Newter was here, and the rest of Faultline’s crew.

For those who didn’t catch on yet.

We reached the first exit, and no sooner had we reached for the door than the handle disappeared.

Ahh. Now it’s Labyrinth’s turn.

The gaps separating the door from the wall filled in, as though wax matching the color of the door was dripping through the gaps.  There were similar things happening at the other entrances, I saw, the doors fading into the walls, becoming little more than discolored blotches.

Because of course they can’t just let the Merchants escape.

And they don’t currently know that Taylor and co. aren’t Merchants. That might become a problem.

Nobody else had seemed to notice, with their attention wholly focused on the woman who was making her way down from the stage with the vial for ‘Doug’.

The Crew are really showing up at the last second.

When the fighting had started, Lisa had dissuaded me from using my power, out of a concern that the ensuing riot and chaos would get people hurt, and that the mob might start to hunt for strangers in their ranks.

Thaaat also might become a problem, yes. Shit.

I had no idea why they were here, but it seemed Faultline was about to crash the party in a far more direct way than we had.  We were about to see that bad scenario unfold, and our escape routes had vanished.

Yeah, this is quite unfortunate.

As Doug approached the stage, taking the long way to keep his distance from his newly empowered ‘friend’, I became aware that my bugs were dying on the roof, where I’d gathered a swarm in preparation during the chaos.  A patch here, a patch there.

Shit. Dude, seriously, I know you can’t fully control it yet, but try to keep your power away from the roof, please?

No.  Not dying.  They were stunned, their senses obliterated by bursts of chaos and false sensations.

Hm…

Does someone else have powers?

Or did Faultline’s Crew show up? Because this kind of sounds like the bugs have wound up in an area affected by Labyrinth’s power.

I had an idea of what it was.  I’d felt the same thing before.

Yeah, I think that’s what this is.

I turned to Lisa.  Moving my left hand from the scratch on the back of my upper arm, I discreetly pointed up and murmured, “There’s company on the way.  We should go before there’s trouble.”

Heh, as if there hasn’t been trouble throughout the chapter.

It makes a lot of sense for Faultline’s Crew to show up. They’re the ones we know have ties to the Dealer subplot, and it’s believable that they may have recovered these vials while investigating that, only for the Merchants to come and steal them, possibly not knowing at first what exactly they had found.

So, of course, it’s time to steal them back, and maybe punish the Merchants.

She looked up, then nodded assent.  Tapping Minor on the shoulder, she gave him a hand signal, and he notified the others.  We began moving.

I will admit I’m a bit disappointed at the prospect of leaving instead of seeing the Crew in action against Skidmark and his people.

The person on the roof was joined by others.  Some bugs died beneath their footfalls.  More bugs were stunned as the first individual crawled forward on all fours, around the lip of the roof and onto the ceiling of the mall, hanging off of it by his hands.

Hiya, Newter. 🙂

Ohh. It wasn’t Labyrinth’s power causing “chaos and false sensations”, it was Newter’s. The bugs are drugged again.

I guess I was wrong in a way that still led me to the correct conclusion.

With the building largely unlit, I couldn’t make him out.

Ninjewter.

Was this division & the hard feelings on purpose?  If it was intentional, if Skidmark was dividing his allies from their former groups and cliques so they couldn’t gang up against him, I’d have to adjust my estimation of him.

I think this particular issue is on the boy making the choice, for giving Rick hope by trying to pick both his friends, and then picking Doug without hesitation when asked to pick one of them. I don’t think Skidmark made him pick one specifically to cause divisions.

That said, what Taylor is suggesting here is the classic Roman tactic of divide and conquer, and it sure worked for them!

Not that I’d like him any more, or even respect him, but I’d give him credit for intelligence.

That’s about how I feel about the Romans doing it too.

“You didn’t help me when I got pulled into the ring,” the boy with the powers told Rick, “Doug at least tried.  He gets my prize.”

Hey, seems like a good reason to me.

The boy who was coughing looked up, surprised.  The one with blood on his face, Rick, suddenly looked angry.  “What the fuck!?”

About as expected.

A flash of white high above and to the right of the boy with the powers made everyone nearby cringe.  It tore away a chunk of a metal beam that was helping to support the damaged roof.  

Whoops.

Seriously, dude, this place is wrecked enough already, try not to make the roof collapse.

People were giving a wider berth to the boy with the powers.  I suspected his abilities and his apparent lack of control were the only things keeping Rick from running up and punching him.

Hehe, yeah, that might end badly.

“Like the puny pink nipple on the end of a pencil?  Fuck that,” Skidmark snarled.

Pfft, hehe

“Um,” the boy drew out the noise, all too aware of his audience, probably unable to think straight.

“Scrub!” Skidmark shouted, and the crowd roared.

Sure, that works!

How in the hell was Scrub better than Eraser?  In what insane reality?

It does sound a bit more insulting, but that’s the norm when it comes to what Skidmark calls his people, and I do think it’s more creative.

Eraser is a bit more immediately descriptive, but it’s like calling Skitter “Bug”. I think we all knew that wasn’t going to stick.

Skidmark waited until the noise of the crowd had died down before he raised the vial, “No point in you having a drink of this shit.  Wouldn’t do sweet fuck all.  Pick someone.”

Oh, he is doing what I suggested. Nice.

…watch as it turns out this guy is a friend of Bryce’s.

The boy stared at Skidmark, processing the words.  He flinched as another flash occurred near him.  A hand clutching one elbow, he turned toward the crowd.  When he spoke, his voice was shaky, “R-Rick!  Doug!”

Uh. Two names?

I’d assume there’s only enough for one in that vial.

Two people emerged from the massed people who stood around where the audience had been.  One had blood running from his scalp to cover half his face, while the other was coughing violently, blood thick around his mouth and nose.

“Can…  Can I give it to both?  Can they share it?” the boy with the glowing hair asked.

No, if that were the case and Skidmark was aware of it, he would be looking for ten winners.

Skidmark chuckled, and it was a nasty sound with very little humor to it.  “No, no.  You definitely don’t want to do that.  Pick one.”

Hm. Based on the way he’s talking, it really seems like Skidmark knows a few things about this stuff. Something about that “definitely” suggests that he knows what would happen if someone took a half-dose, and it’s not pleasant.

“Doug.  Doug can have it.”

Rick might not be happy. At least until he sees what happens to Doug.

A flash of light marked another uncontrolled use of the new cape’s power.  It struck close to the ground, removing the leg of someone who lay unconscious or dead on the ground, but it left the ground perfectly intact.  Why?  When it consumed clothing and flesh but not the building itself?

That is very interesting. Maybe it only works on organic material? Though that doesn’t cover all clothes. That would also invalidate my explanation for the “pull” after the flash.

Or maybe it’s just specifically for the use of erasing people and their clothes? Powers can be weirdly specific sometimes.

“Boy,” Skidmark pointed, “Approach the stage!”

To be fair, Skidmark didn’t say the winners had to use the super juice themselves. It seems like a reasonable compromise to allow the boy’s prize to go to someone else of the boy’s own choosing.

But that might not be how Skidmark intends to do this.

The ring flashed and disappeared.  The boy turned, as though in a daze.  He flinched as another burst of light sparked a good ten feet away.

Yeeah, better get control of that sooner rather than later.

He limped toward Skidmark and stared up at the Merchant’s leader.

“You’re gonna need a name, kid, if you’re going to join the Merchant’s upper circle.”

Hmm… Voidlight?

The boy blinked, looking around, as if he didn’t quite understand.  Was he in shock?

Would make a lot of sense.

“Come on, now.  Let’s hurry it up.”

There was a spark of the boy’s power, and the flash removed a beachball-sized section of rubble beneath Skidmark’s ‘stage’.  The boy stared at it.

Wait, now it’s removing part of the building?

Also, imagine if he accidentally removed Skidmark. That would probably not end well for the boy.

“E-Eraser?” he answered, making it a question.

Fair. Not super inventive, but he was put on the spot.

“If we wait any longer, there’s only going to be one of you cockbiters left in the ring!  We got five of you fuckers left, and that’s all we need!”

We’ve got some winners! Time to see super juice in action, perhaps.

Only five?  There had been at least eighty in the ring at the beginning, and still more had joined the fight afterward, one way or another.

Ah! I guess Taylor just didn’t make note of that, with the obvious exception of Bryce.

I’m sure the rampaging new parahuman had something to do with the numbers dropping so much more quickly now.

I could see the remaining five as the audience moved back to give them space.  A family of three, it seemed, a woman with a gaping wound in her stomach, her hand crimson where it pressed against the injury, and the boy who’d had his trigger event.

Why is the boy who had his trigger event counted for the purposes of finding five people to give superpowers to? Can the juice give him more powers?

Other than that we’ve got a family – nice work making it through this together – and Kanaya. I hope the stomach-wounded woman gets vampire powers.

I didn’t see Bryce or his new ‘family’ in the mist of the people retreating from the scene.

Welp. Time to search, I guess.

Let’s hope you find more than just his legs.

It took a full minute for everyone to break off in the fighting and back off to a point where they didn’t feel immediately threatened.

So is this just halftime, or did the still-fighting population of the arena reach five, or…

So many injured.  How many of his own people had Skidmark just lost in this stunt?

Probably a lot, both injured and dead. We’ve seen some of the deaths happen, after the trigger event, and the narration, rules and people involved make it seem like there’s been more.

But hey. A single parahuman can be worth a lot of mundanes in some people’s eyes.

(I’m still 98% certain there are parahuman supremacist terror organizations out there whose primary goal is to cause as many trigger events as possible for the public. Doesn’t matter whether they show up in the story or not, I’m just pretty sure they’d exist in the setting.)

Did he care?  He stood to gain five new parahumans for his group.  Six if you counted the guy who’d had his trigger event.

To be fair, he could’ve gained the other five without this mess, but as I described last chapter, this whole thing is a pretty solid way to find the most useful people to give the super juice to. (With the exception that it doesn’t account for loyalty.)

I don’t think there’s much left of the chapter, but Skidmark told me to stop so– no, I’m kidding, let’s move on. 😛

The last group to tackle us had largely been beaten back.  Another group made some threatening moves, but they seemed to be in rougher shape than us.  Their leader was an amazon of a woman with a wild look in her eyes and matted hair, and I could see concern flash across her face as she looked us over and noted the disparity in the condition of our groups.

Yeeah, don’t even bother.

It struck me she was in a bad spot, knowing her group would be thrashed if she took us on, but at the same time, she couldn’t order her guys to back off without looking like a coward.

Hm. Tricky situation for both sides. I’m not sure how to solve this – backing off might give the amazon’s guys confidence and spur them on, but intimidation might also spur them on by virtue of them having the same “I’m not a coward” attitude as the amazon. Holding their place doesn’t solve anything either.

…move sideways?

Whatever decision she would have made, we didn’t get to find out.

Oh? Did the guy with the bursts of non-existence come too close, or something? I doubt it’s another trigger event, given that that would presumably cause another round in the tesseractid zone.

“Stop!” Skidmark hollered into his microphone.

Hm. Alright, sure.