“Any time now,” he said.

It began as a pale square in mid-air, then unfolded rapidly, three-dimensional.

Cauldron?

When it opened up further, the interior of a building loomed in mid-air, the exterior absent. 

Guys, I think we found a chunk error.

He floated forward and set foot on the white tile of the hallway.  He felt the distortion as the space shifted, felt the rush of wind as air pressure adjusted.  It took only a couple of seconds.  When he glanced over his shoulder, the oil rig was gone.  There was only more hallway behind him.

Well then. It seems we ha– oh fuck is Siberian Legend’s Nemesis

He walked onward, confident in his ability to navigate the maze of rooms and corridors.

Evidently he’s been here before and he’s not being guided even though Cauldron clearly expected him. But he doesn’t have the personality for a leader of the company – Cauldron’s amoral attitude towards putting villains into the world doesn’t mesh with Legend’s desire to make a positive impact on the world.

I wonder if he knew Siberian was a Cauldron client before he saw the tattoo.

It’s hard to stop doing things I enjoy, even in order to start doing other things I enjoy.

Basically what I’m saying is I’ve been meaning to stop messing with Minecraft and start blogging for a couple hours now, and now we’re getting into the part of the evening where the blog would amount to like… four or five posts before I’d have to stop for the night.

So yeah, I might as well put off the blog to tomorrow and get a more complete session. The less unnecessarily fragmented the chapters get, the better, I think. See you then!

So when we last left off, grade-A-minus bitch Yan was sadistically forcing Sierra to choose. Hand, knee or a ten-year-old.

Of course it’d be great if they could find a fourth option, but I’m thinking it’s going to be the hand.

“My hand.”

Booyeah.

45-45 odds at worst, I know, but it still feels good to get it right.

Yan smirked, taking the gun out of the boy’s mouth.  “Put it flat against the wall.”

Maybe if Sierra gets lucky here with the placements, she could disarm Yan. But even then they’d still have two strong, combat-trained guys and one strong, combat-trained woman against a young, untrained woman and an even younger, untrained teen girl who seems to have submitted to the opponents… as well as, what, seven kids, ten and below?

Honestly, the kids might be the key to turning the tide here. Do not underestimate kids. They can be vicious. (The fact that I just came from playing Minecraft, where baby zombies are significantly more of a threat than adult zombies, only strengthens my conviction on that front.)

Alternatively, the key might be Skitter’s return. While it’d be an unexpected rescue from the characters’ perspective, it wouldn’t be a deus ex machina, because both this chapter and natural consequences of recent events have set up the return as something that should either happen now (15.1 is also acceptable, but disappointing) or not for a long while still.

That, and I want to see Taylor react to finding out that the ABB members she hired are in fact shitty people and she made a mistake in hiring them.

…actually, that last thing is part of what I don’t like about this chapter so far. There was so much potential for these three to get partially reformed, and then as soon as we see them again they go and do this. Maybe there still is potential, though. It depends on how forgiving Taylor is feeling.

Though I doubt she’ll be in a great mood after Jack and co. escaped the city.

So I got distracted for a while there by humongous slime cubes and teaching llamas to spit fire, but there’s still time to get in a short Worm session tonight. Let’s try to make some progress, shall we?

A handful of my bugs were wiped from existence a fraction of a second before more explosions of varying size ripped through the area around her.  Legend was somewhere up in the air.

Oh hell yes.

So I guess the bugs that got wiped got caught in the laser blasts?

I drew my bugs together around Siberian’s head, in the hopes that I could distract her.  It was pretty thin, but there wasn’t much I could do.  Even a direct hit with Legend’s lasers wouldn’t affect her.

Better than nothing, I suppose.

I shifted locations, flying half a block before landing again.  I could just barely make out the pair of combatants with my swarm sense.

So they’re near the edge? Or is it that they’ve wiped out too many bugs?

Something about what Legend was doing seemed odd.  He wasn’t firing constantly.  Rather, his shots seemed to be strategically placed.

Maybe he’s trying to manipulate the environment to make it harder for Siberian to navigate it? He knows she’s not affected by the explosions directly.

He ripped apart the side of a building a moment before Siberian landed there, then tore through the five or six floors beneath her so she had nowhere to go except straight down.  The instant she stepped free of the building’s ground floor, he tore into the ground with a series of laser blasts that expanded outward, thinning as they went.

…is he trying to leave her in a deep pit?

It created a bowl-shaped indent, with rubble covering the storm drains that had been exposed by the lasers.

We need to go deeper if stranding her in a pit is indeed the goal here.

I could see Bonesaw too.  Her face was bloodied, her nose gushing blood, and her cheek was a ruined, abraded mess.  Whatever had eaten at Parian’s dinosaur had gotten on her too, devouring the edges of her dress, one sock and part of the shoe on the same foot.

Whoops. That’s the problem with splash potions. They splash.

“You killed my mom,” Parian’s voice sounded hollow.

Oh damn, it’s personal now.

“Prepare to die.”

“My teammates did most of the actual killing, so I don’t think I did, if that makes you feel any better.” 

…why is her consistent lack of understanding of other people’s values and emotions so damn endearing?

“My aunt, my best friend, my cousin… they were all here.”

“Wrong place, wrong time?” Bonesaw shrugged.

That’s not helping, Bonesaw!

Ahaha

She slapped at a wasp that had managed to get in position to sting her.  She wasn’t in the area of her anti-bug smoke anymore.

Well, that might be helpful?

“They told me to run, to protect the kids.  But they were supposed to escape while I handled that,” Parian sounded lost, dazed.  “I thought they’d get away, so I played dead.  I didn’t know.”

She did play dead! I’m not sure if she means while she was in costume or not, but I do lean towards that.

Parian’s creation struck the villainess a second time.  Bonesaw was thrown into a metal shelf unit with enough force that she dented it.  One test tube slipped from her fingers.

WOO!

The other, she whipped at the stuffed dinosaur.  It hit with enough force that it shattered on impact. 

Let’s see what this splash potion of… something does.

The dinosaur struck Bonesaw a third time.  Heavy as the impact was, Bonesaw was cornered and she couldn’t go flying as she’d done before.  My view of the scene was limited to the back of the Dinosaur’s head, and the occasional view of an stubby-fingered arm as it was drawn back for a haymaker punch.

Come on, this is making for back gameplay footage! Get back on the screen!

It pounded her, one hit after another.

My heart sank as I saw the stuffed dinosaur begin to deflate.

Well, fuck.

It backed away from Bonesaw, and I saw a spreading area on its side where the fabric was thinning out, bleaching.  Once the first holes appeared in the fabric, the rest of the process was swift.  It crumpled almost explosively, revealing a figure inside.

Was I right? 😮

Parian threw off the cloth that had covered her and used her power to rip away her sleeve and part of her dress where it was disintegrating; whatever had eaten at the fabric of her dinosaur armor was continuing the process with her clothing.

I was!

Also, that’s a bit awkward for her.

Suddenly she’s naked in more than one sense of the word, and I think the literal sense is meant to emphasize the metaphorical one.

The woman wasn’t in any shape to fight, but Alec did strike Cherie across the head, fairly ineffectually.  She retaliated by kicking him, then grabbed his wrist as he tried to draw the weapon he had in his pocket.

It’s a brawl in the family!

So is Alec’s pocket weapon his taser?

It was a gold-painted stick topped with a crown.  She couldn’t see why he wanted it, but he did and so she wasn’t about to let him have it for just that reason.

Yep. A bit smaller than I’ve been picturing it all along – the scepter I’ve been imagining would never fit fully in the pocket, and definitely not without prompting jokes about “is that a scepter in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” from Grue or Tattletale.

I guess this might not the main scepter. Maybe this is Sceptercraft: Pocket Edition.

He changed tactics, rolling over to drive one shoulder into Cherie.  With his free hand he tried to reach for the gun holster worn by the woman.  That had been what caught his attention, gave him that surge of confidence.

Ahhh. The great equalizer, potentially used to unlock a stalemate.

Cherie fought with him, pulling him away, and then got one leg under him to roll him away.  She pinned him, holding his wrists to the floor.

Hm. She looks like she’s winning in this moment, but Alec still has the ability to mess with her grip or balance.

Also she’s gone back to calling herself Cherie. Fair enough!

“The soldiers there can keep him in line.  I’ll keep him away from Senegal and Brooks.  Minor, Pritt and Jaw could watch him and instill some discipline in him, and they’re uniquely equipped to track him down if he tries to slip away.

Okay, that’s fair.

I’d keep him out of trouble, and have him gather information and act as a pair of eyes on the street.  He’ll hate it at first, with the soldiers giving him a hard time, on top of the missing hand, but I think he’ll take to it once he’s actually doing something concrete.  What kid doesn’t want to be a secret agent?”

Bryce, wearing sunglasses: Mesa. Bryce Mesa. Lemon Coke Zero, shaken, not stirred.”

Cashier: “…you want me to shake this soda bottle for you, kid? Are you sure–”

Bryce: “It’s okay. I’ve got a license to spill.”