But even without the glass, there was still sand.

Clearly what we need to defeat Shatterbird is a magical pink lion.

Anyway, I considered mentioning the sand in the intro post, but I decided “painted crystal red” was too poetic to sully with “and maybe a bit of white/yellow/brown from a sandstorm and the tannish brown of corpses, plus whatever colors are on their clothes and stuff…”

I stepped out of the way as a trio of people moved down the street, supporting each other as much as they were able.  Each of them had been blasted by the sand, their skin left ragged.

Ouch.

It had turned a bruised combination of black brown and purple where it hadn’t been scraped off and left raw, red and openly bleeding.  One looked as though he’d been blinded.  The sandburns covered his upper face.

There’s a reason one particular tool we use to remove material so we can change the texture of a surface is called sandpaper.

Two ambulances had stopped at an intersection just a block away from where I had announced my claim of territory.  At a glance, I could tell that they’d had all mirrors removed and all glass stripped from the dash, doors and windshield.

More of Coil’s people, unless the hospital took the same precautions at Sierra’s warning.

Those that had emerged from their homes and shelters were gravitating towards the ambulances.  There was still dust settling on the streets, and I could taste it thick in the air, even through my mask.

It seems like Wildbow’s eyes had recently been opened to the possibilities in using the sense of taste when describing something. Only two chapters ago, we had Taylor tasting Lisa’s blood (…now that’s something that sounds a bit different out of context), and now this.

I wondered if we needed to be getting masks out to people.  It couldn’t be healthy.

Probably wouldn’t hurt, at least. Unless of course the masks had an eye portion with glass lenses. That would be a bad idea.

I never thought I’d be thankful in any way that Leviathan had trashed my hometown.

Would it happen to be because he broke a lot of glass that Shatterbird could’ve used now?

Or maybe because the water is washing away the blood and glass shards?

Leviathan’s tidal waves had shattered many of the windows and the residents had put plywood, plastic and boards up in their wake.  It meant there was less material for Shatterbird to use against us.

Got it in one. 🙂

Countless people had been spared from injury and death due to Shatterbird’s glass shards because Leviathan had gotten to us first.

In a way, Leviathan was less dangerous than Shatterbird, largely thanks to the shelters and forewarning system. Shatterbird also has much, much greater range for quickly killing tons of people, though Leviathan did have the sinkholes to try for.

Though I doubt Shatterbird could match Leviathan’s murders-per-day record of nine million. Although she might get close if she went to a city like Tokyo or New York (New York City alone doesn’t have enough people to hit nine million, but its population is almost twice as dense as central Tokyo). Then again, she might be limited to doing something on this scale only once in a while – a cooldown, if you will – which would drastically limit her kill per day ratio even in such cities.

By the way, it feels so weird to talk about cities with that many people. 9 million, 13 million, 38 million if you include the greater metropolitan area of Tokyo… And here we Norwegians are with 23 times as much

total land area as the Tokyo metropolitan area, 148 times as much as central Tokyo, 413 times as much as New York City – and 5.2 million people to fill it.

Plague 12.6

Howdy! It’s that time again!

Last time, Taylor made her way home to make sure her dad would be okay when the Shattering hit, and made arrangements to save as many other people as she could along the way. She sort of succeeded at the first part, though more because of what she did in 11.1 than what she did in 12.5.

But now Coil wants her to prioritize her territory next. It’s time to take a look at what sort of carnage Shatterbird has made out of the people Skitter swore to protect.

Hopefully Charlotte’s warning managed to spread and save a share of the people there, if that’s even where she was when Taylor called, but it’s also possible that people didn’t believe her.

In retrospect, this is probably exactly why the Slaughterhouse Nine chose right now as the time to let Shatterbird go through with the Shattering of Brockton Bay. Most of the nominees and people who might be around when they were warned would be away from their territories in order to attend the Lake Heroic meeting, many of them not going back in time to take measures to protect their territories from the attack.

…oh jeez, I wonder how Bitch is reacting to what just happened. If she’s realized that her base, full of dogs, probably got hit too. Though that’s on the edge of town furthest away from where Shatterbird roughly seems to be, so maybe the song didn’t reach it. They did say it would reach most of the city, not all of it.

Anyway, yeah. Skitter’s territory, massive carnage, painted crystal red, though maybe not as much as it could’ve been if things went well for Charlotte. That’s pretty much what I’m predicting for this one.

Let’s jump in and take a look!

“It just delays the issue, allowing another 15 or so years for humanity to prepare.” What would preparation look like?

For some examples:

  • Allowing more powered people to emerge.
  • Developing more tinkertech and regular tech that might come in handy.
  • Informing select parahumans about the upcoming apocalypse to prepare them for whatever efforts might be done to reduce damage and possibly even ending the event. They’d need to pick trustworthy ones, though, because it leaking to the public might cause panic, rage, riots, dejection… on another hand, maybe the negative reactions to the US government publicly predicting the upcoming apocalypse would be worth it for the people who would take it seriously and become apocalypse preppers. Maybe some of them would be able to survive because of it.
  • With more time, Dinah and other parahuman sources of information may be able to provide more knowledge of the exact threat

    and its timing

    (especially if Dinah’s power gets easier to use with age/training), helping to make plans for how to best deal with it. Plans that are probably largely going to fall out the window when the threat actually comes, but still plans that might help. Knowledge is power in this setting, let’s not forget that.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think this preparation would solve the problem, or make a huge dent in it, but every little thing that might help is desirable in this scenario, and each extra year before it happens might provide several such little things.

It wouldn’t really make much sense for real paramedics to be at the house so soon after the attack. Even if they had time to prepare early because of Taylor’s warning, it’s not like they can send ambulances to every house in the city. It would be a pretty big coincidence if Danny’s house happened to be one of the very few houses that they were able to send paramedics to.

That is fair point.

Dude when do you even sleep? Aren’t you Norwegian?

The only thing that is regular about my sleep schedule these days is it getting fucked up. I do usually manage to fall asleep somewhere in between 2 and 9 AM, at least.

I can’t be sure of what my feelings on Rachel were at that point in the story but I think that back then even though she didn’t tell about being a candidate I still felt sympathy for her because from her interlude it’s obvious she wants to get closer to people but she’s been hurt too much in the past so she’s keeping her distance to avoid being hurt again. Yeah, she never met Taylor halfway, but given her history I can’t blame her.

That’s fair. I don’t blame her for that either, really, but it’s still kind of hard to take “I have no real positive connections” as a sympathetic motivation for shitty behavior when there’s seemingly been no attempt from her side to create some (and said behavior actively harms any such efforts), even when it was initiated by someone who actually wanted to look past her shitty behavior and get to know her.

She’s ended up kind of neutral on the sympathy scale, I guess. I don’t sympathize with her much, but I don’t hate her either. It’s understandable that she acts this way, just not sympathetic after all the shit she’s pulled.

“This is insane.” And some real Shatterbird bait, too.

Hell yeah. A 240-room hotel with roof-to-floor glass windows on every one of them and their little bathrooms too? That’s a massacre waiting to happen if Shatterbird shows up here.

Holy crap your hometown looks gorgeous.

Thank you! 🙂

It’s not exactly a big place or a tourist destination (though it does see a fair amount of tourists on their way to other places, which is part of why they’re planning the hotel), but I think it’s a nice little town we’ve got.

The L shape of the clock is the side view.

Oh! So:

The thing on the right is how I imagined it. Bit of a fancy modern design, y’know.

But yeah, I suppose the left design does make a lot more sense with Hebert sensibilities and economy.