Doing the wrong things for the right reasons.

I panicked, freaked out.  My mind went someplace else, and it found the bugs there.  Not that I knew what they were, at that point.  I didn’t have a sense of proportion, and with all the info my power was giving me then, my brain didn’t know how to process it all.  As far as I knew, all around me, in the walls of the school, in the corners, and crawling around the filthy interior of the locker, there were thousands of these twitchy, alien, distorted things that were each shoving every tiny detail about their bodies and their fucked up biology into my head.

It’s hard to explain what it’s like, having a new sense open up, but you can’t understand it all.  Every sound that they heard was bounced back to me at a hundred times the volume, with the pitch and everything else all screwed up as if they wanted to make it as unpleasant and painful to listen to as possible.  Even what they were seeing, it’s like having my eyes open after being in the dark for a long time, but the eyes weren’t attached to my body, and what they were seeing was like looking into a really dingy, grimy kaleidoscope.  Thousands of them.  And I didn’t know how to turn any of it off.

Don't underestimate me.

"Meh, I could take her."

Running forward, he swung the club at the swarm like he was trying to hit a home run.  The head was scattered, dashed to pieces, and he laughed again.

Until the rest of the swarm dog piled him.  Then he started screaming.

“Motherfucker.”  Even without intending to do it, I used my swarm to carry my voice.  His head craned around, as if to look at the swarming bugs who had just, for all intents and purposes, spoken.  Eventually his ‘face’ turned back to me.

“I have no idea how the fuck I’m going to do it,” my voice was a low snarl, barely recognizable as my own beneath my anger and the noises of the swarm.  ”But I’m going to make you regret that.”

I almost laughed, and some of my humor must have translated in a mental direction to my bugs, because they started making a noise that wasn’t speech.  I stopped them.  It wouldn’t have sounded much like laughter anyways.  ”All of the above?  None of the above?  Does it matter?  Some of us wear the villain label with pride, because they want to rebel against the norms, because it’s a harder, more rewarding road to travel, or because being a ‘hero’ often means so very little.  But few people really want to see themselves as being bad or evil, whatever label they wear.  I’ve done things I regret, I’ve done things I’m proud of, and I’ve walked the roads in between.  The sliding scale is a fantasy.  There’s no simple answers.“

'Know where you are:

The area extending west of the ferry station north, including the factories and the remains of the Boardwalk, is believed to be under claim by the supervillain Skitter. Skitter is a member of the Undersiders, who are allied with the Travelers in an as-of-yet unnamed alliance. Skitter is an unpredictable young woman tending towards acts of apparent kindness to those she deems her subjects and bursts of sudden and extreme violence towards those she sees as her enemies. The city is not funding work in her territory, as Skitter is handling matters there.

Skitter controls insects and senses what they do. Anyone with allergies to stings or insect bites would be advised to leave this area. She offers food, shelter and care to anyone who agrees to work under her, but the Dockworkers Association cannot suggest that anyone accept her offers, as her ulterior motives are unknown.

This area is not currently the site of any ongoing disputes between capes. There is limited power in this area. There is limited cell service in this area. There is not water service in this area.'

Armsmaster: You gonna fight me?

Skitter: I’m a good guy.

Armsmaster: You don’t look like one.

Whatever else Shadow Stalker might think of the bug girl, how the girl was creepy, a freak, she had to admit Skitter had demonstrated enough viciousness to date that she could almost respect the girl as a fellow predator.

Battery: What’s your agenda?

Skitter: Do I have to have one?

Battery: Yes. Your kind always has an agenda.

Skitter: Maybe I’m unique.

Battery: No, knowing what you tried to pull with pretending to be a villain? Or pretending to be a hero that’s pretending to be a villain? You’re more likely to have some scheme at play than anyone else.

A figure stood behind Yan. Her costume was barely recognizable – She wore a short cape of tattered black cloth over her body armor, a skintight black suit beneath that, and there were folds of black cloth draped around her legs like a dress or a robe. The entire fabric seemed to ripple and move. It took Sierra a second to realize it was crawling with a carpet of insects.

The disconcerting part was the girl’s face, or lack thereof. Her expression was masked behind a shifting mass of bugs that moved in and out of her hairline. Sierra couldn’t even tell where the bugs ended and the scalp began, as the small black bodies crawled into and onto the black curls. There was a hint of something like glass where Skitter’s eyes were, but the bugs ventured far enough over her eyelids and around the frames that nothing was visible in the way of goggles, glasses or skin.

(After The Nine have attacked the nursery of an hospital.)

PsychoGecko: Now, now, let’s not jump to conclusions here. We don’t know for a fact that this wasn’t a case of self defense. Those babies might have been asking for it. One of them might have smuggled a Walther PPK in its diaper to cap an unsuspecting nurse, and then Jack Slash saw it and decided to act heroically. Or Siberian figured it was as good a time as any to try eating a baby. Hell, if you she downed the diaper too then you might as well sell that video off for another Jackass movie. Maybe they’ll put it just after the part where someone blows a horse.

Tieshaunn: Thanks for all those wonderful pictures in my head. better be careful the next time you go to sleep…

PsychoGecko: Slept like a dead baby.

TheAnt: It was implied that they took a few alive, at least to me. Knowing Bonesaw, that is not a good thing.

PsychoGecko: Must need [the materials to build] more spiders.

Tieshaunn: DAMMIT, WHY WON’T YOU STOP!?

PsychoGecko: I bet Siberian likes veal.

To be fair, almost none of the capes should be able to exist. Just because the endbringers are able to tell reality to fuck off a little bit harder doesn’t justify persecuting them!

Scapegoat: I was perfectly happy, Being able to tell myself that hey, the news is blowing things out of proportion. There’s no way Brockton Bay is as scary as they’re making it out to me. Dragon suits get sent in and are promptly forced out, but really, the mayor‘s telling Washington it’s safe enough. The media got something wrong, or they’re making little problems sound bigger than they are. See the piles of dead bodies where this girl spat out clones. Okay. I can live with that. An unusual power and strong parahuman. Could be an exaggeration. See the destruction, the ruined buildings and the streets that still haven’t drained a hundred percent. More or less what I expected from the news. The girl with the mutant dogs? Bug girl? Still manageable. But she opens her mouth, [points at Tattletale] and pop goes my bubble of happy self-delusion.

Tecton: You want to tear a hole in reality?

Tattletale: I do.

Psycho Gecko: Principled people in Worm? That IS suspicious.

throwaawy: >>Principled people in Worm? That IS suspicious.

no it's...(o.o)
...it's (>.>a)
...........(-_-);

I’d really like to dispute that. I really would =/

Weeks or months ago, I might have had a hard time wearing that confidence the way Jack did. The history, the long sequence of events and conflicts where we’d come out ahead in our respective teams, it could just as easily be a burden, the accumulated weight of the various precedents we’d set, but we’d made it into our armor, something to make our enemies hesitate at a critical juncture.

Innomine: Hey Wildbow, what are our chances of getting a non-interlude chapter on saturday?

Wildbow: Interlude Sat, maybe Tues too

Wildbow: Just because I need a break from the main story

saintsant: You're a bad person, Wildbow.

Wildbow: and your tears of frustration sustain me.