Twig 15.1 said: “Caton’s second rule is where you have to be able to do maths quick in your head. Intake scales. I’m not going to read the numbers out loud, you both can read. Gases, fuels, hydration. Note correlation to size. Where the science stops and the art starts is when you can adjust the scales and numbers as you grow the system, and you start seeing the organism naturally take on the necessary proportions to draw breath, digest, and, of course, hydrate.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: Jessie was wearing a wool dress in navy blue, with a collared shirt underneath. Her hair was braided to one side, the short braid just barely touching the collarbone at her right shoulder, and she had the glasses set so that she was looking over them as often as not, to better complete the ‘librarian’ look. It allowed her to give me a lot of ‘disappointed teacher’ looks. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: “Right,” I said. “Six hundred crown dollars.”



I turned, opened a bag, and, blocking it with my body, I picked out some bills. I counted them, closed up the bag, and turned around. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: Leah didn’t look like a suspicious individual, which made her all the more perfect for the role of clandestine tutor. She was shorter than me, fresh faced, blonde haired, and dressed in fairly nondescript clothing – a long-sleeved dress, cardigan, and stockings. Her boots were lace-up, almost knee high, and caked with now-dry mud, marking her trip from the Academy to the crummy neighborhood that Jessie and I had set up in.



If it wasn’t for the dark circles under her eyes from late-night studying, the ink-smudges at one side of her hand where it had rested on notebooks? The faint stains of bodily fluids that her lab coat and apron hadn’t caught and washing hadn’t entirely removed? I wouldn’t have guessed she was an Academy student. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: All the more so because she had found her way to a lantern-lit room in the ass end of town, where everything was covered in cloths and dust. Tools and bits of building material from a job that had never finished were strewn here and there. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: “I feel like the moment my hand takes that money might be the same moment that Academy soldiers kick in the door and drag me off.”



“Absolutely,” I said. “Because that’s how it works. They’re waiting for you to touch the money. The introductory lesson to show you know your stuff? Irrelevant. They have to follow very arbitrary rules like you taking the money after sharing the info.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: Leah frowned.



“It won’t be murder,” Jessie said.



Leah frowned more, her eyes rising to meet Jessie’s.



“She wasn’t worried about murder until you mentioned it,” I told Jessie. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: “A product of a system that breeds cutthroats. You end up with people who can’t stop cutting, I suppose.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: “That she’ll do. Maybe I can be more creative about who I take out and how. If the crime scenes are grisly enough, in a dramatic sense, then that could sate her bloodlust some?”



“Not actual bloodlust. I imagine violence would bother her.”



“Probably. But given a chance, she could get a taste for it, same as she got a taste for sabotage. Her grades are good?” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: “Only a little,” I said. “I’m very curious where she goes from here. I’m imagining her riding a high. Moving straight from one excitement to another. Her choice of where she moves to could say a lot about her character.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: Jessie snuffed the lantern, then picked it up, while it still faintly glowed with heat-reactive bioluminescence. Purples and blues danced and the residual light made it possible to see the outlines of the door and doorframe. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: No opportunists harassed us on our evening walk. A bit of a relief, that. On the down side, it meant we couldn’t continue to subtly establish our local mythology. On the upside, it meant we didn’t need to make any detours or change out of bloody clothing. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.1 said: “There was more,” Pierre said. “A name came up, one that you said to watch out for. Genevieve.”



“Fray. She’s coming?” I asked. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “It’s really difficult to find people who we want working for us, for something like this, you know? Because you want good, helpful, quality people. But you also don’t want to be too sad when things get hairy and people start dying.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “We owe her,” Jessie said. Then she paused. “I wonder how Mauer does it. Does he have the magic touch, when it comes to finding people who are just assholish enough to not mind if they die?”



“Mauer’s magic touch is in tapping into that subset of the populations that is willing to die for the cause. His willingness to send them to their deaths is their willingness to go down fighting, and so long as that’s true he can keep his conscience clear.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “It helps that it’s a beautiful woman knocking on their door out of the middle of nowhere, asking for their company and, presumably, offering money,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “Three out of four of them are men,” I said. “You and I have talked about salesmanship. This is that. Even if there’s no product.”



“Same techniques,” Shirley said.



“Exactly.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “Let’s slow down a tich, then. I want to arrive as they do.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: He was being difficult. I wasn’t sure what it was. My small stature? That he needed to be the biggest, meanest dog in front of his men? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “The brief, Clay,” I said. “The plan.”



“Then why not call it that?” he asked. He chuckled, and his brothers and cousins took his cue, following suit.



Yeah. Not exactly the cream of the crop, any of them. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: For a guy as smart as he was to be this small a player in this small a place, it meant there had to be something wrong with him. It bothered me that it hadn’t turned up just yet. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “Forty?”



“Count,” she said.



I wondered if he could. Oh well. We would manage. If this executed well, then all the better. If not, it let us weed out people we couldn’t use. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: “Don’t have to be a bitch with the orders. Could at least be nice about it,” Otis said.



Jessie gave me a glance.



Something you didn’t have to deal with as a guy? Being commanding as a guy is fine. As a girl, well… rubs some people the wrong way. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: I slammed my hand down on the switch on the wall, so close to the front door, that controlled the lighting. Conveniently placed to allow the last person to leave to shut everything off. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: I could navigate that darkness by intuition. The afterimage of where the people were stuck in my mind’s eye. The psychology of fear and panic told me the most logical positions for where they would be. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.2 said: Probably the best way to go, but given circumstance… given the fact that it was a drop of several feet, that they wouldn’t be able to defend themselves in the moments following, and that Clay looked like a mean, unhinged sort? They elected to head for the back door. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: Trapping someone in place with physical bonds was an interesting thing, when it came to psychology. It made their world small. Once the escape routes and the connections to allies were taken away and pressure was applied, the sum total of existence became the room they were in. Their experience and ability to plan extended no further than the interaction between captor and captive. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “I will,” he said, with grave seriousness, looking down at me with eyes that looked like they were meant only meant for getting and giving sympathy. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “I know. But we do what we need to do in order to make this happen. How good are you on their business as usual?”



“Watched these guys from a nearby rooftop with some binoculars in hand for a few hours. I’m good,” she said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: I leaned forward, so my face was close to hers, stopping short of our noses touching, only to turn my face at the last second, so I could speak in her ear. “Do tell.”



Any of the girls I’d interacted with to date might have reacted. I could picture Mary matching aggression with aggression, forward lean with forward lean, forcing a game of chicken. Lillian would have backed off, likely blushed. Shirley would have redirected, deflected, or otherwise shied off. Lacey would have been traumatized, though I hesitated to call Lacey a girl. Helen would have eaten me alive.



Jessie, though, didn’t flinch at all. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “I’ve been with him for seven months now,” she said. “In that span of time, he’s had Crown, Academy, Rebellion, and criminal organizations come for his head, some of those very motivated, and often two or three of those groups at the same time. He has literally had his heart ripped out of his chest, yet he’s still here. He’s better off than he was, and he’ll be better off in another seven months.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: I could have given them a scenario where their time and effort would have been worth it even if I failed, but that would have spelled out a scenario where they would go for the safe bet, and help me fail. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: Confinement changed how one thought. It made things a dialogue between captor and captive.



But they’d lived a life of confinement. Doing work they had to in order to make ends meet. They didn’t have freedom in the conventional sense. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “Not an army, exactly,” I said. I fished in a pocket for a bill, and extended it toward her. She read my mind, and provided one of her cigarettes. I added, “Taking steps toward… recruitment of a sort.”



“Vague,” she said, lighting my cigarette. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “…And she’s not magical. She gets her information from places. She’s wanted and recognizable. She needs accommodations ready, especially as she brings more people with her. And if she doesn’t want to stay in one place for too long, then she needs to have people handle the preparations or initial phases. In the best case scenario, that preparation is done unwittingly.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: That got the faintest of reactions. Turned out the guy who started screaming the moment he was assaulted, kidnapped, and tied up in a dark room had obvious tells. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “And her big play involves the Academy.”



“We already had our suspicions about what that play would look like,” Jessie reminded me. “This more or less confirms them.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: “You’re very readable, Sy. When you feel insecure, you push the boundaries. Even with allies. Especially with allies. You mess up their glasses, for example.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: We were sitting on a monumental secret. But to utilize it, we needed a voice, and six hundred were far louder than two. Six thousand were better than six hundred. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: As I’d told Leon, Fray laid groundwork and put out feelers. She likely had a hundred groups like this little drug laboratory at the edge of the world. When certain stars aligned and she saw opportunity, then she leveraged them. They gave her the in. Groups like this let her get set up and act quickly, much as the student she was tutoring had given her access to the lab with chemicals and water supply access that would let her taint the town and surrounding region. Dame Cicely’s. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.3 said: She would, through the replacements we were setting up or a lack of awareness that we were in play, set up her ‘something big’.



And we were damn well going to steal it. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: There was something reassuring about being the figure in the shadows, the member of a band or pair of assassins and investigators who fit together like clockwork. That reassurance had been turned on its head now that we were crossing the threshold.



We were no longer the unpredictable figures that were shaking the box of spiders, but now another few of the people who were making a box, choosing and gathering the spiders, and hoping that the journey that followed wouldn’t see things shaking too much. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “Scale built into it. Pallets are three point six stone, these crates are six point four. Got crates specifically made to be that weight. Nice and tidy ten stone. Mental calculation on quantity of product, ninety-ninety of happy-go-lucky, we’re looking for one seventy eight and a half stone… and we’re within the allowable margins. Lid goes on…” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “What was this station, again?” Marvin asked.



“Packing,” Junior said, patient. He shot another glance my way.



Did Junior want my approval? Or was he such a practiced sycophant that he was capable of suggesting that sentiment while he plotted to undermine me? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “My girl likes this body type,” Marvin said. “If we break up, I’ll go back to the way I was, but things aren’t going that way, so I’m stuck this way, I think.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: It took some time for Junior to figure out how to structure it. But the guy was a student.



Not the best student. Jessie had said that Leah beat Junior in the rankings. Which was odd, when I compared my assessment of their natural abilities. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “I consider myself a people person,” Junior said. “I’m good at figuring them out.”



“Sure,” I said. “Others have said you had talents in that area. I believe them.”



“I’ve known her for nearly a year, and I didn’t guess one tenth what you just did.”



“I read people, Junior. It’s part of what I do. A matter of survival.”



He didn’t reply to that, but he seemed to take it in and give it some consideration. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: Yeah, I thought. My gut feeling was right. He was of a type that could be disarming, play nice with just about anyone, and be convincing in the process. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “Yeah,” he said. “Exactly that. If I have to turn to something stronger, which I will someday, then it’ll come at a cost.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “The thing to pay attention to,” I said, “Is the people she brings with her. The headsman, the massive fellow that follows her, does he say more than five words at a time, if he speaks at all? Is the stitched she keeps in her company free or happy? Does the woman with bird wings still look haunted?” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: “As you wish,” I said. “Point being, she’ll follow through. She’ll be genuine on a level, and her brilliant mind will likely be interested in following through in terms of sheer problem solving. Yet if you look at the people that have been with her the longest, who have been waiting for her to set aside the time to fix them? They’re still waiting. If you think for a moment, and rationalize that someone who collects the wounded as soldiers might find herself without an army if she’s too quick to mend…” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: So many things were out of my hands. Arrows I’d loosed and trusted to fly straight. Boomerangs I’d thrown and trusted to return. But I couldn’t read all of the prevailing winds. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: My expression and tone were dead serious as I said, “Not while she’s asleep. I made Jamie and Jessie a promise long ago. That they would be safe while they were asleep. I wouldn’t betray that.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.4 said: I did something I’d done thousands of times before, and I used Wyvern to adjust how my brain worked. As I’d done hundreds of times, I adjusted how it worked in respect to sleep. I used poisons and drugs to do something in that same realm that Junior had tampered with and suffered so much for. As I drifted off, I calibrated myself so my sleep would be a shallow one. The slightest thing would wake me up. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: “Is this how you operate, Mary?” I asked. “Is it a factor in how you’re put together? When you’re really nervous about the day, you focus a little bit on grooming? Armor yourself in fashion, arm yourself with the necessary tools, and find your center?”



“I was only nervous in the very beginning,” she said. “Back when I didn’t know the Lambs. Then again, when Percy came up, and when the Lambs split.”



“The very beginning. That’s when you settled on your particular style. Before then, we mostly saw you wearing the Mothmont uniform.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: It was dim outside, the first rays of dawn only just reaching out. People were awake and busy, because it was seven in the morning, but the colder season was creeping in, stealing away daylight and making its approach clearly felt in the early morning. In a few weeks, water would start freezing and the air would be dry. For now, however, the salty air that blew in from over the ocean and into the city was cold and damp, the light faltering. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: “Little kids, I imagine. And old men. But seventeen year old girls?” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: “How is your lipreading?”



“I’ve been focusing on it. We’ve known we’d probably be needing it. I should manage pretty well. We’ll see how it goes.”



“Let me know if you’re not picking up everything. I’ll translate.”



“Will do,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: We were mostly silent as we finished eating and wiping our hands clean, making our way to where we needed to be. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: A vehicle momentarily blocked our view of the conversation. My mind, primed to fill in the blanks, immediately jumped in five different directions, as to where the conversation might go, and how Fray might respond.



The horse and carriage passed, and I took a moment to get a grasp of what was being said.



Fray: “…the reason I keep you around is for the company.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: Then the pair of them were out of sight, blocked from our line of sight by an intervening building. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.5 said: We were on track. Fray was on course to rendezvous with Junior and the other members of the Rank.



I watched their mouths, but could only see Fray, and for only part of the statement. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: Their choice of clothing and hairstyle were accurate enough to fool me. If they hadn’t been actively following Avis, then I wouldn’t have given them a second look. Overalls tucked into wading boots and a sweater for one. Vest, shirt, and slacks for the other. Their hair was messy, only nominally combed back or parted, and their hands. Oh, thing of beauty, they had the calluses of hard manual labor. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: The second was that they had been tipped off. It would have had to occur within the last four or five hours. The Academy moved slower, with instructions passing up the chain of command and key assets, which would mean they got the info four or five hours ago. Cynthia would move faster and more aggressively. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: More lines of thinking spiraled out from that. Cynthia was naturally more combative and aggressive, which would likely mean that she would move forces in, which meant implications and consequences and possible war or civil war, which raised questions about Fray’s response and the tools she had at her disposal, and how she had accounted for this possibility in general. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: I momentarily debated the wisdom of simply slicing his wrist open and then using the confusion to disappear into the crowd. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: To his credit, I was a bit nettled at that. I knew he would’ve said something like it no matter how I looked, but I was nettled. I’d put effort into preparing for the day. Girls liked me. Mostly after they got to know me, but still. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: Even Jamie had liked me, and he was a boy. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: “I think… going by my luck today, if I guess, I’m going to be wrong. Maybe you’re actually older than me. Are you twenty?”



“Seriously. How old do you think I am?” I asked.



“Fourteen?” he asked. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: Not that I’d always wanted a dog, really, but I had to admit that Hubris had turned me around some.



The fact that Hubris had been completely self sufficient had been a factor. The fact that he’d nourished a part of Gordon that needed nourishing, supporting my friend and brother like he had… that was the real thing that had opened my eyes to why dogs were a thing.



But I couldn’t conscience owning an animal that was liable to outlive me, so that was that. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: “That’s beautiful. I want her to be my mom.”



“Okay,” he said. He seemed taken aback. “While my mom was gone, Auntie Nono assumed she was dead, didn’t shed a tear, just went into mom’s room and began taking her stuff. Fair game, you know?”



“Perfect,” I said. “I really am my mother’s child.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: We walked by the group of girls without incident. Three of them had eyes for Gordon Two, giving him appraising looks, but one of them turned her attention to me, instead. It started as a glance because of the bruise on my face, I suspected, but her eye traveled as her mind clearly wandered into the territory of wondering what my story was.



I winked, confident, and I got a surprised smile.



Low standards my ass. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: I had a sense of what Gordon the Second was doing. Trying to humanize himself. But I didn’t really care. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: “I’ve seen some of the messes left behind,” I said. “I’ve seen the red plague up close. Tore it out of someone, even. I’ve seen primordials. I’ve seen a man with the voice of an angel turn into a monster. And I’ve seen child and noble alike die.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: He’d said I looked fourteen to him. At my worst, I looked fifteen, and I was legitimately a year older, after accounting for my stunted growth. Maybe two years, even. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: He’d earned points in my book for volunteering the information and cooperating as much as he had, but he’d indirectly insulted Lillian, Mary, and Jessie, and he had insulted me.



So, all considered, I didn’t mind that I was about to make his bad day worse, and likely ensure he was going to be even later for class, if he attended at all. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.6 said: I moved right up behind him before he realized I was there. My knife cut across his hamstrings, and then I reversed the knife and plunged it into his chest as he toppled. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.7 said: "You’re asking for a lot, and you’re giving me very little,” the man said. “You’re taking my Academy from me.”



“There’s room to negotiate,” Avis said. “In another place, at another time. Not here. Not in neutral ground. Keep in mind, if anyone overheard you talking like that, it would leave you less room to negotiate, not more.”



“You’ve delayed me three times, now. I’ve played along, I’ve helped keep the pot stirred, I’ve lined up the targets for you to shoot down, but I’m running out of patience. Don’t think I don’t see the direction the winds are blowing, I know what it means that you’re here and things are happening.”



“We never doubted your political sense, Albert.”



“You want my cooperation? You have it. But I won’t be delayed, not when I know that you’re in the final stages, and you won’t necessarily have a place for me when all is said and done. If I wait too long to make sure I get what I need, you’ll move forward and I’ll be left in the lurch with nothing and no leverage to negotiate with.”



“Fine. Shall we move to your office?”



“My office is the last place this conversation should be had. My quarters aside, it’s the one room in this academy where I should feel like I have a modicum of privacy, so it stands to reason I have none at all. We’ll talk in generalities.”



“Or we won’t talk at all?” Avis asked. There was a pause, a non-verbal response. She responded with a quiet, “Very well. What do you want?”



Gordon Two shifted position, slowly moving into a sitting position with his back to the bookshelf that separated us from Avis and her conversation partner. He stared into space like someone who was only beginning to comprehend the great mysteries of the universe: awed, horrified, and confused.



“I want to run my Academy, but I won’t have that, will I?”



“Generalities,” Avis gently reminded him.



“I want money enough to live comfortably for the rest of my life.”



“We’re not equipped to supply that, especially not up front, and I doubt you’d take a promised future amount any more than you’d accept delaying this conversation.”



“Quite right.”



The man I’d thrown a knife at gurgled a death rattle, gases and fluids warring for a place in his throat. It seemed to scare the living daylights out of Gordon the Second.



“I assume you’ll keep asking for the moon, knowing we can’t or won’t deliver.”



“Mmm,” he said.



Avis lowered her voice, and I had to strain my ears and tilt my brain toward the task of hearing her. “I’ll tell you what we can deliver. We’ll move forward with this, you already have some idea of what’s at play, and we’ll cut some individuals out. We know that the stables are… crowded. As the flood occurs, the horse and the pig will be caught out in the cold.”



“The horse and the pig? Oh. Oh, that does tickle my shriveled black heart,” the man said, without speaking any quieter than he had been. He sounded louder, if anything.



“We agreed to pay you a sum that we haven’t and won’t pay them, and we’ll pay you the remainder before anything else happens. It will see you through the next year or two, we hope. Enough time to get back on your feet and find another stable elsewhere. You know my credentials, professor.”



“I do.”



“I’ve seen people rise and fall, represented in pins on a map as well as the addresses and titles on pieces of mail. The number of birds that fly to and from them. While the earthy beasts figure out what’s happening and turn their attention toward finding shelter and surviving the cold winter, you’ll be secure enough to focus on getting ahead.”



“The only reason I’m talking to you is that I know I won’t be getting ahead, dear. I won’t get another, ah, stable. Don’t lie to me and pretend I will. The stable was built on floodlands. It flooded. I’ll be a stablehand elsewhere, not an owner.”



“Somewhere starting with an S, or a W.”



“Thereabouts.”



“Look at me, professor,” she said, lowering her voice even further, to the point that her voice distorted. I leaned closer to the corner to hear better. She went on, “Imagine that I’m a vulture that flies in circles over the dead and dying. Those two places are among them. A morbidly ill beast and another stable of creatures built on floodlands, respectively.”



“You have me so very excited for these prospects, my dear,” the older man said, lacing his words with sarcasm and even more venom.



“We will be in your neighborhood in the future, professor. And in a way that isn’t traceable, a way that isn’t easy to connect to you, we will see that you have a stable of your own to run again. If it is S, that ill beast, then you shall keep it, and we shall nourish it, because it suits your ends, and it suits ours.”



“A small war to bring some life to a warbeast with no purpose?”



“Something of the sort. If you find yourself placed at W, then perhaps we’ll see if we can’t make it a repeat of what you’ll see happen here. Acknowledging that two points make a line, and that line points at you, we’ll furnish you with a more comprehensive exit strategy.”



“No generalities,” the old man said.



“Money enough to make you comfortable for the rest of your life, professor. At that point we’ll be prepared to provide it up front.”



“If that comes to pass. But tempting me with imagined gnashing of teeth on the part of my enemies isn’t changing matters now, is it? You’re still telling me to have faith that you’ll deliver on your promises.”



“Then I’ll give you something concrete. You know what I’m asking. We’ll both set this in motion, and in the earliest stages, you’ll be free to steer it or reverse course. Your ability to do that is why we’re talking to you. We need you to let this unfold. Take the first step, ignore the first mutterings. And you’ll have the horse kicking at your door, clearly upset about this.”



“A nice thought, but hardly enough to make me feel secure about this.”



“I’m not done, professor. You’ll take the second step. People will inquire, trying to find the validity of the rumor. They’ll find it started at the horse’s stall. He’ll be at your door again, angry. He’ll wheel, he’ll deal, but it will be Sisyphean at that stage. And all you’ll have to do to break him is wait until he’s on the brink of saving himself, the stone nearly hauled to the top of the mountain, and you give it one small push, to send it and him down with it.”



The old man chuckled.



Gordon Two was shaking his head. I placed my hand on his shoulder, and he startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there.



“I think we might have a deal,” the old man said. “If I get to see the horse’s back broken and the pig…”



“Crushed in the stampede, I assure you.”



“And all it takes is that I have to hasten a flooding that will inevitably happen? Yes. Worth it to see that happen, if nothing else.”



“You’ll watch it happen as you help us, I assure you, and we will follow through. Even if the damage can’t wholly be stopped at that point, you’ll be placed to rake over some messes and allow certain others. We want you to feel motivated to do that.”



“We have a deal.”



“Allow me to talk to some others. We can ensure the horse is blamed for the break in the floodgates, so to speak. I’ll send someone to you, and you’ll know it’s time. In the meantime, get your house in order. Not too orderly, but know that people will be looking at you.”



“Of course. I’m an old hand at this.”



“It’s why we’re talking to you, professor.”



“How do I reach out, if I need to talk to you?”



“You can use the messenger we send you. I’ll be checking in myself, to fine tune things as they play out. If not me, then my employer will. You know her.”



“I do.”



“Then until our next conversation about stables, floods, and drowned horses, professor.”



“Until our next conversation, my dear.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.7 said: the man said.



Avis said.



Avis asked. There was a pause, a non-verbal response. She responded with a quiet,



Gordon Two shifted position, slowly moving into a sitting position with his back to the bookshelf that separated us from Avis and her conversation partner. He stared into space like someone who was only beginning to comprehend the great mysteries of the universe: awed, horrified, and confused.



Avis gently reminded him.



The man I’d thrown a knife at gurgled a death rattle, gases and fluids warring for a place in his throat. It seemed to scare the living daylights out of Gordon the Second.



he said.



Avis lowered her voice, and I had to strain my ears and tilt my brain toward the task of hearing her.



the man said, without speaking any quieter than he had been. He sounded louder, if anything.



she said, lowering her voice even further, to the point that her voice distorted. I leaned closer to the corner to hear better. She went on,



the older man said, lacing his words with sarcasm and even more venom.



the old man said.



The old man chuckled.



Gordon Two was shaking his head. I placed my hand on his shoulder, and he startled, as if he’d forgotten I was there.



the old man said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.7 said: I tensed, readying for Avis to come in our direction and find the bodies. I held my gun and my knife ready.



She wasn’t pumped full of combat drugs, and the modifications to her body that let her fly also made her frail. I’d have the opportunity afforded by surprise.



If I could do it without giving her a chance to scream, then I could make it look as though they’d died in a mutual struggle. I could remove Avis from the picture, cause a stir, and use the paranoia of the Academy, Academy staff, and Fray to eke out an advantage. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.7 said: Once I had him standing, I was sure to keep him moving. I didn’t bother with the gun, and I didn’t really have to. He seemed to have forgotten that I’d led him at gunpoint until now, and the sight of those men dying seemed to have left an indelible impression in him.



“You would have seen patients die at some point,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.7 said: We navigated the library, walking until we reached a railing that overlooked the floor below. The open space between us and the people below was bridged with a clear membrane. There was a little bit of dust on the membrane, and the faint lines of blue veins webbing it, but it made for a remarkably clear picture of what was going on below, while absorbing a remarkable amount of the chatter and noise. There were tables, groups gathered, and students drinking tea while sitting in chairs with books. The levels above us were separated by more membranes, making for increasingly blurry views of each floor above. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.7 said: “The horse is pretty obviously Professor Horsfall. I think the pig has to be Sir Mondy.”



“Sir?”



“Aristocrat. He has a stake in the Academy. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: One girl had a lone deer antler at the corner of her scalp, and makeup had been staggered so it seemed to blend into her brown skin. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: The leader wasn’t modded so heavily, but she’d foregone the academy jacket entirely to wear a black sweater with a layered collar beneath a double layer of jacket and military jacket. I’d thought about clothing as armor as I got ready in the morning, but the fashion choice there was akin to plate mail where it covered her, and there wasn’t much beneath. Her top three buttons were undone and her skirt was hiked up higher than any of the girls. Chance more than choice that I couldn’t see anything worth seeing.



But her attitude, I’d seen it on some drunks and some fighters. She was spoiling. For a fight, for trouble, for… anything. She was the queen of her clique here, and the crowd at her sides and back were more armor, on top of the layers she wore. It let her expose more throat and belly, metaphorically. Baiting others in even as she looked for a morsel to bite at herself. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: “A medal on my homework?” she asked. “Please don’t treat me like a child.”



And in saying that, you make me think of you as more of a child than if you’d remained silent. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

15.8 said: He wore a lab coat of a very old fashioned style worn by people on the battlefield, old enough that I imagined it had been his father’s style more than his own. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: The stitched were in uniform, and were warm enough I could see the heat of their bodies in contrast to the cool air around them. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: They and the men who worked with them all wore Academy design and Academy badges. They were Beattle’s security team. The people who rounded up escaped experiments and broke up fights between students. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: “A word in private?” I asked him.



“Hm? What do you need to say to me that you can’t say in front of these men?”



The Horse was proud, arrogant. Good looking for those who liked men, I supposed. I could see why Yancy hated him already. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: I’d captured the rooftop girls. Fray had Professor Y and the Greenhouse Gang. If this went sour, then I’d lose ground, while Avis would be free to continue recruiting, gathering forces.



There was a critical mass at play that, should either of us achieve it, would mean that we could flip the stragglers and the questionable types. It was a race to that scale and mass. And if I could remove Avis from play, then I could grow our forces while Fray tried to figure out what was happening. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: I wanted to see a trace of bitter satisfaction at hearing about the failure of Professor Y. Except I didn’t, and he wasn’t someone with a good poker face. That satisfaction wasn’t there. He hated the man, I was fairly sure, but… no joy at seeing the man fail.



Had I just made the mistake of trying at a clandestine deal with someone that was actually a decent person? Someone who wanted his enemies to be better people? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: Avis exited the Greenhouse alone. She held herself differently now than she had. She was calmer, a little more confident, and a little less worn around the edges.



She’d been Academy once. Intelligent conversation, tea, and time with students had to be a balm for the soul. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.8 said: The drug was only just kicking in. She hadn’t taken it overtly, which meant it was an implant she could activate with a muscle, or something contained within a tooth. Nothing acted quite that fast, which meant she’d likely taken it when she saw the Academy security approaching. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.9 said: “That’s a fine way to treat someone that’s helping you out,” I said. “Pointing a gun at them.”



“You’re an admitted part of the rebellion, and you’re a big part of why trouble is unfolding here,” the Horse said.



I turned around, facing professor Horse. I wiped at my lower eyelid, and my finger came away with an unbroken line of blood on it.



“The actual fault lies elsewhere. Mainly with your professor Y. Now before emotions take over, I want to point out that you’ve got men bleeding over there, professor Y is preparing to run, and the riot is unfolding behind the scenes. There are priorities here, and effective management of time is key.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.9 said: “Yeah. I got the impression he wasn’t the kind to abuse a prisoner,” I said.



Build rapport, reinforce ideas, us versus them, don’t hurt prisoners, we’re on the same page about Horsfall being a good guy. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.9 said: “Part of the reason I’m here is I share common ground with you guys. I came from a place not so different from here. I had my own greenhouse. I had my own Greenhouse Gang. The most important thing? More than the mission? It’s going to be ensuring you all are free. Nothing tying you down. No dark cloud bearing down on you, no feeling like your best isn’t a guarantee.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.9 said: “Tea, talking, sleeping in, music playing on a machine. Resources to pursue passion projects. Associating only with the people you want to associate with.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.9 said: I never brought more than one of the same kind of poison when I could help it. It was easier on my system and tested my tolerances less if I spread stuff out. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.9 said: Whatever else he was, whatever I was trying to do, the man seemed decent. I’d meant what I’d said to his soldiers when I said I wasn’t sure how to handle him. He was what I wanted to promote in the Academy. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.10 said: The student council vice president was standing off to one side, while the treasurer took the ‘stage’ – a set of stairs by one of the dormitories. She was a very feminine and demure looking girl with straight black hair. The sidelong glance she gave me said a lot, however, about the thought processes going on in her head.



She knew this wasn’t working, but she wasn’t getting flustered.



“Listen!” the student council treasurer belted out the word, pushing his voice to its limit. But the body of students already had some who were shouting at that volume or close to it. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.10 said: The vice president of the student council was a breaker of hearts, it seemed. I could piece together where things stood. Ralph, the heavyset, glasses-wearing member of the Greenhouse Gang was number two in the student rankings and the student council president there was number one, while this young lady was number four or five, and yet they were subordinate to her when it came to their hearts and her ability to toy with them. Perhaps Ralph had escaped. Perhaps he’d put some distance between himself and her because he knew he hadn’t. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.10 said: I winced a bit at that last segment. Family wasn’t what we needed people to be focusing on when we were trying to get them to do the reckless thing and run away with Sylvester’s rebellion. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.10 said: “I can’t tell if you’re an angel or a devil,” Rudy said.



I smiled.



“You don’t hear much talk like that nowadays,” Possum said.



“I grew up in a town so small we joke the Crown didn’t see us when it took over,” Rudy said. “Some churching, still.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

fucking Radham

Twig 15.10 said: It was a lie, though. Yes, those things factored in. Yes, they were something I’d seen in retrospect. But I really hadn’t had to look that hard. There had been something dark at play in their eyes. I imagined Death was there.



There wasn’t much talk of that particular horseman these days either. Jessie’s influence more than anything. Or Jamie’s. One of the books they’d been talking about at some point, though that one had had a different horseman as the focus. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

kidnapped

Twig 15.11 said: These were the delinquents, along with Rudy and Possum. I’d given Rudy the task of finding Possum’s friend and told him to meet up with me later, and he’d ended up bringing her with. The friend hadn’t been found, and she had decided to stick around.



I wasn’t sure I agreed with her being a part of this, but I could only do so much at one time. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.11 said: I looked at her, then at Rudy.



Was there a line extending between them? Was it sketchy or bold or both? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.11 said: From there, I had enough slack to free the remainder of the wire. A bit of twisting, unwinding, pulling, and general abuse got the length of wire free. It thrummed in my hand, sometimes even feeling uncomfortably thrummy, depending on where I touched the wire.



Awkward, awful stopgap technologies. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.11 said: Then I emptied the buckets of chemicals for the stitched onto the floor of the stable, backing away swiftly as the puddle grew. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.11 said: The student council president and vice president were standing at the bars of their cell, watching. There were two members of the Greenhouse Gang that had been spreading the word, and there were others who looked more like delinquents. Ones we’d had stirring the pot.



They’d done a good job to work against what we were trying to do. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.12 said: “Stay put,” I said. “There’re deeper cells, right?”



There were a few nods. Someone pointed.



“Yeah. Stay where you are. The next wagon of officers and rioters bound for jail won’t arrive for a short while, and we can deal with them if they do,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.12 said: “I’ll be in your debt,” Avis said, with an emphasis that strained her already strangled voice. “You don’t know what it is like to fall into their hands. To be one of their enemies. I hope you never do.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.12 said: My voice was hard, and there was no room for ambiguity. “Get that into your heads. Alright? Our success and failure from here on out is our collective success or failure. If we do this right and we don’t start doing stupid things for stupid reasons, it’ll be a success. But if you get greedy for yourself instead of greedy for the all-of-us, or if you start thinking small then we start failing. Get over whatever ideas you had about how you or any of the rest of us are divided.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.12 said: I checked my destination, and was happy to see I’d included notes on how to get there, with a few sketched landmarks. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.12 said: Factions would form, inevitably. I was just hoping we’d get that far. The balancing act continued. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: I could look at the crowd, fuzz out my vision, and focus on movement and spacing, and I could intuit, to a degree, the restlessness and degree of motion. I could see where people remained turned toward friends, looking at Jessie and me over or along their shoulders. They appeared in clusters, in places where groups mingled. The Greenhouse Gang was among them. The patterns and shapes made by those clusters looked like cracks and fissures running through the collected mass of students. Suspicion, dissent, and the vast pool of anger and frustration threatening to turn toward Jessie and me. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “Introductions are in order,” I said. “My name is Sylvester Lambsbridge, this is Jessie Ewesmont, and the most important thing to get out of the way is that we have no association with Genevieve Fray at all.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “Genevieve Fray is very good at sounding like she cares. Even through intermediaries. I don’t know exactly what she said to you, but I imagine it something along the lines of how she plans to save the world, and I know she tells every individual soul along the way that she’ll save them, making promises to each and every one about how she’ll solve their medical issues, save their lives, save their minds, or cure them of everything that ails them.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “I’ve spent more time working for the Crown and the Academy than many of you have been in school. I’ve killed on behalf of the Crown while working for them, and I’ve killed members of the Crown nobility since leaving that role behind. I’ve witnessed the start of wars and I’ve personally ended them. So trust me when I say it’s no mistake that I’m standing here in front of you now.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “Jessie is nearly as experienced as I am, and far more capable in a number of areas. She’s also harder to explain, because she lurks more in the background, as a planner and coordinator. That’s who we are. For every day you’ve spent studying, we’ve spent a day immersed in the darker, bloodier side of the Crown’s and Academy’s dealings. Today, our individual worlds have collided. The students need the kind of help we can provide in navigating that dark underbelly of Crown and Academy. We need the knowledge, the influence, and the voice the students have.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “I believe him,” Mabel said. “Maybe it’s silly or I’m being misled because I’ve actually looked into his eyes and talked to him while Fray only sent a representative, but I feel better about working with Sy than I felt when we were talking to Avis. Something about her unnerved me.”



“I don’t think you’re processing this with your head, Mabel,” Ralph said.



“You think I’m going with my heart?”



“Parts below the belt, Mabel,” Ralph said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

penis

Twig 15.13 said: Mabel remained standing. Her hand went to her hair, tucking it behind one ear. I could see the tremor in her fingertips. She probably didn’t like confrontation. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: Mabel nodded. Then she took her seat very quickly, as if she was very uncomfortable continuing to stand and be the center of attention. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “Tall order, promising me any kind of lasting happiness,” she said.



“The prison break was a tall order too,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: She said, “He wasn’t always the gentle soul you see before you now. There was a time when it was just him and his fellow experiments, myself included, and the rest of the world didn’t matter. That’s changed. Fray says she wants to protect humanity, but it feels like she’s forgotten the individual humans along the way. Sylvester’s found them, in the meantime.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: No more fancying a girl or fancying a boy and wondering how courting them would affect your grades, or calculating how it might affect theirs. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.13 said: “Hello, Sylvester,” she replied. She uncrossed her arms and put her hands in her pockets. She sighed. “I was just telling Dolores that I’ve had the most surreal day.”



“Oh, you’ve got her there with you?”



“Of course. She’s getting old, yet she remains a good listener.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “The Lambs were more predictable before, and one is right here, walking and talking with me, less predictable than he once was. Obviously, given how today went. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “Of course,” she said. Then, abrupt, she said, “You’ve grown.”



This was a side of her I’d forgotten, as Fray had devolved into a greater series of schemes. Of plots and things I had to account for, a lifeform that had been stitched together in the background, extending its reach and producing plague here and primordials there, nudging rebel groups into life.



I’d nearly forgotten I could talk to her and she could put me off balance so adroitly. Possibly without even meaning to. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “You’ve grown in other ways,” she said. “How you function, how you approach the world.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “I studied the plague. Because I did think I might be able to use it, find the source, or disable it and leverage the cure for my agenda. It’s elegant. Elegant enough that we probably already know the name of the culprit. ‘We’ being the doctors and scientists of the Academy. He’ll be one of the geniuses, on par with Helen’s creator, Professor Ibbot. I would actually like to find him, because I think he has an agenda.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “That the nobles aren’t anything more than glorified experiments.”



“Yes,” Fray said. She said it in such a way that I knew there was no surprise. She had known.



“If the word gets out, the myth will be shattered. People will be disgusted with them. It will taint everything the nobles touch. Legitimacy, their seeming immortality, their grace, their power and control.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

chance

Twig 15.14 said: “Absolutely, they do. But Sylvester, there’s more to it. There are regions, places I’ve borne witness to, which are sealed off. They use things like the same cloud seeding we see at Radham, only to ensure death rather than parcel out leashes. They use grown walls like you no doubt saw at Tynewear, only far taller, and they flood the areas on the other side with biological agents, parasites, and weapons. They tell people that these were the places where disasters happened. That this is why only the Academy can be trusted with the knowledge the Academy disseminates.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “They have laid waste to continents, in whole or in part. If they can’t win, then they ensure nobody can. If they rule a world that they’ve reduced to a half the normal size, they still rule. Given science and sufficient time, they can fix what they leveled. When they do, the world will be theirs. Unopposed. The Infante, the Judge, is someone who oftentimes handles these sorts of decisions. Even nobles like the Duke are rightly terrified of what he might decide.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

conveniently killing off most of the black people of the world so Wildbow doesn't have to write them

Twig 15.14 said: “Does that bother you?” she asked. “There are tradeoffs. I’m not capable of the same improvisation you are. I may dig deeper into other areas. I get less benefit than you do, I suspect.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

improvisation

Twig 15.14 said: ‘There’s an experiment I talked to once. They talked about how lonely it was, being the only one. The divide that separates the likes of them or the likes of me from the ordinary Jacks and Jills. So there was this thought, always lingering, that, hey, at least Genevieve Fray is out there. There are commonalities. We’re not related by blood, but at least we inject the same agony-inducing poisons into our brains on a regular basis. Common ground, ahoy!” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “Twenty years, Genevieve, give or take, with seven to nine of those years already spent. Twenty years, and then as the months go by, you start thinking… well, ho, taking Wyvern once every month? I’m out of commission for nearly a week, aren’t I? Sometimes less, sometimes more, but it averages out that way, especially when you account for time spent in the labs, getting blood drawn. Time doing the tests or interviewing with my disgruntled doctors or the too-nice redhead who smiles and acts nice to make up for the fact that she’s read the same dang file I have and she wants to downplay those same things that keeps ten year old me staring up at the ceiling at night. Ten year old me grows to resent them, even damn well hating them for what they represent.”



I was gesticulating a little too much, cigarette between my fingers. I put it back.



“A quarter of your time lost to the labs and the injections.”



“Exactly! Ten year old me goes through the weeks and the months and he isn’t exactly one for mental accounting of numbers, but that deadline is there, always looming, and he can’t help but feel like he has only so much time, and he’s losing some of it. And somewhere along the way, it clicks. You get what I’m saying?”



“Best you finish your thought.”



“This ten year old, his mind runs on multiple tracks, he’s good at juggling a few lines of thought at once, and there’s been this persistent one that’s been ticking around in the back, that he can’t quite riddle out. How can they do this? How can they fucking justify it? And despite not being a mental calculation type, two thoughts connect. Twenty years, minus twenty five percent, give or take, and you have fifteen. That’s thought one. Then he thinks back to how they’ll handle the tormented, lonely young man who talks to his hallucinations, and he imagines sedation, a last batch of experiments on him, to squeeze out the last bit of usefulness, and then one final dose, before they give him merciful oblivion. What am I describing, Fray? Gets fifteen years if lucky, then a mercy killing?”



“A dog.”



“A dog! I’m treated no fucking better than a dog, not given any more years, kept on a leash. I realized that pretty early on too, eh Fray? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.14 said: “No,” I said. I extended my finger. “No. Fuck you, Fray. You don’t get to claim the rights and wisdom of being doctor and experiment both. You don’t get to be the savior. You’re as bad as any of them, because if the cards had fallen down differently, if you hadn’t been caught looking too hard at things they wanted to keep secret, you’d be one of them. And you probably would have gotten your damn tea party with the Lambsbridge Orphans, and I probably would have enjoyed it! Hell, it might have been everything I needed for me to stay with the Lambs and stay at the Academy, having a like mind, Helen getting that tea party you seem so set on, and if you could work half the miracles you seem set on promising, you could have saved Jamie and Gordon. Perfect! Hunky dory!” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

the entire story

Twig 15.15 said: “She wasn’t who I wanted her to be, and I saw that, and a lot of accumulated stresses and disappointments came out,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.15 said: “The dark cloud that’s hanging over all of this and making it look a lot grayer is that our standing plan may not work. Fray thinks others have tried, or others have done similar things. She knew and she didn’t try. The Crown is a sore loser, Jessie. She believes that if we move forward and spread the word, the Crown will sooner erase the Crown States from the map than allow the mask to be pulled off.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.15 said: When I accused her, arbitrarily, she started listening to me. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.15 said: “So… We all put our chips in, paid the price of admission. And I’m left wondering about Fray.”



“She lost her career.”



“Yeah,” I said. “She has a restricted schedule. Not as restricted as mine, damn her, but she has a limited timeframe to work with. And I have to wonder, where’s the grudge? Why doesn’t she care that we just spoiled Beattle for her, when this is supposed to be all she has? Why is she such a cool customer when she’s working with limited time and we just cost her cumulative weeks or months of work that she’s been doing in the background? And no, I don’t think it’s Wyvern. I think it’s that she doesn’t have stakes in this. Not here, not this particular job or what follows, or maybe not even what in comes before. I called her on it, asked her about the sacrifices and in that moment… ”



I didn’t need to finish. I’d already spelled it out. Jessie had all of the pieces.



“She’s playing another game.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.15 said: “I feel like we might lose some. Ones who want to follow, but who get caught up in things. It’s an awful thought. Like, if I’d been stopped and dragged back to the Academy just when I’d committed to leaving?”



“I know what you mean,” Jessie said.



“Yeah,” I said. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: I focused the binoculars briefly on the windows. I could see the Lambs within, talking to one another. From their tone, they were talking strategy. Helen, Mary, Lillian, Duncan, and Ashton. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: “We should get rid of her,” Jessie said. “She’s inscrutable, and she’s inscrutable to the both of us. She keeps escalating. She’s a danger to us and a danger to the Lambs, and she’s a danger we can’t properly solve.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: Room for something better, like you saw in Lillian.”



“Nothing like what I saw in Lillian,” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: What does Genevieve Fray’s change matter, if she’s willing to ask everyone but herself to make the necessary sacrifices? Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: It wasn’t a complete image, and it resembled things that Evette had seen in the depths of her breakdown. Painted with broad, incoherent strokes, it was a perfect image of Fray, but it fell to pieces in the emulation, in the dance, the movements, and the other things. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: I had nowhere near the connection to Fray that I had in the Lambs. Any of the other Lambs, I could have danced with them, in the natural and instinctive understanding of how they moved, how they thought, and what they might do in any instant. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: “I’m not very good at manipulating you, Jessie. I mean, yes, there are some ways. I understand you, I can do stuff to tease you, but in the romantic sense of boundaries and intimacy and getting close? I’m not sure what the tricks are. I want to say or do something to you to open the doors and I don’t know how to sweep you up in my spell or dance past the boundaries. You call me on my bull. It’s completely unfamiliar territory, and it’s territory I can’t cover using Wyvern because there’s no way to practice it.” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: “Something’s not working,” I said. “Gordon said I was fluid and you were solid. I’ve thought that some of the Lambs had natural affinities for one another, and some had natural conflicts. Gordon was never going to fully understand me, and I was never going to fully get him, Mary and Helen struggle to find that natural dynamic, and you and I-” Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Twig 15.16 said: We won’t sacrifice you before we sacrifice ourselves, I thought for the city, and all the other ones like it. Click to expand... Click to shrink...

Bitter Pill is the Arc name, presumably in reference to 'a bitter pill to swallow', which usually means basically an unpleasant truth being acknowledged. This... seems like it should've been the Arc name for Sy realizing he's being horrible to Lillian and Jessie.[Also, if it's meant to be referring to what I think it's meant to be referring to... uh, no]Another rare hint of how Mad Science works. Very,vague....Also, it's more Sy learning Mad Science. I think I've made my anger over that clear in the previous Arc, though.This is a bit of a disappointment in description, amounting to confirming that Jessie is presenting as female and little else. The glasses positioning point is sort of characterful? I guess?Wildbow completely forgetting he established that Crown Dollars arein Twig-verse.It's a little detail, but I'm surprised he forgotparticular detail, given how he's got some personal fondness for this dollar coin thing.I am weirded out how this Leah girl is getting a more useful description than Jessie got. It's also a weirdly solid description for a character I'm not expecting to last past this Arc.[She doesn't even lastthis Arc]It also occurs to me it's the second female character Sy hasn't providing an even slightly sensualized description of in the entire story. Strange timing, that it's only since the story had Sysuppressing his sexuality that he's occasionally dodged the overly-sexualized descriptions of women, but I'd be perfectly happy to see Sy stop doing it, even if it feels like more evidence this isn't deliberate characterization of Sy.[I forget to note down later cases, but Sy actually never does a pointlessly sexualized description of a woman in the rest of this Arc. I'd like to imagine this is deliberately hooked into his relationship with Jessie, except Twig is clearly entirely oblivious to having ever done such overly sexualized descriptions in the first place, so that's a non-starter as a theory]I can never tell if Twig has forgotten its own descriptions for how building construction works or if it intends a given building to be more in line with real world construction and just isn't explicating it.This is the kind of Lovable Rogue Snark Sy ought to have had... the whole time. Points for this being amusing, but still.Sy uses the 'devastating' line again. Eeeeeh. It was mildly amusing before, but it's not doing it for me here.[It keeps coming up through the Arc, but it makes so little impression on me I don't bother to note it down]The picture painted ofparticular Mad Science school is somewhat interesting, and I do particularly like the bit about how the school is effectively a source of labor that paysinstead of you paying for the labor, as it's a nice intersection of practicality and assholery. "Sure, sure, Igor, I'll teach you. Now fetch me beaker #7. Quickly, now!"Okay, I like this exchange. A rare example of Sy's 'social intelligence' being played. It's naturally obvious what Sy is going off of, here, and it's also the kind of thing you wouldn'tconnect on your own. (Sy's point didn't occur to me as a possibility until he said it: I was thinking in terms of Leah being upset that they'd baldly bring it up or something of the sort, buthe'd said it? Yeah, makes sense)I'm going to take this opportunity to more explicitly convey that Lamb Arc 14 didn't paint a picture of an environment thatcutthroats, it merely allowed that to be one viable path. The school Leah has been dumped into definitely sounds like a place that would breed such behavior, but the model we saw in Radham looks a lot more like one in which people tend tobe charismatic and good at selling themselves to potential fundersnaturally competent at Mad Sciencenaturally advantaged by family circumstancescutthroat, with the overall emphasis actually being on family connections or charisma as the best routes. It only 'breeds' cutthroats if you make the extremely cynical assumption that when Being An Asshole is apath people will choose it over allvalid routes a disproportionate amount of the time.This dynamic would have much better served Twig's goals regarding classism, rather than trying to use it to 'explain' why Mad Scientists are Evil People. In this model. if you arrive at school with existing connections and resources due to your family of origin, you'll tend to perform better than your lower-class peers. Even if you don't actually perform better, you're still less impacted by poor performance, and can keep taking risky, expensive routes until you finally start getting good grades, and if youperform better the Academy will then throw more money at you, snowballing your initial advantage.Students who don't arrive with those advantages will have three routes available to them: be natural geniuses to such an extent it overcomes everyone else's advantages, netting them good grades to get good funding to pave the way for the future,spend time and energy on cultivating connections to get resources, taking time and energy away from your schooling and projects (Which demands you have good social-fu into doing Mad Science competently),sabotage the people above you so that you'll be higher on the curve and thus get more resources until you're successful enough that you don't need to turn to sabotage anymore. (Which this option would only be practically useful for people who only need to move up a few places -if you're at the bottom of the class, there's little or no point to sabotaging anyone)This would exaggerate class divide in Twig's world, with those born into privilege not only having the advantages I just described butgetting subtle social advantages -lower class students would tend to automatically have unpleasant reputations due to how they would be the main people to turn to sabotage and also be prone to basically trying to hit upin town for money in a way the upper class students wouldn't need to do. The unpleasant reputation would create barriers to success, such as creating situations where someone whohave chatted casually for five minutes and in the process happened to teach you something useful instead turns you away instantly because they don't want 'your kind' harassing them for money or whatever.This could thenbe leveraged for some of Twig's other apparent goals; for example, maybe attractive young women find it easier to get their foot in the door when trying to talk to people for funding than equivalent young men, so that this notion that beauty is a kind of power has some actual truth and bearing on Twig's story. Sy's relationship to Lillian and his supposed tendency to hurt those he cares about because he cares about them could then be tied into, with Sy's obvious jealous streak leading to him tending to sabotage Lillian's attempts to get funding from wealthy men because there's a sexual subtext to the situation and that sets him off precisely because he likes Lillian, leading to her having difficulties at the Academy. (As opposed to her father arbitrary screwing her over because Drama)Also, I think Twig would be a lot more interesting if it ran with one of the more obvious implications here and made Mad Scientists tend to be. That would be amazing, unique, and logical. More missed opportunities.Instead we're getting baseless claims trying to convince the audience The System drives Mad Scientists to be evil, and it's just disappointing.....What is with Sy andto encourage other people to be more horrible?Oh, and it turns out Pierre the rabbit-man is still around. That's a bit of a shock, and frankly rather puzzling, but sure, why not.... I'd have sooner characterized her as cautious. In general, the vibe I got from her was more in line with a serial killer, in terms of calmly plotting to get what she wants and methodically trying to acquire it. Like, I know Sy and I have both seen her for all of ten minutes, but this looks to me like Sy reading the script, rather than generating a theory based on observation.Now that I think about it, I'm not sure Wildbow has ever really done acalmly methodical violent female character. Mary's characterization is... ambiguous, and too heavily variable, and Taylor has this thing of dumping her emotions into her bugs so that shemore calm and unemotional than she. The only other calm-seeming example I can think of is Iron Maiden/Arachne, and her mechanics seem to imply anto obviously emote, which isn't the same thing as actuallycalm. I can think of amore cases of female characters where violence and excitement go together in his works. This might be part of why I'm bothered by the fact that I'm disagreeing with Sy's assessment.... but mostly it's that a serial killer-esque approach just makes a lot moresense for someone who goes to a school and was getting away with these shenanigans.Worldbuilding that seems like it should've cropped up ages ago. I'm also not certain why one wouldto make such a lantern, given it apparently still requires a flame of some kind to run. What's supposed to be the advantage, here?I touched on this in Arc 14 but didn't really go into detail, but Twig seems to be approaching Sy as if he's gone through a Warlord Skitter-esque phase of becoming a Big Dog who can assume any minor threat is a non-threat and has a reputation to match. In the previous Arc it was annoying me because the reputation/social response aspect made no sense, whereas in this case it annoys me because Twig has been continuing to play the 'Sy is bad at fighting' card but now it wants me to buy Sy is a super badass who can basically be assumed to stomp random Brunos and the like? (With Jessie's help, admittedly) Can you make up your mind, Twig!To clarify a bit, when I say Sy hasn't earned this 'Warlord Skitter'-esque status, I'm actually not in any way referring to howview him as an incompetent idiot asshole. I mean that the story has at no point done anything toto this. There's bits and pieces it could parlay that way -such as Sy managing to take out the Baron- but not many of them, and the story hasn't set itself up where it's natural for the people Sy isthis reputation against to have anyof such a reputation. The Mad Scientists the Infante assigned to him last Arc, for example, in no way indicated they recognized Sy, and there's no actual reason for the audience tothey recognized Sy in the absence of actual evidence. Since Sy keeps moving about, operates in the shadows, and lives in a world where information travels relatively slowly and with low fidelity to boot (No TV, no internet, I'm not sure Twig's world even has), people he's interacting with aren't going to know him by face, abilities, or reputation. Skitter repeatedly had very public victories, had a distinctive, unique power as well as a costume to match and was attached to one city, with her territory staked out post-Leviathan to narrow her focus, and of course lived in a world with full video recording on every random cellphone and the like. It was perfectly natural for Skitter to get a memetic reputation as she took down multiple well-known badasses, and for that reputation to affect how people interacted with her.Sy, meanwhile, shouldhave something of a shadow reputation, where people who operate in extralegal circles (Plus the nobility and their immediate staff) know he exists and might, if their mind is deliberately pushed in that direction, have it occur to them that the confident young man who is behaving oddlybe Sy. But the idea that he's already got and is building up further a local reputation as Someone To Not Fuck With in this particular city just doesn't, and it didn't fit any better back when he/Evette was intimidating an entire room of Mad Scientists because?... I dunno, Twig thinks it's already set up a Warlord Skitter plotline for Sy? I really have no idea why Wildbow wrote that scene that way.We meet a 'stray' warbeast, which has apparently been protecting some human children? Odd.Aaaaah, Jane Slash is going to be part of this Arc. Thatmakes the story worse.End 15.1 on revealing that Sy and Jessie set up here inthat Jane Slash or Mauer would come here soon, all but confirming this is going to be a Jane Slash Arc.--------------------------------I... actually found this decently written, aside little things like the dollar bills issue? And the somewhat more major thing of Warlord Sy being inconsistent and unearned.The fact that Jane Slash is going to be a major part of this Arc is not a good sign, however. Very much not a good sign.Like. I actually stopped reading for a solid week after this chapter. There was other stuff going on in my life that contributed, but the main thing, when it got down to it, is that Jane Slash really is that much of a motivation killer. Sy is godawful on a number of levels, but somehow Jane Slash has consistently managed to one-up him for distorting the story. The fact that this first chapter is weirdly good doesn't help me push through, because basicallyArc has started off with shockingly decent writing and yet almost all of them nosedive within three chapters.Well. Maybe this Arc will be different? I... have a lot of reasons to think it won't, but let's try to be optimistic anyway.sighOkay, let's step back for a moment. When has Twigdepicted Sy as actually being upset when a decent person died who wasn't a Lamb? Or even when theyThe answer is that it hasn't.Like, if we back up to Lugh, Sy talked about pretty much exactly this idea, how good people he actually liked means people he'd be upset to see dying, but then people die and what's Sy's response? Nothing. People Sylikes get snarked at, such as Sy basically blaming their death on their own stupidity, but people he supposedly expects to not be happy to see die? Yeah, he just doesn't react. He's not bothered. Their dying screams don't stick with him, he doesn't flinch in shock and horror, he doesn't swear to avenge them, he doesn't apologize for getting them into the mess in the first place. They die, and he moves along.Which is fine, by itself, but it justto keep having Sy insist that he will be bothered when decent people die while the story not only refuses to provide actual evidence this is a thing but in fact providesevidence that it is a thing.While making it clear that Sy is intended to be good at understanding and controlling his own personality.I honestly wouldn't hate Sy aas much if the story wasn't dead-set on trying to pretend Sy has these feelings and values he just plain. I keep saying Jack Slash as an actual protagonist would be interesting, and I mean it. An unapologetic monster can be a perfectly fine protagonist. I'm not even complaining, per, about having Sy think he's moral when he's not. It's all the meta-signals, the way other characters interact with him and how the events of the story play out, that make it clear Sy isn't reallyto be flat-out delusional, but rather is supposed to be thinking true thoughts that apply to him in reality, and that Wildbow just hasn't cottoned on to how this has literally nothing to do with what he wrote.That, in other words, the writer is botching their writing.Stuff like this is a good example of how other people engage with Sy like he has a legitimate point, though I actually was quoting it because it's just agonizing watching Sy try to psychoanalyze Mauer when the audience has alreadyMauer's mentality and knows that this is a man for whom death holds no fear. (However lame I found the handling of that to be, his character has remained consistent with it) Mauer doesn't need to have a clear conscience by virtue ofpeople being willing to die for the cause, because we already know he doesn't see death as some ultimate Horrible Thing. In that view, people dying for the cause becomes a pragmatic issue, a question of whether the lives spent are worth whatever they buy, not an issue of conscience.Now, Sy isn't necessarily supposed to be a perfectly accurate analyst (For all that this is how Twighim in practice), but this entire conversation doesn't really make sense, narratively, except to try to infodump on the audience. This isn't really telling us something about Sy's mentality, for example, and there's no actual point to this scene otherwise, especially since the story haspreviously tried to establish/claim that Sy dislikes the tension between wanting good, competent people at your back vs how that exposes them to danger by definition. Repeating it is unnecessary, or more precisely if Twig had done its job right in the first place this would already be firmly established in the audience's mind and trying to reaffirm it just indicates that Twig is sort of dimly aware that it botched the original attempt to establish this notion, or so I hope anyway.Otherwise this conversation happening at all makes even less sense, and I'm still trying to give Twig the benefit of the doubt.This is Sy talking about Shirley, and basically hitting on her while trying to look like he's just making an observation. In-thread, Egleris has indicated he believes Sy wasn't fishing for sex in their original interaction, which is the primary reason I'm noting this line -I've been watching for any evidence regarding that scene, and this is the first thing I've found, and it leans rather more in the 'fishing for sex' direction.Again, this is the kind of thing Twig should've actually depicted, this thing of Sy teaching Shirley 'salesmanship', in no small part because Twig really seems to intend for the audience to view Shirley and Sy as having a moderately close, positive relationship, while having depicted almost no interaction between them. The Arc with the ludicrous Primordial super-plague? Throw it in the compacter, set it on fire, and replace it with an Arc of Sy interacting with Shirley while no urgent dangers are going on. Bam, you've cut a completely worthless Arc and actually meaningfully set up for the following Arcs, including this one.My impulse response is that 'tich' is not a word, but the internet tells me it's an informal spelling of 'titch' used by British folk. So either this is Wildbow's Canadian-ness showing or it's another random moment of Twig remembering British-ness is supposed to be a thing with the story. Not sure which.Wait. Is Sy...doing reasonable psychoanalysis? Trying to guess at possible motives that sort of fit, 'talk' his way through the problem on incomplete information, instead of hurling arbitrary claims off of arbitrary assumptions at the audience that magically turn out to be correct?Miracle of miracles.Let's see if this sticks as an actual change.[Nope]It feels really weird to have Sy sneering down at under-educated folk. Previously he's gotten along fine with lower-class people, the larger story desperately wants us to hate people of education as well as the only educational system the story has depicted in any manner, and Twig wants us to believe Sy has warm fuzzy feelings toward those who are disadvantaged by the system. If this were a scene in really early Twig, I'd take it as an attempt to start shaping our idea of Sy's character pointing toward him being the kind of intelligent person who looks down on anyone who they feel is unintelligent, a kind of pecking order by way of IQ dick-waving contests, but with everything that's come before this just feels out of character.Notice that I'm criticizing Sy being an asshole as out-of-character behavior.That should be a hint that something is wrong here.More reasonable psychoanalysis! Not necessarily, but within the framework of Sy's personality I'm perfectly willing to believe it doesn't cross his mind someone might notto be a big player, and so this particular flaw is acceptable as a product of in-character forces. Critically, Sy hasn't magicked up a baseless conclusion off of zero information -he's got some information, it tells him something non-specific but meaningful (Ignoring that his framework is flawed, but I just covered how that's not a problem, narratively), and then he stalls out for lack of more information to draw a more useful conclusion.Again, this uncharitable interpretation feels out of character for Sy. I'd sooner expect him to focus on them reacting to presumed arbitrariness of the number than actively wonder if a grown man canAlternatively, you're a pair of youngsters who are expecting grown men to obey you like you're their seniors. This is exactly the kind of issue you were dealing with before, the only difference is the gendered language being attached to it due to the changed presenting gender. Which can be its own issue, to be sure, but the assumption that Jessie having changed presenting gender is why she's getting pushback when you two weregetting pushback and it was just that when she was Jamie she was in the background, notorders, is a rather bizarre assumption to be making.Also, this whole thing is some dealy with trying to attack a local gang for reasons not yet made clear. I haven't commented much on that because what's happening is largely just the story blandly moving itself forward. If it had a better track record, I'd be looking forward to seeing where it was going with this. As-is, I'm not bored or anything, but it's not strongly engaging me, Which is fine, but it means I have little to say about the sequence. Like, cool, Sy and Jessie are riding herd on their minions to try to get them to Do A Thing. Stuff that has to happen, ya know?You know, I think this is the first time Twig has ever addressed the topic of how people control their lights. I'm disappointed it seems to just be a regular modern lightswitch, and there's a lot of things I'm iffy on here. Isn't this supposed to be a small town? Is electrical lighting that widespread? If so, why wasn't New Pork City running with electrical lighting? If it isn't, why isbuilding conveniently electrical? Why isn't it bioluminescent, for example?Stuff like this makes me doubt Wildbow has really thought through Twig as a setting, which is a problem given how Twig's story is trying so hard to be tied deeplyits setting.Aaaand now we're back to Sy just arbitrarily claiming he Knows Shit and can Predict Shit on the basis of this stuff he supposedly knows, even though he has incomplete information, doesn'tknow everyone is afraid and panicking, and never mind that different people react differently to fear. Example: my mom used to be moderately afraid of spiders, which made her tend to not want to go anywhere near them. My dad wasof spiders, and his response to this mortal fear was to grab a shoe, run them down, and smash them so dead there was no possibility of them hurting him. And keep smashing for a good ten seconds after they were probably dead.So not only is he being vague, but it's bullshit even if I accept that he magically knows 'the psychology of fear and panic' and also assume he's arbitrarily correct that everyonepanicking etc.Goddammit, Twig....is a drop of several feet? What is SyEnd 15.2 on Sy threatening to replace the local gang's leadership with similar-looking people if they don't cooperate. I find this mechanically improbable.----------------------------------------------Well. We're still having moments of Twig managing to do right the things it's always done wrong, but we're also having a return to form, with nonsense psychoanalysis and the story relying on vagueness in hopes the audience won't notice how what's being written can't actually work. Not a good sign.There was another week-long break between this and the previous chapter.Anyway, the actual chapter.Surprisingly, it's actually the immediate aftermath of the previous chapter's end.This is very strange, coming from the writer who has done Worm WoG that Armsmaster would jury-rig escape routes using what little was in the cell. I don't think Sy is being written deliberately stupid here, yet I have difficulty with the idea that Wildbow actually believes this.Anyway, Sy starts psychologically torturing the girl he was hoping to have as a tutor from chapter 1. Because this is Sy, no explanation is offered. Leah's reaction is, itself, fairly strange, as the audience has no reason to believe that she would believe that Sy and Jessie would be upset at her working in this group. It comes across like Leah reading the script.I'm going to note, as an aside, that the entire reason Sy enrages me so is he's very obviously going to Karma Houdini his way out of everything he has ever done, when the story is in its closing moments. He's the 'sympathetic', 'likable', 'heroic' protagonist, ergo no matter how completely and utterly horrible of a person he actually is, he will never get a real comeuppance, not anything like the myriad horrible things he's done to other people. If Sy were a major antagonist of Twig and got away scot-free at the end,would want Wildbow's head on a pike. Since he's our viewpoint character, though, a blatant double-standard is invoked, and people like the Baron will suffer heinous fates they 'deserve' for their crimes, while Sy will never suffer anything more than temporary inconveniences, most of which he doesn't actually care about. (The story has failed in its totality to make it believable that Sy being separated from the Lambs has hurt in the way it wants the audience to believe, and being separated from the Lambs is the closest the story has come to retribution for his heinous behavior)It's not even the fact that hegoing to get away just fine, note. I'm fine with stories in which there is no karma, in which very bad people get away with awful things and no arbitrary forces step in to cut them down. I tend tothat kind of story, as while it's not necessarilyrealistic, I'd still rather have that than a feel-good lie that clearly doesn't believe the lie itself. (If you have to cheat to make your message work, I have difficulty imagining you actually believe what you're writing) Twig is not that kind of story, no matter that it's tried to explicitly invoke it at times. No, it's your generic feel-good karmic justice story, only our 'hero' by this standard deserves everything inflicted upon eg the Baron and, but is immune to karma due to his status as the protagonist.The blatant doublestandard, above all else, is what galls me here.(At the tail end of a conversation about torturing people)I'll admit this got a very slight smile out of me for a second.I... what? You don't take a few hours in a single day and have the entire routine down pat, supermemory or no. Anything of this scale is going to take aat minimum to go through its full normal cycle. Unless Jessie is supposed to be doing some of that supermemory deduction that has cropped up on occasion, this makes no sense. Even if she, that's very much stretching the bounds of possibility.It's mildly interesting to me that Sy has so completely internalized the notion of Jessie as female that he's even now making comparisons like this.On the other hand, it reminds me that part of why I'm not happy with how this whole Jessie transition was handled is that the story had exactlyscene in which it suggested Sy was making even the tiniest effort to work around his issues with homosexuality, and then promptly dropped the 'Sy getting over his homophobia' plotline by replacing it with 'and now Jamie is Jessie and so it'sgay!' That was literally the first time anything resembling character development has happened with Sy, and the story killed the plotline before it couldanywhere.And going by recent-ish thread conversation, Wildbow thinks Sy is actually an example of a character getting over their homophobia?... by what standard is he better off than he was when Shirley met him? Is the storytrying to do this vibe with Sy, after spending so long trying to play plotlines involving Sy being crushed by the world blah blah blah? I'm remembering all of a sudden the other reason I've not been mustering motivation; Twig literally can't get anything right.Back in Tynewear, he was actually relatively happy, life was easy, he wasn't throwing himself into danger for no actual reason while fucking over the people he supposedly liked. So exactly how is he supposed to be, now that he's heading a gang of local toughs who don't like or respect him to fuck with literally the only woman in the entire story he's shown the slightest bit of respect (Jane Slash) for... ugh, this is just stupid.Actually correct and mildly intelligent! It's a bit of a common mistake to try to assuage people that it's okay to fail, and end up painting failure as the safer, better choice than success, and so they basicallyto fail.I really don't think Wildbow knows anything about the timeframe he's set Twig in. A big part of late 1800s/early 1900s stuff was the social problems created by factories having basically all the bargaining power in the employer/worker relationship. Theunions are a thing at all is because the natural process of employers implicitly/indirectly bargaining with workers as a collective were broken; no matter how many workers concluded their pay was too low, their working conditions unsafe, their hours too long, there was a long line of people eager to jump in and accept this awful deal, so the employers had no need to improve conditions to draw in employees. So unions would form and actively bar non-union employees, to artificially get back that bargaining power. Even to this day, you get terms like 'wage slave', the notion that plenty of people who have jobs are basically chained to a job they don't actually like and don't really have the ability to change to one they are okay with, but the timeframe Twig is occurring in is basically the height of this dynamic, and Twig itself has made explicit allusions to all the pieces being in place. (eg factories weren't obsoleted by Mad Science)people have never had the kind of freedom Sy seems to be referring to here, so why he calls it 'in the conventional sense' is utterly beyond me. It's not even in-character-appropriate, given Sy has never felt like he had real freedom, himself. (Which is fairly galling, with how pampered his life has been in a number of ways -yes, he's a child assassin experiment, but for no plausible reason he and the other Lambs were apparently given near-total freedom when they weren't on the job, and Twig has increasingly indicated they had effectively unlimited funding, and back in Tynewear the process of getting money was so trivial it occurred off-screen in a matter of hours)You have got to be fucking kidding me. Twig really is committing to this nonsensical and not eventhing of 'Sy the smoker'.Whatlogic could underlie this choice, given it utterly contradicts Sy'sand has absolutely no narrative weight to it? It's just this random, flagrantly wrong thing the story is running with for no reason.It's occurring to me with watching Sy do an interrogation that part of what's bugging me is the story is just taking it as a given that Jane Slash has arbitrarily large amounts of money to throw around, never mind that she's a fugitive from the Crown and is on the outs with. Where is she getting this money, exactly?It's never going to stop being painful to have Twig try to hoodwink the audience on Jane Slash's blatant bullshit by explicitly insisting she's not magical bullshit that makes no sense. If you're not going to evento make her marginally plausible, don't constantly call the audience's attention to her lack of plausibility, anddon'tto the audience and repeatedly insist sheplausible. Better to skirt around the topic, if you're not willing to actually write her as making sense in the first place, so people can at least hold onto theThat seems like a rather bizarre connection to make. My own assumption was that the fellow was hoping someone would hear and come to help. Or that he's on drugs and not behaving entirely rationally. Screaming like a ninny when nothing is actuallyto you isn't really an 'obvious tell' behavior. It's just weird, if it's not deliberately attention-grabbing.Insert appropriate outraged tirade and/or disappointed/angry memepictures here about Twig withholding in-character information for no actual reason.To Twig's credit, pushing boundaries incessantly has been a major pattern of Sy's behavior. To Twig's detriment, it remains a statement having nothing to do with anything Sy has ever done. In situations Sy has had reason to be insecure about, he has always and forever held back and avoided pushing boundaries. It's, actually, because pushing boundaries is just his default and so when he stops it stands out quite a bit. So Jessie is alluding to something that'shappened (Sy pushing boundaries), but is producing a statement in direct opposition of observable reality, when her wholeis about being extremely good at remembering actual reality. Yay.And because Twig is incapable of acknowledging that maybe analysis superpowers can be, Sy proceeds to respond to this flagrantly wrong statement in a manner that confirms Twig intends for it to be true. sighOh, also, Jane Slash is of course going to be here tomorrow, becauseSy and Jessie have pulled off their operation just in time. Twig isn't even trying to pretend its plot isn't made of contrivance, now.Okay, first of all, no you're not. It's not a fucking goddamn secret. It's an everyday factoid everyone in the entire world already knows. Secondly, recruiting an army of people. What youis something like a printing press, or to usurp some legitimate channels of communication to spread the information, or to bait the authorities into responding in a public manner that confirms your claims, or otherwise allow you to rapidly disseminate the information.people doesn't actually speed this up, especially when you're not making any effort to convince the people under you that your word is your bond. (Which, to be fair, it isn't, so that would be a lie by definition)Again, where does she find the time to arrange all this, the resources? Does shego around and meet with every single little group to build trust? Does she send letters to all of them once a month every month, demanding quite a lot of her personal time just to maintain upkeep on that trust? Where does she get the? Money doesn't come from nowhere, and the image Twig has painted is that the real money is all centered around Mad Science and nobles ie. Is she bankrolled by some Aristocrats (Which, for those who only read Threadmarks, is apparently the term for non-noble wealthy people, even though it's quite possiblythe worst possible choice in the English language for serving that role) who resent the current order? Hopefully aof them, because she'd needof money for what she's supposedly doing. Or is she somehow collecting a little bit of money from an extremely large number of people lower in class and wealth? If so, how? And whatever the case, why hasn't the Crown tracked the money trailher? How is she just hiding out in random nowhere holes the Crown cannot find her in, like some Saturday morning cartoon villain with their magical Antarctic fortress, only Jane Slash's unfindable fortress is actually her running around on Crown soil but inexplicably being impossible to track down?Every time Jane Slash enters the story, dozens of questions are raised thatto be answered, absolutely none of which actually. She is second only to Sy for sheer magical nonsense, and in some ways is actuallysince the story occasionally remembers to take a moment to try to justify Sy's success as making sense.It was true ten Arcs ago, and it remains true now.Goddammit, Twig.And this hasto do with your plans to recruit people and spread The Secret That Isn't Actually A Secret?...End 15.3 on this 'dramatic' statement.----------------------------------------------------------I keep wondering if it's not that Twig is so bad, that it's something about me going through stress, or whatever, but even when my own life gets less stressful, even when I step away from Twig for a week -- all its problems remain just as ugly as I remembered them, if not uglier.Oh, and we never got a proper explanation for Sy torturing Leah. Jessie incorrectly claiming Sy pushes boundaries when insecure sort oflike a stab at an explanation, but even ignoring how it's flat-out wrong, itan explanation. He didn't torture the kid heinterrogated. What was the point of torturing Leah, beyond that Twig really does just seem to hate its female characters?[This never gets explained, justified, or expanded upon, and indeed Leah stops being relevant to the plot after this]Ah, so Twig imagines itself to in part have Sy having reversed his position from back in the days when he worked under the Academy, that now instead of fucking with people for no reason he's fucking with people for no reason.Snark aside, thisa change, and even if Twig was correct this musing would be more appropriat