#11.1p2

Let’s find out how he’s holding up.

He stood on the ledge above me.  He was more tanned than I was.  He wore a short-sleeved button-up shirt and khakis and held a clipboard.

Oh, huh. I suppose he would end up working as a manager for a part of the rebuilding. I probably should’ve seen that coming, but I never thought about what his job situation would be after Extermination.

It set him apart from the other laborers, and the man who stood just behind him, wearing a gray t-shirt and jeans.  I knew in an instant, my dad was in charge around here.

Yep! The clipboard alone made that clear.

Looking at him, I couldn’t imagine how I might have thought he was Coil.  Even in a dream.

Hehe. Yeah, he’s not quite that bony, is he.

“Just out for my regular run.”

Oof, ow, ouch...

Who let Wildbow coat his words in bone hurting juice?

As he’d done with his own underground base, Coil had set my lair up with a discreet entrance and exit.

Makes sense. Never know when enemies might be blocking off the front door.

Leaving through the front door would be conspicuous, if I started working with anyone beyond my teammates.

That too. As I mentioned, surveilling the building for a while would quickly reveal that Taylor worked for Coil if she’d kept using the same door as the more obvious of Coil’s folk.

Skinny teenage girl with black curly hair entering and leaving the same building that the skinny teenage villain with black curly hair was operating out of?  No.

Oh good, she got around to eating something.

Alright.  This was it.  I pulled on my mask.

Time to claim my territory.

Hell yes.

So then we’re not doing more decorating with these guys... Are we going out to put out signs or something, like the ones I joked about Bitch putting out to claim her territory and enforce good treatment of dogs?

I’m so glad Taylor is being honest about this. Danny doesn’t deserve any less. She might have some trouble explaining why she’s not coming home, though.

Speaking of which, I wonder how much Danny has pieced together. What he thinks might be the reason she left in the first place, what she was hiding in 6.9 that she was so unwilling to tell him that she straight up fled and didn’t come back.

I wonder how much he knows about the villain named Skitter, whether he’s seen footage of the Undersiders and thought that one of them looked awfully familiar, whether he’s kept questioning whether there was actually something there or he was just imagining things because he missed Taylor...

“I… I don’t know how to ask.  I’m afraid to ask you to come home, because I’m not sure I can stand to hear you tell me you won’t.”

“Actually, dad, I’ve got this fancy new villain lair now with electricity and plumbing and cool terrariums, how about you come home to me instead?”

“I’ll take that... wait, villain lair?”

He paused, for a long moment.  Waiting for me to jump at the opportunity.  I stayed silent and hated myself for it.

You know how I like to be certain about things... but I’m willing to take this as confirmation.

I’d thought of that mental image in particular because of the cold, horrible feeling in my midsection; fear, guilt.

Guilt is a really strong theme of this chapter.

My thoughts immediately went back to my nightmare from earlier.  I turned to look.

“It’s you,” my dad spoke, “Wow.”

Hi, Danny. It’s been a while.

True. I guess that’s why you’ll need employees.

It was tricky, and I didn’t know for sure how I’d handle things if-

“Taylor.”

Oh shit.

Danny? Please tell me this is Danny. We’ve had a fair bit of buildup surrounding him in this chapter, and it sounds like him and... I just really want it to be him.

The second option to come into my mind is Dragon, of course, but I think she’d still refer to Taylor as “Skitter”, or at least “miss Hebert”.

Hah, nice.

Maybe you should team up with Imp and play some pranks on him.

“Yes?”  His question was curt.

“It’s Skitter.”

“What is it, Skitter?”

“I need a loan of some guys.”

What do you have in mind? Furniture-moving muscle? Company?

“How many?”

I looked around the living room, “Eight?  A truck would be a good idea, if you can get one here.”

“I can.  These men you require, are you needing gunmen or-”

“Just regular guys, anyone up for some exercise.”

Sounds like the former.

Or maybe she just wants an entourage on her morning run? ;P

“I assume there’s no rush?”  He was being more curt than usual.  Maybe I’d woken him up.  I didn’t really care.

Sounds like it, yeah.

I wonder, since Taylor making this call isn’t dependent on Coil’s actions (unless he did something involving Taylor in the other reality), is he currently having this conversation with two Skitters at once?

He could deal, if I was working on something that helped him.

“No rush.”

“Then I’ll have them there in an hour.”

“An hour, then.”

I felt especially justified in pulling out that Undertale screenshot in the previous post because, like Undertale had a previous mirror near the beginning of the game that said “It’s you!”, Worm also had a mirror scene in the beginning, all the way back in 1.1. I think there’s a sort of connection between then and now, just like with the mirrors in Undertale.

However, maybe the other possible text for the later mirror is more appropriate here: “It’s me.” In which “me” is not the same as “you”. Without going too much into spoilers, this signifies that the protagonist doesn’t recognize themself in the mirror anymore, because their actions over the course of the game have changed them so thoroughly that the flavor text claims that it’s the narrator in the mirror.

In this way, mirrors can be damn effective literary tools for allowing a character to get introspective about the ways they’ve changed over the course of the story.

All that said... it actually sounds like Taylor approves more of what she’s seeing now than what she saw before.

It was as though it was always a stranger I was looking at, and I would be left vaguely surprised at the combination of features across from me.

Or at least not much less. She’s just...