| Worm | |
|---|---|
| Gestation 1.5 | |
| Date posted | 25 June 2011 |
| Link | Gestation 1.5 |
| Chapter guide | |
| Previous Gestation 1.4 |
Next Gestation 1.6 |
| Chapter List | |
Gestation 1.5 is the fifth chapter of Gestation. In it, Taylor Hebert manages to blind and then evade Lung until the Undersiders arrive.
Plot
Lung leaps from the street to the side of the building that Taylor is on. He ascends by burying his clawed fingertips into the building’s exterior. Taylor waits for him at the edge of the roof near the fire escape, knowing that she can't outrun him and that a retreat down the fire escape would be too slow. She looks in her inventory for something useful: her emergency Epipen is useless and a pouch of chalk dust is potentially more dangerous for her than him. She settles on the pepper spray, a gift from her dad for her self-defense when on her morning runs.
Taylor crouches to make herself a smaller target and prepares to fire. Lung, still on fire, shows up at the edge of the roof. She aims for the one eye that he had open and misses, hitting his shoulder. Her second shot is on target, and Lung feels the effects but doesn't fall, managing to haul himself over the edge of the roof.
Taylor has nothing useful left and knows that striking Lung is useless, so she bolts for the fire escape. Lung strikes her down with a wave of fire, and she is sent sprawling. Unable to move or attack without alerting him to her location, watching as he swiftly recovers from the pepper spray, she braces herself for the inevitable. She's saved when a massive animal the size of a van hits Lung, putting him on his knees. The ensuing brawl sees the creature and Lung falling from the edge of the roof.
Two more creatures similar to the first one arrive to the rooftop, each with a pair of riders, two girls and two guys. They dismount and introduce themselves: Grue, Tattletale, Bitch (that the good guys and media call Hellhound) and Regent. They reveal that when they heard that Lung planned to attack them that night they decided to meet him halfway, but they found only Lee, Lung's Lieutenant, and half dozen members of the Azn Bad Boys. The fight was short and Lee retreated.
Taylor is silent throughout this exchange, noticing this Grue asks if Taylor is hurt but is interrupted by Tattletale saying the reason for her silence is her shyness.
Lung suffers in the ensuing fight against Bitch's creatures, which are revealed to be dogs, half blind and suffering from the insect venom, he winds up losing. Tattletale informs everyone present that a cape is coming, Bitch summons her dogs and they get mounted. Grue offers Taylor a ride, but she refuses, and the group departs.
In the wake of all this, processing the information the group had just shared, Taylor realises that these teenaged villains were the "kids" that Lung was talking about killing. Further, the teenagers had left with the impression that she was one too. Taylor feels like crying.
Major Events
- This is the second half of Unnamed Bug Girl vs. Lung
- This is the introduction of the Undersiders.
Trivia
- Tattletale shares her own version of these events later.[1] It's there that she reveals that Lung planed to use his pyrokinesis to torch the district until he forced the Undersiders out of hiding (or until panicked locals did).
- She also reveals that she knew Taylor was a hero the entire time, she also saw similarities between the way Taylor was acting and her brother, Rex, who commited suicide.[2]
- In Coil's other timeline, the Undersiders arrived earlier and Taylor attempted to attack both groups at once, which caused both Taylor and the Undersiders to lose.
Characters
Solo HeroesAzn Bad BoysThe Undersiders
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