“I could try,” Grue said, “I’ve seen her power, but I don’t get the full picture, I might kill it. Or fuck it up somehow.”
Hey, Brian, what were you using your power for earlier?
“Please,” I said.
He raised one hand and created a wave of darkness. It passed over the two girls.
Amy: “What the… Grue!!”
I brought Atlas to Grue, and he laid one hand on the shell. I could feel shifting in Atlas’ mandibles, head, thorax and abdomen.
I hope he can do this. I’m fine with the relay bugs being temporary, but Atlas is too cool to let go of.
The shifting stopped the same instant I saw Glory Girl spear straight out of the top of the cloud of darkness, flying high with Amy in her arms.
Damn it, she figured out what he was doing, didn’t she (does she know about Brian’s new power yet?). Or at least decided to get out of the dark.
“Did you finish?” I asked.
“Couldn’t say,” he sighed.
Guess we’ll have to find out by trying to feed a giant beetle.
What do you feed it, anyway?
I searched Atlas with my power, trying to get a feel for his physiology. As with all the other instances, everything about him was invisible if I wasn’t looking specifically for it, a black hole in the database of knowledge my power provided. He was created, and there was no genetic blueprint that my power could decrypt and analyze to figure out what part served a given function.
Ahh, that makes sense. Normally the power just tells her what it can glean from the DNA.
When I reached the area Grue had affected, I found it even darker, untouchable. The nervous system wasn’t something my power could interface with.
…maybe Regent can?
“I had to model it off of something, and I get the feeling I don’t have the same innate knowledge that Panacea does,” Grue told me. “The only thing I have any knowledge about is myself. I don’t know if it’s going to work, but he has a human digestive system. Or something close to it, that worked with his body. Near as I can figure, everything connects to what it’s supposed to.”
Better hope Grue knows his human biology.
I know I had trouble keeping my focus up when it came to the digestive system. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t take biology when the natural sciences class split up into more specific ones.
“Thank you,” I said. “Really.”
Tattletale was still watching Glory Girl and Amy disappear. She glanced down at Atlas, “You’ll have to figure out a diet that gives him every nutrient he needs, and pay a hell of a lot of attention to him. If you give him something his body can’t process, it could poison him like that.” She snapped her fingers.
Yeeah, makes sense. This isn’t going to be an easy pet to feed.
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