“Jack’s taken me on as his protegé.  Teaching me the finer points of being an artist.  What he’s been saying is that I’m too focused on the external.  Skin, bone, flesh, bodies, the stuff we see and hear.

How is “bone” external? Flesh, I can kind of understand, what with mouths and such, but if bone’s showing directly, something is probably wrong.

And if that kind of thing is “external”, what’s “internal”? The brain?

He’s told me to practice with the internal, and this seems like a great time to do that.”

Aaand we’ve got a victim right over there on the couch.

“Internal?” Amy replied.

“It’s easy to break people’s bodies.  Easy to scar them and hurt them that way.  But the true art is what you do inside their heads.

Looks like I broke that down correctly.

And I suppose there’s some truth in what she’s saying. Of course there are less artful ways to break a brain, but careful modification can create interesting results.

Do you have a breaking point, Amy?  Maybe if we find your limits and push past them, you’ll find yourself in a place where you’ll want to join us.”

Oh, I see. Things are falling into place – she’s doing this in order to “work through that” like one might work through not having the key for a car when they’re stealing it.

She’s planning on hotwiring Amy.

Amy was pinned.  She tried to use her power on Hack Job through the contact he was making with her chest and neck, only to find it wasn’t available.

His specialty, though it “doesn’t work as well”. And if he doesn’t have the ability to pick and choose targets, that’s fine for Bonesaw unless she needs the abilities of the other amalgamates, because she doesn’t have much need for her tinker abilities at the moment.

She couldn’t sense his body, the blood flowing in his veins, or any of that.  Even her own skin felt quiet, where she normally felt the pinprick sensations of innumerable, microscopic airborne lifeforms touching her.

Huh. I suppose it makes sense that with a touch-range power that allows her to sense and modify the biology of a target, all the lifeforms on and in her would count as touching her and therefore be available to her power. Even if she might not be as effective at modifying their ability when they aren’t human, it makes sense that she’d still sense them.

She’d barely even realized that was happening until it stopped.

Makes sense. It’s like turning off a noisy fan you didn’t realize was on.

It’s neat how calmly Amy is talking at this point.

“Oh.  Oh!”  Bonesaw smiled.  “That’s okay.  We can work through that.”

Judging by the number of people nominated with moral compasses that don’t at all fit into the Slaughterhouse Nine, I believe her.

“I- I don’t think we really can.”

“No, really,” Bonesaw said.  Then she snapped her fingers.

Uh. Should I be worried about what that snap means?

Hack Job flickered into existence just in front of Amy, and there was little she could do to escape.  She cried out as the man’s massive hand smashed her down onto her back, a few feet from Mark.

Ouch. Yeeah, looks like Bonesaw just decided that “Oh, she’s not coming with me of her own free will due to her morals. Guess I’ll just have to do this the hard way.”

Mark struggled to stand, but Murder Rat darted across the room to light atop the back of the couch and press one of her three-foot long claws against his throat.

Sorry, Mark. There’s not much you can do about this.

Also, jeez, those claws are longer than I thought.

Amy looked at the onetime heroine, tried to picture it.  It wasn’t any better.  Worse, if anything.

Eh, fair.

“That’s only the beginning.  Can you even imagine the things we could make?  There’s no upper limit.”

The sky’s the limit, they say, but the sky isn’t a physical thing. It doesn’t stand in the way of going far beyond. (The ground, on the other hand, is clingy and tries to pull you down.)

There was a beep from the answering machine.  It began playing a message.  “Amy, pick up!  We’re looking at dealing with Hellhound, and there’s injured.  Call Aunt Sarah or Uncle Neil over to look after dad and get over to the-”

Hm, were there mentions in 11a of Amy not showing up or answering, or something like that?

Also, I thought Neil was dead. Was he not Manpower after all?

The message cut off, and there was the sound of a clatter, a distant barking sound.

Sounds about right.

I don’t remember, did we hear this message in 11a before Bitch cut Glory Girl off?

“I don’t think I have it in me to do stuff like that,” Amy said.  If nothing else, I can’t disappoint Victoria any further.

Oh yeah, I don’t think she’d approve, exactly.

Amy blinked.  Sister.  She thought of Victoria.  “I make a pretty shitty sister.”

Aww. Don’t sell yourself short, Amy.

“Language!”  Bonesaw admonished, with surprising fierceness.

Ahaha!

And this from a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine! I can just imagine what it’s like when they’re all together and Bonesaw insists on keeping the language clean.

I really love the balance of immaturity, brutality and technological ability we see in Bonesaw. It’s ridiculous, disturbing and kind of adorable all at once.

There’s a good chance she’ll be at the top of my Slaughterhouse ranking in the Arc Thoughts.

“I’m sorry.  I- I’m not a very good sister, I don’t think.”

“You could learn.”

This is quite the conversation to have with one of the most feared individuals in the country, in front of three affronts to nature and your recently disabled adoptive dad.

“I’ve tried, but… I’ve only gotten worse at it as time passed.”

And Amy is just so caught off guard by Bonesaw wanting her to be her sister that she starts opening up quite a bit.

Bonesaw pouted a little.  “But think of the stuff we could do together.  I do the kludge, the big stuff, you smooth it over.  Imagine how Murder Rat would look without the scars and staples.”

True, that would probably help with the aesthetics, unless you’re going for the Frankenstein’s monster aesthetic.

…just as Amy was thinking about leaving one adopted family because she believes they do not want her, she gets approached by someone who actually wants her to be her big sister.

I kinda love that. This is gonna be interesting.

“I don’t know.”

“So you’re bad at names too?” Bonesaw grinned.  “I’m thinking something like shrine, temple… but one with multiple floors.  Um.”

I think you’re veering more into Asian religion and architecture with that. I do appreciate the connection to having the upper and lower portions of the body, that’s kind of clever.

I still prefer my own suggestion, though.

“Pagoda?”

Ah, right, that’s the word.

“Pagoda!  Yes!”  Bonesaw skipped over to her creation, wrapped her arms around one of his, “Pagoda!  That’s your name, now!”

It’s not all that bad, I suppose, as a name.