“They’re enough.”  He pounced.  She leaped to one side, and almost glided to a position across the street.  She was using the glass of her costume to levitate herself.

Eyy, called it!

From her new vantage point she told him, “I did say I had my suspicions about your motivations.  I think I’ve come to understand you. Jack encourages this, you know.

Encourages what? Trying to understand people’s motivations?

Understanding our targets, be they recruits or victims.  You learn a lot being with him.  I believe you, Hookwolf, are a born warrior.”

Jack’s right. I believe we’ve been over this quite a few times now: knowledge (and understanding) is power.

A warrior, huh? As in he fights just for the sake of fighting? I suppose that makes a lot of sense with the fighting ring background.

“What’s the rush?  In fact, any moment we delay, you have a chance of reinforcements arriving.  Your Stormtiger, your Othala, your Menja, they could all do a little something to assist you. It’s in your advantage for us to delay the fight.”

She does have a point, or would if Hookwolf hadn’t asked them to do other things. I suppose they might come after him when they were done, though.

“Except I’m more than capable of putting you down myself.”

“Perhaps.”

And unlike the three mentioned, he’s not easily vulnerable to the glass.

He adjusted his form, dropping to four legs once more.  The aesthetic suffered, but he created two needle-tipped limbs at his shoulders, poised like scorpion’s tails.

The aesthetic suffers from becoming a wolf with dual scorpion stingers growing from the shoulders?? I don’t know what world you’re living in, Hookwolf, but in mine, that’s super cool.

“Ah, that’s much better,” she said, “But you’re still too attached to conventional forms.  Why have legs at all?”

Oh, you’re a connoiseur of unconventional body shapes?

I suppose there’s something psychological about it. Hookwolf doesn’t seem to need legs, but he very much prefers the quadrupedal form. So is it just “I prefer the aesthetics of having legs”, or is there more to it?

Cricket collapsed, large quantities of blood spilling through her fingers and around her hands, where they clutched her throat.

And Shatterbird just had to hit the throat, too. As if Cricket didn’t have enough problems with that.

“Now it’s just you and me,” Shatterbird said.  She dusted herself off, not giving any concern to the sharp edges of the glass shards that made up her garment.  “We talk.”

I wonder if Shatterbird ever uses her ability to move glass on her garment to let her fly.

“I think I’ll kill you instead,” Hookwolf growled.

It’s weird how reasonable this sounds at this point.

Hookwolf didn’t even need to look.  He laughed, “No.  Afraid my lieutenant is a little too fast for you.”

Yeah… though are you sure you don’t need to look?

“Look out,” Cricket’s said from behind him, the artificial sound of her voice detracting from the inflection and urgency.

Okay, good, looks like it worked.

So what now?

A tide of glass slammed into him.  Standing on only two limbs, his balance suffered, and he wasn’t able to keep from being pushed onto his side.

Ah!

Looks like I was right, sort of – she can’t dodge bullets and cancel the power at the same time, but she does have good enough reactions to do the former at the cost of giving Shatterbird a moment without the latter.

“Wasn’t aiming at her,” Shatterbird said.  She fired several more shots, simultaneously releasing a shard of glass from her free hand.

…oh. Or she can use the gun to destabilize the glass that’s already there.

Hookwolf turned, saw Cricket clutching her throat.  She’d dodged the bullets, but Shatterbird had controlled the flight of the glass shard she shot at Cricket much in the same way she’d controlled the descent of the massive spike of glass.

Or maybe it’s my first explanation and she’s just using the gun to distract Cricket without shooting at her. Or maybe she’s using the sound of the bullets to deafen Cricket’s subsonics.

Anyway, doesn’t that turn into a match of reactions? Cricket reacts to Shatterbird shooting the glass, Shatterbird reacts to Cricket moving and adjusts the glass’s path, Cricket reacts to the glass’s path changing and moves further, etc.? I would think Cricket would win such a match, unless Shatterbird correctly predicted her movements and didn’t have to rely on reactions.

It had struck its target.  “Just needed to break her concentration.”

Oh, okay, it was the third one, then.

Then again, Cricket does have her reactions, so it’s not going to be easy to hit her either, as long as the subsonic fuckery that cancels out Shatterbird’s power doesn’t prevent Cricket from using that.

“Seems so,” Shatterbird answered, rapidly backing up to maintain some distance from Hookwolf.

Yeeeah, good call. As long as Cricket is canceling Shatterbird out, she’s (presumably) practically powerless, at least if it also covers the movement of glass rather than just the shattering.

“And here I was thinking you’d won the lottery with powers.  Incredible range, fine control, devastating force, versatility… and all it takes is the right noise and it all falls apart?”

It really is a pretty damn awesome power!

“Guess the men who bought my power should ask for a refund.”

…oh? Did you get this power from Cauldron? Or conversely, sell “samples” of it for them to develop into a mass-producable form?

If Cauldron is capable of mass-producing powers that are this strong… 

That’s pretty scary, honestly.

“No.  Not interested in being conned into a game of twenty questions to figure out what you’re talking about.  Not giving you a chance to figure a way out.”  He punched one of his massive spears at her, and she threw herself to the ground, rolling beneath the impaling weapon.

For the first time, I’m uncertain about whether a Slaughterhouse member will make it to the end of the Interlude.

I mean, she probably will – otherwise we’d have two open spots – but this is the first point where it’s genuinely seemed like one of them might not.

As she stood, she drew a gun from the folds of her glittering dress.

Ah. Good to have backup, I suppose, in case of just this sort of situation.

She fired between Hookwolf’s legs at Cricket, the noise of the shots ringing through the air.

Shit. Good tactic, though – best to attack the one who a) isn’t nearly invulnerable to your weapon, and b) is the one messing with your power.

“Tell you?  Why should I?  I think we’re done here.”

I mean, fair. She did just attack your base, kill and/or maim some of your people, and hit you with a spike of glass from the sky. She hasn’t exactly done anything to warrant you telling her your secrets for nothing.

Shatterbird raised one hand, then frowned, her lips pursing together.  “Hm.”

Cricket climbed to her feet.  She was bleeding badly where she had exposed skin, and chunks of glass were partially buried in her arms and legs.

Don’t attack, Cricket.

…actually, you may want to run. Shatterbird might try to take you as a hostage, although your powers could make that difficult.

There was the quiet rasp of her laughter.

“Pride goeth before the fall,” Hookwolf said, striding towards his enemy.

That it does.

“Seems as though Cricket can use her subsonics to cancel you out.”

Oh, huh! That’s really neat.