“What I find really interesting is that you’ve got some connections.  A girlfriend, maybe?  No.  Nothing romantic.  You have friends?  A team?”

Fuck.

He stayed silent.

“Come after me, I go after them.  You may be immune, but they aren’t.”

“Fine.”

I suppose as long as she keeps it as a bargaining chip, that’s better than her just going after them anyway just for the sake of a little more revenge.

“And remember, I can always tell Daddy where you are.  He’s pissed you left.  Pissed I left, but he’s too scared to come after me.  Not with the Nine having my back.”

Ahh, yeah, that makes sense.

“They don’t have your back, Cherie.”

That is a good point. She just admitted that.

But Heartbreaker doesn’t know that, does he now?

Which could change…

“Fuck,” Alec said, his eyes widening.

“Have fun with that,” she smiled, standing.  She had to leap back to avoid being stabbed with the gold-painted stick as she released his wrist.  “Now we’re even.”

I… have questions about your definition of “even”.

“Fuck you.  That’s not even at all!  I leave home, so you arrange to have me killed by some of the scariest fuckers on this side of Earth?”

“Hey, Alec, what does the word ‘disproportionate’ mean?”

“Yep,” she smiled, smug.  It was good to see she could provoke him, get a response out of him.  Was that because she’d done it well, or had he gotten more emotional as of late?

I suppose getting back into the habit of keeping people to feel emotions through could have helped.

He ran his fingers through his hair.  “Lunatic.”

She really does fit into the team quite well.

“Not interested.”

“Doesn’t matter.  You get nominated, you’re tested no matter what you want… and a few of the Nine don’t want to have two Vasils on the same team.  Shatterbird hates my guts, for some reason.  Crawler doesn’t respect me.  Jack thinks it would be boring.  So what I’m thinking is that this test?  The initiation?  It’s going to be a little harder for you.  They won’t be testing you to see if you’re mean enough, bloodthirsty enough, creative enough.  They’re just going to try to kill you.”

Damn.

Also, this spells bad news for all the other seemingly “failed” nominations we’ve seen.

Only two people we’ve seen have actual interest in participating – one of them only because he’s being forced into it – but apparently they’ll all be attacked by the remaining Fellowship members nonetheless.

That includes Labyrinth, the daydreamer. Way to go, Burnscar, I thought you liked her. Possibly even romantically.

And now the Undersiders have the Slaughterhouse coming after two of their members, and one of them is somewhat willing. Yeeeeeeah. This could get pretty intense for them.

Oh, and they’ll be trying to test Noelle too. That probably means more attacks on Coil’s base to get access to her.

Arc 12 is gonna be a wild ride, I think.

“Got you, little brother.  You still suck at fighting.”

Should’ve taken sparring with Grue a little more seriously, perhaps.

He stared up at her, panting for breath and looking half-bored at the same time.  He used his power, and she let go of his left hand to strike him across the face.  He stopped.

“Oh quit it, I won fair and square.”

She smiled, “Thought you should know that things got pretty shitty at home after you left.  Daddy got really overprotective, angry.  It sucked.

Ahh, got a bit of resentment for the consequences of Alec leaving, do we?

Sucked worse when we couldn’t find you.”

“Sorry,” he said, in what she judged as the least convincing tone he could manage.

Yeeah, he doesn’t care that much.

“My payback?  I’ve nominated you for the Nine.”

That’s a weird payba– oh.

The trials.

Welp.

His emotions were so muted.  Dim.  How much of that was Jean-Paul or Alec’s personality, and how much was his natural immunity, built up over years of exposure to Daddy?

Hmm. Are you sure “natural immunity” is what that is? Have you heard the same sort of dimness from other people who’s been exposed to Heartbreaker’s power, and assumed that Heartbreaker’s power caused a form of immunity to yours?

She couldn’t get a sense of what he was feeling, which was disappointing.

Is he feeling much at all?

However faint his feelings were, she could sense the slightest change.  A chime of attention.  He didn’t look at any of the puppets that he was struggling to control, but she could sense his attention flicker to the woman.  A thrum of confidence.

Oh? Did he successfully override the emotional control, even just a little?

They both dashed towards the woman at the same moment.  In their hurry to get to her, they collided, falling to the ground as a trio.

Pfft!

“It’s a bomb.  Very simple.  A block of explosives rigged to a timer.  Any time I call the right number, the timer will reset.

Ahhh.

And she said she had 15 minutes when she last called the number.

Better not run out of battery, Cherish… which you were, last we checked your phone.

I did make the mistake of letting my phone battery die, but I figure I’ve still got a couple of minutes.  If you keep me here for any longer than that, I go kablooie.”

Yeeeah, that’s a problem. So after she’s done here, she’s got a very short time limit to charge her phone, or find another phone, so that she can avoid going kablooie anyway. That, or to get rid of the bomb, and I suspect that’s easier said than done considering it appears to be primarily intended as a safeguard against body control.

“Is that a threat?  Sounds like a win for me.”

That depends on the size of the explosion, does it not?

“You’ll probably get blown up as well.  Or maimed,” she smiled.

“I could walk away.”

True. He’d have time.

…again, depending on the size of the explosion.

“And lose control over your minions as you get further away?  Please do.  I can make the call when you’re gone.”

Don’t forget you need an active phone to do that.

Man, imagine if she does forget that, accidentally kablooies herself, and both Bitch and Hookwolf end up on the team as a result.

That… would be silly, but not all that satisfying as a use of the first of Alec’s family to appear in person.

“Ah.  I sort of remember that bit about your power.  The part that sticks in my head is that you don’t have long-term benefits.  It wears off, and your targets build immunity pretty quickly.”

Sometimes I get momentarily confused because I split the paragraphs into chunks to comment on, so things aren’t always in response to the last thing I quoted. The main thing Alec is responding to here is the comment about her power having range.

Also, that’s an interesting tidbit. I guess that’s why she didn’t even try to mess with Alec’s emotions, to what extent he has them anymore.

Cherie shrugged.

“I’m not the best when it comes to strategy, but I’m thinking… I’m going to win here. Eventually.  You can’t run without me getting control over my people and sending them after you, you can’t use them to attack me, and if you stay, I can try doing this.”

So the tug of war is actual hostility on some level. At least now that Alec knows who Cherish is with.

Her arm jerked involuntarily.

“Remember me practicing my power on you when it was new?”

Oh yeah, that’s still part of his powerset.

Wait.

Is he implying what I think he’s implying?

It’s been a while, but if he’s taken control of her before, then it’s easier to do again now…

“I remember, little brother,” she frowned, looking at her arm.  “Daddy had us all practice on each other.”

That’s a little less awful than it could’ve been with some different powers, I guess. Can’t imagine being a practice subject for Nicholas was any fun, though.

“I got the info on him a day or so ago, after I heard the Slaughterhouse Nine were in town.  Isn’t he immune to powers?

Oh! Well, that puts a stick through that theory’s wheel.

I guess she must’ve gone for something more indirect. Siccing the other Slaughterhouse members on him would be one possibility, probably, with powers like Shatterbird’s glass control not technically affecting him directly. Is he immune to mundane damage too? I’ve speculated that he’s a Brute before, so maybe he’s just really tough on top of this.

That’s pretty much what he does.  Super strong, enhanced toughness, big… and your powers just stop working when he gets close.  Or they go haywire.”

Oh, that is very interesting. He’s not just immune to anything that affects him directly, he can create an anti-power field. Can he make it affect only his enemies? Also, what sort of range does it have?

I particularly like the haywire part. Haywire powers or magic can be fun.

“He is immune to powers, but he didn’t get close.  See, difference between me and Daddy is that I have range.  I can use my power even if I can’t see the person I’m using it on.  Through walls, from the building next door.  Hatchet didn’t get close enough to me to turn off my power.

Well, that answers my range question: Not long enough.

Also, if Hatchet Face can pick and choose whose powers to turn off (not clear yet), and has to do so actively, can he also detect whenever there’s anyone within range with powers he can turn off?

He tried, but it works both ways.  I was prepped to run any time my power stopped working, because it told me he’d found my trail or guessed where I was.”

Seems like a good tactic.