“I want to drive.  Switch seats with me.”

He nodded dumbly and climbed out of the jeep.  She made her way over to the driver’s seat, then waited for him to climb in before she peeled out.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess she doesn’t have a license.

The jeep cut through the shallow water that covered the roads.  Others had noticed her leaving, she knew, and were following in their own vehicle.

Hm? Are there other Slaughterhouse members around?

She could sense them, each a  fingerprint of emotions in deeply individual configurations.  The mix of personal pride and confidence that she sensed in them suggested they were military.  The soldiers that had been taking over for this guy?

Oh, okay. I suppose maybe he didn’t properly check out before getting enthralled. Or maybe they noticed the seat switch?

Hang on.

What’s one thing we know about parents and children with powers? Their powers are often similar.

And what’s one thing we know about Heartbreaker? He’s got lots of children.

I think we might have a half-sister of Alec here.

Crazed, kooky, cracked, crazy,
Nutty, screwy, mentally diseased…

Was I wrong earlier? Does this song, even with the line “Nutty, screwy, mad for me”, have anything to do with love?

Also it seems to have gone on for a while.

I’d question whether it was even really playing or if she was hearing the music from her own core, if not for the military guy commenting on the music.

Reaching for that mortal fear, she wrenched it.  When that wasn’t quite enough, she pulled at it and twisted it until everything else was squeezed into the far edges.

Ahhh. Emotion manipulation. She might also be able to do things with the underlying personality.

With the way emotions are presented semi-metaphorically as music, maybe she can do something with actual music as well?

He screamed, throwing himself as far away from her as he could get, his weapon falling between the seats.

Yeeah, that would do it.

This particular usage of the power seems a lot like Gallant’s emotion blasts or Glory Girl’s angelic aura of fear and respect, but more versatile. Heartbreaker also comes to mind, especially if she can reach deeper and manipulate his underlying personality.

“You pointed at yourself twice, skipped the wild-looking one with clothes, and said you keep forgetting your own name. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“That’s not funny.”  His voice went hard, any gentleness gone.

Of course he would think she’s trying to joke.

He might not like her proving it to him. Possibly not survive it either.

…pfft, imagine if, instead of proving it by way of showing him her power or something like that, she took out her stolen wallet and showed him a printed group selfie of all the Slaughterhouse members, making victory signs in front of a burning and thrashed building. :p

“Look! There’s me, and there’s Mannequin, there’s Shatterbird, there’s Siberian with her knockers out like usual, there’s Burnscar, Crawler, Hatchet Face and… the new girl. Shoot, I keep forgetting her name. Let’s just call her Barbie, okay?”

“It’s really not,” she agreed with a smile.

Hehe.

He went for his gun, but he didn’t get that far.  She closed her eyes for a moment, listened for the music that came from his mind and body.

Okay, I think we’ve got the Newbie here. I’m not sure what all she can do with this up close, but it’s a power that seems like it could be used to locate someone, depending on how much of a range it has. Besides, we know Bonesaw is a tinker, and this doesn’t seem like a tinker power at all. More thinker, with an H in there.

Turns out all the music, and not liking silence, was all foreshadowing of her power rather than of her amount of sanity.

The jangling, dissonant noise of alarm, the throbbing percussion of mortal fear, every part of his body shifting into fight or flight mode.

Ironically, this is telling her some of the same things I briefly mistook the music for being a power that could tell her about.

The underlying notes spoke to his personality.  His love of his family, his fear that he was about to leave them behind, anger towards her, a momentary anxiety that he was overreacting.

This even more so.

But there’s probably more to this than that. The only way she could use this information to stop him from going for his gun seems to be Tattletale-style appeal to secrets. Then again, I haven’t finished the paragraph yet.

She grasped this in the fraction of a second.

Yeah, this has to be quick in order to stop him from drawing his gun on her.

“Oh, we’re visiting because it’s a time like this,” she smiled.

Yep. Almost definitely a Slaughterhouse member.

And that “almost” is only there because while we haven’t heard of any other villain groups coming to town to take advantage of the situation, it’s still plausible that some would, and this could be an elaborate misdirection. I really don’t think it is, though.

“Thrill seeking?” his voice hardened.  “That’s not only stupid, it’s disrespectful.”

Hm, yeah, I suppose it is. It’s like looking at a poor nation’s suffering and going “that sounds fun, I should try that”.

But hey, wasn’t thrill seeking part of how Bonesaw was described in 10.6?

“The people I’m staying with?  They’re the Slaughterhouse Nine.  I’m one of them.”

Woah, way to be super honest all of a sudden!

I kinda love that. “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, I’m one of the country’s most feared villains.”

“Well, I’m not about to deny someone their coping mechanisms.  Where do you live, or where did you live, before the attack?”

I have a feeling she didn’t live here in Brockton Bay. If she says that, though, he’s bound to get confused about why she would come here.

“Out of town.”

He raised one eyebrow, but he kept looking out the windows for possible trouble.

Bingo.

I feel like that’s a big point in favor of this being either a surprisingly coherent Bonesaw, or the Newbie (which is a possibility I didn’t think of until now, but also one that seems less likely because of the lyrics). Moving to Brockton Bay right now is pretty worthy of a raised eyebrow from me to if she’s not here to take advantage of the situation like the Slaughterhouse Nine.

He put the key in the ignition and started the car so he could use the windshield wipers.  “Sounds like there’s a story there.  People don’t just come into town at a time like this, and if you were just visiting, you would have evacuated already.”

Oh yeah, I’m sure there’s quite the story here, alright.