Small things.  Nothing she couldn’t have bought in a well stocked convenience store, maybe.  But she would operate best if she was relaxed, and having some personal items made her feel better.

Makes sense. Especially since it just hit me that a natural reaction to fear would be to instinctively tell her power to hide her more effectively, which apparently makes it weaker – if Imp is startled or frightened, it might make her more noticeable.

That only left the problem of finding them.

Yeah, that’s gonna be the tricky part, unless she gets super lucky. I guess the luckiest thing short of stumbling over all of them would be running into Bonesaw without Siberian present. Bonesaw would be easier than many of them to follow and less likely to put Imp in the crossfire of an attack without noticing her than Jack or Burnscar. Though it’s possible that Hack Job would sense Imp’s power and disable it if she got too close to him.

They’d attacked the Merchants, and observing her mom had given her the chance to find out where.  It was a starting point.

I suppose it’s better than nothing.

■

I guess we’re skipping ahead in her efforts.

Around the girl guide stuff, she found a small tape recorder and an old pair of binoculars.  After finding an old backpack that had never been emptied of the school supplies, she found some notebooks that had only been filled in about a third of the way.

Spying equipment? You going ahead and looking for the Nine, Aisha?

She tore out those pages and tucked the notebooks under one arm.

Good idea tearing out that stuff. If the notebook were to be lost and found by the Nine, it might’ve contained enough information to identify her as its owner.

Everything went into a compact black handbag, along with her taser and knives.

Hey, at least she’s going prepared. This still might end badly if she gets too close to Cherish (which isn’t very close), but still, she’s trying.

Also, it’s entirely possible that the power does work on Cherish’s more unusual senses. The Dragon thing was most likely a result of her brain being silicon. Hell, Mannequin might be more dangerous, since we don’t know how his brain still works – he might’ve integrated it into some artificial internal system that could mess with Imp’s power.

“Go get some papers, Sam.  Sam McSamsam.  Sammy-sam.  Samster-”

Hamster. Sammy-sam McSamsam the classroom hamster.

“I don’t want to get up any more than you do,” Sam growled.  “You’re not one of the talkative ones, are you?  I like it quiet.”

Seriously, how many days have they been together?

“Mom,” Aisha said, as if she could get her mom’s attention.  Ironically enough, she knew that if she deactivated her power, she’d have even less chance of talking to her mom.  It wasn’t just the horned mask and the black costume.  She’d never had anyone just sit down and listen to her.

Yeah, I think if she’d made herself visible, they’d do quite a lot of other things than listening to her. Especially since she’d appear to show up out of nowhere in that costume, though that might change their tune from anger to fear.

Dad ignored her, mom was self-centered and Brian was too focused on what needed to be done that he ignored everything else.

That sounds like a really good description of Brian.

Taylor’s got a bit of that too, but it manifests somewhat differently.