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.

“I’m fine where I am.”

“This isn’t a request.”

She’s far more forceful about it than the others we’ve seen. With a bossy attitude like this you’d almost think she’d be the one in charge of the team.

“Is that so?  You going to make me?”  He was nearly restored.  He could fight now if he needed to.

I wonder if Shatterbird was the one who recruited Burnscar.

Forcing someone into the team like this is probably a bad idea, honestly. Unless the recruit really does “thrive among” them, they’re not going to be giving their all, and may look for ways out, including tactics like selling the rest of the team out to authorities or otherwise sabotaging them.

“Yes.  I know who you are, Hookwolf.  I spent some time researching your history.”

“Not that interesting.”

We know a little of it, and I’m with Hookwolf on this – what we know so far isn’t all that big.

“I beg to differ.  You ally with the Aryan groups.  Run one, but your motivations seem to be different.  I have guesses as to why, but I’d rather you tell me.”

Hm, interesting.

We did get narration suggesting Hookwolf was indeed a Nazi earlier, but I suppose it could’ve been misdirection.

Hookwolf struggled to pull himself together.  He used hooks to pull the metal back towards his core, where it could be reabsorbed, recycled.  It didn’t take much of his reserve of internal energy to create and move the metal, but it took some, and he’d rather not run out.

Hm, another potential weakness, in that you can wear him out, although he probably still has more endurance than most people.

It was a risk, he knew, but he needed a few moments to pull himself together and rebuild his body.  He let his head and upper chest emerge from the core, taking form in the hollow metal ‘head’ of his canid form.

I suppose his brain is in the core, then?

And all of a sudden we’re back to the discussion of brains and their locations.

“What do you people want?” he asked.

“Person.  Singular.  I am the only member of my group here,” Shatterbird informed him.

Yeah. No surprise here, of course, but it might be a different story with Hookwolf.

“Arrogant.”

Hmm. I suppose as long as you assume the goal was attacking and defeating Hookwolf and his Chosen, it could come across like that.

“You can be arrogant when you’re strong enough.  You should know, Hookwolf.”

…oh yeah, the kettle’s got a point about the pot. Though Hookwolf doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as arrogant as Kaiser was.