“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.

“Right,” he said.

“Anyways, it got old real fast, them constantly finding me, constantly making me pack up and run somewhere else. Besides, the freedom to do what I wanted and go where I wished kind of lost its appeal when the boredom set in.

Ah, yes. People generally prefer pain over boredom.

I would’ve done it even if my big brothers weren’t coming for me, but I joined the Nine.”

Again, I love how she just casually drops this bomb on people. :p

Let’s see what Alec has to say about it.

She looked at the multitude of small changes that crossed Alec’s expression and smiled.

I wanna see them too! Damn non-visual medium…

“Well,” Alec said, after processing her statement, “That was dumb.”

Hah! Nice.

“He did.  Guillaume and Nicholas.  Guillaume just has to touch someone and he can sense everything they do for a good while.

Huh, that’s pretty neat. That’s arguably even better for tracking than Cherish’s power, though of course it requires getting within touch range in the first place and has a time limit.

It sounds like it’d be easy to make a good, balanced D&D spell out of it.

Nicholas just wallops you with pants-shitting waves of terror.  Literally thousands of eyes and ears looking for me, can’t fight when they do get close to me.”

So Nicholas’s power is a lot like Cherish’s, but way more specific, sacrificing versatility for strength. It also sounds a bit similar to a supercharged but targeted version of Glory Girl’s power.

It might also involve a bit of target-specific illusionry, twisting the mind into “seeing” horrifying images.

“Somehow I’m not surprised.”

Me neither, really, on the celebrity kidnapping thing.

“Heroes came after us, from both Vancouver and Montreal.

Ah, right, of course they did. Not sure how that consequence slipped my mind right after I was talking about the results of going non-local with his “army”.

Half of what we had built and earned as the Vasil family just kind of got trampled in the fighting that spilled out from that.  All because Daddy wanted to bone someone famous.  I got fed up, left.”

Damn.

Not gonna lie, that’s a good reason for leaving.

So how long did it take before the Slaughterhouse picked you up?

“So you’re on your own.  And he didn’t send the others after you?”  Alec moved one of his subject’s legs so she would fall to the ground rather than point her gun at the man standing next to her.

I wouldn’t say she’s on her own, per se…

Man, first Bitch getting recruited,

their boss’s base getting attacked, and now one of the existing members is one of Alec’s siblings and she seems to have decided to try recruiting him. The Undersiders’ involvement with the Slaughterhouse Nine is quite tangible now.

“But?”

“But it didn’t happen.  Time passed, he never made a push for it.  Guillaume got his power, you know.  Ten or so of us kids, and three of us could control people one way or another.  Four if we count you.

Okay, so I guess the number of kids is a little more realistic than I was imagining.

Still, though, that’s not a number to scoff at.

We had what we needed to pull off something huge, and Daddy decided he wanted a celebrity among his girls.

Hrm.

One question I thought of but forgot to write a couple posts ago: Was there ever a plan in the first place? Or has he just been mass-producing parahumans just for the hell of it?

Took us on a road trip to a film set in Vancouver, kidnapped this star, took her back to Montreal.  So petty.”

I wonder if she was someone who’s famous in our world.

“How’s he doing?”

Right now? I mean, if she went her own way too, chances are she’s not that much more up to date on that than you are, Alec.

“Unfocused.  For the longest time, I thought he was building up to something.  Lots of kids, ensuring they had powers.  Thought he’d try to topple the other gangs and become ruler of organized crime in Montreal.”

Ooh, Montréal. So Alec’s Canadian, then, specifically from the second largest predominantly French-speaking city in the world, after Paris. That would explain the language, even if Nikos Vasil has Greek ancestry and Alec and Cherish’s mother(s) don’t have French.

…did I know this already? I don’t remember it, but it seems like the name of the city Heartbreaker operated in is the kind of thing that would come up during the Alec backstory exposition, or in 6.8.

*blog search* Hm, no results for “Montréal” with or without the accent.

Anyway, there’s more – Cherish’s previous theory on what Heartbreaker was doing pretty much matches my own, though I might’ve been thinking a little bigger. I mean, with enough kids, he could have practically an army of parahumans, many of whom would have the power to control more people in various ways, for whatever cause Heartbreaker wanted an army for.

Though I suppose the moment he went non-local with his efforts, that would be a cue for the Protectorate to mobilize more than just the local team against him, and on a large scale, they’d still have so many more, and so much more varied, capes than he would. And that’s before considering the individual values of some of the most powerful people they’ve got, like Eidolon.

But yeah, if he’s now unfocused… did his plan fall apart somehow? Is he getting old?

(Also, Montréal sounds like a terrifying city to live in for anyone who values their self-control.)