“No,” Amy said.  Then, just to make it clear, she added, “No, it’s not going to happen.  I won’t join you.”

Bonesaw really doesn’t seem the type to take “no” for an answer…

“You will!  You have to!”

“No.”

…but unlike Shatterbird’s way of not taking “no” for an answer, she’s more inclined towards “Yes you will!” or “Why not, we can change that!”

“I have to do like Jack said.  He said I won’t be a true genius until I’ve figured out how to get inside people’s heads.”

Uh oh, back to this again. Are we going more literal with it, like I thought earlier?

“Maybe- Maybe you won’t be inside my head until you realize there’s no way I’m going to join the Slaughterhouse Nine.”

Heh, yeah. Not in the figurative way, at least.

Bonesaw frowned.  “Maybe.”

Hm, is she beginning to accept it? Or just thinking up a different approach?

Amy nodded.

“Or maybe I need to figure out your breaking point.  Your weak spot.  Like that man there.”  Bonesaw pointed at Mark.

…yeah, it was the latter.

“Cherish said you sleep here, and you’ve been around him for a while… so why haven’t you healed him?”

Oof. Sore subject.

She’s gotten enough of this from her family. Now she’s getting it from the one who wants to be family too.

The first had grown back before she’d started on the third.

Ah, right, regenerative powers.

Try severing the connection of the spines?

Though maybe that would mess with the control system and kill Pagoda.

“He heals,” Bonesaw informed her.  “Two regenerators in one.  There’s only one good way to stop him.  Try again.”

Messing up the control system and thus killing him?

Pain.  She inflicted pain on Pagoda.  No reaction.  She’d have to reach into his brain to make it so he really felt pain again.  She tried atrophying his muscles, with no luck.  Anything she did was undone nearly as fast as she could inflict it.

Quite a damage sponge, this one.

“Five seconds,” Bonesaw announced.  “Four.”

Sending signals to his arms to get him to move.  No.  The metal frame overrode anything she could do with her power to control him.

The pressure is on.

“Three.”

Amy used the only option available to her.  She disconnected him from the metal frame that Bonesaw used to control her subjects.  She could sense it as the metal shifted into motion around his heart.  Not needles, as there had been for Murder Rat, but small canisters of fluid.

Yeah, needles probably wouldn’t work against the regeneration.

Also, where exactly is his heart? Which chest, which ribcage is it behind?

“Two… one… zero point five… Ah, there we go.”

Pagoda lurched backward and broke contact with Amy, her power no longer giving her an insight into what was happening with him.

So what was the fluid? Explosives?

He sat down, using one hand to prop himself up.  A moment later he slumped over, his eyes shutting.  His breathing stopped.

Hm, no. Some sort of poison, I guess.

“I use my creations to collect material for other work.  It’s a circle, using them to get material for more creations.

Seems like reasonable strategy. You know, as long as you ignore what those “materials” are.

Having the Nine was essential to get things started, and to help get things going again if a hero managed to put down a few, but now I’m in good shape.  I stick around because they’re mostly fans, and they’re kind of family.  I want you in my family, Amy Dallon.”

And there we have it again. Bonesaw inviting Amy to be family.

“Please.”

“Now, I’m willing to make sacrifices to see that happen.  Same thing as with Murder Rat.  You don’t stop Pagoda, I’ll have him hurt the man on the couch.”

Hm, seems like she’s not aware of the relation between Amy and Mark, or of who Mark used to be.

But I suppose that makes sense, since they arrived after the Endbringer event took Mark out of the main cape scene.

Amy used her power on Pagoda, felt his body, much the same as Murder Rat’s in so many respects, though the metal frame with the needles in his spine was different.

How does his spine even work? Does the bottom of Prophet’s spine attach to the top of Carnal’s?

She reached for the ligaments at his shoulders and hips, separated them.

Same tactic. Fair enough, why change it if it works?

“Excellent!  Pick her up, H.J.”

Does Hack Job understand the initialism?

Hack Job picked up the limp Murder Rat, put her down a short distance away from Amy.

Apparently so.

Bonesaw walked over to her creation and propped up Murder Rat so she had a view of the scene.

“Hey, ligaments or no ligaments, you’re gonna watch this.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t kill her.  The healer, letting someone suffer like that.  Or are you against mercy killing?”

Oh boy, that’s a big debate.

In cases like this? I’d be in favor of killing her off.

Not sure Bonesaw would’ve appreciated it if Amy had actually done that, though. I mean, this is clearly something Bonesaw has put a bit of work into.

Again, there was no answer she could give that wouldn’t worsen her situation.

I don’t know about that. “No, but I didn’t want to ruin your work” might be a good one, even if not true.

“Or are you against killing in general?  We can work on that.”

“Please.  No.”

Oh boy. That would quite likely end up with Mark as the target.

“Pagoda.  Your turn.”

Pagoda approached with an awkward lurch, and Amy managed to stand and run.  She got halfway to the front door before Hack Job materialized in front of her, barring her way.

Coddamn teleporters, always getting in the way…

He pushed her, and she fell.  Pagoda lurched over to her and pressed her down.

I wonder if Prophet was a healer, in a sense more like Amy than like Carnal. It would fit the Jesus delusion.

“So here’s the lesson,” Bonesaw said, “Hurt her, take her apart.  If you go easy on her, or if you leave her in a state where she can move, she’ll cut you, and then she’ll cut a body part off that man on the couch there.”

Damn.

Murder Rat placed a blade against her cheek, scraped it down toward her chin, as if giving Amy a close shave.

“You know I don’t have a beard, right?”

She reached up and touched the woman’s chest.  Without Hack Job touching her, her power was coming back quickly.  She felt Murder Rat’s biology snap into her consciousness, until she could see every cell, every fluid, every part of the woman.  The two women.  She could see Bonesaw’s work, the integration of body parts, the transfusions of bone marrow from one woman to the other, the viruses with modified DNA inside them, skewing the balances and configurations until she couldn’t tell for sure where one woman started and the other began.

Chimeras. That’s what I should be calling these things.

Also, it’s kind of interesting how they’re connected enough that even though it’s not quite seamless, Amy only needs to touch on point on the chimera to get access to both parts.

(Alternatively, I suppose it’s possible that both women have cells in the area Amy is touching.)

She could also see the metal frames inside the woman, interlacing with the largest bones of her skeletal system, the needles in her spine and brain.  Bonesaw’s control system.  There was something around the heart, too.  

Ah, yes, total control of her nervous system.

Metal, with lots of needles pointing inward.  She was rigged to die if the control frame was ever disabled.  The woman, no, the women, were awake in there.  One and a half brains contained in a synthetic fluid in her skull.

Got a bit of a failsafe in case of technomancers or others with the ability to cut off the control and turn the chimeras against Bonesaw. And of course, they’re both aware of the hellish existence they now have.

She targeted the ligaments at the woman’s shoulders and hips.  Cutting them was easier than putting the things back together again.  Dissolve the cells, break them down.

Huh. Not a bad tactic.

The woman collapsed onto a heap on top of her.

Yeeeah, I would think detaching the bones of the arms and legs would do that.

A wide smile spread across Bonesaw’s face as she settled into a cross-legged position on the floor, facing Amy.

Have we seen her not smile yet?

“I- no.  Please.”

“You’re a healer, but you can do so much more.  Why don’t you go out in costume?”

I mean, we have seen her out in costume. But these days, I suppose she’s dividing her attention between Mark and the hospitals with no time left for that.

Amy didn’t respond.  There was no right answer here.

“Are you afraid to hurt someone?  That could be our first exercise.”

She’s willing to mess with people using negative effects, but the worst we’ve really seen was giving Taylor a headache.

Amy shook her head.

“Murder rat, come here.  Hack Job, back off.”

Well. How are you going to get out of this one, Amy?

Hack Job let go of her, and she tried to scramble away, but Murder Rat pounced on her, pressing her down against the ground.  The woman smelled rank, like a homeless person.

Probably the scent of wild city mice.

“Jack’s taken me on as his protegé.  Teaching me the finer points of being an artist.  What he’s been saying is that I’m too focused on the external.  Skin, bone, flesh, bodies, the stuff we see and hear.

How is “bone” external? Flesh, I can kind of understand, what with mouths and such, but if bone’s showing directly, something is probably wrong.

And if that kind of thing is “external”, what’s “internal”? The brain?

He’s told me to practice with the internal, and this seems like a great time to do that.”

Aaand we’ve got a victim right over there on the couch.

“Internal?” Amy replied.

“It’s easy to break people’s bodies.  Easy to scar them and hurt them that way.  But the true art is what you do inside their heads.

Looks like I broke that down correctly.

And I suppose there’s some truth in what she’s saying. Of course there are less artful ways to break a brain, but careful modification can create interesting results.

Do you have a breaking point, Amy?  Maybe if we find your limits and push past them, you’ll find yourself in a place where you’ll want to join us.”

Oh, I see. Things are falling into place – she’s doing this in order to “work through that” like one might work through not having the key for a car when they’re stealing it.

She’s planning on hotwiring Amy.