More explosions ripped through their living room as Mark continued to open fire, hurling the orbs with a ferocity that surprised Amy.  When Hack Job tried to block the shots with his bodies, Mark bounced them between Hack Job’s legs, off walls and off the ceiling.

Huh, not bad.

But seriously, is there a reason Hack Job hasn’t turned off Flashbang’s power yet? Is he unable to because of the fusion causing his powers to not work as well? We’ve seen they do work, but maybe not having full power prevents him from turning powerful people’s powers off.

Almost as if he could predict what his enemy would do, he lobbed one orb onto the couch.  It exploded a half-second after one of Hack Job’s duplicates appeared there.

Sweet!

And unless Hack Job is really quick with his teleportations or the fusion caused a significant change to how the power works, any damage dealt very soon after a duplicate appears will stick.

More duplicates charged from either direction, and Mark dropped a concussive orb at his feet, blasting himself and one of the duplicates in opposite directions.  He quickly got his footing and resumed the attack, fending off one duplicate that turned his attention to Amy, then going after Bonesaw.

Flashbang is being awesome and I love it.

An orb of light grew in his hands.

An explosive light orb?

“It worked!  Yes!” Bonesaw crowed.

Mark flicked his eyes in one direction, offered the slightest of nods, his forehead rubbing against hers.

Gotta keep Bonesaw from seeing the light orb until it’s too late for two reasons. Element of surprise, and keeping her from calling Hack Job on Flashbang.

Amy flung herself to one side as Mark stood in one quick motion, flinging the glowing orb at the little girl.

Excellent work.

Hack Job flickered into existence just in time to have to orb bounce off his chest.

Damn.

It exploded violently, tearing a hole into his stomach and groin.  The villain flew backward, colliding with Bonesaw.

That looks like it hurts.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.  “I’m so sorry.”  She wasn’t sure what she was apologizing for.  For taking so long to do it, maybe.

Sounds likely. Or maybe for messing with his brain, still affected by a sense that doing that was wrong?

Or for the fact that she would now have to leave.

I mean… you could not leave, though Bonesaw doesn’t seem to make it easy.

Or have you decided to accept the offer just so she’ll leave Mark alone?

His attention was on his hands.  She could feel it through her contact with him, the power he was just barely holding back.  And Bonesaw?  The little lunatic was somewhere behind her.

Oh yeah, that’s right, now that he’s mostly back to his old self, he’s a cape too. Flashbang’s back, baby. But what exactly could he do, especially with Hack Job around?

She drew Mark’s hands into his lap, between her body and his, where Bonesaw would be less likely to see.

It’s clear that whatever his power actually does, it involves his hands.

I would guess it causes flashes and bangs.

It wasn’t that she was afraid to get something wrong.  No.  Even as complicated as the mind was, she’d always known she could manage it.

That was the main reason she gave in Interlude 2. So what’s the real reason?

No, it was what came after that scared her more than anything.  Just like finding out about Marquis, it was the opening of a door she desperately wanted to keep shut.

The idea that it’s a bit like mind control, at least if she abuses it?

She restored his motor skills, penmanship, driving a car, even the little things, the little sequences of movements he used to turn the lock on the bathroom door as he closed it or turn a pencil around in one hand to use the eraser on the end.

Everything he’d lost, she returned to him.

Yay!

He moved fractionally.  She opened her eyes, and saw him staring into her eyes.  Something about the gaze told her he was better.

😀

Everything else in the world seemed to drop away.  She pressed her forehead to his.  Everything biological was shaped in some way by what it had grown from and what had come before.  Rebuilding the damaged parts was a matter of tracing everything backwards.

Like making a model of an ancient city based on its ruins.

Some of the brain was impossible to restore to what it had once been, in the most damaged areas or places where it was the newest growths that were gone, but she could check everything in the surrounding area, use process of elimination and context to figure out what the damaged areas had tied to.

Makes sense.

She felt tears in her eyes.  She had told herself she would heal him and then leave the Dallon household.  Actually doing this, fixing him, taking that plunge, she knew she would probably never have found the courage if she hadn’t been pushed into it.

She did seem a lot more willing in that moment than I would’ve expected her to. In a world where Bonesaw didn’t show up in her living room, Amy getting cold feet about it wouldn’t be all that surprising.

She’d healed him frequently in the previous weeks, enough to know that he was remarkably alert in a body that refused to cooperate or carry out the tasks he wanted it to.

Much like the chimera components, though in a very different way.

Not so different from Bonesaw’s creations in that respect.

Hey, that’s my comparison, dammit!

She’d healed everything but his brain, had altered his digestive system and linked it to his circadian rhythms so he went to the bathroom on a strict schedule, to reduce the need for diapers.

Clever.

Other tune-ups she’d given him had been aimed at making him more comfortable, reducing stiffness and aches and pains.  It was the least she could do.

Yeah, even if you wouldn’t heal his brain, it sounds like he was lucky to have you.

Now she had to focus on his brain.  The needle had drawn ragged cuts through the arachnid layer, had injected droplets of acid into the frontal lobes.

Arachnid layer? Sounds like Skitter’s domain…

More damage, in addition to what Leviathan had inflicted with the head wound, and it was swiftly spreading.

Yeeeeah, acid to the brain? I think that might be bad.

Amy’s screams joined his.

“I’m doing you a favor, really!”  Bonesaw raised her voice to be heard over the screams.  “You’ll thank me!”

Oh, sure, she totally will.

Amy rushed forward, hauled on the metal leg to pull it from Mark’s nostril, pulled at the other legs to tear it from him and then hurled it away.  Lighter than it looked. 

I suppose it makes sense that the robots would need to be light, in order to walk on walls or move quickly across the floor.

“Now fix him or he’ll probably die or be a vegetable,” Bonesaw told her.  “Unless you decide you’re okay with that, in which case we’re making progress.”

So no matter what Amy does here, other than continue to pretend she can’t manipulate brains until Mark dies or becomes even more disabled than he already is, Bonesaw will see it as a victory.

Amy tried to shut out Bonesaw’s voice, straddled Mark’s lap and touched his face.

There are a lot of ways to touch someone’s face, but I can’t help but imagine Amy’s palm applied directly to the middle of the face.

“Please,” Amy said.  “Don’t.”

Bonesaw reached into her apron and retrieved a remote control.  She pointed it at Mark, where he sat on the couch.  A red dot appeared on his forehead.

Welp. Here we go.

“No!”

One of Bonesaw’s mechanical contraptions leaped across the room, its scalpel legs impaling the suede cushions on either side of Mark.

Time to cut him open?

One leg, tipped with a syringe, thrust into Mark’s right nostril.

Ahh. Let me guess, this is going to be deadly or at least highly detrimental to the brain if Amy doesn’t fix it?

He hollered incoherently, tried to pull away, only for two mechanical legs to clutch his head and hold him firm.

Yeah, this ain’t pleasant.

“I don’t want to break it,” Amy said, her voice hushed.

“Ahhh.  Well, that just makes me more excited to see how you react when you do.  See, all we have to do is get you to that point of peak stress.

This sounds a lot like something that has been suggested about the Manton effect before – that breaking it might require something similar to a second trigger event.

Your power will be stronger, and you’ll be able to push past that mental block.  Probably.”

While I’m on the topic of Manton, what would a Manton-unlocked Panacea even be capable of? Repairing objects? Manipulating their structure? Or is her power just so innately biological that it wouldn’t make a difference?

Maybe it would allow her to revive the dead. We’ve seen formerly-living material count as non-living for the purposes of the Manton effect (wood vs green wood). Maybe part of why Amy can’t revive people – besides the biological difficulty of getting everything working again at once – is that the Manton effect won’t let her manipulate the biology of corpses?