Bonesaw does seem to know what she’s talking about, but it’s still unclear whether or not she knows about the Dandelions. I don’t think she does, and as such, I’m taking the “accidents” part with a pinch of salt. The rest seems fairly reliable, though.

Amy stared.

“And then, before it can destroy us, before we can hurt ourselves with our own power, before that spark of potential burns out, it changes gears.  It figures out how to function with us.  It protects us from all the ways our power might hurt us, that we can anticipate, because there’s no point if it kills us.

Resulting in required secondary powers, like Lung and Burnscar being fireproof.

It connects with our emotional state at the time the powers came together, because that’s the context it builds everything else in.  It’s so amazingly complicated and beautiful.” 

It really is.

Bonesaw looked down at Amy.  “Your inability to affect brains?  It’s one of those protections.  A mental block.  I can help you break it.”

Is the Manton effect the same way?

And are you suggesting that Amy “can’t affect brains” because the power doesn’t want to risk her messing up her own brain using her power on herself?

Ohhh. She meant if Amy specifically was touching someone during their trigger event, using her power to sense the biological changes as they happen.

Twenty or thirty people she’s taken apart.  However many others she’s tortured to death.

She didn’t say “to death”, but I wouldn’t put it past her.

Bonesaw smiled, “And I know the secrets.  I know where powers come from.  I know how they work.  I know how your power works.

Okay, but does she actually? Has she figured out the involvement of the Dandelions and managed to take notes on them?

You have to understand, people like you and me?  Who got our powers in moments of critical stress?  The powers aren’t meant for us.  They’re accidents.  We’re accidents.  And I think you could see it if you were touching someone when they had their trigger event.”

Hmmm.

I’m not sure I buy that. With the way Hana’s trigger event was depicted as involving the death of a Dandelion, maybe, but Scrub’s trigger event made things seem premeditated by the Dandelions.

But Taylor wasn’t touching Scrub at the time. She was quite a distance away from him, in fact. So maybe touching does make a difference in what you see.

Or maybe it lets you remember, for some reason?

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to.  What you need to know is that the subjects of our power, the stuff it can work on, like people?  Like the fish lady in Asia?  The boy who can talk to computers?  Our powers weren’t created to work with those things.  With people or fish or computers.  It’s not intentional.  It happens because the powers connect to us in the moments we have our trigger events, decrypt our brains and search for something in the world that they can connect to, that loosely correlate with how the powers were originally supposed to work.

Okay, yeah, this makes sense. Bonesaw is suggesting that, for example, Bitch’s power was originally meant to empower something, and only after connecting to Bitch did it become a power to empower wolves.

In those one to eight seconds it takes our powers to work, our power goes into overdrive, it picks up all the necessary details about those things, like people or fish or computers, sometimes reaching across the whole world to do it.

Interesting. In Bitch’s case, it would “learn” things about wolves, and dogs because they’re closely related.

Then it starts condensing down until there’s a powerset, stripping away everything it doesn’t need to make that power work.”

But how do these things relate to Taylor? How did Taylor’s brain in the moment cause the power to latch onto “bugs”? Was it because of the uncomfortableness of the situation?

And how do you explain powers like Scrub’s? Did it latch on to “nothingness”? ”Destruction”?

Amy shivered.

“Who is he?”

“My dad.”

“Why not fix your dad?”

I doubt Bonesaw is going to have any patience for Amy’s reasons, really. I mean, she’ll probably hear her out, but she’s not going to respect them.

“My power doesn’t work on brains,” Amy lied.

Oooh, nice call, lying there. If she’d told her that she was afraid to use her power on brains, Bonesaw would probably be like “Oh come on, we can overcome that. Here, let’s try!”

“You’re wrong,” Bonesaw said, stepping closer.

Hm. Well, at least she didn’t take it as the lie it was.

“No.”

“Yes.  Your power can affect people’s brains.  You have to understand, I’ve taken twenty or thirty people apart to figure out how their power works so I can put them back together again the way I want them.

Oh yeah, I suppose that would make it easier for her to tell how powers work.

I’ve learned almost everything about powers.  I’ve induced stress of all kinds on people until they had a trigger event, while I had them on my table and wired to computers, so I could record all the details and study their brains and bodies as the powers took hold.”

Jeez.

Well, at least if she gets caught, her data might prove useful to the scientific community, amorally obtained or otherwise.

Maybe she could divulge some interesting factoids to us while we’re here?

“Ready to join?” Bonesaw asked, looking for all the world like a puppy when her master had the leash out, ready for a walk.

Yeah, no, I don’t think so.

Eager, brimming with excitement.

For all the puppylike behavior, I don’t think Rachel would like Bonesaw.

“No,” Amy said.  “There’s no way.”

“Why?  Whatever’s holding you back, we can fix it.  Or we can break it, depending.”

As horrible as it is, Bonesaw’s approach is actually better than Shatterbird’s. Shatterbird forces people into the Slaughterhouse Nine by threathening them with violence and the like, with no regard for whether or not the victim will be willing and loyal to the Nine. Bonesaw, on the other hand, attempts to force people into the Slaughterhouse Nine by changing them so that they’ll become willing. It might not be quite as effective at actually recruiting them, but the people she does recruit this way will be less likely to doublecross the team.

(Though she’s not doing it as… directly as I thought for a moment when she began. So far, anyway.)

Go, go, Wormer Rangers!

Which is to say, let’s get back to the Interlude.