Shatterbird scowled.  “Then who or what was that?  Crawler, do you know?” 

Hmm. Inhuman eyes, and more importantly, possibly an inhuman brain. Might cause trouble.

Aisha backed toward the front door.  She stopped as Crawler appeared in the doorway that led from the kitchen to the front hall, looking through to see his teammates on the far end.  His voice was a mangled mess of sounds that only barely approximated anything like speech.  “I don’t smell anyone.”

I suppose it makes sense to try a different sense when dealing with a seemingly invisible enemy.

Smells can’t find me, then, Aisha thought.  Still, she didn’t have her escape route.

Yeah, makes sense that they wouldn’t, really. It’s one of the important distinctions between this power and invisibility – anyone who smells you, or hears you, still has their memories of that wiped.

“Torch the apartment and make a break for it?” Burnscar asked.  “We can meet up as a group later.”

Better hope they leave space for you to follow them out before they torch it up, Imp.

Aisha yanked the knife out and then gripped her taser.

Hm, maybe the electricity could mess with whatever tech she’s got under there?

“Is it Jack?” Burnscar asked, looking around, then turning to the window, “What the hell?”

Alright, so Burnscar hasn’t noticed Aisha yet. That’s good.

“It’s not Jack,” Bonesaw said.  She snapped her fingers, and the mechanical spider leaped on top of her, beginning to suture the wounds in her neck.  “I gave Jack the same safeguards I gave us, he would have succeeded if he tried it.”

…well, fuck, of course she would.

This just threw a big spanner in the works for any plans to simply kill Jack in a mundane way, and it seems the other physically weak members – Shatterbird, Burnscar and Cherish – have the same protection.

If Taylor had tried to send the trolley the other way in 12.4, she would probably have failed.

So she pulled the knife free and stabbed Bonesaw in one eye.  The blade scraped against the bone of Bonesaw’s eye socket.

…isn’t this supposed to go straight into the brain? Or is the knife too big for that?

Flame erupted and pieces of glass came to life around Aisha.

And there we have the others stepping in. Have they noticed her?

She backed away quickly as a wall of flame rolled over Jonathan on the table and divided her from Bonesaw.  There was a rumble and the sound of falling furniture as Crawler stood.

How tall is this room, anyway?

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!”  Bonesaw shrieked.  “It hurts!”

I’m sure she’ll fix it up fairly quickly, but that rarely helps with the pain in the moment.

Why isn’t she dead?

I mean, if I’m right, it’s clear enough that I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it earlier. She specializes in tinkering with biology, so why wouldn’t she tinker with her own to make herself better protected?

Jonathan?

Aisha looked down at the body, and realized the heart was beating inside Bonesaw’s hands.  The man’s eyes were moving, and his lips moved as he struggled and failed to make words come up through his windpipe.

Oh, I see. The squeaking may seem to come from the guy attempting to speak, but it’s actually a dove named Archimedes.

The surge of horror and disgust gave Aisha the strength to cast aside her doubts. 

Y’know… when I talked about Bonesaw being impossible to kill, that was a joke, but it honestly does seem believable that she’d install some failsafes in her own body. Though self-modification is more Mannequin’s thing, and biological failsafes was Aegis’.

“Sorry kid,” she said.

She plunged the knife into Bonesaw’s bare throat.

Let’s see how this goes. Good luck, Imp.

Bonesaw screamed, shrill and loud, which caught Aisha off guard.  With a knife in her throat, the girl was screaming?

Hm. Was I right?

Or did Aisha just miss the throat proper?

Reacting more on instinct than wit, Aisha pulled the knife out and then slashed it horizontally across Bonesaw’s throat.

She’d expected a spray of blood or gurgling.  Neither happened.  Bonesaw screamed again.

Yep, looks like she did install some protections.

A squeaking sound distracted her from her thoughts.  It was like air being let out of a balloon, but in shorter spurts.  Bonesaw?

It’s the arrival of the secret ninth member, Helium Guy.

No, the girl wasn’t making any noise.  The mechanical spider?  No.  Not the spider either.

Maybe it’s Crawler snoring.

Hm, okay, serious speculation… Maybe Cherish is in the hallway, trying to sneak out, but the floorboards are creaky. Or maybe it’s Mannequin?

Okay, it’s probably not creaky floorboards, but I’m stumped.

Stepping as close to Bonesaw and the spider as she dared, Aisha investigated the sounds.  Where were they coming from?

Maybe Bonesaw’s sticking mice into this person’s chest cavity.

Bonesaw smiled, “You’re going to have to speak up if you want me to hear you, Jonathan.”

Ahh, the patient!

Slowly, she walked over to Bonesaw, navigating around the drones.  Could she kill the kid?

She’s too adorable to die. I’m not saying I don’t want it to happen, it’s just not physically possible in-universe, regardless of Wildbow’s wishes.

On the one hand, Bonesaw was the one who kept the other members going.  Removing her would take a lot of problems off the board.

Oh yeah, that is true. Jack’s the brains, but Bonesaw is the heart.

She could finish off Bonesaw and run for cover in the kitchen, out of Burnscar and Shatterbird’s line of fire.  From there, it was only steps to the front door and safety.

Line of fire, heh.

Also she seems to be forgetting about, or unaware of, Burnscar’s mobility. I suppose she wouldn’t know about that if she’s basing all this off Coil’s intel.

On the other hand, it was still murder, and it was a kid.  A kid that had a hundred kills under her belt.

Yeeah. And who’ll go on to do much more if you don’t intervene.

Assassinating Jack could also be disastrous, but in a much less structured fashion.

Aisha moved quickly aside as a spider moved from the kitchen, past her and to the table.  Whatever cameras or artificial intelligence it used, it didn’t seem to notice her.

Oh, good.

Unless otherwise suggested, I’m going to attribute that more to the spiders not being tasked with watching out than to Imp’s power for now.

It handed Bonesaw a diet cola that the little girl opened with bloody fingers and drank.

Gotta keep hydrated while working!

With a little more confidence, Aisha moved further inside, giving a wide berth to Crawler and Burnscar’s foot-high images of flame.

Probably a good idea. I get the feeling they’d be more likely to notice Imp if she caught fire. Especially Burnscar, who can probably sense nearby fires.

Holding her weapons, Aisha stood next to Shatterbird, at one end of the couch.

See, this is where you could use that knife. Shatterbird is by far the most deadly Slaughterhouse member, but she’s fragile. You could probably stab her in the back easily, and maybe even get away with it unnoticed.

At least mechanically speaking. The emotional difficulty of assassinating someone is a whole other can of worms.

Also, assassinating one of the Nine other than Jack could be disastrous for the city, due to revenge and such.

Bonesaw stood over the dining room table, with a mechanical spider-thing on the opposite side of the table, assisting her.  A young man was on the table itself, his wrists and ankles tied down.

Aw, look, she’s working!

…alright, it’s not that adorable right now, but this is Bonesaw. It’s only a matter of time.

His torso was open from collar-bone to crotch, his ribs splayed apart.  Bonesaw and her mechanical spider were elbow deep in the contents of his torso. 

Usually when a character is red-faced in fiction, this isn’t why.

The spiders.

Ah, fuck. Robots. If the spiders have any semblance of sentience (not to be confused with them being AIs – they just need to sense and remember things, not be intelligent), they’re a risk for Imp just like Dragon was.