Amy looked at the onetime heroine, tried to picture it.  It wasn’t any better.  Worse, if anything.

Eh, fair.

“That’s only the beginning.  Can you even imagine the things we could make?  There’s no upper limit.”

The sky’s the limit, they say, but the sky isn’t a physical thing. It doesn’t stand in the way of going far beyond. (The ground, on the other hand, is clingy and tries to pull you down.)

There was a beep from the answering machine.  It began playing a message.  “Amy, pick up!  We’re looking at dealing with Hellhound, and there’s injured.  Call Aunt Sarah or Uncle Neil over to look after dad and get over to the-”

Hm, were there mentions in 11a of Amy not showing up or answering, or something like that?

Also, I thought Neil was dead. Was he not Manpower after all?

The message cut off, and there was the sound of a clatter, a distant barking sound.

Sounds about right.

I don’t remember, did we hear this message in 11a before Bitch cut Glory Girl off?

“I don’t think I have it in me to do stuff like that,” Amy said.  If nothing else, I can’t disappoint Victoria any further.

Oh yeah, I don’t think she’d approve, exactly.

Amy blinked.  Sister.  She thought of Victoria.  “I make a pretty shitty sister.”

Aww. Don’t sell yourself short, Amy.

“Language!”  Bonesaw admonished, with surprising fierceness.

Ahaha!

And this from a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine! I can just imagine what it’s like when they’re all together and Bonesaw insists on keeping the language clean.

I really love the balance of immaturity, brutality and technological ability we see in Bonesaw. It’s ridiculous, disturbing and kind of adorable all at once.

There’s a good chance she’ll be at the top of my Slaughterhouse ranking in the Arc Thoughts.

“I’m sorry.  I- I’m not a very good sister, I don’t think.”

“You could learn.”

This is quite the conversation to have with one of the most feared individuals in the country, in front of three affronts to nature and your recently disabled adoptive dad.

“I’ve tried, but… I’ve only gotten worse at it as time passed.”

And Amy is just so caught off guard by Bonesaw wanting her to be her sister that she starts opening up quite a bit.

Bonesaw pouted a little.  “But think of the stuff we could do together.  I do the kludge, the big stuff, you smooth it over.  Imagine how Murder Rat would look without the scars and staples.”

True, that would probably help with the aesthetics, unless you’re going for the Frankenstein’s monster aesthetic.

…just as Amy was thinking about leaving one adopted family because she believes they do not want her, she gets approached by someone who actually wants her to be her big sister.

I kinda love that. This is gonna be interesting.

“I don’t know.”

“So you’re bad at names too?” Bonesaw grinned.  “I’m thinking something like shrine, temple… but one with multiple floors.  Um.”

I think you’re veering more into Asian religion and architecture with that. I do appreciate the connection to having the upper and lower portions of the body, that’s kind of clever.

I still prefer my own suggestion, though.

“Pagoda?”

Ah, right, that’s the word.

“Pagoda!  Yes!”  Bonesaw skipped over to her creation, wrapped her arms around one of his, “Pagoda!  That’s your name, now!”

It’s not all that bad, I suppose, as a name.

Amy swallowed, looking at the woman.

“The other, I’m trying to figure out a name.  The one on the bottom was Carnal.  Healer, tough, and healed more by bathing himself in blood.

…something tells me he wasn’t a hero.

Thought he had a place on our team, failed the tests.

Ah, yeah, figures.

The one on the top was Prophet.  Convinced he was Jesus reborn.

Huh. And here I was just recently talking about Christian end times and how Scion was the only one we knew of so far with a Jesus/divine aesthetic. I’m fairly sure there was something about false prophets in said end times.

What do you call a mix of people like that?  I’ve got a name in mind, but I can’t quite figure it out.”

Hmm…

Communion. That’s what you call them. This is Jesus’ body. This is Jesus’ blood.

“Murder Rat used to be a heroine, called herself the Mouse Protector.

Huh. Power to control mice and rats, perhaps? Or at least communicate with them?

In a similar vein to Taylor and the spiderbots, I’m imagining Mouse Protector using a computer without moving her hands other than to type, controlling the computer mouse with her mind.

Anyway, Mouse Protector is a somewhat silly name, but if you treat “mouse” as a metaphor for the small and helpless, then it becomes kind of evocative.

One of those capes who plays up the cheese, no pun intended.  Camped it up, acted dorky, used bad puns, so her enemies would be embarrassed to lose to her.

Pfft, like Spiderman. This is something I’ve previously commented on Worm not really doing, so it’s nice to know that there are capes in this world that actually are like this.

Ravager decided she’d had enough, asked the Nine to take Mouse Protector down.  So we took the job.  Beat Mouse Protector, and I took her to the operating table.

I’m beginning to understand why getting caught by the Nine is sometimes considered a fate worse than death.

The other Nine tracked down Ravager and collected her, too.  Just to make it clear that we don’t take orders.

…of course.

We aren’t errand boys or errand girls either.  Now Ravager gets to spend the rest of her life with the woman she hated, making up.”

Oddly poetic for talking about an inhuman Frankensteinian monstrosity.

The third was another Frankenstein hodgepodge of two individuals, emerging from the hallway where the amalgamation of Oni Lee and Hatchet Face -Hack Job- had exploded.

I’m going to take this a confirmation that Hack Job is meant to be taken as a name for the amalgamation itself.

The lower half was a man who must have been built like a gorilla in life, rippling with muscles, walking forward on his knuckles.  His upper body grew up from the point the other body’s neck should have begun, an emaciated man with greasy brown hair and beard, grown long.  He was not unlike a centaur, but the lower half was a brutish man.

Oh wow.

That’s quite the look.

Then there were the other things.  They weren’t alive.  Spidery contraptions of scrap metal, they lacked heads, only consisting of a box half the size of a toaster and spindly legs that moved on hydraulics, each ending in a syringe or scalpel.

These would be some of the robots Bonesaw mentioned, I imagine.

A dozen of them, climbing onto the walls and floor.

I doubt Taylor could control robots just because they’re vaguely spidery, but it’s still fun to imagine that.

Amy swallowed.  She didn’t have words.

Bonesaw smiled.  “I thought you’d appreciate this more than anyone.”

Does she know Amy from before? Amy doesn’t seem to know Bonesaw from anywhere other than pictures.

I suppose it’s just the profile Cherish put together of her, the public knowledge about Amy, the fact that they’re both medically inclined, and whatever surveillance Bonesaw might’ve done.

“Appreciate this.”

Hah, I love how you can just hear the flat dryness of this line.

“You’re the only other person who works with meat.  I mean, we’re different in some ways, but we’re also really similar, aren’t we?  You manipulate people’s biology, and I tinker with it.  The human body’s only a really intricate, wet machine, isn’t it?”

That is a perspective I share, to be honest, though a machine people have a strong sense of ownership over. Which is reasonable, considering that machine is them.

Others were entering the room now.  From the kitchen, a woman, the structure of her face altered into something that was more rat-like than human, conelike, ending in a squashed black nose that had staples around it.

Are these the other fusion experiments?

I don’t think I recognize this one.

Bonesaw had added a second set of teeth, all canines, so that the woman would have enough as her jaw was stretched forward.  Drool constantly leaked between her teeth in loops and tendrils.  She was pale, except for her face and patches all down her body, where patches of ebon black skin were stapled in place.  Her hair was long, dark, and unwashed, but most unnerving of all were her fingers, which had been replaced by what looked like machetes.

Looking sharp. Ey? Eyy?

The clawtips dragged on the hardwood as she stumped forward on feet that had been modified in a similar way, no longer fit for conventional walking.

So what is this, a raccoon-themed one?