Who else?  He wracked his brain.  Jack Slash was the brains and leader of the operation.  Not a threat unto himself.

Not to Hookwolf personally, I suppose. It’d just be metal against metal.

Shatterbird couldn’t harm him, he was almost certain.

Besides the layer of skin, but Hookwolf’s dealt with that already.

Bonesaw.  She was the wild card, the most unpredictable element in terms of what she could bring to the table.

Unpredictable does seem to be her thing.

Is her power as unpredictable as she is? Maybe it’s like Eidolon’s but random, like the power I made up for myself back in Extermination?

So often the case with tinkers.

Oh. Okay, so she’s a tinker too. I suppose that makes sense – didn’t Coil’s info on Mannequin state or imply that Bonesaw had helped out with his transformation?

As for her specialty… Medical equipment? I know that might sound weird, but a bonesaw is a surgical tool, and tinker-grade medical equipment would be a very varied category of tools (accounting for unpredictability), many of which could be used as weaponry as well. Especially if adjusted by a morally compromised tinker with her specialty in it.

More troubling were the Nine he couldn’t put down.  The Siberian was untouchable, an immovable object, invincible in a way that even Alexandria wasn’t.

Hm, interesting. We already know about the “immovable object” part, but the invincibility is new.

I guess if no part of her can be moved against her will, piercing or slicing attacks can’t force her flesh to part, and bludgeoning attacks do no damage either because they don’t push the flesh inward to squish things… I suppose invincibility to physical attacks, at the very least, is a logical consequence of this power.

Even if he were capable of hurting Crawler, he wouldn’t want to.

Interesting. So is that because of their power, or interpersonal stuff? I’m inclined to believe the former.

Although maybe it’s just that he doesn’t want to piss them off because of a scary offensive power. That doesn’t seem quite like Hookwolf though, and he’s considering this on the basis that he thinks the Slaughterhouse members are all attacking in the first place.

Mannequin, he wasn’t sure about.  He knew the crazed tinker had encased himself in a nearly indestructible shell.  As strong as Hookwolf was, he faced that distant possibility that any of these people could pin him down or set him up to be taken out by others.

Sounds about right, especially with the “unless he was forced to stay still” from the last paragraph meeting Siberian’s power.

Which is to say I’m resuming the chapter. Let’s go! 😛

Yo dawg I heard you like Worm so I put a worm in your Worm… and that worm is me.

“Shatterbird!” he roared, once he knew he was secure. 

Ah, so he recognizes the power. Makes sense – judging by Taylor and Danny’s reactions in 10.6 and 11.1, her power seems to be the most well known among the Nine, and it’s presumably the one they use to announce their presence to the public.

There was no reply.  Of course.  She was attacking from a safe position.

I wonder how much range she has.

Also, is it an area effect centered on herself, or can she pick a spot within line of sight to act as the center of the effect?

An attack from her meant an attack from the rest of the Slaughterhouse Nine.  Daunting, but not impossible.

Hm. If you think you, Cricket, Menja and Stormtiger, especially in the states each of the others are in right now, can take on all of the Slaughterhouse at once… Eh, I wouldn’t bet on you. I suppose you do also have the remaining mundane recruits by your side, but let’s be real, a member or two of the Slaughterhouse could probably take out most of those without much trouble. Especially Jack.

He was virtually invincible in this form.  That left few that could actively hurt him.  Burnscar.  The Siberian.  Crawler.

Hm, interesting. Burnscar makes sense, since she can heat the metal, and Crawler’s battle form is probably all sorts of weird and powerful, but why Siberian?

There was Hatchet Face, the bogeyman of capes.

Huh. That’s quite a reputation.

With the exception of Hatchet Face, the group wouldn’t be able to do much harm to him unless he was forced to stay still.

I see… To be fair, Siberian is pretty good at restraining people.

Why couldn’t they have put the cell phones away before they started sparring?

Such a teacher.

Why couldn’t they put the cell phones back in the box…

Leah lay dying, and Stormtiger had one hand pressed to his throat, blood billowing from a cut that may or may not have nicked an artery.

Guys, I think Leah might not become an elite.

Just a hunch.

Hookwolf tapped into his core, the ‘heart’ from which his metal sprouted inside his body.  He could feel it start to churn with activity, and the metal he already had encasing each of his muscles began to stir.  Soon it was lancing in and out of his pores, criss-crossing, some blades or needlepoints sliding against others with the sounds of whetted knives.

Getting ready to fuck up the source of this carnage. Someone’s gotta pay, or at the very least stop.

In a few seconds, he had covered his body, to protect himself from further attacks.

That’s important too.

Two trainees and one of his graduated Chosen were dead.

Rude, Shatterbird.

…actually, this is the first instance we have of one of the Fellowship members actually killing someone in these Interludes, other than them talking about having killed. That might be supposed to tell us something about Shatterbird. Perhaps she’s more reckless about these things than the others we’ve seen?

They’d been wearing glasses, and the glass had penetrated their eyes to tear into their brains.

Ahhh. Yeah, that risk is a thing that’s been built up ever since 10.6 (though I didn’t recognize it for what it was in that particular chapter, since it was more vague then than in 11.1).

I didn’t think of the potential for the glass to go all the way into the brain and outright kill them that way, though.

The others were all wounded to some degree or another.  Some had been hit by the glass that flew from glasses others were wearing, others from the windows, and one or two others had patches of blood rapidly expanding around pockets where cell phones had been stowed.

Hm, Taylor was probably right when she suggested that the pocket might not be a safe location for Danny’s glasses either.

By the way, I wonder if Cricket’s reactions are good enough to dodge the glass completely.

So why is Shatterbird the one who’s presumably taken an interest in Hookwolf?

Could Shatterbird be a changer, able to turn into a bird and to have one of the most literal cape names we’ve seen in the story?

Or maybe she’s not after Hookwolf after all. I do suppose Cricket wouldn’t be a bad addition to the Slaughterhouse Nine.

But no, I’ve been predicting Hookwolf’s nomination ever since the nomination plot was revealed (though at this point it’s beginning to look like none of the nominations are going to actually work out except Bitch), and there’s got to be a reason he’s the POV, rather than Cricket.