Hatchet Face was something of a dilemma to me. He was not a particularly difficult opponent, I had the weapon I needed to beat him, and while I couldn't predict the future with any real accuracy without extradimensional access I could still duck under his rather wild and slow axe swings with ease. No, the problem was how to kill him painfully.
I experimented with poking a few nerve clusters, and received no response. Not only had the man been heavily modified by Bonesaw after his death, he had a significant amount of brain damage that would prevent him from feeling real pain. Problematic.
My contemplation was slightly disturbed by Cricket snatching her scythe from me, and cutting him in half angrily. The top half of his body started to crawl dumbly towards her, so I stood on his neck while I thought about it.
"What the hell were you doing, just dodging like that?" Cricket asked.
"Churning," I responded, reaching my decision. It was simple. Hatchet Face was already dead, simply reanimated with some portions of his brain revived. The personality was gone, and only a dumb brute remained, running on a combination of software my sister had installed, and instructions, probably from one of the Nine's two Tinkers. I may be able, with a lot of work, to fix that, however, consultation with Ada's memories indicated that she would not want me reviving past members of the Nine, even if it was only to kill them again in some particularly painful way.
I raised my palm and shot a burst of kinetic energy into the foot of Bonesaw's other creation. Two former capes, one with a regenerative ability that worked better the more blood he fed on, and one who regenerated lost blood. They'd been tied together, a sort of feedback loop of extreme regenerate power. The result was a misshapen lump standing on two legs, constantly dripping red blood in a trail as it ran for us, bladed arms already windmilling wildly.
A top heavy misshapen lump. The blasts from my palms were weak now, with only one generator to power them, but with a little charging they were sufficient to knock one of the regenerators feet out from under him, sending the creature sprawling. My other hand beheaded Hatchet Face with my lightsabre, and I then kicked the head under the house.
Extradimensional processing returned, and with it the blueprints that my power provided. Good. I had been slightly worried that Hatchet Face would somehow wipe the slate clean, making me lose the accumulated energy buildup that Ada, and now I, planned to save. The Leviathan fight had produced a huge amount, even given our relatively limited contribution. Killing Riley had a similar effect. I would be able to reach into the upper branches of the Human Augmentation tree with this.
I winced internally as my social analytic program informed me that 'churning' had not been quite the right word choice. It should have been 'thinking.' I still struggled with that. The part of my brain assigned to speech had originally been designed to interpret metaphor and simile. Unless I could offload the task of processing language extradimensionally, I was still incapable of regular conversation. I could change that, but the drop in combat efficiency as resources were reassigned would be incredible. I thought that Social Analytic 31.8.17 might fix the problem. It had not. Never mind. It had never stopped me before.
Hatchet Face's head could be collected for further use. That particular power could be neatly weaponized. I was better at fighting in a power negation field than most capes. Regrettably it wouldn't work on the Siberian, who would be my greatest challenge, there was evidence of the Siberian remaining invulnerable even inside Hatchet Face's field, but it may present an avenue to killing Crawler if the Bakuda bombs didn't work, and who knew how many powers I would have to face while cleansing the PRT.
"Would you mind dealing with the regenerator dear?" I said to Cricket. She looked at the headless corpse of Hatchet Face, licked her lips, and ignited her scythe.
She should enjoy that. She lacked an adequate knowledge of his body to properly dissect him, and then destroy the brains of the two individual regenerators, so instead she was going to dance around a slow, lethal cutting bag, slicing and dicing until either she died, found the correct places to strike by fluke, or I designed to intervene. I do believe she'd be excited enough afterward for me to further confuse her gender preferences. She already had trouble telling a standard adrenaline rush from arousal.
"You can stop now. I know you're there," I said turning to face the alley that Hatchet Face had emerged from.
I didn't know. It was a guess. Mannequin had zero emissions. He did not show up on radar, sonar, infrared or ultraviolet. Impressive work. I simply knew that someone had to be directing my sisters creations, and he was the most probable candidate.
His first move was actually very clever. A small, compact disk was thrown behind me, at enough of an angle that I would have had to scramble to intercept it. I watched it closely, stepped back, and noted that it was a magnet of some kind, drawing Hatchet Face's head out from under the house, and closer to me. Bringing me back inside the power blocking range.
A spiked limb on a chain launched at me from a pile of rubble, and I stepped aside so the blade parted only air. The head was a minor inconvenience, and I would move out of it's range once I charged anyway. First though I had to gather data for later assessment. I needed to know how to cause Mannequin pain. He was an active member of the Nine. He also didn't have skin, probably not even conventional organs. Some sort of brain implant may be required.
"Another Broken Doll. It is fine to see you Mannequin." I said.
Additional conflict required for planning. Generating. Unable to access extradimensional sources. Planning around blockage.
Mannequin retracted his arm, and stood from the trash heap, a small collection of innocuous white spheres coming together to form his body in simple twitches and jerks.
I stalked around him, leaving myself open to additional attacks, smiling and moving out of range of Hatchet Face's head. Hmm, Social Analytic didn't seem to have done too badly this time. It was at least semi-understandable, from an outside perspective. I allocated extradimensional resources to combat performance, and continued to gather data.
"We are the same, you and I. You are not Sphere. You are his shell, his mouthpiece to the world, and the face he shows to those watching the play. I am all these things to my own creator." I said.
Mannequin raised his leg, extended a blade from it, and idly doodled a smiling face on the pavement with the tip of the blade. Then the other leg rose, and shot from his knee with a hiss of gas. I moved my head to the side, and caught the projectile.
"We are both Dolls, and both Broken, but I think my edges will prove themselves sharper." I said, igniting my lightsabre and cutting the leg free from it's chain.
Mannequin tilted his head with a slight rattle of chain, and then turned and started to scuttle rapidly on his arms and remaining legs.
The chain that I'd just cut was made of an incredibly sturdy metal after all. If I could cut that, I could cut his casing, and Mannequin was an ambush predator anyway.
Cricket seemed to be faring fairly well with her opponent. Or at least, he hadn't been meaningfully hurt, and she hadn't been caught yet, so I set off in pursuit, eventually scooping up and throwing a roofing tile that landed on the ground under one of Mannequins arms, and skidded, allowing me to catch up to him.
He turned his head and limbs around and shot another blade at me, at point blank range as I caught up with him. I had already started the same motion that one would use to brush aside a fly, and the flat of the blade slid along the back of my hand as I pushed it away with the exact minimum of fuss and effort.
I was getting a fair bit of conflict now, such predictions became simple with such a wealth of calculation power.
One quick swipe with the lightsabre cut both his arms off at the shoulders, another cut his leg off, and when a hatch on his head opened and started spewing mist I cut that off as well. It still spewed the mist, and it ate down to the metal of one of the boots I was wearing that got a little close, but I ignored it, leaving it in the alley as I kicked Mannequins body back towards Cricket and the regenerator.
I think that, if she won, I was going to come up behind her, hug her, press my breasts against her back, and then breathe softly into her ear that she was too slow, I had already beaten mine. Sufficient motivation was key to making her push her boundaries. Instead of seeing it as a victory to have finally found the regenerators weakpoint, it would instead motivate her to improve her analytical skills and biological knowledge so as to be able to identify how to take down varied, often non-human enemies. It would make her a more useful asset. Of course if she'd already lost then she was dead, and if she hadn't lost yet, and needed my help…
Hmm, well then she'd be dead as well. Unfortunately this battle had been going on long enough that she would consider it 'her' fight. If she couldn't win on her own then interference would undo all my work with her, rendering her insecure, despondent, unpredictable, and unwilling to obey my commands without coercion. She would challenge my authority, instead of my physical prowess, and she would chose bad times to do so. I would have to kill her to prevent that. Annoying.
Mannequin was doing something that made his torso glow with heat. It merely burned my boot as I kicked him, making what was left of the leather covering the metal hiss. I was using the broken thruster boot, so it was having no effect on me.
There were no hatches or access points in the primary shell, it was solid, designed to be nearly unbreakable. The connection points for the limbs were heavy shielded, and not actually connected to the interior design. I was betting he was smart enough have a communication device in there as well, to let the rest of the Nine know that he was in trouble, for all his reputation of being silent.
That was going to make my next task difficult, though not impossible. I had figured it out. I do believe that Mannequin had a very severe case of agoraphobia. Terrified of open spaces, and exposure.
"I wonder, when the Simurgh changed you, did she show you how you were going to die?" I asked. The shell was nearly invisible to sonar externally, but there would be something inside to listen, and look. Of that I was sure.
"Did she show you how I was going to cut that shell open, and leave the slimy, feeble thing inside to be picked clean by insects and birds. Fried by the heat of the sun. It's still a cloudy day dear Mr Alan Gramme, so that's going to take a long, long time. I'm going to find the contents of a dumpster, spread it on the beach, and place you on top of the garbage. Another piece of meat thrown out with the trash. No one will know. No one will look. I have my sisters skills with surgery. You will feel it all. It will be a very long time until you find oblivion," I told the glowing ball of heat that I was kicking around.
Naturally the Tinker was going to kill himself before I could actually do it. I couldn't stop him with the tools I had right now, and fear of what I promised coupled with the pain of roasting alive inside his own body were enough for me to consider the primary objective fulfilled, but he did not know that, and he wasn't suicidal by nature. The decision would take time and a mental breakdown, all inside a featureless cream oval. Interesting, to know it was happening, and see no outward clue.
I noticed that Cricket had, in fact, beaten the regenerator. Her scream when I hugged her was an interesting experience that left me with two broken eardrums.
