"I hate my power," Irritation groaned, flopping her head to the side to glance at Chamber, who was also on a hospital bed, and also wrapped in bandages. "Sure I can make you armor, but I should be able to make some for myself too dammit."
"Fat lot of good your armor did us," Animos said from the chair in front of her, drinking a beer. His real body healed very quickly while he was in his Changer form, so his burns were already long gone, and he was only hanging out in the tiny sick bay because he had nothing better to do. His hair hadn't grown back though, he was still bald, missing eyebrows and eyelashes.
"Please, she'd have pummeled you to pulp in seconds without my armor," Irritation snapped back.
"She pummeled us to pulp in seconds anyway," Animos said with a shrug.
"Well duh! She's the Butcher. It happens," Irritation said.
"Injuries during our first spar were inevitable, it is a simple way for her to show how easily she can hurt us. We are all alive, we will heal quickly thanks to her technology. Things are better than I expected," Chamber said, apparently unconcerned by his broken arm.
"Pretty boy is just happy he doesn't have to be the new Butcher's whor…" Irritation began, before Chamber pulled a gun from under his pillow with his uninjured hand, leveled it at her, and pulled back the safety.
"You finish that sentence and I will end you," he said calmly.
"Will you, really? You're not the Butcher's squeeze any more. You start acting up now, we get to fight back. You realize that, right?" Irritation asked, as purple plates began forming around his wrist, elbow and shoulder, locking the gun arm straight.
"I realize that your power is extremely unsuited to defending yourself, or from preventing my own power from hurting you," Chamber said.
Irritation looked at Animos, who shrugged again.
"Those painkillers are making you stupid. Face it, he's prettier than you. No need to get your panties in a twist," Animos said.
Chamber fired, and the bullet changed trajectory the moment it left the muzzle, nicking Animos's ear before bouncing harmlessly off the wall behind him, it's velocity altered to be less damaging to the environment. Irritation, who had locked the gun more or less pointed in her direction, jerked, and winced as her still mending ribs protested the treatment. Animos chuckled, and took another sip of his beer.
"Poor Irri, you really want to be all badass like your sister, but you still jump when a gun goes off. Glad you didn't hit the bottle Chamber. I'd have to fight you then."
"Whatever," Chamber said, as the plates around his elbow, shoulder and wrist dissolved, and he put the gun back under his pillow.
Irritation glared at them both, and winced again as she settled back in her bed. Vex was going to show those idiots when she got back. No one bothered Vex, even the last Butcher had decided she was useful enough to keep fairly happy.
"Soo…" Animos said, filling the sullen silence. "What does everyone think of the new Butcher? I haven't even managed to pin down her powers. Tinker and Thinker, obviously, but I'm not quite sure what her specialty is, and I'm not sure if her Thinker ability is pre-cog based or what."
"I would guess that she has some sort of accelerated perception Thinker ability," Chamber said. "She mentioned thinking faster than a human to the Butcher during their fight, and it would explain her odd behavior. Quarrel would pause and consult with the collective whenever there was any sort of major decision to be made. Mayhem does not pause. It is possible the conversations are happening quicker."
Animos nodded thoughtfully.
"That's true. I just sort of assumed that Mayhem and the Butcher collective weren't on speaking terms. She has asked to be called Mayhem, instead of Butcher, and some of the older Butcher's would throw a fit about that. On the other hand she seems fairly well informed about the Teeth, and while she's obviously mad, she hasn't been quite as… erratic as the ones that try and fight the Collective rapidly become."
"No, you might be onto something. I haven't heard her mention anything about the Teeth that she couldn't have learned from Charley or from the internet, and her insanity… it's a different brand than the normal Butchers."
Irritation nodded thoughtfully.
"She is weird. She was muttering to herself while she was Tinkering earlier, and she had her eyes closed. It sounded like code-names. She was talking about someone called the 'prince of knives,' about something called a 'rave in a box,' and 'project infinite loop.' Then she just launched into some kind of weird maths equation."
"I heard that as well, it was more of physics equation. As far as I could tell it was describing how to throw a human through a plate glass window without hurting them," Chamber said.
Irritation looked at him.
"You actually understood that garbage?"
"I had to write it down and work it out with a calculator, but yeah. Bone density and placement, impact point, glass thickness. I didn't get the whole thing, but I'm pretty sure that's what was going on. A power like mine benefits from an understanding of physics, so I've been studying it," Chamber said.
Irritation just looked at him, then shrugged.
"Whatever. What about Cricket? Anyone else think it's funny that the Butcher went from having a squeeze like Chamber to a girlfriend like her? Girl looks like she's been hit in the face with a shovel coated in razor blades," Irritation said.
"I am not sure if Mayhem and Cricket are in a relationship. If they are, then it appears to be one centered almost completely around violence and inciting violence. Admittedly, there is precedent for that sort of thing among previous Butchers, although relationships of that nature tend to end quickly," Chamber said.
"Like hell. You don't cut hearts into someone's face unless you like them, and Cricket didn't seem very upset at all about the new scars," Irritation said.
"It's sentences like that that make me wonder how I've survived this long," Chamber said dryly. "Oh, and Irritation? I wouldn't recommended speaking that way about our newest member. She lasted longer against Mayhem than the rest of us combined, and she strikes me as the sort to be… touchy."
Irritation shrugged.
"So? The Butcher was going easy on her cause she likes her."
"Bones don't bend that way when someone is going easy on you," Animos said, chuckling lightly.
"Where is our new cape anyway. She's injured to. Or is the Butcher giving her some sort of special treatment?" Irritation said.
"She left to look up the layout of the Chicago PRT building. Something to do with planning an assault soon. Not sure how I feel about that, there's always a bit of upheaval when a new Butcher takes the helm, but going after the PRT might get us attention we can't shake," Animos told her.
"With the Triumvirate gone and the Endbringer truce over, it's basically open season on the Protectorate right now. They're spread far to thin to chase us down after a successful strike, but it needs to be successful first," Chamber said, fishing a large physics textbook out of his bedside table and opening it to a bookmark.
"We can take the local Protectorate no problem, but Boston isn't quite as big as Chicago. Who have they got there at the moment?" Irritation asked.
"Dunno, I'd have to look it up, like Cricket's doing," Animos said, then his phone chimed, and he flipped it open, put down the beer and stood up.
"Mayhem just sent me a text, she's beaten Saint and the Dragon Slayers. Looks like she didn't think much of them. Called their piloting atrocious. Anyway she's bringing all four of them back here, and she wants me to prepare holding cells and some torture implements. Do we have anything like that, the last Butcher just used her ability to induce pain?"
"I think Chopblock left a small kit behind before he left. Don't know who went through his stuff after he died, but you might be able to track that down," Chamber said, without looking up from his book.
