Riley Alone (COMPLETE)

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The first time I actually feared for… for Jack's life – It's hard to think about that even now. But, the first time was a normal day, just like any other. Sometimes, I think about how this must be how people talk about when we came around; it was a normal day, until suddenly it wasn't, and I was scared."



The rain makes a nice sound in the background, and Bonesaw can't help but hum to herself as she works, having fun conjoining the cluster. Mousy was a little torn up when Ravager brought her back, so this isn't Bonesaw's cleanest work, but the brain was still intact so she can still do so many fun things! And she's learning so much too, like how the gemmas between cluster-mates communicate, and how she can streamline that communication by linking them together just so. The gemmas are almost identical too, even though they were located in different areas of the hosts' brains, which was a fun surprise.

A bump in the road jostles the bodies, loosening one of the sutures holding them together and Bonesaw pouts as she has to set down her tools to fix it back in place. It wouldn't do for her to get the brain right, just for it to get poorly lobotomized from hypoxia of the brainy bits. That would be so sad, especially as she hasn't given them a name yet. To stop it from coming loose again, she staples the two pieces together.

"Sorry poppet," Uncle Jack calls from the driver's seat. "I think we hit a raccoon."

Bonesaw's head jerks up and a grin finds her face. A bit of spare grey matter is never a waste to have, even if it's damaged or inhuman. "Ooh! Can I have it? Please, Uncle Jack?"

He laughs. "I'll pull over at the next rest stop, see if we can't scrape it off the grill together. Why don't you get back to your project, and I'll get you when we stop?"

"While we're there, can we get a person or two? They didn't play nice before we got them and I need another larynx if I want them to growl right."

Shatterbird scoffs from her seat by the window. "Rat's don't growl. They hiss."

"Now Birdie, be nice. I'm sure whatever Bonesaw has in mind will be more than fine." He pitches his voice back her way. "Tell you what, kiddo, I'll get you that larynx if I get to name it. Sound like a deal?"

"Yes! Thank you so so sooooo much!" She's laying it on thick, but she does need that larynx and this new toy needs a name, so really it's a win-win.

He hums thoughtfully as he merges onto the interstate. "Let's see. Mouse Protector and Ravager… MP and R… How about 'Murder R–'"

There's a harsh screech and the world is suddenly upside down, then right side up, then upside down again. Bonesaw crashes into a wall and then sticks there as her spine's burrs keep her in place, letting her see as the rest of her family in the RV tumbles as well. Uncle Jack disappears through the front windshield; he wasn't wearing his seat belt – naughty. Shatterbird's head impacts the window and leaves a bloody crack. Bonesaw feels more than hears Ned tear through the back and ceiling of the vehicle, inertia carrying him up and out, and a drop of his spittle sizzles a hole through her cheekbone.

Moments later, the vehicle comes to a complete stop and she lets herself fall from the wall, landing on her head in a heap with a cute "oof." She stands up and brushes herself off, then takes stock. Murder R is ruined. Looks like it got about as much Ned as the ceiling did. The other mash-up, the one made from Prophet and Carnal, is still intact, of course, and she supposes that's better than nothing. Really, all she needs is this one to break in her new big sister. She can put together some fun muscle out of just about anything, even if it won't be as interesting or impressive as Murder R would have been.

She lets out a precocious sigh, finishes patting the dust off her dress, then climbs out of the wreckage, followed by the regenerating mash-up. She lets out a cute huff with her hands on her hips. It's going to be so not fun finding another vehicle to fit Ned that Shatterbird doesn't immediately break because she thinks it's ugly, but as long as they're all together as a family, everything will work out.

Sibby comes out of the woods by the side of the road and casually skates towards Bonesaw, and the girl skips towards her and greets her with a spinning hug – Those are always so fun. Sibby sets a giggling Bonesaw down and then looks toward the wreckage.

"We got into a accident," Bonesaw explains.

She looks around conspiratorially. None of the other cars are close enough to hear. Some even are backing away, pulling off the road to turn back or get into the other direction's lane. Don't they know that's not allowed?

Satisfied no one is listening, Bonesaw whispers her tattletale to Sibby, "Uncle Jack wasn't wearing his seat belt. He owes me a quarter after this!"

Sibby grins, then tilts her head as she looks around for him.

"He's over here," Bonesaw says. She takes the striped woman's hand and skips to where he should be. Ned, a tenth of a mile up the road, is smashing through cars on the other side of the interstate, and it looks like Mimi is having fun with the fires he's started. Bonesaw would like to join them and get that larynx– Well, with Murder R broken, she doesn't need that anymore, but she might still be able to find a corona pollentia or two among the nearby drivers. It's been a while since she last forced a passenger to connect, but it's always fun in a roulette sort of way. She'll have to see what Uncle Jack thinks about it.

He's not… quite where she expected him to be. He's in the right location but the context is all wrong. He shouldn't be face down in a muddy ditch with a speed limit sign protruding from his skull. But he is. It doesn't fit. He should be brushing himself off and clicking his tongue at the irresponsible and reckless behavior of the other driver who made them flip. He definitely shouldn't be wetting himself, especially since Bonesaw removed that automatic response, which means something broke his bladder.

Sibby isn't as rooted as Bonesaw is, less conflicted about seeing him like this. She's been with him longer; maybe it's not her first time? Either way, she pulls the girl to him, and behaviors borne from almost a decade of practice take over, guiding Bonesaw's hands in diagnosing his injuries and starting about fixing them. Her dress is going to be so muddy after this.

She removes the sign with Sibby's help, and Jack's eye gurgles and deflates. It was deep in his head. She sets her surviving spider boxes – less than she'd like: only a couple are still intact – on the task of gathering some materials. They bring her her surviving supplies, including Murder R's remains and that raccoon, then go further afield. Screams join the sound of rain as they go after the few people who haven't already gotten away.

"Is that Jack?"

Bonesaw's hands continue to pull apart his skull while keeping the rain out as she turns her head to see Shatterbird looking down at them. Her hair is stringy with blood and rain.

"Yep-a-roonie!" Bonesaw says, keeping up her cheer. Uncle Jack might be a little down now, but he's fine as long as she's here. Honestly, he'd be fine even without her – That's just the kind of person he is.

Her face screws up with disgust as she watches his deflated eye slide out of its socket. "He's going to be okay, right?"

"Pft, of course, silly pants!" Bonesaw almost laughs at her question. "He's Jack. When is he not okay?"

She bites her lip but nods, kindly pulls glass together into an umbrella to keep the rain off them, and lets the little surgeon get back to work. It looks like the impact jarred the protective mesh encasing his brain, and that's jabbing into the grey matter along the breakage, so she sets about removing that and then repairing the brain around the – Oh.

Oh no. The sign hit his corona pollentia. It's… It's fine. It's just a bump. Barely ten percent of the structure is missing, and only another twenty or thirty percent is damaged. It's fine. She can… Oh! Idea! If she can link the mash-up's power into Jack, then it should repair the damage itself. She'll have to mostly scrap it, but that's fine, they don't matter, only Jack matters. It'll be sad to lose her best tool to break her big sister into the right shape for the family, but she can make another; regenerators aren't too rare, even if they are a challenge to work with. If Hatchet Face's body survived in the storage freezer, then even that challenge shouldn't be too challenging.

So she calls her creation over and – Where'd Sibby go? – starts the process. At least, she tries to. The switch for its powers must have broken in the crash; she can't turn them off, but she needs to if she's going to change the powers to help Jack. She huffs and puts on a pout. She has to fight against its regeneration so she can fix the switch before she can heal Jack's corona, and she doesn't even have any of her big tools, only what's in hand. It'll be a challenge, but a fun one, like doing hopscotch without her feet attached.

She doesn't have time to look through the wreckage of her lab for what she needs; every second wasted is another second Jack's brain goes without oxygen. Admittedly, that's not too terrible a problem, not like with regular people. Jack's brain should be able to survive without any damage for at least ten minutes without any oxygen, thanks to her modifications over the years.

She's fixed the switch and is about halfway through linking the two together – she giggles: twogether – when a tire bowls her over Jack's body, sending her heels over head. She lands on her back, rain falling against her face. She blinks. Shatterbird's umbrella: it's gone? She sits up and looks around, and spots a flash of colorful light, only a bit away. That was a laser, which means the heroes are here. So quickly! It's only been – she checks her internal clock – eight minutes since the crash?! That's so much longer than she thought!

Her eyes zoom in, and it looks like there are at least four heroes fighting with Sibby, Shatterbird, and Ned. She doesn't see Mimi, Cherish, or Manny anywhere – She hopes he didn't run off ahead to get a head start in Brockton Bay; he's been so eager in his own ways about meeting Armsmaster.

Her family is winning, of course – they always win, since you can't lose as long as you're living your truth as an artist – but Bonesaw watches Ned chase one hero into the woods, and then that same hero steps out from behind a car: a teleporter? Self-duplicator? Illusionist? Something with time? That would be fun. There are so few time-based powers, like the passengers either have a reason to be stingy with letting hosts access that kind of power, or don't know how to manipulate it that well themselves. Knowing the 'why' behind the passenger would really help her narrow that answer down, but then knowing 'why' would answer so much more than just that; it would answer everything!

If that hero is manipulating time, taking them apart would teach Bonesaw so much about the passenger and put her closer to the answer. And if they survived enough, she could make them into such a fun art piece! She could make them leap forward in time randomly, so they're force to watch as everything changes without being able to affect anything: the perfect audience. Or she could temporally displace them maybe? Make them run out of sync with this time. Bonesaw isn't sure exactly what that would look like, but it sure would be fun to find out.

She's already taking a step towards the possibly-but-unlikely time manipulator when she hears a splash behind her. She turns back to see Jack's arm twitching in the mud and SHE HAS TO FIX HIM SHE CAN'T LET HIM DIE TOO.

She falls back to her knees and gets back to work. As her spider boxes return with materials, she sets them to other tasks. These are terrible working conditions – in a muddy ditch without her good tools while it rains, pressured by the heroes – and it shows. Her work is sloppy and slow, but she gets the blood and oxygen flowing to his brain again. She's about to finish connecting Jack's brain with her mash-up's power when her fingers and tools become frictionless and dull against Jack's brain.

"Sibby no! I'm not done," she whines, overly childishly.

As the words leave her mouth, a light washes over them – Sibby, Jack, her creation, and herself. Her family is unharmed, but the work she did on her mash-up goes to poop, broken by the blast. Two of the heroes are heading toward the quartet, lobbing blast after blast into their faces, leaving the family unharmed but breaking one of Bonesaw's scattering spider boxes, and this workspace just went from terrible to untenable.

"We need to go, I need to finish saving him." The terror in Bonesaw's voice is entirely real. She's too close to losing everything again. Not that she even can lose her Uncle Jack. There's no way he could die: he's Jack Slash!

Sibby picks her up by the nape of her neck and Jack by his ankle, then runs at the pair of heroes, swinging her at them. She kicks at the nearest one as he dodges, dislocating her leg's joints for an extra bit of reach, and her Mary Jane scrapes against his shoulder; there's no physical feedback to tell her she made contact, only his hiss of pain and the splatter of blood. One bounding step later, they're in the woods. Bonesaw calls for the Carnal-Prophet combination and the remaining spider box to follow.

The road quickly disappears from sight, and soon after from hearing. When Sibby decides they're safe enough, she sets the two down under an old oak tree and Bonesaw scrambles to get back to work. While Sibby can make people inviolable, that doesn't exactly have any medicinal properties, past the old adage of 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.'

He's worse now. Some of his neurons connecting to his pollentia have atrophied, and Bonesaw hurries to wipe away a bit of mud from the matter.

She turns to Sibby, serious. "I need a body, brain intact."

She nods, then disappears with a series of leaps, ricocheting between trees to go fetch. A spider box makes it to Bonesaw and she immediately sets it to gathering materials – squirrels, moles, badgers: anything mammalian – as she salvages Jack. It comes back with a pair of rodents in its grasp and she uses them where she can. Manny comes out of nowhere, followed by Bonesaw's creation, with a head in hand: one of the hero's.

"Perfect!" She giggles. "Did you try to follow us?" she asks the head. "Dum-dum, that's how we get you."

Manny keeps watch as Bonesaw finishes what she started in the median's muddy ditch, and thankfully the only interruption is Sibby coming back with a struggling, terrified person in her grasp. Bonesaw tells her she doesn't need him, and Sibby starts to eat, not spending the time to kill him first.

He, like everyone else, starts screaming. So unoriginal. Manny seals his mouth to keep him quiet, thankfully, and Bonesaw is able to finish putting Jack back together. Her unnamed creation's power is irrevocably warped by her meddling, her work too rushed to avoid damage to its coronas. If she tried to put it back how it was, there's a good chance it would just expire and she'd have a heavy corpse on a control frame. Might still make for a fun pony for a minute though.

His eye – she still needs to replace the other one – flutters open. He looks around at the scene, then to Bonesaw.

"Rat," he says. "Murder Rat. I think that would be a good name for it, assuming it survived whatever just happened. No? Such a shame, I wanted to see what you'd make it do."

Bonesaw hugs him. "UNCLE JACK!"

He laughs, and it's a bit raspy, but undeniably his. "Careful poppet, you're getting mud all over my favorite, and I suppose now, only shirt."

He nudges her off and she lets go. He stands, and even half bald with eye-goo dangling from his left socket, he's as imposing and indomitable as ever. He lays a hand on her head and she pouts as he ruffles her curls.

"Are we still going to Brockton Bay?" she asks.

"I think we might need to make a pit stop before we go there, give the others a chance to catch up with us and give you a chance to resupply. If I'm not mistaken, you lost all your new toys just now, didn't you? I don't think you'll have much luck convincing Amy to join our family without at least your pet here in tip top shape."

Bonesaw pouts and kicks the dirt petulantly. "You're right. I just really really really want to meet her! I never get a chance to talk about my art with someone who gets it."

"You'll get your chance, don't worry. And don't worry Mannequin, I –" Jack cuts himself off and looks around. Bonesaw looks too. Manny's gone. Jack frowns a serious frown. "I suppose he had something to do. I'm sure he'll catch up, but for now we go…" He looks around and chooses a random direction. "This way!"

He takes Bonesaw's hand as they start to walk through the woods, and Sibby takes her other. Jack starts to whistle a cheery tune as they swing Bonesaw between them. Her family is safe and still mostly whole. It's okay.

Spoiler: authors notes

You might recognize this chapter from my snippet thread on SB, but there's been some changes from that to fit the story as a whole. Double feature to make up for it tho. drop some change in my kofi cup if you like it.

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The first time I saw Jack fail, I think, was soon after that, in the next town. Siberian, Shatterbird, and Crawler met up with us, but we'd lost the other three and my mashup. Mannequin was gone in the wind, and Burnscar and… Cherish died in the fight after the crash. I think I'm supposed to say I'm sorry about that?"



It wasn't odd in the least, really. It felt like a normal day in a new town: fresh, exciting, and ripe with materials.

"Aaaand… Done!"

Bonesaw starts to put her tools away and her spider boxes leap away; she's done tinkering for the moment. She wasn't able to find any parahumans to play with, but she has plenty of spider boxes again and she got to make an ogre with the leftovers! He's a big boy, twenty bodies full and supported by a brand new, custom skeleton that Bonesaw can of course control.

She makes grabby hands and he picks her up under her arms and lifts her to his shoulders. She grabs two of his ears and starts to steer him toward where she thinks Jack and Shatterbird might be. They went headhunting, even though there can't be that many parahumans in a town this size. Two or three, maybe four, and that's if Sibby or Neddy didn't eat one already. She hopes they saved her the head, if they did. It would be fun to try to give her ogre a power.

Sibby alights in front of Bonesaw's ogre, falling from somewhere. She eyes the new friend with a curious tilt of her head.

"Hi Sibby!" Bonesaw calls and waves. "This is Mister Mittens, on account of the way I weaved all his fingers together. Mister Mittens, this is my bestest friend in the whole wide world, Sibby. Say hi."

Mister Mittens lets out a low, wordless chorus of a groan. Bonesaw giggles. Sibby smiles at her, and she thinks that means she's not going to eat him. She hopes so, at least; she worked hard on Mister Mittens.

"Do you know where Uncle Jack is?" Bonesaw asks.

Sibby cocks her head and her smile grows a hair smugger. She leaps away, through a wall, leaving a perfectly Siberian-shaped hole in it. Bonesaw gasps. It's a chase! She tugs on Mister Mitten's ears and eggs him on after her. The wall crashes against his body, the first of many as she follows the trail of perfectly shaped destruction – a footprint in the asphalt, a claw mark across a mailbox, shorn lamp post, and so on.

The trail runs out and at the end isn't Sibby, but Uncle Jack and a man with fire dancing between his fingers like a party trick. Uncle Jack also has his power dancing between his fingers in the form of a penknife. It's a standoff! So exciting. The pyrokinetic parahuman isn't wearing a costume, but is instead dressed much like Uncle Jack, in a pair of slacks and a button-up shirt. But where Uncle Jack looks comfortable and put together, without so much as a singed thread on his newly obtained shirt, the pyrokinetic is haggard, his clothes torn and stained with blood from a dozen tiny cuts.

"So? Who will be next?" Uncle Jack asks playfully. "Who do I cut this time? Man, woman, or child?"

Bonesaw notices that there's a woman and child behind the pyrokinetic parahuman. Their shoes are bloody and their Achilles tendons are cut: immobilized but barely hurt.

"Me," the pyrokinetic says through gritted teeth.

He flings the small stick of flame at Uncle Jack. The fire stretches out like a beam, quick but not instantaneous, but Uncle Jack dodges with a laugh and it passes between his arm and body. The tip impacts a wall behind Jack; within a fraction of a second, the tail catches up and the attack explodes into a fireball against the wall.

Jack's knife doesn't stop dancing between his fingers as he dodges, and the other man cries out as a new cut opens up along his forearm. Uncle Jack laughs again. He's having fun playing with this man. Bonesaw wonders if Jack is going to bring him into the family or kill him. She kind of hopes for the latter, as selfish as it is.

How would his power work if she gave it to Mister Mittens? Does it need to dance between fingers? Does that increase power or speed or affect anything, or is it just something he's doing for fun? Can he have more than one out? Is it one per hand? How does having more hands and more fingers affect his passenger's interpretations?

"Bonesaw, my dear," Uncle Jack calls. "Welcome to the show, I hope you're having a good time. I know I am."

"Uhuh!" she calls back. "Your friend seems fun, Uncle Jack."

"Hah! I suppose he is."

"Is he going to be one of us?"

"I'm not sure yet. That's up to him. What do you think, John?"

"My name's not John, asshole!" the very rude man snarls.

"Language!" Bonesaw chastizes, scandalized.

He spares her an incredulous, terrified look; it only lasts a moment as the woman behind him cries out, a cut opening on her cheek.

"Eyes on me, Johnny boy," Uncle Jack says jovially. "We're not done yet."

A new bolt appears in John's hand and just as quickly spears out towards Jack, who again dodges with a laugh. Three small cuts open in a line across the three people. The silly billy didn't say who Jack should cut, so he cut all three of them.

"Throw throw, as much as you can, you can't hit him, he's the Slaughterhouse man~" Bonesaw sings and claps. She giggles at her rhyme and Jack laughs with her. That means she's doing good!

"If you don't follow the rules of the game, everyone suffers, John," Uncle Jack says. "Now. Who do I cut next?"

Bonesaw watches as, over the next five or so minutes, the man suffers over a hundred tiny cuts across his body – none of them are vital; all of them are painful – until eventually, when he's down on one knee and can't raise his left arm, he clenches his eyes shut and tells Uncle Jack to cut the woman. Uncle Jack does so, and the man clenches his eyes shut against her pained outcry: different than her earlier, fearful, despairing sobs and wails. Uncle Jack asks again, and the man starts to cry and beg for Jack to just kill him.

"That's not what I asked," Jack says.

He cuts the woman again. John tries to take the lashes upon himself again, but only lasts for three more cuts before he gives up and tells Uncle Jack to cut the woman, again and again.

"Next one kills her," Uncle Jack teases.

"Oh! Can I have her when you're done?" Bonesaw asks him. Even though she's on the older end of things, since she's close to John, there's a chance she'll have a corona pollentia that she can maybe tinker with.

"Of course, poppet," Uncle Jack laughs. "Now John; do I kill the woman and give her body to Bonesaw, do I cut the child, or do I cut you again."

John starts to cry.

"I need an answer, Johnny boy."

"Kill me," he weeps.

"I heard kill!" Uncle Jack cuts the woman's throat.

She gurgles and John screams into his hand, then goes still. The child has long since gone catatonic, and is staring absently at the dying woman. Bonesaw is sure a cut or two will bring them back to the present.

Uncle Jack shakes his head sadly, but still with a smile. He looks at me. "Go on, poppet. You can have all three, if you want. He's done."

With a big grin, she hops off Mister Mittens – he catches her and lowers her to the ground – and starts towards the trio of warm bodies, eager to tinker.

"Such a shame. We were having so much fun, Johnny boy. See you in the next life, I suppose. Now what to do next…"

The man looks up at Bonesaw, a distant look in his eyes. He looks at Uncle Jack. Distance morphs into anger. He mutters, low, "My name's not John."

He flings a bolt at a grinning Uncle Jack who– is consumed by a ball of fire? Uncle Jack's tossed out of the fireball, twenty feet back, and into a fire hydrant with a painful thump. He lies still.

Bonesaw looks at John, and he looks at her. Both of their eyes are wide and disbelieving. They look back to Jack simultaneously. She runs, and a spider box jumps onto John's back and disables him from the neck down with a quick snip. By the time Bonesaw makes it to Jack's side, he's sitting up and brushing himself off.

"You're hurt," she cries out. He's got second and third degree burns in a starburst pattern across his chest, and his facial hair is singed off.

He glares at her, meanness dripping from his gaze, then turns it to John with gritted teeth. He shakes it off and points an easy smile her way.

"Nothing to worry about, dearie," he tells her. "I just got taken by surprise; I thought he was done, but he had one last kick left in him. Happens to the best of us."

It's never happened to him before, she doesn't say.

Nothing changes physically, but suddenly his smile looks a lot less easy and friendly. He looms over her, his form consuming her world. He lays a hand on her shoulder and squeezes reassuringly. "It's fine, Bonesaw. He got lucky. That's all. Do you understand?"

She doesn't hesitate to nod.

"Tell me you understand."

"I understand, Uncle Jack. He got lucky."

"Right-o." He chuckles and lets go to brush away the burnt fibers of his clothes, and just like that, the moment is broken. "Now, why don't you have some fun with the oh-so-lucky man? I'm sure a good girl like you already has some ideas about what to do with him, don't you?"

Bonesaw grins. "Yeah! I want to see how his passenger designates the release for the powers. It looked like the power was coming from his fingers instead of his hands, and that's almost never the case for beam-emitters. And then I'm going to see how the powers take to having more fingers by transplanting the coronas into–"

Uncle Jack cuts her off with a pat on the head and a laugh, "That sounds lovely, but I need to find a new shirt. I'll check in on you later, and you can show me what you've done, okay?"

She scuffs her shoe against the ground at the minor admonishment. "Okay, Uncle Jack."

He turns to leave, but calls over his shoulder, "And don't forget to make it artful. Really test how much you can twist Lucky John, okay?"

Most pyrokinetics are completely immune to the heat they generate. Bonesaw wonders how she can remove that safeguard. First she'll have to see if the bolts in hand are actually hot or just a light-emitting precursor to the attack he used. And then she'll…

Spoiler: an

drop some change in my kofi cup if you'd like

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The last time I saw the Siberian… She was a monster, but even now I still… I miss her. I don't even know what she was to me. A sister? A pet? A mother figure? I don't think I'll ever understand her. I don't understand how I killed her, either, but I must have."



The Nine visited a few other towns to find new family, introduce them to the freedom of their way of life, and have fun, but it wasn't long before Jack said it was time to show the flag and make sure that everyone knew that just because three of the family died and Manny left didn't mean they weren't still having fun and making art. Uncle Jack wanted to make a big splash, so all of the Nine came to this city, Lowell, to do just that.

Bonesaw got to tie someone into a knot, with a leg through their ribcage, for her introduction to the city. They were alive, of course. Probably. The birds might have gotten to them and changed that before anyone found them. But it was still fun either way!

Uncle Jack, Sibby, and Bonesaw found a good vantage point to wait for Shatterbird to announce their presence, and then they can start their fun in earnest.

…Just like always.

"Why so glum, sugar plum?" Uncle Jack asks.

"Nothing," Bonesaw says. "It's not a big deal."

Sibby tilts her head at her, and Jack says, "Now poppet, there's no need to be like that. You know repressing yourself does no one any good. So be a good girl and tell me what's on your mind."

"It's just…" Uncle Jack gives her a moment to consider how to phrase it. "You always say that we're artists and should always strive to push our limits into new forms, right?"

He nods, smiling coyly like he already knows what she's going to say and has an answer ready. But he doesn't preempt her, letting her say it anyway.

"But Shatterbird always does the same thing every time. I know she sings a different song, but she's still just singing and breaking everything."

"Be that as it may, you have to admit that she's a talented herald. Whenever she sings, there's not a single person who's left in the dark. And, it could be said – not by me, of course – that you do the same, only with flesh instead of song."

"You're right," Bonesaw reluctantly admits. He is right, but she still feels weird about this. As good a performer as Shatterbird is, it's still kind of boring.

Uncle Jack hums and Bonesaw looks up at him. He's staring out over the city from their vantage point atop a chapel. She follows his gaze, and so does Sibby, taking a seat at the edge of the roof. The sun is rising, and the city still sleeps. There are few people out, and Bonesaw spots a stray dog sniffing around a dumpster. Uncle Jack sighs.

"I admit that I've thought about this before. Shatterbird's routine has gotten a bit, well, routine. But it wouldn't do for us to go without a proper introduction, especially now, and she has that special way of setting the stage for the rest of us that I'd hate to lose. And I certainly can't imagine her agreeing not to sing. I wouldn't ask her to miss out on so much of her fun either."

That makes sense. It's just the way things are.

"But how about an accompaniment?" he asks.

Bonesaw blinks. "Huh?"

"It would need to be something big and something complimentary, so as to not ruffle her tail feathers."

"Wait, do you mean…?" She hesitates to ask; it's too exciting an idea to vocalize and have shot down.

"Why not? A change of pace would be nice. You still haven't gotten a chance to use that one you came up with in New Mexico, did you?"

Her jaw drops and she vibrates with excitement at the prospect of letting one out. But she needs to be certain, needs to make sure he means what she thinks he means, so she picks her jaw up off the floor, jams it back into her skull, and asks, "But you said that they're too easy to start a good time with."

"That is a rule I made…" He taps his chin with a knife, then smiles down at her, his newly heterochromatic eyes gleaming with mischief. "But rules are made to be broken. I believe it was Michelangelo who once said, 'you have to learn the rules like a professional so you can break them like an artiste.' So. Are you an artiste?"

Bonesaw's grin stretches wide and she bounces on her toes for a moment before leaping up to hug him, babbling thanks and excitement. Sibby watches them with a warm, loving smile. She never gets to use a plague as an opener! He only ever lets her use them as a goodbye present, and even then almost never!

Uncle Jack chuckles and pats her on the back before setting her down. "You'd best go ahead and get it ready. Our dear songbird should be about ready to start."

She doesn't have much time, he's right. Shatterbird likes to announce them when the most people are out and about – during the morning commute, around lunch time, or the evening commute – and the sun has just crested the horizon. She has the plague already made, but if she's going to spread it quickly, she'll need to change it from droplets to aerosol, like the corona virus she made – the one that damaged unactivated passenger connections and forced a partial trigger. With where they're situated, the wind should help disperse it to the majority of the city, and it's best that it not survive for too long or the rivers will carry it away and spoil later fun.

She works quickly, motivated by the excitement of novelty, and finishes aerosolizing the solution as the city wakes up below. Cars have started to clog the streets and she knows Shatterbird is soon to start her song. Bonesaw releases it, a light blue mist dispersing from atop one of the tallest buildings, upwind of most of the city, disappearing from sight as it spreads.

The trio watch as it takes hold of the city, progressing rapidly. This is one of her more utilitarian plagues; it's honestly a bit of a shame that she's using it here and now. But still, it's a fun one, targeting the nervous system to instill a sort of sleep paralysis; the victims are immobile, but conscious and dazed. Shadows will feel darker, sounds will be distorted, and after a few minutes, they'll begin to hallucinate. It doesn't wear off.

They watch as some of the early risers, those who are already going about their day and not on the road to work now, stumble and stagger until they're slouched against a wall or laying on the ground. More than a few people go still at the wheel and crash into things. With this, Shatterbird will have a truly captive audience.

The air starts to vibrate, a high sound that Bonesaw can only hear because of the additions she made to her ears, carried from afar by the glut of glass in the city. Sibby flinches and swipes at the air. Bonesaw gives her a confused look, and Uncle Jack matches it, and Sibby suddenly sinks through the roof's edge, erasing a line down the wall of the building as she falls, swinging at the air like a normal person beset by a swarm of invisible bees.

Bonesaw and Uncle Jack move to the edge of the building and peek over it. They watch together as Sibby, the indomitable and invincible Siberian, tucks her arms around her head and runs around in fright. And then the city shatters. A wave of exploding glass travels out from the center of the city, where Shatterbird set her stage.

The duo are above it and away from any windows or computers, but most of the people they can see from their perch aren't. Hundreds of people around them are impaled and are bleeding out. None of them scream. None of them can, even as Sibby plows through them. It's quieter than it's ever been after one of Shatterbird's songs.

And then Sibby disappears. One moment she's turning a confused expression toward the distance, and the next she's simply gone.

Bonesaw blinks in confusion. "Where did Sibby go?"

For a minute, Jack doesn't answer. He just looks stunned. Then he smiles and injects some blessed levity into the situation. "It… seems she's been holding out on us. No worries, Little B. I'm sure she'll come back to us just fine. You know how tough she is."

S9

​

"What the shit was that?!" Shatterbird screams at Bonesaw, twenty minutes later, landing in front of her and Uncle Jack with a crashing wave of glass that falls to the ground, inert, around them.

"Language!" Bonesaw chastizes.

"Be quiet or answer the question, you damned nuisance," the stained glass woman snarls.

Jacks hand on her shoulder is the only thing that stops Bonesaw from siccing a half dozen spider boxes on her. She smiles sweetly up at Shatterbird and the woman turns to question Jack instead.

"What. Happened? I sang, but everyone was asleep! She"– she points at Bonesaw –"ruined my performance. I know it was her who put my audience to sleep!"

"Yes, that was dear Bonesaw's doing," Uncle Jack says. "We thought you could do with an accompaniment.

"An accompaniment?!" she screeches. The glass around them kicks into the air like dust devils.

"You sing ever so much, and it's quite beautiful every time, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of variety every so often. I actually thought it was a lovely change to your performance – That's why I suggested it. Usually, there's so much moaning and groaning after you sing, but this time it rang out so perfectly. It's stuck in my memory quite vividly."

Shatterbird looks conflicted, like she wants to still be mad, but Uncle Jack's praise is making her rethink her earlier position. "Well. You still should have run that by me ahead of time. I looked stupid waiting for a reaction that never came."

Uncle Jack touches her cheek and raises her gaze to his. "I'll try to run any last minute changes by you, next time. But we're performers, and we need to leave room for spontaneity."

"Yeah," Bonesaw can't help but say. "Or, you know, any changes at all."

Shatterbird haughtily turns up her nose at her without a word. Bonesaw gives her a saccharine smile with venom in her eyes. Uncle Jack laughs.

"Ladies, let's not fight, not when we have a whole city to play with," he says.



"Now that I think about it, that was also the last time Shatterbird talked to me. She left about a week after that and ruined some of my projects on her way out. Last I heard, she was down in the Caribbean with a new team."

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The first time I thought something was wrong – like, really, seriously wrong – with Jack was… maybe three months after Shatterbird left? I think that was when this happened. We'd lost Crawler after a fight – like, he'd just disappeared and we couldn't find him while we were leaving town – and without him it was just Jack, me, and new meat. Hell, we'd lost even some of the new meat."



"Well, that could have gone better," Jack laughs jovially.

It's weird. He shouldn't laugh jovially, not now, not after what just happened. He should chuckle meanly, or chortle with vengeance, not… brush it off, right? It's just him and Bonesaw and two people they don't know very well yet left.

Bonesaw looks up from fixing her gravel-blasted arm at the new family members. Brandling, one of the new people, is staring at Jack with poorly disguised confusion and fear, and the other one is immobilized by the endoskeleton she installed, staring blankly at the suburban house's wall while in sleep mode. She'll need to work on that in the next few days or they'll break, either freeing or frying her. It would be inconvenient if Nettle teleported away.

But for now she needs to focus on herself. She needs to get her right arm back in order so she can reattach the fingers she lost on her left hand so she can work on making another spider box; she's down to just one after an interesting force field user – oh, she wishes she could have studied him; it's not often that powers allow force fields to be moveable independent of the parahuman – and that's not nearly enough.

"Oh well," Uncle Jack continues, "we'll get them next time, give them a good what for and show them who's boss."

Bonesaw pauses in her work. "We're going back?" she asks.

"Of course, poppet," he answers easily. "We can't let them think they can take away our family and get away with it."

She hides her frown. The only family anyone took weren't much family at all. Those three were barely with themfor two weeks, and Bonesaw had to install control features to keep them from running. She's not sure she can even remember their names with how many members Jack and her brought in and lost in the last two or three months. Most of them she had to similarly rig up.

"Are you sure?" Bonesaw asks weakly.

He gives her a hard look and she hurries to explain.

"I just mean that we don't have a big family right now. Shouldn't we find some new friends before we go back out?"

"Bonesaw," he says, dripping disappointment. "Don't you want to punish the people who took away your family?"

Her gut clenches. They were barely even family, but she knows better than to voice that. Family is family, no matter what. Instead she asks, "Can I at least fix us and maybe get another spider box?"

"Hmm. Fine, if Antler and Breakmire meant that little to you, we can wait."

She shrinks in on herself in a vain attempt to hide her relief. The guilt she feels helps sell the affectation of guilt, she hopes. From how Uncle Jack sighs at her, she knows it didn't work. Even though they were only around for a few weeks, they were still family, at least a little. She shouldn't be so selfish and not care about them. But…

She misses Sibby and Neddy and Manny. And she doesn't want to admit it, but she even misses Shatterbird sometimes. They were family for so long, and she hates that they're gone. They just… left. Shatterbird found herself a new family and Uncle Jack doesn't even want to chase her down. Manny is out there, alone, doing what he loves, so she supposes that's good and she should be happy for him, but she misses his cooking. She tried to make a pie the other week and it had a heartbeat. None of his pies had heartbeats.

And Sibby just disappeared! If she was striking out on her own like Manny or Shatterbird, Bonesaw would be sad but she wouldn't be so worried like she is. Sibby's invincible, so she has to be okay, but she's just… gone. Bonesaw doesn't understand.

And Neddy ran away too. He was so sad that Sibby left that he couldn't stand it, and Bonesaw didn't even know he liked her! She knew he wanted to fight her, but she might come back, right? So why'd he have to leave too?

Cherish was annoying though. Bonesaw is glad she's dead.

Jack sighs and gets to his feet. He moves into the kitchen, and comes back with a few cans of soda and a bottle of juice. He tosses Bonesaw the juice and she fumbles to catch it, dropping her tweezers in between her radius and ulna: annoying. She takes a sip. Apple: her favorite. That's nice, at least.

"Classic or vanilla?" Jack asks. "You're a vanilla Coke kind of guy, right Breed?"

The other conscious and free-willed member of the family doesn't respond.

"Well?" Jack asks.

"M-me?" she asks, pointing up at herself.

"Is there another guy here named Breed?" He looks around, then shrugs at her.

"My name is Brandling, though," she says.

Jack frowns.

"I mean, I- I can be Breed, if- if- if you want me to be. Um, sir."

Jack's frown deepens, and Brandling continues to ramble.

"I'm Breed now, and I love Coke– vanilla Coke! Sorry. I meant Vanilla coke."

Jack's frown doesn't falter, but he tosses the can her way. She catches it, and he pops the top to his classic Coke, then takes a sip. He strikes up a new line of conversation with her, and Bonesaw tunes them out to refocus on her tinkering.

It's hours later, late into the night, when she's finally done – In that she's out of materials. Her body is back into working order, Nettle's brain's control nodes are fixed, Brandling's cuts and bruises are patched, and Bonesaw was able to build three new spider boxes. She's running dangerously low on chemicals and solutions, and Nettle barely qualifies as art since she wasn't able to find another parahuman to mix her with, and she doesn't have the materials or the time to make up any new, fun stuff. She worked as long as she could and used everything she had on hand while she waited for Uncle Jack to tell her, "That's enough," and lead them back out.

But he didn't. And now she's out of stuff to do stuff with.

Brandling went to bed, and Uncle Jack's lounging on the recliner and reading a book. He doesn't look like he's in any sort of hurry at all, which is… confusing. He was so serious about going back out there and making the others pay for taking their family earlier.

"Uncle Jack?" Bonesaw voices.

He looks over the top of his book with a slight smile. "Hm? What is it, sweet?"

"Are we still… going back out?"

He raises an eyebrow at her and folds the book over a finger to mark the page. "Did you want to?"

"Well, not exactly, but earlier you said we were going back, to make them pay."

He stares at her blankly. "No I didn't."

She blinks. "Didn't you?"

"Sweetie, I'm not sure we have enough friends to really do much of anything there." He stands, kneels in front of her, and places the back of his hand on her forehead. "Are you feeling alright? Did you hit your head earlier? You don't feel warm, and I don't feel any bumps."

"I'm fine, Uncle Jack. I… must have misheard you earlier."

"If you say so." He stands up. "Now, I think it's past your bed time. Why don't we get you tucked in, and we'll talk more in the morning."

Bonesaw calls Nettle to her and they go upstairs with Uncle Jack. He holds her hand and leads her up into one of the bedrooms, pulls back the covers for her, and tucks her and Nettle in after they remove their day clothes. He kisses her forehead and turns the light off as he goes. She closes her eyes and tries to sleep, but it's hard to find. She must have misheard him earlier, or misunderstood what she thought he'd said, or something.

She continues to stew in her anxious thoughts, but eventually, sleep does take her. What feels like a moment later, she's being shaken awake. She raises her head and Uncle Jack's looking down at her with a serious expression.

"We need to go," he says.

"Did they find us?" she asks sleepily. "Are we– Wha?"

"We need to go," he repeats. He pulls the covers off of her.

"Where are we going?" she asks as she gets out of bed and gets dressed. Nettle obediently does the same.

"We're going back into town, like I said. Weren't you listening? We'll hurt them while they're distracted. Miasma's going to throw a fit if we don't do something about it, so let's get moving."

Bonesaw opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. She doesn't understand. Who's Miasma? Did Uncle Jack find a new friend while she was asleep? She squints and realizes his beard is untrimmed, and a chill grabs her by the heart. Something isn't right. For as long as he's had a face, he's never had anything less than perfectly sculpted facial hair.

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The first time I felt alone, I guess, was after the last time we hit a place big enough to be called a city. It didn't go well, obviously. I mean, without Siberian, Shatterbird, and Crawler, we weren't what we used to be. Maybe it could have gone better if I'd had another mashup, or if we'd had time to recruit first, or if the city wasn't still on high alert from our first attack, or– Well, it doesn't matter. It went poorly."



It wasn't easy, getting away. None of it was easy, or even very fun. Jack got hurt again when they were making new introductions, and Nettle and Brandling died, and no one new joined, so for the first time in her life, her family is reduced to two: Jack and herself. Jack found an abandoned house a few states over to take refuge in after a few days on the road.

With just the two of them, and so much heat – it's weird, the heroes never tried so hard to chase them before, but they were hounded for almost four whole days before Jack said they'd lost their tail – the pair needs to lay low, which means new faces. Bonesaw gives Uncle Jack a couple decades in the face and changes his hair color to blond with red facial, then moves on to changing her own.

She changes her hair color to red with tighter curls, green eyes, slimmer cheeks, and a pair of glasses she found in a ditch; she changes their scents and the timbres of their voices too – That should be enough, she hopes, especially if they dress differently. Her favorite dress is ruined anyway.

Disguised well enough, they have time for another sort of upkeep. Bonesaw is hungry, and she's sure Uncle Jack is too, having not had the chance to stop for food while on the run and with only the snack-foods they scavenged along the way, and a growing girl needs a balanced diet. Bonesaw moves to the kitchen to look for something to eat.

"This wine is fantastic, Crimson. I swear I half expected you to try to slip me some blood again," Jack says with a laugh. He's standing in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, holding a wine glass full of… She sniffs. Full of chlorine bleach. He sips it.

Bonesaw's brow furrows as she represses a sigh. She doesn't know where he even found that. They've only been here for an hour, and she's pretty sure he didn't come into the kitchen in that time. Why he would drink a cleaning chemical eludes her. She resolves to keep an even better eye on him than she has been. He's been acting odd, and it's starting to worry her.

"Uncle Jack, that's not wine. That's chlorine bleach," she says. It will be such a pain making sure that doesn't damage anything.

"It's a bit muddled, yes, but that's how you know there's plenty of tannics in it. It's a sign of a good, robust variety." He swirls it and sniffs it. "An… 87' Malbec, if I'm not mistaken. One of the better years for their Sauvignons."

Bonesaw doesn't like this game. She doesn't know this game. He's messing with her, but she doesn't know why. He's having fun, but it's not his normal fun. It's scarier, or at least scary in a new way.

She gets back to rifling through the kitchen, looking for anything useful. There's plenty of cookware and dishes, but there's no food in the fridge or in the pantry. She keeps looking through the cabinets for– Aha!

"Uncle Jack, I found food!"

Rows of canned food line the cabinet: beans, vegetables, mushrooms, soups, and even raviolis! There's no way they could compare to Manny's but they're still her favorite. She misses Manny's cooking. For someone without a mouth, he made the best food. She hopes the tasters she helped him make are still working.

"Oh no no, that won't do, champ," Uncle Jack says as he looks over her shoulder. "Good wine deserves a good meat. The best things in life come in pairs, after all. Bonnie and Clyde, Eden and Zion, guac and potato chips, Elmo and Mr. Fish." He holds up his mostly empty glass of chlorine bleach. "Wine and steak."

Bonesaw looks back at the canned food. "We don't have steak."

"Well then we'd best go get some. A day like this I need the lord help me deserves celebration."

"What?" He's acting weird again. Still.

"I'm sure there's a butcher or a market around here we could find some good meat at. And if not, we can find a deer or a cow and make steak ourselves. I don't know if you're aware, but I'm pretty good with a knife," he continues unabated. He drops his glass and it shatters on the linoleum floor, then moves toward the front door to grab his jacket. Her heart leaps in her chest.

"No!"

He stops after only a single step, then turns to Bonesaw and tilts his head dangerously. "'No?'"

Her heart stops, metaphorically. It would be too dangerous to still her blood right now, when she needs it to keep moving so she can answer. "Let me do that," she says. "Please Uncle Jack? I'll go get some steak, and you stay here and… Um. Enjoy more wine?"

He sighs and sets a hand on her shoulder. "Bonesaw. Wine is for aunts and homosexuals. I'll catch the game with a beer, like a real man."

Uncle Jack lashes out with a knife faster than she can follow and she flinches, though his arm passes over her shoulder rather than through her. She stands stock still until he pulls back, a can of corn impaled on his knife. He pops the lid and takes a sip even as its juices spill across the floor, then moves into the living room, setting his jacket back on the open fridge door as he goes.

Bonesaw remains where she is, trying to decipher what any of that means. Does he want her to make him into a woman? From Uncle Jack to… Aunt Jacqueline? Does he want her to drink wine? But he said that's no-no-juice and not for good girls. Does he want her to get real beer for him? Or another can of corn? Or–

"I'll take fries with my burger, if you don't mind," he calls. "Shaken, not stirred."

That's enough to get her moving. Steak, a burger, fries, and a milkshake maybe: add that to the shopping list. She should also get supplies while she's out if she has the time and opportunity: just some basic stuff, if she can. Some cold medicine and isopropyl alcohol, and maybe some vinegar, to make pheromones. Oh! And–

No. No. Focus. Steak, burger, fries, and a milkshake maybe. And beer and canned corn. She needs to stay focused. They passed a grocery store on the way into town, so she makes sure her shoes are tied and heads that way.

S9​

"How old are you?" the clerk at the checkout line asks as he eyes the six pack of beer she'd picked out.

Making sure to not be suspicious, Bonesaw watched everyone else do their shopping and learned how it works. She'd gotten a basket, gathered what she needed from the aisles, and then come here to talk to this man before leaving.

"I'm twelve!" she answers with a smile and a swirl of her skirt.

He sets the beer down beside him, apart from the other groceries. "I can't sell you beer."

"But I need that for my uncle," she protests.

"Then your uncle can come in and buy it himself," the clerk says. "I can't sell to minors."

Internally, Bonesaw debates the merits between pressing the issue or risk Jack wanting to come here himself. It's not like she could stop him if he pressed, but she also really needs to get back to him and make sure he's still okay. She hopes he hasn't gone out. She eyes the cans of corn she got and decide to hope that those will be fine.

She sags as she says, "Okay, no beer then."

"This'll be thirty-seven eighty-five after tax," the clerk says.

She blinks. "What?"

"Thirty-seven dollars and eighty-five cents," he repeats. "It's how much you owe."

She continues to stare blankly up at him.

He sighs and looks up at the ceiling in suffering. He looks back down at her, obviously frustrated. "Listen, kid, you have to pay for this. With money."

"Oh! Money!" She breaks out into a smile. "Why didn't you say so, silly? I have that." She digs into her pocket and pull out her money. It rattles and clings as she drops it on the counter. She pushes the pile toward him.

He barely glances at it before glaring at her. He visibly holds back what he wants to say to instead say, "This isn't enough."

"Oh. Um." She searches her pocket again and dig out another three coins that she didn't pull out with the rest: two brown pieces and a medium-sized silvery one. She sets it with the rest of the coins and smiles.

The man's face doesn't change. "It's still not enough. It's barely four dollars, if that. You need more money."

Bonesaw frowns. "Well I don't have more. And you're being very rude, mister. You didn't treat anyone else like this."

"That's because no one else was a broke twelve year old trying to buy beer," he says sufferingly.

Her fingers tighten as she itches to take him apart and put him back together into something that will actually do his job right, but she can't make a scene. Even so, ideas come to mind. It wouldn't be hard, even; all he does is move the groceries from his right to his left and then ask for money.

Maybe it would be worth it to fix him. She still has a sleepy-gas solution ready, so she could use that and then fix him, and then leave before she makes a scene. Her tools are pushing out from under her fingernails and she's about to do it when an old lady behind her says,

"Oh stop it Joshua, I'll cover her."

Bonesaw stops and watches as the lady hands over a piece of plastic. The clerk – Joshua? – doesn't take it.

"Muriel, she's obviously a scammer," he says.

"Well she's hardly a decent one. And if she is, then this is a scam worth falling for. Now take my money, or do I need to have a talk with your mother?"

He's cowed by that and takes the plastic card. Is that the money? He puts it in a machine and then- gives it back? What? How does that count as money? He didn't even keep it, and Bonesaw knows money is made of a cotton-linen blend or pressed alloyed metals, not plastic. So what just happened?

"Dearie, what's your name?" Muriel asks and it takes a moment for Bonesaw to register that it's directed her way.

Bonesaw knows she can't tell Muriel her real name. "…Riley."

"What are you doing here alone, Riley? Where's your– uncle, you said?"

"He's waiting for me at home," Bonesaw says, playing along while she tries to understand the old lady's angle. Why did she pay, if that's what she did? What is she getting out of this? Why does she care?

"He didn't come with you?" Muriel asks.

"He's not feeling well right now."

"Ah," Muriel says understandingly. "You have an awful lot of groceries to be carrying home all alone. If you don't mind waiting a moment, I could drive you where you need to go."

And then it clicks into place for Bonesaw. She understands why Muriel is doing what she's doing. Paying for the groceries, defending her from the clerk, striking up harmless conversation, and then offering her a ride: Muriel is trying to get Bonesaw alone so she can kidnap her, harvest her organs, or eat her! Bonesaw's done similar things in the past. She doesn't often eat people, though she wouldn't turn down a treat from Sibby when offered.

With Bonesaw's understanding comes calm. It's easy to deal with things when you know what they are. So she puts on her best and brightest smile and thanks the old lady.

"I'd love that," she chirps cutely. "Thank you so much!"

Muriel smiles down at her kindly: an incredible poker face. The clerk hands her her bags and she leads Bonesaw out to her car. They put their combined groceries in the trunk and then get in and buckle up. Weirdly, Bonesaw doesn't see any weapons or drugs or anything useful for subduing people. Muriel must be pretty confident, which would be okay if Bonesaw were a normal twelve year old girl. Maybe she has some sort of training in close quarters combat? Or a hidden weapon? There's plenty of space in her big purse. She can't have powers, not with how old she is, unless looking old is part of her powers or she got help to look so old.

"So dearie, where is it I'm taking you?" Muriel asks as she shifts the car into drive.

"Oh, um." Bonesaw takes a moment to consider the roads – she'd walked here from the house in a straight line – and then points. "That way. We're staying on the north side of town."

Muriel turns and starts that way. "Are you and your uncle new in town? I haven't seen you around before."

"Mhm! We just got in today."

"Oh, that must be difficult for your uncle, moving in while under the weather."

"We move around a lot so we're used to it," Bonesaw explains.

"Still."

"...Yeah."

"Do you think you'll stay here for long?"

"I'm not sure."

"What does your uncle do that has you two moving around so much? And where are your parents?"

"They died when I was little," Bonesaw says faux-flippantly.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Muriel says with the right amount of compassion in her voice.

"But we're artists. Our family goes around the country making art and showing it off to whoever we can."

"Oh? I know that must be exciting. I had a transexual friend who did something similar when we were younger. Of course, the world wasn't quite so kind to her type back then, so she was constantly getting harassed by police officers and such."

"Turn here," Bonesaw interjects, and Muriel moves closer to her end. "It's so frustrating how they won't ever leave us alone. But it's fun sometimes, when I got to show them something new and see their reactions."

Muriel sends Bonesaw a worried look. "I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying you've had to deal with police before?"

"Mhm!"

"My goodness! What ever for?"

"Well, some people don't like our art. It's this next left."

"I… suppose that's true, but for the police to get involved." Muriel shakes her head. "I had thought things were getting better on that front. What's the name of your group? Maybe I've heard of you."

"Oh you've definitely heard of us. It's this yellow house on the right."

"The Daniels finally sold, did they? Good for them, it will be nice to have some life put back into that house." Muriel pulls into the driveway and puts the car in park.

"We're the Slaughterhouse Nine, by the way," Bonesaw says with a smile.

Muriel gasps and her eyes flicker over Bonesaw's face again. She frowns. "That's not funny. A nice girl like you shouldn't be telling those sorts of jokes."

"It's not a joke." Bonesaw giggles and smiles cuter than ever. "I'm Bonesaw."

Just as Muriel realizes how outclassed she is and horror dawns in her eyes, Bonesaw jabs her with a paralytic-coated needle from under her fingernail. Muriel slumps in her seat, immobilized. Humming, Bonesaw reaches over her to open her door. She calls a spider box to her and has it jack into the old lady's spinal cord, then has it make her retake the wheel. Bonesaw gets out to open the garage door, and Muriel drives the car in. The door closes, and Muriel's fate is sealed. Silly old lady wanted to use her for parts; the irony brings another smile to Bonesaw's lips.

The realness of her smile doesn't last, as she soon has to end the familiar game of deception and adultnapping and return to the new game that Jack's playing. Arms laden with groceries, Bonesaw goes inside. Uncle Jack is – thankfully – still here. He's in the living room: watching the news, it looks like.

"Uncle Jack, I'm back."

"Welcome back. I see you made a friend while you were out," Uncle Jack greets, nodding at Muriel.

"Mhm!" She hesitates, then gambles. "I got your beer for you too."

"Oh? Good girl."

She holds out a can of corn for him.

He stares at it.

She keeps her arm extended.

He takes it and inspects it. He looks at her with concern.

She keeps up her grin despite the worry and fear.

"Bonesaw," he says softly, "this is corn."

Her smile brittles. "It… It's beer, isn't it?"

He shakes his head slowly while his concern grows more obvious. He sets the can of corn to the side and kneels in front of her. "Are you feeling okay? Did someone hurt you while I wasn't looking?"

"I'm fine. Or, I think I am. Aren't I?"

"Bonesaw, beer isn't even made from corn. It's made from wheat and hops. Corn makes whiskey and whiskey makes my girl get a little frisky."

"What?"

"I'm worried about you, Bonesaw. I need you to be a good girl and tell me if something's wrong or I can't help you."

"I don't… I don't know what's wrong."

"But something is wrong?" he presses.

"I–! I don't know!" she cries out. "I can't– I don't know! I don't understand! Everything is so wrong and I'm so confused!"

"Hi So Confused, I'm Uncle Jack," he says, suddenly jovial.

"Uncle Jack, what?! What does that mean?!" she cries out.

"I think I know what's got you so glum, sugar plum," he says without answering. Bonesaw latches onto the hope behind his words without reservation. "We lost a lot of family recently. You're feeling lonely and scared that you'll be alone forever, but I want you to listen to me, okay? I will never leave you, Bonesaw, and as long as you have me, as long as you stay my good girl, we can make a new family, wherever we find ourselves. So even though we're in a bit of a rough patch, I want you to stay strong and keep being the good girl I know you to be. If you can do that, then I promise you, we'll make ourselves a new family, just as full of love and joy as the last. Okay?"

He stares into Bonesaw's eyes with pure adoration, assurance, and authenticity, and she knows deep in her heart that his words are true. As long as she has her Uncle Jack, everything else will fall into place.

She sniffles and nods, and he pulls her into a hug, comfortably tight. She loves him, and she knows he loves her, and they'll stick with each other through anything, because that's what family does. She'll take care of him, and he'll take care of her. She'll fix him, and he'll love her for it. She'll keep them safe, and he'll find new people to join the family.

It'll be okay. She cries into his shoulder because that's what she's supposed to do at times like these, when she's scared but relieved and being held, so she lets herself cry cutely like a good girl. When she's cried enough, she wiggles away and Jack releases her.

"Feeling better?" he asks.

"Mhm," she says with a final sniffle.

"Good." He stands and smooths his shirt. "Now, why don't you and Winter whip us up something good and I'll gather the gang?" He makes for the door.

"Wait!" she calls, and he turns to look at her.

"What did we say about using your inside voice?" he admonishes.

"I– But–"

"Ahem."

She looks at the floor and mumbles, "To use it when I'm inside."

"That's right. And where are you?"

"Inside."

"So then there's no need to shout, especially when I'm right here."

"'M sorry."

"I forgive you. Now, why don't you, me, and… I don't think I caught your friend's name."

"Muriel," she mumbles.

Uncle Jack sighs. "Bonesaw dear, I know we just talked about using your inside voice, but please speak up. It's unbecoming to mumble."

"Her name's Muriel," Bonesaw says at a conversational level.

"Thank you. Now why don't the three of us get started on dinner. It's about that time and I don't know about you, but I could eat a horse. Dibs on the cutting!"

He laughs at the familiar joke, and as she laughs along, a bit of tension leaves Bonesaw – It's immediately replaced by a heavier, different tension due to Jack's rapidly changing coherency, but at least he's not trying to leave the house. She still doesn't understand the new game he's playing, but at least he's playing it with her.

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"I know it's kind of random, but I miss tea parties. They were fun, and even by my standards now they weren't usually that fucked up. It was nice to sit down for tea and cookies with Siberian and whoever wanted to join us: usually the newer members and some of my creations. Shatterbird even attended every now and then. We'd just talk, pretend at being fancy, give each other over the top titles and monikers, and snack on goodies. I hate to admit it, but even with everything else, they were nice. Even the last one was mostly pretty good."



"More tea, Great Lord Slashington of the Slashington dynasty?"

"That would be lovely, First Lady Bonesaw, Mistress of Tea Ceremonies. And would any of our other lovely guests prefer a cookie? Or perhaps a scon?"

Bonesaw giggles and fills Jack's teacup with more tea. "That would be quite affectatious, Lord Slashington, and I would be remiss to ever deny such a treat."

With a pair of tongs, Jack places a cookie onto her saucer. She takes a demure bite and then dabs away the crumbs with a napkin.

"Absolutely divine, Great Lord Slashington. Berry Duchess Bethany, you simply must try one. Please say you will?"

Bethany, a fun new toy Bonesaw picked up the other day, whispers a hoarse, "Yes please," and tremblingly holds out her own saucer.

Uncle Jack tongs a cookie onto her plate and she sets it back onto the table before she can drop and break another. There are only so many breaches in decorum a tea party can allow, after all.

"Oh goodie, that makes me ever so joyful," Bonesaw cheers.

"You simply must tell us what you think of them, Duchess Bethany of the Berry Briars," Uncle Jack says. "It's an old family recipe, and I know my grandmama, the late Empress Jewel, Lady of all that is Sharp, would have been delighted to hear how you find her prized work."

Bonesaw stifles a giggle. Uncle Jack is so silly. She bought these cookies at a store earlier today, with Muriel's plastic money, and Bethany looks to know this, judging by how she looks between the cookie on her plate, its perfectly uniform peers on the serving plate, and Jack's smile. She sweats as she lifts the cookie to her mouth and takes a delicate nibble.

"It's good," she says.

"You truly think so? Oh, you honor me and my grandmama's recipe, Miss Duchess. And Lady Bonesly of the Sawed Nation? What do you think?"

Bonesaw can't hold in her giggles any longer. "You're silly, Lord of the Uncle'd Slashes. I bought these cookies!"

Uncle Jack laughs along and raises his hands in acquiesced guilt. "You got me. My grandmother isn't quite the baker she once was, being dead and all. I'm surprised the Duchess didn't realize that."

Bethany whimpers and freezes.

"Tell me, Duchess, is your palate really so unrefined as to not distinguish between store bought cookies and those made by a dead woman?" Uncle Jack asks playfully, with an undercurrent of danger.

She stammers meaninglessly and then apologizes. Bonesaw clicks her tongue at such inelegance, unbefitting a tea partier. Jack agrees, shaking his head.

"That's twice you've spurred our hospitality and treated us so poorly. Perhaps you'd like to take a hint from Monsieur Bearington of the House of Bears? He has yet to even approach insulting us in our own house." Uncle Jack turns to the fourth and final guest. "What's your secret to being such a grateful guest, Monsieur Bearly?"

The stuffed bear Bonesaw had sat up on a stool says nothing, of course. He's cute and purple.

"You don't say?" Uncle Jack jests. "Well I suppose that's what I get for bragging about your skills as a guest; you prove me a liar. That's one, but because you're French-Canadian, that's two."

The stuffed bear continues to say nothing. Uncle Jack returns his attention to Bethany. "I'm sorry to say that I don't have a shining model of behavior for you to follow, but what can you do?" He shrugs. "Now, you won't mistreat your hosts for a third time, will you, Duchess Beth and Knee?"

"NO! I promise, I won't, Lord um– Lord Slasher the um, Master of… Slash?"

Jack smiles and gestures with his knife for her to continue.

"I'm- I'm- I'm sorry I didn't um… properly appreciate your hospitality?" Bethany guesses, feeling the edge of danger. Bonesaw can smell her sweat at this point and can see her pulse hammering in her neck.

"That's good to hear, Duchess Beth of Any Baroque, but you should really be apologizing to Lady Sawbones of the Bony Surgeons Guild; it was, after all, her gift of cookies that you dismissed as being no better than a dead woman's work," Uncle Jack says with a warm smile. It's so kind of him to think about Bonesaw like that and make sure she gets recognition.

Bethany turns to Bonesaw, who smiles sweetly. Bonesaw isn't going to count whatever Bethany says as a strike against her, no matter how inelegant or against the spirit of a tea party it is. For one, she's having fun and a third strike would mean losing a guest, probably. For another, Uncle Jack really likes handing out strikes and she wouldn't want to spoil his enjoyment; it's not often enough that he joins her for these parties. And finally, because giving Bethany more time to stress before her latent passenger activates can only be a good thing.

That's why she's here as a guest and not as materials in the first place; Bonesaw and Jack want to force Bethany to trigger. Based on Bonesaw's exploration of Bethany's brain while she slept, Bethany's poised to trigger with some sort of social engineering power, either with or without a control element, based on the placement, size, and orientation of her Corona Pollentia: seventy percent sure. When Jack suggested a tea party to coax her passenger into connecting, Bonesaw jumped on it, closed Bethany's cranium, and woke her up.

It's also been nice seeing her Uncle Jack get so focused and excited about something. He stopped playing his other game when he decided to do a tea party.

So Bethany's either going to trigger and join Bonesaw's family, or die. She's not young enough to be Bonesaw's sister, but maybe she could be a fun aunt? Not one that's married to her Uncle Jack though, that would be weird, but a different sort of aunt, one that will dote on Bonesaw and protect her and always be there for her.

So when Bethany stammers out another fearful apology, Bonesaw accepts it with a smile and a sip of her tea. She goes to pour herself another cup, but the teapot is empty. Uncle Jack notices.

"Maid Muriel, we need more tea," he calls out. He gives a gentle double-clap, and Bonesaw puppets her into the room.

It's been a week since Bonesaw turned the tables on her, and despite her age, Muriel's body was well taken care of. It's how she mostly survived until now, throughout the various surgeries and augmentations. Bloated with over a dozen brewing solutions, she shambles over to the table on her three legs. Trilateral symmetry didn't do her any favors, but it was fun to program her ambulatory instincts to work with that rare body design – Everything is sadly bilateral or radial nowadays.

Bonesaw sets the teapot down near the edge of the table – on a coaster, of course – and removes the lid. A proboscis made of a section of small intestine and muscle uncurls, the end dropping into the teapot. A moment later, warm green tea starts to flow out and fill the pot.

"Oh god," Bethany whispers. Her tea cup clatters onto her saucer and she gags and heaves. "oh god oh god oh god oh god."

When the teapot is full, Muriel retracts her proboscis and shambles back to the basement to continue her fermentation and generations of chemical material. Bonesaw caps the pot and refills her own teacup. She takes a moment to add a spoonful of sugar and a dash of milk, daintily stirs without clacking spoon against cup – like a fancy lady! – and then takes a sip.

"Oh, I am so sorry," she says. "Where are my manners? Would anyone else like some more tea? Lord Slashington, of the highest order of Slashed Slashes?"

"Don't mind if I do, Lady Saw of the Guild of Sawing Saws of Bones." Uncle Jack holds out his teacup for more and Bonesaw obliges him.

"Monseuer Bearfinkle of the Bearfinkle Holdings?"

"I do believe he's still working on his first cup," says Uncle Jack. "Not a very thirsty fellow at all."

"I suppose not. Any Duchess Beth? Would you like some more tea?" Bonesaw asks.

Bethany starts to cry. "Please, no, don't make me drink that."

"Hm?" Jack questions. He takes a sip of his tea. "I'm afraid I didn't quite snatch that, Duckess. I could almost sweat I head say to you've not drink me."

Bonesaw blinks and replays his words in her mind. Upon closer inspection, she concludes that they definitely didn't make sense. Both the Lady and the Duchess look at the Lord with confusion, but where Bethany is terrified, Bonesaw is concerned.

He knows what he's doing though. He's Jack Slash, and he always knows what he's doing, even if it doesn't always look like it, so she can rest assured. And the more Bonesaw thinks about it, the more sense what he's doing makes; triggers are caused by helplessness and trauma, and information-gathering powers come from situations involving confusion and a sense of not knowing. By pretending to be incomprehensible, he's edging Bethany ever closer to triggering! And it's just after she refused tea, which must be the third offense, so that's even more terrifying!

So it's okay, and Bonesaw can relax and trust in her Uncle Jack.

"I don't– I don't– What?" Bethany asks, hyperventilating.

"She ashed you've won't tea? Goodis. Oare ngu thirdsty?." He lifts his knife to stir his tea and smirks. "Goober. There's no fear poison not goo hat for guest to you mine. Die shishus."

Bethany blanches and gags at the mention of poison. Hurriedly, she shoves a finger down her throat to try and expel what she'd already imbibed, and in the next moment Uncle Jack's head thumps against the table as he falls out of his chair. Bonesaw stands and has only enough time to take a single step toward him before he moves.

"AND THE POISON IS KNIFE!" he yells as he launches up from the floor and vaults over the table, knife in hand, smile on his face. Everything clatters and spills, and most of the tea set Bonesaw had scrounged together shatters against the floor. He tackles the stuffed bear and stabs his knife into it, again and again. "BREED YOU SON OF A BITCH! I TOLD YOU NOT TO BRING THESE THINGS TO THE FUCKING DINNER TABLE!"

Bonesaw gasps and covers her mouth with her hands. He just… Uncle Jack just said bad words. Uncle Jack never says bad words! He gets mad when other people say bad words around her because she's a good little girl who shouldn't be exposed to crass language. But he just said the b-word and the f-word, and Bonesaw doesn't know how to act about that. Does she chastize him like she would anyone else? Does she accept that they're maybe not bad words right now? Does she pretend she didn't hear them? Does she ask Uncle Jack why he said them?

Not knowing what to do about the bad words Jack just said, she does nothing as blood suddenly stains Bethany's shirt, spilling crimson across creme cotton. She clutches at the wound and falls to the floor with a pained cry. The wound isn't immediately fatal, but without intervention Bethany will mostly likely bleed out in six minutes. Bonesaw could save her and give them another chance to force her trigger, or hurry up and harvest her for materials while the meat is freshest, but she does nothing. She stands, hovering over her chair and doing nothing because she doesn't know what to do to be good.

When Uncle Jack is done stabbing the teddy bear into a million pieces, he stands back up and wipes his brow clean of sweat. He's smiling. Then he looks around, sees the wrecked tea set, dying woman, and shocked niece. He frowns and looks down at the wreckage of fluff at his feet. He blinks and then looks around again, visibly confused. When he looks again at Bonesaw, he plasters on a smile that must be fake, despite how easy it looks.

"Well, that was a fun way to end the evening, don't you think?" He chuckles.

"Uncle Jack said a bad word," Bonesaw whispers.

"Did I? Are you sure?"

Bonesaw nods. "Two of them."

"I'm sure it sounded that way, but Bonesaw, I don't say naughty words. Igbh wouldnght beu roght tagh glrsh ang einf grafilf." His words dissolve into nonsensical gurgles and groans, said with a confident and reassuring cadence. If Bonesaw had overheard these sounds in isolation, she would assume they're another language. But she knows that despite any meaning Uncle Jack is trying or not trying to infuse into these sounds, they are just noise: meaningless and terrifying. It's like a very confident baby's babbling.

She doesn't understand him at all and she's getting the creeping suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her Uncle Jack, but what that could be, she doesn't– The car crash! He suffered a brain injury! He said that he was fine, and she believed him, so she never followed up to make sure things were fine; the closest she came to checking his brain was when she connected his optic nerve with a new eye.

He stops blabbering. "Abluh?"

"I need to take a look at your brain, Uncle Jack," she tells him. She hopes it's just his speech that's not working properly and not his language centers. She hopes he can understand her.

He makes another short noise that tells her nothing.

She approaches and he continues to babble reassuringly. When she doesn't stop, he takes a step back. He's broken or breaking and she has to fix him. She can't let him break and become just meat. Not him. Not Uncle Jack. She has to fix him.

So she doesn't let him flee. She jabs at him with a needle and he dodges, and she tries again and he dodges again. She sics her spider boxes onto him and he goes down like a baby deer as they paralyze him. Bonesaw pauses. That was too easy, far too easy. Which means… he wants this, right? If he wasn't okay with this, he wouldn't have let her catch him, regardless of the cursory dodges; it's all part of his game. That much she can grasp.

Bonesaw puts him under and splits his head with a handmade bone saw. She opens him up and checks for the… damage. Oh geez. Bits of his frontal lobe and pollentia have necrotized. His gemma looks untouched, without obvious damage, but it's not as active as it should be. With her electroreception, she can see as it barely flickers with activity.

This is bad. It's not the worst she's seen, and not bad enough she can't fix, but it's worse than his brain should be. Did her fixes not stick? She hasn't cracked his head open since the car crash; has the damage been progressing since then? How much has this been affecting him? Memory and judgement are mostly controlled by the frontal lobe, so could it be this whole time that he's not been playing a game but–

No. No, he's Jack Slash. He's invincible. He's taken on some of the strongest parahumans in the country and led others of similar strength, and he's come out on top every single time. He's not going to be actually hurt from a car crash, and even if he is, that's why she's around; she's going to fix him and make him better and make everything alright again and her family will be okay and full and–

Everything will be okay. She just has to fix him. And lucky lucky, the parts of his brain that are most damaged are present in their guest.

Bonesaw gets to work. She grabs at the still dying woman's body, ignoring her limp struggles. Bonesaw cuts into her skull to–

The not-tree grows. Thanks to the help of Structure, it grows faster than any of its kind has ever grown before. Taller and deeper too. Its roots deepen and break through impossible rock to reach the reservoirs it had only heard legends of from the eldest of its kind. It gobbles up nutrients from the ground below and chokes the sky from above, reaching up until there is no more air. When it releases seeds, none grow. The ground below it is blighted and dead. The jungle it grew from is no more. Only it remains. As it sickens with isolation, Structure communicates, and the impossible, alien intensity of that communication peels the bark from the not-tree's trunk. Forces it could never comprehend assault it as sheer collateral.

Continue?

Structure's communication makes no sense, but it makes perfect sense too. It's not right, but the not-tree understands. The scents and chemicals the not-tree knows as information is there, but there is so much more that it cannot hope to understand. And yet somehow, even as it struggles to move nutrients to heal itself from the radiation, it does understand. Structure's progenitor-self-hub accepts and returns the communication.

Abandon.

Structure watches as the not-tree collapses under its own weight and rips up the planet's surface as its egregious weight pulls at the tectonic plate it rested upon. Bits of the planet's crust are launched into space from the force of the fall, and a cloud of dust begins to choke the planet. Structure searches through other worlds for yet another host.

Bonesaw's bone saw slips, ripping hair and scalp and jamming. She sits up from her slumped position and blinks away confusion. She saw something. Something familiar. She gasps in realization. Bethany triggered! That's so fun, she's so excited to examine the data the once-VCR recorded. With just a tape as a harddrive it's not likely to be rich data, but all data is good data.

The blood on the floor quivers, and then starts to bounce and wave, crests and troughs meeting each other to become peaks and valleys, before those peaks suddenly solidify, spike, and split into needle-like brambles. Pinpricks open on Bethany's skin as the blood inside her does the same, branching sharpness extruding from her, and Bonesaw has to scramble crabwalkily to avoid getting impaled.

She triggered with some kind of hemokinesis, rather than an information gathering power, which is surprising. The passenger's means and behaviors are elusive and hard to comprehend, but Bonesaw was confident in her hypothesis. Did her passenger see that Bethany was going to die and changed its conditions so as to grant powers – any powers at all? Does it have that much autonomy and flexibility? Why could this one force a connection when other latent parahumans would just die? Was Bonesaw wrong in her speculation? Can–

She rolls to avoid the bramble of blood rolling over her as it grows her way. Bethany is crouching, pain and terror brilliant on her face as she sloppily directs her new ability. Like all new triggers, she's nothing but instinct; she hasn't learned finesse or discovered the intricacies of her abilities – That makes her less dangerous, but only by degrees. The blood bramble smashes into and through the wall as Bonesaw dodges again. It's growing, and Bonesaw can't tell if that's because there is more blood than before, or if the bramble is hollow now: blood generation or cleverness? Another infantile swing punches a hole in another wall, seeing Bonesaw cling to the ceiling like a gecko.

Bonesaw needs to put her down so she can try to decipher why Bethany's power manifested this way. A spider box falls on Bethany from the ceiling, administering a debilitating neurotoxin.

The blood bramble stills, then falls to the floor inert. Whether this means Bethany will die of blood loss or if her passenger will protect her from that due to the nature of her powers, Bonesaw does not know. She doesn't care if she dies either; Bethany's stupid flailing hit Uncle Jack and it's– It's not good. It's–

He's been mangled, and the only things keeping him in one piece are the augments she'd already installed. The body isn't what worries her though, it's his brain. She left it exposed and vulnerable, and that meanie took advantage. A branch of blood got inside his cranium and scramble-stabbed parts of it. What was minor necrosis is now major brain trauma and Bonesaw isn't sure if she can–

She can fix this. She has to be able to fix this. She has to fix this. She has to make him better. He has to be okay. He will be okay. He's Uncle Jack; he's not going to be done in by a stupid new trigger meanie. As long as she fixes him, he'll be okay and because he'll be okay, that means she can fix this.

"It's gonna be okay," she whispers, unsure of if it's to herself or to him. "I'll make it all better, I promise. It'll be okay. I can fix this. You'll be okay."

She mumbles as she works, her mouth keeping her hands moving. His brain dies four times over the next hour, and she pulls him back from across the veil each time. She can't help but feel like she's losing more and more of him with every pass. She doesn't let it stay her hands, refusing to let the loss happen. She can't lose him. She can't let her family die. Not again. And eventually, she does it. She's done. She doesn't have to say goodbye.

She blinks away the fuzziness in her mind and pulls her hands out of the mess she made. The disassembled remains of a microwave and radio are scattered around the pair. She barely remembers making what she made, but it's working, whatever it is. Artificial neurons – made of what looks like ionized couch fibers and toothpaste – carry signals from the healthy remnants of his original brain; they're shoddy and she'll have to replace them before they fail. Four small contraptions sit nestled in his brain matter, anchored to the skull, and she's not entirely sure what they do, exactly. She's pretty sure they deal with locomotion, memory, language, and… something else. It's built against his corona pollentia. She'd have to disassemble it to understand the mechanism behind it, but she thinks it's reinforcing his passenger's connection. Did it try to leave him when he died? If it did, it looks like she leashed it back, but it remains to be seen how successful she was. It doesn't look like it's actively failing, at least.

She's done. He's as fixed as she can make him. She replaces the missing part of his skull, then falls back onto her bum to wait for him to wake up. She wishes she had something to tinker with to occupy her hands, but she disassembled the meanie who caused all of this during her fugue. And that's what it was, she's realizing: a fugue. It's been years since she'd lost track of what she's doing and entered a fugue state, but that's exactly what just happened. If this worked, she'll have to thank her passenger, as unlikely as it is to hear her. She only has a vague understanding of half of the stuff she put in his brain, which means it's unlikely she would have been able to make it if she were in the pilot's seat.

She waits. His heartbeat and breathing are steady, but he doesn't wake up, so she waits. There's nothing she can do other than wait – she can't leave him, can't run off and abandon him, can't be alone – so that's what she does.

When the police come by, red and blue lights flashing obnoxiously, she lets out a killer plague she'd kept in her tertiary kidney – one she's absolutely certain Uncle Jack is immunized against – to make them leave them alone. The town goes silent and still after that – dead – and she continues to wait.

Eventually, late into the night, Uncle Jack's eyes open. Bonesaw holds her breath as he sits up, not sure if she should believe her eyes, waiting for him to be normal. He blinks as he looks around, and his eyes settle on her. He smiles and her heart hitches.

He doesn't say anything, just stares at her, and she eventually vomits the words, "Are you okay?"

"Okay?" he asks thoughtfully. He grins. "No, I'm Jake."

She blinks. "Huh?"

He chuckles. "I'm just messing with you, puppet. I'm fine."

She watches him stand and stretch. He's still torn to bits, but her previous work is good and able to keep him ambulatory despite the damage. Hesitantly, she mirrors him, standing and brushing off her dress. There are stains that will never come out, and tears that aren't worth mending; they'll both need new clothes before they can go anywhere.

"We both need new clothes," Uncle Jack says, picking at the stained, shredded fabric that was once a shirt. "Then we should be heading onward. No rush on that, at least: a ghost town this size shouldn't attract attention too quickly."

"I'm sorry," she says. "I know you don't like me using plagues but–"

"You thought it was necessary," he interrupts, "and you did it for me, so I'm not mad."

"You're not?" she asks.

"I'm not. You did good, kid," he says in a gruff voice. "Now let's check out the neighbor's place, see if we can rely on their kindness to at least dress ourselves."

She lets herself smile. He seems like he's at least mostly back to normal, and she feels herself relax a smidgen.

"I'm back to normal," he says out of nowhere, and she blinks.

She's quiet as she follows him into a neighbor's house. They look through closets and dressers for new outfits. She finds a nice yellow sundress that should fit her, though she'll need a shower before she's willing to try it on. The two shower together, wearing bathing suits scrounged from closets. She helps pick splinters and fibers out of his wounds, and he helps wash her hair. She lets herself relax into his touch. It's nice to be taken care of.

"This is nice, isn't it?" he asks.

"I… guess so?" she answers. "I'm glad you're okay."

"I'm not okay, I'm Jake," he repeats. "I thought I told you that earlier."

She cracks half a smile. She wishes he wouldn't joke like this right now, but that he is is… it must be good, right?

"I'm sorry," he says with a sigh. "I know I shouldn't joke, but I just want you to know everything is okay now, alright?"

"...Thank you, Uncle Jack," she says. She feels weird.

"Jack?" he asks, sounding genuinely confused. "My name is Jake."

She blinks. "What?"

"It's short for Jacob. Heh, did you think my name was Jack this whole time?" He boops her in the nose. "Now who's being silly?"

She stares up at him; now she's the genuinely confused one.

"Jack is just what Kurt called me, as a joke," he explains. "My real name is Jake. I can't believe I never told you that."

He has to be joking, right?

"Gotcha!" he says with a sudden jerky motion. "That was a joke."

"Oh. Oh!" She laughs at his joke.

He stares at her oddly, like he's waiting for her to do something. She doesn't know what to do, so she stares up at him just the same. Is he going to– He gets back to washing her hair, helping the red run out. She wants to relax into it and enjoy the closeness again, so she shoves down that kernel of wrong that's sprouted and grown since Uncle Jack awoke.

"Something wrong, puppet?" Uncle Jack asks as they finish up and dry themselves off. "You seem a bit… subdued."

"I'm–"

"Ah! I know! You need to tinker. It's been too long since you've gotten the chance to really stretch your legs, hasn't it? How about we find you some parahumans to play with? I'm sure we can find one or two for you to make into art."

She blinks. That wasn't what she was going to say, at all, but "That does sound nice," she admits with a burgeoning smile.

"Then let's find ourselves a ride and blow this popsicle stand. There are plenty more popsicle stands to see and blow," he declares.

"Okay, Uncle Jack," she says.

Dry, they separate to get dressed. She slips the dress on over her head and pulls her hair out from inside, letting it bounce across her shoulders. Then she puts on knee socks and her trusty pair of Mary Janes. She leaves the bathroom and joins Uncle Jack in the hall, ready to go, but her brain skips a beat when she sees how he's dressed.

"Uncle Jack, you're wearing a sweater-vest?!" she asks incredulously scandalized.

He looks down at the zig-zag patterned sweater-vest he just put on over top of his button up shirt, then at her. "Yes. Why?"

She gapes, struggling and failing to find words. He's never worn a sweater-vest before in his life. He's almost never buttoned his shirt all the way either, but he has it buttoned to the top now. It's surreal seeing him dressed like this, casually and not for a bit, and it sends her head spinning.

"I think it looks snazzy, don't you?" he asks with a grin.

She lets out a confused, stressed whine.

"Come on, Bonesaw, let's blow this popsicle stand. There are plenty more popsicle stands to see and blow."

She doesn't move. He clears his throat, threatening a three-count, and she bustles into movement like a good girl. A good girl doesn't tempt a three count.

They walk outside together to find a car, and luckily the keys are in the one in the neighbor's drive. Uncle Jack pops the trunk so they can load their belongings – mostly Bonesaw's meager lab – inside. Muriel died to the plague she'd released, Bonesaw realizes; it's a bit ironic that the tool she'd made to brew things like plagues died to one, and it's a shame, but not much of a loss. She can make another, easily; Muriel was just a tool for her art. Still, she gets Uncle Jack's help to empty her of her chemical and bacterial bladders and puts them in jars and puts the jars in an ice cooler for later. Waste not, want not, after all.

"Ready to go?" Uncle Jack asks as he closes the trunk. "We're not forgetting anything, are we?"

Bonesaw feels better after loading everything up. Even if he's dressed weird, he's still her Uncle Jack. She puts a finger to her cheek as she pretends to think about his question. "Hmm… Nope!"

"Then let's get on the road. I'm thinking… Georgia. It's been a while since we've been there, hasn't it?"

"We were there just a few months ago," she reminds him.

"Oh. Hm."

"...We can go to Georgia," she says when he suggests nothing else and the pause goes on for too long.

"That's a marvelous idea," he says. "Let's do that. Let's do that."

They climb into the car and buckle up.

"So where to?" Uncle Jack asks.

Bonesaw blinks. They just decided, didn't they?

Uncle Jack laughs. "Kidding, I'm kidding!"

Bonesaw laughs along, relieved. He starts the car, puts it in drive, and idles directly into a mailbox.

"Heh, sorry, the wheel got away from me there," Uncle Jack explains easily. He accelerates over the mailbox with a lurching bump, and drives directly across the road and into another mailbox.

"Uncle Jack?" Bonesaw voices with concern.

"Are we sure this car is working right? It doesn't seem to want to turn quite right."

"Uhm. I think you're supposed to put your hands on the wheel?" Bonesaw says. She's decreasingly certain that that's how that works; it feels too obvious for that to be the problem and for Jack to miss it.

"Ah! Right-o!" He puts his hands on the wheel and pauses. His eyes pinch with intense thought.

"...Maybe I should drive," Bonesaw suggests.

"No," he barks. "It's the adult's job to drive, and the child's job to ride along."

"Okay. If you're sure."

"A good girl shouldn't doubt her uncle like that," he chastizes mildly.

"Sorry, Uncle Jack," she says, feeling genuinely awful.

He puts the car in reverse, drives straight back over the mailbox they previously ran over, and continues on into the garage door.

She wonders if she should suggest taking the wheel and steering for him.

"I'm the adult, and that means I drive," he says in response to nothing.

"Okay. I–"

"We'll talk about it when you're older. For now, be a good girl, be quiet, and let me concentrate."

She quiets, though she didn't say anything. At least they're wearing their seat belts. Uncle Jack licks his lips, wraps his fingers around the steering wheel like he's choking it, and turns the wheel. He grins.

They're not moving.

"Um–"

"I know, poppet. I know. Just… give me a moment." The car accelerates, turning now to avoid the twice-flattened mailbox by driving over the lawn instead. It's going well until they hit a car parked on the road.

She doesn't say anything.

"You know what, sweetie? I just had a great idea," Uncle Jack says. "Why don't I teach you how to drive? I was about your age when King taught me, so what do you say?"

Bonesaw blinks. "Didn't you just say I shouldn't?"

"Hm? No. Are you feeling alright? Cellular Structure didn't hurt you, did she?" He sounds genuinely confused and concerned, enough to make her wonder how much of the conversation she imagined.

"No! I'm fine, I just–"

"Alright then, let's switch seats and we'll start your first driving lesson."

He gets out before she can respond, leaving his door open. The car is still in drive, and the only reason it's not moving forward without his foot on the brake is the car they've already run into. She unbuckles, climbs over the center console, closes the driver's door, and re-buckles. Uncle Jack gets in the passenger seat.

"Don't forget to buckle up," she reminds him.

"Right-o," he says, doing so. "First thing you have to do is adjust your seat and your mirrors." He tells her how and what the right values are, and she does so; when she can touch the pedals and see the right things, he continues. "Next, you'll want to press the brake and move the prndl into drive."

She looks down at the prndl. "It's already in drive."

"Okay move it into park." She does so. "Okay now you'll want to press the brake and move the prndl into drive."

…She does so.

"Now, slowly take your foot off the brake and move it to the accelerator, but don't press it."

She does so.

"There we go. You're driving."

"…We're not moving."

He blinks and looks around. "Did you take us out of park?"

"Yes."

"And you're not pressing the brake, are you? That's the left pedal."

"No, just the accelerator."

"The emergency brake isn't on, is it?"

"I don't think so?"

"Well, is it?"

"I don't know what that is. Where is that?"

"Right here." He taps a handle in the center console, next to the prndl. "Hm. It doesn't look like it's engaged. Maybe it's an issue with the engine?"

"I think it's because we're driving into a car, maybe?" Bonesaw gently suggests.

He blinks again, as if just seeing the car he drove into only a few minutes ago. "Ah. That might be it. Good eye. In that case, press the brake and move the prndl to reverse – That's the 'R'."

Bonesaw puts it into reverse, takes her foot off the brake, and the car slowly back up out of the other car's side.

"Okay, now stop; press the brake," Uncle Jack says when they're a few feet back, into the yard. "Shift the prndl back into drive and turn the wheel to steer us past the car you hit."

She follows his instruction and inches past the parked car and onto the street. She turns to move them down the road and continues onward, slowly. Jack praises her and she lets herself smile. He grabs the road atlas from under the seat and directs her out of town, toward the back roads. She doesn't go above twenty miles per hour for the entire drive and is unable to shake the terrible feeling that creeps up her back to settle around her neck.

Author's notes: Jack slash teaching Riley to drive is my favorite scene in this entire story. I had so much fun writing it, and it makes me laugh with every reread. I hope it made you all laugh too, now that we don't have to worry about Jack being broken or anything; Riley fixed him, so he's fine and everything's alright and lighthearted and easy and okay again : )
also if you like this, i have a ko-fi. Feel free to tip me a couple bucks, if you're so inclined.

Click to shrink...

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The first time I lied to him was so fri– It was fucking stupid. It wasn't some big betrayal or me striking out for independence or anything like that. I still loved him then, and I still thought I needed him. I barely even had a reason to do it, honestly. I wasn't pushing boundaries or teen rebelling, I just… needed a break."



That choking feeling of bad-weirdness didn't let up over the next weeks. If anything, it got worse. Every moment Bonesaw spent with Uncle Jack – so, every moment – made her feel like she was chewing aluminum foil. It was becoming increasingly difficult to have a conversation with him; every time she tried, she came out the other end more confused than ever, having apparently imagined entire stretches of conversation. She checked herself over multiple times to make sure she actually wasn't hurt like Uncle Jack kept suggesting, and even though she finds nothing wrong every time, every time she has the urge to check again.

She's going mad, and she's not sure if she's dragging Uncle Jack with her or if he's pushing her towards it. She doesn't want to know. She just wants her family back.

"…and so there I am, one foot stuck in a toilet, desperately trying to hold the woman's head still so I can light the candles before Prowler opens the door – and he's about ready to break it down because my falsetto is great but I'm not the best impressionist, so he knew something was wrong – because remember, it's his birthday and– Bonesaw? Bonesaw, are you listening?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah. Prowler's birthday, head cake, fake voice." Bonesaw gestures with her fork for him to continue, then goes back to stirring her collard greens.

"I'm not sure I like your tone, young lady."

She glances up and he's frowning at her, hurt. She shrinks in her seat. "I'm sorry Uncle Jack." She makes herself brighten. "You can keep telling your story, I'd love to hear the rest of it."

"What story?" he asks.

Her bright facade cracks on the inside, held together visibly only due to her tinkering. "The one about turning Prowler's girlfriend's head into a cake for his birthday?"

"Why would I tell you that story? You were there for that. You helped with the fondant, remember?"

"Oh yeah, I remember now. Silly me." She bonks herself on the head cutely, at odds with the scream ripping through her brain, the scream that's been growing in volume since Bethany.

He gives her an odd look, then tut-tuts as he shakes his head. "You should stop playing with your food. I know you don't like spinach, but a growing girl needs her veggies."

She stares down at her plate, then shoots a glance to the can her veggies came from. Collard greens. Not spinach. The screaming gets ever so slightly louder. She scoops and swallows the slimy, stringy slop without chewing, shoveling the food into her mouth. When she's done, a few seconds later, she asks to be excused.

"I suppose you may," Uncle Jack says. He grins sharply. "If you don't want ice cream."

"Thank you." She stands and immediately walks into the other room.

"You have to put your dishes away, dear," Uncle Jack calls from the dining room barely a moment later.

"I'll do it later," she calls back tightly.

"Bonesaw," he warns.

"Later."

"One…"

She squeezes her eyes shut real hard, until she hears a roaring in her ears.

"Two."

She goes slack and re-enters the dining room and forces an embarrassed smile. "Sorry. I'll do it now."

"Do what now?"

She stares at him, face frozen. "…Put my dishes away?"

"Good girl, staying on top of your chores. I know they're not exciting, but you are the newest member of our family."

His praise feels like nails on a chalkboard. That's never been a rule in their family, that the newest does chores… right? Was it? She can't remember. Either way, she hurriedly gathers her plate, cup, and the scattered cans that once held their lunch, takes them to the kitchen and rinses them in the sink. Honestly she's not sure what to do after that, having never washed dishes before in her life, so she leaves them there like that.

She can feel Uncle Jack's eyes on her through the doorway, so she goes back to the living room where she has at least marginally more privacy. She breathes. She just breathes and stares at the wall. The wall doesn't move. The wall doesn't change. The wall stays the same and doesn't surprise her or make her feel like she's losing her mind or–

"There you are, poppyseed," Uncle Jack says as he limps into the room. She's been working hard to fix him, but the heroes have been hotter on their trail than usual since Bethany's town and she hasn't had much time – what time she could spare was more focused on keeping his brain implants working. "Whatcha thinking so hard about?"

"Can I go out?" she accidentally asks.

"What would you want to do that for?"

"...It's been a few days since the heroes found us, and we have some breathing room. I was thinking I could go into town and get some things so I could fix you up?" She wasn't thinking that at all, but it's a good idea. The screaming noise intensifies as she hopes he doesn't call her on the lie; even if she'll do it, she wasn't thinking it. Please, just don't call her on it. Please.

Mercifully, impossibly, he just smiles and says, "Good thinking, poppet. You're always looking out for your dear Uncle Jack. I appreciate that. I think everyone in our family appreciates how much you care for us."

…

…

…

It's not a long walk into town: a small, one stoplight sort of place. Bonesaw is grateful to have the chance to breathe and sort out her thoughts, and thankful for the disguise she wears. She meanders. She knows she should find someone about the same size as Uncle Jack so she can easily transplant the muscles to fix him up. She knows she should do what she said she wanted to do and then return.

But…

She passes a park and sees kids her age, playing, and can't help but stop. She doesn't mean to, but it's like her legs are being controlled by someone else and refusing any commands that move her away from the park. There is no other parahuman controlling her legs though, she's certain of that. She'd know if there were. Still…

She comes to a stop under the shade of a pine tree, its low branches trimmed away. There are almost twenty people at the park. Parents – mommies, mostly – are grouped in threes and fours at benches, relaxing and chatting while keeping eyes on their children at play. A couple of the younger kids are in the sandbox, making, flattening, and remaking piles. Another three are on a swing set, one pushing the other two.

Most of the kids though, the older ones nearer her age, seem to be screaming and running around, chasing each other. Are they playing a game? It doesn't look like a complicated game. There looks to be one special person who gets to chase all the rest. When the chaser catches and touches another, the touched person stops fleeing and starts chasing.

It's weird though. It looks like the game Sibby liked to play with people, but the chaser doesn't take anything or bite anyone, even though that would help the previous chaser avoid the new one. There's no blood at all, Bonesaw notices. Weird. The chaser touches, but that's all. The stakes for the game look to be becoming the chaser, but that's the one with the power, so why would anyone flee? They should want to be the one with the power, right? There don't seem to be any ill effects of being the chaser.

It doesn't make sense.

Bonesaw considers taking a closer look, to gather experiential data instead of simple observational data. But how does she join? If she starts fleeing, the chaser doesn't have the knowledge to prioritize chasing her over another. The chaser wouldn't even know to chase her at all; if the chaser could chase anyone, one should have gone after one of the kids in the sandbox by now, since they're immobile or unsuspecting. Bonesaw can't just start chasing someone, can she? There's only one chaser, and if she's not that, then her chasing would mean nothing. Maybe she could touch the chaser, and then start chasing?

She nods at the plan. It should work as a way to join in. Bonesaw runs into the group, straight at the chaser. The boy sees her when she's no less than ten feet away and freezes. She slows to a halt and taps him.

"Okay, now you run," she says.

"Who are you?" he asks instead of running.

"I'm the chaser. So you're supposed to run, and I'm supposed to catch you." Right? Isn't that how this works?

"You're not playing with us," he says, insulted.

The other kids congregate around Bonesaw and start to talk. Mostly they ask each other questions about who she is and if anyone knows her.

"She's weird," one says.

"She's so old," says another.

"Is this stranger danger?"

"She's ruining our game."

And on the comments go. When the consensus is reached that no one knows or particularly likes her, they start to move away from her. Bonesaw smiles. Finally, they flee. She runs one down, a different boy than the one she took the designation from and touches him. He stumbles to the ground, then gets up and turns on her.

"What'd you do that for?! Jerk!"

"What a creep!"

"She was watching us. Creep! Creeper!"

"Creeper, creeper," one starts to chant and the others join in.

Bonesaw stares at them uncomprehendingly. These aren't the same shouts from earlier, and there's much more cohesion and unity than the game's previous chaos.

"You're playing wrong," she says, but no one listens. She frowns and stomps her foot. "You're not playing this game right. Play it right!"

They continue to chant at and ignore her. She grits her teeth, not understanding why they won't do what they were just doing. She didn't break the rules, and if she did it was barely. She didn't even hurt anyone that bad. No one is getting any help, so why does it matter that she joined in?

She gasps in realization. This is just like what Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer went through. She's about to show them why it's not okay to bully someone just for being different when a woman comes over and calls for the kids to stop. They scatter and slowly group up elsewhere, casting glances at her.

"Hey sweetie, I don't think I've seen you around here before," the woman says, squatting down to get on Bonesaw's level.

"I'm new in town," she explains.

"Oh, well welcome. My name is Clarise; what's yours?"

Bonesaw knows she can't say 'Bonesaw.' That tends to not go well. So she says the second name that comes to mind, the same one she fell back on with Muriel as well: "Riley."

"Where's your mama, Riley?"

Be a good girl. "…She's dead."

Clarise blinks. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"It's okay. It was a while ago. Thank you though."

"What about your dad? Is he here?"

Just let me die. Please. "He died first."

Clarise looks panicked now, even though I'm not doing anything to her. "Who takes care of you then? Somebody has to."

"My Uncle J-ake does. Uncle Jake took me in when I was little."

"And where is he?" she asks with audible relief. She stands and looks around. "Is he here?"

"He's at home."

"He left you here?"

"No, I walked."

"You came here alone?"

"Mhm! I like parks; they're fun. Or at least they're supposed to be. This one hasn't been much fun at all." She scuffs the ground with her shoe. Sometimes parks have bunnies and squirrels, which are cute, but the woods are better for that, and zoos are even better than the woods, usually; they have more diversity in bigger animals and they're so kindly caged. This park just has meanies.

"Why don't we get you home, then? I'm sure he's worried about you disappearing like that."

Clarise stands and holds out her hand for Bonesaw to take, and the choking feeling suddenly returns. Bonesaw didn't realize it had left her.

"No!" she shouts. "I'm not supposed to go places with strangers." A lie. No one cares if Bonesaw is alone with someone strange; usually the opposite is what causes concern.

"I really think we should get you home, sweetie. You shouldn't be out without supervision."

She reaches for Bonesaw and she dodges out of her way. Clarise reaches again and Bonesaw dodges again and– It clicks! This is the game! The other kids said Bonesaw was too old to play with them, so that must mean she's playing with this adult!

Just as soon as Bonesaw realizes this, Clarise huffs and leaves, and Bonesaw's smile falls. They weren't playing, it seems. Or!, – she smiles again – maybe she was trying to steal the designation from Bonesaw so she could be the chaser? Bonesaw was the last one to touch the designated chaser.

She runs up and taps Clarise on her back. She stumbles forward a step, and turns to Bonesaw. An angry look passes over her face and she leaves, quicker than before. She's not chasing Bonesaw. No one is. And now she's not allowed to chase anyone else.

After a few minutes of standing there in the field, staring at nothing much at all, she returns to her place under the pine to watch the other kids play. It's not as fun this time, and the group who was playing chase has moved on to a different game. Bonesaw doesn't bother trying to decipher the rules. She knows she won't be allowed to play anyway.

Twenty minutes later, a man stops next to Bonesaw.

"Riley, right?" he asks.

She looks up at him. He's dressed in blue with a bulky vest and a belt of gadgets: a policeman.

"I got a tip that you were here unsupervised. You should know that's illegal."

"It is?" she responds obligatorily as she takes further stock of him.

"Mhm. City ordinance says minors need to be supervised by their legal guardian, to keep you safe. It's a five hundred dollar fine or six months in jail, abandoning a kid like you like this."

"Oh," she says. He's about the right height for what she needs, though it's hard to judge muscle definition and quality through his current clothes.

"Now, you seem like an alright kid, so I'd be willing to let your parents off with a warning, but I need to escort you home."

She stares blankly at him, wondering if he knows how funny this is.

He frowns. "Riley, it's either that, or I'll have to take you to the station and we can wait for your mom and dad to pick you up there. And I don't want to throw the book at them, but my Sergeant isn't quite as understanding. He's all about making sure negligent parents know what the cost is. So I think it's best you let me take you home and have a talk with your parents, okay?"

She smiles up at the current owner of Uncle Jack's new legs. "Okie dokie! We can go home and talk to Uncle Jack if you want."

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"The last time Jack… The last… I… I'm sorry. I don't want to talk about that."



Bonesaw works quietly, suturing Uncle Jack's arm closed. He cut himself when they were introducing themselves to the other campers at the campground, and she knows that that means something. Something important. She continues her stitching.

"You know, it's a shame we're not in Montana," Uncle Jack says. "You can really see the stars out there."

Her face holds a smile because she doesn't know what else to put on it. Even though she feels like she should rather pout, she's with her Uncle Jack – with family – and that's supposed to be happy. That's supposed to make her happy. She's supposed to smile. So she smiles.

"Not like here. Too much light pollution to see any around here. Wait, no, I think I can make out one." He points at it and tears the stitch loose.

"That's the sun," Bonesaw murmurs, not bothering to tell him to look away. There are plenty of other eyes around here that she can use to fix his if he burns his retinas again.

"The sun's a star," Uncle Jack says smugly, like it's some grand revelation. "It's a big one too. The biggest one in the world."

He lowers his arm and she starts to cut the aborted stitches free so she can try again. He starts to fidget with his butterfly knife, and it mixes well with the background noise of the forested campground: crows cawing, bugs chirping, squirrels chattering, and bare branches scraping against each other in the wind.

The knife clatters as he drops it. Bonesaw glances at it and then him. He doesn't seem to have noticed it left his hand; his fingers continue to twitch in the familiar pattern, spinning an absent knife. It's scary, but not in the right way. Jack Slash isn't supposed to be scary like this. He's not supposed to drop his knife.

She pulls the last of the ruined stitch from his arm and smiles over a suppressed sigh. She's fixed him so much lately and it's getting boring. She hasn't had a chance to let loose and make any art; ever since the tea party, she's really only had the time and opportunity to tinker on Uncle Jack and herself, and that's almost exclusively to pull them back into working order just in time for Uncle Jack to antsily declare they're going out to find new family and get himself hurt in the introduction, starting the cycle anew.

He's not right anymore and she can't figure out what's wrong.

"You know, this reminds me of when I was young. I was just starting out– Or, no, it was before then. I hadn't even joined the Nine yet," he says, still spinning a dropped knife.

She hums, just making noise because that's what she's supposed to do when he talks.

"I was cutting up my dad too," he says wistfully.

She pauses. His… dad? Uncle Jack has a dad?

"I guess I never mentioned him. Not the funnest time for this one, you see? I'd just realized everything was fine when it was supposed to be broken. It's not fair; nothing is the way it should be. It was all right as rain and wrong because of it. My dad was so angry at me. I don't know if I'd ever seen him angry before then. So I picked up my knife and I cut him."

Bonesaw blinks, uncomprehending.

"I guess you don't call me 'dad' though, not like I did him," Jack says. "You're not allowed to call me daddy by the way. There's no need to think about your dad, okay puppet? Uncle is good: close, but not too close."

She… Uncle Jack is being weird. He's playing his new game of nonsense. He's not… Bonesaw re-sheathes her scalpel in her finger and picks back up the sewing kit she found to restart the sutures. For not the first time, she misses her real tools, broken or lost in fights, unreplaced and unrepaired. All she has left is the scalpel that rests in her index finger.

"I always liked kids. Never wanted to be a dad though. Too much work, and I could never coach little league. What is that even? Basketball? Tennis? I don't actually know. I was homeschooled: never got out to play sports with the other kiddies. But an uncle? Now that's where it's at: all of the fun, none of the responsibility. Bonesaw's a good replacement for Nicholas, don't you think? She's got potential."

Bonesaw continues to work despite the rising tide of noise in her head. Just one stitch after the other, and then, eventually, Uncle Jack will be fixed and things will be normal and everything will be alright and her family will come back together.

"Another forever-child, like those boys from that book. Would that make me Captain Fishhook or Peter, do you think? If I'm Hook, you can be gay cook with a lisp. What was his name? Sméagol? Bonesaw is more fun though. She's mine in a way Nicholas can never be. He was already… complete, when I met him. I can guide him, and we're buddies, but it's the difference between… buying art and painting something yourself. Nicholas is fun, don't get me wrong, but I made Bonesaw."

Just one stitch, and then the next. Bonesaw closes the gash in his arm and then moves to the next. His forearm's sub-dermal mesh is ruined. When did she last replace this? She can't remember; her last month has been a flurry of the same work repeated. Bonesaw starts to pull the skin up to get at it.

"I always wanted to think of you as my magnum opus," he continues. "My greatest project. I conceived you at your beginning, and I never let you go. I even named you. When I was done with you, you were going to be something irrevocable, something that I could unleash and have everything break like it's supposed to. You were supposed to be something that nothing could recover from."

He chuckles depreciably and Bonesaw has to purposefully keep her hands steady.

"But you were never finished," he says coldly. "You never broke quite right. You broke, of course. I broke you again and again, piece by piece, and eventually I didn't have to break you anymore; you would do it yourself. But you never broke right. You never saw things how I see them. You think you do. You'd say you do. But I know you. I know everything about you. I can see into your soul, and there's one difference between us, my sweet summertime~ bap-bap-bahhh."

"Stop," Bonesaw breathes. A whisper as she fails to pull the sub-dermal mesh free: it catches on muscle and she can't bear to rip it out. She can't hurt her family.

"You always wanted to make everything better. I wish it was your passenger to blame, but that's putting the cart before the horse that swallowed the… Oh wait, she's dead of course. Heh. You could never bring yourself to break something for the sake of breaking it. You were always looking to build or fix things. You could never just let things be broken." He sounds disgusted. He sighs, and his tone changes to disappointment. "I wanted to break you of that habit. I made it one of my projects. It was like a game I played with you. You're Surgeon, and that's just not okay. You like games, right Riley?"

"Please. Uncle Jack. Stop it." Her words scratch against her throat.

"Yeah, you like games. Monopoly. But I could never figure out how to play you. I had fun on you. I'm having fun now." He laughs again, sharp and abrupt and quickly silenced. "But you never stopped wanting to make things better. I'm sure no one else would agree with me on that, but no one else knows you like I do. No one else ever will. I was there when you attached, and I'll be there when she dies and you move on, and I'll be the one to tell Him what you learned. But you were never okay just letting something be broken. I suppose I shouldn't blame you for being what you've always been, but I do. I blame you for all of this, Riley. You wanted to fix things, but you can't. Some things will always be broken, and you just have to accept that."

He hums and looks out across the clearing at the murder of crows picking at the scraps: remains of those killed for fun. He looks serene despite, or maybe because of, the things he says.

I– Bonesaw shakes. Her hands retreat to her lap and she can't make them move or still. The mesh hangs out of his arm, messy, red, and wet. She doesn't get it. This doesn't make sense. It's a game, right? It's a game, like he just said, another game, that's all this is. She just has to bear it and then… She just has to bear it.

A minute or two later, he continues. His voice is cold, at odds with the kindness in his eyes as he looks at her.

"You never figured it out, you stupid bitch."

"Language!" Bonesaw chastizes before she can think, and faster than she can react he hits her, knocking her to the ground.

She blinks up at him and he smiles down at her, now standing. He's still smiling so kindly, looking to the world like nothing happened. And maybe nothing did happen. Maybe he didn't hit her? She could be imagining the stinging in her cheek, right? Just turn it off.

"Why are you on the ground, silly pants?" he asks with a chuckle. "Come on, up up."

He holds out his hands and there's no use hesitating. So why does she hesitate? His smile dips a little and Bonesaw takes his hands and he lifts her to her feet and brushes off her dress. She stays still and silent, uncertain of what to do. He's never hit her before. He had cut her dress or her hair or broken something of hers, but he never hit her. So he didn't just hit her now, right?

"Everything is already broken, and it will be broken forever, and there is no fixing it," he says kindly. Mockingly. "There is nothing at the end of the mission. Everything we've ever done is a joke. There is no solution to the problem, because everything is the problem. And no one gets that. Even I barely get that, and only because of me. You certainly don't. And that's why I've always, always hated you, Surgeon. Riley. Bonesaw. You're my greatest work now, and you're a failure. I thought you could be better than Nicholas, but you're only more useful. You're a tool, just like him. Not an heir. Not something to be unleashed, but something to be shelved. You disappoint me, my love. She was never able to put it together, Kurt. Stupid girl."

He sighs and pats her on the head patronizingly. She wants to tell him to stop, to beg him to be quiet, to pick a different game to play – any other game. But she doesn't have the words. She doesn't know what to say to get him to do what she wants, not like he can. She's never been able to predict him, only ever able to go along with his games how he wants so he'll keep playing how he does, but now she doesn't even know the game he's playing – she doesn't know the rules, doesn't know the stakes, doesn't even entirely know who's playing or why – so how can she even try to fit the role?

"It's not like I could just come out and I'm a homosexual, Kurt. It's pretty funny how Shhhhhhatterbroad never figured it out. Because saying it ruins it, like a good joke. You have to make them realize it themselves to get them to internalize it right, otherwise they'll think it came from you and dismiss it later. Make them think it, slow and patient. There's time before the end. Not much, and never enough, but some. And with Bonesaw around, we can make it all the way to the end, just stay close to her, stay close to the fun ones, the powerful ones, the broken ones. They're where it's ripest.

"Hey. Riley. I want you to listen closely." With a gentle hand on her chin, he raises her gaze to meet his. He's staring at her, serene and seemingly present. She can taste bile in the back of her throat. "Good job, sport. I'm proud of you, and it's not your fault."

She blinks and suddenly things are clear to me. I understand.

"You're not Uncle Jack," I tell him in barely a whisper. Louder, "You're not Jack Slash."

"That's a stupid name," the flesh in the shape of family says. "King said to call me Sever. Pretty wicked, don't you think?"

"Jack Slash is scary," I tell the thing. But it's not true, I realize. There's something off about that statement. "Jack Slash was scary." That's the truth. This fleshy thing hasn't been scary in the Uncle Jack way for a long while. "You're not scary. You're not Jack Slash."

"You're such a disappointment, Bonesaw. I'm glad I took you in. You're a fun girl. A bad girl, but a fun one," it says.

I reach out to touch the thing's arm, where there's a gap in it, with a piece of something poking out. I grab the piece and tug, and it comes loose, pulling out from the thing's protuberance with a squelch and a spray of warm liquid. I look down at the pale layers of pre-treated leather that remain attached to the part I took. I drop it.

The fleshy, foreign thing takes a step back and flaps its rubbery opening at me. It makes noises, but they wash over me without meaning or recognition: white noise to join the roaring in my ears. What else is inside of this ill-proportioned thing? I have to know.

I reach out to take another piece. I wrap my hand around a growth at the end of its upper growth and pull. Internals shift, but it doesn't come loose. The thing hits me again, lashing out with its other upper growth; the piece in my hand comes free of the rest of it as I fall but it's not enough. I need to see what else is inside this thing: what and who it really is.

I leap at the thing and tackle it to the ground. I dig my hands into it, finding purchase in bloody, red gaps and topological handholds, and it tries to throw me off, hitting and pulling and tearing at me in turn. I pull, and I can feel my muscles scream and tear as I work them harder than ever before.

It has answers. It has to have answers. Its insides can tell me where Bonesaw's Uncle Jack went. It can tell me what's real and not. It can tell me everything if I can just get inside of it, see what's wrong, and fix it.

A CRACK! and I'm holding strips of flesh and a piece of clavicle. The thing that isn't family makes more noise as it throws me off of its body, leaving behind more of its meat. This piece in my hand isn't enough. It doesn't tell me what I need to know.

I get up off the ground, and the thing bends to grab its discarded knife. A dozen cuts open up across my body as it swings and I charge. It buries the blade hilt-deep into my gut as I bring it bodily to the ground. The blade wiggles and twists as it dances across and through my organs, but it can't get through my augmentations to the immediately vital ones.

I clamp my teeth down on the thing's shoulder and dig into it, reaching through the breach to the rest of it. I dig, and I tear, and I rip and shred and do anything to pull it to pieces. There is no precision. There is no art. There is only the the burning need to get at what is hidden within this thing that took my family.

The thing lets go of the knife to try to push me off, but we're one at this point. I'm buried up to the elbow in its chest cavity. It changes tact and does the same, pulling free the knife to root inside my abdominals with its hand, widening the gap.

The thing's cries change pitch and tenor, and I can recognize the repetitive noise through the roar-scream in my head. He's laughing. I pull my teeth free of its collar and sink them into its neck, and when that doesn't stop the laughter, I rip out the thing's throat, snapping muscles of my own to do it.

A spray of blood shoots out from the new holes. Red spills from us and soaks into the ground. It's such a pretty color, with many positive associations. It's the first color word most languages come up with, after light and dark, Shatterbird once told me, before this still-laughing thing around my hands and beneath my teeth took her from me. It tastes like a blade.

I scream to drown out the noise it makes and break my fist against its head when that doesn't work. My knuckles break, then my metacarpals, then my carpus, until I'm bashing a meaty, ruined knob at the end of my radius and ulna against the thing's head, and only then does the skull finally cave and I can break my bones against its insides.

I don't stop. I can't stop until I know. So I don't stop.

Spoiler: authors note

this entire fic is in first person btw. isnt that fun?

frfr this chapter might be one of the best things ive ever written. the jack slash monologue is just so... *chef's kiss*. i learned so much about who Jack is while writing this chapter.

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

"…"



Bonesaw comes to and quickly wishes she hadn't.

"Ouchie," she groans.

She's covered in boo-boos. Everything hurts, from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head to the tips of her fingers. She tries to push herself from a lay to a sit, but fumbles the ground. Her brow furrows as she looks at the failing arm, and then pouts at her mangled lack of a hand. Something pulped it to the wrist. Her other hand works, and on the bright side, that means there are only five fingers that hurt, even if they're not in the best condition.

One-handedly, she makes herself sit up, wincing at the stinging and using her spine more than her abdominals. They're not responding, and when she looks down, she realizes why. They're not there. Instead of a tummy, she has a hole, and out of that hole spills minced guts, looking like the warm chili from one of Manny's meat buns. That's… not good.

She jerks to coherency and looks around, scanning the area for who might have done this. She got into a fight – obviously – and it was a rough one – again, obviously – but she doesn't see anyone who might have done this. The only people around are corpses, a dozen of them, laid out across the campground without care or order. There are also bird bodies around, looking like they dropped dead mid-flight. All of the trees are leafless, even the coniferous.

It's quiet. Too quiet. The only sound Bonesaw can hear is the wind. She looks again at her abdominal cavity and finds that the bladders holding her plagues, serums, and enzymes are all busted. She killed everything.

She looks around again. She did this? That doesn't feel right. She didn't do this alone.

"Where's Uncle Jack?" she asks the wind.

She calls his name, then does it again when she hears no response. On her third call, her voice cracks painfully. She tests it, reaching her hand down her throat to finger her vocal chords. They're damaged: a clean cut that speaking only aggravated. The cut came from below, weirdly.

She pulls her hand from her mouth and pushes it up into her chest from the other end to poke at the damage: hundreds or even thousands of lacerations, from her neck to her pelvis and all along her muscles. Her heart, lungs, and most of her intestines are unhurt at least – She'd reinforced those the most because they're the most vital or annoying to replace.

She looks around again. Few things other than herself could have survived the hell unleashed by her popped bladders, so whatever attacked her should still be around, either dead or to finish her off. She can't think of a reason to inflict this much hurt on her and not want her dead.

But she sees nothing, not even a suspicious dead body. Then Bonesaw looks where she's sitting. She's intimately familiar with how much blood and mass there is in a human's body, and she's on top of much more of both than can feasibly be explained by her minced insides.

She's on top of a body, she realizes. It's almost as mangled as she is, torn rather than cut. Where her insides feel like they held an angry baby Hooky – she thinks that's what his name was: one of Shatterbird's prospects – this body below her looks like it was attacked by a chimpanzee: relentless, blunt, and just shy of mindlessly aggressive. It's ripped into pieces, and those pieces were bluntly brutalized.

Oddly, she can see evidence of her art mixed in with the mush. There's subdermal mesh still intact in places, and some of the slightly scattered organs are similarly reinforced. But it's been a month since she made anything worth calling art, and longer still since she made something with anywhere near this amount of care. Could one of her earlier ones have somehow survived and come after her? That doesn't sound right, but her head hurts so much it's hard to think of anything else that might explain it.

And then she sees the knife in its hand.

She blinks.

I blink again.

She looks around, and then back at this destroyed body and its knife.

I recognize this knife.

She doesn't recognize this knife.

I got it wrong.

She can't be right.

…Can I?

"Uncle Jack?" she croaks.

He doesn't respond. How could he, with his head caved in and his brain and all of the gizmos she painstakingly crafted and installed to keep him alive and functioning spread across the dead grass?

He's dead.

Uncle Jack is… dead. That doesn't sound right, but it feels right. Staring down at this opened lump of spread flesh that was Jack Slash, Bonesaw feels… something. It's hard for me to tell if it's a good feeling or bad feeling, but it is a big feeling. It's a feeling that takes up all of the emptied space in her chest and abdomen and then some.

I… She… I have to go. I have to do… something. Somewhere. Somewhere that's not here. I can't be here. There are no answers here. I can't do this again. I can't.

I pick myself up off the meaty lump and tumble to the ground beside it on barely functioning legs. I push myself up again and stumble away, into the woods.

End of Arc 1​

 

[R3N41SS4NC3]

It hurts to be. Even after more than… a week?, two?, more?, subsisting in the wilderness, the pain remains, like an open wound. Unlike a wound, there is no cure, no treatment, no fix, no betterment. The body can be fixed, but this…

A road is found, and along that road is a town, lively despite the late evening hour. Fireworks burst overhead, and music can be heard even from this dark and lonely park on the edge of town. The center of the festivities is too scary to be alone in. Even the edge is scary without someone, but being alone near others is ever so slightly easier than being completely alone.

The Slaughterhouse Nine is dead. That's the news that everyone is celebrating. It's printed on every newspaper and magazine in sight, and even one billboard.

It's not true. But it could be. Or maybe it already is. But it isn't. It could be proven false, and easily. A walk into town is all it would take. But what would be the point? The Slaughterhouse Nine is dead. It's not fair.

The sat-upon swing is still. Is it still a swing when it does not swing?

A boy walks into the park, kicking a stone forward as he moves. He's alone, which is almost the oddest thing about him; the actual oddest thing is that he doesn't look happy. Everyone else is happy. But this boy is mad. He picks up a stick and beats it against a slide until the stick breaks. Then he throws the stick.

It's kind of nice watching someone else be not happy tonight. He's not not-happy for the same reasons, but it's still a bit of a balm, like how desert wind is a relief from the heat, despite the stinging sand it carries.

The boy looks to be about twelve years old, with short hair shorn close on the sides and heavily freckled skin. He picks up something else and throws it at the plastic slide: a stone, judging by the sound.

"Hey."

The boy startles and looks at the swing set. The darkness is keeping him from seeing more than a shadow in the shape of a person, otherwise he would certainly flee.

"Why are you mad?"

"What?" he asks.

"You're mad. Everyone else is happy. Why is that?"

"Everyone else is stupid," he spits. "I don't even get what the big deal is. If Jack Slash was actually scary then Eidolon would have pulped him years ago."

"Hn. But why are you mad?"

"Why do you care?"

"If it's not a big deal, that shouldn't make you mad, should it? Is that all it takes to make someone mad?"

"I'm not even mad," the angry boy snarls angrily. "It's just stupid that my parents dragged me out to go to this stupid party about a stupid dead guy."

"Oh."

"They said it was a chance to 'make friends' or some bull crap like that, but it's so stupid! I already have friends. It's not my fault they're back home and their parents didn't drag them to this stupid hick town. It's my stupid dad's stupid job's fault. We were fine, and then he just decided to move and ruin everything and now they want me to just forget my actual friends, my real friends, and 'just make new ones' like I even want new ones. I don't care about any of these stupid kids in this stupid town. I'm supposed to be playing Protectorate Fighter Three with my friends. They're playing without me and my parents wouldn't even listen. They're ruining my life and they don't even care! It's so stupid!"

He seems to really like the word 'stupid.' Even though he's not using bad words, his language doesn't feel very clean.

"That sounds not very nice. Losing friends isn't good."

"And that's not even the worst part," he says, joyfully angry now. "The stupidest thing is my little brother is such a baby about it. And he's a hippogriff about it too! He keeps whining and crying about missing home and like, yeah! Me too! But I'm not waking everyone up in the middle of the night to cry about it. And he won't even back me up like he's supposed to when I try to tell our parents to take us back home. He just– He takes their side! Can you believe that? He cries to me about it and then he's like 'maybe we can give it a chance. Maybe it won't be so bad'," the boy mockingly whines. "And he's ruining everything. If he just stayed on my side, we'd be able to convince our parents to move back home out of this stupid town. Mom said I'm being selfish but Dad's the selfish one. His job was fine and if he didn't like it he didn't have to ruin everything and drag us out into the middle of nowhere. He could have come here alone if he really wanted it. And Mom always takes his side even though it's so stupid! She won't even admit that I'm right."

The boy rants and raves, seemingly endlessly angry, even though it doesn't make sense. He's mad that he has a family that stayed together? He's mad that his little brother needs him? He's mad his dad provides for his family?

This boy might be the worst boy in the world. He calls everything else stupid, but he's the stupid one if he can't see how good he has it. He doesn't deserve these things that he can't appreciate: his loving brother, his two loving parents, the safety, security, and support of a family.

Hate wasn't something known before this moment, not really. There was frustration, anger, and dislike, but never hatred like there is now. But this boy brings it out like nothing else ever could.

"Hey. What's your name?"

"Aron," Aron says.

"Do you want to see something cool? It might change your mind about this town."

"Don't be stupid. Stupid."

"If it doesn't change your mind, I promise it will help convince your parents to move back home."

"What? How? What is it?" For the first time, Aron doesn't sound angry. He sounds intrigued.

"Follow me, and I'll show you."

Off the swing and into the woods. A moment later, Aron follows, away from people and into the darkness. Four feet trudge through the woods in the early autumn night. The leaves are only just beginning to turn: a spot of orange or red lit up by the occasional firework. The booming overhead keeps the forest quiet, everything that isn't and wasn't human is too scared to come out. Maybe the humans should be scared too. They are the architects of this world's suffering, and no less vulnerable to it for being so.

"Where are we going?" Aron asks.

He receives no answer, yet he continues to follow, deeper into the darkness.

"Ugh what even is this thing you're showing me? It better not be stupid or lame. It's stupid, isn't it? Well? Say something!"

"Here."

He stops a pace away. He looks around and finds nothing of interest. His face scrunches up in a scowl. "Where is it?" he demands. "What is this thing that's going to get me home?"

He receives only the boom of a firework as a response.

"Agh I knew it! This is some stupid hillbilly prank, isn't it? Are you so stupid that you think this is a joke? This is kidnapping, stupid. I could get you arrested for this. I knew this whole town was a stupid waste of time."

"You're not very nice."

"What did you just say?" Aron takes a step forward, angry. "I'm not the one who's going around lying about cool stuff in the woods."

Another firework goes off, higher. Its light breaches the canopy. Aron blinks, and then squints as he tries to see through the darkness.

"What's wrong with your face?" he asks.

He takes a step back.

"Hey, quit it."

He takes another step back.

"Stop. I'm serious."

Another step away, but no distance is gained. He's come too far into the woods, too deep into the darkness, too near to escape.

"Quit it! Stop– Stop chasing me! Go away!"

A pair of hooves pin him to a tree before he can run, and a fist buries itself in his gut, knocking the wind and sense out of him. He falls to the ground and curls in on himself. He tries to suck down air but can't. A rock is used to break his leg, then the other, and he cannot scream, only whine breathlessly. He's trapped.

A poor imitation of a spider box limps out of the shadows. Made mostly of deer, fish, possum, and wood, it's useful as a materials bank, in the same way a campfire is useful as a chemistry lab. It drags itself over to the sobbing, fallen boy.

Work is done, and it is slow without tools, equipment, or a lab, but soon enough a liquid is synthesized. Aron's mouth is pried open, gently, and the solution poured in. He's forced to swallow despite his best attempts to expel it by gagging and coughing, and a minute later it begins to take affect. His struggles slow, and after a few minutes, his body is slack and numb. His mind should be slow and pliable too.

"What's your name?"

"Aron Jay Carpenter," Aron murmurs.

"What's the J stand for?"

"Jay."

"It's just… J?"

"Yeah."

"What's your little brother's name?"

"Ketlan."

"How old is he?"

"Seven."

"How old are you?"

"Eleven and three quarters."

"Where do you live?"

"143 Kennedy West Street, Indianapolis." That's his old address. Indianapolis is far, far from here.

"What's your new address here? In Burgess."

"186 Nightingale Drive."

"How long have you lived there?"

He answers, and he continues to answer all of the other personal questions asked of him. He speaks of his family, his new home, his hobbies, his likes and dislikes, his daily routine, and more. He's questioned until the drug runs out, and then when he's dosed again he returns to answering.

He speaks calmly and comfortably, even as his body is stripped, taken apart, and lain piece by piece into and onto another. His arm is taken in its entirety, and replaces the pair of juvenile hooves that were attached and used as a facsimile. Skin is taken and transplanted as well, flayed and unflayed. Pieces are removed as Aron talks, and not all are from him.

The boy's body is the blueprint, and everything that doesn't fit into his shape is cut or scraped away, until eventually, hours later, Aron dresses in his clothes and stares down at the doomed body. Everything important has been ripped from it: appearance, clothing, information, and personhood. The only things left to it are its spark of life and its place in society. A moment later, only one remains, and Aron leaves to take that as well.

Spoiler: authers noats

I'm not done fucking with the POV yet! it's too fun, to do this with such a depersonalized and dissociative character. If you missed it, this chapter was from Riley's POV as well, but without any direct reference to Riley herself bc she can barely bear to be herself in any form. She doesn't know who, how, or what to be, so she mostly isn't. Until she decides to be Aron. That'll turn out great, right? ...Right?