9.6

February 24th, 2011

I was officially hunting the Slaughterhouse 9 now.

That old tinkertech device made by Dragon's father? Turned out to be WAY worse than I thought it was. It was called Iron Maiden, it had a direct access to her programming, and its main purpose was to, at the push of a button, rapidly corrupt Dragon's code until there was nothing left of her. Not only was it an awful way to go, similar to a quick acting poison with no antidote, or to someone repeatedly stabbing your brain with a toothpick - but it also had another, much more insidious function.

Since Iron Maiden had direct and unlimited access to Dragon's inner workings, whoever had it could ALSO rewrite entire swaths of her code. Meaning, it could be used to Master her.

Despite officially having no Tinkers on the team, the Dragonslayers still managed to alter her code somewhat, and used the alterations and Iron Maiden itself to repeatedly bypass Dragon's security and steal her tech. Imagine what could be done by an actual Tinker or a Thinker with access to this horrible thing?

I shuddered to think what the Slaughterhouse 9 could do, if they had direct, real time access to Dragon's coding.

What they were PLANNING to do - judging by how Mannequin tried to disengage with the dimensional access device, he definitely wanted to come back later and fish Iron Maiden out from where it was stored. Hell, it was all but guaranteed that the Slaughterhouse Nine targeted the Dragonslayers SPECIFICALLY to get Richter's grotesque panic button.

I was pretty sure the confrontation went like this:

The Slaughterhouse Nine barged through the front door, Crawler - a heavily mutated giant, one of their two Brutes and supposedly NOT a Case 53 - tearing the vault door open, and rushing to the mechs to deny access to them. One of the Dragonslayers was in or near the hangar, and got to their mech just in time to get pulverised right in its cockpit.

One of the remaining two Dragonslayers attempted to stall the Nine (leading to a running battle where the Nine toyed with them) and the other went straight to where Iron Maiden was located. Either unwilling or not having the time to activate the horrible thing, they shunted it into the pocket dimension, and used explosives to destroy the access device as completely as possible. My guess was, Mannequin followed them and appeared just in time to see them chuck the machine out of Nine's reach. All three Dragonslayers were either killed or captured by the Nine (or maybe both, considering some rumours about Bonesaw), and then…

Well, it was obvious that Mannequin stayed behind in an attempt to repair the access device and retrieve Iron Maiden, but why weren't the rest of the Nine there?

Whatever the reason was, I was having none of it. Not only did the Nine try to subvert one of the nicest, most sane Tinkers in the world, not only was said Tinker responsible for the security and wellbeing of countless people - but Dragon was ALSO my friend. This made the entire situation both a matter of public safety AND deeply personal - and even one of the two would've been enough for me to act with extreme prejudice.

And since Jack and his little band of douchebags didn't get the memo, they were gonna BECOME the memo.

…As soon as I found them.

This was the main issue. The United States had a population of over 300 million people. Among them, in urban areas 1 in 8000 were parahumans, and in rural ones the ratio was 1 in 30000 - so there were anywhere from 10000 to 37500 parahumans in the country, mostly congregated in and around major settlements. And trying to check all of them one by one was not an entirely efficient use of my time - especially since the Nine were not exactly confined to US soil.

Oh, if I had no other choice, I would've gone through with the search either way - but luckily, I had Dragon on my side, who was almost as angered by the situation as I was (and FAR more perturbed, understandably so).

"Okay, so we've established that they're likely still somewhere on the continent," I sighed. My network had been monitoring Toybox and the planes and ships leaving Americas, and Dragon was scouring all the camera feeds she could find for ANY video signs of the Nine. Of course, there was always the chance that Jack Slash had got his hands on some portal-making parahuman, but just like I told Mr. Unison - even ATTEMPTING to predict EVERYTHING was a road to madness.

"Yes. I'm seeing some new maybes in California, New Mexico, Montana and Florida."

"Send me the coordinates, I'm sending over the Dolls."

It was a very simple solution. Dragon looked for anything that could be suspected to be related to Nine, and I sent over my Dolls to check it out. Given that I currently had six of the things - (though one was still stuck trailing Miko of Miracles - I did NOT trust her not to do anything stupid after she attempted to launch THREE differently catastrophic 'solutions' to the snow issue), we were dealing with the possible hits in a very timely fashion, but…

But there was no confirmation so far, even though we'd been at it since Armsmaster found a way to use Iron Maiden to disable some of Dragon's hardcoded restrictions and get rid of the code that was clearly added by malicious parties (after which, we destroyed the accursed device just to be on the safe side).

"No, another miss," I reported. "None of them are even parahuman, though the one in New Mexico seems to have a bit of tinkertech on him."

"Understood, I'm marking him for surveillance." Which made sense. A non-parahuman carrying tinkertech around could be a nonissue, or could be a smuggler or worse.

The weirdest thing about it was that even as we worked, Theresa (Dragon's civilian name) and I were also technically hanging out.

See, once I heard that Dragon was an AI, I had an idea for a much better present than what she'd got out of the ordeal. Remember how Panacea and I made a 'tastebud prosthetic' for Weld? Well, what if we made that, but full-body?

It took some convincing, but EVENTUALLY Amelia agreed to create a 'meat puppet' that matched Dragon's virtual avatar. Then, all I had to do was create a device that linked a Karmic signature to the thing, allowing someone's mind to inhabit the fleshy body.

"Whoa," Theresa blinked, still a bit unsteady on her feet (because sense of balance was a skill). "Is this what it's like to have teeth? Really weird. Do they always get in the way like this?"

"I guess? I mean, you'll get used to it eventually," I shrugged, a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth.

"And I guess, getting used to clothes takes some time too," she noted with a slight grimace, as she adjusted the thick sweater on her shoulders.

"Yep. Don't tell me you hate this," I raised my brow.

"Oh, I LOVE it," she chuckled, before gingerly stepping forward and giving me a hug, "Thank yo-ooooh, THAT'S what hugs feel like! Hoooooly…"

Yeah, as it turned out, Dragon really liked giving people hugs. Mostly to me and Armsmaster, but a lot of Protectorate heroes, PRT agents, and Land of Fantasy Ltd employees got at least one in the past four days.

And currently? We were in a two-person pile on a couch in a common room on the Rig, playing on a pair of portable consoles. I was helping Theresa to set up her own village in that game about falling in debt to a raccoon, even as both of us were looking for the Nine via our networks.

I was not sure whether the entire setup counted as working or relaxing, all things considered. Maybe in this case, distinction didn't really matter because I wouldn't have been able to fully relax until I was teaching Jack Slash the definition of-

"Wait, what- Oh no…" Theresa looked somewhere off to the side, a clear look of distress on her face.

"What? What just happened?"

"C-Chicago! The entire city just went dark!"

Shatterbird.

The Nine.

"I'm sending five Dolls there. The closest will be there in two minutes." I closed my console, and put it down. I was NOT going there myself, not unless two thirds of my Dolls ended up non-operational - but I had to concentrate now.

"I'm sending in Cawthorne, ETA five minutes." She had likewise put away her console. "ETA on Ladon, Nidhug and Melusine is ten minutes, will remain on standby until Shatterbird is neutralised. I am also informing the PRT of the attack."

Okay.

I did not expect the PRT to matter during the fighting, but they definitely could help in dealing with the aftermath.

As the first Doll was approaching Chicago, it activated both the Endbringer Suite and the Karmic Sonar Visualiser Enchantment. I immediately saw thousands of dimensional shadows, hundreds of them belonging to different parahumans.

I tried not to pay attention to the way entire streets were shattered beneath me, glass and bleeding bodies strewn everywhere. Some alive, some dead - but I did not know how to-

Right.

"Amelia! Panacea!" The Camera Orb knocked itself into the door of her room. The girl grumbled something, and went to open the door.

"What?!"

"The Nine just attacked Chicago. Shatterbird, she-" I tried to pick my words, before powering through it. "I wanted to ask if you are willing to help. I can transport you, if you are. With bodyguards, of course."

"Y… Yeah, I'll go," she nodded.

"Thank you. You'll be picked up in a minute," I couldn't help my relief, as I went through a few similar conversations with people who could guard her. Meanwhile, Panacea went to shrug on her robe - and then, Swordsman, Witch and Glory Girl entered the room through a portal that dissipated behind them. "Okay, I'm also assigning one of the Dolls for your protection. Swordsman?"

With a nod, Swordsman pulled out a Talisman that created a portal to the location of one of my Dolls, and slapped it against the door. I activated the thing, and the four of them walked out of the dinky foyer of Amelia Dallon's rental flat, and onto the streets of Chicago, where the second Doll was waiting for them. They immediately went out to start looking for survivors.

Meanwhile, my first Doll finally found one of the targets.

A hulking figure of 'what the hell was I even looking at?" was chasing a flying woman with a lantern through the shattered streets. I had no idea who the woman was - just that she was shooting energy orbs at her pursuer to try to slow him down, each consecutive orb having less and less effect on the multilegged, many-eyed beast the size of a van that dripped acid saliva all over the place.

I knew the monstrosity - it was Crawler of Slaughterhouse Nine. Adaptive regenerator, who rapidly mutated to become immune to things that damaged him.

Yes, the Nine were one of the few groups I broke my rule for, and properly researched them and how to deal with them - just in case I ever came across the group.

The Doll threw a 3D Barrier in Crawler's path, causing him to crash into it, the forcefield immediately breaking and exploding, sending the massive Brute/Changer tumbling back.

"Oh! It's you!" The beast grinned widely, as he stood up. "Finally! Come on, fight me!"

He jumped at the Doll and swung one of his massive paws - only for it to uselessly crash against its 4D Barrier.

"Greetings, Crawler," I said nonchalantly through the Miko Doll, as he now futilely tried to drip acid on it. "And congratulations - you get to be a part of a very important experiment. And no, you don't get a choice in the matter."

It grabbed at his head, the Lethal Persuasion Enchantment allowing the relatively small appendage to anchor itself deep into his skull, as he cried in pain and, disturbingly, joy. Ignoring it, the Doll broke one of his legs, and gouged a couple eyes. In a bit under thirty seconds, they were good as new.

"Got the baseline. Good."

With that out of the way, the second hand dimensionally shifted, grabbed a 4D knife out of the Doll's backpack, and sliced off Crawler's connection to the eldritch abomination.

He shrieked - this time, there was no joy in his voice.

"See, I already know that I can safely depower parahumans. But the process can be too much trouble, especially for Kill Order targets like you. So, in your case I get to see what happens if I don't bother cleaning up the scraps of foreign matter."

He screamed in agony and terror, as if intuitively understanding what just happened. The Doll once more broke one of his legs, and gouged out a couple eyes to test things out. A minute later, the damage was still there, the monstrous murderer screaming his impressive lungs out, while thrashing uselessly in the Doll's vice grip.

"Well, all that's left is to see if this eventually kills you or not. Good night for now, and thank you for your cooperation."

Crawler received a dozen Karmic Amulets to the face, went out like a lightbulb, and was tossed into one of the cells Dragon prepared for the experiment, the 4D reinforced one. If the remains of a tendril in a human brain could kill, it was better to test it on someone who wasn't going to be missed.

That woman he had been chasing looked at me weirdly, but I paid her no mind.

While I dealt with Crawler, things kept moving on. One of my Dolls was keeping Panacea safe, another was looking for other Nine members, and three others were rapidly approaching the city.

Soon, one of the Dolls encountered another Niner. This time, it was a tall, bulky man covered in more scar tissue than clothes, using a giant cleaver to fight off a couple of clearly Ward-aged capes (a clear Tinker in a power armour and some kind of a martial artist), as they were protecting a heavily bleeding bearded guy in wizard robes. The Nine cape was Hatchetface, a high-end Brute with a power nullifying aura. And a power nullifying aura was not a threat to an already fielded piece of tinkertech. And- oh, he ALSO had some tinkertech on him? Or rather, IN him.

I memorised the pattern, even as the Doll descended onto him, and repeated the Crawler maneuver (just without any eye gouging), before tossing the guy into another reinforced cell.

"Miko of Paradise, right?" the Tinker boy asked, looking frightened for some reason. "T-thank you!"

"You might want to take him to Panacea. She's west from here, Glory Girl will meet you a street or two in that direction."

They nodded, picked up their bleeding senior, and followed my directions.

Meanwhile, I had a pattern that could help me find at least SOME of the N-

"I'm engaging Shatterbird," Theresa said next to me. "Having some issues getting past her glass. Sending you the coordinates."

Welp.

"Got it."

I sent one of the Dolls there, as the others continued their search.

One of Dragon's suits was indeed busy exchanging barrages with a cloud of glimmering glass shards. I was pretty sure that if I was to look at said cloud with my fleshy unprotected eyes, the flickering would've been downright painful, if not blinding.

The Doll just phased through the glass, caught the woman behind it by the neck - oh hey, similar tinkertech in her body indeed - and began the process of depowering her-

When she suddenly exploded, blood and viscera flying everywhere.

Huh.

"Why do they keep doing this?" I wondered.

"Well, at least now I can bring in the rest of my suits," Dragon sighed.

I looked around, seeking similar tinkertech signatures…

Only to find none.

Hm… Out of the three, Crawler didn't have one. And Hatchetface didn't explode… And considering the timing of Mannequin's and Shatterbird's explosions…

The tinkertech in question likely had two functions: monitoring their surroundings, and termination. And Hatchetface was 'lucky' enough to be tossed into an off-world containment facility before his explosives were remotely detonated?

Yeah, that made sense.

Still, this just meant I had to do the search the hard way. Looking at the shadows…

"Hm… I don't see any signs of fighting. Starting the search for the remainders of the Nine."

"Wait." Theresa had put a hand on my shoulder. "You're needed back in Brockton."

"Why?" I shuddered at her tone.

"Strider will be at the PRT building in five minutes to pick you up. There's an Endbringer attack in Canberra, Australia." There was clear trepidation on her features. "It's a new one."