Crawler was bored.
He had wanted to find the little punk with the glowing white eyes that had managed to hurt him the other night, but the scent trail had died off and it wasn't like Crawler could just interview people. Well he could, but it wouldn't be subtle.
So instead he had taken to wandering around the Docks, hoping something would catch his attention. At some point he was due to meet up with the rest of the Nine, but that was still hours from now.
As Crawler exited an alleyway he found himself in the parking lot of an abandoned factory and saw a rather uncommon sight: a civilian calmly walking towards him.
Sure, the Nine attracted the occasional fanboy that wanted to follow them. Those never last long. Either the Siberian would get hungry, Bonesaw would want test subjects, or somebody would just get annoyed at kill them. Whatever the case, this girl wasn't approaching Crawler like the fanatics did. She was walking firmly, like she had a purpose in mind, but Crawler could smell her fear.
Once she was about ten feet away, the girl stopped and cleared her throat. "Excuse me, Mr. Crawler. I have a proposition for you I think you'll like."
Crawler examined the girl more closely. She wasn't wearing a mask so she probably wasn't a cape (then again, didn't this city have a hero team that went maskless?) and was dressed in perfectly average clothes. Faded jeans, a white t-shirt with some brand name on it, and a blue windbreaker covered up a body that frankly could have passed for male. Only reason Crawler had known this was a girl when he first saw her was because of her long curly hair.
"Alright," Crawler rumbled. "You've peaked my interest simply because of the balls it takes to approach me. But if you turn out to be boring I'll hold you down and lick you until your skin comes off."
The girl coughed nervously. "Right, I'll get right to the point. I've read up on you, Crawler. It's said that you like getting hurt, that you only joined the Nine so that you could find bigger and more dangerous foes to fight, because of how your power works. Is that correct?"
Crawler nodded. "Continue."
"Well it seems to me, that the most powerful parahuman around, really, is the Siberian. I mean, she fought the Triumvirate back when there was still four of them, and she won."
"And so you wonder why I haven't attacked her instead of the heroes. Blah blah blah, I've heard this all before and it was much better said then too. By Thinkers who had a clue what they were doing. I'll give you a thirty second head start because I'm feeling charitable."
"No wait, I'm not done yet!"
Crawler sighed. He really was bored if he was listening to this. "Very well."
"Well it occurs to me, that most people, by now, know how your power works. Fighting you only makes you stronger so even people that might be able to hurt you are wary of trying because they're worried about that."
The girl wasn't wrong. It didn't happen all the time but she wasn't wrong.
"So I was thinking of a way that we could change that. See, I'm a parahuman and I've got this power that's pretty unique."
So the girl was a parahuman after all, things just got interesting.
"My power is that anytime I'm wounded, I can transfer the damage to someone I've touched in the past day. So if, for example, I touched you and then I went and picked a fight with the Siberian…" the girl trailed off, not needed to explain further.
Crawler grinned. It was a wide, happy grin that showed all of his teeth. Some acid spittle dripped onto the pavement, sizzling as it landed.
"That does sound like fun but what's the catch? What do you get out of it?"
"You mean besides all the other member of the Slaughterhouse 9 gone? Not terrorizing countless lives as the rampage across the country? Besides that?"
Okay, maybe the girl had a point there.
"Well beyond that I suppose I'll be able to collect the bounty money after I take them out, that should set me up for life…" the girl sniffled. "Which I suppose I'll need after what happened to my Dad."
Crawler didn't care about the girl's family problems, he just wanted to see what this parahuman could do for him. He extended a massive hand. "You've got a deal, kid."
If Jack was being honest with himself he'd have to admit that things were not going well.
Crawler hadn't shown up at the rendezvous point on time, in and of itself that wasn't a big deal. Crawler rarely had the need or desire to go anywhere quickly so he was often late to meet ups.
And then Cherish had announced that someone was approaching with the intention of killing them. Again, in and of itself that wasn't a big deal, happened with a steady regularity when they came to bigger places like Brockton Bay.
So Burnscar had decided to go take care of whoever it was...and had gotten killed.
Bit of a surprise but hey, Jack hadn't expected the little fire starter to last very long anyway so it wasn't that great of a loss. Still, someone killing a member of the Nine deserved their full attention so the group had exited the grocery store they were snacking in to go out and greet the new arrival.
Burnscar's slayer turned out to be a slender teenage girl. She was skinny but not in a malnourished way, more like someone who was just muscle, no fat. She was also on the verge of hysterics.
"Your first kill?" Jack asked as he gestured at Burnscar's corpse by the girl's feet. "It was a good one. Not easy to crush someone's skull when they are capable of teleporting you know, be proud of your accomplishment."
The girl managed to get her breathing under control...mostly.
"E-everyone is scared of you. The Slaughterhouse 9 are spoken of in the same tone as the Endbringers. Yet...and yet the heroes don't want to work together with the villains to stop you. Th-they fight each other while the normal people get killed by you psychos."
Jack had to give the girl credit, she wasn't just blaming the heroes for not stopping them like so many other people had. She knew the local villains were theoretically trying to stop them and that it was causing a lot of distrust. Rather insightful behavior from someone so young, especially since the girl clearly wasn't a Thinker. No Thinker alive would be this brazen. This girl was a Brute but she had some trick that was making her confident. She was sure she was safe, that she'd walk away from this.
She wasn't doing this because she wanted the glory or the fame. She certainly wasn't doing this for the thrill of battle, as evidenced by her attitude after killing Burnscar. She was doing it because she felt obligated to shoulder the responsibility that others refused to carry.
"It's not often I meet someone willing to sacrifice so much, to do something they find so abhorrent, for people they've never met and who wouldn't even give her the time of day under normal circumstances," Jack said.
When the girl flinched at his observation he grinned.
"Uncle Jack, since Burnscar didn't nominate anyone and she killed Burnscar, maybe she could be a contender!" Bonesaw said eagerly from her spot on the coin operated kiddie ride she was sitting in.
"Bonesaw makes a good point, you would make a delightful addition to our group."
The girl shook her head and assumed a fighting stance. "No, I'm here to stop you, not join you."
Jack shrugged, unperturbed. "Ehhhh, you wouldn't be the first person who was against the idea at first. Guarantee you won't be the last."
"No-I mean yes! Yes, I will be the last because I'm going to stop you!"
Having made up her mind, the girl charged forward.
Mannequin was the closest to her and so was the focus of her rage. The Tinker raised an arm and launched it from its elbow socket, bladed fingers extended.
The girl didn't even try to block or dodge the attack so the arm slammed directly into her face, Mannequin's fingers buried in her flesh.
The girl barely reacted.
One of the problems with having your weapons attached to you is if someone else got a hold of them they also got a hold of you. Never before had Jack considered this truism but as the girl wrapped her arm around the chain linking Mannequin to the bit of him stuck in the girl, Jack couldn't help but reflect on things.
When the girl yanked on the chain and pulled the Tinker towards her Jack debated telling the Siberian to get involved but he wanted to give Mannequin a chance to take care of things on his own. If the man couldn't handle a Brute (that admittedly had some trick up her sleeve) for at least a little while he wasn't worthy of being in the Nine.
The girl got within fighting distance of Mannequin he unsheathed a blade from his remaining arm and stabbed it down into her shoulder blade until the tip poked out the other side of her torso. She responded by wrapping her arms around Mannequin and suplexing him into the pavement.
Once on the ground, the girl rolled atop Mannequin and delivered a single punch to his head, smashing it to pieces.
Jack wasn't worried, Mannequin's head was largely ornamental. His brain was safely tucked away in the torso.
Jack became a little worried when, as the girl stood up, she stomped her foot down and through Mannequin's chest. The Tinkers limbs all went limp so either he was doing a phenomenal job playing dead or Mannequin had just been killed.
Most people would have, and had, assumed Mannequin was dead when taking out his head. It was part of the reason he had survived as long as he had. There was no way the girl just happened to stomp in the correct spot, someone had fed her information. To Jack's knowledge, the only person that knew how Mannequin was built and who wasn't here was Crawler.
"I think we might have a traitor in our midst," Jack said, earning a worried glance from Cherish and confused looks from Bonesaw and Shatterbird. "Crawler has been a naughty boy."
Jack scratched his chin. "I'm thinking he switched sides after this girl said something to him."
"No, I killed him. Now I'm going to kill the rest of you."
Jack waved an arm dismissively. "Please, everyone present can tell you're lying. I'm just curious what it was that you said. Some of the best, most persuasive Thinkers around have tried to get Crawler to kill us and they all failed. You didn't quite manage that but you got Crawler to give up the goods on us. Sneaky sneaky."
"Didn't I tell you she'd be a good contender, Uncle Jack? Didn't I?"
"Yes you did little Bonesaw. But I'm beginning to think she might be more trouble than she's worth."
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here!"
The girl ran towards Shatterbird, who easily flew up out of reach. Cherish hit the girl with a cocktail of emotions to make the girl give up. Hopelessness and despair were the usual combo.
With a cry of anguish the girl fell to her knees and started sobbing.
"Well, that was anti-climatic," Shatterbird grumbled as she floated back down.
Unfortunately, she floated down too close to the not-quite-defeated girl who sprang forward. Jack grabbed a knife and cut through the air with his power to slow her down but the girl had taken the slice as she had taken all the other attacks without any reaction. While Shatterbird was quick enough to react, she wasn't quick enough to get out of the way so the girl's entire body was sliced by the glass shards in Shatterbird's dress as she body slammed into the siliconkinetic.
Jack could only shake his head. Shatterbird should have been smarter than that, getting so close to a Brute. It was odd that Cherish's power had worn off so quickly though. Could the girl's rapid healing also cause her to rebound from Cherish's emotional attacks?
Judging from the frustrated look on her face, Cherish hadn't actually let up on the attacks. Maybe the girl became immune to them?
"Alright, Siberian why don't you put a stop to this before she manages to kill Shatterbird?"
Shatterbird had enough glass in her dress that she was able to shift it around like armor to protect herself from the Brute's attacks but if they didn't intervene soon they were going lose another member of the Nine.
The most infamous member of their group stalked forward and reached down and pulled the two combatants apart. Siberian had a grip on each of their shoulders and held them at arm's length apart.
"Shatterbird, I'm disappointed at you for making such an obvious mistake. And you...it occurs to me we don't actually know your name. Do you have something you wish to be known as or should we make something up for you?"
"It doesn't matter what you call me!" the girl said defiantly.
And then she, quite literally, tore herself from the Siberians grasp. Jack knew, along with everyone else, that nothing moved the Siberian unless she wanted to be so for the girl to escape her grasp meant she pulled so hard the Siberian fingers had gouged out her flesh. And yet, once again, the girl appeared uninjured.
The girl hauled back and punched the Siberian square in the face. She may as well tried to drink the ocean, that would have had a more observable effect.
Apparently realizing the futility of that task, the girl switched her focus from the Siberian to Shatterbird. That was also quite pointless as the Siberian still held her in her grasp and so was able to extend her invincibility to her wounded compatriot.
Jack could tell the girl was tenacious and wasn't going to let something like her targets' invulnerability slow her down though.
She made a move towards Bonesaw but that was enough for the little Tinker's spider creations to leap into the fray. They simply dogpiled the girl and pulled her down. The girl continued to struggle as she was injected with concoction of chemicals that was beyond Jack's understanding of science, but Bonesaw had assured him was quite painful.
Given everything they had already done to her, Jack wasn't expecting the spiders to do much and he was proven correct when, with a shriek of...victory? Blood lust? Pain? Combination thereof? With a shriek of something the girl pulled herself into a standing position and hurled something at Cherish.
As Cherish fell to the ground Jack couldn't help but be impressed. The girl had torn an injector off of one of the spiders and thrown it with enough force that it had gone so far into Cherish's torso that Jack couldn't see it anymore. A wound like that would have normally been survivable for a member of the Nine, given that Bonesaw made modifications to everyone that successfully joined, but the injector was still partially contaminated with its payload so Cherish was probably due for several minutes of extreme pain before she finally shook off the mortal coil.
The girl fought to get the spiders off of herself which gave Jack a chance to get his teammates attention.
"I think it's time we head out," Jack said. "We do have a test we're supposed to be administering after all and this girl isn't yet a nominee."
That, and she had just killed two (soon to be three) members and had somehow convinced Crawler to switch sides while also having an extremely annoying Brute power.
"But Uncle Jack, she's smashing up my pets!"
"I know, but if someone wants to nominate her we need to do it properly, not as a spur of the moment thing. Siberian you can carry Bonesaw, Shatterbird I trust you have recovered from your arrogance enough to fly me along?"
Instead of answering vocally, Shatterbird just nodded. That was unsurprising, Shatterbird was much like a cat in that she hated to appear embarrassed or made a fool of. This little incident would keep her more egocentric tendencies under control for a good while so even though they had lost several members, it wasn't all bad.
Now, to figure out how this little girl had accomplished all this.