"Do you like them?" Bonesaw asked, putting a hand on both Pagoda and Murder Rat. "I'm still new to these mashups but I think they're some of my best work!"

Natalie. I couldn't see anything left of her in Murder Rat's eyes, even though they were hers. The look in them was glazed like she was out of her mind on opiates, but as I took the time to read her properly I could see it was because her brain was literally rotting.

"I was just telling Amy here how nice it was to meet her finally," Bonesaw continued, the faux childish innocence of her setting my teeth on edge. "Finally, I was saying, someone else who works with meat."

Natalie had been stitched together with a villain called Ravager, as Ravager's punishment. Their bodies mashed and distorted, things replaced, bits stretched.

My hands were shaking.

"But can you believe it, she says she doesn't want to work with me! I was trying to think of a way to show her how much fun it would be, what we could make, when you just drop right in through the ceiling," Bonesaw smiled widely. "Right on cue, like magic."

I lunged forward, my right hand catching her by the throat, lifting her off the ground. I turned, lashing a kick behind me and sending Pagoda flying across the room as I used Bonesaw as a shield against Murder Rat. Murder Rat's machete fingers stopped just shy of Bonesaw's skin and I reached past her and grabbed Rat's wrist, hauling her forward.

Bonesaw tried to jab me with a needle, but it glanced off my skin not doing the twelve damage it needed to get past my passive defences. I let go of Murder Rat's wrist and gripped her by the neck also, then cast Paralysis Collar with both hands. I dropped them both as they went limp and turned back to Pagoda just in time to meet him with another kick that sent him crashing through the wall this time.

Spiderbots began to swarm in through the door. Amy had retreated to the far wall where she was doing something with a huge mound of flesh, leaving me free to lay into them with my spear.

It appeared in my grip as I sliced through a Spiderbot mid-jump. I flicked it the other way, aiming low, scything another in half as it went for my ankles. I strode forward, decimating the spiders with a spear in one hand and piercing beams of lightning in the other, each one producing a window of experience and loot I ignored.

I stabbed down into Bonsesaw's leg, somehow immune to my collar, as she tried to make a run for it, nailing her to the floor. I leant down and grabbed both her wrists, picking her up as far as her impaled leg would allow, and squeezed. Her wrists didn't break so I piled on the Strength and squeezed harder. They shattered and she didn't even flinch.

Bonesaw goggled at me for a moment, then turned to look at Amy over her shoulder. "Where did you find this guy?"

My teeth audibly ground against each other as I clenched them, flecks of spittle flying off with each seething breath.

"Put her back to normal."

Bonesaw turned back to me. "Put whom?"

"Mouse Protector!"

"And kill poor Murder Rat?" Bonesaw sounded aghast. "I could never."

"Do it, or I'm gonna kill you," my voice slurred with anger, fists tightening further around her wrists.

Bonesaw seemed unimpressed, and for good reason. If I killed her I'd set off her deadman's switch and kill a lot more people. I shook her uselessly, tears of frustration escaping the edges of my visor. Mana encrusted her arms, starting at my grip and extending outward until it covered her entire body. I built it up, thickening the layer until it had the tensile strength of steel. I dropped the oval lump of mana containing Bonesaw and stepped back, reaching under my visor and pushing my fingers into my wet eyes.

Pagoda burst back into the warehouse.

I took a deep breath, settled my visor back in place, and yanked my spear out of the crystalised lump of mana around Bonesaw. Lightning ran along its edge as I sidestepped Pagoda's charge, slamming my spear clean through it and impaling it into the floor. Pagoda struggled, flailing at me with its beefy arms until I encased it in a similar prison to Bonesaw. I took a few steps away and sat down.

"Damn," said Amy, venturing over to sit down beside me. "You were really the investment all along."

I didn't reply and after a moment she put her arm around my shoulder.

"Mouse Protector lived in Boston, right?" she asked.

I sniffed wetly, pulling my knees in and resting my forehead against them. "She was the coolest adult I ever met."

"I'm really sorry."

I tilted my neck until the side of my head pressed against Amy's armpit. "What can men do against such reckless hate?"

"We could kill her, oh, what am I saying," Amy huffed. "We can't execute somebody."

I grunted, shaking my head. Heat of the moment I'd already done, I couldn't do it in cold blood.

Quest 'Saving Private Amy' complete!
Succe-

Ignore.

New quest 'Escort Mission'!
Escort Amy and Bonesaw to Armsmaster!

"My power thinks we should take them to Armsmaster."

"I like that plan. Let me melt everything in the warehouse first-

"I want to fix Mouse Protector."

Amy squeezed my shoulder. "We can try."

New quest

I blinked it away. Wasn't doing it for a quest.

I opened my eyes, lifting my head slightly to look over at Murder Rat. She, it, was still paralysed and motionless, not having whatever enhancements Bonesaw had grafted into herself to prevent it. Thick drool still spilled from her snout-like jaws and pooled onto the floor under her stapled on nose. My stomach churned. I didn't understand how Bonesaw could have done this, the sheer inhuman cruelty needed to push through mutilating a genuinely good person into that.

It was the same for Pagoda, even if he was made out of two villains. It wasn't right. Why did Cauldron and the PRT let these psychos run free?

"We will do it," I said, more to convince myself than anything. "We can do it."

Amy made a noise like she wanted to disagree, but didn't say anything. After a few more minutes I shifted and we stood up, walking carefully to Murder Rat. It remained still and Amy hesitantly put her hand on Rat's arm.

I waited, holding my breath. Partly in trepidation, partly because Murder Rat stank like a sewer.

After a minute, Amy spoke. "I don't know if I can fix her, Greg. I don't think there's enough of her left, and what is there is so well mixed with the other woman I don't know if I could separate them without killing them."

I closed my eyes again.

"Please try. I'll use my Ring, it will fix her."

I didn't believe it, but I had to try.

"And it's not just that," Amy said despairingly. "She has this frame, I guess, bolted onto her skeleton, with needles at her heart. Greg, it might be hopeless…"

"One try," my voice cracked, raw. "Please, take the frame out and if my magic doesn't work, then we'll leave."

Amy made a keening sound but didn't move. Slowly I could see Rat's flesh ripple, the machete's that were her new fingers and toes clinking softly as they detached from her body. Even slower the flesh around her back shifted, a glimmer of metal poking through. I moved around behind her, touching a finger to the emerging frame. With Amy in contact, this should be fine.

I inventoried the frame, then immediately withdrew it and hurled it at Bonesaw's chrysalis in disgust. It clanged off the solid blue and bounced away.

"Nice," Amy grimaced, then after a few more seconds shuffled back on her haunches, wiping her fingertips on the floorboards. "That's about as much as I think I can do."

I swallowed, mouth dry. I reached forward and tapped Murder Rat, my mana depleting as it was bathed in a golden glow. The staples holding her skin and nose on fell out as new flesh grew underneath them, new fingers and toes sprouting when Bonesaw had cut them off, all the unhealed cuts and scrapes Bonesaw had inflicted on her closing and purging infection.

The glow ended and Murder Rat was still there, the spell considered it a single person.

"What now?" Amy asked nervously.

"In a few minutes I'm going to take her collar off," I said, wiping my nose. "And see how much of Mouse Protector is left in there."

"Do you think that's wise?"

"I can restrain her if she's still Murder Rat."

"Well, I'm going to finish melting this place down so we can get the fuck out of here."

I nodded to her and sat down, slipping into my Meditation. I focused my breath, paying attention to the sounds around me. Amy moving about, the breeze around the doorway, Bonesaw and Pagoda's breathing.

I didn't know what I was going to do about Pagoda. I didn't want to kill it, and my prison for it would dissolve within two hours. I guess I'd have to hope that without Bonesaw near it Pagoda would be unable to do much of anything and could be safely captured when found later. It was too far away from any residential areas to do much harm if not, and everyone would be bunkering down anyway to avoid Shatterbird so, really, leaving Pagoda here should be fine.

The silence between the sounds, the stillness, was hard to find. My mind surging through half-formed plans and simulations, worry and despair over the fate of Brockton, that I might have accidentally killed Mouse Protector by not giving Amy more time.

The floor underneath me shifted, falling away with the musty smell of mould. I opened my eyes, the entire floor was melting into thin air, breaking down into small enough particles that it could never be traced back to Amy.

Bonesaw's breathing changed. I'd left her just enough space within her cocoon that she wouldn't accidentally die from asphyxiation, but not enough that she could breathe out some plague cloud and kill everyone. I hoped she was afraid.

My mana was coming close to topping out again, so I opened my eyes and stood up. I had to get it over and done with, I didn't want to wait and drag out the tension. Something lurched in my stomach, wanting to come out.

"Done yet, Amy?" I said instead of throwing up.

"All done, like we were never here."

I wiped my nose again. "Ok, I'm doing it. Stay behind me."

Amy gave a nervous titter and made sure I was directly between her and Murder Rat.

This was it. I dry swallowed.

The collar dissolved and Murder Rat sprang to her feet, landing on all fours in a languid motion. Her extended jaw worked around as her beady eyes took us in; she sniffed at the air and closed her mouth.

"Fackin' been asleep have I?" She said in a grating Boston accent, the words coming out strangely past her dog-like tongue. "Where the fack am I?"

"Mouse Protector…" I started.

"Yeah, I'm half that bitch," Rat stepped backward, glancing down at her hands. "Where're me machete's?"

"You don't remember me?" I said achingly, taking a halting half step forward.

Rat's fingers drummed on the concrete floor as she rapidly sniffed the air again. "Near the sea? Don't smell like home. Where's the Nine at?"

"But you're Mouse Protector, right?"

"Aw, don't give me that face," Rat smiled, the expression ghastly, a string of drool leaking from her row of jagged canines. "Just keep smilin', don't I say that? Ain't I tell you that," Rat's heavy brow bunched up and she clicked three times. "Smoke boy. Mouse bitch knew you, didn't she?"

"Yes! She did, do you remember?"

Rat smiled again, then frowned and shifted her shoulders. She patted her patchy chest, tapping first on a white patch of skin then a black. "Something's missing, ain't it? Feels a bit light…"

Murder Rat's eye lit upon the control frame lying on the floor some ways away.

"Yeah, I remember. You get that out of me? That thing? Bonesaw's fackin' thing? Yeah," Murder Rat said, tongue slapping out the side of her mouth and spattering drool onto the floor. "I know who you are, Smoke boy. You're one of them Wards, ain'tcha?"

"Yes, how much do you remember?"

"Greg," said Amy, warningly.

"I 'member you wanna fack the S'mur, don'tcha?" Rat pointed at me, a bizarre accusatory look on her hideous face.

"I do! You are her!"

"Greg, it's not her!" Amy hissed.

"What? I'm Mouse," Rat wheezed in what may have been a chuckle. "Lookit me, ain't I a mouse?"

I tried to smile, but it felt so, so forced. I turned to Amy who was frozen in fear, then back to Murder Rat.

"You're not her. You're Ravager."

Murder Rat gagged. "Ain't fackin' Ravagah either, Smoke boy. But I'm all innocent like, swear it. Had that frame shit in me, didn't I? Din't wanna do none of it, honest on me ma's name."

Observe said her personality was a twisted and warped combination of both Ravager's and Mouse Protector's, filtered through her only life experience as being Bonesaw's pet. She thought that her memories as her parts weren't her, that she was someone else besides them; her own person. That person was still a psychopath.

I didn't know what to do.

Murder Rat took a tentative pace to her left, keeping a wary eye on me she sniffed at the ground then locked her eyes on the blue lump over Bonesaw.

"Lil' cunt's in there, ain't she? You gonna kill her, 'cause I'd be partial to it," Rat's nasal voice came out with a thick, wet seething stream of drool. "Hey, she's got a bounty, don't she? We could split?"

Neither Amy nor I answered.

"Yeah," Rat licked her snout, moving into a posture coiled with wariness. "I reckoned it was like that. You gonna kill me, Smoke boy?"

Rat nodded slowly. "Mighty kind of ya."

She dropped low, reaching out with an extended, emaciated arm and grabbed at her pile of machetes. She whipped her hand at us, launching one straight at my head. I caught it by the blunt edge just before it tore my cheek open, the rust and crusted blood rough under my fingers.

I didn't do anything as Murder Rat turned and ran, bounding away in a disturbingly graceful four-footed gait faster than an Olympic sprinter. An iron weight had settled deep in my heart, pinning me in indecision. Mouse Protector was in there, somewhere. She remembered me.

Amy punched me in the back of the head.

"Why the fuck didn't you stop her?!" she howled, pacing, clutching at her hand in pain. "You idiot! She was never going to go back to being Mouse Protector! I told you that!"

I stared at the nine crusty machetes lying on the ground.

"She's going to hurt people, Greg! That thing is insane! It's not a person!"

I turned my hand around to better look at the machete finger held in it. This was wired into her skeleton, it must have hurt every second of the day.

"Go catch her, don't tell me that you cant! I've seen your run, get her!"

"Amy," I dropped the machete. "Shut the fuck up."

"Just, aargh!" Amy stomped her foot. "Fine, fuck, whatever! Let's just get to Armsmaster."

Quest 'Mouse Protected' failed!

Ah, you chose the moment that would hurt me most, didn't you, Quest Master?