Everybody froze. For seconds, nobody dared to move, even holding their breath. The fame of Mannequin of the Slaughterhouse Nine was so great, his mere presence so overwhelming that he didn't have to speak or move to command the attention of the crowd. He commanded their fates too.

Looking over her shoulder, frozen between the impulse to run and get some distance between her and the murdering cape and the impulse to stay still and hope he didn't notice her, Amy frantically wondered why one of the Nine was here. He had no reason to, unless he felt like hindering the city's reconstruction. It wasn't unreasonable. Or, a louder part of her thought, he could be after her. Mannequin's prefered prey were tinkers and people who tried to change the world for the better. Wasn't she included in that category?

Then, without warning, panic hit. One of the volunteers closer to him stumbled and turned to run, the first to regain his wits. It happened so fast Amy wasn't sure if anyone but her registered everything in full. Mannequin's arm wiped out, a chain extending from the ball joint that acted in place of his elbow and grabbed him by his neck. He reeled the man in, struggling and choking, until his arm reconnected and he could lift his victim into the air.

A sick crack of bone and cartilage filled the silence. The dead weight of the body fell to the ground, splashing on mud. Mannequin lifted his other hand, index finger moving from one side to another like a pendulum. The message was clear.

No running.

The crowd shifted and rustled, the people on the fringes edging towards freedom, but nobody tried to run again. Fear, uncertainty and certainty alike paralyzed them. Fear and uncertainty for their lives, thought Amy, and the certainty of death. Logistically, it was impossible for Mannequin to stop them all from running. But it was sure he would get some of them, large numbers even. No one dared move first, for the fear of being the unlucky ones.

Seemingly satisfied with their behavior, the madman in their midst nodded. He was still looking at her, she realized with a shiver. He grabbed one of the three policemen he had injured upon his entrance and hoisted her up by her neck too. Where they going to assist to another execution? The woman whimpered pitifully, shaking like a leaf. But it seemed her time hadn't come just yet. Mannequin released his grip when she had her feet underneath her and steadied her with his right hand on her shoulder. It would almost pass as a supporting gesture if it wasn't for the one doing it. With a flourish, his other hand twisted in its socket and like a magician, he suddenly had a rolled up paper between his fingers. He pressed it to her hands.

Trembling, the woman took it and, eyes jumping between the slip of paper to her capture like a frightened rabbit's, unfurled it. She looked once more at Mannequin, questions in her gaze. From her position, Amy noticed how the fabric moved under Mannequin's fingers, subtly squeezing the hostage's shoulder. Then, slowly and haltingly, she read from the note.

"Sirs and Madams, the terms of engagement are as follows: One…"

The Slaughterhouse Nine were recruiting. Eight rules followed in the letter to Brockton Bay's residents, detailing the particulars of how the Nine would test their candidates. It was very business-like, almost pleasant in tone. Almost. The words spoke of 'testing', 'removals', 'punishments' and 'penalizing'. Amy could imagine what the euphemisms hid.

The woman finished reading the letter. Mannequin let them all process what had been said for a few seconds. He lifted his hand from her shoulder and, in a flash, a blade slid from the base of his palm and cut across her neck. The arterial spray left red droplets on his white surface. The second corpse hit the ground. He lifted one hand and very clearly pointed at Amy.

Mannequin was here for her. To test her. She was a candidate for the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Monster

How appropriate.

She turned to face him fully. She had no idea what to do, but his business was with her, not Danny or Kurt or any of the volunteers here.

Amy took in her surroundings in a serie of quick glances around. She didn't even know if Mannequin could see her eyes, but he didn't act like he was blind. They had gathered in the usual place, a waste ground between two sturdy tenements, a square little more than twenty meters across. The walls were covered in graffiti and the ground was a mix between dirt and cement, which ended as being just plain muddy. Slippery. The folding tables were all pushed against the left, near the van that brought the food. A pickup truck with equipment was parked on the right corner further away from the street. That was behind her. There were no alleys, no others means of escaping the terrain but through the street, which was mostly blocked by a chain fence.

And Mannequin stood in front of the only exit.

Her mind raced. What could she do? She had never fought before, lacking the inclination and will for it, and her knowledge of the act amounted to basic self-defense and watching the real pros from afar. No, she should start by what she knew.

They were trapped with Mannequin. He had disabled the meager guards they had first. It couldn't have been because they were a threat, there was no way they would manage to even scratch him. To scare them then? Take out the protectors to make the prey realize there is nothing they can do? A psychological attack. And it wasn't like it didn't fit with the Nine's methods. But something nagged at her, some instinct that told her that there was something she was missing. Some hidden purpose in Mannequin's actions. That was when she noticed the silence. There should have been some workers on the street, a few more police officers near the registration booth, that one vagrant that just sat and watched them eat without making trouble. The relief efforts were diminished today, but still everything was unnaturally too calm.

Mannequin had isolated them. There was nobody to come to the rescue, because nobody was going to go and ask for help. And without cellphones or radio, the only way to communicate was face to face. It meant someone had to escape and run to get them help. Amy probably classified for a brute rating right now, but she was under no illusions that she could beat Mannequin. And stalling was useless when Mannequin had gained all the time in the world to test her.

"Fuck." She grit her teeth, moving to stand on the balls of her feet, legs bent and arms tense, ready to dodge at the first hostile movement. The first move was his.

Mannequin lowered his arm and tilted his head. In curiosity? Questioningly? The puppet man could somehow convey an amazing range of emotions with body language only, but without speech it was still a limited form of communication. Was he asking her a question in his own way, or was he just observing her? And for that matter, how was he going to test her? Recalling what she knew from the Nine's recruitment stints in other places, the only thing she be certain of was that it would be bloody.

Her eyes flew to the rest of the clean-up crew around, pressed against the walls, fear in their eyes, trapped like animals in an abbatoir. And know she had another reason for Mannequin's actions in confronting her in front of so many witnesses. So manyprops for his performance. She had to protect them somehow. Find them a way to escape before Mannequin killed them all.

Then a large hand closed over her shoulder and she was pulled back. Caught by surprise, she almost hurt Kurt as he stepped forward, deliberately putting her behind him. The large man was pale but still he moved to protect her. Then, in an admirable display of nerve and courage, he addressed Mannequin himself. Admirable, but futile. He got as far as opening his mouth.

Mannequin tilted his head down and twisted. He was fast, going from nought to sixty in a second. The motion made his arms spin and without warning the right arm separated at the elbow, the forearm shooting forward. There was barely any time to react. It caught Kurt in the chest, sending him flying back and into Amy. But instead of being bowled over, the girl caught Kurt's falling bulk with surprising ease, considering the man must have weighed two to three times as much as she. She pulled him back and down, out of the way. Where he had been struck, a red stain was spreading from a cut four centimeters wide and who knew how deep.

"You can't fight him." She told him. He tried speaking and coughed, frothy blood spilling from his lips. His eyes widened as he realized he wasn't able to breathe. Pulmonary bleeding. The blade, presumably the same that had slit the police woman's throat, had slid between his ribs and into his lung. Without medical assistance, he would die. Amy made up her mind, a plan emerging from her thoughts. She looked at the men and women standing around her. "Keep pressure on the wound or he will die." She stood, not pausing to see if they would heed her words.

They couldn't fight him, but she could.

In what was possibly the most reckless and idiotic move she had ever done, Amy charged Mannequin. It caught him by surprise. She crossed the twenty paces separating them in a sprint, throwing a punch as soon as she was in range. He dodged at the last minute, pivoting on one leg in a dizzying move. Between her momentum and the complete imbalance that punching while rushing put her in, Amy flew by him, missing by centimeters and heading on a direct collision course with the ground.

He was fast, but so was she.

She caught herself on her hands before she slammed on the earth. Digging in her fingers, she arrested her fall and coiled into herself like a spring. Her legs lashed out in a parody of a back kick, without anything that could even remotely be called technique, but with all the kicking power of an actual horse. She smiled as she felt herself hitting something, but it quickly faded when she realized the impact didn't feel right. Thereupon Mannequin grabbed her by the ankle and sent her flying.

So strong, she had time to think before she collided with the folded tables, breaking and denting some for sure. She took one second to mend the worst damage to her bones before standing up and glaring at Mannequin. He stood in his slightly hunched over way a few paces from where he had been before, head tilted. This time, Amy could recognize the puzzlement at her actions, the aggressiveness displayed by the pacifist healer, and the underlying curiosity as to why someone who avoided the frontlines was so strong. It seemed she had caught his full attention. Good. He turned his palms towards her and a pair of blades slid down from their bases, gleaming sharply. One was dulled red with blood. A challenge.

A drop of rain from the murky sky above landed on her shoulder. She took off.

She took care not to charge at full speed this time, opting for a more moderate approach. Although she had no experience in this regard, she knew it was possible for experienced fighters to herd their opponents in the directions they wanted. If she could push him away from the escape path, she could buy time for the others to run. It had been a long shot from the get-go and the more she tried to land a hit on her opponent, the more she realized that Mannequin held an overwhelming advantage on her just in sheer experience. Mannequin moved with the blows and trying to land a hit on him was like trying to hit water. Like the old cliché from martial arts films about the bamboo cane that bent but didn't break, every time she made contact he slackened the chains connecting his joints, diffusing the force of her hits harmlessly. The terrain favored him too. She slipped in the mud easily whether he had deployed more blades, this time from his feet, to anchor him to the ground.

Amy grunted as she was thrown again, bleeding from a deep stab on her arm. She had to get up swiftly, but taking care not to aggravate any injuries from the workers she had landed on. They cleared the space around her and once more she was going at Mannequin. She feinted left and punched with her right, trying to grab one of his arms. He evaded her easily and threw his hand in an arc aimed to cut her already injured arm. Amy didn't bother side-stepping, stepping into the stroke instead and aiming a kick to his knee. He cut her arm, sending blood spraying and her blow connected. His leg bent unnaturally but he gave no sign of feeling it. Likewise, she sealed the veins and repaired the muscles damaged in the cut. There was no pause, because she was already punching him again.

But not everything was arrayed against her. Amy could match him in speed if not sheer reflexes, and while she was lighter, her strength was on par with his. She had forced back the knee-jerk reaction to his attacks, letting him cut her, and immediately noticed something else that worked to her own benefit. Mannequin didn't want to kill her. Without pain to be felt, she threw herself at him, dodging only the hits she could tell were aiming to incapacitate. As the fight progressed, they had grown in number.

There was also another thing that ensured she would win.

Abruptly, Mannequin stopped, taking a punch square to his abdomen without softening the blow. He stumbled back. His head snapped in the direction of the chain-link fence and the streets beyond. A man disappeared around the corner. Already three more were crossing the open gate at a run.

He had become too embroiled in their duel.

Some people had been inching towards the exit during the long seconds that ticked by as they fought, and now one had taken advantage of Mannequin's focus on her to bolt for safety. More followed him. Mannequin turned his head back to her violently. Amy graced him with a mocking smile she wasn't even sure he could perceive.

Simultaneously, Mannequin turned to chase them and Amy launched herself at him in a desperate tackle. She bodychecked him into the ground, throwing her arms around him and clutching him like a limpet would a rock.

"Run!" She yelled.

Like a shot had gone off, the people moved. They scrambled to the exit, running, limping, carrying the wounded, all the while keeping a healthy distance from the entangled pair. She caught more than one grateful pair of eyes turning her way. Mannequin rose unsteadily. Amy twisted and turned, unbalancing and inconveniencing him. He couldn't move effectively in her grasp. One of his arms was caught between her and his body, but the other was free. It rose and Mannequin stabbed down with it, this time not bothering to go non-lethal. The knife punched into her torso, breaking her bones, finding her lungs and the remains of her digestive system.

"Claire!" Danny stood by the fence, watching horrified as a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine mauled the young woman.

She gathered all the air she had in her lungs in a desperate scream. "Run!" He couldn't die too. She tightened her arms around Mannequin's white form, digging her heels on the ground. She wouldn't let it happen again. "Don-" She gasped as the knife found her lung again and healed the breach hastily. "Worry! Run!"

Mannequin couldn't dislodge her. She felt no pain. She did not tire. Any injuries he inflicted she healed, in her alarm not bothering with anything but the essentials. Bone, muscle, lungs and circulation. She didn't need any more to keep Mannequin in this place. To keep him from the workers.

One misguided bastard came running towards them, shovel held high for a overhand smash. Lightning fast, he lashed out and the man doubled over, hands letting go of his improvised weapon to cover an ugly gut wound. Amy cried out in dismay.

Mannequin retracted his blades, recognizing their lack of utility in this case. Then he forced his arms between their bodies, slowing working to get his forearms distended between the two of them. There was the sound of a canon or a thunderclap and Amy was falling, disoriented. She had let go of Mannequin? Her memories and her sense of herself reasserted themselves as she hit the ground and she realized he had shot her.

She was losing blood fast. Hundreds of small metal pellets were inside her and she could trace the paths that hundreds more had taken through her body, leaving through her back. There was a crater in the front of her chest, raw and burned, hot gunpowder remains embedded in her skin. Her ribs and sternum were broken and caved in, her lungs heavily punctured sacks already filling with vital fluids. It took all she had to stop her diaphragm from spasming and worsening the situation. The rents on the outside skin were easily dealt with but the rest… She had lost too much mass. Her body had already cannibalized most of the useless organs in her torso. She didn't have much to repair herself with.

And she had no time.

Dissolve.
Transfer.
Build.
Heal.

Amy cut corners. Bone could be replaced by cartilage. The surviving bits from her breasts were needed for that. There was no need for skin over muscle when she didn't get sick. The lungs didn't need all those lymph nodes when they could have more alveoles. The lymphatic system could go, point. The esophag got cut halfway down her throat, the remains of her stomach and intestines could be used elsewhere.

She pushed herself to her elbows, going just slow enough that she wouldn't tear the fragile incomplete tissues. Where was Mannequin? A body was thrown to the ground in front of her and she jumped involuntarily. Mannequin held his hands out in a pacifying gesture and stepped back, away from her and the man. He waved his hand in his direction, ushering her to take action.

Amy had to be misinterpreting him. She had to, she begged herself even as she scrambled to the prone body. It was the same brave soul that had tried to help her. "You… You want me to heal him."

Mannequin nodded.

"No…" She denied it. "You. You would just kill him after I did."

Mannequin shook his head and rose a hand to his chest, where a heart would be on a normal person. Like he had a heart. He wanted her to heal him. Really, he did, if she took his words for truth.

"Ah." She opened her mouth to get a reply out and found herself laughing softly. "Ah ah ah…" He wanted Panacea to heal the man. She looked down at the man, seeing him die slowly with both her eyes and her mind. How could she have ever deluded herself into thinking she could atone for anything? She couldn't do shit. She couldn't even put this man out of his misery as he bleed out from a gut wound, an agonizing death. His murderer was standing back and looking at her almost expectantly. She wasn't Panacea anymore. "I can't." The man stirred weakly, looking at her, begging, panic and terror in his eyes. "I can't do that anymore."

Amy looked up and smiled, showing her blood-stained hands to the murderer. It was a broken smile. "I can't." They stayed like that as the man bleed and his eyes dimmed.

Mannequin approached her then, casually. He twisted his forearm and a blade slid out.

He was going to kill her. Could he, she asked herself? Maybe if she actively inhibited her regeneration, it would be possible. At that moment, she welcomed the thought.

But he didn't. He detached the knife with his other hand and held it out to her, kneeling so his head was more level with hers. After a moment, she took it. He got up and nodded, satisfied. Then he had his hand shoot up and grab the rim of one of the surrounding building. He reeled himself over the edge and disappeared.

Amy still had her eyes fixed on the words inscribed on the blade when someone else arrived.

PASS