"There was no long-term, and trying to cling to one would only spoil it all."
This article contains spoilers regarding the ending of Worm and plot of the sequel.
| “ | Bonesaw wanted a family. Her stick was disapproval, a revoking of any ‘love’ from those closest to her. She was far younger, emotionally, than her outward appearance suggested. [...] When she didn’t sleep, or when her mood otherwise soured, she was as intolerable as any of the others, and among the most dangerous. | ” |
| “ | Mmm. I won’t know what I did wrong until you tell me. Some people can put those pieces together, but I can’t. Pay more attention to what you’re doing to my body and why. |
” |
—Riley and Ashley Stillons II, Eclipse x.3 | ||
Riley Grace Davis,[15] known publicly as Bonesaw, was a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine.
Personality[]
Riley once was a little girl who dearly loved her family. When Jack and the Nine came to her house, killed her family, and caused her to trigger, Riley was buried away, masked under the persona of Bonesaw to cope with her situation. From then on forward, Bonesaw's mind developed alongside her passenger, which, alongside Jack's influence, would cause drastic changes in her personality.[16]
Childish and carefree, Bonesaw lacks any aversion to murder and gruesome torture, taking delight in her victims' suffering. She is fixated on the idea of being a "good girl", constantly affecting a cheerful, happy-go-lucky demeanor even while torturing her victims. She has an aversion to swearing, never cursing herself and chastising others for doing so.[17]
Bonesaw constantly craves love from the Nine, who she considers her "family". She has nightmares about her trigger event if she sleeps without being held by one of her older teammates, usually the Siberian.[18] Bonesaw most especially seeks to please Jack Slash, who is her mentor of sorts, teaching her to see her gruesome creations and torture methods as a sort of "art". She tirelessly pursues innovation in her art, looking for inspiration and new, creative ways to make others suffer.[19] When in a bad mood, she is one of the most dangerous of the Nine.[20]
Riley's return came about after Contessa approached her, telling her a few crucial words that allowed her to begin to realize her situation. Her conscience slowly and painfully returned in the lack of distractions to occupy herself with, and she began to realize that her passenger had been subsuming her personality from the day she had triggered. With the revelation, she resolved to become Riley once more, willing to even betray the Nine to do so.[16]
As Riley, she is no longer as happy-go-lucky, as she no longer can embroil herself into a carefree façade. She is unable to fully regret the things she's done as Bonesaw, but recognizes that she should, and knows something is wrong since she doesn't.[21] She no longer has an aversion to swearing, and swears herself at times.[22] While not fully divorced from her life as Bonesaw, sometimes acting borderline sociopathic, she is aware of her faults, and works hard to develop herself as an individual separate from her passenger.[16]
In later years, Riley is rather upfront about being unable to fully relate to other people. Her social skills have been severely stunted from her time in the Nine and her passenger's influence.[23]Relationships[]
Bonesaw has an obsession with building a "family" in the Nine to replace the one she lost. This influences her choices when nominating people for membership.
Jack Slash[]
Saw Jack as a mentor and a father figure of sorts, but also feared him intensely. She thought of him as very intelligent and all knowing, and constantly tried to gain his approval. She felt a sort of confusion and rebellion towards him when she began reverting into Riley once more.[16]
Siberian[]
Saw Siberian as the older sister or family pet, while Siberian saw Bonesaw as a daughter. Siberian was often the one to sleep with Bonesaw, as she had nightmares, and often accompanied Bonesaw when going out to protect her from threats. Siberian hated the idea of losing Bonesaw, and retaliated violently against threats to the girl.[24]
Mannequin[]
Often collaborated with her fellow tinker, such as when they disassembled Grue and hooked up his organs to an entire room, sustaining his body through Mannequin's life-preserving technology.[25] She also used Mannequin's technology to preserve Cherish under the waters of Brockton Bay, which would keep her alive for thousands of years to come.[26]
Panacea[]
Was highly interested in Panacea due to their similar powers over biology. She saw an opportunity for Panacea to become her older sister, collaborating together to create amazing projects of flesh and bone. Panacea did not reciprocate this feeling, disgusted by the idea.[27]
Appearance[]
Bonesaw is described as a young girl in a dress with blond hair curled in ringlets. She has one blue eye and one green eye. Over her dress, she wears a stained, oversized apron, with a pocket that carries her vials and surgical tools.[28] Aside from her hair, which is kept immaculate, her body and clothes are unkempt, covered in dirt and blood.[29] She is almost always accompanied by her biomechanical "spiders", which are small metal boxes with needles and scalpels at the end of their hydraulic legs.[30]
When Bonesaw returned to her Riley persona with the restoration of her sanity, Riley switched to a more unassuming look.[31] She temporarily turned herself taller and began maturing her body while the Nine were in stasis, but reverted her appearance before she let the Nine out from suspension to avoid suspicion. She retained her young appearance for the following years due to the technical difficulty of undoing her frozen aging.[10]
Abilities and Powers[]
Bonesaw is a powerful Tinker whose abilities make her an unparalleled expert in biological, anatomical, and physiological sciences.[32] She is capable of performing a wide array of surgical procedures, which she uses to modify her allies' bodies and her own to be tougher and stronger, and to modify her victims in order to subject them to horrific fates. Her sheer versatility makes her one of the most dangerous Tinkers on Earth Bet.
Her status was achieved thanks to her long period of activity and the materials she's used in her research. Bonesaw is able to alter the Corona Pollentia, allowing her to modify a parahuman's abilities to a limited degree and combine multiple coronas to fuse two powers into one. In one instance she altered Cherish's power so that she senses negative emotions more powerfully and cannot filter them out,[33] and combining the powers of Hatchet Face and Oni Lee to create Hack Job.[27]
Bonesaw is able to very effectively collaborate with and incorporate tech from other tinkers, likely due to her enhanced connection with her shard.[34][13] However, although she can get into technologies that are not biotech, she finds working with it frustrating and way slower.[35]
| Tinker Creations | |
|
She is very bad at giving names to her creations.[45]
Chemicals/Plagues[]
Bonesaw enjoys using vials of chemicals to her advantage. One gas she frequently employed was a white smoke that automatically kills diseases in her radius, useful against plagues that Bonesaw or her teammates were not yet immunized against. It had the side effect of also killing bugs and small rodents, much to the frustration of Skitter.[46] She can create specialized prions, available in liquid and powder form, which cripple the Corona Gemma, disabling the conscious use of powers while keeping the power itself intact.[47] She has vials of white smoke that can congeal into strands of movement-impeding gunk, similar to containment foam.[48]
She has a number of horrifying plagues and poisons designed to inflict painful death. Her poisons had the ability to cause slow, agonizing death beyond that of any natural toxin or venom.[49] She is also able to create epidemic plagues, able to spread to and kill huge amounts of people. However, Jack preferred her not to do this, so the plagues she creates are limited in their spread, an example being a plague she created that caused victims' bodies to explode and spread via bloody shrapnel, which would diminish with every person infected and eventually wear off.[50]
During the Nine's second visit of Brockton Bay, Bonesaw engineered an Agnosia Plague that spread through the water supply and rapidly vaporized into a red, airborne miasma. When inhaled, it rendered people unable to recognize others, causing a spiral of paranoia among the capes of Brockton Bay as they were left unable to distinguish friend from foe.[51]
Body Augmentation[]
Bonesaw has modified herself and her teammates extensively. All members of the Slaughterhouse Nine possess a subdermal mesh, reinforced more around the spine, organs, and major arteries, causing them to be much tougher than regular humans.[46][52] The added protection was powerful enough to even allow members of the Nine to take shots from a sniper rifle.[52] More recently, she installed artificial neurons into the Nine that were able to stay hidden from Cherish's emotion senses.[53]
Bonesaw herself is considerably more augmented. Her body is reinforced like the rest of the Nine, and she has redundant organs, able to function even with her heart pierced. She has numerous contingencies in the event of grievous bodily damage, including a prehensile spine that effectively serves as a third arm when exposed.[54] Her prehensile spine has the ability to extend needles, which can interface with another victim's spine through the mouth to pilot that person's body.[48] She can turn off the pain she felt through an internal 'switch', and is immune to most diseases, venoms, and allergens.[55]
Among her various tricks is her ability to deploy poisons from vents in her body, alongside mechanical traps and needles that can spring out on command.[56] She is also loaded with lethal, potentially epidemic-causing plagues that are set to release into the air upon her potential death.[57] She has capsules in her teeth that she can break to release and spit acid from her mouth.[48] In the case of Master influence on her mind, she has a berserker mode that will automatically activate.[56]
After Bonesaw reformed, Panacea removed everything Bonesaw had implanted into her body. Panacea did not turn off the pain while she was doing this,[58] presumably to make sure she did not miss anything she was removing and because she was still wary of a potential relapse.[59][60]
History[]
Background[]
Riley triggered in 2005, at the age of six,[4] after she was forced to repeatedly provide medical care for her family by the Slaughterhouse Nine. Her mother, father, brother, and pet were spread throughout the house, each supervised by one or two members of the Nine, forcing her to rush between the rooms of the house to patch them up as they were injured over and over again.[16]
After triggering, she continued to stitch her family up using her enhanced knowledge of medicine, growing exhausted over the hours of work. Eventually, she gave up, watching as her mother slowly died in front of her. Dissociating her mother's body in her mind as a mere lump of flesh, Riley mentally broke. Taking the last words of her dying mother to heart, "Be a good girl", Riley faked a smile, resolving to take on the persona of what would eventually become Bonesaw.[16][61]
Post-Leviathan[]
The Slaughterhouse Nine came to Brockton Bay to recruit a new member shortly after Leviathan attacked the city. Motivated by the prospect of an "older sister" with a power that complemented her own, Bonesaw chose Panacea as her nomination, visiting the Dallon household to tell her as much. Accompanied by Murder Rat, Hack Job, and Pagoda, Bonesaw approached Amy and a brain-damaged Mark Dallon, making her recruitment pitch. After Amy expressed reservations with using her power, Bonesaw decided to test Amy, forcing her to disable Murder Rat and kill Pagoda in an attempt to make Amy get over her aversion to killing. After further refusal, with Amy claiming she couldn't use her power on brains, Bonesaw decided to force her to take action by having one of her spiders inject acid into Mark's brain. After Amy gave in, removing the acid and restoring Mark to his full mental faculties, Mark used his powers as Flashbang to drive Murder Rat and Bonesaw away.[27]
Bonesaw participated in the Slaughterhouse Nine's slaughter of the Merchants, releasing a short term plague that caused victims to explode and spread the disease via shrapnel. After the carnage had concluded, Bonesaw began harvesting muscle and organs from the fallen and stitched them together into an artistic creation.[62]
After the Slaughterhouse Nine captured Grue, she worked together with Mannequin to turn Grue into one of her "art pieces".[63] This, along with her torturing of his friends and Taylor, eventually caused Grue to experience a second trigger event.[64] With his newfound trump ability, Grue copied Siberian's power and used it to kill Burnscar and mutilate Bonesaw, chopping off her hands, before helping the Undersiders escape. She also modified the residents of Dolltown to resemble the Nine in order to provide cover for their escape.
She would later replace her lost hands with tech from Mannequin.[65]
With the intervention of Legend and his team, Bonesaw unleashed an agnosia plague on the city as punishment for "cheating" in the Nine's recruitment games. Bonesaw and Jack briefly fooled Skitter into thinking they were Tattletale and Grue, before Skitter realized who they were and ran away. Bonesaw and Jack had a final confrontation with Skitter and Panacea at the hospital before being repelled. She left another group of surgically modified people in the Boat Graveyard. as a final distraction while the Nine fled Brockton Bay, one of these people being Cherish as punishment for her attempted subversion and betrayal of the Nine.
Post-Echidna[]
While evading the pursuit of Dragon and Defiant, the Nine recruited Skinslip, Night Hag, and Damsel of Distress. Bonesaw surgically modified Damsel so she could control her power. Spearheading a raid on Accord's lab the tinker was confronted by Defiant, who stabbed the child tinker in the heart before bisecting her. Nevertheless, Bonesaw survived and kidnapped Blasto along with retrieved samples from the database.[48] A later raid on Toybox gave the Nine access to incredible technology and resources, allowing the group to retreat into a private world where they could wait in suspended animation.[66]
Timeskip[]
During the two year waiting period, before the Nine were revived from cryonic suspension, Bonesaw crafted an army of clones - The Slaughterhouse Nine-Thousand. However, she began to have doubts about serving Jack Slash and about the distinction between herself and her passenger, prompted by Contessa. She allowed herself to grow up over the years, but reverted the changes and partially automated her nervous system before awakening the Slaughterhouse 9000 so as to hide the changes in her personality from Jack.[16]
Gold Morning[]
Riley joined the heroes during Gold Morning, although they didn't trust her. She was assigned to treat the wounded, paired with Panacea, one of the few that could check her work to make sure she wasn't reverting back to Bonesaw.
With the lab destroyed, she couldn't contribute to the fighting any other way.[67][68]
Post-Gold Morning[]
Valkyrie, 'the keeper of the dead', thought that with the help of Panacea, she and Riley would be able to bring back the dead to refill their ranks.
Early Ward[]
Two years later Riley is working for The Wardens, still paired with Panacea and heavily restricted in autonomy.[69] In this time, she developed some fondness for Nilbog.[70]
In the last year Riley provided Ashley Stillons II with advanced prosthetics and their maintenance.[69]
Post-Fallen Fall[]
After the portal sabotage, Riley was stranded alongside Jamie Rinke, Jessica Yamada, and multiple other Wardens' personnel and ex-prisoners near a remote settlement.[71]
Riley ostensibly was the reason that the most of the people survived. However, she backslided to her old habits,[72] raising suspicions and tension in the camp.[9] It eventually led to her fight with the similarly-stressed Jessica Yamada,[73] shortly after they were found by Valkyrie.
There was no evidence found of other misbehavior on Bonesaw's part,[74] but Riley chose to stay in exile, with Valkyrie making visits as necessary.[75]
Post-Time Bubble Pop[]
She was still active, tending to The Flock.
Riley heard about Contessa being captured by Teacher and leaned into her paranoia, making it borderline impossible to contact her without an assistance from the members of the Flock.[76]
The Ice Breaks[]
She was visited by Photon and invited to the fight.[76] Bonesaw accepted invitation, and it was decided that Riley was going to instruct Chris Elman on execution to stay on time.[77]
She provided her opinion on severity of wounds of Victoria Dallon and Byron Vera, forcing Chris to share his emergency supplies.[78]
Following Chris' defection Riley agreed to proceed on her own, despite not having obvious means to deliver results at the moment. She was later recovered by Valkyrie Titan as a part of the deal between Victoria and Contessa.[79]
Her opinion was one of the reasons for the Wardens to attempt to capture Chris Elman during the Victoria's plague deployment.[80]
Ward Epilogue[]
Riley passed the winter in her camp, but returned to The City and the Wardens' custody at the end of the winter. She met Cryptid and Lookout during her visit to the local Wardens' office.[81]
She was provided with a monitored apartment by the Wardens.[81]
Riley informed Dragon about her conversation with Lookout, prompting Dragon to investigate.[82]
Chapter Appearances[]
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Trivia[]
- According to Valkyrie, she is the keeper of the "Chirurgeon" shard,[83] a reflection of Valkyrie's use of outdated language.
- Wildbow had not read Franken Fran when Bonesaw was conceptualized; she went through several permutations before even being named Bonesaw, but after being told about the manga he included it on his influences.[84]
Fanart Gallery[]
References[]
- ↑ “Come now, Bonesaw,” Jack said.
“It’s just so funny, watching him react. His heart beat faster when I touched her.”
“It did. But we should go. Burnscar? Torch the ones we’re not bringing.”
“I wanted to!”
“You had your chance, little b. You got distracted.”
I could feel the heat of nearby flame as Burnscar manifested a fireball in one hand. - Excerpt from Snare 13.9 - ↑ “A pity, a pity. This is my Alice, visiting our not-so-wondrous Wonderland.”
“Riley,” the girl said. “I keep telling you, it’s not Alice, Riley.”
“A mere title, not a name,” the man tittered some. It was an eerie sound, coming from someone his age and gender. Not that Valkyrie minded. She’d dealt with worse in the Birdcage.
“Nevermind,” Riley said. “Alice it is. Whatev.” - Teneral e.1 - ↑ “…a Red Queen and an Alice, then.”
“Or you could call me by my name.”
“I’m quite fond of Alice. She was a chaotic force in the worlds she visited, you know. She questioned, she challenged. A revolutionary in absurd worlds held captive by their own conventions and riddles.”
“This supposed Red Queen and I are friends, you know,” Alice Riley said.
“I’m not sure I’d go that far,” the Red Queen said.
“They were friends and enemies both in the story,” King Rinke said. - Glare 3.x - ↑ 4.0 4.1 “Breadth and depth,” Riley said.
“Hm?”
“The earlier you get powers, the more it spreads across your personality. Growing up with it, there’s less room for you. It’s where young triggers get more versatility, more natural instinct.”
Lookout nodded. “I was eight.”
“Six. Clones, like your friend in the cell over here… they start from zero. It does have an impact.” - Excerpt from Last 20.e4 - ↑ January 20th, 2005- Excerpt from Interlude 25
- ↑ “Bonesaw.” he spoke. The girl on the screen looked barely older than Dinah, maybe the same age as Aisha. The image showed her wide-eyed, a spray of dried blood painted her face at a diagonal. - Parasite 10.6
- ↑ Her height, too, had changed. She’d cut her hair to match, had downgraded her body so the last year and a half of development had never happened.
It was the burning of a bridge, in a way. It would retard her growth in the future, and that would arouse suspicion. - Excerpt from Interlude 25 - ↑ The two girls didn’t talk much as they walked. The younger one was on the cusp of adulthood, but she smelled like blood and sickness. She was blonde, wearing a dress. - Glare 3.x
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Some parahumans, one couple, a jolly fellow who fancied himself a survivalist and who was taking an optimistic view of the situation. He would stop in every day or two, and he hadn’t stopped in for two days. We sent out people to get in touch with him after Valkyrie’s arrival, and they couldn’t find his camp. [...] Terrifying. Crushing. Riley adopted her ‘Bonesaw’ persona, acting younger than she appeared- and with the surgeries she subjected herself to, she’ll never appear older than twelve. Laughing off my questions, being furtive.” - Excerpt from Sundown 17.6
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Some of those structures were the same ones that kept her apparent age at twelve. She had never gotten around to undoing that, in part because it required her to overhaul so many systems that were hooked into it. She wasn’t sure she wouldn’t end up over a hundred years old and still postponing the change to her appearance. - Excerpt from Last 20.e4
- ↑ “You’re the only other person who works with meat. I mean, we’re different in some ways, but we’re also really similar, aren’t we? You manipulate people’s biology, and I tinker with it. The human body’s only a really intricate, wet machine, isn’t it?” - Excerpt from Interlude 11h
- ↑ She has a trump rating. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 Bonesaw likely started out as a Limit but breadth and depth factor in to branch her out considerably. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit, archived on Spacebattles
- ↑ There -can- be very few people with healing abilities. Bonesaw, Scapegoat, Panacea. Others with niches (neurology only, or cardiac systems only), others still with limited capacity (Othala with the ability to grant regeneration).
That’s setting-relevant and a reality when healing is actually something monumentally complex. - Comment by Wildbow on Cell 22.4 - ↑ Interlude 10.y II
- ↑ 16.0 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.7 Interlude 25
- ↑ Her mother’s final words rang through Riley’s head, the last words she’d before she had become a machine that had stopped working.
Be a good girl.
She’d be good. She’d be polite and cheerful and she’d do her chores and she would mind her manners and she’d eat all of her dinner and she’d keep her hair nice and she wouldn’t swear and… - Excerpt from Interlude 25 - ↑ Bonesaw wanted a family. Her stick was disapproval, a revoking of any ‘love’ from those closest to her. She was far younger, emotionally, than her outward appearance suggested. She had bad dreams at night if she didn’t sleep in the embrace of one of her older teammates, usually Siberian. When she didn’t sleep, or when her mood otherwise soured, she was as intolerable as any of the others, and among the most dangerous. - Excerpt from Interlude 12
- ↑ Most days, if snuggling didn’t quite cut it, Jack would keep her busy, give her something to do, and entertain her. Always, his voice in her ear, always ushering her forwards, praising her for being a good girl, for her art, for her talent. Others were interested. Her family. - Excerpt from Interlude 25
- ↑ Bonesaw wanted a family. Her stick was disapproval, a revoking of any ‘love’ from those closest to her. She was far younger, emotionally, than her outward appearance suggested. She had bad dreams at night if she didn’t sleep in the embrace of one of her older teammates, usually Siberian. When she didn’t sleep, or when her mood otherwise soured, she was as intolerable as any of the others, and among the most dangerous. - Excerpt from Interlude 12
- ↑ No. She wouldn’t say she felt guilty about the things she’d done, but she recognized that she was broken, now. She recognized that maybe she should.
A part of her wished she could reach inside and find that carefree perspective, the innocence she’d enjoyed. Another part of her was glad. Everything about herself was modifiable, reversible, pliable. Pieces in the machine. But this? She wasn’t sure she could alter it, nor that she wanted to.
This wouldn’t be a penance. That would suggest penitence. But it’d be just, as best as she could figure. - Excerpt from Interlude 25 - ↑ “Be fucking good, Eli,” she retorted, staring at him. - Excerpt from Interlude 25
- ↑ She held her hand off to the side, and let the scalpel fall. “I won’t know what I did wrong until you tell me. Some people can put those pieces together, but I can’t.” - Excerpt from Eclipse x.3
- ↑ Siberian was tricky. He doubted anyone else in the group was even aware, but their most feral member harbored a fondness for Bonesaw. Siberian had little imagination, and was perfectly comfortable rehashing the same violent and visceral scenarios time and again, but she nonetheless enjoyed Bonesaw’s work. She saw a kind of beauty in it. Even more than that, he sometimes wondered if Siberian didn’t reciprocate Bonesaw’s desire for family. Bonesaw alternately referred to Siberian as an older sister or the family pet, but Siberian’s fondness for Bonesaw bordered on the maternal, like a mother bear for her cub. Did anyone else in the group note how Siberian seemed to keep Bonesaw’s company, to assume she would accompany the young girl when she went out, and carefully kept Bonesaw in sight at all times?
Siberian’s stick was Bonesaw, the possibility of losing the girl’s company in one way, shape, or form. Threats against the girl would be met with a fury like no other. Boredom, similarly, would see Siberian stalking off on her own to amuse herself, a scenario that grounded the group until Siberian’s return hours or days later. Such usually meant a hasty retreat as the heroes who had realized that they could not defeat Siberian came after the rest of the group. - Excerpt from Interlude 12 - ↑ 25.0 25.1 It was some sort of collaboration between Bonesaw and Mannequin. He’d been partially flayed, the skin stripped from his arms and legs and stretched over the walls around him. His ribcage had been opened, splayed apart. An improvised metal frame held each of his internal organs in place, some several feet from their intended position, as if they were held out for display, others placed on the shelves of the freezer. Cases covered in a ceramic shell seemed to be pumping him full of water, nutrients and other fluids that must have been helping keep him alive. - Excerpt from Snare 13.8
- ↑ She’s hooked up to the same systems that keep Mannequin going. Chances are strong she’ll live for a few thousand years. Maybe ten or twenty thousand, depending on the degree of wear from tides. - Comment by Wildbow on Chrysalis 20.3
- ↑ 27.0 27.1 27.2 27.3 27.4 Interlude 11h
- ↑ His teammate Bonesaw, was standing in the corner of the room just to my right. I could see the edge of a dress, an apron with tools and vials in the pocket, long blond hair curled into ringlets, and that same shroud of smoke around her, moving out to fill the room. - Excerpt from Prey 14.10
- ↑ A girl stood in the living room, five or so years younger than Amy. Her blond hair had been curled into ringlets with painstaking care, but the rest of her was unkempt, filthy. She stared at Mark, who was struggling and failing to stand from the couch.
The girl turned to look at Amy, and Amy saw that some of the dirt that covered the girl wasn’t dirt, but crusted blood. The girl wore a stained apron that was too large for her, and the scalpels and tools in the pocket gleamed, catching the light from the lamps in the corner of the room. - Excerpt from Interlude 11h - ↑ 30.0 30.1 It took only moments to rig. Her spider boxes ran on interconnected lumps of gray matter, basic impulses, motor control and storage, with some computer chips to handle functions that were more trouble than they were worth to implement. One of those chips managed rote movements. She removed a defunct spider box from the backpack she was keeping beneath her desk and attached it to Blasto’s spine, between his shoulder blades. - Excerpt from Interlude 25
- ↑ Cockroaches 28.3
- ↑ Wildbow's Parahuman List
- ↑ Don’t worry about Cherish. She’s sleeping somewhere at the bottom of the bay. Bonesaw was kind enough to crank up her receptive range toward negative emotions and remove her filters. The girl will personally experience every awful feeling Brockton Bay’s inhabitants do- and with the benefit of Alan’s tech, she’ll get to do it for a very, very, very long time. - Excerpt from Prey 14.11
- ↑ mightbeaperson928: How much mechanical stuff do wet tinkers get? The big ones in canon are bonesaw and blasto, bonesaw can make her spiders and such but as a surgical tinker that makes sense. blasto however I'm not as familiar with but it was plants if I'm remembering correctly? But he used mechanical vats to grow them in. Are those included in his power?
Wildbow: Wholly depends on the tinker. Also depends on the tinker's development. Bonesaw is an example of a tinker who's collected enough shard experience points, for one way of putting it, to get her passenger to say 'hey, let's knock down some walls and let you experiment more with less wet technology'. - Conversation with Wildbow on Reddit - ↑ Tinkers have a lot of requirements and things that play into how they operate on a day to day basis. Time, resources, upkeep of whatever they've built, general mental energy/focus, and research.
Breaking into a new category takes research. A lot of the time you'll end up trying to ground whatever field you're moving into in whatever you already know & have built, which produces a leapfrogging effect. [...] Research takes time and focus and part of that focus is that you really want to and need to commit to a course to gain momentum. For some tinker types, leapfrogging around like this might be slower the further you get from your core field. Going the complete other direction, Bonesaw can get into tech that isn't biotech but it's way slower and the upkeep is lower quality and over time that degrades... which is where it gets complicated with the pocket dimension she's in and she's less confident about messing with that or changing things up. She can, it's just slow and frustrating.
That's building toward the future, but there's also the stuff you're leaving in the past: the stuff you've made that you don't use every day. It needs some upkeep and minor repair over time.
In both of these cases, you suffer if you're distracted and scattered.
[...]
The effect of being scattered gets compounded when you add in resources.
Resources differ by specialty but if you're breaking into a new specialty you'll tend to require new kinds of material. [...] The move from tech to 'wet' tinkering is a pretty severe one. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit - ↑ 36.0 36.1 Others were entering the room now. From the kitchen, a woman, the structure of her face altered into something that was more rat-like than human, conelike, ending in a squashed black nose that had staples around it. Bonesaw had added a second set of teeth, all canines, so that the woman would have enough as her jaw was stretched forward. Drool constantly leaked between her teeth in loops and tendrils. She was pale, except for her face and patches all down her body, where patches of ebon black skin were stapled in place. Her hair was long, dark, and unwashed, but most unnerving of all were her fingers, which had been replaced by what looked like machetes. The clawtips dragged on the hardwood as she stumped forward on feet that had been modified in a similar way, no longer fit for conventional walking.
The third was another Frankenstein hodgepodge of two individuals, emerging from the hallway where the amalgamation of Oni Lee and Hatchet Face -Hack Job- had exploded. The lower half was a man who must have been built like a gorilla in life, rippling with muscles, walking forward on his knuckles. His upper body grew up from the point the other body’s neck should have begun, an emaciated man with greasy brown hair and beard, grown long. He was not unlike a centaur, but the lower half was a brutish man.
Then there were the other things. They weren’t alive. Spidery contraptions of scrap metal, they lacked heads, only consisting of a box half the size of a toaster and spindly legs that moved on hydraulics, each ending in a syringe or scalpel. A dozen of them, climbing onto the walls and floor. - Excerpt from Interlude 11h - ↑ It didn’t help that Blasto had died a week ago. A stroke, no doubt from stress, in the midst of a refrain of the Love Bugs theme song. The only thing that let him move now were the control mechanisms she’d set up. - Excerpt from Interlude 25
- ↑ My swarm could feel others approach from the heroine’s direction. They were the size of dogs, and they skipped forward on mechanical legs. The mechanical spiders. Dozens of them, coming straight for me. - Excerpt from Prey 14.9
- ↑ Bonesaw reached into her apron and retrieved a remote control. She pointed it at Mark, where he sat on the couch. A red dot appeared on his forehead.
“No!”
One of Bonesaw’s mechanical contraptions leaped across the room, its scalpel legs impaling the suede cushions on either side of Mark. One leg, tipped with a syringe, thrust into Mark’s right nostril. He hollered incoherently, tried to pull away, only for two mechanical legs to clutch his head and hold him firm. - Excerpt from Interlude 11h - ↑ Behind her, Blasto watched the video. She set it to repeat, and the bug box kicked in the second time around. Blasto’s reedy voice sang along. It was so pathetic and mournful that she laughed aloud.
Better give him some exercise too.
By the time the fourth repeat had finished, he was all set up. He started dancing along with the fifth, mimicking characters on the screen. Each repeat would be a little more precise, as the camera captured the necessary elements. - Excerpt from Interlude 25 - ↑ I stared at the laptop. It was still on the last page. Glace.
“Cryogenics,” I said.
“Stasis,” Miss Militia agreed. “The pressure grew too intense, with Defiant and Dragon’s pursuit, they weren’t recovering from losses fast enough. They’ve gone into hiding, and we think they plan to wait.”
Wait, I thought.
“How long?” Clockblocker asked.
“We can’t know for sure,” Miss Militia replied. “But if they’ve put themselves in a cryogenic sleep, they could wake and resume their normal activities days, weeks, months or years from now. Depending on the resources they have available, they might well emerge with clones of their current members at their side.” - Excerpt from Cell 22.2 - ↑ They’d come out blank. Wouldn’t do. She had access to some of the toys they’d liberated from the Toybox. She’d have to put the new Slaughterhouse’s memories together herself. Brains. Memories, or things close enough to memories. She had notes and records, all of the bedtime stories Jack had told her as she drifted off to sleep these past few years. There was information saved on the computer. She could hodgepodge it together.
This would be real art. How well could she rebuild them?
Cranial had been selling memories on the black market, selling skills. She’d kept bad memories too, took them from people, even gave them to some people. Silly, really. A lot of them had wanted trigger events, except the trigger events didn’t work like that.
This computer was only an access point. The other computers took up vast amounts of space, out of sight, out of mind. If something failed, she’d have to go fix it, but she would spend most of her time here, surrounded by her family, some she’d never met. - Excerpt from Interlude 25 - ↑ “The Nine have access to all of their work?” I felt an inarticulate feeling of horror creep over me. I couldn’t imagine anything particular, but anything that enhanced the capabilities and options that Slaughterhouse Nine had at their disposal?
“And access to the work of Blasto, a cloning specialist they assaulted and kidnapped in Boston,” Miss Militia said. - Excerpt from Cell 22.2 - ↑ “The Slaughterhouse Nine attacked Toybox, taking the group’s devices for themselves, and they disappeared. We suspect they used Dodge’s devices to exit into a pocket dimension, and by the time we’d found a way to follow, they’d exited elsewhere.”
“They’re dimension hopping?”
“Dodge’s devices only exit from Bet to pocket worlds he creates with his devices, back to Bet. We believe they exited somewhere on Bet, possibly in another state, then used another device to hide. Which would be where they are now. Without knowing where they entered that particular pocket, we can’t hope to find them,” Miss Militia said. “We know their patterns. They tend to cut a swathe of destruction across North America, and it’s rare for even a handful of days to pass without them taking any action at all. Between the PRT’s past experience with the group, our thinkers, and the fact that they haven’t made an appearance in nearly ten days, we believe we’ve worked out what they’re doing.” - Excerpt from Cell 22.2 - ↑ “The other, I’m trying to figure out a name. The one on the bottom was Carnal. Healer, tough, and healed more by bathing himself in blood. Thought he had a place on our team, failed the tests. The one on the top was Prophet. Convinced he was Jesus reborn. What do you call a mix of people like that? I’ve got a name in mind, but I can’t quite figure it out.”
“I don’t know.”
“So you’re bad at names too?” Bonesaw grinned. “I’m thinking something like shrine, temple… but one with multiple floors. Um.” - Excerpt from Interlude 11h - ↑ 46.0 46.1 “A benefit of little Bonesaw’s smoke,” Jack answered. “If I recall correctly, it’s something of a safeguard in case she accidentally deploys a concoction she hasn’t immunized herself or the rest of our team against. The fact that it works against bugs and small rodents is a side benefit, rather than the intent. Bonesaw’s work has made us members of the Nine more or less immune to disease anyways.”
“And the gunshot?”
“Subdermal mesh. There’s more protection around the spine and organs, and you landed that shot pretty close to my spine. It hurts quite a bit.” - Excerpt from Prey 14.10 - ↑ She tilted my head back and felt around the edges of my mask, trying to find the part where she could pull it off. “I’m really good at figuring out where the Corona and the Gemma are. I can even guess most of the time, if I know what powers the person has. And I can pry it wide open, make it so the powers can’t be turned off, or I can temporarily disable it, or modify it. The powder I blew into your face? It has the same prions I put in the darts I shot your friends with. Cripples the Gemma, but it leaves your powers intact. Can’t experiment with your abilities if I’ve fried your whole Corona Pollentia, right? Right.” - Excerpt from Snare 13.9
- ↑ 48.0 48.1 48.2 48.3 Interlude 19.x
- ↑ Those doubts had become quiet conviction after he’d gone to see Battery in the hospital. One of Bonesaw’s mechanical spiders had cut her suit. He knew exactly the kind of disorientation, hallucination and waves of paranoia she would have experienced as the gas took hold. While she reeled and tried to get a grip on reality, she’d likely left herself open for further attacks. Whatever the case, one of the spiders had injected her with a poison Bonesaw had devised.
Her death had been slow, painful and inevitable. It had been engineered to strike those notes in a way that millions of years of evolution had yet to refine a plant’s toxin or an animal’s venom. Lying in the hospital bed, still delirious, Battery had used halting sentences to tell him about Cauldon, about buying her powers, and about Cauldron asking her to help Siberian and Shatterbird escape. She’d planned to pursue the Nine, to offer assistance and then kill one or both of the villains. Battery had begged him for affirmation that she’d tried to do the right thing, that he would find the answers she didn’t. He’d reassured her the best he could. - Excerpt from Interlude 14.y - ↑ The man stumbled five or six steps before his body began to swell. His right arm bloated up to three or four times the usual size, turning crimson, before it exploded violently, sending shards of bone and a spray of blood into the people nearest him. He screamed, only for his cries to grow shorter and more frantic, as the rest of him reached that critical mass. In another ten seconds, the remainder of his body detonated.
[...]
Behind the child tinker, those in the crowd who had been struck by the blood and flying bone of her first victim were starting to scream as their bodies swelled as well.
,br>Jack frowned. “Bonesaw. You know my rule about epidemics. You have to play fair with the rest of the group.”
“No epidemic! I promise!” She said, drawing a little ‘x’ over her heart, “Four or five cycles. No more. Each transition is going to have only about half the catalyst of the last, and eventually they’ll be able to fight it off.” - Excerpt from Interlude 12 - ↑ Prey 14.8
- ↑ 52.0 52.1 Cherish shrugged. “Bonesaw gave me the works. Mesh sheaths for every major artery and organ, wire reinforcement for my skeleton. It’s not going to kill me anytime soon.” - Excerpt from Snare 13.7
- ↑ Jack was getting heated, talking mostly to himself. “That was the whole point! To see how long we could go without tipping her off. Bonesaw helped with some surgery, even some artificial neural connections that Cherish wouldn’t be able to see. So much work and preparation ruined.” - Excerpt from Plague 12.4
- ↑ Fully? No. But generally speaking, I try to stay one step ahead. If I decide to describe or unveil more of a character (be it their powers or their background), I try to give it some extra thought beforehand and think things through enough that there’s other traits or qualities that aren’t explicitly outlined (but perhaps implicitly).
The benefit of this is that, generally speaking, I’m not coming up with ideas at the moment I’m putting words to the page, and I’ve let thoughts & possibilities stew in my head for some time before it happens (One example: Bonesaw’s prehensile spine & the other accouterments she has set up in the event of major limb damage – I had it in mind well before Blasto’s interlude, but it never came up during the Nine’s stay in Brockton Bay). - Comment by Wildbow in Chrysalis 20.2 - ↑ “Just so you know, I’ve rendered myself immune to all those pesky little venoms and allergens,” she said. “And I can turn pain off like I’m flicking a switch. Don’t want to do that on a permanent basis, but it does make this easier to deal with.” - Excerpt from Snare 13.9
- ↑ 56.0 56.1 Bonesaw laughed again, not for quite so long. Through the giggles, she said, “If you’re going to try to mind control me, I can tell you you’ve got another thing coming. I’ve got safeguards. You’ll only activate my berserker mode.”
[...]
Bonesaw bristled. Mechanical traps, spring-loaded needles and venom venting systems readied throughout her body. She let the bags drop to the ground. - Excerpt from Interlude 25 - ↑ “You know I loaded myself with a mess of epidemics, Defiant,” Bonesaw said. “You kill me like that and I’ll explode into a cloud of a bajillion plagues. It can’t be easy.”
“It is,” Defiant’s voice was distorted by his helmet, vaguely computerized. There was a processor at work somewhere there, Rey observed.
“What, you’ll unleash a thousand plagues on this world to finish me off? Me? A little girl?” Bonesaw smiled wide. - Excerpt from Interlude 19.x - ↑ “I’ve had no sleep,” Bonesaw said. “Big sis here took out all the good bits I’d stored inside myself, and she didn’t turn off the pain. I feel too light. I feel weird. Can’t sit still, not that they ever let me.”
“First tier parahuman problems,” Imp said. Her tone wasn’t as humorous in nature as the words. - Cockroaches 28.3 - ↑ “And they keep getting on my case,” Bonesaw said, apparently oblivious. She directed her attention to Panacea and Lung. “Trust me, I haven’t butchered you all yet, I’m not going to in the future. You can stop testing me.”
“I remember when you were cuddly,” Tattletale said. “You were so happy and fluffy and you had a good attitude. You were a complete and total monster, and nobody in their right mind would cuddle you, but you were adorable. Now look at you.”
Bonesaw scowled, but I wasn’t paying attention to that. Tattletale had used the past tense. You were a complete monster. Referring to the past, or an observation on a deeper level? - Cockroaches 28.3 - ↑ “She is why I can’t leave,” Panacea said. “I’m the only one that can double-check her work. If we’re both here, you’ve got two stellar healers on the back lines. If I leave, you’ve got a healer with minimal combat experience on the front line and a defused bomb with nobody that’s capable of knowing if it’s reactivated.”
I couldn’t really argue that.
Well, I could, but not very well.
“There’s another way to deal with that sort of situation,” Imp said. “Get rid of the fucking bomb.”
“We will,” Panacea said. “If she gives us an excuse. Any excuse at all. But she gets one chance.” - Cockroaches 28.3 - ↑ Probably. You might be able to say that Jack had her family for weeks/months before finally running her into the ground, and that what we saw was only the final stage. - Comment by Wildbow on Reddit
- ↑ Interlude 12
- ↑ Snare 13.8
- ↑ Snare 13.9
- ↑ Bonesaw’s hands were smooth as glass as she reached for her belt. She was cool and collected, even as the bugs slowly flayed her.
She was stopped short as the silk strands tangled her ceramic fingers. - Excerpt from Prey 14.7 - ↑ Interlude 20.x
- ↑ Bonesaw isn’t equipped to make clones. They take some time to grow, anyways. Years to fully develop. Months to reach adolescence. - Comment by Wildbow onVenom 29.3
- ↑ Sure, but that’s Blasto’s balliwick, not Bonesaw’s. - Comment by Wildbow onVenom 29.3
- ↑ 69.0 69.1 Eclipse x.3
- ↑ Interlude 3 II
- ↑ Sundown 17.6
- ↑ Riley seemed to have saved us, if anything, by analyzing the food and curing the sickest of us- people I deemed so at-risk that it was unlikely she could do too much. Riley and Jamie Rinke were, to all appearances, angelic, all considered. Some reining in needed, naturally, and it took everything I had to stay on top of it all, especially with my own bouts with illness, but it worked. - Excerpt from Sundown 17.6
- ↑ This- a whirl of intensity, Jessica reaching out with a bleeding arm, grabbing a thin wrist, slamming it down into rocky ground until the attacker dropped the blade. Frantic, even though it meant losing traction, Jessica reached out and swiped the knife, sending it flying ten or fifteen feet.
The hands that grabbed her arms were small. Fingernails dug into forearm, and came away with fine white lines caught beneath small fingernails that had been painted pink.
Jessica knelt on the offending hand, pinning it down, and strangled-
Strangled Bonesaw. - Excerpt from From Within 16.12 - ↑ Everyone accounted for. Everyone checked over. Nothing questionable. If I had to guess, she was protective of her work because it was all she had to show for the prior timeframe and as you say, it was fragile. I’ve gone over that conversation a thousand times in my head, since, and I think she might have misread my tone, or misread my impatience as my wanting her to leave it behind.” - Excerpt from Sundown 17.6
- ↑ “And Bonesaw?” I asked, quiet. “Is she okay?”
“Riley is Riley, Victoria. Physically? Even with nearly every bit of her technology removed from her body, I don’t think there’s much someone could do to her with physical wounds that would last.”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
“Mentally? Emotionally?” Jessica asked. “She asked to stay. Valkyrie tried to convince her. They struck a deal that Valkyrie would visit now and then. She was ashamed she hurt me like she did.” - Excerpt from Sundown 17.6 - ↑ 76.0 76.1 Infrared 19.z
- ↑ Last 20.2
- ↑ Last 20.4
- ↑ Last 20.a
- ↑ “And Chris?”
“They’re going to hunt him down. [...] He was spreading half-truths and they asked Jessica, who asked Riley, who said he was a problem. They’ll imprison him and take away his stuff if they can. Jessica said to, I think, as a compromise.” - Excerpt from Last 20.10 - ↑ 81.0 81.1 Last 20.e4
- ↑ Last 20.e5
- ↑ Teneral e.1
- ↑ Massive Franken-Fran fan here.
Bonesaw’s original conception predates my discovery of the manga, though (just to head off the ‘that character’s stolen from ____’ guys.) - Comment by Wildbow on interlude 11h
[]
| Leaders | King † • Jack Slash |
|---|---|
| Members | Bonesaw ‡ • Breed † • Burnscar † • Cherish ‡ • Chuckles † • Crawler † • Crimson † • Damsel of Distress † • Gray Boy † • Harbinger ‡ • Hatchet Face † • Hookwolf † • Mannequin † • Miasma † • Murder Rat † • Nice Guy † • Night Hag * • Nyx † • Psychosoma † • Screamer † • Shatterbird † • The Siberian † • Skinslip * • Winter † |
| Bonesaw's Hybrids | Hack Job † • Laughjob * • Murder Rat † • Nighty Night * • Pagoda † • Snowmann † • Spawner ‡ • Tyrant † |
| Clones | Damsel of Distress II ‡ • Damsel of Distress III ‡ • Harbinger Clones ‡ (Harbinger I ‡ • Harbinger II ‡ • Harbinger III ‡ • Harbinger IV ‡ • Harbinger V ‡) |