It should indeed.

Boston is close, at least on a relative scale. They migrate eastward, committing the occasional theft but no atrocities that would get serious attention. Being hard to pin down is important. When they're in the vicinity, Jack deploys Cherish to track down important capes and determine who can be set against whom. Bonesaw takes advantage of the delay to offer the Keres the same upgrades the rest of them have.

Which are?

A mental switch to toggle pain on and off. Implanted armor around each major blood vessel. Backups in case of organ failure. Reinforced skeleton. Any extra limbs? Extra limbs are fun.

She has all the limbs she requires at present, thank you. The other upgrades sound appealing.

By the end of it, she'll be not literally immune to weapons but certainly able to temporarily ignore details like a bullet to the chest. Depending on the bullet.

Excellent, thank you Bonesaw.

Does she still have time to make her drones before the show starts?

The show starts when Shatterbird says it starts. Right now it's still Cherish they're waiting on; Bonesaw can do an everything surgery in minutes or hours but Cherish has to track capes through a normal-person schedule.

Then she'll start work and hopefully won't get interrupted.

Tinkers, she has need of you. She wants a suit of armor made of individual drone-like components she can send off piecemeal to fight or reconnoiter or perform other such tasks.

The tinkers are happy to collaborate. The result will need regular maintenance, but being with the Nine so far has involved more downtime than it might have sounded like.

Then she will be as ready as she ever will be.

Still waiting on Cherish?

She comes back shortly after the suit is done, with a summary of who's how easy to subvert. There's a Protectorate division, obviously. PRT Director Armstrong is annoyingly fair-minded when confronted with someone who may have been less than legal in the past, so absent interference he'd probably work to ally with the local villains.

Accord, a mostly non-combat Thinker. To Cherish, he just screams being overwhelmingly frustrated at anything even the tiniest bit out of place. This also makes him absolutely awful to be around even when he can't order your death. Definitely capable of putting aside a grudge to deal with an unexpected Slaughterhouse Nine, but it's anyone's guess whether he could hold to that when an ally insists on speaking informally or tilting their head too far left. His Ambassadors are all loyal to him personally. While Cherish can isolate that faction easily and probably arrange enmity with others, she can't splinter it without being far too obvious.

The Teeth, led by Butcher. That's most of what there is to know about the Teeth, actually. The Butcher has her own powers, plus watered-down ones from the previous Butcher, whom she killed. She is number fourteen. It comes with thirteen other minds, so Butchers don't usually stay sane very long. The Teeth follow whoever is the current Butcher, because they're differently insane. Most of what they do is ordinary violent crime and drug selling. If someone arranges an unplanned assault by a Teeth cape on a PRT team or cape, that could spiral out and escalate.

Blasto, a plant tinker who is holding East Allston by himself. Frequent opponent of Accord, who is disgusted by him slightly more than by everyone else. Has similar rivalries with one of the Teeth and some unimportant independent villain.

The Travelers are in town. Probably not for long, what with all the traveling, so if the Nine hold off for a bit there'll be that many fewer capes in play. They don't necessarily like each other much but are very tight-knit. More interesting is that they have a hidden teammate who they keep voluntarily locked up. She has some powerful but dangerous ability, which she hates, probably because of unwanted physical changes. Cherish can recognize that feeling. The hidden girl is not always in control of herself, and on her bad days her friends—former friends, most of them—are afraid of her.

From the Keres' point of view, of course, it's all about the powers. None of the heroes seem uniquely interesting, with the possible exception of a Ward made of metal. No need to eat or sleep...and immune to Cherish. Butcher would be a fantastic prize, but killing her would be a gamble. Might risk becoming number fifteen. The Teeth have some promising-sounding powers among their lesser members: one changer can also temporarily cancel powers, one creates clones that quickly fade from "dull" to "brain-dead" but would be absolutely terrifying if combined with Crawler's bulk, and one potentially useful force field power. Accord's people tend to have strong powers in addition to being extremely competent. Notably, their field leader has an area-effect trump power that can strengthen or weaken parahuman effects with only slightly more difficulty than mundane physics. Blasto she already wants to target. One of the Travelers is publicly a Changer who can pick her own form with few or no limits, but Cherish says that's a lie. The fantastic beasts that get addressed as "Genesis" are projections; the girl herself is wheelchair-bound and unhappy with it. The real question is whether their other teammate should be targeted.

She wants them all, of course. But if pressed to prioritize: Blasto, Accord's trump, the Teeth capes other than Butcher, the metal Ward.

She wants to know more about the hidden Traveler. These hints are... tantalizing. Call that priority zero.

The rest are interested too. If they could find out what the power is, if it has enough collateral damage when she loses control, that could be more than enough chaos right there. Or it could just drive everyone to unite; that wouldn't.

So where is she hiding?

The basement of the building the Travelers are using for a hideout. It's tough but not fortified vault tough. Not that that would matter.

If they just show up, though, it'll let people know they're here. And Cherish hasn't started a war yet. How much surprise do they want?

That probably depends on whether the unknown cape losing control is something they can use. If it turns out it's not, they can always just kill the Travelers.

Ellie is in favor of plans that involve potentially killing several capes. They should go and see whether she will be useful, and then either start the show with her, or kill the Travelers and then start the show without them.

And even if the locals aren't at each others' throats going in, there'll inevitably be some kind of inter-faction war council. They can all hate each other then.

Cherish leads the way to the Travelers' current base.

Anyone home?

Three people. One is the hidden girl, another a friend of the Travelers or something. He's often around. Genesis' real body is here, which means the others are probably out in their cape identities.

Ellie is inclined to kill the spare and not disturb the Genesis body while they investigate the hidden girl.

If they don't end up killing the Travelers, the spare might be useful as leverage.

Turns out it's a moot point: there are no spares. As soon as they force their way in, with Cherish bearing down hard enough that the third can't muster the will to wake Genesis, Ellie will recognize that he's a parahuman.

Not an argument in favor of letting him live as far as she's concerned, but Jack would probably be interested to know.

"Well, we may as well interrogate him. Cherish, would you let him up?"  When she does,

"Hello. We are very scary. You're going to answer some questions for us."

Some enhanced interrogation later: his name is Oliver, the girl in the basement is Noelle; he got a useless power and she got something worse because they split a vial of superpowers in a can; there is such a thing as superpowers in a can; Noelle is herself from the waist up but is sitting on a monster that has to be fed a lot of meat every day; starving it makes it harder for her to keep control; if anyone touches her the monster spits out misshapen duplicates of that person; duplicates try to destroy everything the original cares about; duplicates of capes have variants on the powers tending toward slightly stronger; the Travelers are from Earth Aleph courtesy of the Simurgh. The Nine can be very good at enhancing interrogation.

That's in keeping with their reputation.

That power sounds very chaos-inducing. And also very much like something she wants.

Canned superpowers she might look into later, privately, as a side project.