Oliver can't tell them who made the cans. The Travelers found a set apparently abandoned in Madison.

Jack is incredibly happy with that description of the power. So much more potential than just setting off an uncontrolled rampage. "New plan! We kidnap at least one representative of each faction, and we do the obvious."

"How are we securing access to the girl?"

"Staying here, I assume. We'll have to fight the Travelers for it, but they won't know who's here."

"Can we kill them?"

"I don't see why not. Any surviving members would be able to spread the warning about what we're doing. We get them, no one can. Kind of them to keep it a secret."

"Good."

What does Oliver have to say about his other friends' powers?

Except for Genesis, all of them are as publicly portrayed. Sundancer creates and controls a sphere that can melt asphalt, and is herself immune to heat, Ballistic can launch any object he’s touching at a speed toward the low range of “bullet,” and Trickster is a teleporter in the sense that he swaps objects of roughly the same size and weight. Perdition is– dead, probably. Accord took him.

Jack senses a story there, and asks some more questions. It's not the most relevant.

Those all sound fairly impressive. And dangerous, for people who aren't the Nine.

If Ellie kills Genesis now, that will probably bring the others back to see what happened.

It will, but waking her up would do the same. Her power might not be much use to Ellie, since it might be either she or the shade that would have to go unconscious to use it.

(Besides, they don't know yet whether capes the Keres kills can keep their powers when resurrected. Best not mention that to Bonesaw until they've tried it for Crawler.)

Tsk. Fine. They can wake Genesis up instead of killing her to call the others back.

Bonesaw happily ensures that Genesis isn't going back into any comas. If Ellie calls up Cask's shade she might even be able to follow along; most of it is just some clever stimulants.

After that's taken care of, they may as well go see Noelle while they wait.

Yes, what's monster girl like?

Physically normal from the waist up. Of course, "the waist up" means near the ceiling. The monster part is mostly raw, angry red flesh, with some parts smooth or differently colored. It has multiple giant animal heads, some complete with necks and one only half jutting out from her side. Several sets of limbs, of which the most unsettling is the one that looks like a human child's arm. A couple of tentacles.

Noelle hears the door open and says "please, don't look at me—" before she recognizes who the visitors are.

"That is impressive."

That's one of the worse things to hear. Noelle seems to shrink back, and her reaction does nothing at all to most of her mass.

"So how does it work? Just touching you? What determines the clones' mutations or changes in their powers?"

Noelle doesn't answer.

"She doesn't seem in the mood to answer questions. We may have to wait for experimental results."

"I'll tell you if you– if it means you do it less." Jack agrees. This one's going to be easy.

The answer is that it's mostly untested, and testing might not be very informative, but as far as she knows it's how long she stayed in contact with the other victim. The longer the clone spends being created before being vomited up the closer the copy, and the benefit only accrues if she's touching the template. They do have to be alive; otherwise they'd probably just increase the size of the mound the way meat does. Power variations are random as far as she knows.

Can she do clones of clones?

She hasn't tried, because she's never used her power on purpose and what kind of crazy people would even want there to be more clo— never mind. She doesn't have any reason to think she can't.

While they're talking, Cherish warns them that the other three Travelers are arriving. They're ready for an emergency but are far too confident to know what emergency.

Best to get them inside before attacking, and then preventing retreat, yes?

Sounds like a plan.

...this is going to be completely trivial, of course. Outnumbering them three to one when all the heaviest hitters are on their side. But that's no reason not to do it right.

Burnscar sets up a wall of flame behind the Travelers, not to be impenetrable but to block Trickster's line of sight. Shatterbird launches a wave of glass shards. None of the Nine even need to be seen.

And as they die, one two three, Ellie grabs their powers.

May as well get Oliver's too, since they don't need him for anything and she doesn't seem to have a storage limit.

She gets the normal fragments of visions. Ginormous Incomprehensible Monstrosities altering the cells they drop so they don't outright kill the hosts—

And the powers are as described. Trickster's comes with an interesting new sense, like a pressure between any two objects, and if they're similar enough the pressure is the same from both directions and she can push them to switch. It makes sense how it would fit with teleportation.

When Noelle finds out what happens, she breaks down even more.

Not to worry, one of her friends is still alive. And Ellie wants to see what sorts of power variations will pop out of that interaction.

That's barely better!

Noelle manages to make Jack an offer. She'll cooperate, not that he really needs her to, if he'll have his Nine kill her after. It's not like she hasn't tried, and that was before today. Or at least kill her if he wants Bonesaw to keep the not-her body around for its power. He agrees, for whatever that's worth.