Bonesaw's favorite part about being on the run is that she never has to clean her room - she can make a big mess and then move on to a different clean room. Sadly, this means sometimes she looses things in the mess and has to find them in a hurry. This means she is distracted by searching for her lucky wish bones when a piece of stolen tinkertech malfunctions. Still, she would have been able to hear it, were it not for the screaming sounds coming from the pile of discarded dolls she was searching under. Her scalp tingles and a blinding flash of green fills her vision before she can react at all.
"Good job, and now the other one?"
Clenching her jaw again, a different smell drives him into a rage, almost but not quite as intense as the prior fear.
"Good!" Bonesaw smiles delightedly.
"I'm sure you'll still need plenty of reminders but some basic aversion training and soon enough you'll be all helpful all the time."
"Oh, oops, I forgot to give you the antidote to the paralyzing agent - better do that before the secondary effects kick in."
Bonesaw gently pokes him with a needle identical to the first one.
"All better!"
Bonesaw looks pensive for a second, trying to remember - she can get sort of engrossed in surgery sometimes.
"Oh, it was because this way you'll be a very polite and helpful Friend for me here. I'm just getting my bearings and it's important for me to have someone who knows the basics."
"Well, I'm an artist. You're not really anything creative or special - I needed a Friend fast, but later I'll make something really pretty!"
"I'm going to need to have a better idea of what sort of art will speak to people here, but I'm sure you can help with that."
"I don't care what some other artist thinks of art, I want to be original. I need to know what sort of thing speaks to people here - back home if I turned a bunch of people into squid faces it would have been art, but here it would probably be everyday samesies. You can help me figure out what would be different and new for this world!"
"Hm, just so you know - I don't really expect you to give me suggestions about what's different and original - I'll be able to tell by your reactions. Like how I could tell earlier that brain surgery was different and original for you!"
"But also now I want to know, what's the Correspondence?"
"Wow! There's so many cool things in this world already. But I bet if I have a really good idea and I try hard at it I'll be able to make something new and original that everyone will notice!"
"Also, who's the Light-Hearted Wastelander?"
"People say a lot of things about her, too. She's...powerful, and beautiful, and she glows with the Mountain's own light when she wants to, or at least people mostly say it's the Mountain's light and it seems plausible. They say she walked out of the Prickfinger Wastes and declared war on the Masters. They say she walked out of the Prickfinger Wastes and declared war on Hell. They say she's blackmailing the Bazaar. They say she's a sorceress of the First City. They say she speaks with the Duchess's cats and the Fingerkings without taking sides. They say the Tiger Keeper defers to her. They say she's the Mountain's own daughter. What I know for sure is that she keeps a residence in the Prickfinger Wastes and has a laboratory at the University that her brother keeps when she isn't there."
"Some of them? I don't think the Devils like her very much. The Rubbery Men mostly like her, she chases people off if she catches them trying to stone one, and she got one into the University. She's on good terms with the Urchins, I think, and at least some of the Bohemians--it's not that hard to be on good terms with the Bohemians, though, if you can afford to buy them wine and honey."
"Yes I got that," she says impatiently "I want to know what you think of Ms Wastelander."