In the weeks after their escape Bonesaw is hard at work, building up a lab and growing food and splitting branches and stitching them into a scaffold so that they grow into a living treehouse.
Poke poke. Yep, that's definitely what that bit is.
"She's got a corona pollentia."
"Bit of the brain that means she can get powers - it's the first one I've seen here. Lots of people have them back home and there's no reason an orc can't get one but I guess there weren't any powers around to cause them to grow until I got here."
Bonesaw can route the synaptic hookup for the eyes around it to get at the bit of the amygdala where it's supposed to go.
Thread this bit into this lobe and then it's time close the head back up, putting some powder on the seems she cut into the skull and then licking them to activate the sealant so it'll be right as rain. Connecting the eyes is pretty easy now that the tiny organs are done boiling in the pot she put them in earlier.
"And all done!" she says as she drips three drops of liquids into Kat's eyes, causing them to briefly pulse with waves of each color Bonesaw installed before settling back down to their original black.
Beka closes Kat's eyes for her so she can go back to sleeping. "What kind of powers will she get?"
Hmmm...
"Probably she'd inherit them from me - powers can do that even when people aren't biologically related. So it would be similar in some ways, especially in terms of what capabilities the agent that's providing the powers has, but possibly with some sort of refinements from how I've learned to use mine. Some of it will come down to how she triggers - she'll need a sufficiently stressful event to induce the connection and the circumstances around it will have a big impact on what shape her powers take. Though it'll take less since she's second gen..."
Bonesaw thinks for a moment.
"Her corona pollentia is probably too high up and deep for it to be a Tinker power? Not close enough to the bulk of the prefrontal cortex for the connections that typically develop as a result of that. Probably not Thinker either, for the basically the same reason, though it's less clear. I bet I could induce a Brute or Striker or Mover though... Trump too maybe though those typically ended up disappointing when I've caused them, which is really annoying since I'm a Trump and my power isn't disappointing at all... I suppose if she's a second gen off of my power she might get a neat Trump power like mine but I'm guessing no since my Trump aspects seem more like restrictions being removed than my agent having a lot more inherent abilities..."
"Oh um, Brute means strength and durability and is triggered by physical damage, Striker is a touch-based ability and is triggered by immediate simple stressors, Mover is movement and wanting to run away, Tinker is inventing and is triggered by mental stress that persists over subjectively long time horizons, Thinker is cognitive but not related to the same sort of inventing and triggered by briefer mental stress, and Trump is powers that interact with other powers directly and is from stress involving powers. Their are also a few other classifications and really the whole system is just an attempt to describe what's going on, not something inherent to how powers work. Except for Tinkers and Trumps which do seem to be pretty natural categories."
"So she'll probably be a Trump if she's triggered by getting too many surgeries or something and a Mover if Sauron chases us maybe?"
"Oh um. Yeah. Though the Trump trigger would have to be because of the sorts of surgeries I do with my powers, if it was just about having surgery done at all it would more likely be Brute powers."
Bonesaw frowns.
"I don't want to make her trigger."
"I think the people I've made trigger before would almost all prefer to have died instead?"
"And um. They were scared of me afterwards. And angry."
"It probably wouldn't be as bad for her? Since she's second generation it takes less to trigger. But um. When I was working on triggering someone who was second generation her dad still tried to stop me even though it meant he'd die."
Bonesaw hugs her knees.
"Probably it's good that she can trigger if she needs to."
Pat pat. "Maybe we will just live in the woods forever and nothing scary will ever happen to Kat."