"I continue not to like killing twelve-year-olds," Cam points out. "Actually most people of any age manage not to be killed without ever having to threaten to release plagues, although you have got yourself into a sort of precarious position regarding the average person's interest in seeing you dead."

"They have no reason to keep me alive, then. Including the people they've probably already called to arrest me."

"If they have any sense anybody with the authority to arrest you is busy evacuating San Francisco, but yes, this is a problem. I'd suggest that they remand you to my custody but I'm a very busy man and you seem like you'd be prohibitively difficult to keep even if you aren't famous in Japan and especially if I supplied you with enough bodies to keep you happy."

"Well, but I have no idea what you'd do with them. Perhaps it would strike your fancy to invent plagues. Again."

"What kind of art do you like?"

"The kind no one else can do! This one time I turned someone inside out. And you saw the combination of two capes. I could build a super-cape out of even more and use it to kill an Endbringer!"

"Well, that would be very impressive, but I do not think anyone wants you to build super-capes until you have a few years of good behavior under your belt."

"Drat. Well, what do you want me to build?"

"I'm not trying to hire you, I'm trying to figure out there's conditions under which people will let you leave here alive."

"How about if I tell you how to kill Crawler? Sorry, Ned."

"I don't really have to kill him, I can just leave him there. I don't kill people recreationally, you know."

"Do you want it badly enough to let me take Riley home, give her a basement full of mindless bodies, and cross your fingers that she really doesn't like plagues that much?"

"...no."

"So we have a conundrum."

"What if you take her powers away?"

"With what, a copy of Hatchet Face? Does he even work normally on Tinkers? Anyway, I'd love to know how to keep her in his range and be able to maintain him without getting cruel and unusual."

"Yeah, that. See if she can set up something to maintain him, then handcuff them together forever."

"So you want me to let Bonesaw out of her box... give her surgical tools and a mindless cape..."

"Brain alone wouldn't be alive for long."

"Puh-leez, I did my first brain in a jar when I was eight. I can keep it alive until, until something goes wrong I guess. Wouldn't be able to maintain it, obviously."

"I'm not sure how this even starts, because you'd have to be near the brain to operate on it, I assume."