"With mindless bodies. Make a whoever and a Butcher, put the whoever so they, say, suffocate the Butcher, kill the Butcher. There'd be no mind to transfer. But I'm not sure how it'd shake out."

"There are so many things wrong with that. We don't know if that would count as the whoever killing the Butcher, we need the whoever's power for what is probably the hardest use of it and we'd end up with a weaker one, and Cauldron described the Butcher as taking over the other cape's mind. I for one don't want to risk getting overwritten by a blank mind."

"Well, yes, I did say risk of weird side effects, you'll notice I'm not piling up blanks of all the cool powers I've ever heard of with matching Butchers to suffocate right here and now."

"How confident are you that you're safe? I wouldn't try it either, but if you're immune there is a way to become a parahuman."

"I started out deeply uncertain my indestructibility would apply to parahuman powers at all, but so far have found no exceptions up to and including the Simurgh song and Moord Nag. But if you mean I should take a vial there might not be a way to have it affect me at all while not having the full breadth of effect, sort of like I could do a line of coke and barely notice or take the entire suite of symptoms, but not pick and choose."

"I'm not saying you could get the power without being hooked up to the interdimensional symbiote. But if you do take the whole thing, you think that'd give the Butcher an in? Even if that comes later and you don't want it to?"

"Or it could be them connecting to the copy because it looks like the original. Passengers aren't exactly smart."

"Very. They've got what might be describable as instincts, and they've got a lot of computing power, but they don't think. Or they barely do. Hard to tell those apart."

"Because my insects behave pretty normally."

"Oh, that's interesting. If that works at all, it might be able to make the versions of capes without the limits safer."

"I mean, homemade passengers would be necessary to remove the restrictions anyway unless they're located in the cape. Lemme see if I can make one that isn't connected, to see if I'm the one doing that, or not... do you object to testing a Hatchet Face?"

For once, Tattletale and Faultline agree. "Can you try something less inconvenient? A Crawler or a Nice Guy or something?"

"Crawlers are inconvenient to test. What's a Nice Guy?"

"And then if he does have his power? Do we just leave it lying in the rainforest forever becoming immune to starvation and ants and so on?"

"Or get rid of it with something he's not immune to yet. Just has to be quick enough that there's no chance to adapt."

"Fine." Here's an early Crawler, disconnected.

It looks like a perfectly ordinary guy named Ned, maybe a bit distorted where he recently regenerated from a mortal wound.

And if he receives a nonfatal amount of acid burn?

The acid burns a normal amount. It's a bit of a macabre test.

Well, yes, but Cam wouldn't be doing this at all if he cared about the welfare of basement dwellers. "Looks like he's sans powers. So I can make four-dimensional objects, or - something."