Archive of Our Own ^beta

Transposition

Ben Ryker felt like he was at a funeral. The meeting room was too cold and too quiet, and given they all were wearing black and had forlorn expressions on their faces, the analogy wasn’t that far-fetched. When he’d first joined Watchdog, he’d always excepted something like this to happen, but he’d always though his power too worthless and personality too flighty to be actually involved in an investigation like this.

Someone wheeled in a TV, breaking the silence with soft creaks that sounded thunderous to his ears. The aide who’d brought it in messed with the media player under it, and the footage started to play.

The screen flashed black, and the PRT’s logo appeared in front of a grid of white lines. The text ‘Property of the Parahuman Response Team’, flashed under the logo in bold white.

He flicked the mental switch that kept his power dormant upwards, and it roared to life. Like film being fed into a camera, it forced him to look at the screen like nothing else existed. In a few hours, he’d have a perfect copy of this, ready to be looped endlessly and then digested into it’s base elements.

The footage finally played, starting on the grainy image of a narrow chin, showing an impressive amount of stubble.

“Steven, you recording?” A reedy voice asked.

The camera turned to the side in a blur of color, stopping to reveal a pudgy boy with dark curly hair and an impressive stubble. The boy was wearing a security guard uniform. The badge and fabric looked cheap enough that it was most likely a costume.

“Yeah.” The voice behind the camera was deep, but the kind of deep that was always on the verge of cracking. “I’m recording.”

“Good man. Mark, you ready?”

The camera moved again, this time focusing on a tall boy who was built like a linebacker. He was standing in the middle of what seemed to be a sparsely lit parking lot, lit only by a few streetlamps in its corners. The tall boy was dressed in jeans and a plaid button down shirt that made him look like a lumberjack. He nervously combed back his dirty blonde hair, and the pudgy boy walked over to him and clapped his hands together.

“Ok, so here’s how this scene is going to go. Steven, you’re going to shoot my front as I say my line, and then cut. Then you’ll move behind me, and Mark will shove me. We’ll do another cut there, and then we’ll shoot me lying on the floor. Then there’ll be one final cut as you focus on Mark and then the dummy getting its head smashed in.”

“You do know the cutting thing is something you do in editing, right?” The boy behind the camera said. “There’s no need to do it here. We can’t do it here, it’s all going to be in one long bit.”

“Whatever, I was just talking about the theory of it. If that’s the way you do it, then film it all in one piece. Now get in front of me, we need to start shooting. Mark, get out of the way until you’re needed as Hatchet Face.”

The well-built boy moved out of shot, and the camera moved closer to the pudgy boy until he was only visible from the waist up.

“Ok. Commencing the filming of the first scene of the Slasherhouse Nine now. And…action!” The pudgy boy yelled out. His face went blank after his yelled out command, and remained that way for the next five seconds. And then it suddenly scrunched up in faux agitation.

“Where are you, you damn kids!” He yelled out, trying to project out his voice and failing miserably. Once his line was done, he froze again, and the camera circled him, moving and focusing on his lumpy back. A pair of well-built hands pushed him, and the boy stumbled forward. After a pause of five seconds, the pudgy boy walked forward and lay on the ground, his legless torso trying and failing to act like something was coming towards his face.

“Okay, cut! Bring in the dummy.”

Mike moved into the shot, and placed what seemed to be a scarecrow wearing the same costume as the pudgy boy was. Notably, its head was a pumpkin. He laid it on the ground, and the camera focused on Mike’s worn face and his most likely broken and reset nose.

“And…action!” Director boy yelled out again. Mike snarled, and just as his whole body moved forward, the camera smoothly flowed from his face to a torso-up shot of the scarecrow getting its pumpkin head caved in. Bits of orange pumpkin went everywhere, the insides getting turned into paste under the force of the boy’s boot.

“Cut! That was amazing, I think we might have managed to do all that in one take. Show me the footage Stevie—”

The footage cut, now replaced with the same pudgy boy, now lit by natural light. He was wearing different clothes as well, now dressed in a white T-shirt and shorts. The background was filled with muted noise, both of people talking and things being moved. He was frowning, as if he was bing forced to do something he didn’t want to.

“You’ve started recording? Good.” He said, voice more curt than last time. “Cole’s shooting this scene. Go to him.”

“Wasn’t this scene your idea? Why is he shooting it?” The voice behind the camera asked, only making the pudgy boy more angry.

“Cole told me that if I let him co-direct, then he’d let us shoot in his family’s old factory and that he’d get his sister to play Bonesaw. That’s a good trade.”

“I signed up to make a movie under you, not pretty boy Cole. He’s a fucking leech, and you know it.”

“These are the sacrifices we make for art. Besides, he’s only here for the action scenes. When we wrap these up and get to the story bits, he’ll drift away. Now fucking go to him, alright?”

“Never time, you do the camera work for him. I can’t stand to be around him.”

“Fine.” The pudgy boy ground out.

The boy behind the camera began walking. It seemed they were now in a house, and a rather opulent one at that. The shot of the floor they were seeing now was of lacquered mahogany hardwood, and when the boy turned to finally face someone, the camera caught glimpses of modern art hung on the smooth white walls.

The camera stopped moving, coming to stop on another boy. The boy had a button nose and perfectly tousled dark hair. He was photogenic, and the impish grin he sent the way of the camera cemented that. This must have been Cole.

“Steven, right? We need the camera right here.” Two arms gripped something behind the camera, and the boy was pulled into the corner of the room.

“So, here’s how this is going to go. You’ll first focus on Hazel, who’s playing Bonesaw. Then you’ll move the camera over there, to focus on Janet’s silhouette. Then she’ll pop the water balloon we’ve taped to the other side of her stomach with the pin on the wall, and that’ll be it.”

“Why isn’t Adam here? He was the one who came up with the idea, wasn’t he?”

Cole shrugged. “It’s a small room. Besides, it’s a pretty easy shot. I can do it on my own, give the other director a break.”

Cole turned to see someone, and moved out of frame while still yelling orders. “Start focusing on her. Action!”

The camera focused on a young girl standing in the doorway of the room. She was wearing a blue dress and a white apron, plus a wig that made it appear like she had blonde curls. She smiled, and after focusing on her for a few seconds, the camera turned to show the shadow of another much older girl. The shadow swayed, and then there was a loud bang as the ragged shadows of multiple tendrils of water splashed out of the girl’s midsection and fell to the ground with the wet slap of water on plastic sheeting.

“And…Cut! Great work everyone, I think we have that in the bag.”

The footage cut again, this time showing the white of somebody’s palm.

“Adam, why the fuck are you recording?” A haughty voice asked.

The camera was jerkily moved away from the boy’s palm, and the footage became a brief blur of color before it focused on a girl sitting on a folding chair. She was wearing a costume, with a dress made entirely of sequins and a helmet shaped like a bird of prey. Everything was a sickly yellow, like the light they were getting was diseased.

“I’m just seeing if it works.” The boy replied, voice reedier than before. “Don’t really know how to work this thing. It’s Steven’s camera, I’m not used to it.”

“Keep it away from me. God knows what you’ll do with the footage.”

“Bitch.” The boy muttered under his breath.

“Adam!” The camera was pointed in the direction of a voice to reveal a blonde boy. Cole.

“It’s time to film the Shatterbird scene. Get over here, and bring Janet with you!”

The camera panned over to the girl, who sighed and got up off the chair.

“Time to get this over with.”

The camera rose and fell as the boy made is way to where he’d been called, and one could see glimpses of a dusty concrete floor and yellowing factory windows as he did.

The camera finally stopped moving, and came to a stop, only to focus on Cole.

“Already recording? A+ for initiative, man. Now I need you to stand right over here, and just point the camera at Janet.”

The camera pointed to the girl, who was now at the far end of the factory, right under the foreman’s office.

“Keep it on her, but keep it wide. We need to be able to see the windows breaking when I text Tucker and the rest of the guys to toss rocks at them.”

“But then the audience will barely be able to see her.” The voice behind the camera said.

“Doesn’t matter.” The other boy replied. “The glass breaking is the better looking thing anyway. More spectacular, you know what I mean? Now zoom out, man.”

The camera zoomed out, the girl now becoming a blip in the distance.

“Action!”

Janet began to sing in a rising falsetto, and just as her voice was nearing its crescendo, all the windows exploded.

Shards of glittering glass sailed though the air like glittering rain. The camera caught the shards as they broke away from the glass in the windows of the foreman’s office and sailed towards the girl, biting into her skin and sinking into it like diamonds sinking into wax. Red began to drip from the wounds, dripping onto the dusty floor. And then the camera tilted back, and the footage cut off right as the resounding boom from Shatterbird’s heradly got picked up.

The footage changed again, and this time, it started by focusing on an apron stained with the brown of dried blood and dirt. Tools speckled with red smudges hung off the apron, the close angle showing each stain in great detail.

“Oh, I finally got it working!” A cheery voice said, childish in how gleeful it sounded. “The letters on the recording button were covered in blood.”

The camera pointed up to reveal a girl, one eye blue and the other green. Blonde hair in ringlets fell to either side of her head, and she smiled a wide grin at the camera.

“Hello! You might already know me, but just to be polite, I’m Bonesaw from the Slaughterhouse Nine. I found this camera right next to someone Shatterbird got, and since the lens is made of plastic, it didn’t break! I managed to see the movie they’d made of us inside it, and when showed it to Jack, he felt like it wasn’t really a good representation of what we’re actually like. And I’m going to fix that! So from this point onwards, I’m going to be directing a new movie that’s better than the old crummy one in this thing.”

She pointed the camera away from herself, and revealed an empty street. A single man was running away from her, trying and failing to kick the little metal boxes with needles for feet clinging to his feet and slowing him down.

“Ok, and action!”

The spiders all crawled off him, save for one lone one that seemed to inject something into his thigh before jumping off as well. The man tried to run forward, only to stop after taking two steps. His gut began to visibly swell and distend. It grew bigger and bigger, and then his midsection exploded, causing his body to crash into the ground. Bonesaw moved closer to the body, and pointed the camera at it.

A section of the man’s torso was now a gaping hole, with his insides spilling onto the tarmac. Glossy pink tubes tinged with yellow and gray shone in the light, resting on a bed of wrinkly orange flesh that was folded in on itself over and over again to make multiple creases. A large pink sack with a line of red running though it’s middle, probably the man’s stomach, had been forced out and turned over in the wrong direction. Bits of red speckled bone and pink flesh littered the ground around the wound, and blood washed over the entire mess, staining everything red.

“Okay, that went well. Now, I need to find Hachet Face, and get him to reshoot what they did. Now, where’s that off button?”

The camera cut again, and this time started off on an uncomfortably close shot of what was once a man’s face. Everything below his eyebrows was simply gone, caved in and turned into a bowl for bits of gore and gelatinous blood. Strips of gray flesh hung in tatters over the mess, and a lone eyeball was swimming in the mess, fully covered in blood and hard to tell it apart from the other pieces of flesh in the mix.

“Let me film you, you big oaf! I need to get a shot of your face so it matches up with the old one. No, don’t push me away!”

The camera was moved away from the man’s face, and then immediately cut into it now filming the interior of a house lit by blindingly white lights. The camera was closer to the floor now, and what held it zoomed across the carpeted floor to leap onto an apron and climb up it, only to finally stop once it settled onto a shoulder.

“Can you believe them?” Bonesaw’s voice sounded much more annoyed now, and she seemed to be mixing something together with a spatula. “None of them want to be in my movie! I know Jack and I are the only actual artists, but they could at least help out! It’s not like there’s much else to do in this town anyway. Don’t you agree?”

Bonesaw turned, and the camera revealed a boy lying on a kitchen island. He was the chubby boy from before, the original director. He groaned in response to Bonesaw’s question, and she moved closer to him.

“I knew you’d agree with me. It doesn’t help that I’m not every good at this filmmaking stuff. I’m good at coming up with ideas for my creations and new stuff, but I don’t know what good for a film and what’s not. So that’s why you’re here. So I can get ideas from you.”

The boy groaned, and Bonesaw started up a circular saw. “I could just ask you after I’ve put the control frame inside you, but people usually don’t really make any sense after that. Plus, the degradation might make you forget some important things.”

The seemed to give the boy the incentive he needed. His eyes were clouded with fear and pain as he spoke though a haze of delirium. “What…” He choked out. “What do you want to know?”

Bonesaw got up close to his face. “I’ve reshot all the stuff you guys did. What do I do now?”

“Doesn’t…matter. A slasher film is about—” The boy stopped to cough, and he spat a glob of blood right at Bonesaw. She didn’t seem to mind. “Spectacle. There’s no plot. There wasn’t much of a plan besides the action.”

“So I can just cut loose?”

The boy didn’t reply, seemingly having passed out. Bonesaw didn’t seem to realize this, and kissed him on the forehead in thanks, the camera going black as it was pushed into his shoulder.

“Thanks so much! That was really really helpful. And because you were so helpful, I have a special treat for you.”

Bonesaw pulled out a vial out of one of her pockets, and dumped the contents into the mixture. It went from looking like water to gaining a yellowish color, and she pulled out a syringe, loaded it up with the liquid, and tapped it while forcing a bit though.

“You’re an artist, just like me. Well, not exactly like me, but we both do make art. So this is my gift to you, from one artist to the other.”

She plunged the syringe into his arm, dumping the contents into one of his veins.

“There are these bacteria that do this thing called bioleaching, turning metal sulfides into metal sulfates. It’s more of a biological imperative than anything, lets them expel stuff out so it doesn’t position them. But with a little bit of tweaking, I can take the Thiobacillus ferrooxidans and T. thiooxidans that do that and make them process all the stuff that’s inside our bodies and make them spit out pure metal instead. Can you guess what they’ll go to you?”

The boy began to shake.

“They’re going to turn you into a living statue!”

It started out slow, at first. Strands of metal began to poke out of the boy’s flesh like shoots though soil. Parts of his skin began to shrivel and compress, like they were being sucked into his body by some unseen force. His body began to collapse in on itself, and just as he seemed to become a desiccated corpse with sunken cheeks and hollow eyes, his skin began to bubble.

He began to let out an inhuman scream as dozens of pustules bubbled up to the surface of his skin, stretching his flesh and turning it waxy. They grew, swelled, and then burst open, revealing a brackish mixture that coated his skin and then hardened. Needles punched through the massive growths oozing metal pus, nailing them in place. His skin collapsed under the weight of all the metal, and it began to slowly entomb him.

Metal seeped into his eyes, into his ears, into his nose. He began to choke, screams cutting off as he was deprived of air.

When the metal finally hardened, it showed the boy frozen mid-scream, whole body shaking in agony.

“Hmm. The rate of metabolism was too quick, but that’s only a minor mistake. Now, all I to do to complete you is to sand away the bad bits. Now, where did I put that angle grinder?”

The camera turned along with Bonesaw as she went in search of the angle grinder. Just as she picked in up, there was a crack, and as she turned towards the source of the noise, the thing holding the camera flew off her shoulder, spinning around and around in the most nauseating way possible before it slammed into a wall and finally cut out.

Ben Ryker’s power turned off, and he returned to the world of the living with a haze over his head and an inability to process anything. Someone was talking, saying something, asking questions. The footage had apparently been cut short because a hero had found out where Bonesaw was and had attacked her. He didn’t care anymore. He ran out of that meeting hall like a man possessed.

They learned nothing new about the Nine that day.