23

Chapter Text

Deep in the void of space, hidden in the shadow of the Moon, an angel hung bleeding. The Simurgh had been wounded, and wounded grievously. She floated, curled in a fetal position, her broken wings huddled around her. Glittering crystalline liquid that passed for her 'blood' leaked from her shattered limbs and floated around her in a cloud of droplets, as her body slowly, laboriously mended itself as she hid from prying eyes.

She was no true living thing. She was a construct, an artifact of technology far beyond human comprehension and from a race long lost in the Entities' unfathomable pasts… a being more computer than creature. She did not have the limitations of the pitiful lifeforms on the planet far below, nor even the limitations she normally pretended to in their presence; she could have self repaired far more rapidly under normal circumstances. But the computing cycles that would have normally been dedicated to such processes were occupied elsewhere. Her body was forced to heal laboriously slow as the processing cycles of her mind struggled to comprehend something outside of the parameters of her programming to understand.

The test subjects had defeated her.

Not appeared to defeat her, or been allowed to believe they had defeated her. Those outcomes were her standard methods, and well within her acceptable parameters. No, they had defeated her. And in such a manner! They had corrupted the test bed, seeding it with what she could only catalog as material paradoxes, things her powers could not ignore yet could not accept as real-- and thus blotted those areas out of her mind's eye. The tactic had rendered her all but blind, distorting her post-cognitive and precognitive senses into an indecipherable blur.

Then they had somehow rendered themselves immune to her psionic manipulation…

Then as she blindly flailed, blind, deaf, and mute, they had fallen on her. They had unleashed enough raw Shard power, enough raw force on her to damage her more grievously than she ever had been in all of her existence.

She was a victim of her creators' arrogance: the Entities imagined themselves the pinnacle of existence, masters of a completely materialist universe; their confidence in their own supremacy was such that they imagined that their coding was naturally perfected, and that all possible outcomes could be forecast-- were, in fact, already forecast-- in their flawless programming design.

Those of you experienced in computer coding may now take a few moments to laugh hysterically.

Because of this shortsightedness, and for lack of any being capable of correcting it, she and her 'brothers' labored under equally weighted, conflicting orders. The Prime Directives dictated that such a threat that she had just encountered should be reported instantly to the Entities, and that all force be appplied to annihilate it instantly and utterly.

Yet the Prime Directives also dictated that the knowledge being painstakingly gleaned by the Shards must be preserved at all costs, that the Cycle must be continued, step by laborious step…the Entities had never conceived of the possibility that such an existential threat could come from their test subjects, any more than even the most heavily guarded military lab could conceive of the laboratory mice taking up arms and attacking the researchers.

And on top of this paradox, their Directives also dictated that the orders of their Controlling Shard, a shard NEVER MEANT to go out of the Entity's control, and already an irrational hindrance to their goals, had be obeyed to their full extent.

The sheer unfathomable impossibility of it had her complex cognitive engine gridlocked.

So she hung there in space; the Hopekiller, her self-repair slowed to a laborious crawl as she slowly struggled to untangle the paradox of her defeat. And while she labored to do what her masters never envisioned her needing to do-- to think outside the box--- countless tiny details she had been carefully nurturing in the planetary test bed went untended...

One of the secrets of the Universe—the key to more things than you can imagine-- is TIMING. The greatest comedians and orators worship at its feet; mechanisms from the crudest engine to the most intricate swiss watch depend upon it. The turn of the Seasons and the changing of the Tides pivot upon it. And of course the vital difference between a crude plan and an ingenious one-- or more aptly between a successful one and a failed one-- is Timing. Used deftly, it can grant one the illusion of omnipotence.

Coil most certainly reverenced Timing. His timeline-splitting power for all its potency would scarcely rise above the level of a clever parlor trick without the magic of Timing…. So he studied it meticulously. To leverage his power to its full potential, to orchestrate not one, but two parallel plans where either one could be dropped at a moment's notice and the dropped plann supplanted with yet a third… then a fourth… then if need be a fifth… well, that involved meticulous structuring on the level of the aforementioned Swiss watchmakers and tactical planning on the order of a four-star general.

That, at least, was what Coil told himself. He took quite a bit of smug satisfaction in his own meticulous multitasking skills. He regarded it as just another bit of proof of his own superiority, his own fitness to have the power over others that he coveted.

Of late though he was deriving far less enjoyment from them due to how much they were being taxed. Business as Coil had been business as usual-- but ironically business as Thomas Calvert had suddenly become extremely complicated. Persons unknown (though he had a fair guess as to whom) had suddenly begun waging what he could only think of as cyber warfare on his civilian persona. Credit cards canceled, or maxed out and then canceled. Utilities shut off. Services and products he never ordered delivered to his office in the PRT, many outrageously expensive and quite a number extremely embarrassing (it had been a long morning explaining to accounting that he had not, in fact, used his expense account to order a selection of gift-wrapped fleshlights, rubber dildos and buttplugs and several hardcore porn subscriptions delivered to his office.) Twice his bank account had been emptied out to make donations to spurious international charities. Memos filled with various ethnic slurs had been forwarded from his email account to various coworkers. Three times he had to go to the authorities to have his name removed from neighborhood watchlists for convicted sex offenders (once on the same day that the porn had arrived, no less.) His vehicle had been impounded twice for unpaid traffic tickets, his driver's license, concealed carry permit, and PRT ID had all been flagged as expired or fraudulent…

He'd even been declared legally dead once. He almost wanted to salute them for that one.

Consequently he found himself splitting his timeline more often than ever before, just running around putting out the irritating little brushfires threatening his 'secret identity.' He didn't even have enough time to spare to hunt down those responsible. He was no fool; shortly before his woes had begun the Undersiders had basically vanished off the face of the earth. The warehouse lair he had provided them was abandoned, their possessions still lying about as if they'd been dropped mid-stride, the costumes, weapons and other gear he had provided them (with all its useful implanted tracking devices) was found piled in a dumpster in a back alley. They had slipped through his fingers somehow…

Still, even 'off the grid' as his wayward Undersiders had gone, Coil's current headaches had Tattletale's fingerprints all over it. He had the computer technicians on his payroll working round-the-clock to try and track down his digital persecutor. They were having little luck, unfortunately. It was irritating in the extreme but not unexpected; Tinkers and Thinkers with a hacking specialization routinely thwarted the best computer security and left the best experts weeping in frustration.

Understandable. Not unexpected. Still infuriating in the extreme.

He lacked even an applicable underling on which to vent his fury in his usual fashion…

It's perhaps unsurprising that he chose a course of action that was more rash than usual.

"This is BS, Sarge," the mercenary in the passenger seat muttered as the van crawled through the neighborhood. "Doing a snatch in broad daylight? During an Endbringer Truce?"

"Shut it," his Sergeant said, not taking his eyes off the road. "Coil says go, we go. What we're paid for."

"Yeah. Coil says. But a year ago Coil damnear bit your head off for even suggesting doing any action during a Truce."

"You got a problem following orders?" Sarge said. His voice didn't change tone, but the words were heavy as cigarette smoke with veiled warning.

"If the guy giving the orders and signing the checks starts getting a little squirrely, yeah I do," the soldier of fortune shot back. "And this guy's so nutty he's starting to smell like peanut brittle."

Sarge let out a snort that might have been a laugh. He was no fool. He, and others in the brief chain of command, had noticed that Coil's behavior and orders were getting a little...erratic. More so than usual. There was quiet talk behind closed doors of finding greener pastures, and soon. "Don't get your BVDs in a bunch," he advised. "We'll be pulling up stakes soon enough. We just grab this kid, take our paychecks and walk."

"Won't the capes and the PRT freak?" This came from one of the four in the back of the van.

Sarge risked a quelling look over his shoulder. "Stifle that talk," he said. "The Endbringer Truce is a Cape thing. We're not Capes. The kid isn't a Cape." (Coil had, wisely, kept his mercenaries in the dark about WHY he was so interested in this girl.) "We're in plainclothes and we're not carrying any Tinker tech, so noone will even know we're working for a Cape. So far as anyone's concerned it'll be just another ordinary kidnapping."

And doesn't that say volumes about the way things are, he thought. He kept those thoughts to himself, though; a paycheck was a paycheck, and in the past he'd slit a lot more throats and stabbed a lot more backs for less than he was being paid now. A kidnapping might skeeve him out, especially for a boss that gave off the vibes Coil did… but the mercenary wouldn't lose more than a minute's sleep over it.

"There she is." The private in the passenger seat said, pointing ahead. Not half a block ahead of them, a school-age girl toting an oversized Sunshine Kitty backpack was trotting down the sidewalk, skipping absently over the puddles and bits of slush left behind by the melting snow. Sarge pulled over and threw the van in park. "By the numbers, gentlemen," he said, hitting the door locks. All the doors on the van popped open and half a dozen men in sunglasses and plain suits jumped out.

The girl looked over her shoulder and, as Coil had warned them she probably would, immediately broke into a run. "Hey kid-- ah dammit, she's rabbiting!" Sarge was irritated but he wasn't particularly concerned; they were all trained mercenaries and more than up to catching a stubby legged little brat. They all broke into an easy trot, limbering up their tranq dart pistols and tasers.

Sarge watched the proceedings from the driver's seat, keeping the engine idling high.

To Sarge's surprise the girl suddenly stopped running, dropped to her knees and threw her backpack on the ground in front of her. She yanked the zipper open and dumped two somethings out on the sidewalk. "RED ALERT! RED ALERT!" she screamed, her voice cracking.

The mercenaries staggered to a halt, a few yards away, weapons raised. The two objects--- some sort of comical little toy robots--- righted themselves… and lit up, throwing rotating lights around the street. Twin sirens began whooping, loud enough that several of his men winced and covered their ears.

"HOSTILES DETECTED!" blared one. "BUTTHEAD ALERT! BUTTHEAD ALERT!"

"SOUNDING THE ALARM!" the second one screamed, trotting on its stubby legs to the girl who scooped it up in her arms. "DISTRESS BEACON ACTIVATED! SIGNALING AUTHORITIES! ENGAGING PROXIMITY DEFENSES!" Sarge could only gawp in shock as a shimmering half-dome forcefield sprang up around the robot and its mistress.

"Shit!" One of the men said. "They didn't say anything about her being a tinker!" He fired at the shield-- pointlessly, as the taser darts bounced off the shimmering dome. Several shattered tranq darts joined them, scattered on the ground around the shield.

One of the mercenaries got clever and took a shot at the second robot with a pistol. Sparks flew as the robot flipped over on its back. "DANGER! DANGER!" the bot yelped. "HOSTILE BUTTHEADS HAVE ENGAGED LETHAL WEAPONS!"

"Damn right we did you-- glurk," the gunman said. The robot had flipped back up on its feet, undamaged save for a scuff mark on its bubblegum light dome, and now it was GROWING. With a weird shimmer of light and a *wooooioiiiing* sound Sarge hadn't heard since he was a kid watching Sid and Marty Krofft, the stubby robot enlarged till it towered nine feet tall. Its headlight eyes were glowing red.

Sarge got the sinking feeling it was mad. "Get back in the van!" He yelled into his throat mike; even as he spoke he was throwing the van into reverse. He wasn't quite fast enough; the robot spun in his direction and sprouted what looked like an old fashioned sci fi ray gun from its chest.

ZAK ZAK ZAK ZAK! Bolts of blue-white light spattered from the gun. One struck the grill of the van; the engine went up through the hood with an almighty bang. He could hear all four tires blow out, almost an afterthought. He threw himself from the vehicle as the cab began filling with smoke. His men had backed up to the van, their more serious munitions limbered and firing free-- to no effect.

The robot stomped out of the smoke cloud filling the street. It extended its crude gripper-claw hands; they snapped open with an ominous CLINK.

"BUTTHEAD ERADICATION PROTOCOLS ENGAGED," it growled. "MUNITIONS OPENED: ONE CAN OF WHUPASS."

While Obie-One was busy dealing with the kidnappers, Dinah was using her cell phone to contact the police. It was proving a lot more complicated than it need be, Dinah thought; you'd think a police operator for Brockton Bay would be a little more familiar with the hard-to-explain. "--A-l-c-o-t-t," she repeated for the third time. "I was on my way home from school and they tried to kidnap me!"

"Where are you now? Are you safe?" This woman, Dinah thought with irritation, sounded way too much like a recording.

"Yes… no… well kind of--" Dinah looked up at the forcefield over her head. The owner's manual said it should last for hours. But she couldn't leave this spot without turning it off.

"Can you give me your current location," the woman with the tape-recorder voice said.

"CURRENT LOCATION IS--" Ken Obie, who was still sitting in her lap, rattled off a street corner and a latitude and longitude.

"Who was that??"

"That's Ken Obie, my robot!" Dinah said. "I already TOLD you-- the bad guys in the van tried to grab me so I--"

"Robot??"

Who WAS this woman? "Yes, Ken Obie's protecting me with his forcefield while Obie One is stopping the bad guys--"

"… The 'bad guys' are still there?"

"Yeah, I think they tried to run away but Obie One blew up their van..." There was a rattle of gunfire in the distance.

"Did I hear gunfire? Are you certain you're safe?"

"They're shooting at Obie One," Dinah said dismissively. "It's not working--" there was a whump. "Wow, one of them had a grenade. I think that made him mad..." Crackling, sci fi energy noises filled the air; there were a number of surprisingly Wilhelm-esque screams. "Yup. It did." Several painful sounding thumps were heard. "Oooh, Obie One got one by the leg. And now he's hitting the other guys with him… yowch. You maybe better send an ambulance, lady..." this suggestion elicited a number of garbled, confused-sounding noises, but no answer.

"SIGNALING PRT," Ken Obie piped up. "AUTOMATED DISTRESS MESSAGE AND COORDINATES BROADCASTING...." Even as he spoke, Dinah could hear the 'whup whup whup' of a PRT helicopter coming in overhead. "

Dinah sighed with relief. Thank goodness-- she thought she was going to have to talk to this operator lady forever! "Never mind, officer lady, the PRT are here," She said. She thought for a moment, asked her Power a quick set of questions, and nodded. "You know, there's an 87 point 4 percent chance that you really shouldn't have transferred to Brockton Bay from Boston, ma'am," she added as troops armed with restraining foam disembarked from the helicopter. "You're really not adjusting well." That said, she hung up and waited for the fracas outside her little forcefield shelter to settle down.

Taylor's laughter rang off the rafters of the Lost Workshop. The wolfgirl staggered over to the nearest scruffy couch in the main workroom and collapsed across it, tears running down her furry cheeks.

The ruckus drew curious onlookers; they came from all around the complex, meditations (and naps) interrupted, projects left at their workstations, peeking around doorframes to see what the commotion was all about. They saw the werewolf girl sprawled on the couch, laughing her ass off; that was plain enough. But standing in the middle of the open floor--

Well, it had to be Bayleaf. Nobody else would transform into something so ridiculous.

"What in the hell?" Lisa muttered. Nobody contradicted her.

"It.. looks like… an owl?" someone ventured.

It did sort of look like an owl. That is if owls were eight feet tall. It had a short, hooked beak, and enormous lamp like eyes, and feathers all over its barrel-shaped body. It also had bear paws, and claws, and a crown of antlers on its head-- and an unquestionably disgusted look on its face.

"An owl-bear, right?" Lisa asked, a smirk growing on her face. Bayleaf's feathery brows bunched up in a scowl, but he gave her a terse, unwilling nod. He let out a low, mournful sounding hoot.

"He looks like he escaped from the Banana Splits show!" Taylor cackled.

"It's supposed to be an advanced form," Bayleaf said. Several people snorted; He sounded as if he was trying to force the words out through a bassoon. "Tougher, and… lets me channel more mana, make my blaster attacks stronger."

"Turn you into a blaster-brute, huh," Tattletale said.

Bayleaf nodded. "It's supposed to be my base form, only-- transcendant," he complained. "All... transparent and sparkly. But this…!" He flapped his feathered arms in dismay.

Taylor managed to get her giggles under control. "He's been meditating for hours, trying to unlock some of the deeper druid transformations," she said. "Apparently this form is first on that branch of the progress tree."

"Gotta level up a little more before you can Digivolve that far, huh?" Tattletale said with a smirk. She was treated to the unique sound of an owl-bear blowing a raspberry. Adrian threw himself on the couch next to Taylor and crossed his arms, clearly ready for a prolonged sulk.

A moment later Aisha came running in from the Console Room. "Guys it's going down, it's-- the hell is Woodsy Owl doing here??"

Taylor could probably be forgiven for falling down laughing.

Aisha shook her head and decided to ignore the she-werewolf having hysterics on the floor. "It's going down, y'all," She said. "I just got in, I step through the door and Dinah's alarm is going off!" That serioused up everyone present. Taylor got to her feet, Adrian shifted back to his worgen form, and everyone followed Aisha back to the Comm. Sure enough, the panic light they'd set up for Dinah's guard-bots was strobing like mad. Aisha took the big chair and opened up the link to Obie One and Ken Obie. Their current status and location began scrolling across the main screen.

Bayleaf swore. "I should've known Coil would break the Endbringer truce," he snarled.

"Obvious in retrospect, thought, isn't it," Tattletale said, her voice tinted with disgust.

"Okay, ring up everyone," Bayleaf told Aisha. "I think Shar'Din and the Pandas are closest to that neighborhood right now, he wanted to check out some arcane anomaly in that area-- Fennek and Lok'Tara are in the woods near Calvert's house… alert the PRT--"

"No, wait!" Taylor shouted. "Don't do anything yet!"

Startled, everyone turned to stare at her. She was standing there, chewing her thumbclaw. "Wait, think think think," she muttered. "Aisha, where's Coil right now? Ping him." Aisha nodded and lit up another monitor.

Some time back, they had managed to tag Calvert with a tracer. Panacea had gengineered a microscopic parasite that caused a dramatic alteration in the host's body odor; the host would emit a powerful yet short-lived pheromone undetectable to human or even animal sense of smell, but that would set off specially designed detectors (courtesy of Uber and Leet) from up to half a block away. The Alliance had spent days planting these detectors all over the city in a grid, as well as carrying small portable ones on themselves; the parasite, invisible to the naked eye, had been slipped by no less than Gallant into Calvert's drink at one of the city's interminable soirees. For the past few weeks Coil had been leaving a scent-trail from his house to his "secret base" to his civilian home and back again. It would set off no bug detectors, and not even a bloodhound could scent it. But for all his cunning Coil was now about as difficult to track as Pepe Le Pew.

Taylor's eyes flickered back and forth between the screens. "Has the PRT started making its move yet?" she asked suddenly.

Aisha looked at the feed from Dinah's bots. "No, the bots are still dialing--"

"Cut them off!"

"But--"

"Do it!" Aisha obediently sent the Obies the command to go Radio Silent.

Bayleaf was baffled. "What are you doing, honey?"

"You're supposed to think two steps ahead with an enemy," Hemlokk said. She scooted into a chair and started typing at another keyboard. "With Coil you have to think at least THREE, twice over. This timeline with Dinah being kidnapped, it's obviously one he wants. He doesn't know yet that it's going sour, or he would have dropped it already.

"This is it. For the first time we've got Coil in a position where we know where he is, AND where his alternate is likely to be. If we don't trap him now, If he sees the PRT mobilizing, he'll just drop this timeline and we'll all be back at square one." She looked at Bayleaf. "It's time. Call Piggot."

Bayleaf nodded; he pulled out his cellphone and began dialing. It was a covert number that Armsmaster had slipped him back in Canberra: noone but Armsmaster and Piggot knew it even existed. "It's time," he said when the phone was picked up. "Start the Snake Trap." He read off a twelve word confirmation code, nodded when it was accepted, and began filling the person on the other end in on the situation.

"This is the dicey part," Hemlokk told the others as Bayleaf muttered into the cell phone. "If we're going to catch him we've got to keep him committed to this timeline as long as possible, till his other options are cut off." She recited this even as she was sending off texts to the rest of the team, telling them to get into position.

"What ARE his options?" Aisha said.

"He's got three places he'll likely go to wait for the results," Taylor said. "His home, his lair, and his office at the PRT." She chewed her thumbclaw some more. "But which one is the 'go' option, and which is the 'no go?'

"And how do we push him to make the one WE want?"

Thomas Calvert was having a good day.

He was well overdue one. For weeks he had been remorselessly pranked, his ex-minion Tattletale-- he knew it was her, there was no way it wasn't her-- using her hacking acumen against him. Every day had found him, morning, noon and night, having to chase off Home Repair representatives, plumbers, locksmiths, food delivery workers, and a disturbing selection of "Craigslist" buyers and sellers of various levels of sleaze, all of them convinced that he had contacted them... by the second week he'd begun splitting the timeline, pulling out his pistol and gunning them down on the front lawn just to vent his rage and frustration.

But today, at least, his morning seemed clear. Noone attempting to peddle pizza, used furniture, or ominously vague and certainly illicit 'services' on his doorstep; no text messages on his phone about scheduled appointments; No boxes of goods he'd never ordered... could it be that the horrible brat had tired of her juvenile pranks?

Not likely-- but he wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He got up with the sun that morning, had a shower, a light breakfast, got into his luxurious yet nondescript little car, and split the timeline as he reached the end of his driveway. In the first one, he turned left; in the second one he turned right. He waited till he was several blocks away before he pulled out a burner phone and dialed a carefully memorized number and recited a password to the person who answered.

It was here that his ironclad self-control failed him, and he made a grievous mistake.

TIMELINE 1

"Go," was all he said into the receiver, then hung up. He expertly dismantled the phone, extracting the chip and the battery both and dropping all the pieces into a specially-made crusher/shredder he'd had installed in the car just for this purpose. He didn't really need to dismantle the phone; the crusher did a good enough job. He just found it physically satisfying to be extra thorough.

That done, he began driving a casual, semi-circuitous route to downtown, where his underground base lay waiting. He had waffled for quite a bit on this choice: did he want to be elsewhere when the kidnapping took place, so as to establish an alibi? Or did he want to be there in his base when they wheeled his new Pet in, so that he could begin asserting his control over the child Thinker and making use of her power as soon as possible? After much debating he'd concluded that he was, after all, a Mastermind… being somewhere else while your minions did your dirty work wasn't much of an alibi to anyone with a working brain. Plus with all the setbacks he'd had of late-- small, petty ones but setbacks nonetheless-- he didn't have much time to waste. Even a few minutes of questions with Dinah would give him a staggering advantage in the hero-villain chess game, and quickly.

He headed for his base.

TIMELINE 2

"Go," was all he said into the receiver, then hung up. He expertly dismantled the phone, extracting the chip and the battery both and dropping all the pieces into a specially-made crusher/shredder he'd had installed in the car just for this purpose. He didn't really need to dismantle the phone; the crusher did a good enough job. He just found it physically satisfying to be extra thorough.

That done, he took a slow, scenic route out to the PRT building, ready to spend an idle day shuffling paperwork and looking innocent.

He had made his first fatal error. Normally he had rules; normally his self-control was ironclad. Among the foremost of those rules was that all his ventures had a "go" and a "no go" timeline-- no exceptions. That failsafe had saved his hide more times than he possibly could count.

But the past months had been a litany of failures. His loss of the Undersiders had been the first of it. Then the constant, random attacks on his civilian identity. His replacement band of villains, the Travelers, hadn't had a successful heist in months-- Coil having to "opt-out" of them over and over, as his twinned timelines would suddenly and randomly spiral out of control or simply fall dark without warning… in an incredibly rash moment of impulse, he decided to grab twice for the brass ring.

It wasn't a serious risk, he told himself; if the abduction failed, in either circumstance he would be miles away physically from the fallout, and his two timeline-selves would be as far as possible from each other as well as in two of the three most secure places he could be.

He perhaps would have been a little less confident if he'd known the fate of his third, civilian-identity, bolthole after he drove away.

TIMELINE 1 and 2

Later that afternoon, Thomas Calvert's quiet little neighborhood had some unexpected visitors. A large, battered yellow schoolbus, one that his neighbors would swear they never saw pull onto OR off of their street, chugged its way up to Calvert's walled-in property, and parked just outside of the gates. A window rolled down; there was a quick "thwang" and the transformer on the utility pole outside the property sprouted an arrow shaft before exploding in a waterfall of sparks. The telephone lines, cable boxes, the digital satellite dish and other utility kibble received equally swift precision execution. Any utility that didn't flush was offline.

Another arrow shaft turned the locked driveway gate into mangled wire. With a rattle and bang the rusting beast backed its way to a stop, exhaust smoke wafting across the manicured lawn. Two passengers disembarked; one a powerfully muscled woman with avocado-green skin and tusks at the corners of her mouth, the other a sandy-furred vulpine with enormous pointed ears. They both looked as if they had dressed for a particularly rough-and-tumble Renfaire.

"Ahh, suburbia," Fennek said, breathing deeply, his tiny arms outstretched. "Nice house! Does your heart good to know a red-blooded American criminal psycho can still make good, don't it?" He looked around. "We clear?"

Lok'tara grunted and looked back to the driveway entrance. A couple of yuppie wives pushing jumbo-wheeled strollers were just power-walking past; they happened to glance up at the house and saw Lok'Tara and Fennek standing there. They let out squeaks of alarm. Lok'Tara curled her lip into a snarl and let out a snort. The two housewives yeeped and hustled out of sight a good deal faster than they arrived. "All clear," Lok'Tara said. "Not like we care."

Once again, Fate bit Calvert in the butt. After two weeks of every sort of work and delivery truck showing up at all hours on Thomas Calvert's driveway, the sight of a giant green woman and a furry Case 53 midget driving a salvaged school bus engendered no reaction out of the neighbors other than an emphatic desire to pull the curtains and ignore it till it went away.

"True enough," Fennek said cheerfully. "Well, we've been told to eliminate this place as a possible bolthole for Coil… clear down to the foundation. So shall we?"

"Doesn't this break the Unwritten Rules?" Lok'Tara asked.

Fennek paused and gave her a shocked look. "Break the Unwritten Rules? No, no, no, of course not. This isn't a bunch of Capes attacking another Cape at the house where his civilian identity lives!

"Oh no. This is just a completely random home invasion, looting, vandalism and arson against an innocent random citizen. So that makes it okay!" He drew an arrow and nocked it. The arrowhead glowed ominously as he aimed for the front door. He grinned evilly.

"Knock knock," he said, and loosed.

The front door, and a considerable chunk of the wall all around it, disappeared with an almighty bang and a ball of crimson flame. The animals in the bus set up a ruckus at the sound. "Do be a doll and let the pets out to stretch their legs, will you?" Fennek said, as he picked his way through the bricks and splinters and marched inside.

Lok'Tara smirked. She strode over to the bus and threw open the emergency door at the back. A half-dozen or so of her rescue dogs came pouring out, followed by Truck, who was baying excitedly at all the fun. Fidget and Gidget were clinging to his back. They had been taking them all out for exercise in the nearby woods when they'd gotten the "all hands on deck" call from Hemlokk and Bayleaf.

All the more bad luck for Coil. The dogs scattered in every direction in the walled-in yard in doggy delight and proceeded to do things to the landscaping that would have the homeowner screaming in horror.

Lok'Tara chuckled, then heaved the garage door up-- the fact it was locked made little difference to her. The metal crumpled like tinfoil in her grip. "C'mon," she told Truck. "Let's see what kind of steak a supervillain keeps in his fridge."

Over the next fifteen minutes, Thomas Calvert's luxurious little home underwent not so much a looting and demolition as a slow-motion explosion…

TIMELINE 1

"Okay, okay okay okay," Taylor-- no, Hemlokk; when she had that feral huntress look in her eyes, Bayleaf could only think of the girl as Hemlokk-- said. "He's headed for the not-so-secret Lair. We do not want this; we want him as far from all his Big Red Buttons he's got there. We gotta convince him to drop this timeline. Tattletale? You in position?"

Downtown, on the rooftop of the innocent office building hiding Coil's Base, sat Tattletale. She had her portable computer and was sitting indian-style next to a utility box, underneath an Obie-bot deployed force field and as many Stealth and Invisibility enchantments as the Alliance artificers could stack on one person. Her initial Sherlocking had confirmed that the office building was full of innocent office workers and ordinary companies renting space from the property holder, but she was taking no chances. "Roger, I'm tapped into everything and I do mean EVERYTHING up here, and I'm ready to start the fun and games," she said, tossing her blonde hair over her shoulder and giving her monitor a smirk. "Do we start now or wait till he's inside?"

Taylor played out both scenarios in her head as best she could. "Outside. If he's inside he may decide to drop the other timeline and turtle up. But string him along as long as you can… we want him to think everything is normal--"

"Until it's too late. Got it." With a flurry of keystrokes Tattletale started plying her long-awaited revenge.

When she said she was tapped into everything, she meant it. Up to the point that the Alliance had gotten involved, Coil had actually managed to keep the location of his base secret even from her. But between Bayleaf's "outsider" knowledge and Panacea's pheromone trick, Coil might as well have painted a big yellow dotted highway line to the front door. And no matter how self-sustaining and redundantly secure a building was, it still needed access to the outside world: power lines to recharge batteries, fuel lines for generators, ventilation shafts and fans, humidity and climate control, access to radio, television, satellite, internet… and computers to control it all.

Hemlokk had dug up the blueprints from the "lost" Endbringer shelter from Coil's own corporate computer files. Lei Ling's earth elementals had tunneled down to the wiring and plumbing. And Tattletale had both manually spliced into the computer systems of Coil's lair-- and for good measure hacked into both the regular city power grid and traffic control. And then just to be thorough she'd tapped into the private computer systems… The entire neighborhood was under her direct control.

All it took… was a push of the button. She tapped ENTER, and the fun began.

Immediately, every office building in the immediate area had a brown-out. Lights went dark, machinery went still, ventilation and air conditioning ground to a halt and most importantly every computer-- every office desktop, every digital cash register, every mainframe-- crashed. Even on her rooftop perch Tattletale could hear the wails of dismay and outright cursing from office workers who'd just watched an entire day's work vanish into the ether. She cringed just a little. "Sorry folks," she muttered. "But it's all necessary."

A moment later her own laptop started ringing. A great number of very aggravated supervisors were attempting to call the power company. Their calls were being intercepted and they were now receiving a pre-recorded message Tattletale had composed herself informing them that the power company was very sorry, there was a service outage in this area, it would be 6 to 8 hours before service could be reconnected, etc.

The response from the whitecollar crowd was as she had predicted. Management would fuss and fume for a few minutes, throw its hands in the air and tell everyone to take an early day. Tattletale gave everyone ten minutes to get their coats, grab their car keys and get all the way down to the parking garages.

Then she hit the traffic lights.

She didn't lock them all red at first, oh no. She waited until the disgruntled office staff were just beginning to empty out of the parking lots and garages onto the street. Then she disrupted the traffic signal cycles for five minutes, letting everyone get REALLY snarled up in stop-and-go traffic. Then and only then did she flip every light to red, leaving everything for blocks around stuck in gridlock….

… just as Thomas Calvert's pretentious little car drove into the middle of it.

The best part was, Calvert's little basement clubhouse had no clue what was going on topside. She had sifted through Coils computers and found that Coil had apparently run 'security drills' on an irregular basis. It was a simple matter of setting one off; the entire base was in lockdown for the next 24 hours. Noone in, noone out, no communications, radio, online or otherwise-- with the grand glorious exception of herself, of course.

Going by what she saw on the security cams the mercenaries Calvert employed were treating it as yet another rote drill, demonstrating no suspicion and no initiative either, simply locking down whatever they were doing, retreating to their quarters or their duty stations and bolting the doors behind them. If what Lisa was reading from Coil's protocols for this sort of drill were correct, they would maintain radio silence under any and all circumstances until the all-clear the next day.

Perfect. They couldn't call Coil to find out what was up, and he couldn't call them.

Better still, the tech staff had shut down the lair's mainframe and put it in lockdown-- but the moment they had stepped out of the server room and locked the door, the virus Tattletale had installed rebooted the system and gave her full administrative access. In moments she was gallivanting through the system, gleefully wreaking more havoc than a herd of gremlins.

Goal one: evacuate the area around and over the base. Done. The gridlock was moving slow, but it was moving; she calculated that by the end of the next hour it would be clear and this portion of downtown would be all but completely abandoned. Goal Two, deny Coil access to his base. Coil was stuck in the mother of all traffic jams at the moment, so check. Goal Three: put base in lockdown and deny Coil and his mercenaries any contact.

Goal four: go through Coil's computer system and defuse all the (some figurative, some quite literal) time bombs and dead man's switches the paranoid freak had installed…. In progress. More than once Lisa cursed Coil's redundant paranoia: as Bayleaf had predicted the psychopath had wired his base with a self-destruct system, and going by the info she was pulling down with her Azeroth-tech-enhanced laptop had crammed his base full of enough explosives to send half of downtown into orbit. She was VERY busy for several tense minutes remotely deactivating that particular nasty little surprise. That wasn't even the worst of it; both the base server and Coil's own private computer were packed full of nasty little databombs-- blackmail packets against various politicians, files on Cape identities both in and outside the Protectorate, computerized instructions to wire sums of money and encoded instructions to particular addresses at particular times… Tattletale shuddered to imagine what havoc would have been unleashed by this horrible man out of sheer spite for his own demise, even as she carefully picked apart and defused the system he'd set up.

The Travelers were on-base as well, and locked down--

Dear God. He'd even set up a timer to release Noelle from her cage and set her loose on the city, complete with a pre-recorded message guaranteed to drive her into a frenzy… Tattletale erased it, locked Noelle's vault door down, and activated the knockout gas that connected to Noelle's prison, and to the Traveler's quarters. Clever of Coil to have that on hand. Pity he hadn't planted enough gas canisters for the entire base. Oh well, at least Coil's pet parahumans were out of commission. Along with his Endbringer-In-A-Box.

Deactivating all Calvert's little booby traps may have been child's play; all the same, Tattletale was feeling VERY grateful for the magic portal behind her on the roof, and the hearthstone in her lap. Just in case.

But for now, the goal was to get Coil to drop the timeline that had brought him here. It shouldn't take too much longer; every "tell" she had off the man told her so. For all Coil's love of master plans, he had less patience than a toddler with petty frustrations or setbacks. That was what made his Power such a diabolical gift. Bayleaf had told her (and her own Power had confirmed) that Coil's usual method for dealing with frustration was to split the timeline and indulge in a fit of destruction and sadistic violence in one branch--- shooting a nearby minion, torturing and killing a captive, or simply smashing the nearest objects at hand to flinders--- then collapsing the timeline when his sadistic temper was momentarily sated.

It was almost morbidly hilarious: the cool, cunning and always collected Coil was in reality as much of a scenery-chewing maniac as any old black-and-white serial villain. She shook her head. All the times he'd been sitting there, cool as a cucumber, while off in some alternate reality he'd been ranting and frothing like Ming the Merciless…

Well, all things considered he probably wasn't handling the petty inconvenience of being trapped in a Brockton Bay traffic jam very well. Traffic in Brockton Bay made the traffic in Manhattan, New York seem like a courtly-mannered soiree. In fact given the rising din of gunning motors, car horns, and swearing rising from below, she figured Coil would blow his gasket in about four.. three… two…

"ARRRRGH!" Calvert screamed, hammering on his steering wheel with his fists. His temples were pounding from the aggravation and the rising stink of traffic fumes. To damnation with it, he could wait this out at the PRT. With a snarl he collapsed the timeline.

SECOND TIMELINE

Thomas Calvert stepped into the lobby of the PRT building with a sigh of satisfaction… then promptly split the timeline again. In one timeline he proceeded to his office; in the other, much to the puzzlement of the PRT staff, he turned on his heel and walked right back out the front door.

TIMELINE 2-B

"He's balking at the PRT entrance," Aisha said, her nose almost pressed to the tracking monitor. "He must know sumpin's up--!"

"No, he just split the timeline again," Hemlokk decided. "He wants his alts to be as far apart as possible for safety's sake. He must've walked on into the building in the first timeline so he's taking a stroll elsewhere in this one."

"Dammit, no time for anything subtle," Bayleaf growled. "Shar'Din! Give me a portal to the PRT building!"...

Calvert strode down the sidewalk, his head held high and his gait steady. It was a habit long in developing, to look calm whether he was or not. It never paid to look urgent or spooked when he was trying to put his time-alts as far from one another as possible…

It didn't help him any when the grizzly bear ran him down.

The beast charged out of a back alley, roaring and bellowing. It slapped him to the ground with one massive paw and began batting him about like a cat toy as he screamed in bewildered terror. It seized him in its jaws and began to shake---

He staggered a few steps just short of the elevator. "Whaddafuuhh--?" he blurted.

Several people nearby looked up, surprised at his outburst. Quickly he collected himself and strode to the elevator as if nothing had happened. Inside he was badly rattled to say the least.

The hell was that? A BEAR ATTACK?

The first thought that came to his flummoxed mind was to wonder: Was there some new Cape villain with a bear theme running around town? The hell just happened?

Calvert was no fool. SOMEONE WAS MOVING AGAINST HIM. Once was circumstance, twice was coincidence, thrice was enemy action-- and he was disinclined to wait for a confirmation of enemy action. The brownout, possibly, the traffic jam, maybe, but even he wasn't dumb enough to chalk up a wild animal attack in the middle of a city to circumstance. Of course he wasn't dumb enough to let himself be mauled by a bear just to keep a timeline open, either… which played into his unknown enemy's hands. He was now trapped in the PRT building.

He had to get in contact with his mercenaries and find out what the hell was happening.

Even as befuddled as he was his hindbrain took note of the climate in the building. He looked around while he waited for the lift; years of exposure had taught him how to "read" the different moods of the PRT building. At the moment staff and troopers were hustling about in the manner that suggested to him some deployment was underway… did it have something to do with his own run of "accidents" this morning?

He failed to notice the receptionist behind him sealing the front doors, or discreetly phoning the upstairs offices to let them know he'd arrived.

"Oh, sir!"

A clerk was standing in front of him, blocking his path to the elevator. Best to get whatever she wanted, get her out of the way, get upstairs to his office where the mutant cape bears weren't. "Yes?" he said curtly.

"Director Piggot sent me to find you," she said. "She wants you in her office, oh, five minutes ago." The woman grimaced and handed him a sealed folder. It was thick as his thumb and stamped with a series of logos indicating he was to not open it until in the presence of his direct supevisor-- in this case, Piggot herself. He mumbled something appropriately dismissive, signed her digital clipboard indicating he'd received said missive, and boarded the elevator.

He had to get this meeting over with, get to his office, open up an encrypted line to his base and to other resources, and find out who the hell had sicced a mutant bear on him in the middle of Brockton Bay.

He stepped through Piggot's office door after a brief knock, and found himself looking down the largest gun barrel he'd ever seen in his life. Miss Militia was looking him in the eye through the sights. She did not look particularly friendly. Armsmaster was standing to the left; Assault and Battery were standing to the right. The rest of the room was filled with fully kitted out PRT officers. EVERY weapon was leveled in his direction.

Piggot was sitting at her desk. She thumbed something under the desktop. There was a faint whoosh. Metal shutters dropped over the windows and closed off the door behind him. She gave him a humorless, thin-lipped smile, her basilisk eyes riveting his. "Ah, so you've arrived," she said. "Feel free to open the dossier now."

Almost hypnotized, he slowly lifted up the file he'd been handed and tore the sealing strip. He thumbed through the papers; it didn't take long for him to realize it was a comprehensive file of criminal activities--- on him. Names, numbers, transactions; records of bribes, digital espionage, embezzlement, tax evasion, blackmail, and more; files that could only have come from his own meticulously kept and obsessively encrypted and protected computer files deep in the heart of his secret base.

On the very top of the stack was a sheet of copier paper with a single word printed in enormous block letters:

PWNED

It was then and only then that Calvert realized he'd forgotten to split his timeline again.

Piggot's smile was ghastly beyond measure. "It is SO much nicer when they walk right in the front door and drop themselves in your lap, isn't it?" she said to nobody in particular.

Bayleaf listened for a moment at his cellphone, then looked at the rest of the Alliance members with a doggy grin on his face. "Piggot's got him. He's tagged and bagged. PRT crews and the Protectorate are on their way to Dinah's location and the lair."

A whoop of relief went up from the group. Aisha got on the mike. "Okay, Tats, boss man says to drop the word on 'em!"

Back downtown, Tattletale cackled like a maniac and got on her laptop again.

The commander of Coil's rent-an-army cussed to himself and paced back and forth in the narrow confines of his "command center--" little more than a 10x20 room with a couple of folding tables and a computer thrown in it. They were stuck in yet another of Coil's damnable "security drills." Another! The paranoid stick figure had drills for every conceivable scenario and a few dozen ridiculous ones, and he was constantly testing all of them.

This particular drill was annoying in the extreme. Complete lockdown, no communication into or out of the base for 24 hours. God only knew what circumstances Coil thought this prepared them for. This contract was proving to be a massive pain in the ass.

The trooper sitting at the computer desk suddenly stiffened. "Sir?"

Just as he spoke, the lights in the base went out. The emergency lights, however, did NOT activate. Muffled swearing echoed from every corner of the underground base. Said swearing got more urgent as the mercenaries realized the entire base was shut down.

The Commander felt the hackles on his neck rising. He realized why in a moment; the incessant hum of the ventilation system had fallen silent.

They were in a sealed up underground base. That was not a good thing.

It was then he noticed that, by some inexplicable means, the computer was still powered up. He stepped up behind the pencilneck running the thing and looked at the screen. White text glowed on a black background. He felt the blood drain from his face as he read it.

WE CONTROL THE HORIZONTAL.

WE CONTROL THE VERTICAL.

WE CONTROL THE AIR SUPPLY.

THE PRT WILL BE THROUGH YOUR FRONT

DOOR IN APPROXIMATELY 10 MINUTES. WE

RECOMMEND THAT YOU SURRENDER.

DO YOU SURRENDER? (Y/N)

The commander felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. Wordlessly he reached out and pressed "Y".

The PRT and the heroes of the Protectorate arrived with choppers, armored trucks and armored-up troops and making a great deal of ruckus.

Dinah Alcott was found safe and unharmed, sitting with two small tinker-made robots next to a pile of hog-tied and badly battered mercenaries. The remains of their vehicle, their gear and their arsenal of weapons, which included several tasers and tranquilizer darts, was more than enough to damn them. The PRT agents were NOT gentle loading them into the prison truck.

The division that arrived at the 'secret lair' was even louder and noisier. Fortunately the traffic in the immediate area and several blocks beyond was all but cleared out (gridlock or no, when a large number of wage slaves wants to get away from the office before the boss changes his mind, the gettin' gone is got!) The PRT troopers found the hidden vault doors open wide, with a score of disarmed and extremely disgusted mercenaries kneeling in the dust, waiting for them.

The PRT tore through the base like crap like a goose. They found stockpiles of weapons ranging from mundane firearms to exotic Tinker ray guns to caches of chemical weapons fit to make the blood freeze. (A dozen or so barrels didn't sound like much, til you knew that some of what Coil had stashed away for a rainy day could have depopulated Brockton Bay with a single barrel…)

The Travelers never even had a chance to resist. They were found unconscious in their quarters, manacled and loaded up. They had to load the still-sleeping Noelle-- doped to the gills with Tinker tranquilizers-- into a military freight truck. The poor girl would be transported to a bunker out in Arizona where the PRT would study her condition and try to help her, or at least make her as comfortable as they could. The other Travelers would be kept at the same facility as "guests" of the U.S. Government-- till someone in authority figured out precisely what to do with the band of world-hopping capes and their monstrous friend.

Coil never had a hope. He was in PRT custody. Piggot took especial pleasure in putting him under the most draconian Master/Stranger protocols she could muster, as well as the highest flight/escape risk rating on the charts. He was destined for the PRT's deepest, darkest cell, with every anti-Master, anti-Stranger, anti-Mover measure they had.

With the evidence they would gather from his secret base, and from interrogating his less-than-loyal employees, an express ticket to the Birdcage looked to be in the offing. The 'interrogation room' Coil frequented, with its well-used tools and the gutters in the floor, was enough to condemn him. The room he had set aside for Dinah-- with its hospital gurney, restraining straps, and cabinet full of intravenous drugs-- was enough to damn him twice over.

Mysteriously, the PRT would be unable to retrieve anything from Calvert's computers or paper files. Some unknown virus had turned the computers into bricks, frying the hard drives. Several had been subjected to a hacking attack that somehow made the hard drive motors accelerate till the disks shattered and the circuitry burst into flame. Then the fire had seemingly spread from the computers to the paper files...

In the end the investigators would only be able to retrieve bits and scraps. A more suspicious individual might have suspected some manipulation-- they would find comprehensive proof of Coil's blackmail plans, for example, yet strangely enough all the records of what that blackmail was FOR had been amongst the destroyed files.

The investigators' hopes of turning up more evidence at Thomas Calvert's civilian residence would be short-lived. Some time during all the ruckus with Dinah Alcott and the capture of the base, his home had been… demolished. The interior was gutted, furniture smashed, possessions destroyed; it looked, as one inspector would put it, "like someone let loose a troop of bears armed with flamethrowers inside." The remains of several caches would be found (a hidden wall safe, a secret chamber under the floor, a few secret compartments in the closets) but noone could begin to guess what had been in them-- they had all been ripped open and emptied.

When Calvert received the news, the breakdown would be spectacular.

"Passports, ID in several different names, cash in several different nationalities, gold and silver coins, couple of guns..." Fennek recited as Lok'Tara tossed the articles, one by one, on the coffee table. "Oh, and several folders of blackmail material on certain political figures, and I'm guessing the thumb drives have more of the same. Not exactly your standard bug-out bag-- of which he had several squirreled away." He snickered and fell back on his sofa. "You were right to send us to trash his house, Hemlokk; if Coil ever escaped he would've beelined straight to that house for this little stash."

Noone asked what a bug-out bag was, Bayleaf noted. Ever since the Endbringers had begun their reign of terror, there were few people who DIDN'T know what it meant to have a backpack or duffel bag stuffed with emergency supplies ready to grab on the way out the front door.

The Alliance was all together in the Lost Workshop, crashing out in what was coming to be known as the Comfy Couch Room. At some point several overstuffed chairs, sofas and recliners had migrated to their 'regular meeting area' at the center of the Workshop, cozying up around an oversized coffee table and a mini fridge or two. It was hardly what anyone would call a proper War Room, but nobody seemed inclined to move them elsewhere.

Grue whistled as he riffled through the stacks of cash. "Most people would RETIRE on this. This guy kept this much around just so he could start up all over again?"

"He wanted to rule Brockton Bay," Lisa said. "Literally. He thought that after the End, or the Big Collapse, whatever you want to call it, that he'd be some kind of medieval warlord… God knows why he picked Brockton Bay."

"To quote everyone's favorite Ghostbuster, 'Tasty pick, Bonehead," Fennek said.

Bayleaf sighed and shrugged. "For an evil person, even everything they ever wanted isn't enough. They take and take, and eat, and eat, and in the end they're even hungrier than they were before." He dropped the gold coins he was holding in his palm back on the table.

Lisa smirked. "Well, he's gonna be hella hungry now," she said. "I bled out all his accounts. We now have a very large, very fat bank account under a very Swiss sounding name."

"With a lil' sumpin-sumpin on the side under the name 'Tattletale,' amirite?" Aesha snarked.

"I neither confirm nor deny anything."

Shen waved a hand. "Are you sure--?" he said to Lisa.

Lisa patted him comfortingly on the knee. "Yes, I totally fragged Calvert's dossier on the E88," she reassured him. "I left plenty of incriminating evidence behind for the PRT, but he's got nothing in his blackmail files but a pile of ash and the smell of burnt plastic." She huffed, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. "Never occurred to the paranoid dum-dum that wiring up all his computers and filing cabinets with self-destruct flares meant someone ELSE could push the big red button on them."

Shen breathed a sigh of relief, then looked guilty. "I know the Empire is a bunch of scumbags," he said. "b-but Kayden and Aster don't deserve to have their lives destroyed. Kayden's really trying to make a clean start of it..."

Lei Ling crossed her arms. "I don't know how I should feel about it," she said, scowling. "I know I'm supposed to hate 'em all, and yeah, they were a bunch of a-holes-- above and beyond being Nazis, I mean-- but… shit, I dunno. I lived my whole life around them--- and believe me, they weren't all sunshine and buttercups with me just because I was white, either---"

"We get it," Grue said, waving it off. "No matter how bad they were, family's family. You can't help but feel conflicted, no matter how crappy they were." He gave a little shudder. "Just hope you're right about Purity turning over a new leaf."

Shen scowled a little at that, but nodded in acceptance. "Kind of hard to earn a good name," he said.

"Tell me about it," Lei Ling muttered.

"Just one day at a time, Lei Ling," Bayleaf advised. "It takes a lot of… of… Lok'Tara? What are you feeding them?" The orc girl was sitting on a beanbag chair, with Brutus, Judas, Angelica and Truck gathered around her. Every now and then she fished something out of the cooler sitting next to her, tore it into strips and distributed it to the eager dogs. Lok'tara looked up at the question.

"Meat," she said. "A little treat won't hurt them."

"We took time to clean out Coil's larder," Fennek said smugly. "Slimy jerk had expensive tastes, let me tell you. Fidget and Gidget are sleeping off about a pound of raw peeled shrimp each." There were several proclamations of surprise; thanks to Leviathan, the price of seafood was staggering. Most businesses and restaurants got by with freshwater fish, and farmed seafood was starting to become seriously profitable. There was talk of converting the Salt Lake in Utah into a giant fish farm.

"I'm almost scared to ask, but-- what KIND of meat, Rachel?" Lisa said, humor and horror warring on her face.

Lok'Tara pulled an un-opened package out of the cooler and squinted at the label. "Wag-You Beef?" she said. "That's for dogs, right? You know--- "Wag the tail," sort of thing?"

Several people in the room choked. "WAGYU BEEF?" Shen spluttered. "Lok'Tara, that stuff is imported Japanese beef! It cost several hundred dollars a pound, and that was BEFORE Kyushu sank! My dad used to brag for weeks about getting a cut or two smuggled into the States!"

Lok'Tara stared at him, eyebrows climbing up her forehead. She tore off a strip and stuck it in her mouth. "It's good," she admitted, chewing. "But it's not THAT good..." She tossed Truck another strip.

Shen stared in disbelief as the orc girl proceeded to make doggie treats out of $500-a-pound imported steak. "Don't sweat it," Fennek told him. "I made sure most of the haul got stashed in the pantry and freezer, instead of in the dogs." He held out a box of crackers with a jar balanced precariously on the top. "Caviar?"

Bayleaf snickered at the croggled expression on Shen's face. This team… He looked over at Hemlokk who was perched on the sofa next to him. She had a disturbingly withdrawn look on her face. He pulled her arm around her shoulders. "Something wrong?" he asked.

"I'm thinking we'd be stupid to think Coil is the only one willing to stoop to that dossier trick," she said suddenly. "Or that they wouldn't use it against us."

"The unwritten rules--" Lisa said.

"The unwritten rules are breaking down," Hemlokk said. "If they weren't a joke already. We just helped break them!"

"Hey, Coil broke them first," Aisha said. "That's the point of the Rules. Mutually Assured Destruction. You break the Rules, everyone else gets to break them on YOU."

"Yes, but was anyone really keeping them in the first place? Except for us suckers down on the bottom rung?" Hemlokk said a bit snappily. "Sure, the big players USE them-- to their advantage. And everyone else is supposed to play Lois Lane and pretend they don't recognize Superman in his Clark Kent suit. Meanwhile they kill civilians and bystanders, go for the kill against Capes, target Wards-- nobody talks about it but Vista can show you scars from one of her run-ins with Hookwolf…" she shook her head. "And if Kaiser doesn't have a nice stack of files on his enemies ready to use as a Nuclear Option like Coil did, I'll eat my cowl."

"He wouldn't--" Shen protested, then fell silent. Why was he defending the man? Shen KNEW what he'd stoop to!

"Maybe five years ago, maybe last year, but not now," Hemlokk said. She got to her feet and started to pace around the room. "The stakes are getting too high now. The Merchants are gone. Lung is gone and the ABB is collapsing without him, and even if he escapes and comes back he's a non-threat. Coil is gone. The only real Cape gang left in this whole region is the Empire 88. Other capes, other gangs, are going to be looking here and seeing ripe territory… with only one gang in the way..."

"And Kaiser is going to be looking around and figuring all of Brockton Bay is his for the taking," Grue finished grimly. "Whether the Empire starts it or some other Cape gang moves in-- The next big gang explosion is going to be for ALL the marbles. And nobody's going to be inclined to just play Cops and Robbers anymore." He gave Lisa a dry look; she winced but said nothing.

"That's not even taking into account Cauldron," Hemlokk added. "We're threatening their power base, their 'Path To Victory.' They already violate every law and Rule imaginable; they don't even have the moral qualms Coil did.They have resources Coil only dreamed of, and they'll be more than happy to use them to deal with us." She stopped pacing and stared off into a corner, ears laid flat. "We all have too many skeletons in our closet, too many people they can use against us."

"So what are you saying we need to do?" Bayleaf nudged her.

"We need to… to pull in all our loose ends," Taylor said. "I mean, my Dad is in the know, and the protective gear we gave him gives me a lot of peace of mind, but… most of us have family and friends who can be used against us. And what about Glory Girl and Panacea, and Gallant? They're not even Alliance, but they're tied to us, and so that means their families are targets too.

"That IS why we have secret identities," Grue pointed out. "To protect our families."

"And as we just all agreed they're about as durable as tissue paper now," Taylor retorted. "Ignorance won't protect them, or us, anymore." She saw Shar'Din and Vindicator share a guilty look out of the corner of her eye. "We need to bring everybody in under the tent." She looked around at everyone. "All of us."

"It's stupid that we have to even say it, but… it's way past time. We need to go talk to our families."