Interlude 1 - Time Locked Heroine

Rebecca Costa-Brown

(Picture here)

Alexandria was walking through the Protectorate HQ in New York. While she would have normally simply flown into the upper parts of the building, platforms had been constructed specifically for flyers, being seen unharmed was the main priority.

After what happened not ten minutes prior, the public required reassurance, and while she didn't have the same gravitational charisma as Keith or James she was still the best PR analyst between them by far.

Less said about David.

People were already taking pictures, and she knew that the confident stony face of Alexandria walking calmly through the compound would soon circulate the internet. This was important, after the evacuation had been called out earlier this afternoon, while people hadn't been particularly scared there was still panic, a strong front was needed to put down the fires of panic.

Aware of the cameras pointed her way she swallowed an exhausted sigh.

This whole day had been a shitshow.

After the disappearance of Doctor Manton, and with him two vials the first thing they did was have Contessa make a path to find him. Except the doctor already knew that, the moment they entered contact with her almost all of Cauldron's servers had been taken down.

It was a feat of impossibility, only ever to be achieved by the fact that the Doctor had explicit access to almost everything in the facility and most of Cauldron's data. But even that shouldn't have been enough, Number Man had the entire place up and running within five minutes.

Once again, Rebecca was reminded that Kurt was perhaps the strongest thinker barring Contessa which they had in their current rooster. The man had single-handedly destroyed an automated virus, breached through the defenses put up to stop Cauldron from taking back control, and managed to precisely do that before anyone really knew what was going on.

All while eating a bacon double XL cheeseburger.

Not that it mattered in the end, thanks to the Doctor injecting an untested sample into his daughter. The trigger had successfully gone off, but the power had not been compatible with his daughter resulting in a rather atrocious death.

Rebecca suppressed a shudder, finally arriving at the elevator. As the doors closed she allowed herself to marginally relax.

The state they found Bella Manton in was grotesque, the only reason Rebecca hadn't puked was thanks to years of experience with similar situations. The upper torso seemed to have been twisted off while all of her muscles and tendons exploded out of her body, her face frozen in a mix between unimaginable pain and fear.

But it had been enough, with the "Trigger" being set off, Contessa's path had been thrown of course, her third biggest blind spot showing its ugly head and reminding them that even if the lady in black seems invincible most of the time, there are things which can throw her off.

It wasn't until later that same day that they managed to find and surround the doctor. Yet once again, using the second sample, Manton injected himself.

And created perhaps the most dangerous monster Alexandria had ever seen.

The stripped woman, with a coloration reminiscing of a zebra, would normally not be taken so seriously. The fact that she looked like Bella had thrown them off for a bit, but they dealt with this before, Masters who projected existing people weren't completely new, not in a world where parahumans like the Fairy Queen existed.

This time it was different, the projection moved so quickly that Alexandria almost couldn't react. It was only thanks to Legend pulling her away that allowed for the attacker to harmlessly pass by her.

And completely cut the wall behind her as if it was made of butter.

The building shook, and that's when they realized that this would be dangerous.

Hero had been the first one to activate the distress call, alerting the Proctorate of an emergency dispatch to retrieve civilians from the area. An excuse was made on the spot, to ensure that no secrets would come out properly, and a mass bombing threat seemed perfect for the occasion.

James always was like that, thinking about the people first, as soon as he confirmed the protection for the civilians around them they focused back on fighting against the projected Bella, at which point Willian had already left the area.

No damage was done.

It was beyond frustrating, and equally as terrifying.

And it just kept on getting worse.

The Slaughterhouse Nine showed up after about nine minutes and fifteen seconds since the emergency alert had been sounded.

Too quickly, they already had plans to attack New York but probably thought that the chaos of a mass bombing would be too good to pass up.

Alexandria had dreaded when they received confirmation of their sighting, the four of them hadn't been able to effect the Projection at all up to that point.

Blasts of energy that she had seen damage Endbringer, weapons of multiple types completely unaffected whenever the Projection wished, and even Eidolon after switching his powers four times in a row hadn't been able to damage her.

With time he probably could find something, but they didn't have it. The only reason they were even relatively doing okay was that the projected Bella was unable to properly form an attack against their flying selves.

Most of them had distance-based attacks, Alexandria was feeling a bit useless since she was taking to throw whatever she could grab her hands on at the projection. At one point the thought of simply diving in and engaging in hand-to-hand combat was appealing.

And then she caught them by surprise, allowing Legend to blast her, no damage had been done but this time it sent her flying. It shocked them, almost nothing they threw seemed to move it around so they were caught by surprise when this attack did.

They were too slow to react as she slammed against the side of a skyscraper, when she ran up the wall in clear defiance of the laws of gravity, and when she launched at blinding speeds towards the closest person she could.

Right against Hero.

Slow to react yes, but Alexandria saw every single moment as if it was played in slow motion.

People tended to forget that, the Library of Alexandria was where she came up with the hero name, thanks to her Thinker ability to see, process, and register much faster than possible.

She saw how Hero raised his armored arm to block, how the Projection simply stretched her arm towards him without any fanfare, and how it was sliced completely off without any resistance.

Annihilator was the first thing that popped into her mind. The second was the way in which James's face contorted in pain, blood squirting out of the wound, and the screams from his mouth.

The silence of the elevator allowed Rebecca to hear her own breathing, or better yet how it had stopped entirely. Taking a deep breath to calm her nerves she clenched her fists.

If it had been her, completely confident in a power that hasn't allowed her to be damaged for the past fifteen years, she probably wouldn't even have moved to block the blow.

With a startling realization, she gulped.

Alexandria would have died, Hero could have died.

This all occurred in a slip-second because Legend caught Hero before he could fall.

And then the Projection who had been grinning maliciously at them stopped. Its face turned into confusion for a second before blinding rage surfaced.

And it disappeared.

After that, it had been a blur for Rebbeca. Legend being the fastest had taken Hero and transported him to a place where they could safely door into Cauldron's medical site.

Eidolon and she stayed back to search for Manton, but the action itself had scared her.

They separated to quickly find her. However, the sound of an explosion going off had taken her attention. While she would normally ignore it as the sign of other Proctorate heroes fighting the Slaughterhouse Nine, the fear of Manton's Projection cutting through the heroes made her change course and fly towards the sounds.

She drew closer until rapid shots filled the silenced deserted area. And soon, a figure walked out of a technology appliance store.

He was young, with white hair that was most likely a changer power, the fact accentuated by how the boy wasn't wearing a mask or anything to cover his face.

He must have heard her or had some kind of power sense, abruptly swinging in position and pulling his pistol with surgical precision aimed directly at her face, even meters away she could calculate that he was aiming straight into her eyes.

The first thing that struck her, was that he had beautiful blue eyes.

Before she could contemplate the rest, the elevator's door opened and Alexandria tensed once more, walking past corporate staff and nodding towards the heroes as she passed them, sauntering with purpose towards her office.

Once reached inside she scrambled off her costume, and threw her visor off, she was so familiar with doing so that it had been done within a second. If one were to watch it would look more like she suddenly lost her clothes.

Now dressed with only the skin-tight second skin, she continued forward with no problems.

"Door me to Cauldron Medical Facility." She spoke to the air, in an empty room.

Silence greeted her, then the air twisted before it seemed to stretch apart at a singular point, becoming bigger and soon creating a portal.

On the other side was someone who looked exactly like her, except of course, she seemed taller, older, more mature. Her body double for when the world needed Rebecca Costa-Brown and Alexandria at the same time, Emily was an incredible parahuman changer, who could copy any person she touched within the last seventy-two hours, even their mannerism.

The only limitation was the fact that she stayed the same age no matter what. Copied a ten-year-old boy? Emily will be able to change into a twenty-nine-year-old version of him, even acting in a way that seems within the parameters of his calculated future personality.

In some way, Rebecca was uncomfortable with her. Whenever she looked at Emily all she could see was what she could have grown into if her power hadn't locked her body in its late adolescent state.

Of course, the thought was incredibly foolish, so she simply ignored it.

"You look like shit, take a shower before you go off to pretty boy." her double body also was incredibly prickly, and never professional, another thing that Rebecca didn't particularly like about her.

However, she was way too exhausted to argue, simply giving her a nod and walking past her into the facility.

Looking around furtively, Rebecca sniffed herself and grimaced.

A quick trip to the shower room wouldn't take long.