Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2.1
“Taylor”

“Run like deer, die like sheep, or fight like wolves,” Wolf told the Undersiders as they gathered round the stovetop island in the kitchenette of their lair. “The first two states default to civilians for the most part because they have those choices when facing parahumans. If, when shit starts to go down they do the first, they stand a good chance of living, if they stand their ground they stand a good chance of accomplishing the second, the third is where we come in.” I watched as the man flipped the pancakes in one pan before turning the bacon in another while watching a pair of eggs fry in a third. I wasn’t surprised at the appetite that he was cooking for, when I had come out for my morning run he had been there waiting to join me. He set a relatively easy pace till they reached the boardwalk where he moved both of us up to sprints showing how much faster his longer legs could carry him. I simply sprinted to Brian’s location while he did sprints between the two of us until I arrived. Afterwards we bought drinks, coffee for the rest of the team, tea for me and orange juice and a soda for him before going to the loft to cook breakfast. It was as he cooked for us all, whatever we wanted, that he lectured us about the next few days.

“When a wolf fights, it’s always a struggle for survival;” he continued talking while now filling plates with our breakfasts. “There is never any quarter asked, nor any given, and they almost always attack as a group. Their attacks are distractingly in sync with each other, one grabbing the prey’s attention while another comes in and attacks a weak point. This is how I fight, and it is how you will learn to fight.”

“That goes against everything the PRT wants and teaches as well as half the unwritten rules.” Lisa responded to which Wolf quirked an eyebrow at the thinker. “And you don’t give a damn what they want, you just want to keep people safe,” at this point a hint of wonder entered her voice. “You want to keep us safe, but why?”

I watched as Wolf smirked sliding the girl her plate of pancakes and grits, “Because you guys are my pack now,” he answered. “And while we will try to bring our targets in alive I am much more concerned about the five of you making it back to base in one piece at the end of the night. To that effort I’ve requisitioned a number of containment foam grenades and bean bag rounds as well as six AR15/M16’s with under barrel grenade launchers. While I don’t like the base rifle, it’s fairly light, easy to learn on, and I can either maintain them myself with a minimum amount of time or teach you to maintain them yourselves with about the same amount of time. After that we move to sidearms,” at this point he sighed and looked at the five pseudo-villians. “Personally I prefer a forty five caliber, but that said I doubt Lisa or Taylor could handle the recoil of one, Alec even would be iffy, so we’ll be using nine millimeter pistols for sidearms. Ammo for both the rifle and pistol are going to be standard ball however, so I don’t want you taking the safety off of them unless it is absolutely necessary. Again the important thing is for you to come home at the end of the day.”

“So you’re basically training us to be mercs as well as parahumans so we don’t have to rely on our powers.” Brian stated sounding a little angry. “Why would we want to do that, it only makes us more dangerous to civilians?”

“It also makes us more useful to him and to ourselves.” Lisa answered thoughtfully. “What he’s doing is showing the world that the unwritten rules as well as the PR battle that the PRT wages around the world is essentially useless. We won’t be faces in the news; we won’t be people that have families that our enemies can respond against. We’ll be shadows that make accomplishments and then disappear only to be seen when we surface again with another victory.”

Wolf simply nodded, “That however is all for another day,” he said. “For today we have a checklist of things to do to ensure that Coil ends up on the wrong path and finds himself either dead or captured.”

“So what’s the plan?” Alec asked.

“Rachel, you go about your normal day,” Wolf said looking at the girl. “You’re the most noticeable and we need someone keeping Coil’s mercs occupied while the rest of us get other things done.” Rachel nodded so Wolf continued. “Just go about your normal day and keep your cell phone on and on you, Lisa might have to text you a meet point later on or you might have to haul ass to help Brian and Alec.” The girl nodded again and finishing her breakfast which was heavy on the meat and eggs before she dumped the plate in the sink and headed out. “Alec, you and Brian have recon to do at a school so try to disappear either into the crowds or use an adjoining rooftop, Lisa will get you the address and a picture but I need you to keep an eye on one Dinah Alcott. She’s the Mayor’s niece and a precog that Coil wants to forcibly recruit. He might go for her early since his plans have been leaked and then discussed in front of him at the PRT. He might decide it’s too dangerous, but then again he might decide to take her with a different group than his mercs so keep your eyes open.”

“Picture and address of both her home and her school are waiting for you in the printer guys,” Lisa responded as a hum and rattle started under the TV. Putting away her phone she looked at Brian and Alec, “Please try and spot Coil’s mercenaries before they spot you,” she asked before turning back to Wolf and continuing, “I suppose I’m on command, comms and control, is there anything else you want me to be doing?”

“I want a one command cut out setup so that everyone of Coil’s plants and personnel can be locked out of the communications setup he has, and I need the address of his base.” Wolf answered. “Taylor and I are pulling recon mapping out the base and prepping for possible problems. If Coil calls today to get you to do either a job downtown or else a kidnapping agree to it after letting him sweat for about twenty minutes while you “talk to the team” if it’s the bank robbery, or a jewelry store I have a way to cover for it, if it’s the kidnapping, he’ll really never know what hit him.” Lisa nodded and jotted down an address on a napkin before finishing off her coffee and heading toward her laptop. “Taylor,” he said and I nodded. “We’re going to scout every entrance and exit, along with the layout of Coil’s base,” at this point he smiled. “I want spiders jamming every weapon he has in that place along with a mass of wasps and bees on hand to help the assault. I’m going to have people covering every exit this place has even if I have to recruit Faultline’s crew to do it.

“So are we going in costume or not?” I asked dropping my plate in the sink, watching as he polished off a third egg along with half of the bacon, three pancakes and a bowl full of grits with butter, salt and pepper on them. He washed it down with the last of his orange juice before answering. “Costume under street clothes, mask in a bag of some sorts. I don’t think we’ll run into trouble, but best to go prepared,” he finished. I nodded and then ran off to get dressed. This was going to be an interesting day regardless of what happened.
--

“There it is.” I heard Wolf mutter as we walked past a high-rise office building in the downtown area. Looking I didn’t see anything that screamed secret base or hidden evil mastermind. “Any place I should focus my search?” I asked.

“Look at ground level and below, see if you can find air access shafts that go down when they should all go up.” Wolf answered, “I nodded and started to focus on my bugs as Wolf guided me toward a park about a block away.

“Found it,” I muttered. “I’ve got four openings on ground level, one in the elevator shaft, one in the sub-basement, and two into the parking garage.” Suddenly I lost contact with a lot of the bugs that were in the entrance that was hidden in an air shaft that went into the parking garage. Stopping them from sinking any lower I kept the rest of them from dropping into the cold and lack of oxygen. “Something is wrong with one of the entrances.” I said quietly as we sat on a park bench. “Bugs are hitting a cold layer that has absolutely no oxygen.”

“Interesting,” Wolf said. “Note it and move the bugs to working something else. I get the distinct feeling that we’re working on a short clock here.”

“Right,” I answered and moved the remainder of the bugs out and down the adjoining airshaft that actually fed air into the underground facility. Mapping out the base was going to be tedious work, but necessary if we were to meet our objectives.

--

Alec looked around at the middle school’s front area noting the various vehicles as they came and went. Up the street a panel van from Brockton Bay Electric and Gas was sitting alongside the curb and a set of cones were out around an adjacent manhole cover showing that someone was down working in the junction. “Grue,” he said looking at his stakeout partner who was laid out on the rooftop appearing to take a nap. “I don’t like the look of that panel van over there.”

“What about it do you not like about it Regent,” his partner asked continuing to lay there and soak up the sun.

“I don’t know,” Regent responded. “It just seems a little to conveniently placed considering we are trying to foil a kidnapping.” Grue grunted in response.

--

Lisa stared at the multiple windows on the big screen TV as she used it in place of her laptop’s screen. The remote keyboard and mouse also allowed her to work from the comfort of the couch while leaving the main piece of electronic hardware sitting hardwired into the screen. The laptop was her cold unit, bought under an assumed name from a generic store for cash and before today it had never been online, indeed it had never even been turned on except to load a single install CD with the programs for hacking the backdoors into the PRT and protectorate bases as well as the city’s CCTV system. All their phones had been replaced with burner phones and fresh Bluetooth units so plugging her phone into her laptop she pulled up the dialing program and started calling the others. “Alright people, let’s get this party started,” she muttered to herself.

--
-Wolf-
“So what was it like?” The question itself caught me off guard as I sat on the bench watching the bugs draw out floor plans that included, indeed even specifically referenced the ventilation system. I answered with a questioning grunt so Taylor repeated herself, even going so far as to clarify the question. “When you fought back against your bullies what was it like?”

I sighed and took my eyes off both the bugs that were drawing in the dirt and the grid paper that I was using to diagram the floors. “When I fought it was rarely about defending myself, at least not primarily.” I answered. “Defending others was my excuse to beat the hell out of the bullies because it was the same people that picked on me. That got me some respect and out of quite a bit of trouble early on, but unfortunately it simply caused the bullies to fixate on me.” I returned my attention to the diagrams on both the ground and the paper in my lap as I continued speaking. “After a while of that it got to the point that my mother got a bait long after I had reached my boiling point and told both me and the school in no uncertain terms that the next time one of their special snowflakes did anything to me that I had her express permission to beat the ever-loving hell out of the little bastards. It worked because when the one that seemed to get the most enjoyment out of the whole thing decided to pick a fight I stepped up and bloodied his mouth and nose.” At this point I looked over at her and smiled, “this did wonders for my self-esteem so when I transferred schools a couple of years later and a senior decided he was going to shove me into the schools decorative fish pond, I threw him in instead.” At this point I smiled both at the memory and the grin that the story produced on the teen’s face. “That got me a bit of respect and no one really picked on me from that point on. Marine Corps, oh there was the usual slight bit of hazing and inter-service rivalry with the sailors that I went through the same schools with, but that was more the old sibling rivalry that Brian could probably relate to better than you.”

“I don’t know,” Taylor qualified with a grin. “I grew up over at Emma’s house almost as much as she was at mine, her sisters were practically mine, so I understand picking between siblings.”

“Point,” I conceded. “Still, the point is that each time I stood up to them it improved my self-esteem, which in turn made it easier for me to stand up to them again later.” I smiled that feral smile again, “beating the hell out of them was just a fringe benefit. Now, what time is it?”

“About half past one,” Taylor answered, “maybe a little after that, why?”

“Because I think it will be today,” I answered. “Lisa talk to me, what’s happening?”

“Alec and Brian are on sight and Rachel is in position about three blocks away walking the trio waiting for school to let out so they can keep an eye on the target as she goes home.” Lisa answered. “I have all but a couple of Coil’s Trojans either blocked, spoofed or destroyed and am sitting on the alert button for the Wards, Protectorate, and PRT so I can alert them as soon as something happens. At that point I’m blowing Coil completely out of the system and locking out all of his access, at which point he’ll know he’s been outed and things will hit the fan.”

“Good call,” I answered. “Taylor and I are going to find a copy shop or something so that I can get these floor maps we’ve been working on scanned and uploaded to you so we can start planning our assault. I want everyone on the same page when it comes to taking him out. That way we can hopefully avoid any friendly fire incidents.”

“Understood,” Lisa replied as I got up and wiped the floor plans from the playground sand box. “I’ll keep a watch on things till,” at that point she stopped her attention going elsewhere until a final word summed up the situation nicely. “Shit!”
--
Dinah:
Kids boiled around me as we were released from the confines of school. Looking around I noticed a person on the roof of the building across the street as well as the city maintenance van down the street packing up. My power was throwing conflicting numbers at me about if they would attempt to take me again today, in short I couldn’t tell what was about to happen. This is the effect of two capes powers interfering with one another, the question was whose power was messing with mine.

Crossing the street and starting toward home, I gripped the bridge of my nose as a wave of pain passed through my head. The headaches that using my power brought on were bad enough, but having to abuse the ability by asking the same question multiple times during the day was making this headache one for the record books, not that it was a large record currently. As I walked I noticed the van that had been up the street from the school pass by me and stop at the corner, just as I felt reality start to fuzz.
[spoiler=coil interrupt] The van door slammed open and one of the two men inside jumped out heading straight for me. My response was to run down the alley parallel to the cross street. Suddenly the man chasing me stumbled into the dumpster that half-filled the alley. It didn’t stop him though, I could hear him pick himself up and come after me again. Moments later he was right behind me again and again I heard him fall. Looking ahead I saw two figures standing there watching, one was talking on his phone while the other seemed focused on the man behind me. The man chasing me was right behind me again and then the man watching made a gesture and the man behind me fell again. [/spoiler]
 This caused me to ask the question again. Asking my powers for the safest route home had to be done specifically because it couldn’t give me a straight answer. Before I left the school I had asked and found that walking would be safer than riding the bus even though it was a decent walk home. Asking the same question now my power indicated that the greatest chance of safety lay in turning and running down the alley I was drawing abreast of, so I started running down the alley. Behind me I heard the van accelerate away from the corner and while it took me a minute to reach the far end of the alley I didn’t find it waiting at this corner like I expected. “So little one, need some help?” hearing the voice I turned slowly to face behind me and the two capes that stood there waiting. Surprisingly my power was telling me that safety was with them, so I answered the question, “Yes.”
--
Calvert/Coil-
[Spoiler=Coil Interrupt]
I ended that timeline and worked at my desk for a few minutes before I split it again. In the first one I stayed at my desk and continued to do paperwork. As an assistant director at the PRT there was a lot of paperwork and the prospect of an Endbringer coming to town was increasing that tenfold. In the second timeline I stood up and walked out my door and straight into the barrel of a PRT issue foam sprayer. “Assistant Director Thomas Calvert you are under arrest.” It didn’t take a second before I was still sitting at my desk and opening a file folder for a .exe file that would wipe any and all existence of me from the system. Unfortunately it was that instant that the door to my office decided to swing open allowing two PRT troopers to enter wearing foam sprayers and immediately start demanding what was probably my surrender.[/spoiler]

As Coil I ended my entire PRT timeline, and then ended the timeline where I had stayed at home that day as a team assaulted my residence. The thing was, even if I had been barred from the building and my normal access had been rescinded I could still access the program that would erase my existence from the PRT’s files. Navigating my computer’s access to the PRT’s database through the various backdoors that I had installed in their systems I tried to do just that when suddenly I found my access revoked here as well. Suddenly the PRT system started to back trace me and then it was a race to disconnect myself from the various proxy servers that I used to access the PRT servers before they could trace me back to my base in Brockton Bay.

“Damn you Tattletale,” I muttered before putting the base on high alert.
--
A/N I apologize for my sense of humor in this post, it is a fickle thing.
Meanwhile back at the PRT
Emily Piggot looked at the empty office that usually housed her assistant director, “He’s in the wind Wolf,” she said into the cell phone in her hand. “I can try and get a kill order, but I doubt that there’s a court that would authorize it.”

“I understand director,” the voice on the other end replied. “My team currently has his target, and he’s probably trying to figure a way to pick up Tattletale so he can torture her to death and not end that timeline.” Emily was suddenly distracted by an internal messenger running up to her out of breath and handing her a sheet of paper so she missed whatever it was that Wolf had said next.

Looking at the pages contents she started to swear as she started walking back toward her office. Once she trailed off the voice asked her, “What’s wrong?”

“Bakuda and Oni-Lee just broke Lung out from his transport to the Birdcage.” She answered and was treated to a solid minute of invective in three different languages.

“How bad was the damage?” Wolf asked.

“Thankfully not too bad,” Emily responded sighing and pinching the bridge of her nose as she leaned against her office door closing it. “Report has a total loss of the first transport van to a shaped charge land mine, but the driver survived the vehicle’s backwards flip and he was the only one on board. The second one had Miss Militia in it and she swerved off road to avoid the flying truck only to lose the tires on one side to punji stick pits in the ditch. Armsmaster was in the third and went to the other side of the one lane road where there was a pop-up pike wall that the truck hit killing its engine. Then Oni-Lee popped over to the backs of the surviving transports and popped the locks with shaped charges before extracting Lung from the one he was inside.”

“Damn,” Wolf grumbled over the phone line, “I miss working with professionals like that. What was the total time from initiation to extraction?” he asked.

“Less than thirty seconds,” Emily answered with a grumble of agreement at Wolf’s comment as she sat down behind her desk. “The damn van that hit the mine hadn’t even settled yet when they took off.”

“Total injuries?” Wolf asked.

“Just the driver had anything significant, and that was a fractured wrist and a concussion,” she answered. “The guards in the back of the trailing transport were strapped in as were Miss Militia and Armsmaster.” At that point Wolf chuckled, “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Now I can actually see if I can’t cut a deal with a dragon.” He answered, “We’re going to need him when Levi shows up, and he might be useful against Crawler when the Nine show up after that.”

At that Emily swallowed hard, “You mean to tell me that the Slaughterhouse Nine are supposed to come back to my city and you hadn’t informed me yet?”

“Yeah sorry about that,” Wolf replied. “I’ll tell you what, Saturday me and my team will show up in civs for a debrief and general breakdown of what I know. I know Armsy wants to know everything I do, as do all of you, but this is in house only right now, only outsider I want there is Dragon.”

“Why not the Triumphirate, or the PRT Directors from around the country?” Emily asked honestly curious.

“Do you remember what I told Armsy about people and their questionable loyalties?” he asked her in response.

Thinking for a minute Emily remembered what he said about Triumph or Battery and how he couldn’t quite trust him because he had gotten his powers from a shady group instead of triggering normally. “Yes,” she answered.

“Another tidbit is that Director Costa Brown who is actually Alexandria, works for them and got her powers that way.”