/ Taylor /
Fighting the urge to giggle like a loon I cloak myself from all means of perception, relishing the look on Sophia's face as she slowly realizes exactly how fucked she is, my power letting me see it in slow motion.
I was being stupid earlier, the level of power I have is unreal. It's completely inefficient to fix things like a normal person but slightly better. I can choose any goal I like and let my powers guide me to it. I thought that the Simurgh fight would be difficult, the end boss of my adventure who would fall somewhere farther along.
This isn't a fantasy novel where I need to go through a bunch of arbitrary goals before finally confronting the big bad which I barely manage to beat due to all the practice with my powers and Dues ex Machina. I'm more than strong enough to just skip to the end. Hell if Eidolon could hold off scion with 3 powers, I could probably kill him with my superior powerset right now if I wanted to.
The scariest part of the Eidolon power wasn't the fact that the powers were obscenely strong, which they were, but that the powers could bek perfectly selected to be as efficient as possible in combination with each other. Canon Taylor's master rating was an order of magnitude more effective with a small complimentary thinker power. I could do the same thing with 10 high power variants. Super lasers are death to most capes in my line of sight, super lasers with portals opening in perfect firing positions for any target I can think of can kill almost anyone on the planet. Endbringers are scary and obscenely strong for this setting, but I'm on a different level entirely.
Case in point, what I want right now is for the PRT to stay out of my way while I leverage my powers to mess around and have fun. My first thought was to make myself so insanely useful that anyone will do what I want, while I take vacations doing fun things. Plans and conspiracies that I could run to subtly steer the world in the direction I wanted popped into my head courtesy of Eidolon, but I discarded them almost immediately, I don't want to play super Contessa. I was more than strong enough to reach for an ideal and let me powers make it a reality in a more direct fashion, conveniently sidestepping all the hard work.
My power gives me the answer, a forgery power as well as a thinker power load up into my power selections. The thinker power lets me know that despite the first impressions perk, my behavior mirrored several prominent villains closely enough that it will eventually be suspected that my powers are messing with my head. They'll investigate my motivations, but combined with my immunity to thinker powers, flawed observation on their part, as well as simple human bias, would paint a completely incorrect picture of me. They would think that I needed careful management, like some third rate villain with a crippling mental condition *cough* Accord *cough*. After a few weeks, the information and recommendations from them to the rest of the world would have everyone walking on eggshells around me, which I could see would annoy me after the novelty of it wore off.
I didn't particularly want or need approval, but the Protectorate were a useful enough tool to take care of my less interesting problems; Sophia Hess, Emma Barnes, and Madison Clements being prime examples. They tormented me and hid behind the system to empower them, it gives me warm fuzzy feelings to know that I was using that same system against them. Surprisingly enough, precognition showed me that even though orders were to give me whatever I wanted, there were enough people who believed in the trio's innocence that they were willing to bend the rules to get them some softer treatment, they weren't monsters after all and they wouldn't hurt civilians just because some villain demanded it, they even thought they were doing the right thing.
That won't do at all. I use the forgery power to create a tailor made report of me made to pull at heartstrings; my motivations, and suspected trigger event, mixing just enough truth with the lies that proving any of it false will be all but impossible. I forged the sender to be listed as Armsmaster so it wouldn't get brushed aside, and forwarded it to Piggot, embedding a special message that only Alexandria will see.
There's a few different reasons I'm doing it. The first, and most important, is to make sure I get properly credited. Cape identities are for the weak, and keeping it up will be a headache I don't want to deal with. The conclusions they'll draw from this report will give them (incorrect) reasoning for my actions that won't seem so scary. She's hurting villains because she want to help people who can't help themselves, she's hurting heroes because she's mad at them for not helping her, and so on and so forth. It's all bullshit of course, as they'll soon realize, but this'll keep them off my back for a few weeks at minimum.
The second reason is so they'll take care of Danny. Just because I'm not talking to him anymore, possibly ever, doesn't mean I want him dead. They have a perfectly acceptable witness protection program and they can take care of him. Cutting off contact with him might be petty, but really the sort of relationship I wanted, that of him just accepting whatever I'm doing despite disapproving, wasn't going to happen without a master power, which would defeat the whole point anyway. I'm much better off just doing what I want and letting him decide if he wants to talk to me properly on his own. I use my powers to materialize a few gold bars for him across the city, and I remove the filter preventing communication from him. I also leave a note, letting him know that he can go to the PRT now since it doesn't matter anymore.
With all the little odds and ends taken care I decided to move onto the next item on the Agenda, meeting all of my favorite canon characters. I don my new cloak, and wrap it around myself before teleportaling off to an 'abandoned' warehouse in the docks.
No one was here. Shit, when I told everyone that the villains had to be outside of the city ASAP after killing an entire gang in seconds I didn't think that anyone would actually listen to me.
/ Lisa /
Lisa was sitting down, reviewing a report of the new independent cape Browbeat. Coil wanted them to try to recruit him despite his heroic tendencies. She barely stopped herself from groaning out loud when he told her that. Everyone always thought she was some sort of masterful manipulator. If she had to admit it, it was her fault really, her power was a lot more limited than she let on. It was very strong, but the headaches would rapidly cripple her for the rest of the day if she ever used it on full load for more than a few minutes. She usually built up a portfolio of people over time and then let it out all at once, giving the impression that her power made her nearly omniscient. She's pissed off enough people now that letting her reputation fall anywhere below that wouldn't be good for her continued health.
Turning someone so set on being a hero would take at least a week of using her power daily to build an accurate dossier on them, and even with that it would be hit or miss as to whether or not it would end up working at all. She couldn't give it anything less than her best though, she had to be useful, her boss tried his best to keep as much information about himself from her as possible, but one of the things she consistently picked up on with every phone call or meeting was that he would have zero problems doing terrible things to her if she ever proved less than useful, so she pressed on, hoping that she could get at least one workable piece of information from the scattered police reports and a blurry cell phone video.
She was annoyed with Rachael for ruining the Spitfire recruitment. She had a terrible migraine for days before she could come up with a perfect recruitment pitch, and Rachael ruins it in a few minutes just for some extra cash, when Lisa knew for a fact that most of what she earned she donated away anyway. A certain song on the radio they were passing by on the street from several weeks ago annoyed Bitch. Lisa vindictively set it to her ringtone with a grin on her face, her power was great for petty revenge. She knew she was just procrastinating though so she was about to get back to her report before she got an text message on her work cellphone from an unknown number. This was troubling because only coil knew this number. It just read "You're welcome ;p"
She turned her power on and
Coil wouldn't give out this number, me carrying around a phone just for his calls is another one of his power games
Sender knows about my "employment"
Sender isn't Coil's ally
Sender has access to Coil's files
Files aren't networked
Sender is in Coil's base
She hears a sonic boom rattle the windows so hard they almost shattered. Her headache is rising slowly, indicating she's reaching the limit of using her power for the day. Normally she would stop at this point, but this was too important to wait for, grimacing she turns it on again.
Sound signature indicates sound indicates rapidly vaporizing brick and metal impacting energy barrier
At 346 meters/second with standard sound dispersal rates and the direction of the sound the explosion originated within 100 feet of coils base
Coil's base is gone
Coil is dead
I'm free
"What the hell was that?" shouted Regent from the living room.
Lazy bastard won't even get up off his ass to ask me a question that he knows would give me a headache to answer. Heh, I'll get him back.
"That was our boss's base being melted with him still in it" I shout back
"Wait, what? …Seriously?" He called back, somehow managing to sound bored while shouting.
A portal opened in the middle of our living room and a mousy looking girl with a feathery cape wrapped around herself stepped through, I immediately turned my power on and saw
Background light from window in behind portal .043% lighter than outside, originating from different part of world? Angular curvature of earth would require at least a 60 mile teleport to generate effect. Mover 4 minimum
Portal origination is PRT cells.
Portal origination point identical to Brockton Bay PRT cells
Portal origination point is Brockton Bay PRT cells
Alternate universe? No.
Portal is from 5 minutes in the future, 15 miles away
Mover 8 minimum
Power used just to impress me
I relax, if she wants or needs to impress us then whatever she's here for can't be too bad. I school my face into a blank expression
"No, not really, he was technically dead and vaporized from severe kinetic trauma before the heat really got him to him." The mystery girl calls out nonchalantly.
The rest of the team panic and sprint into the room, Grue floods it with darkness while Bitch whistles at her dogs and starts to use her power. I'm about to tell them to cut it out before my power turns itself off, the sudden loss making me fall back onto my chair, stunned for a moment. The smoke is gone and Bitch's dogs are back to normal and being held back a few feet from the girl.
"Relax", I tell them "She's not here to fight"
"Why's she breaking into our base then?" Rachael growled.
"A great question" The girl answered "And it deserves an equally great answer, to make a long story short about 20 seconds ago I killed Coil and about 20 seconds from now an alternate me who still doesn't know I came back to the past will beat up and mug Armsmaster before killing the Simurgh a few minutes from then to intimidate the PRT. Also, to wear as a cape since she makes a bitching cape. I also told all the villains to leave Brockton Bay or I'll kill them, which doesn't include you guys, by the way, but honestly I don't think that last part will happen since I'm also fairly lazy. I then broke into the PRT to settle some personal stuff. Also, Coil is your boss and a total Psychopath who regularly tortures you and makes you forget about it with his powers to make sure you're not thinking of betraying him. He kidnapped and forced Tattletale to work for him. I took offense since she's my favorite supervillain so I killed the shit out of him. I realize he made promises to the rest of you so I'm going to do my best to make it up to you, and since my best is amazing that will take about 5 minutes at the most. Any questions?"
Grue raises his hand.
"Yeah you, with the motorcycle helmet" She said, pointing at him.
"…Are you fucking high?" Grue asked with an incredulous voice.
I couldn't help it, I laughed. It started with a snort, then a giggle, then I stopped trying to hold it back and I just laughed, on and on and on, barely stopping to breathe.
Everyone was giving me weird looks except for the cape who broke in, who was just sitting there with a strangely familiar smug expression, looking like she just did something particularly impressive and was waiting for everyone to acknowledge her genius.
