Interlude 1.B
Coil
Coil leaned back in his chair and sighed. Every night for the past week, he had tried to have the Undersiders pull off some sort of heist. Increasing their notoriety was a large point in his plans, as they would become an effective tool to incite fear in a target.
But he had a problem. Each night, he would split timelines. In one timeline, he would have the Undersiders go out to perform whatever robbery he had designated, and in the other, they would remain at their base, safe and sound.
He had given them a few days of rest after they robbed the Pharmacy, and then he had tried to send them out. They hadn't been more than a few minutes on the scene before someone wearing iron armor had shown up and began attacking them furiously. They had managed to defeat him, but he had managed to kill two of Bitch's dogs first, so Bitch had killed him in retaliation.
While he wanted the Undersiders to gain some notoriety, he didn't want to add any more murder charges to them. In addition, Bitch's dogs had made up a large part of their firepower, so losing them meant a weakened group, in addition to Bitch going mad with grief. So, he would collapse the timeline into the the one where they had never gone out at all.
This had, in a similar fashion, occured night after night, and he was getting pretty annoyed. He couldn't find very much information on this "Terrarian," other than the sparse few details in the PRT report. Apparently, he could create armor and weapons on the fly from base materials around him, he had a decent mover rating for his fast pace and ability to jump over a dozen feet into the air, enhanced strength combined with regeneration, and a plethora of weapons that he pulled out of a pocket dimension. He had tried, in various attempts, to get the Undersiders to take him down without killing him, but apparently the armored parahuman's Brute rating was a little exaggerated, as he would continue fighting right up to the point of death. Mostly fine after one hit, but then the next simply killed him.
So, this time, he would try something new. He had noted that early on in his cape career, Terrarian had had a scuffle with some Empire capes, and he imagined that they might want a rematch. Except… He still didn't know what ethnicity that Terrarian was. They might attempt to conscript or recruit him, and he didn't want the Empire to get another cape, especially one with such a diverse skill set.
He should try to ensure that a fight would occur. Considering his options, he paged through reports from his spies in the various groups of Brockton Bay. Noting that the Empire had apparently rescheduled a raid on some of Lung's shipments from a week and a half prior for some reason, he pondered a moment, before deciding.
He would have one of his members in the ABB "discover" that the Empire was going to attack, and inform Lung. Then he would have the Undersiders lure Terrarian to the location, entangling him in the battle, before retreating. At the very least, he would be able to observe more of Terrarian's abilities. If he was incredibly fortunate, then the young cape just might get himself killed by one of the two gangs. Nodding to himself, Coil enacted his plan.
OoOoO
Tattletale
Tattletale wasn't too sure about this plan. Coil had assured her that he had fail-safes in play in the event of the worst coming to pass, but she was still leery of it. Apparently, they had to attract the attention of some new hero calling himself "Terrarian". Tattletale hadn't been able to get too much information about him, other than a basic rundown of his powers, and a few blurry pictures. It was enough for her power to inform her that he made all his own gear, though the exact means eluded her. For now, though, she had to go inform the rest of the crew.
She walked into the main room of their base. They had taken to lounging around in there for the majority of the past week, as Coil would call to have them gather up, but then not give them a job to do. It was something he had done occasionally in the past, but he had done it every day this week, which was odd. Tattletale's power wasn't too forthcoming on the reason, either. It told her that he was going to have them do a job, and that they stayed in the room as a safety precaution somehow.
She spoke up. "Alright, guys, Coil's got a job for us." She waited for the inevitable outburst.
Regent, currently playing some game on a console, looked up and spoke loudly. "Frickin' finally! We've been sitting around for a week!" She agreed, in her head, but still mentally frowned at the conflicting information that her power had been giving her regarding Coil's plans. Perhaps he had been testing some sort of anti-thinker device? If so, it had been working somewhat. She had no idea what he wanted.
Grue merely smiled. "That's good, what's the job?" As the nominal team leader, Grue took his job seriously, and wanted to help the others stay safe. A good sentiment, even if Tattletale's cynicism prevented her from truly believing that he would be able to make it through the next five years without getting broken down repeatedly until not even he believed in the possibility of safety.
"There's a new cape around Brockton Bay, calls himself Terrarian. He's often seen dashing around rooftops at speeds that would make Olympic Sprinters jealous, while wearing full iron plate mail. Notable feats include fighting off Cricket after she chopped off his arm, and taking down Squealer and Skidmark, who have yet to be broken out of jail by Mush. Who knows, they might actually get sent to a prison that can hold them this time." She doubted it.
Regent held a hand up. "Wait, this guy's got a whole medieval knight theme going on? What kind of Brute is he?" That was a surprisingly competent question to get out of Alec, which mildly disoriented her.
"Ratings have him at Brute 3, mostly because of his regeneration. He regrew the arm that Cricket chopped off pretty fast, and he tends to ignore bullets, though whether that's because his armor is that strong, or he regenerates fast enough not to care, we don't know. He's really fast, too, which is the real problem in a fight. His main combat method, though, revolves around the fact that he can materialize various weapons he stores somewhere, kinda like Miss Militia." She expounded.
Grue frowned. "Guy sounds dangerous to fight."
Tattletale gave a cheshire grin at that. "Which is why that isn't our job. We just have to lure him to a scuffle between the Empire and ABB, who will be causing enough property damage that our aspiring hero will have little choice but to give up a chase on non-destructive small-timers like us, and get the Protectorate to help him interfere with the gangs." She had to admit, that part of the plan was… fairly solid. Assuming, of course, that Bitch's dogs were fast enough to keep ahead of Terrarian. With Regent helping with tripping him up occasionally, and Grue interfering with his power, though, they should be able to manage.
She just wished she knew what was so special about this guy that Coil wanted him in the gang fight anyways.
OoOoO
Author Note: Sorry about this chapter being so tiny. I'm seriously ashamed of this, but interludes just always kick my butt. I wanted to add a third one here, from Taylor's POV, but I spent hours and hours agonizing over it and it just wouldn't work, so in the end, I just posted what I had so I could go back to Greg.
I'm sorry for the combination of tardiness and brevity. But sometimes, interludes just need to happen.
