The Costa-Brown? Your peace of mind.
Rebecca read the report with steadily rising eyebrows, and equally sinking heart. By the time she finished she felt cold.
'Christ,' she thought numbly to herself.
Turning away from the screen she peered out the window of her LA office, to look out over the city and allow her mind to settle.
It didn't help all that much.
Even with her experiences over the time since she'd acquired her powers what she'd read was exceptional. Exceptionally bad or exceptionally good she didn't yet know, although it was distinctly possible it could be both simultaneously, of course. But one way or the other, the entire thing stretched credulity to, or even past, the breaking point. If it wasn't for the huge amount of positive proof that had come to light in the last two or three months, she'd think it was the work of one of the less believable fanfic writers that infested parts of PHO.
Some of those people were weird.
But occasionally useful, it had to be said. The tendency of a certain subset of that sort to come up with methods to weaponize damn near anything had led to, as crazy as it appeared on first glance, some interesting breakthroughs in power-related technology. Getting good ideas from an internet forum sounded insane on the face of it, but one couldn't argue too much with the reality of it.
Although the PRT was never going to admit publicly to having a PHO research division as long as she was in charge. It was too embarrassing.
Even the nutcases in question would probably look askance at some of the things implied or flat out stated in this report. She herself was having trouble believing it, despite the evidence.
One thing was very clear, though. It was important to stay well out of Brockton Bay, especially as they had no idea yet why David had reacted like he had to Kaiju. Until that was settled, they couldn't risk the operations of Cauldron. It was too important to the future of Humanity. If it had one…
She wondered, again, if there was any way that the Family could help their goals. Yet again the big problem was that they simply didn't know enough about the alien lizards. Where they ultimately came from, where they'd been all this time, why they'd picked now as a suitable moment to pop up, why the hell they had decided that performing drive-by acts of civil engineering was a good use of their time, and for that matter, how on earth the Hebert family had ended up being their point of contact.
That last one was something that would bother her for a long time. It was so… random.
But everything the Thinkers could come up with, which was very little since the Family seemed to utterly break Thinker abilities for anything directly concerning them or closely connected to them, suggested that interfering with the Heberts, the DWU, and recently New Wave or the city administration, was something that would end spectacularly badly. Contessa herself seemed extremely unwilling to even consider the matter these days, having had a number of very strange reactions when Rebecca had pushed her on the matter. Doctor Mother was all for finding out more, of course, as that was pretty much her nature, but could be distracted easily enough whenever the subject came up.
Poor David was paying the price, but what could you do? And with any luck the woman would eventually work out what was going on.
Rebecca smirked a little at the memory of the last meeting, where the poor bastard had sat down, gone pale, stood very carefully, then spent the rest of the time leaning casually on the table with a look in his eyes of a man who had gone through something he'd prefer not to think about. Even Paul had looked amused although he hid it well.
Turning back to her screen she scanned the report once more, concentrating on various key parts and mulling over the implications and likely ramifications that followed. One thing was abundantly clear, that being that all their projections for Brockton Bay were now completely useless. Everything had changed very abruptly and the longer the Family was around, the less the models applied. Already none of the key aspects were valid and she suspected that given a year or two the entire city would be affected to one extent or another by the odd Thinker-blocking issue.
In the last three months, all three main gangs that between them accounted for a good ninety percent of the civil and criminal issues in the city were out of action for various reasons. The Merchants no longer existed for all practical purposes, with only Skidmark and Mush on the loose accompanied by at best twenty non-powered members. They were little threat and would probably meet a bad end in the near future without further action on the part of the authorities, based on the enormous rewards offered by a number of sources.
The Empire Eighty Eight, while essentially intact, had withdrawn almost entirely. Kaiser, according to Paul, had issued orders that no one was to do anything to upset the reptiles, which had more or less stopped normal operations on the spot. And the Azn Bad Boys had also stopped all visible activity for apparently similar reasons on the part of Lung. With the loss of Oni Lee, that gang had only one Parahuman left, although he was certainly one of the most dangerous ones on the planet.
And, for some reason, appeared to be on speaking terms with Saurial…
That was both intriguing and worrying, she mused. 'Personal Honor' as he'd told Paul was an odd way to put it and knowing the man in question could mean almost anything.
She shrugged. It would probably come out sooner or later. At least like this he seemed content to sit and drink beer, which was probably a better option than almost any alternative.
One of the things she was still puzzled by was the way that both the Undersiders, and now Über and Leet, appeared to have been absorbed into the DWU. She could almost understand the former, since the minor villains had only just started their careers and were probably salvageable and most likely had some talents other than their powers the union organization might find useful. The DWU had a reputation, she'd discovered through her own research, of taking people from a whole range of somewhat peculiar backgrounds and managing to turn them into useful members of society in one manner or another.
But Über and Leet? Sure, the former was supposed to be very competent at a whole range of odd skills, his power letting him learn things much faster than normal. And the Tinker member of the pair seemed to be able to come up with almost anything you could imagine. Once. The results were often dangerously unreliable too. But… the pair of them were idiots. All that potential and they used it making videos based on bizarre computer game based crimes. Their reputation had suffered as a result.
That said, they were oddly effective at slipping through the fingers of the PRT and any other heroes who tried to apprehend them. Not to mention that their crimes were generally low level enough to avoid attention from someone that might take them seriously. Whether from luck or judgment she wasn't sure, but one way or another they skirted the line between 'nuisance' and 'threat' with considerable acuity.
Even so, she still couldn't quite see why the DWU would be interested in them, although Paul was of the opinion that their reputation was somewhat ill-deserved. He'd also said that this took them out of the villainy business so from his point of view it was something that should be kept out of. He'd added, with a definite smirk, that the pair appeared to be looked upon with considerable interest by the Family, which was another reason to avoid any unpleasantness.
She could see his point.
Additionally they hadn't heard anything from or about Coil for some while as well, since the last time the man had tried to get them to help him. Making the decision to leave him to his fate was easy, since he seemed to have attracted the attention of the lizards in a big way, and they didn't want the Family getting curious about them too once they'd finished with the man. As far as she could tell he'd managed to end up in the position that every ally he might have tried would tell him the same thing. Quite possibly for the same reason.
The report that Emily had filed showed that the man and his entire operation had been wound up in one day of hard work with Family help, but glossed over a number of things that at some point she needed to investigate.
The end result of whatever had happened to him was still somewhat unclear. The day before things went odd the Thinker-blocking effect had taken him and his entire operation out of the ability of any of their precogs or clairvoyants to track in a meaningful manner. She assumed that meant that the Family had become directly involved at that point, somehow. That was about all the data the Thinkers could gather from a considerable amount of work, which in many cases had managed to make the Parahuman in question flatly refuse to do the same thing again if the lizards were connected in any way.
One of them had almost had a stroke in the process of trying, so she couldn't really blame them for their attitude, although it was highly annoying. Still, there was no point in pushing too hard at the moment, since all it was likely to do was lose them even more support at an awkward moment.
No. Brockton Bay was somewhere it was safer to monitor from a distance. Allowing things to play out was probably the best approach, at least for now. If nothing else it produced some interesting data, the study of which was quite useful. Some might even help their long range plans. Emily Piggot was very competent, and remarkably enough appeared to have ended up in a position of mutual respect with the Family, which at least meant that they didn't need to risk assigning anyone else to the post. Most of the viable alternatives would probably cause… issues.
She didn't want to consider how those issues would play out, based on this report. It was unlikely to be good.
Shaking her head, she closed the document and turned to the addendum that Emily had sent to her alone. Opening the attached sub-report, she read it with steadily increasing shock...
PRT Internal Document EP/THRPT/1022-03-00002988/2011-03-11
CLASSIFICATION:
Top Secret
DISTRIBUTION:
Security level 9 or above, Chief Director Eyes Only
DRAFTED:
Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE, Brockton Bay
CHECKED:
Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE, Brockton Bay
ADDITIONAL:
Legend, Protectorate Leader, New York
Armsmaster, Protectorate ENE, Brockton Bay
Dragon, Guild Member, Protectorate Associate, Vancouver
REFERENCES:
EP/THRPT/1022-03-00002987/2011-03-11
DATE:
03/11/2011
TIME:
19:04:22
REVISION:
01.A.8
INTERNAL THREAT ASSESSMENT REPORT NOTES
SUBJECT: The Family and known Allies/Associates
Update Addendum March 11th, 2011
Preface
Chief Director,
I am writing this addendum to be read in conjunction with the currently updated Family Threat Report as submitted earlier today [DocRef EP/THRPT/1022-03-00002987/2011-03-11] as the information contained is deemed too sensitive for the standard reporting mechanism.
While this is not the conventional approach, I feel that it is required in this exceptional case. The Family presents us with a totally out of context problem that would appear to be most likely permanent, with all the ramifications that implies. In the long term I am hopeful that we can adapt to their presence, and indeed the city of Brockton Bay has managed to do exactly that with a somewhat unusual degree of alacrity. I am also certain that if all the information and deductions that have been gathered were released to the public at this point in time the outcome would be less than desirable. Even allowing dissemination of such data inside the PRT itself could be problematic. I defer to your judgment in the final disbursement of this report, but I strongly urge you to consider it very carefully indeed before you decide.
Briefly, it is the opinion of every member of both the Protectorate ENE and the PRT ENE with knowledge of this subject that to engage in any action that would cause the Family to consider either organization to be an existential threat to them, the Brockton Bay Dockworkers Union, or any allies of either, would be disastrous to a level that is almost impossible to appropriately categorize.
To put it less formally, The Family are all in a class of potential threat that far eclipses any known S-class problem, based on abilities and knowledge we know they have. Taking into account abilities we have reasonable cause to assume they have, or can learn, that potential threat is second only to the Endbringers themselves.
If Dragon and Armsmaster are correct in their speculations about abilities and knowledge that The Family might have, they could quite likely be more dangerous than even the Endbringers.
I hasten to add to this my own thoughts that while they have a potential for danger that makes me pale every time I consider it, I also do not think that they would become such a threat unless we make them so. Legend agrees, as do Dragon, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and a number of other senior agents. Every encounter we have had with any member of The Family has shown that they are calm to a level that is almost unbelievable, virtually impossible to provoke, rational, easy to communicate with, and respectful of our authority and that of the civilian government.
I do not want to discover what would happen if somehow this relationship broke down. Neither does anyone else.
It is suspected that there is, in essence, no feasible manner in which to win in such a scenario. We might be able to deal with their human allies, depending on what technology they have provided, but no one would like to guarantee it. We are also completely sure that if such an action did take place, all it would do is make the Family that much angrier and cause them to take the metaphorical gloves off. The results of that do not bear considering.
Once again, I do not think that such a nightmare scenario would ever happen without extreme and deliberate provocation far past the point of sanity. But it is my job to consider the possible results, and pass on my conclusions and suggestions. I very much hope that you will in turn consider the ramifications and take appropriate action to prevent any such thing occurring.
It is in all our best interests to allow The Family to gradually integrate with the city and our own civilization. The end result will, undoubtedly, be somewhat unusual, but at the same time the early indications are that it is likely to be beneficial for everyone, except the criminal element. Most of which appears intelligent enough to have come to the same conclusion based on the available evidence.
Admittedly there are aspects of that world that will need to have the lesson put to them in more forceful terms but I have little doubt this will happen in due course, despite my own wishes. The sole encouraging thought in that case is that we have ample evidence that The Family will repair the damage caused during the teaching of this lesson.
Respectfully,
Emily Piggot,
Director,
PRT ENE, Brockton Bay
Rebecca finished reading the real Family threat report, which could basically be summed up in one word…
Family: Yes.
She was almost certain via her own powers that it had taken an enormous effort of will for Emily Piggot not to have put it in exactly those terms, added the comment "I told you so," and retired. But that woman was nothing if not both competent and disciplined and had resisted the temptation. She would no doubt do her duty to the bitter end. If only out of spite.
When she finished, she stared at the last page of the report, swallowed, and closed it with a twitch of a finger.
Then she got up and left the room, looking for something stronger than coffee while thinking a little hysterically that Director Piggot deserved another raise.
Quite a large one.