Chapter 2.c

Thursday, April 14th 2011

Plans rarely went so well in Coil's experience. There had been a minor hiccup here and an outright failure there over the past several weeks, but he'd finally done it: he had acquired his pet. Dinah Alcott was currently being attended to by Mr. Pitter, who was probably his most loyal hired hand if only due to his pastimes and how much information he had on the man that he could use to bury him if the time ever came.

Not that a bullet wouldn't be simpler, but where was the fun in that?

His safe timeline was still running, where he had called the Undersiders off of the robbery, giving them his base offer of five thousand dollars each for their troubles. The Butcher then hit the PRT building minutes later and caused the distraction for him by stealing back her minigun. Unfortunately, Dinah had escaped his clutches in that reality thanks to Vista.

He had honestly expected something terrible to happen when the girl's parents had been killed during her successful capture, like Butcher just stumbling upon the attempt like had happened the week prior. Her parents weren't supposed to be at Truman Intermediate when his men went to acquire her, nor were they expected to be outside to take her home. Earlier, he had forced her to overuse her power with false starts and such, so perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised she asked to be taken home. It hadn't done her any good in the end but he had to applaud her tenacity in his many failed attempts.

The death of two minor players in the city was an acceptable loss in his mind since he had no intention of ever releasing such a useful tool, and the knowledge that they were dead would be a potent reminder when she tried to rebel. He just wished his new pet was in a state to answer his questions. Even a single one would help matters greatly in choosing a reality to settle upon.

His Undersiders had hit Brockton Central exactly as planned, the Wards had responded in force, including Vista, preventing the Shaker from being there to help her little friend like she had in his failed attempt. Knowing they were friends however? He would use that knowledge to great effect.

Circus proved their worth by making contact with Uber and Leet and bringing the bungling pair onboard; they had served as an adequate distraction for Assault and Battery. With everything going off as planned, he just knew that something was coming.

What he had never expected was for the Butcher to interfere at the Bank itself. The girl had returned to the Teeth the same night as Emily's failed attempt at removing her from the board. An unfortunate outcome, but better in the long run, especially since this new Butcher was crippling his problems for him.

It would be a simple matter to prolong that conflict and weaken both sides further. Already he had arranged a leak of when the most recent captures would be transported away to make it back to Kaiser. Having moles in the right places was always worth the expense.

He just needed to ensure the Butcher remained pointed at the Empire for the time being, once his pet was ready, taking over the city would be child's play for him. A pre-cog and one of the strongest Thinkers on the coast, both at his full disposal along with his own power? He would be untouchable.

If only getting information on Butcher XV wasn't so damn difficult. He had extensive files on both Damascian and Quarrel, from before and after their taking of the title, but Weaver had been a new cape when she killed XIV, so there was no baseline to compare it to.

His moles and connections with the PRT weren't faring any better. Ever since the failed capture attempt Emily had locked down everything she could involving the girl; everything was off the books and 'need to know' until things settled. She cited op-sec as the reason for not informing him of the details of Butcher XV's recent activities which suggested there was a lot more to it than she was letting on.

Not that he could ask his informants with the Teeth anything, because he had none. His last attempt had ended in blood, with Big Robbie claiming the head of his attempted plant. In retrospect, using a man who was former Empire might not have been the most effective of tactics given the man's history. Robbie then made a point of informing the entire gang that Coil was without honor and that anyone seen associating with his 'gang' would become his next arena bitch. There was nothing more he could do as that man was practically a religious figure within the Teeth; none would defy him, not even the capes.

He had been extremely surprised when the Butcher of all people confronted the Wards, with a revised costume that fit her persona as the Butcher in full. He hadn't seen any missing persons reports about someone matching XV's description, which meant her civilian identity might still be intact. It wasn't much, but it led further credibility to the theory that some aspect of her power kept the madness at a more manageable level.

Coil had found himself caught completely off-guard by Butcher's public declaration that she was claiming the Undersiders as her own. That had barely sunk in when Butcher helped the Undersiders escape… by covering the Wards with pizza sauce.

The media, however, ran with it being blood and thought the PRT's excuse that it was pizza sauce to be a horrifically poor attempt at a cover up. Coil had allowed himself a belly laugh of amusement over that, as Emily could hardly have come out of that interaction looking worse. He had also noted that there were Wards who still had twitchy trigger fingers when it came to Butcher XV, a fact that he could very easily make use of later.

Then, less than thirty minutes after thoroughly embarrassing the PRT in public, Butcher provided even more ammunition for Coil's war against Emily. She had stolen her signature minigun back with relatively little effort (apart from some jammed foam sprayers), then teleported down into the Wards' common room for a victory photo. Between Panacea's raised middle finger and the red stains decorating the Wards' costumes, Coil had wished that he had access to that security footage.

Butcher XV was proving to be quite a PR disaster for Emily, working better than many of Coils' own planned schemes. He had managed to keep his name out of the push to have the girl relocated to the Birdcage, thanks to words judiciously whispered in the right ears, which positioned him perfectly once Butcher inevitably stepped too far out of line.

Now, though, Coil was annoyed. He glanced at his computer and frowned under his costume — his Tattletale was late for her check in. When Butcher claimed the Undersiders, she made no attempt to pursue them when they fled the bank, and so he had assumed they escaped safely. That may not have been the case after all. Had the Butcher managed to capture the Undersiders on top of securing her minigun?

As a precaution, he scheduled a message to be sent in twenty-four hours to some of his contacts within the E88 to arrange an unfortunate accident for one Aisha Laborn, in the event the Undersiders flipped on him and it escaped his mind later on.

Losing the Undersiders would be a blow, but one he could recover from if he could convince Accord to give up the Travelers. No, it was losing his Tattletale that would be painful; she may have been annoying, but her power was too useful to just discard. That was why he had brought the safe version of her in to help locate her missing counterpart, but the safe timeline Tattletale was currently failing miserably. She had rapidly developed a headache, an issue not helped by the constant attempts to follow branching thoughts with her power.

Having his pet fully leashed would have made this trivial, and no doubt the Tattletale across from him knew what his decision would be, but she held her tongue as the minutes ticked by. He was just about to call it a wash and collapse the reality with a spent Tattletale when his phone rang in the reality where he had secured his pet. Coil smiled under his mask, his Tattletale was finally contacting him.

"Tattletale, you're late."

"Boss! Oh thank god!" That was not a reaction he ever expected to hear from the girl. "Butcher grabbed us in civvies after we got away, she's got us back at the Teeth's lair and is conscripting us!"

"Calm down and explain."

"No time. One of their members tried to…" She choked up. "I stole his phone, I need to tell you what I can so you can drop this fucked up bullshit and make preparations! They're doing military drills, serious training shit. Regent's missing, Grue's in the pits and Bitch is apparently getting chummy with Animos."

"What about you?"

"Weaver has taken a… personal interest in me."

"I see." Now that he knew where she was, mounting an eventual retrieval would be easy enough with a few attempts and his pet.

"You want to keep this side of the coin… Christ… Can you at least give me a flip to try and escape?"

She wanted him to risk a split on her, was there much of a risk to it? In his soon to be discarded reality he brought his attention back towards his Tattletale.

"You heard from her?" Tattletale asked with a wince of pain. "She's not safe is—"

"The Butcher and the Teeth have captured the Undersiders. Regent is likely dead with Grue soon to join. They seem to have recruited Bitch."

He very pointedly didn't mention her own fate, forcing her to stretch her power further, watching intently as she suffered to glean those scraps of detail he hadn't stated.

"You're going to sacrifice them, because you got what you were after… Who you were after, and reclaiming me is all you care about."

"Brilliant as always my dear little pet," Coil said smugly as he stood and leveled a pistol at her. "I'll enjoy breaking you once again."

His gun fired once, striking Tattletale in the heart. He would have taken his time killing her, but he always loved watching the life fade from her eyes. With a sigh, he collapsed that reality.

"Very well, Tattletale." He split reality again. "You have your net, stay where you are."

In his new split: "You have your net, good luck with your escape."

In both he heard her say in stereo. "Thanks boss."

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, alarms started blaring in and around his underground base. It took Coil a moment to process that he was hearing the sounds in both realities; he pressed the intercom and screamed, "Status report!" When no reply came, he returned to his call. "Tattletale, what did you do!?"

"Returned the favor, nothing more." The line went dead as he realized that Tattletale had replied in exactly the same way in the reality he hadn't asked her. Had the entire conversation been a recording?

Wondering just what the hell was happening in his base — and putting Tattletale's treachery out of his mind, she would pay — Coil forced himself to calm down and examine the security feeds from around his lair.

Almost immediately, he wished he had not.

The Teeth were known up and down the east coast for their brutality and berserker madness. Coil had tested his forces against the group in several timelines when they first moved in, tweaking his contingency plans to ensure that the Teeth couldn't take him unaware. They were easy to distract, often on mind-altering substances, and the capes' tactics were entirely focused on backing up their crazed leader.

Now, Coil watched as heavily armed Teeth screamed into his base with something approaching coordination, following bugs as guides. As best he could tell, they had used breaching charges on the outer door, and his men were unable to return fire due to XV's bugs swarming them. The automatic defenses fared no better, and Coil thought he saw an arrow sticking out of one of the turrets.

A field of translucent razor spikes started to appear on the lower level just as the Teeth approached the main part of the base, and soon after the catwalks were overwhelmed with Spree clones. Where they couldn't just push or throw Coil's men to their pointy death, the clones tore the catwalks apart and sent everyone tumbling down.

Coil's blood ran cold when he realized that the Teeth were laughing while they killed. Trained mercenaries his men might be, they still broke when the Teeth used their fallen comrades as impromptu shields and their limbs as clubs. Some were even lobbing severed heads as projectiles.

All the while, Butcher used her bugs to direct the battle from afar, never appearing on the battlefield herself. Coil's men shot lasers into bug clones while Animos charged out from behind the swarm with a mouth full of mercenary; Hemorrhagia fell upon a group of snipers after being led around the back by bugs. Men screamed as their eyes were devoured and their friends were torn apart.

In the face of the sheer brutality of the Teeth's attack, Coil had briefly forgotten that he had two timelines with which to salvage this disaster.

In one, he attempted to place a call, only to find his cell phone lacked signal of any kind — even the wifi was dead. A signal jammer then. His landline proved to be no better, greeting him with silence when he picked up the handset. In the other reality, he frantically tried his radio, hearing only static and the occasional distorted scream.

While one instance started adjusting the radio, trying to find a workable frequency, the other abandoned the phones and sat down at the computer. Coil was unsurprised to find his internet access disabled, but he still was able to operate the base's internal control systems. That proved just as futile when all of the base's turrets were inoperable due to 'mechanical errors.'

An explosion on one monitor drew his attention — Butcher had arrived in the armory and was fighting the men that were there to resupply. The men barely had time to realize that the Butcher had arrived before they flew into a frenzy, many resorting to using their loaded guns as clubs instead. She disabled the whole group with laughable ease. Coil could only grit his teeth in frustration as yet another critical point was lost to the band of madmen.

Coil had to stop himself from throwing the radio in frustration. What good was his power if he was trapped in his office while his men died and his organization crumbled? He didn't want to abandon the base until —

A sudden, loud crack outside his office drew his attention, rattling his nerves and door both. Given that she had just vanished, it was obviously Butcher. Coil found some slight comfort in knowing that even Glory Girl couldn't just rip his door down, but like the rest of the base's defenses, tests against the rest of the Bay's sane denizens meant little in the face of the insanity he now faced.

His only solace was that the Tinkertech bug zappers in the vents around his office seemed to be doing their job. He'd bought Toybox's entire supply when he first learned of Weaver and commissioned as many units as they could make as a rush order. The few units they had on hand were barely enough to shield his office, but it was keeping him alive for the moment. Unfortunately, that just let Coil watch the security feeds.

The main part of the base was a complete loss — Vex had turned the whole room into a deathtrap to the point that the Teeth themselves pulled out. Unfortunately, his panicked men would still try to retreat there.

Coil muted that camera.

Once it was clear that they couldn't beat the Butcher with strategy, whoever was left of his command structure ordered what men they could contact to fall back to the command post. His mercenaries proved their worth, as they were quick to establish defensive lines behind solid cover — not that it would do much good against the Teeth capes.

That ended up being a mistake as well, as Butcher herself reentered the battle with an explosion of flame and fury and set about cutting down his men like some sort of goddess of battle. His mercenaries may as well have been cheap ragdolls in the face of Butcher's onslaught as she picked them all apart with insulting ease. Even the Tinkertech lasers failed to pierce the shields that one of her many powers granted. Thirty seconds later his men were all on the ground and XV vanished with a puff of smoke.

Stalling Butcher turned out to be pointless, and Coil learned another interesting tidbit — Butcher was more than capable of fighting while directing the battle elsewhere. He could see the symbols form on the walls or in the air, directing the Teeth to their next slaughter, or to wait until some other piece was in place, all while the Butcher lived up to her name. Coil started to truly worry there, because it meant that any effort to distract her would be a waste of what little time remained before he was out of men and options.

All the while, Butcher's bugs were clustering on the camera lenses of the Teeth's conquered rooms, slowly strangling Coil's ability to witness the battle. He was almost relieved when several of those went dark, because the Teeth were apparently not in the mood to take prisoners.

Coil felt a bit of relief when he spotted Trainwreck on one of his screens as he smashed a random Teeth psycho into the concrete. At least that asset was finally earning his worth. The rest of the Teeth gave the hulking Tinker some space, their guns proving ineffective against the armor. To his surprise they didn't waste much ammo trying anyway.

Then a muscular man stepped forward, the Teeth deferring to his instructions. He had more trophies adorning his 'costume' than any other person he had seen within the Teeth so far. In his hand was a massive meat cleaver, dripping with blood. He stepped forward, undaunted by the Cape before him.

Trainwreck took offense to that and attempted to repeat the previous showing, but Coil's stomach sank just as quickly as Trainwreck's arm hit the ground, no longer attached. The man didn't even slow down as he brought the cleaver around for another swing before the screaming cape could react. Coil could do nothing as he watched Trainwreck get carved up until the only thing left was the severed head of the Case 53 that was now being held aloft.

Coil was definitely going to have nightmares about Big Robbie and his Tinkertech meat cleaver for a long time. What good was spending so much to hire a Cape if they were just going to die like the common mercenary? He couldn't even contact Circus to recall them back to base to help in the defense.

Damn that treacherous Tattletale. When he found her again, he was going to make her wish that the Teeth hadn't gotten their claws into her.

Recognizing the situation for what it was, he knew what he needed to do. In one reality, he took a moment to arm the self destruct, then moved towards his emergency escape hatch while his other self kept an eye on the darkening security feeds. The hatch's motors strained against an obstruction before Coil heard a loud pop within the wall and smoke began to emanate from the wall panel.

In both timelines, he twitched. The combat in the base had finally reached the hallway outside of his door, and on his monitor he could see the last of his men die to a particularly enthusiastic Reaver. That monitor went dark, and on the last functioning camera, he saw Butcher XV approach the door to his office.

Coil had interacted with her multiple times, in various throwaway realities just to see how open to recruitment she might be. At the first meeting, she hit his body double with a pain blast then dragged him to the PRT. Every meeting he attempted after that went the same way, and any attack on her for capture failed spectacularly; but his efforts had helped plot Emily's own failed capture attempt. It was a pity Butcher hadn't killed Vista like he hoped. That would have made capturing his pet all the simpler…

As he continued to watch the video feed in one timeline, he triggered the final failsafe on his computer, wiping the drives and erasing everything pertaining to his financial empire. He could always reclaim everything for a fee from the Number Man. It galled Coil that his only option was to contact Cauldron for an extraction, but he certainly wasn't going to risk running towards the madmen storming his base.

It was then that he noticed a singular fly emerge from the vent above his office, one that was there in both realities, flying in an identical path shouldn't have been —

The fly exploded.

Coil was temporarily blinded and deafened by the blast of flame, falling out of his chair in surprise and ending up in an undignified heap on the ground in both timelines. Possible need for parahuman healing for his ears and the important fact that Butcher could teleport to her bugs were about the last things on Coil's mind as he pulled himself up and beheld an armored figure that had haunted his nightmares in one form or another for the past year.

That she was there in both realities posed a major problem, but afforded an equal opportunity all the same. Coil just needed to keep things going until an opportunity presented itself and he could make his escape. Rather than address him, or resort to violence, Butcher instead placed a single hand upon the door.

In the first timeline, he pulled himself to his feet quickly, only to freeze in horror when the metal began to shimmer and reform under Butcher's touch… transforming in exactly the same way in both timelines. The synchronicity of the action despite Coil's own different states suggested Thinker support, and Coil wished he had a third timeline to curse Tattletale's name for giving the Teeth a script for the attack. In retrospect, neither timeline had been vastly in his favor during the entire attack, not that he had retained any control over the situation. Coil was tempted to keep the reality with the self-destruct (only a few minutes away), just to spite the Teeth, but there was still a chance that he could salvage this mess.

However, before he could stand up in the second timeline, he was forced back to the ground by the worst pain he had ever experienced. Lightning and needles made of liquid fire coursed through his veins, sending him into a twitching, screaming mess, and dimly he wondered why things hadn't hurt this bad during his previous tests.

Then again, he had never pissed off the Butcher in both timelines.

Distantly, through his own screams of agony, he heard metal crash to the ground. Coil tried to lift his head to look, but he was in too much pain to even spasm. It was at this point that he realized that there was no salvaging this — Coil was at the mercy of the Teeth and their Butcher. Mercy did not exist in their vocabulary.

Coil was a spiteful man at heart, and if he was going to die, he would take all of them with him in a blaze of ignoble indignation. The Teeth would not lay claim to his kingdom.

Tattletale would not be allowed to look down upon him in defeat.

"This one," a familiar voice said, which meant his hearing wasn't as damaged as he thought. Also, the pain had ceased, a small mercy. Then something SCREAMED.

Like the popping of a soap bubble, he lost the reality where he had been counting down the minutes to the self-destruct. Coil pried his eyes open and saw a monstrous form sticking its head through the enlarged door: Animos, the one cape within the Bay that worried him more than the Butcher. It was a power interaction he had never wanted to test, and now he knew the results.

Somehow, Coil managed to keep himself from simply passing out in fear. He had survived Ellisburg; he could talk his way out of this situation… even if the thought of doing so without his powers nearly made his knees too weak to stand.

However, as soon as he managed to climb to his feet, Butcher reappeared in a flash of fire and pain and a claw wrapped around his throat. "Hello, Coil," Butcher XV growled.

The yellow, reflective lenses of her mask gave a clear reflection of his current state, which was quite thoroughly screwed. A chill crept up his spine as dozens of black widows emerged from the recesses of the Butcher's armor and moved up her arm and onto his costume; he regretted ensuring that his costume was lightweight and breathable.

"B-Butcher," Coil rasped. "What do —"

She squeezed, choking off the words in his constricted throat. There wasn't much hope for the situation if he couldn't speak, and his power was still out of commission. She hadn't killed him yet, which was his only boon; she wanted him alive for something, he just had to hope he could work around it before she had no more use for him.

Behind her, his Tattletale stepped into his office, with another cape following close behind. Vex, one of the few Teeth capes that bothered to maintain anything resembling a civilian identity. He'd tried applying pressure to her a few times, but the girl was a fanatic to her 'family' and refused to break. He had given up on her after two weeks of attempts, content that if it came to it, he could ruin her with a phone call. What concerned him most, was the unconscious girl currently being held in her arms.

His pet.

Tattletale seemed none too pleased by the state of the girl; no doubt she knew that her fate would have been similar if she ever crossed him, which made it all the more puzzling that he was still breathing. Was she already so subservient to the Butcher that she would resist taking revenge on him?

That was a problem for later, right now he had something far more pressing cutting off the circulation to his brain. Right, the Butcher had wanted to be a hero, what remained of her might take offense to his treatment of his pet.

"Dinah Alcott," Tattletale spoke clearly. "She's the Mayor's niece and this bastard used our little robbery as a distraction to liberate her from school."

"We found her hooked up to all kinds of fun drugs," Vex added. "Spree recognized some of it, and there was some really expensive Tinker stuff in there too. That girl would have been open to just about any suggestion he gave within the day, no matter how much it hurt her to do it just to get another hit."

He could see the insects covering the Butcher tremble even as the girl herself remained impossibly still. It was an unnerving sight.

"Death would be a mercy," Butcher XV said without inflection. "No, I'm not." It took Coil a moment to process that she wasn't speaking to anyone present. "Hmm, that could work. Thoughts?" A moment of silence. "It would be too much work, simple is better in this regard."

Coil was confused due to only hearing one of fifteen sides of the conversation, which was hardly conducive to understa—

His world became agony once again as the Butcher's pain projection engulfed his senses far harsher than it had before. It did not waver, it did not relent, and release did not come. The world itself fell away as the agony became his everything. It wasn't until he felt a creeping cold that he realized he had been moved elsewhere.

Blinking his eyes open, he saw Tattletale smiling grimly down at him. The creeping cold was spreading with each beat of his heart, sapping his strength to the point that he could barely track things with his eyes. Attached to his now bare arm was an IV, which he could see was connected to a familiar cocktail of designer drugs he had paid a small fortune for… all for making his pet more agreeable.

Moments later his eyes began to grow heavy as even his heart itself grew cold and seemed to slow from its jackhammer pace. It was ironic that he would suffer the fate he had intended for his pet.

How very much like his Tattletale.

It would be her undoing…

Someday.