Thomas Calvert slowly woke up, to find himself in a cell. It was one of the cells of his own base, he realized. How the hell did that happen? He had been sleeping at his home in one timeline, and was standing at his base in the other, and he didn't see anything happening at his base. so how was he being held prisoner at his own base?

The door to the cell was opened, and in came Tattletale. She had that damn smug smile on her face, and was looking like the cat that had the canary. Oh how he had tortured that smile off her face in so many discarded timelines... Anyway, she was about to speak.

"How are you feeling, Coil? Or should I say, Thomas Calvert? you don't know the pains that I had to go through to get you, and we just found your real name last night! Fucking hell! No wonder that you knew what the hell was happening in the PRT!"

He split the timeline, But found himself alone in both timelines. He frowned, It wasn't supposed to happen. He ended the split and Tattletale was revealed, standing just there, another smug smile on her face. It was infuriating. He stayed silent, Wouldn't do to give her more ammo.

"Well, Mr. Calvert, it's time that I extracted my payment from you." She produced a laptop, opened it and started typing. "Let's see, what's the password for your main legitimate account? Huh. Good one. Wow! That's a lot of money! And the Fortress Construction too? That's good. Hmmm, you sold the company to a Lisa Wilbourn at cost, because you wanted to retire. PRT troopers get old fast, you see. And the Numberman's account, well he's gonna be understanding..." Throughout her speaking, Thomas Calvert was only furiously thinking one thing. How had they bypassed his power? The split timelines should have shown him the attack on his base, or bases, and he should have woken up from the sound of them in his house. Why hadn't he? He needed to find out, maybe Those People would be amenable to saving him from this mess with the information.

"I see that you've been thinking about your predicament, and how you got in it. It all returns to your kidnapping of Dinah Alcott. If you hadn't done that, you would have seen the attack at your base, and the attack at your home. So we had to become creative, we had to find a way to block precogs. If you remember, Dinah said that you would be attacked in a week, and then the next day, she said that the numbers were 5 percent. we found a way to blind precogs. and your power? It has nothing to do with the timeline. It's a precognition power, predicting what would happen in the timelines, predicts which one you choose, and then autopilots your body through the chosen one. You experience it as separate timelines." Tattletale said.

Well, damn. Still, it's new information. He could work with that.

"I have powerful backers, you know? They won't let you just go on, scot-free, they will take care of you themselves." There. Let her go on from that. Soon he may be able to bring out that woman in the suit. It would be a last shot to these assholes, a final fuck-you, so to speak. If she learned of the Case-53 deal and no doubt told the others, they would come for them.

His Tattletale looked at him with suspicion, and left the room.

Lisa went to the others, and said, "We may have a situation. He said he has backers, and I'm inclined to believe that. He seems to believe the backers won't come to his help, but if we get some information from what he lets slip, they may come to clean us up."

"Do you have any contraptions to deal with this?" Jason asked, to the scowling of Leo.

"No, we would have to be more specific." Lisa said. "Let's ask Simurgh if she has any ideas."

They seemed to think about it, and then decide it was better than nothing. Why have more trouble than they needed.

"He said so, didn't he?" Simurgh said. They had told her what had happened, and she was looking a little irritated. "I know what he's talking about. There's this group called the Cauldron, they have been a nuisance from the start of the recent cycle. When the other entity crash-landed (let's call it the Thinker), it was disoriented. While it was vulnerable, one of its shards was given to a young girl, who then tried to use the power to kill it. It managed to restrict the shard to not work on other entities, but the shard had already given a way to the girl to kill it. Let's call that shard Path To Victory. You see how that goes? It's a little like Coil's shard, as in it sets a path to a certain desired outcome, and then forces the body on autopilot to achieve that outcome. The body doesn't always has the capacity to perform the path, so there's that. Anyway, Cauldron. They use the body of the dead entity and take parts of it to give people powers. They sell it to others, often taking favors as payment too. They have made a shadow organization to get control of the government, and then help the human race survive. They have done many morally unspeakable things in the name of that goal. Not much worse than the gods did in the ancient times, or the more recent ones, but still. Now Coil was just looking to make more conflict in his last breaths, so don't worry yourselves too much about it. Now that you have the precog-blind-inator," There was a groan from Lisa, "you can be a blind spot to them. They are very reliant on thinkers, and not much of normal analyzers, so they won't be able to make much leeway against you."

"Eh, not much we can do now anyway. We can try to convince the gods to put some ironic curses on them when this whole mess is over." Percy said. The demigods agreed, being generally more pragmatic, but Lisa and Taylor were looking appalled at the thought. They didn't like what they were saying.

"What!? we were hardwired to be belligerent and have mild sociopathic tendencies. I have killed when I was eight, some demigods start sooner. Haven't you read the Greek myths?" Reyna told them. They were clearly unhappy, but they could understand.

They both looked at each other, and thought that if it was a good idea to continue the path forward with this group. They basically admitted to be sociopaths, but it seemed they weren't really menaces to the society. They would stay, and see where it will take them.

A few days later, Leo had made his artillery platform, and it was hidden in the warehouse. When the need arose, the roof would open and it would rise, with a range that encompassed the whole city, and then some, and pinpoint accuracy. It would be using HE ammo, AP ammo, some new adhesive ammo, gas cannisters with a tranquilizer agent, and some lead weight ammo for special targets where they didn't want too much damage to the surroundings. Those had an enchantment to hit the target in a 30 degree cone from the firing vector. so even if the target moved, the possibility of collateral damage was pretty low.

The rest had worked to familiarize themselves with various firearms, Percy's curse with archery thankfully absent. Each had a pistol keyed to them, and some of the boys had taken assault rifles as well. Frank had taken to sniping really well, and you couldn't see him separate from his HK 417.

Taylor had learned how to listen through her bugs, and had learned how to summon her scarabs. It was easier to summon them in the morning, and one day she accidentally turned into a swarm of scarabs in the middle of training.

She had communicated with Queen Administrator, and it was amenable to leave the primary node, and join them for the data that it would provide them. They had learned from this that their ultimate goal was to find a way to survive the heat death of the universe, and do whatever they wanted without fear of running out of resources. They didn't know how to pop it's bubble, that everything had to die, and it was highly likely that it wouldn't survive the cycle, so they let it be. It took a lot of persuasion, but it seemed that Queen Administrator would be amenable to give Taylor the power to use the other shard bearers' powers that are at a certain radius of her for herself, but it would need a lot of data as a price. So Taylor started heavy experiments with her powers, and it would take about two years before she would be given that.

Lisa had finished looting Coil's finances, and was now a very rich girl. She had the mercs on her payment, and they were used to take care of the territory that used to belong to Coil. She had an ear to the ground ro watch around the city, so they didn't turn the whole thing into another Boston Games. It seemed that Accord would be trying to come to town, and they had to deal with that mess. They had to watch for the fucking Butcher, whatever number the current one had, and maybe they could convince Thanatos to take his soul when they killed it. But again, since the Custodes aren't Parahumans, it would be easier to take care of.

It was the 5th of June when they heard the scream, accompanying the shattering of glass all around the neighborhood. They all were geared up in six seconds, and were riding the chariots throughout the city to see what had happened. The whole city was out in the streets, most of them full of wounds because of the shattered glass, many had died in the initial attack. Lisa and Taylor were grim faced, having an idea of what had happened. It seemed that it wasn't an isolated incident. They turned the comms to all channels.

"It seems that the Slaughterhouse Nine are in town."

They went to the PRT headquarters to see what the hell was the next step to deal with these murderous scum. They reached it, only to see they weren't the frist ones there. Not even the second. The Empire and the New Wave had beaten them to the punch. it seemed that some of them had been nominated to become the next members of the Slaughterhouse nine, as one of the bastards had been killed.

Hookwolf had been nominated from the Empire, and Panacea from the New Wave. Surprisingly, Armsmaster had been named too. There had been other nominatees, but they weren't present at the time.

The heroes and villains assembled stiffened at their arrival, as their previous engagements had not left a good impression. They had decimated the Empire, and the heroes were wary because of Bakuda.

Pleasantries were exchanged, albeit grudgingly, and the discussion began. Protectorate and PRT information on the nine was shared, the bounties were announced, and the kill on sight was encouraged.

There was a flash of light, and the Parahumans were faced with the sight of Simurgh in all her divine glory, her six grey wings spread wide. The Custodes all bowed, to the baffled looks of the rest of the gathered.

"What do we have here, boys?" She said, a devious smirk on her lips. It made the hairs on the necks of everyone stand on end. It never bode well for a goddess to have that kind of smile, as it would only mean trouble to the poor bastards that had her attention. The other Parahumans obviously didn't know that, but having a former Endbringer give that smile had the same effect.

"The Slaughterhouse Nine are in town, and we were about to talk strategy." Percy said. He was worried as well, but he had faced angry and murderous immortals enough to not let it faze him. Most of them were the "friendly" gods and goddesses that he had somehow insulted with his uncanny personality. Him being a son of the Sea, it was against his nature to be subservient to anyone, as the sea didn't want to be contained. Still, it was a good experience for times like this.

"Huh. Didn't think they would be brazen enough to come here. Usually they would go to places that are weak, and they can indulge in their urges. If you had been hit by Leviathan, it would be understanding, but now? When you're at full power?" She shrugged, and looked around.

"Can you tell us anything about them? Or does it count as interference?" Annabeth asked, now that the ice was broken.

"No, I can give you some basic info, and if you need anything more, you know who to ask." The smirk was pointed at Tattletale this time, and she groaned.

"At least give them some proper names, you monster! they're a crime against naming!"

"Checks and balances, my dear. There has to be a downside to what you make." The smirk grew smug, and those who had seen Tattletale before today, could remember it on her face.

"I hate it that you're right. And stop making people think that I'm your daughter!"

"Hehehehe... Okay, I'll try to do it less. Anyway! Slaughterhouse Nine. Jack slash has been the leader since he killed king, and he has been doing it by knowing how to read Parahumans. His power helps him to learn what makes each Parahuman tick, when they would attack, when it's a feint, and he uses it to stay ahead of his opponents. You can dispatch him by using someone who isn't a Parahuman with a sniper rifle, or sending one of the Custodes here after him." There were shocked looks from the Parahumans, and dirty looks from the demigods after hearing this.

"We don't really advertise what we are to the public, Simurgh! Didn't we tell you this literally after you came to the base?"

"Don't worry about it. They know not to make a mention of it anywhere else. Or they'll know when they decide to do it." It made the Parahumans suitably cowed, as the sentence had the promise of humiliating and uncertain death left unsaid. A few seconds later, and Miss Militia slipped from the table she was leaning on, and accidentally shot Armsmaster in the groin with the .50 cal pistol that her power materialized. Fortunately for Armsmaster, because of his power armor he was saved, unfortunately, a .50 cal packs quite a punch. So he was left grabbing his groin and kneeling on the ground. It made them realize that the threat was real, and they better not escalate it.

"Next we have the Siberian, and as she's a projection, her controller. You'll notice a beat up van lurking around whenever she's near, that's where the projector is located. you have to be fast, and decisive, and end him quickly. It's a good use for the artillery platform that you have made Leo."

"Stop giving away all our secrets!" Leo screamed, while the gathered Parahumans were gobsmacked. They had made an artillery platform?

Miss Militia rounded on them and said, "Did you make an artillery platform in my damn city????!? Give me one good reason why I shouldn't paint your brain all over the wall."

"It was for situations like this damn one that we have on our hands. Believe it or not we made it around the time that we wanted to move against Coil." Reyna said.

"What do you mean moving against Coil?" Aegis asked.

"I don't recall saying anything about Coil." Reyna answered with an expressionless face.

"Anyway, the rest of that bunch can be overcome with sufficient firepower, and anything that survives would be taken care of."

On that note, the meeting was concluded and the Empire and the Custodes left.

"Shit keeps getting better and better." Assault said, and nobody was inclined to say anything else.