Interlude: The Director; The Performer
Rebecca Costa-Brown hated meetings, which was why it was a relief that she had an excuse to skip the next one, using her body double to take her place as Chief Director of the PRT. It was going to be a tedious one too and she made a mental note to give her double a little bonus.
"Door to Cauldron." She commanded and walked into the secret facility armored as Alexandria, the unbreakable hero. As she stepped through into the meeting room she noted that Contessa was absent, but Legend, Eidolon, Doctor Mother and the Number Man were all present. "It's been confirmed." Alexandria stated confidently as she sat down at the table. "The majority of the Slaughterhouse Nine are dead. I made sure of it with my own eyes."
"It's already being celebrated as a holiday." Legend agreed. "But no one has stepped forward to claim their bounties?"
"Not a soul." Alexandria admitted with a scowl. "It's bad enough that we lost the potential to make use of the Siberian, but we don't even know who did it."
"Actually we do." An unfamiliar voice cut in. Alexandria was on her feet instantly, Eidolon's eyes flashed with power and Legend's hands began to shimmer with energy. A man wearing a button up shirt, vest, and tie stepped into the room, eyes dancing between the Triumvirate with amusement. A step behind him came Contessa. "Greetings." The newcomer's eyes flashed to Doctor Mother. "I see you didn't inform them of me?"
"I was going to do so today." Doctor Mother replied evenly. "You're early. Eidolon, Legend, Alexandria, allow me to introduce Mister Suit."
"Suit is fine." The man grinned wryly. "Forgive me for the interruption, it was perfect timing. Fortuna and I had another rematch scheduled and it ended early this time." His eyes narrowed at Contessa behind him. "Did you path that or something?"
"Coincidence." Contessa said, emotionless as usual, though Alexandria's enhanced thought process was able to catch a hint of humor in her eyes.
"Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?" Eidolon asked abruptly, folding his arms and glaring with suspicion.
"As Doctor Mother stated, I am Suit," was the wry reply. "I am here, because we share common cause against Scion."
Alexandria snapped her head between Doctor Mother and Contessa. "You brought someone else into the fold without telling us?" She asked harshly.
"No." Contessa reassured her. "Suit discovered us on his own. His Thinker abilities are easily on par with Kurt's," she nodded to the Number Man, "and perhaps even my own."
"Perhaps being the key word." Suit threw in his opinion. "But I was certainly the strongest Thinker from my own world. I am from a parallel Earth where we did not receive powers from Scion and his partner. Passengers as you might call them. Shards of a greater entity." He shook his head sadly. "The two of them destroyed my world before moving on to this one. But, by a stroke of good luck, we did manage to infect a piece of them with our power. That shard then connected with a human on Earth Bet, allowing her to call upon us and our power."
Alexandria felt a jolt of realization as the reports she'd read began to make sense. "Olympus. The new hero team in Brockton Bay."
Suit's eyes clouded briefly before a look of understanding flashed across his features. "Of course you wouldn't submit yourself to inefficient human bureaucracy. Smart I suppose, though I imagine the effort to maintain the illusion that you do not age must be difficult."
And just like that a decades long secret was gone. Alexandria felt her fists clench before she allowed her logical side to take over. Suit was clearly an ally if his claims of being some sort of… interdimensional refugee were true. In addition, Cauldron still wasn't sure about how much influence passengers had on their hosts. Having access to superhuman beings without such influence would be… useful. Too valuable to kill or silence through other means.
Suit smirked. "You are a very pretty woman when you're contemplating murder."
Eidolon let out a small snort of amusement as Alexandria sputtered in response.
"So back to the Nine." Legend steered them back on track. "You think you know who killed them?"
"A super from my world, though this one would be a projection from young Ms. Hebert." Suit began to explain, throwing down a small disk that then displayed a holographic profile. "Magician. The deadliest supervillain ever produced."
Eidolon couldn't help but scoff. "Magician? What, does he think he can use real magic like Myrddin?"
"He named himself Magician because he always has another trick up his sleeve." Suit explained, deadly serious. "And believe me, if you'd ever had to fight him…" Suit went quiet and Alexandria began to analyze his microexpressions. Fear. He was scared. "Imagine your Faerie Queen or even you yourself, Eidolon, except unbound by a three power limit. That is the sort of dangerous bastard Magician is. He slaughtered hundreds, maybe thousands of other supers and fed upon their powers, making them his own."
The room went silent for a moment before finally Legend asked the looming question. "How did your heroes beat someone like that?"
The Triumvirate hadn't had a hand in putting the Faerie Queen into the Birdcage. She'd entered willingly and for all they knew, she could leave whenever she wanted.
"Overwhelming force." Suit stated grimly. "Let us pray Taylor is smart enough to never summon that super. Or rather," Suit amended, "pray we are never in a bad enough situation that he needs to be summoned."
"A single person defeated someone who, by your account, outclasses both Eidolon and Glaistig Uaine?" Alexandria asked sharply, mind awhirl at the possibilities. That sort of raw power would be an incredible boon against Scion.
"At the cost of his sanity, yes." Suit confirmed. "He was only one of five other M-class supers in existence. If Taylor can harness their power too… well, we might just have a chance."
"By all reports from the Protectorate's observation, the girl can't even control all the projections she's summoned." Alexandria scowled, not liking the thought of so much power in one person's hands. "This Magician, she summoned him a number of weeks ago."
"And apparently he's still active." Suit agreed. "Which is good, because it's subconsciously growing Taylor's power. What's bad is whatever he has planned. No doubt the kidnapped Bonesaw has something to do with that."
"Do you have any idea of what that might be?" Doctor Mother asked politely before Eidolon could lose his temper.
"I have… suspicions." Suit said slowly. "Magician has endeavored for one thing above all else since he gained his powers: He wishes to triumph over death. Not just his own, but he also seeks to bring back his mother and probably his brother as well." Suit began to explain. "He nearly accomplished this back in our world when he was brought back to life by a super called Encore. Unfortunately, when Magician killed Encore, he didn't realize that you had to invest power into the summoning of the dead. Eventually that power ran out and Magician returned to dust before he could renew himself."
"Now this is where it gets tricky, so pay attention: The foundation of Taylor's powers, of my existence, is built upon the same concept as Encore. By tapping into the cosmic power of the storm in the same way that he does, we were able to give Taylor a theoretical connection to the imprint of all beings touched by the energy of the storm and to bring forth those imprints. I myself am technically such an imprint, merely modified so that I am not reliant upon Taylor for existence. I passively draw power from the storm by my very existence and even if I die, I'll simply be reborn."
"My theory is that Magician wishes to use Bonesaw, a bio-Tinker, to modify Taylor's shard and essentially grant him all the same benefits that I have, that way he is no longer reliant on her for life. Perhaps he might even seek to kill her and take the power for himself. I can't say for certain, I never truly knew the man, I can only make my best guesses."
At Suit's conclusion, all of Cauldron sat deathly still. To hear that their best shot, a practical silver bullet could be in danger because of a facet of her own power… It was a bit to process.
But not for Alexandria. No, for Alexandria there was one clear solution.
"How do we kill Magician?"
Suit grinned darkly in reply.
Magician sauntered down the street whistling a merry tune, dragging a beaten and bloodied body behind him. Luckily with fourteen or so Stranger powers layered over him, he was virtually immune to detection, so none of those who passed on the street gave him more than a glance before their attention was turned elsewhere. He entered the safehouse where he'd stashed Riley and threw down his acquisition in front of the young bio-Tinker.
"I brought you a present." He declared. "Praise me and my genius." He demanded.
Having somewhat become inured to his occasionally childish behavior, the former Bonesaw merely rolled her eyes as she glanced up from her latest project. "Was it something I actually asked for this time?"
"I thought you liked getting to meet Blasto." Magician snarked playfully. "Collaboration between bio-Tinkers is pretty rare, you learned a lot from his work, right?"
"Yes, but he was also scared half to death of me." Riley frowned. "Are you ever going to tell me why so many people we run into are like that?"
"One day." Magician promised. "When you're older."
He didn't particularly care for Riley's feelings overly much, but if she were wracked with guilt over what she'd done as Jack's puppet… well it would interfere with his current plans quite a bit.
"As long as you promise." Riley agreed reluctantly. "So why'd you bring this villain here?"
"How'd you guess she's a villain?" Magician asked teasingly. "Maybe she's a hero."
"You wouldn't do that." Riley said confidently, crossing her arms. "You're a good guy, you only bring me bad people to tinker with."
Oh you poor child… you don't know even half of what I'd do.
"Well you're right of course, she is a very nasty villain." Magician poked the unconscious villain. "Be sure to not let her die under your care. I need you to make some modifications to her gemma, her abilities might come in handy."
"I'll get started." Riley nodded happily, grabbing her surgical tools.
Magician stepped out of the room and then back out onto the streets after renewing the stranger effect on the safehouse. Couldn't have any nosey heroes or just people off the street interrupting Riley's work.
With a simple application of a long ago stolen teleportation power, Magician reappeared in the city of Brockton Bay. Layering another few Stranger powers over himself, the founder of the Black Hat Syndicate chose a random cafe that had wifi and smelled like it had decent coffee. Then he did some research.
Brockton had a fair number of skilled heroes. Magician's interest was particularly drawn to Dauntless and his ever increasing abilities. Too bad he couldn't steal the powers of these parahumans, but if Riley's manipulations bore fruit…
Well, a supervillain could hope.
He continued his research, trying to get a feel for who Taylor- Olympia- could summon, who she favored. In public appearances he was able to learn that she seemed to rely heavily on a group from Legacy's academy, along with Legacy himself.
Oh now this is intriguing….
A new healer helping out at the hospital during the Bakuda attack? How… novel. Especially because Magician recognized the face.
Isaac Walker you little punk… I'm sorry you died too.
Accessing a technopathic ability, Magician dug deeper, burrowing past the firewalls of the PRT and accessing their information as well. Day-Day had been around? And he'd actually been helping the Hebert girl too… surprising. His brother must have seen something in the girl, some kind of fire or steel. It was almost enough to make him call off his plan, to accept his fate and fade back into the well of cosmic energy that was the 'afterlife' of supers.
But not quite enough. A supervillain had to have higher standards than his baby bro.
Sighing with some measure of disappointment (seriously, he was really the only M-class Taylor had summoned so far? He felt a tiny bit insulted) Magician disconnected from the internet, downed the rest of his reasonably tasty coffee, and then stepped back onto the street. He allowed a plethora of extrasensory abilities to wash over him, just to make sure there were no sketchy Strangers or Thinkers watching him.
Huh… That's odd.
From what he could tell, he was being watched by two different sources. One was a seemingly omnipresent sort of vision, not directly targeting him, just… around. The other though…
A parody of an angel in low orbit. It's power frighteningly familiar, like that of a super, but twisted and altered.
Magician cursed softly under his breath and then summoned a portal to a pocket space. He was not dealing with that now. Especially when the power tasted so similar to the only super to ever best him in single combat. He'd leave those things for Taylor to deal with.
He'd let her have the spotlight for a little while longer. He had to prepare a proper grand entrance for Earth Bet. One that involved staying the hell away from those things called Endbringers.
They reminded Magician far too much of Ares.
A/N: We're now caught up with what I have on spacebattles, next chapter should be out Friday if my writers block gets out of the damn way where it's been for two weeks!
Anyway, feel free to hit me with any comments or questions in the reviews, I love to hear constructive criticism or helpful tips.