Vista skipped school because she knew something that the other Wards didn't.
The adults around the Rig –both Protectorate and PRT alike –never bothered to tell the Wards anything really important, but they usually ended up finding out anyway. Adults simply never failed to underestimate children, and they always seemed to overlook Vista specifically. Always forgetting that, despite of her age, Vista actually held more seniority than Director Piggot herself. A fact that Vista brought up all the time, conveniently ignoring that her seniority was by less than a week.
Vista's common protests were universally ignored or remarked upon with all the seriousness of tomorrow's weather.
Right now, however, Vista was never happier to be overlooked. The adults quietly whispered when she happened to be near, or when they were alone, forgot about her unique powers. A power that Vista often abused shamelessly, twisting and compressing space so that she and the other Wards could eavesdrop on troopers.
Talkative troopers who were confident in their privacy.
Vista snickered. They should really have paid the rulebook more than a quick glance. It had several warnings about her powers, omnipresent tinkertech cameras, and operational security; there was no such thing as complete privacy on the Rig.
Or anywhere else, really.
She had been at the Rig the night before, working with Kid Win to test some of his new equipment. Vista wasn't scheduled to do it, but she hadn't exactly been told not to… Really, Vista would do just about anything to keep from returning to that house. Then she had "heard" some troopers carelessly whispering about a new, young Case 53 that Velocity and Miss Militia had stumbled across. The cape had apparently gotten their attention but for some reason, hadn't been brought to the Rig that night.
Because of that, Piggy went on her usual tomato-faced tirade about riding everyone's asses harder than usual –not that Vista even thought that possible. This time, however, the director was even going as far as to force the Wards (and only the Wards) to sit through a dry, dull mandatory lecture on the PRT's tangled web of bureaucratic red tape.
Yay.
Then, early this morning, Armsmaster answered an emergency on the Docks that a dispatcher on a "coffee" break was saying involved the very same cape... Maybe Assault would have been a better person to send. Case 53s almost always ended up joining the Protectorate, but Armsmaster was a dick and Brockton Bay was also home to Faultline's crew of mercenaries.
Vista knew that she would probably join the villainous crew just to spite Armsmaster… probably.
Shoving her internal debate aside, she hovered in a corner near the Rig's entrance, hoping to catch a glimpse of the person who would end up becoming their newest member. Maybe it would be an actual girl this time –Icarus, for all his silence, was still a boy. Still, Vista would settle for someone nice and maybe not too annoying. The Wards already had that in spades.
When Weld was found, there was some scuttlebutt about him being moved to the Brockton Bay… nothing ever came of it. Battery had mentioned at the time that it was pretty normal for Case 53s to be kept in the same town they woke up in.
Something about providing some "comfortable familiarity in the area they worked." Personally, Vista thought it would be better to move a Case 53 away from the strange place they woke up in, panicking with no memory of where they were or who they are. But that would be reasonable, and Vista had learned long ago that the Protectorate was anything but reasonable.
After all, the Wards were led by the oldest, rather than the most experienced member. Idiots.
The door opened, and Armsmaster led a tall, balding man inside –
Wait, was that Mr. Hebert? Mr. Fire and Rage, Call-Me-Danny, Hebert? What was he doing here? Vista hadn't seen the gangly man in months and had been mildly put out by it. Mr. Hebert used to come in to yell at Director Piggot fairly often –a cathartic experience for all the Wards (and most of the senior Protectorate), not that they would admit it.
They weren't suicidal.
The Case 53 that Vista had heard about came inside, ducking awkwardly through the thick doors of the Rig. Vista gasped aloud at the pretty cape. Slender, the cape stood well over Armsmaster in his power armor and wore a silvery sort of… plate armor?
Vista suppressed an incredulous giggle at the sight of such an outdated thing, though she couldn't deny that the interlocking plates were a sight to see.
The cape's white-gold hair was pulled into a short, practical braid that Vista, herself, used when the PR team would allow her to get away with it. The young woman wore a curiously blank face mask that only revealed her violet, almond-shaped eyes. Vista felt the weight of her stare when the cape scanned the room. As the group walked past her, Vista noticed the odd stride of the Case 53. Her legs were weird… Kinda like Lung's when he really got going. Awesome!
What was much less awesome were the loudass alarms that filled the building less than an hour later. The Rig, attacked by some sort of sound-based weaponry, clambered to respond to the threat.
Vista rushed out before Armsmaster or Miss Militia could tell her not to, and stopped on a dime as soon as she stepped outside.
The midday sun had been smothered, and a full moon cast the Bay in an argent light with the aid of the stars above. God, the stars. They were an astral sea that made Vista's head spin in vertigo with the very vastness of it! Never before had she seen so many or so clearly! As clearly defined as they were, she could actually make out all the constellations that she had been taught several years prior.
Like gravity, her eyes were drawn to the towering figure standing in front of the Rig like an ancient titan straight out of Vista's textbooks. The mountainous being loomed over streetlamps and sidewalk trees alike, dressed in a dark robe-thing that accentuated his thick chest with a familiar, silvery armor of interlocking plates. He glared at her with those swirling, scary spheres of yellow-gold lanced through the unnatural darkness, and the young Ward struggled to look directly at him.
"Where. Is. My. Daughter."
The enormous man's voice washed over Vista with the weight of a tsunami, saturating the thrumming air around her with its resounding bass. The ground underneath her feet shivered in response and when the echo of this titan's voice died, a palpable silence replaced it, filling Brockton Bay.
There were no car alarms, no shouts of glee or anger. No midday birdcalls or raunchy Merchant catcalls. No grief-stricken moans or terrified screams from the homeless. The city itself held her breath and the air thickened with a cloying tension.
Not one person dared to break it.
In spite of the winter's cold embrace, Vista felt slick with a nervous sweat.
The glass doors –now rendered a shattered mess by the timbre of the giant's voice –burst open and the Case 53 from before ran out, her scaled legs leaping across the between Vista and the thing before them. Behind the cape, PRT troopers rushed out, encircling Vista in a protective circle that did little to put her at ease.
"My lord!" A soft, echoing voice emanated from the young woman. "My lord, what are you doing?"
The colossus of a man strode forward, and she felt the strangled urge to warn the poor woman away. The titan towered over the older girl, even more than she, herself, towered over Vista. The mantle of power that cloaked the figure before them impressed upon Vista an unspoken threat of swift retribution.
A promise made all the more frightening for the displeased scowl the marred his face.
"Guinevere," the giant spoke softly, and the newfound gentleness of his voice threatened to smother his words under the sheer reverberation of his oceanic voice. "Why have you left home?"
"My lord, I love you dearly… but I am my own person." The armored cape strode slowly up to the bronzed titan and Vista felt her heartbeat hammering in her ears. "Even though it goes against my heart to flee from home like a thief in the night, you left me little other choice."
The titan bent to one knee –Vita felt a flash of fear when the armored kneecap dug into the dense concrete like it was loose sand –and spared a baleful glance to the PRT troops surrounding the young Ward. "My child, these people will only disappoint you. I have seen their hearts and they are lacking! They entreat calamity with their passivity, deliberately engendering hatred in the hearts of their constituents so they might but breathe for another moment! Guinevere, these people flagrantly disregard their own posterity; they look not to the horizons that lay before them, but to the gold that they would hoard."
The Case 53 –Guinevere? –stretched her dragony legs to their upmost, balancing her not-insignificant height atop her talons and reached up toward the gargantuan man. He bent farther and her clawed gauntleted hand tenderly cupped his bearded face, hidden in the black of his beard. "How can they be any different? My lord, you have sealed your children away in your lands and still you find fault with what these people do without your aid. I cannot remain in that ivory tower, knowing how they drown below us."
Blazing, blinding golden globes of spinning, sparking light intensified.
"I should remove this distraction of yours, Guinevere. These children are not worth the attention that you waste on them."
Vista's heart skipped a beat.
"But you won't."
Hair darker than the empty void between stars dipped as the man lowered his head. Voice wavering, his next words were all but buried underneath his rumbling, resonant bass. "They will not thank you."
Vista couldn't hear Guinevere's soft reply, but whatever it was… it made the gigantic man suddenly rise to his feet and the PRT troops panicked, firing their tinkertech weapons at the threat before them. Pale blue slugs froze and flickered into nonexistence before they crossed half the distance between their protective circle and Guinevere, let alone the titan himself.
Vista's heart seized at the dismissive disgust in those smoldering yellow-gold eyes. "Look upon your championed people, my daughter, and behold their glory."
Guinevere silently held her head high as Gywn turned his back on her, walking away. With every immense step, the space around his silhouette wavered. With every thunderous step, the distortion grew and childish curiosity made Vista –her quaking fear fading now that the colossus had deigned to leave –flicked her power towards the odd distortions.
Immediately, her stomach revolted and Vista's breakfast eagerly embraced the road. The distortion was so much more than that. He was doing what she could do, but on a scale that Vista couldn't begin to fathom.
Vista ignored the bitter, acrid tang of stomach acid burning in her mouth.
The giant was punching –tearing, twisting, ripping, razing, breaking through to –a hole in… something. In everything? Through nothing? He bent it, compressing it across a vast distance and rendering her sense of direction useless. Up was left and right was down, every step was a step that traversed a space beyond space. Vista could only gawk at the incomprehensible mess that her power struggled to interpret for her.
When Vista could only just make out the silhouette through the obscuring miasma, a corona of yellow-gold power flared out like a soul made manifest, blinding everyone with its cold intensity. Vista's vision slowly returned, and she saw Guinevere standing by herself in the middle of an empty street, staring at the empty spot that her beloved lord had occupied just a moment ago.
The Case 53 turned on a dime, facing the skittish throng of armed troopers with a crinkle by her eye that might have been intended to be a smile. "All is well. I am the most favored of my lord's children."
The cheery note in cape's lingering voice rung just a little too hollow in Vista's ears.
xXx
In a spare timeline, Coil had Tattletale strapped to a chair. The young blonde bled from several deep cuts, light gashes, and severe lacerations that crisscrossed her naked body like a horrifying parody of a tiger's stripes. Her eyes were blackened (bruised to the point of swelling shut) and leaking tears that served only to further irritate her mangled eyes. Twin streaks of cleanliness marked the pilgrimage of those tears down her marred face.
Idly, Coil rather thought the girl looked like a panda or raccoon at the moment.
"I already told you everything!" the young girl's hoarse voice broke once more.
Coil's mind raced as he silently prowled around his tool's chair. When Tattletale called in the night before to report that she had abandoned the Empire investigation, he had been… upset. He needed those names. So when she held up a paltry "dangerous cape" excuse, Coil scheduled a meeting for the following afternoon.
Then that… thing appeared, blocking out the morning sun with a gesture and cowing the Protectorate's response team into submission with its unheard threats. It communed with its "daughter" and left, leaving a terrified Brockton Bay in its wake.
Coil didn't even know if the huge creature was some extreme sort of Cape 53 –as many specialists on PHO had begun to speculate –because Cauldron was radio silent. His moles within the PRT were useless, since the organization (in a stunningly rare moment of brilliance) had locked up the information tighter than anything that Coil had encountered before. There were no digital records, all paper documents that pertained to the event were being held under Emily's direct oversight, and none of the more senior members were being told more than they absolutely needed to know.
Indeed, compartmentalization was the enemy of espionage.
This cape –if it could even be called that –was a game changer and Coil needed information. Should he bring this thing under his thumb? Could he arrange some sort of nonaggression pact like he had with Cauldron? Would Coil be forced to eliminate the cape?
Could he eliminate the cape?
If he could neither make peace with that thing nor kill it… then he needed to find a way to direct its attention away from his own endeavors. To do that, Coil needed answers. Answers that he was quickly finding out that Tattletale simply didn't have.
"Once more, from the top," Coil stoically commanded.
"You're scared," his tool's nervous laughter bubbled out hysterically. "Good."
Coil didn't reply, simply electing to drag his knife across a thin slice of unbroken skin. Lightly enough not to break the skin, but with enough pressure to remind her of who held the power.
Coil's little… reminder was enough to send his tool chattering away.
"I don't know if the guy is her father, but his body language betrays a protective –almost possessive –emotion towards her. He showed up and blocked sunlight in an obvious display of power, so he might be inclined towards dramatics. Or it could've just been a quick way to command attention and fear before leveraging it later in whatever dialogue he had with the PRT. His sudden appearance was meant to show off his power, though he could've been bluffing… Start out with the best card in your deck and make them wonder what else you have up your sleeve."
No more than she had said in the previous timeline. So, his tool wasn't holding back on him.
Good.
"The girl."
Tattletale's split lips curled into a frown. Perhaps his tool felt a lingering distaste for the woman? Maybe a fading remnant of her first encounter with the cape? Interesting. Coil took note of his tool's uneasy feelings about the Case 53.
He could leverage it later, in a more necessary timeline.
"That 'girl' is of artificial design –her bodily proportions are just too symmetrical to be a natural occurrence. She's sapient at human levels and young, despite what you're thinking. Based on figure, she's probably a teenager (but who knows with her origins) and either very skilled or just plain naive. Could be some mix of both, though, since it's obvious that the cape's never been away from her home. Her talons are sharp enough that she has to step carefully, possible Brute rating. Probably not a Changer or a projection since she wears armor –though it could be a bluff."
Coil scowled under his mask. There simply wasn't enough information on this girl… though, if Tattletale was right and this girl was naive, then perhaps he could use that. Dear old Emily was already taking an unnatural interest in this cape –and his moles hinted that it wasn't of a positive sort.
It would be oh so easy to nudge her along. A whisper here, a rumor there. It would ripple up the chain of command and into her ear. Emily Piggot would be kicked into a blind rage and Coil would be there with open arms to shield the poor girl from the big bad director. Then, he would have an in with that thing that showed up –either a chink in its armor or a valuable asset that could sway the thing's opinion of him… and that would allow Coil an amount of leverage for a nonaggression agreement.
Plan made, Coil began to utilize his tool in a different manner –secure in the knowledge that the timeline was expendable.
Thomas Calvert was alone in his office, closing his work email. While Coil played with his tool, Calvert picked up his phone to make some calls.
After all, Brockton Bay was to be his.
He wouldn't allow it to become another Ellisburg.
In the other timeline, a spent Coil stabbed his knife into Tattletale's jugular.
And closed the timeline.