by Louis IX
Check first chapter for disclaimer and global warnings. This one is a weird one, with "coil" being the inspiration word.
Coiled UpIn the 90s, the "cape movement" was in full swing, and only a few recent happenstances had started to hamper that. The Slaughterhouse Nine, for one. And the Endbringers, too. It was around that time that more and more villains appeared, and also when people started to understand what a trigger event was.
In several cases, when a trigger event was caused by someone, the newly-awakened parahuman lashed out towards those they identified as their tormentors. Sometimes, it caused another trigger in return, and the two civilian enemies became cape enemies – or "nemeses".
In very rare cases, those sworn enemies were able to discuss and put aside their differences. And even find love.
It happened.
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Gung-hoIt happened because a lost teenage girl, named Annette, was swallowed in an all-woman revolutionary movement. It was spearheaded by a known parahuman whose methods worsened with time, and the whole gang ended up barricaded when the Protectorate heroes rounded them up.
With the many powers used indiscriminately, things broke, and the house collapsed. Lustrum was arrested, and the ruin was left for the cops and firemen to find and extract other victims – having done their job, the capes had retreated, not really caring about the mundane people possibly dying in there.
Annette noticed the others around her being crushed by fallen masonry, and only a support beam falling diagonally had prevented her from following. But she saw cracks on its surface, and was quite sure that it would break, eventually. And she would die.
She triggered into a Brute with an increased strength, resilience, and regeneration. It was not enough to escape, but she was now strong enough to still live under the tons of bricks, wood, and plaster. And the kitchen's sink.
When the mass of masonry moved, above her, Annette thought she was under attack, and immediately punched the person peeking through the hole – she had had enough time to identify him as a male, and that meant an enemy, in her current view of things. Even if he was quite different from the image of the enemy she had in her mind: young, tall, and thin, the image would follow her for a while.
With her strength, he was sent flying with a broken face and neck, and the rapidly approaching ground made him wish he had done things differently. Like her, he triggered, and got that exact ability: to do things differently. As such, instead of falling to his death, he returned to his body, at the point where he was removing the cinderblock, seconds earlier. Instead, he called to check if there was someone.
She heard a male voice, and struck through the block, sending him flying again.
He rejected that choice and tested another, testing his powers at the same time. But whatever he did, if he made himself known, she attacked him. Sometimes accompanied with anti-male slogans or epithets.
So he returned to the firemen brigade and asked for a female volunteer. He had difficulties making his point as, from their point of view, he had done nothing. But he explained having heard those insults from below, had seen a wounded cape, and wasn't taking any risk.
Like a magic incantation, the talk about a cape summoned the PRT back on the scene, and Annette was promptly pummelled until she was unconscious, before being dragged away from the wreckage, towards a quick trial and a probably long stint in prison.
The young man, whose name was Daniel Hebert, was disgusted by their methods. Because the woman's fate was slightly his fault, he decided to help her. Using his power to choose the proper discourse to motivate them, he gathered the dregs of Lustrum's followers around him. And then, he arranged for a blockade on the penitentiary convoy, a few days later, and had the woman pulled out and put into a normal hospital (because despite her Brute powers, she still had broken bones, courtesy of the heroes who had apprehended her). Anonymously, of course.
With her limbs in casts, Annette wasn't ready to punch him, yet. She was healing quickly, but not enough to avoid him speaking to her, once again choosing his words carefully. It made him stutter, at times, but he noticed that she wasn't disturbed by that. From her indoctrination, she fully expected that he'd be putty in her mere presence – even if that flew in the face of Lustrum's other doctrine, that women had no power.
Little by little, they both realized that they could fall in love with each other, despite their rocky beginnings. And they did, settling in a town far enough from Annette's past as a Lustrum cape for it not to be a hindrance.
Of course, that meant that they had very few friends, when moving in. But they were otherwise pleasant with their co-workers and quickly built up other friendships – Annette while getting a degree in Literature and then teaching it, Daniel ending his Law degree and then working for the Dockworkers Union.
Unfortunately, some agitated people blocked the Bay when they decided to sink boats, and most of the poorest people lost what little income they had. Those at the very top weren't concerned, of course: the Mayor said that everything was well and didn't care about the poor and homeless people in his town, even despite knowing that leaving them in these conditions would lead them to join gangs, worsening the overall condition over time. Cognitive dissonance at its best. And the less said about the government, the best.
Seeing that nobody cared about the mundane people in his city, not even the local heroes and their burgeoning alliances (the Brigade and the Protectorate), Daniel started his own faction. Discreetly. He started by getting a cape identity, separate from his own in case he was found, and to create the fiction that he would be recruiting for someone else.
Because it was a recruitment, alright. Under the excuse of working at the Dockworkers' Union, he identified and brought in many honest malcontents – those not happy about the state of things, but willing to do something about it.
And he sent them to work with "Coil", his alternate identity.
Daniel was already tall and thin. With his Coil costume, he even appeared taller and thinner – thicker soles, helmet reinforced at the top, and body armour that displayed the shape of ribs and other bones, all that disguised him quite well.
Training and equipping his "troops" took time. Of course, Annette sussed things out, and her presence in his "gang" was like a voice of reason not to go overboard with things. Such as not falling prey to shortcuts that would put him under someone else's thumb – no borrowing from other crime lords, no doing drugs or women… it left very few occasions to get cash to pay his men (and women), but he arranged for the careful looting of any gang cache, or single villain's lair.
With a few of his people having the skills to infiltrate computer networks, and others to program detection algorithms for the visual data taken from the city's surveillance cameras, he was able to discover new triggers quickly. And there were many, as if difficult living conditions were an ideal ground for triggers.
He recruited (but not at gunpoint) the Thinker named Sarah Livsey, who helped his organization with money and further plans. Such as planting moles in the newly-created Parahuman Response Teams. As such, he got wind of the budget allocated to build Endbringer shelters, and got a shell company in the course. With Sarah's work at lowering their opponents' chances of winning, he got the contract, which meant more work for his employees, those he hadn't recruited yet, and other people in the Bay – he only recruited locally, even if he had to kick the people into shape.
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A triggerDaniel loved his wife, and the two of them often called each other, as if they were teenagers in love. With Daniel's power, he could even cheat and call her in one timeline, while keeping another in which he didn't call her, just to hear the sound of her voice.
Or to be sure that she didn't get an accident, because phoning while driving was starting to become a high cause for accidents. When he noticed the truck coming too fast towards the car, he suppressed the timeline in which he had been calling her, preferring her to have all her reflexes to face the thing.
The problem was that Taylor called her at the same time. The sound of tires sliding on the asphalt, and then the torn metal and plastic, and the explosion from the spilt gas… all this transmitted very well to their daughter, who triggered – second-generation triggers were less immediately deadly for the person, generally.
And all this because Taylor was at her nature camp and wanted to tell her mother that she had visited an insect house, at a zoo, and found earthworms disgusting.
Thankfully, Annette was a Brute, and survived the crash. True, she broke many bones, but she also healed rapidly. Even her spine.
Meanwhile, Taylor ended up with the ability to Master said worms. Joy. Not that she noticed immediately, of course. Instead, she discovered her power when, later, she found herself stepping on a snake. In her panic, she yelled at the thing to get away from her… and it did.
Taylor was a naturally curious girl. When she learnt that she had a power above snakes, she checked to see if she could master other animals. But very few obeyed. Centipedes did. Eels, too. Lizards did not.
To her surprise, when bored in class and wanting time to speed up, she found out that she could make the clock's hands faster, too. It wasn't a mastery over time, though, just a manipulation of the material thing. Taking apart a spare clock, later, she observed that her influence was limited to the coil.
And that's when she made the link: she could manipulate anything that coiled. Other mechanical coils, too, such as those in a car's suspension. Or in a gun.
She sought her dictionary, too, because "anything that coiled" was quite large and merited a thorough definition. Snakes coiled. Fires were often described as snakes in the way their flames coiled up. She tested it, and, yes, she could manipulate open flames.
She could manipulate her father, too. More than a normal daughter, even… but only in his Coil persona, for some reason.
Showing her parents that she had powers, she was included in the gang. And got an armour made of metallic coils wound around her body. As weapons, on top of being able to manipulate her coils to lash out at threats, she got Joker-like punching gauntlets. With coils, of course. And for her moving around, she got other coils under her shoes, allowing her to jump quite high and far.
Her immediate detection of coils in her surroundings, which had always been there but right beneath her notice, was worked upon to be able to passively detect guns in the vicinity. And centipedes set on the ground, to detect intruders walking on them. And other centipedes set in special boxes in the pockets of their allies.
Manipulating her father was also done when they were watching the news, one peaceful evening. They saw the whole judiciary farce that was Canary's trial, and Taylor turned to her father with doe eyes. And, seeing that, Annette did the same.
They got her. Thanks to Taylor's power, the PRT soldiers never got around to fire a single bullet at their gang, who got away with their new ally. She didn't want much, but when given the choice of helping with the city or doing nothing, she chose to help. And with Sarah and Coil choosing their words carefully (again), the girl was on board with them.
And not a moment too soon, because the gang known as the Travellers were sent by Accord to "deal with" Coil and his gang – the refusal of his loaded help had irked the Bostonian villain. Canary soothed their egos, and only Trickster and Noelle resisted – thankfully, Sarah was watching and noticed that before they could act out. Staying in a cell for a week, with Canary singing for them, they ended up completely converted.
It helped that Panacea could actually heal Noelle (and Jess, the paraplegic projector). And how did they get Panacea, you ask? That's because of a pact between Marquis and Coil, back when the Brigade was harassing the former: if either of them was to fall with no one to take care of their daughter, the other would take care of her. It was all legal, too, making the Brigade's decision moot: Amelia Claire Lavere had been living with the Heberts for years before she triggered into a bio-tinker – working with Coil and getting her curiosity from her adopted mother and sister, Amy explored her powers freely… but responsibly, too. She wasn't going to create self-replicating organisms or viruses and launch them in the world.
She had a "public" persona of Panacea, the parahuman healer, who healed deadly conditions for free, but who could also, for a specific fee, heal specific deformities (such as amputated limbs, bad eyes, or congenital defects). She also changed the appearance of those people who couldn't step outside because of unjust decisions from higher-ups, such as Canary – who was now known as Raven, with black hair.
Their group got a lot of goodwill when she brought her unparalleled healing freely, at each Endbringer fight.
Speaking of which…
Leviathan came to Brockton Bay.
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Some fightingThe Endbringer fight was horrendeous, as was often the case. But it was also quite short, for a simple reason: when it went from its upright position into another, ready to jump and pounce on a group of flying blaster, he coiled his tail up… and his whole presence lit up in Taylor's mind.
And she noticed that she could control it. Not fully, and not completely. She could not, for instance, counter its current programming, which forced him to attack Eidolon and his allies. But she could push him back once the member of the Triumvirate ended up dead – it was one thing to participate in an Endbringer fight, it was another to be its sole focus, with kid gloves removed. Eidolon lasted three seconds.
And, noticeably, after his much-lamented death, no Endbringer came forwards anymore. Thinkers worked on that, and the result was surprising, horrible… and promptly classified: Eidolon had been the one to control them, subconsciously getting one of them out every few months to get his fill of level-appropriate violence – as the most powerful parahuman in the world (reputedly) he had never been able to exert his whole strength against other capes.
The Protectorate capes in Houston were sad to see their leader dead, but also relieved: he was an ass to his colleagues, whom he always saw as inferiors; besides, his departure allowed for natural selection to start again between "regularly powerful" people for the top slot.
Those in Brockton Bay didn't see it that way, of course: even short as it was, an Endbringer attack always caused massive amounts of damage, and a city in that state was wide open to external attacks. Such as the Slaughterhouse Nine.
The only good thing was that, due to Leviathan's attacks, there were very few windows still intact for Shatterbird to apply her power to.
Quite crazy, the members of the arch-villain group were certain of their invulnerability – and their philosophy was that anything that could kill them deserved their spot. That's why Bonesaw was seeking Panacea out without protection. She found her nemesis (same power, different sides) at Coil's base, in the middle of their parahuman team. And while Panacea deployed anti-plagues by the gallon (thankfully, she had trained for this), Canary sang.
Once subverted, Jack Slash's programming removed, the teenage girl named Riley was, of course, ready to work with her new friends: she created airborne agents targeting the specific biology of her erstwhile group, and released them near their house. Invisible, it got them all, and they could apply for the bounties to increase their faction's money.
The only one not being caught was Burnscar, and only because she didn't return to their lair. Instead, she was seeing her friend Labyrinth, and it was Faultline who called Panacea to heal her. Between Sarah's power and Panacea's, it was determined that the arsonist wasn't as mad as she seemed: it had been a ploy to stay alive in a group of utterly crazy people – she had tried to kill them, several times, after trying to increase the hotness of her fires. But it hadn't worked.
Now that they were dead, she asked for a new identity, free of her scars, and Faultline vouched for her (in the sense that she recruited her, and would hunt her should she turn coat). She also paid the normal price for the full makeover.
Now, with Panacea able to change people's biology, and Riley able to enhance them, Coil's unpowered people got upgrades allowing them to stand up better when facing capes… and the capes got the same too: sub-dermal armours, reinforcement of the bones, insulation of the nerves and brain, the whole nine yards.
She was also able to transfer powers from people to people, but few of them accepted the required brain surgery. Especially when they already got powers.
Still, in order not to lose them, Riley "saved" the brain structures of the few parahumans mad enough not to surrender when defeated – they had to be killed.
Eventually, Coil worked a deal with Dragon and the PRT, where they could end up the travesty of justice that was the Birdcage – from her surveillance feeds, Dragon knew about the daily raping of prisoners, and about the rate of births inside. The presence of kids there shocked people, when it was revealed by an "anonymous" Thinker (they needed the public's approval).
One by one, the criminals were removed, their power-granting brain stems removed and "saved" by Bonesaw, and they were left as unpowered prisoners spread in the normal jails across the country. They were anonymous, too, Panacea changing their appearance enough for them to be unrecognizable – and if they wanted to out themselves as erstwhile parahuman villains… the reaction of the unpowered mob around them would be quite damaging. None said anything.
That way, Amelia and her father could see each other. It hadn't been the initial aim, but it was good for both. And the same went for the other families, too.
Life went on.
A golden man frowned. In his tribulations around the world, he was seeing less and less misery and pain (and painful first-generation trigger events) and more peace (and second-generation triggers). It didn't mesh well with his program and provoked twitches each time he noticed a happy happenstances. Soon, the twitches encompassed his whole body, and he… changed. The vacant expression turned murderous, and he suddenly started throwing lasers around, aiming haphazardly at happy people: in cities, in rural areas, at sea… anywhere. And everywhere.
A woman wearing a Fedora appeared suddenly near Taylor, and grabbed her elbow. The two of them sank into another portal, and Taylor found herself in space. Thankfully, Riley's last improvements allowed her to survive. In front of her was a planet covered with a creature that was so vast that it not only covered the whole Earth (not her own, thankfully) but also several others in other dimensions.
How did she know? Because the Fedora-wearing woman gave her a sheet of laminated paper with the bare bones, at the end of which was a trio of simple sentences: "It's Scion. Scion is killing the worlds. It's also a space worm, coiled around a planet."
There would be some questions, later, about how the woman knew about her power. But, for now, she had a worm to control.
It took all of her energy, and health, to push her power towards the completion of that goal. Scion even appeared, towards the end, but Taylor was then surrounded by portals that sent his lasers back – once her target acquired, she didn't need line of sight anymore.
The multipart worm was convinced to head elsewhere… with as many "elsewhere" as there had been parts. With its shards spread to the winds, Scion ceased to exist as an entity.
It was right after having bodily moved through dimensions to slice through Taylor's body, leaving her almost dead – Riley's enhancements kept her alive only long enough for her to be brought back to Panacea. And even then, it required the healer to go against her general principle of not doing brains: she had been working on that, because working on individual neurons or memories or habits wasn't the same as treating an aneurysm or a concussion.
With the powers having left the vicinity, many capes found themselves depowered. Most of them, in fact. Those who kept a semblance of super-power were those enhanced by bio-tinkers, and Coil had plenty of those in his "gang".
And now that he had the single most powerful group in town, he could order everyone… to be happy. Or else.
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To be continued… after a rewinding