2.4

Brockton Bay

April 8th 2011

11:03 EST

The Boardwalk is everything I was expecting, and worse. Seriously. 15$ for coffee? Said coffee better not be coffee so much as it is the nectar of the gods.

Unfortunately, the rest of the items are just as ridiculously overpriced. Even in alternate dimensions, capitalism rules all.

If my knowledge of canon is correct, today is the day that Taylor gets juice spilled on her, leading to the rise of Skitter.

While helping Taylor sure seems like a good idea, I have no clue how to approach her. 'Hey, I'm from an alternate dimension, where your entire life is a story, and because I feel bad for you, I'm going to un-fuck your life!'. Yeah,no.

I'm not exactly a therapist or psychologist, and can't assume that all fanon are the logical or even likely outcomes, meaning that I have no idea as to how make things better for Taylor. Pushing for her to join the wards seems nice, but I'm kind of a known villain, so approaching Taylor and convincing her to join the wards is a horrible,horrible idea. Even assuming that the whole fanon(canon)? of 'Taylor attacked the undersiders in one timeline, causing both her and the undersiders to die horribly' and 'Taylor was going to commit suicide by cape' are incorrect, if either are true, then I don't look forward to fighting the girl who killed Alexandria with bees(my god).

With that incredibly long winded and possible proof that one of my new powers is internal dialog, I move onto my next target.

Dinah Alcott.

I don't have anything against the girl, but Coil's going to be kidnaping her in roughly 6 days, so I can't leave this issue alone. Morally, I feel obligated help her, after all, she's twelve. Practically, letting Coil get his hands on one of the more powerful precogs is a very bad idea, considering I plan on taking him out at one point or another. Only one problem.

My apparent immunity to thinkers means that convincing Dinah to let me help her is something spotty at best, and relies on 'bad man going to give you drugs and enslave you', and I certainly don't have any idea of where to look for her.

At least, not right now.

The main reason that I'm here though is the convenient maps of town, giving me a good look at the general layout of everything. Including the mayor's office. With the map drilled into my head, I decide that now's the best time to skedaddle. I think those enforcers over there are looking at me funny.

Searching the school and the city record's are tedious for three reasons. The first is finding and destroying the security cameras to leave no existence of my presence. The next step require actually finding the rooms. Leaving as little presence of my existence means I can't shake down staff to find what I'm looking for, and as it would turn out, the records of students and city members are kind of hard to find. I have to spend nearly 20(relative) minutes at the mayor's office and about 5 at the school to find the records room. Luckily, apparently alternate USA still believes in paper records, so I don't have to test the speed hacking technique of try every password combination, because that would take about a year in my estimation.

The only problem in the rooms is carefully searching every box and hoping that these things are in alphabetical order. Luck strikes again though, and Alcott is pretty close to the start of the alphabet, so the search is mercifully short.

Dinah's description is more or less what I'd expect from what we got, 12, brown hair, yada yada. Her school lets out at 3:00 o'clock, though I suspect that the actual number is more like 2:58 or something. It's not even hard with the information to find the route that she would take home, either by bus or by foot.

Waiting for school gets out is actually worse when you're not in school, as it turns out. It turns out that BB actually has such a hideously low education budget that there are no dedicated school buses, and students instead get a pass that gives them free use of the cities public transportation. With this in mind, and the use of the public bus routes, I found the route that Dinah should be taking home. Assuming her parents don't decide to drive her.

The chances of this are incredibly low, as both her parents work full time jobs, meaning that Dinah should be using the public transportation. Unless she gets a ride from a friend. In which case I have to bank on her riding the bus on one of the other days this week. Well, it's better than just kidnapping her.

Luckily I don't have to wait long as the girl that I recognize from the files I looked over comes around the corner. Dinah Alcott.

As she walks by I lean off the wall and,after looking around for any bystanders, I pick up my pace in order to catch up to her. As I draw near to her, I casually ask,

"Chances you're attacked and kidnapped in the next few days?"

She looks at me a bit strangely, and answers,

"97.45821%"

Before I can ask her anything else though, She responds,

"Why can't I see you?"

I internally sighed and weigh my options. While I didn't want to reveal anything to the kid who would reveal whatever she thought she needed increase the odds, I didn't really have a choice if I wanted her to trust me.

"I'm immune to thinkers."

She seems to consider this, before nodding.

"Are you going to kidnap me?"

Who ask that and expects an honest answer? Either way, I say,

"I don't plan on it."

She frowns, but nods. At this point it's a matter of of determining what will work and won't work to keep her safe.

"The Protectorate and PRT are compromised. I can't guarantee your safety there."

She thinks(or Thinks?) then nods.

"70.845% I'm kidnapped if I go to them."

Well shit. Knew there had to be a reason in canon.

"New Wave?"

Dinah almost gets this look on her face.

"55.43% chance."

Well, it's better, but those are still too high when dealing with , is she factoring in his power?

"Coil's the man who's going to attack you. His power is to create two different timelines."

Her eyes seem to widen slightly, but the she has what I've now dubbed as the 'Thinking look' on her face. She shake her head after a while though.

"I can't see any local heros who could improve the odds."

She's frustrated. I can understand. There's no one I can pass her off to, and I don't think I can defeat Coil in the given time. Granted, if I could, it's not like she could see if I could. Well, it's time for plan D. I fish a more recently aquired burner phone out of my pocket and hand it off to her. Dinah takes it, though looks at me inquiringly.

"My number already on there. Don't use it unless you need me. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to respond around the clock, though call me if you're ever in danger."

That's the best I can do for now. Hopefuly the mere presence of the phone will allow me to be able to watch over Dinah and deter Coil in whatever timeline he uses to try to kidnap Dinah.

She looks over at me and slowly nods. Well. Let's see your move now Coil. Assuming that he doesn't just take her in the middle of the night.

Not like that!