Rebecca Costa-Brown
Washington D.C.
"Senator Heimstul," she greeted the elderly man with a nod.
The senator, a man who has served the nation as its senator for the last four decades, nodded back in return. "Chief Director Costa-Brown," he replied with a smile. "It's good to see you out and about early in the morning!"
Unlike her, Senator Heimstul was dressed in his running outfit, a tacky purple and white checkered patterened running shorts and nylon shirt. Behind him was his platoon of bodyguards, all of whom were in their own training outfit sans their guns.
At the age of ninety-five, he was the oldest person serving in a public office, and had made a great number of friends and enemies.
She happened to be one of his allies, and this meeting was completely coincidental.
Because she too was in her exercise outfit.
She took up jogging right next to the old senator, who not only kept up with her but did so seemingly effortlessly.
Senator Heimstul was a senator who supported her and the Triumvirate even before the creation of the Parahuman Response Team, and have been one of their biggest proponents in the Congress and in his home state of Ohio.
"I heard that you missed out on Vexa. Again," he chuckled.
Rebecca frowned.
Senator Heimstul was also one of the few individuals outside of Cauldron who knew her other identity as Alexandria.
"Yes. Alexandria was unable to grab Vexa's attention," she replied. But that's not what we are here to talk about."
"No, it isn't," he conceded.
"What can I help you with?"
The two of them stopped by a water fountain. The senator took a sip and she took a sip. After waiting for the bodyguards to get their own sip of water, they began running again.
"I've been wanting to know about the black pot's more recent meeting, specifically what its mother decided about Slaughterhouse Nine."
Rebecca grimaced.
Despite being a willing collaborator of Cauldron, Heimstul was one of the most aggressively meddlesome helpers Cauldron had. It didn't help that one of his grandsons died to Slaughterhouse Nine, which he knew Cauldron was allowing to roam free to better predict the upcoming apocalypse.
"Mother hasn't decided anything on the Nine," she replied. "She's been avoiding me about it, in fact."
Heimstul grunted. "That bitch needs to loosen her asshole a little. There's no point to living life like a scrooge."
"She'd disagree with you."
"Let her. She's not the one who has to watch her grandchildren die trying to be hero."
There was a bit of silence between the two before she spoke up.
"Have you been in contact with the Broker yet?" 'Since that day' was left unsaid.
"Once," he replied. "The bastard came to offer me revenge."
She stopped.
Heimstul stopped a bit in front of her and looked over her shoulder. "I'm obviously still a senator, so I obviously didn't take it. Hurry it up, Brown."
She resumed walking.
"What exactly did he offer you?" he asked.
"Power. Wealth. An army. He considered Hecarim to be one of his finer recruits," he replied. "Losing Hecarim made him very mad, you see."
"I see," she said jerkily.
The Broker was someone everyone in the know looked for with passion. A cape capable of granting powers to others? He was the perfect weapon against Zion!
But alas, he was also one of the three Blindspots that Contessa could not see. Coupled with the fact that he had powers he granted to others close to him that interfered with Contessa's power, finding him was trying.
"I don't think you do," Heimstul replied. "You didn't see him call upon a literal army. I never knew that there were even that many capes in America."
"We have evidences to believe that his reach extends all around the world and few beyond it."
"Of course, he does," he scoffed. "I saw a hundred capes that day, Brown. There were at least four among them who were all comparable to you. He offered me that, Brown. He offered me a literal army to hunt down the bastards who killed my dead grandson." He stopped. He glared at her. "Do you know why I didn't take it?"
She stopped too. She shook her head.
"Because of you and your little dipshit group."
"To bolster Protectorate numbers, so that more people could be saved."
"Yes. That," he hissed. "For the sake of America, I gave up on my revenge even after I saw the uncensored video of how they killed Hecarim."
She looked at him in shock. "There was no camera in the area, how-?"
"No camera you knew about, Brown," he grunted. "But there was one that the Broker got his hands on." He paused. "I'm here to tell you that."
"Just that?"
"Yes, just that. Keep your pet murder-hobos on a leash, or I will take the Broker up on his offer."
She watched the senator leave with his bodyguards.
-
"He said that?" Doctor Mother asked.
"Yes," Rebecca – now Alexandria – replied. "All of this happened without our knowledge."
Numberman hummed. "This is troublesome," he replied. "Heimstul's chance of helping us in finding the Broker and forcing him into the Protectorate drops to zero if we count this new incident into account."
Eidolon grumbled.
Alexandria looked at David from the corner of her eyes.
Of all members of the Cauldron, he was the most disgruntled about the Broker because the latter managed to gift someone else a downgraded version of Eidolon's power.
Jack-of-all-Trade was now the regional Protectorate leader of Seattle, and possessed influence comparable to the Triumvirate in their cities, despite possessing only two slots instead of Eidolon's three. And he was firmly within the Broker's pockets.
"... Let's continue the meeting. We can revisit the Broker later on," John, always the calm and collected cape and friend known to most as Legend, said.
"Of course, Legend," Doctor Mother said. "How goes our experiment in the west coast?" she asked Alexandria.
"Tagg's methods provide no better improvement to trigger rate in a given population than the Brockton Bay experiment."
"No better or same?"
"No better. Most of the triggers in his area also end up as a villain, which causes greater social instability," Numberman responded in her stead. "The only advantage Tagg's method has over the Brockton Bay experiment is the fact that capes who work under him remain loyal to the Protectorate for a long time."
"What about Brockton Bay itself?"
"Cape feudalism is definitely taking shape under E88 and the ABB. It has the best trigger rate so far from any of our experiments," she replied.
"Is it possible for us to introduce another faction to Brockton Bay?" Doctor Mother asked. "I don't like the fact that our best experiment for natural trigger rate has too big of an impact on social stability."
"Unless you want to talk to the Broker directly..."
"Hmm."
-
Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown looked over her paperwork she had to complete during her stay at Washington D.C.
Her morning meeting with Senator Heimstul had been negative.
The weekly lunch meeting with Cauldron was inconclusive.
And her paperwork, which she couldn't push onto someone else because of the sensitive materials found within, was not decreasing. She distinctly remembered separating the big pile into two and completing one of the separated piles, but when she looked back at the original pile, it had retained its initial height.
"Chief Director."
She looked from the one foot and three inches high pile of paperwork the door to her Washington D.C. office. Standing at the doorway was her secretary, Jenny Mayde.
"Yes, Jenny?" she asked.
Jenny looked sheepish. "Representative Wu wants to talk with you," she relayed. "I think he wants to talk about the recent loss of that the PRT in his home district."
Rebecca nodded, immediately putting up her "iron guard" expression. She was famous for it, so why not use it to intimidate unimportant representatives? "Send him in," she replied.
Jenny was gone from the doorway, and mere 5 seconds after, Representative Wu was there.
Under normal circumstances, Representative Wu would have been a great ally. Caring of the people, stalwart ally of justice, and a loving father. He was incorruptible… which actually made her job harder.
"Chief Director Costa-Brown," he greeted.
She stood up and nodded respectfully. "Representative Wu. Have a seat," she said, gesturing to the seat across from her desk. Wu took the seat briskly, and then waited patiently for her to ask.
And ask she did.
"What brings you here today?" she asked.
"Tagg."
Rebecca wanted to groan. She really did. Tagg was a miserable piece of shit who'd done more damage to the PRT than uphold its values. If it wasn't for the fact that-
…
If it wasn't for a fact … that is no longer true.
Cauldron had kept him in position so far because he was the subject of their PRT-generated natural trigger events. No one else was as ruthless to non-heroic parahumans as Tagg was, but mere hours ago during Cauldron's weekly meeting, Tagg had been written off.
…
Rebecca smiled and reassured the representative that she would make sure that Tagg would get the punishment he justly deserved for terrorizing Wu's home district and state. Though Tagg was a good leader to the men and women serving under him, he could be less than approachable, even daunting, to approach for the civilians.
A just punishment for Tagg? She could think of a few involving PR campaigns...