My knowledge of Earth Bet was a limited but immensely valuable advantage. The more I acted, the more things rippled, the less accurate it would be for foretelling events.
In this situation many would work to minimalize changes, work to nudge things gently in hopes of preserving that power to better control the situation.
Those people would as result find themselves in direct confrontation with fellow chess masters relying heavily on a playbook that required it to be compromised just to use.
I didn't plan to do that.
Instead I was going to fully embrace the ripples of the butterfly effect and try to ride the tide. I was going to use all that knowledge right here and now in as big and explosive a way as I possibly could to gain as many assets as I could, deny my enemies as much as I could, and make things as 'better' as I could.
The original timeline was a shithole. Everything just kept getting worse. The hero of the story had to descend to the very worst states of humanity while trying to be a hero due to circumstances forging her into a weapon she never wanted to be.
Fuck That.
Coil was a 'starter boss' someone set up powerful enough to be a city wide threat, weak enough to be defeated in the neophyte growths of a hero, and hideous enough to motivate them to do what needed to be done to defeat him. His power seemed simple, almost weak when you first heard what it did. He predicted two possible timelines with absolute accuracy from his own simulated perspective then picked one to experience.
It didn't seem that potent until you realized what it let him do. He could run any scenario he could start with his available resources and see how it would turn out without cost. He could go all in with everything he had to gather even minute details about his enemies, rivals, or resources without any risk.
More over if he encountered any kind of unexpected trouble he could approach it from two dramatically diverse approaches and pick whichever scenario went better for him.
In short, he could save scum real life, and he was very very good at exploiting that.
Unfortunately that power of his only was no risk if you didn't know he was your enemy, and Iwashis enemy simply by virtue of being someone not on his pay role unwilling to bow to him. More importantly he was mine for just what he had done, would do if I hadn't intervened, and was currently doing at this exact moment.
Explaining all of this to Lisa while carefully dancing around the fact that they were in truth employed by said villain for Brian had the former looking very pale, and the latter looking very concerned about someone who had been puppeting their lives without him ever realizing it.
Or maybe that was just me informing him that Coil habitually tortured him for information in his discarded timelines with Lisa confirming the truth of my statements with her own Thinker power.
To be honest... it was almost too easy to convince them. Once I explained Coil's power the rest just slid into place. Coil calls them up just like I did, grabs them, restrains and has his fun, gaining more and more knowledge to manipulate them without them ever being the wiser. I listed his habits, his behavior, his tendencies towards success in the face of massive gambles.
The contradictions between bold planning and the lack of direct challenge to even contemporary powers like the Merchants. Questioned just how he could afford such over the top expenses such as former military forces and tinkertech weapons while making such a little impression on the local crime world.
All to quickly the simplest answer became the one I was feeding them. That Coil was playing a subtler game, and manipulating everyone in search of his grand prize.
Brian still almost backed out regardless. This mess was out of his league and going to dark places he had no plans on getting involved in.
Also known as the 'supervillain' Grue, Brian was chiefly small time. He had a good head for tactics for his age, skill and experience in unarmed combat, a strong build, good set of morals for someone on the darker side of the tracks, and a kid sister he would fight the world for. He could create pools of darkness that he could see through but others could not.
The darkness also ate up sound better then some professional recording rooms and had locked up...potential that could kick him up a good few notches in terms of danger rating. But for all of that he was also a very practica lyoung man. He knew when to fold them, knew when the risk began to outweigh any level of potential reward.
After all, even if a job could bring you a fortune, you couldn't spend it if you were busy pushing up daisies.
There was no reason he would want to getting into a mess like this.
"You drop me off nearby, we're done. There is no risk to you, all I need is Tattletale here to tell me where," I pointed to Lisa.
"Right after you tell me just how crazy this guy is. You just want to walk in and try and take him flat out?"
"I can slug things out with an Endbringerin melee. I'm not worried about his men, I'm worried about getting to him," I replied dryly. "If I just try to set up a meeting he'll find an excuse to avoid it in the kept timeline when the one I get close goes pearshaped on him."
"Okay, I get that. You're still bettering everything you can take him like that. What if you get caught and he finds out I'm involved?" he asks.
"Then you're screwed a slight bit earlier.Think about this Brian," I stressed. "I knew who you are, who you work with, shit you don't even tell your family. Either I'm right and trying to get you to help me take out a mutual enemy before it's to late. Or I'm a madman who knows way too much about you and is willing to take on an armored bunker full of ex-soldiers with laser guns." I quirked my eyebrow at him. "The way I see it, your best options are to trust me, hope I get shot to bits by said lasers, or humor me enough to let me go focus on someone else letting you get out of it in one piece."
His hands clenched tight and the frown on his face would send a lesser man running. I didn't blame him, I was basically blackmailing him at this point.
But he followed Lisa here, so I had to convince him. One way or another.
"Fine," he grunted out. "But we're not doing this half cocked. If you are right, and Coil's planning this big move. There has to be some way we can turn that to our advantage."
"That's where you come in," I agreed, eyes tracking to the side, "Or rather you do."
Lisa Willborn, also known as Tattletale had the ability of super-deduction. She was basically Sherlock Homes without the martial skill, fake limp, or control over her mouth.
But those things could come with time, if she chose to gain them anyway. The chief issue with her was that her life had basically been a series of people forcing her into intellectual servitude, and hence she tended to be proportionally more willing to help you the less you tried to force her into helping.
Irony at it's finest people.
Lucky for me Coil happened to recruit her to her job in the Undersiders at gunpoint. That hadn't exactly made her well predisposed to working with him even before I gave her the hint needed for her power to whisper every little horrible thing he had done to her into her ears.
Then again that might just be what her brain was currently pulling together about me. I was just a bundle of unhappy revelations after all. The only real reason she hadn't ripped into me yet was that I kept pointing her back at Coil. The speed of thought was fast, jumps of intuition moved quickly even before they were improved by orders of magnitude by omnicidal alien hardware but it wasn't instant. More importantly it was attached to a human teenager. A smart one yes, but still just as prone to distraction and bias as everyone else.
And Lisa had quite a few well earned bias' when it came to Coil.
"I'm thinking," she said, rubbing at her forehead. That was bad. Normally she was a talker, to the point it was actually a big weakness. If she wasn't talking it meant she was having problems, rubbing her forehead indicated she had a headache, meaning her power was at the limits of what it'd give her as well.
"Don't burn yourself out," I reminded her, "We've only got one good shot at this. He's going to want to update his data sooner or later, and I'm not willing to silence either of you," they hadn't done anything warranting that after all.
Brian didn't look happy at that train of thought, but at the same time seemed a little relieved at the statment that I wasn't willing to go that far.
Lisa only cracked a small smile, "Well that's relieving." She instantly knew I was speaking the truth burning up more use of her powers to read me like an open book.
It was times like this I wish I was favored by She Who Lives In Her Name rather then The Ebon Dragon. Psychic powers would make me feel like I was on a much more level playing field right now.
Unfortunately while Tattletale did have that ability, it was a finite resource to her. I wasn't sure the exact mechanics, but I knew if she used her power to much it built up a headache, and judging by the way she was rubbing at her temple she'd already used it far more then she should have.
"Just focus on Coil for now. If you want to analyse me later and figure out my deal, just pick a time and place. I'll owe you that much for this, but this is our best chance at Coil. I'm asking a lot by asking for your trust but if this pays off now it pays off big and you already know I'm not going to burn you," I informed her offering logic.
She scowled, "I know that already. How do you-" she twitched, "Nevermind, so... You're sure you can manage a frontal assault?"
I considered it, I was on a full tank and it would be an in closed environment, with lots of hard things nearby to drive people into, ample cover, and nice thick walls which would hide my anima flare nicely.
"I take 'em," I replied, "Death toll might be high though. Most of the mercenaries are just guns for hire, I'd prefer not to put them in the dirt if I didn't have to."
Brian looked less comfortable with that, "You sure we can't just call in the PRT, blind tip?"
"His civilian identity is a PRT contractor, one high up on their command chain," I informed him.
"Ugh," he grimaced, "Okay seriously, I am not comfortable playing this fast and loose with the rules. I mean I know they're unwritten but-"
"If he's a civilian contractor then we can probably get the PRT to hush it up. They'll crack down hard just to keep things under wraps," Lisa observed.
"No good," I shook my head, "He's got patsies set up to take the fall for him. Coil's power is subtle, there's no way anyone could prove he wasn't just some normal unpowered human who happened to be a tactical genius with megalomania."
"I don't like the idea of a terminal solution," Brian admitted.
"Coil's a monster," I shook my head, "He has to go,fast. His connections are far and thick enough that if we don't cut him off completely he'll get loose."
"How complete are we talking?" Brian asked still looking for way out of the less permanent option.
"You really want to know? This isn't stuff you can unlearn easily," I warned him.
Lisa's eyes went wide, "The PRT Director is a-!" She was cut off by my shoving my hand over her mouth.
"Really don't want to know," I repeated to him grimly.
He rocked back a bit at that, looking at Lisa who was no longer tying to talk, and had easily pulled my hand away now looking very concerned and summarized thusly; "Shit."
"A great deep pit of it," I agreed. "Look... I'll do it," I said not feeling exactly comfortable with this myself. It had to be done but even if he was a monster I didn't like the idea of killing another human. "I just need the opening to do it."
Lisa's eyes flashed open for a moment, "I think I have an idea."
About time already. The wait had been killing me.