Interludes: The Deranged Scientist, The Man with a Plan

Janus was stooped over his workbench within Cauldron's secret base (oh and how glorious it was to have actual resources again!) welding a part into place when he heard the door to his lab open with a slight hiss. He glanced up to see Mr. Suit march in, body language screaming fury.

He carefully set his tools aside, raised his goggles, and stood up to greet him. "Hey buddy, how's it going?"

The words had barely left his mouth when Suit moved with Thinker (Janus liked the Earth Bet terminology. Much better defined categories, in certain instances at least) precision and struck like a cobra, hitting Janus right in the center of his windpipe causing him to choke and take a step back.

He jumped through time.

"Hey buddy-" Dodge backward, get hit in the groin by knee.

Jump. "Hey buddy-" Dodge backward, block incoming knee, and then get hit by a right cross across the side of the face.

This went on for a few iterations before finally Janus found the exact right combination of blocks and dodges to make Suit simply throw his hands up in frustration. "Alright, how many iterations did it take you to do that?"

"None, I just know you so well." Janus lied, even though they both knew the answer was somewhere around seventeen, having done this song and dance before. Though Janus refused to count the times where he'd pissed off Suit to the point where he drew his gun instead of using hand to hand. Getting shot hurt! It was an extremely delicate balance to make sure his old pal gave up out of annoyance, rather than escalate. "Now what's got you so pissy? Have you been drinking again?"

Suit ground his teeth. "Janus, this is not the time for your games. Taylor has been taken."

Ah. That.

"Meh, she'll be fine." Janus shrugged, lowering his goggles back over his eyes.

"You knew this would happen, didn't you?" Suit snapped angrily, face slowly turning red. Wowza, Suit was taking this way too seriously! "Janus, that girl is our last hope!"

"No. There is another."

"Now is not the time for Star Wars quotes!"

Janus gave him a grin and a thumbs up. "It's always time for Star Wars quotes." A gunshot sounded. He jumped through time.

"-last hope!"

"I am aware." Janus replied seriously, taking off the jokester cap and switching to the serious one. For Suit to be on such a hair trigger… well it spoke rather loudly of his friend's mental state. He was usually way more in control. "But I didn't tell you because you would have done something premature and stupid." He gave Suit a flat look. "Like causing a reality altering paradox."

That actually made Suit glance away with an embarrassed look, anger leaving him. "That was one time."

"Uh huh." Janus nodded solemnly. "I totally believe you. Besides, I had another reason too. Another time traveler asked me to keep it close to my chest."

"There aren't any other time travelers around." Suit said skeptically, brows furrowing in thought, before slow realization began to take hold. "Except…"

"Yup, your baby girl is alive!" Janus cackled, enjoying the look of shocked horror on Suit's face. "Didn't think she had it in her, but she stopped by a few days ago. Was really confused about where and when she was for a while too. Poor girl has been through the ringer."

"How?" Suit managed to choke out. "Not even you truly survived that detonation. The total destruction of our world."

"She's literally built different." Janus shrugged. "She may have less experience than me, but remember, I made her powers even better."

"Where is she now?"

Janus shrugged. "Dunno."

"Janus…"

"Suit…"

"Where is my daughter?!" Suit snapped, hand reaching for his sidearm.

Alright, Janus was about done with this. He froze time, took Suit's gun, then shot him six times in the chest. "Would you shut up you sanctimonious, overemotional bastard!" Janus howled, kicking the corpse a few times for good measure. He sighed, jumped, then put a restraining hand on Suit's wrist to stop him from drawing the weapon.

Suit flinched at his sudden motion and his furious eyes went flat as his Thinker power took over. "You just killed me, didn't you?"

"You shot me first. Three times in the last few minutes. It was preemptive self defense." Janus let go of Suit's arm. "Now let's talk about this like adults and-"

Suit shot him in the groin. The son of a bitch.

Janus jumped again and then dodged the bullet right before Suit could actually fire. "Low blow dude!"

Suit took a restraining breath and stowed the pistol. "You're right. My apologies." He took another deep breath. "Where is Jade now?"

"I genuinely don't know." Janus said, raising his hands in a placative gesture. "And don't go shooting me. Just because I know a lot of stuff doesn't mean I'm omnipotent."

"Do you know what she's planning at least?" Suit asked.

"You're the one with a Thinker power dude. I gave it to you for good reason, I know you can use it." He said.

Suit took another long breath. "The main Thinker portion of my power is being… finicky. It always is when it comes to Jade. Too many variable on what she can actually do." He glared. "Thanks to someone giving her bullshit powers."

"You're welcome."

"And as to the other aspect of my powers… you know I don't like using it." Suit said with a low sigh, sitting in one of Janus' spare chairs.

"Buckle on the big boy pants my guy." Janus sat, taking off the serious personality and adopting the more compassionate one. He was still capable of making a passable fake. "Ask the questions. It isn't that hard."

"How would you like it," Suit began, voice going quiet. "If every time you jumped through time you heard your wife's voice in your ears? Your daughter's?"

Janus shrugged. "You know that I don't really care anymore. Literally excised it from my brain."

That told Suit enough though. The two old friends sat in silence for a while, but by the way that Suit closed his eyes and began to tear up slightly, Janus knew he was using the other aspect of his powers. Suit could ask questions and his power would postulate an answer. It wasn't perfect, but it was extremely powerful, especially with how many minds Suit had consumed. Unfortunately, the voice his power answered with always belonged to someone he had once cared for. And unlike Janus, Suit still felt very strongly about the people he'd lost.

Suit opened his eyes and scrubbed them with the back of his wrist. Wuss.

"Are you done with your little self pity session?" Janus asked mockingly.

"One day, when this is all over, I will find a way to kill you permanently." Suit whispered.

"I look forward to it." Janus chuckled, then went back to work.

Mr. Suit approached Earth-Bet's strongest hero as he gazed out across the ocean with no small amount of trepidation. Eidolon had access to practically any power, albeit bound by sets of three, but ever since learning how to recharge his powers, the once waning hero was stronger than ever.

"It got away." Eidolon growled as Suit neared. "We were so close to finally killing one of them and then that bastard Magician had to screw it all up." He turned to look at Suit and the super was struck once more by how ordinary Eidolon's truce face was. He managed to pull off the 'mysterious and powerful' hero angle very well, but once the mask came off he was just another man of average appearance.

"Yes, Magician has always been a pain in the ass." Suit agreed, thinking of several of his encounters with the villain.

"And now he has Olympia." The hero shook his head. "What exactly is he going to do?"

"Nothing good. I know he desires her powers, but how he's planning on stealing them without also killing himself… well that's anyone's guess." Suit shook his head. "Regardless, I have a Plan to get her back."

"You and your Plans." Eidolon sighed. "You're almost as bad as Contessa sometimes."

Suit ignored the jibe, no matter how true it was. "You are our best hope and getting Taylor back. You are the most powerful parahuman on the planet short of Scion."

Eidolon scoffed. "I've already tried taking on Magician, remember? All three of us together, the three strongest heroes on Earth, couldn't stop him."

"Perhaps." Suit shrugged. "But that was before you had learned to regain your strength as you have now and you are more prepared this time." Suit glanced out at the setting sun. "I believe with the right powerset, you can be more than a match for Magician."

Eidolon shot him an incredulous look. "He crushed us last time. Could have killed us."

"He didn't crush you." Suit said. "He was far more injured than he appeared."

"But-"

"Magician is a pathological liar." Suit cut him off. "Extremely powerful, yes, but so powerful that he could fight all three of you without consequence? No, while you were nowhere near close to truly killing him, you did hurt him. Now that you are prepared, I am sure we can do more."

"How?"

"Sit down with me and close your eyes." Suit settled himself onto the rooftop. "Please." He gestured.

Eidolon gave him an annoyed glare, but Suit continued to stare placidly. Finally the hero sighed and did as the thinker instructed. "I swear, you tell me to hold your hands and breathe in together…"

Suit extended both hands with that same expression before chuckling at Eidolon's look and retracting them. "No, as entertaining as that might be, the goal here is to get you in sync with your powers. Now do as I said and close your eyes. Focus upon your powers. Now dismiss them, one by one."

Eidolon's eyes remained closed and expression still faintly annoyed as he seemed to do as Suit had instructed. "Alright, now what?"

"Do it again, but this time, pay attention to those powers. Where they come from, their source if you will." Suit said.

Eidolon twitched as he seemed to obey Suit's instructions, but then let out a faint growl. "This is pointless. I've been doing this for decades and I've never felt whatever it is you're trying to have me feel."

"Because you've never actually looked for it." Suit replied as his communicator buzzed. "Keep going. I'll be back in a moment. Door me."

A golden portal formed in the air and Suit stepped through and into Cauldron's main base of operations. Contessa stood waiting patiently. Suit smiled at the Thinker and then gave her a slight nod when he noted her posture. Unsure. "Your power is off. Good."

"Your advice was appreciated." Contessa said. "My power was indeed interfering with my judgment and-"

"Doing it again." Suit chided as she unconsciously began to run a Path to make talking to him easier.

She stopped and then forcibly allowed the Path to drop. "Sorry. It's not… easy being a person."

"It never is." Suit said, sighing deeply as he recalled his own periods buried so deeply beneath his Thinker power that his humanity had seemed nothing more than a distant shadow. Fortuna had been that way for far too long.

The thing about powers, be they derived from the Entities or from the Storm, was that they were not human. The Path to Victory and Suit's own 'Plans' were powerful and convenient, but they were not infallible. Fortuna had spent so long trapped in her own power, wading through blood to try to achieve an optimum goal that didn't even truly exist, that she had lost her humanity. Her power led her to do some truly heinous things that Suit knew could have been avoided if Contessa had spent only a second looking for a different Path, but because the easiest Path involved killing… Well, Suit knew how that cycle played out. It was also the time period where his powers had grown exponentially.

Some might say that humanity didn't matter in the face of complete annihilation. That logic and hard choices needed to be what decided the fate of human lives. Suit believed in both, but only to an extent. If they sacrificed everything to protect humanity, then what did it matter what was left? It wouldn't be human, it'd be a shell of something once beautiful, worth protecting. Maybe that made Suit a hypocrite, considering some of the things he'd done to try and stop Janus and then later the two Entities. But then again, he was only human.

"What are you having David do exactly?" Fortuna asked, breaking Suit from his thoughts.

"We'll see." He shrugged. "Hopefully something useful."

Fortuna's eyes narrowed. "You don't even know?"

"My Plans aren't as straightforward and step by step as your Path. Sometimes, I have to innovate, experiment." Suit shrugged. "I know that Eidolon is the key, that he is important and that it obviously has to do with his powers, but I don't know exactly what I need to do to tap into that potential, so I'm having him do some basic exercises right now, try to get in tune with his passenger maybe."

"His passenger is dead though." Fortuna's brow furrowed in confusion.

"Maybe." Suit admitted. "Or maybe it's as close to death as we mere mortals can comprehend for a being such as a passenger. The Entities are the closest things we've met to gods." A faint smile played across his lips. "And even dead gods still dream."

"That has the stink of one of your quotes about it."

"See, you don't need a Path to get to know people better, you just spend time around them." Suit laughed. "Now what is it that you called me here for?"

"The Doctor just wanted to know what you were doing. She's having Clairvoyant keep an eye on you. She believes finding and aiding Taylor Hebert should be our main priority right now." Fortuna said.

"We already know where she is." Suit shrugged. "One of the first questions I asked of my power."

Fortuna's spine stiffened and eyes took on the cold look of running a Path. "Then we need to assemble a strike team, now. I can have approximately two hundred and forty seven combat capable capes gathered in less than an hour and-"

"Numbers won't mean anything against Magician, just like they won't mean a thing against Scion." Suit said, bopping her on the head the way he might have one of his daughters when they were young. "Magician doesn't yet have a surefire way to steal Taylor's powers and he's never been one for torture just for the sake of it. She has some time and we need Eidolon to be ready first. He is our, pardon the pun, Trump-card."

"This is no time for puns or jokes. The fate of the world is at stake." The cold look didn't leave her eyes. Old habits die hard.

Suit rolled his eyes. "I'll go check on our friend then. Door to Eidolon."

Another portal formed and Suit waved farewell to Contessa's back as she swiftly began to move to begin her Path. "How's it going Dave?" Suit called as he approached the concentrating hero.

Eidolon, who normally got pissed when Suit played with his name, raised a hand for silence as sweat beaded along his brow. Finally his eyes opened, alight with excitement. "I think I know what you were having me look for."

Suit grinned like a shark and sat down again. "Good. Then we begin the really fun part."