Sometimes, she wondered if people knew that Power, had diminishing returns.
She was probably one of the most individually powerful people on the planet. If she wanted to, she could go to almost any nation on the planet, and tirelessly eradicate its defenders, its leaders, even most of its Parahuman's, faster than anybody could react. News probably wouldn't spread outside that country what she had done until she was finished, and installed herself as leader of her petty little kingdom.
But ultimately, she was smart enough to realize that doing such a thing would be pointless. It was easy to use power to destroy. To tear things down. It was easy to ambush. Frighteningly so in fact. Even a relatively middling Parahuman had a reasonable chance of killing herself, Legend, or Eidolon if they planned things just right. But again, what was the point? Having goals that included anything less than the total subjugation of everything in your immediate vicinity, meant that Power quickly became less and less of use. Once you had enough of it, a wise woman would simply trade it for Influence, which was - unless you were being very petty or stupid - different than actual power.
Influence did things that Power never could. Power wouldn't stop people from assaulting a dictator in their sleep. Power wouldn't eradicate crime in a city. In many cases, Power barely even guaranteed personal well being for some. But Influence? Influence opened doors. Influence stopped men without them ever knowing why or how. Most people didn't make that distinction. Power did tend to come with its fair share of influence. But never quite enough. That's why it was always the smart Parahumans she had to be wary of. She feared not the man who could hurl an Endbringer into space - if she had to, she could resolve that problem in dozens of ways, very few of them using direct power. No, what Alexandria worried after the most, were people with just enough power.
Just enough power was essentially the true misery of the Parahuman condition. Agents were terrifying that way when naturally acquired. They always gave you just enough rope to hang yourself with.
Of course, this was all mostly just her waxing poetic, in the microseconds between being in one location and the next. She had been working as Alexandria for nearly two days now, non-stop, without a single break. Without pausing to even take in her surroundings, she blurred into motion, flying around the room she found herself in, in a corkscrew pattern that rapidly took her entire body at Mach speed through every area in the room in seconds, destroying the shipment of Tinkertech there, and just about everything else.
She wasn't worried about catching innocents in the crossfire here. The Gesselschaft Tinker who made most of these weapons had a Kill Order that extended to anyone working with or handling his technology. There was simply something expressly disturbing about a Nazi who produced weapons that instigated spontaneous combustion in their targets that unnerved most people.
It was a moot point regardless because as she landed in the center of the room, and quickly reported the location to the nearest PRT squad to secure, she noted that there wasn't anyone here in the first place. She wouldn't have been able to tell at the speed she was moving at. Not until she got in front of a mirror at least.
The Gesselschaft had been pushing hard, all over the country like this. She understood why of course. They had nearly no traction in America. If they could have the Empire in Brockton make them a foothold, a beachhead, then nearly any cost was worth it.
When she finished her survey of the area, she took off again, flying high into the sky above the city so she could get a better view of the area. Many people forgot that before her, the name she had taken was associated much more with intelligence than simple brute force. She allowed them too - because being regarded as an unstoppable physical force and nothing else was helpful against many villains - but it definitely underplayed what made her truly dangerous. High in the sky as she was, her prodigious mind was able to pick the patterns in the traffic below. The paths people's lives took. And given that this was her city, the place she was most familiar with, she had dozens, if not hundreds of thousands of perfectly remembered looks at the city just like this. Enough that she was confident she could track every urban development, and most of the economic fortune of the city purely by analyzing those memories.
A tac she took now, in order to locate the next cache of surprises the Elite had warned her about.
Alexandria wasn't stupid. She understood why the Elite had warned her about the Gesselschaft's sudden move into the city. It neatly struck two birds with one stone. For one, even most villains disliked Nazi's just on principle. And for another, a new Gang meant new competition, even if the circles the Elite typically ran in were a far cry from the dingy back street deals that most Parahuman gangs dealt with.
She wondered how the girl would handle things. She usually didn't take much of an interest in individuals such as her. A human shaped Master power that provided her with a strange pseudo Brute defence was definitely unnervingly similar to Manton in some respects, but she wouldn't otherwise have pegged her as worth paying attention to as anything except an unusually powerful Parahuman. It wasn't common but it happened from time to time in cesspools like the bay. She was brought to mind of Gu Poison. The ancient Chinese practice of filling a jar with poisonous insects and sealing it. When the jar was later opened, it was said that the only surviving insect would be particularly potent and dangerous, having absorbed the venom and ferocity of all its competitors.
She knew the comparison wasn't perfect but it worked. Parahumans came from misery. They also tended to make misery. Some places, like Brockton Bay, bad an almost perfectly measurable increase in them.
So no, the girl didn't interest her for her power. What drew her attention was something Contessa had noted, almost in passing, at there last meeting. Or rather, she had noted it. Contessa had merely taken in what she had noticed and adjusted her plans accordingly. She had been reading through her reports at the time, when Contessa had stepped into her office in order to advise her on all the various minor things she would have to do in order to keep everything on track. When the woman had gotten to her one line suggestion to 'allow Taylor Hebert to have her projection finish murdering the Empire Eighty-Eight she had been forced to pause.
The girl hadn't even started killing the Empire Eighty-Eight. She had barely even come into conflict with them in fact, until this most recent offensive spurred on by their parent organization. She could still remember the slightly confused look on Contessa's face when she had asked for clarification.
"Her Projection is murderous. It will soon decide to begin executing the Empire using those blast in can fire from its sword. Their reach is far greater than reports have implied." The suited woman had explained neutrally.
Which, was the crux of the problem. Because Nexus' Projection no longer held a sword. At the time it had been a fairly friendly seeming Panda of all things. Most demonstrably, it had been a Healer.
Contessa had merely blinked at that. Then tilted her head in that way she did when readjusting a path.
"Ah. It changes. Please keep me informed of any changes to the Projection as they come. I will have to form a new path for each." The world's most dangerous thinker surmised casually, before exiting the office.
She wouldn't quite call it being a blind spot. Not in the same sense that they usually used the word. Eidolon, the Endbringers, Scion. Just those five beings would cause Contessa's paths to fail. The girl's power, however, seemed to provide something of a loophole. When it changed - and as far as she had been able to gather from reports, changing was a key feature of the power - it would register to Contessa in almost the same way as a new trigger. It wouldn't distort the path, or break it - but things would need adjusting.
So she waited. And she watched. And now, she was putting out fires, and musing on what to do.
She could probably take the girl underwing. She was fairly certain there were no teenage brutes her age that would turn down the opportunity to functionally apprentice under her. But that put her just a tad too close to Brockton Bay for her liking. Especially at a time when someone seemingly benevolent had arisen to take the rains and showcase whether or not civilization could reasonably survive after the end. She supposed she would at least meet the girl at the next Endbringer battle. Thinker support had indicated she was far too idealistic not to show up with a power like hers.
She just hoped the girl would learn to leverage her Power into Influence in time to make something of herself. The ability to obliterate city blocks wasn't actually worth all that much when you wanted to save people. To be a Hero. It was much more helpful when you were a soldier. Doing what you had to, because no one else would.
Alexandria hadn't considered herself a Hero in years. She would leave that to younger capes, with lighter burdens.
Right now, she had a war to fight. And so, she flew off, having already reasoned out where the next cache of equipment would be, ready to destroy it, and everyone near it, exactly as she had the last.
A/N: I think Alexandria gets a bad rap for being the most evil bitch of the west. She obviously is the biggest bitch in the whole wide world, but I find the idea that she would just drop what she's doing and rush to a new capes side to involve herself - either positively or negatively - in their life kind of weird, especially since it happens in alot of fics. Cauldron doesn't typically step in to completely ruin someones day unless they're going to do something blatantly detrimental to the continuation of humanity in their immediate area of influence, and since Contessa can't predict Triggers, sometimes they fail to even do that in any meaningful way. If someone is going to pop up as what amounts to a benevolent Nilbog, or even just a less assholish Nilbog, I get the impression she would just keep note of them in her head for if anything happened and they were needed.
Also! IF YOU MADE AN OMAKE IN THE LAST LIKE, 75 PAGES, AND I MISSED IT, PM ME! I PROMISE I READ THEM ALL I'VE JUST BEEN BUSY!