Thomas Calvert was having something of a strange time in his life.
It all started out with a new Parahuman.
On the one hand, she served as an excellent example of everything wrong with the PRT and its current leadership. A phenomenally powerful Parahuman, who would only get more powerful with time, that had not only triggered because of the Protectorate's incompetence but had been alienated by one of their own.
It should have been so easy. A practical slam dunk for him. After all, his ultimate goal was to position himself to wrest control over that organization from his one time teammate, ostensibly by doing everything in his power to portray her as being incompetent as possible.
There were just a few problems with that.
For one, he found himself in the awkward position of having many of his plans move forward too quickly. Despite the ruinous nature of Piggot's relationship with basically any parahuman she came across, Calvert - otherwise known as the villain Coil - actually found himself defending the woman. Not because of any lingering loyalty from their shared trip into hell so many years ago. No, he was forced to defend her because he simply wasn't ready to replace her yet. It was honestly infuriating to the man. Never before had something gone so perfectly for him and yet so utterly, horrifyingly wrong.
What's more, Nexus seemed to be some kind of agent of pure chaos. Disregarding her own considerable ability to inflict harm on her surroundings when provoked, the girl simply seemed to do whatever the hell she wanted, and then bumble directly into villains along the way. If she were any other Parahuman, he would have expected her to have died or been severely injured by now. Even her most notable failures were still spectacular in how much dust they apparently kicked up.
Take, for instance, all the careful work he had put into eventually ousting the Empire Eighty-Eight from the city, in as vast and catastrophic a way as possible. He had done everything right. When the girl had first triggered, he had made the calculated move of directing them to her missing father by the simple expedient of having one of the gangsters on his payroll 'stumble' across the man. He hadn't even had to do anything past that point. Kaiser might have considered his little display of power 'making a point', but as someone who had tried to have the girl assassinated multiple times, Coil was confident that placing the two on a collision course could only mean good things for him.
He now deeply regretted that choice.
He had learned early on that what she could do and what she actually chose to do were two very different concepts. On the face of it, she was a Brute with a projection that was - likewise - a Brute. Albeit, a Brute capable of going toe to toe with Lung long enough to eventually drown the dragon of Kyushu in the bay like an unwanted pet. Generally speaking, this made her perfect for his needs. She was heroic, she was vulnerable, and she could be manipulated to his ends. In his mind's eye, when he envisioned himself as the new Director of the PRT for the ENE region, the girl served as his replacement for Lung. A heroic Marquis if you will. It didn't really matter if she joined the PRT or not - although he had carefully lined up several 'favours' he could do to make things up to her the moment he took power, just in case. All that mattered was that her continued presence would deter other criminals from thinking they could make a home for themselves in his city. Meanwhile, 'Coil' would be free to run the criminal underbelly of things, trusting in his mastery of asymmetric warfare to carry the day against the otherwise all-powerful bruiser. He had already run several tests with the Undersiders using strategy's the Elite had pioneered against Alexandria in order to test his theory, and had found everything working to his satisfaction.
However, counter to the butting of heads he would have expected from a normal Parahuman, the girl seemed curiously against the idea of picking a fight with the Empire. He understood why of course. Her father was something of an obvious vulnerability to her. One that even he had considered using on more than one occasion. He had tried, in the first week or so, to see what she would do in his absence.
He had dropped that timeline.
And so he watched in silent dismay as the girl all but accidentally handed the city to the Nazi's. Under normal circumstances, he would have tried to form an alliance with the other local villains against the threat. Lung was proud but he wasn't stupid. And Skidmark was... well he was stupid, but not suicidally so most of the time. Unfortunately, he quickly found himself to be the only villain left in the city.
Now though, with that chapter of things closed, he found himself energized and ready to move on with things. He was already in the process of moving the Travelers into town early, and the Undersiders were his creatures so long as he continued to fund them, which meant that as long as he played his cards right, he was the only game in town.
Now, sitting in the office of one of his throwaway bases, he rubbed at the bridge of his nose in thought. Then split the timeline.
In Timeline A, he pressed a button on his intercom and spoke. In Timeline B, he gave the order for a group of his mercenaries to move out.
"Bring her in." He said cooly, leaning back to tent his fingers atop his desk like a corporate boss giving a review. Several seconds later, Tattletale flounced in, stepping quickly around the chair on the opposite side of his desk and sitting down.
"Hey Boss. How's life?" She chirped, and Coil had to temporarily suppress the urge to shoot her in the face with his sidearm. He'd done it before after all. His problem presently was two-fold. For one, the irritating girl had come to the conclusion that he presently needed her out and about more than he needed a drugged up magic eight ball, and for another, her power had obviously told her something about the nature of his ongoing plans, and more specifically, how they were not, until very recently, going as expected.
"Wonderfully." He said dryly instead of allowing his anger to show, pulling a drawer out and allowing his hand to rest on the gun there for a second before reaching for the manilla folder he kept underneath it. The slight twitch from the girl as he did so was highly gratifying. He had, after all, actually decided to shoot her at that moment, if only for a split second. With a snap of his wrist he dropped the folder in front of the girl, pleased with how she held her tongue as he did so.
"You've said your team has been having problems with Shadowstalker and her new partner." He stated flatly, making sure to put all the emphasis on Shadowstalker even though she was the least of his current problems.
"Predator now, but yeah. Her partner is some kind of Trump. Like a long-range Hatchetface. I think she can detect and track Parahumans too." Tattletale said idly, using a finger to drag the folder towards her and popping it open to flip through the pages contained within.
Then she snapped it shut, holding it at arms length like a poisonous viper.
"You sure you want me looking at this Boss? The PRT doesn't love it when you out their guys." Tattletale pointed out. Then blinked once and grinned at him.
"Of course you do, because you're tying up loose ends and trying to stay on Nexus' good side. You know I actually kind of like her. She's all right for a white hat." She intimated, reopening the folder. He lifted an eyebrow at her, waiting for her to continue. He had found the best way to mislead Tattletale was to simply nudge her towards an incorrect conclusion on her own and then act as though she was right all along, which in Coil's case meant trying to hide how annoyed he was.
It wasn't hard. He just had to hide how annoying he found her.
"Your tastes aside," He drawled, "The girl tried to murder you. I find turnabout fair play. There's no room in the city for someone who flaunts the rules so recklessly."
The 'besides me' went unsaid but noted if the way Tattletale rolled her eyes at him was anything to go by. She was becoming annoyingly independent again. It would be time to drag her into one of his 'private interviews' soon.
"Plus the trump scares the shit out of you." Tattletale chimed in, grinning at him. Drat. He was hoping she wouldn't have noticed that. It wasn't so much that he was too concerned about the girl, since she was unlikely to ever be able to target him with the way he operated. It was simply that someone who could detect Parahumans and would inevitably end up being arrested at some point would be very bad for his tenure as the Director of the PRT.
"Tattletale." He said firmly, allowing some of his seething hatred for the girl to shine through in the single word.
"Yeah, yeah. Do we get any support for this job? Crimes dangerous in a city with Nexus in it." The blonde pointed out, flipping back and forth between two of the pages in the folder.
"If you require it. I doubt you will." He answered patiently, reigning in his temper. Tattletale tilted her head slightly at that but otherwise failed to comment. As previously stated, the Undersiders were actually fairly well off when it came to Nexus. They were hit and run specialists. Unless the girl had recently acquired some spectacular ability to track people, he doubted she would be able to reach them in time to stop them from achieving their goals and leaving.
Well, provided they started out quickly enough.
"That will be all. I'll contact you with the details later." He said dismissively, already tired of Tattletales presence, and unable to easily chastise her while his second timeline was otherwise occupied.
She said something pithy as she left, but he paid it no mind, instead turning his attention to his computer screen where a number of helmet camera's were sending their recordings. He watched as several of his men approached the wrought iron eyesore that Trainwreck had made of the little garage he had taken up in. They quickly circled the building until they were adjacent to the office, and then silently began to arm thermite charges on the wall.
"Go." He stated coldy, watching with interest as the charge melted through the wall to reveal a shocked middle age man blinking awake in a half crouch from where he had been laying on the floor. A burst of gunfire took him in the chest, sending his lifeless body tumbling to the ground.
Then his men started screaming. For all of one second at least. It wasn't her fastest response time, but the speed Nexus could murder people at never ceased to amaze him. He had made something of a habit of this, once he realized that she seemed to be acquiring new powers. It was a guilty pleasure of his. The first time he had done it, weeks ago, there had been a yellow light, like a bomb going off, and then he had died. He had tried to emulate the event the day afterward - from a safe distance away of course - and found a disconcerting yellow skull hanging over the entire city while the buildings and people evaporated under its grinning visage.
Subsequent attempts had worked out better. With the girl becoming less indiscriminate, and more focused - seeking out and murdering nearly every Villain in the city over the course of several hours using a variety of techniques he had never seen before and had failed to coax out of her again.
Today, she picked up one of his soldiers helmet cameras, looking into it for a few seconds, and then stepped sideways off-camera, and into his office.
He closed that timeline hurriedly, blinking once languidly.
Then he stretched a hand towards his desk and withdrew a proposal that he had been debating for a few days now.
He wasn't really a proponent of the old adage 'If you can't beat them, join them', but he did see the wisdom of staying out of Nexus way for the most part.
A little goodwill towards his civilian identity would go a long way after all.
Carefully placing the proposal under one arm, Coil carefully stood from his seat and stretched. Then he carefully opened the door to his office and made the trip downstairs to the car, and driver, that were awaiting him there. As he approached the driver's side door opened, and a woman in a sharply tailored business suit stepped out, her dirty blond hair tied up in a neat little bun on the back of her head that completely belied the hungry, nearly desperate look of longing in her face as she watching him approach.
He would have rolled his eyes at her if he could. Unfortunately, he was currently portraying himself as her ally, so the gesture couldn't be allowed past his thoughts.
Instead, he waited for her to open the back door of the vehicle for him, and then slid inside, withdrawing a small pill case and tapping out a single pill as he waited for her to get into the seat in front of him.
"B-boss I don't think-" The woman stuttered nervously, tightly gripping the steering wheel in front of her but not actually starting the vehicle.
"Sssh Pet, I know." He whispered, leaning forward and extending a single finger with the pill atop it.
He would be lying if he said he didn't enjoy this. There was something nice about having someone stupid around who didn't have to focus so hard on manipulating.
With a mild whimper, the woman extended her tongue, and Coil gently placed the pill on it, before withdrawing his hand. For a few seconds, there was no response, and then the woman relaxed noticeably, then started the car.
Coil leaned back in his seat, pressing the button to raise the partition between himself and his driver. Then smiled as the vehicle pulled out of the parking garage, as invisibly as it had come.