The Kaiser's New Clothes
Chapter 1: They Saved Kaiser's Brain
Amy Dallon drew the hospital curtain aside, looked upon on her next patient, and despaired.
"Oh fuck off," she groaned, rolling her eyes.
"Guggghhhhfuuuuu..." Kaiser slurred.
He was sitting up in bed, leaning against the headboard, his face completely covered by bandages like a mummy. He would have been completely unidentifiable had he not still been coated in a full suit of armour from the neck down, the hospital's blankets torn to shreds by the blades, with only a single blue eye visible through all the wrappings.
Purity sat in a chair beside his bed, arms folded over her chest and legs crossed, looking at him almost pityingly. She still wore her white costume, now damp, dirty, and torn in places, but she wasn't using her light powers at the moment, leaving her plain face and mousy brown hair clearly visible. Amy had never seen Purity so exposed before. Or any villain, really. It was surreal seeing a cape outside her own family being so cavalier with their identity.
Not that she supposed it mattered anymore, since the Empire's members had all been outed days ago. Amy scowled as she remembered Kayden Anders' very public downtown rampage after the incident, and all the injuries she'd had to fix afterwards, but Purity only looked to her for a second with a sad indifference, before turning back to the man in the bed.
Sighing, Amy ignored her too, and approached Kaiser's bedside.
"Do I have your permission to heal you?" she asked.
"Bluhhhhhyyyyyyyaaaaa?" Kaiser's head rolled aside to look at her, his single uncovered eye wide and searching.
Amy frowned.
"Yes, heal him, please," Purity answered for him.
That was as close to an affirmation as she was going to get, since Kaiser was obviously in no fit state to answer, so Amy shrugged and got to work. Swallowing her distaste, she placed two fingers to an exposed part of Kaiser's neck, and immediately balked at what she was seeing.
"How the fuck are you still alive?" she asked aloud.
Purity sat up. "What is it?"
"He's missing a chunk of his brain!" Amy said, staring down at him with awe.
"Oh, yeah." Kayden settled back down. "That."
"It looks like his head was split in half, and a slice of it just... fell out? Lucky whoever brought him back found the rest of his skull to reattach, but that's a lot of brain to lose. I didn't know human beings could even survive this, let alone stay conscious through it. He should've bled out pretty much immediately. This has to be a power. PRT were way underestimating his brute rating..."
"Furrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggleeeeee..." Kaiser added, dribbling over his bandages.
"Hmm..." Amy tilted her head. "He also seems to be shedding a lot of skin cells. Is that normal? I'm not totally clear on how his powers work."
"Can you help him or not?" Purity asked, frowning.
"I don't do brains," Amy answered immediately. "But I've stopped the bleeding, fused his head back together, and fixed some other incidental damage. He should be alright to take off the bandages now, but that's all I can do. You want any more than that, I suggest you go to your own healer."
"Othala is dead." Purity looked at the floor. "Went down when Leviathan cratered downtown."
Amy shrugged. "Oh well."
"'Oh well?'" Purity clenched her teeth, fixing her with a steely glare. "That's all you have to say?"
Amy casually dusted off her hands.
"Yup."
"So that's it? He's stuck as a vegetable, after defending this city from an Endbringer, and you don't even care? He's just going to be like this from now on?"
Kaiser tossed in bed, tearing up the blankets more and gurgling incoherently.
"Look, what do you want from me?" Amy sighed, exasperated. "I told you, I don't do brains, and besides that, it's fucking Kaiser. Frankly, I didn't need to heal him at all. After how the Empire's hurt my family, I would've been well within my rights to leave him be."
"He would be better off dead than like this!" Purity shouted.
"Oh wah, wah, wah." Amy balled up her fists and rubbed under her eyes. "Is the poor wittle Nazi sad that her douchebag ex-husband can't commit hate crimes anymore?"
She dropped her hands, and returned Purity's incredulous look with a flat stare.
"Look, I couldn't fix his head if I wanted to. This is the best you're getting, and it's only thanks to the truce you're getting this much. I have no sympathy for the Empire, and this is the least he deserves. Whatever happens to him now is all up to you. You want my advice? I'd send him off to the parahuman asylum in Philadelphia. It's the cheapest option, the one that gets him the best care, and the one that will disrupt your family's lives the least. It will also be incredibly funny to me."
Purity snarled.
"Your bedside manner is atrocious."
"Thanks! I get that a lot." Amy smiled brightly and tossed her hair the way she'd seen Vicky do sometimes. "Now, if you don't mind, I have to go help the people who who would actually be missed if they died."
Purity glared after her as she left, closing the curtain behind her. Now alone again with her ex-husband, Kayden buried her face in her hands and began to cry.
Kaiser loudly shit himself and screamed in response.
It was a countless eternity later that Kaiser found himself walking again, pulled forward by a sad woman, and moving himself with the metal around him, which he seemed to be able to control.
"Come on, Max, only a little way more..."
He wasn't quite sure where he was. He only knew that he was confused, and messy, and that he was being led somewhere down a long, bright hallway, his metal boots clanking against the floor with every step.
"Kaaaaaayyyyyy..." he mumbled, drooling from the corner of his mouth. "Kaaaaaaaayyyyyy?"
He looked aside at the woman helping him walk. Her sad brown eyes looked at him with something he didn't recognise.
"I'm here," she said. "It's okay, Max."
They came to a door, and she led him inside to a clean white bathroom. A tile cracked underfoot where he stepped on it, and Kaiser looked around uncomprehendingly. Kayden stopped him and began unravelling the bandages around his head.
"Come on," she said with a joyless smile. "Let's get you nice and clean."
With the bandages gone, she grabbed one of the blades forming the neckline of his armour, and tried to wrench it loose, but the metal wouldn't budge. Screwing up her face in concentration, she pulled harder at it, with both hands this time, but still couldn't do anything.
"Max, please, could you drop your armour?" she asked. "I'm trying to clean you up."
He stared at her blankly.
"Max, I know you can still use your powers. You had to move your metal to walk here. Come on. Drop the armour. You can do it."
Still he stared, mouth hanging loosely open.
"Okay," Kayden said with a sigh. "This is a little too delicate for my powers. Stay right here. I'll be back in a minute. I'll... get a crowbar or something..."
She quickly marched out, slamming the door behind her, and Kaiser was left alone in the bathroom.
Alone. He was alone. Why was he alone?
Had he always been alone? He felt like he had, but he couldn't be sure. His thoughts were so sluggish, and they kept going around in circles. Where was he? What was happening? All he could really be sure of was that he was afraid. Everything was an unknown. Danger could come from any direction. Some deep, primal part of him told him to run, to fight, but he didn't know if he even could. He was only even still standing because of the metal around him.
Where was the woman with the brown eyes? When was she coming back? He felt safe with her.
He looked around the room, trying to make sense of it. There was a shower and a toilet, both things that looked somehow familiar, or at least he thought. There were rails and seats coming out of the wall, and a boxy thing next to the sink. But the thing that caught his attention the most was the reflection in the mirror.
He startled at the image staring back at him, a haggard blond man with dried blood running down his face, and a body made of jagged pieces of metal. He instinctively knew that it was himself staring back, and yet he didn't recognise the man he saw.
His heart beat rapidly in his chest, and he let out a strangled moan. Kaiser stumbled closer to the sink, clutching his head as he stared himself in the eye.
"Nyyyyyyyyyyyyyyuuuuuuhhhhh!" he screamed. "Nyyyyyhhhhh! Nyyyyyoooooooooo!"
He hit himself in the forehead repeatedly, the sharp metal breaking his skin and making him bleed again, but he didn't care. He had to think.
His head wasn't working right. He knew that.
Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong.
Why wasn't he working right, he wondered? What was wrong with him? Did he make a mistake? He felt like he had. He felt like he'd made a terrible mistake, but he couldn't remember what.
Was this why the woman had left him? He got the feeling that this wasn't the first time she had. Maybe this was why everybody left him in the end?
Was he just broken? Was he not good enough?
No.
A moment of cold horror interrupted his crying, as the answer came in the briefest flash of a memory. A man's voice, accompanied by the image of a hateful sneer. He didn't remember who the man was, or what was said, or why, but he remembered the sentiment behind it, that cold contempt that made him feel the same sense of fear and betrayal he was swimming in now.
It was a deep-rooted memory. The clearest he had. The one fundamental truth about himself he could be sure of.
And then Kaiser finally understood.
He had never been good enough.
With an anguished scream, like a wounded animal, he let his power loose on the room. Pieces of himself flew out from his armour and coated everything around him on pure instinct, and they burst into jagged metal spikes, now growing out of every flat surface in the room. The image in front of him cracked, as a long, sharp blade shot out from the pieces of him covering the mirror.
Kaiser drove his head forward to meet it.
And then he was somewhere else, watching two beings swim across the stars.
Kaiser stared, captivated, as he watched their slow dance between realities. Some distant, half-remembered part of himself told him he'd seen this before. He had seen this same dance, these same two incomprehensibly huge beings. He saw them approach the Earth from afar, crystalline pieces splitting off from them, spreading across many worlds, like how he split off his pieces and spread them to grow his metal.
What he hadn't felt before, and what he realised he felt now, was the thought and sentiment behind it. He felt something in the way these beings looked down at that blue planet and its people, across the many worlds where they existed. A cold curiosity. A desire to experiment. A calculating disregard to the consequences of their actions. Behind all that power, and all that potential, there was no emotion or spark of compassion. Only an overwhelming sense of sheer indifference to humanity, and certainty in their own purpose. Somehow, he knew that these creatures could end this planet and the lives of everything on it without care or remorse. The way they looked at humanity, looked down on humanity... there was something eerily familiar in it.
My God... Kaiser thought to himself as the realisation overcame him. They're so fucking racist!
"You want to look down on me?" Armsmaster shouted, turning away from Miss Militia, Legend, and the Undersiders to address the other capes in the hospital. "I tried to save this city! I got closer to killing the fucking Endbringer than Scion! That girl is the person you should be mocking, spitting on! A wannabe hero without the balls to do anything heroic! Planning from the start to betray teammates for fame!"
Everyone's focus was on Skitter now, who took a careful step back, away from Armsmaster, and away from her group. The Undersiders, standing apart from the the heroes, looked to each other.
"Is this true?" Grue asked Tattletale.
She sighed.
"...Yeah."
Skitter took another step back, looking ready to run, but then buckled along with every other parahuman in the room as they all cried out at once.
Heroes and villains alike collapsed against walls or to the ground or back in their beds, as all were wracked with the typical visions of space whales, alternate realities, and apocalyptic disasters. For a moment there was chaos in the ward as the non-parahuman doctors, nurses, and interns scurried to help the ones closest, checking for injuries or trying to rouse them. Fortunately, they all seemed to recover soon enough, most waking up again with groans and sighs in a matter of seconds.
Legend was the first of the main three Protectorate members to rise, shaking his head as he floated himself back upright. Armsmaster and Miss Militia followed, the former shakily forcingly himself up, while the latter held her head and gasped.
"Did you see them?" she whispered to Legend. "Do you... remember?"
"I..." Legend shook his head. "I can't quite..."
"They're like viruses..." said a voice on the floor. "And babies. And... And gods... all—"
"Tattletale, wake up," said Grue, slapping her in the face.
"Fuck!" Tattletale startled, sitting upright. "I was on the verge of something there!"
There was a murmuring around the ward now, whispers and pointed looks, all directed towards Armsmaster and the Undersiders.
"The hell..." someone said.
"Was that a trigger event?" asked someone else.
"No fucking way."
Skitter, only just back on her feet, took another stumbling step back, holding her head, before noticing how much of the room's attention was on her, specifically. Panacea in particular looked at her like she'd just grown a second head.
"Holy fuck, did he just make her second trigger?" said Regent.
"Armsmaster, what the hell?!" called one of the out of town heroes.
"What? No!" Armsmaster held his hands up in a placating gesture. "I didn't! I mean— I didn't mean to!"
"Armsmaster, you dick!" Trickster shouted across the room.
"What the fuck, Armsmaster?!" another hero joined in.
"You don't do that to someone!" said another.
Skitter stood frozen in the middle of the scene, head turning slightly to regard the crowd, silently unresponsive to the bizarre turn of events.
"No, no! I didn't know—" Armsmaster looked around desperately, as a chorus of jeers and booing rose from around the hospital. "Skitter, I'm sorry! I didn't know I would... Please, let me—!"
"I think you've done enough, hero," Tattletale cut in, shooting Armsmaster a smug smile as she strolled over to Skitter's side and grabbed her hand. "Come on, Skitter. Let's go. Fuck these guys."
"Uhh... um... s-sure..."
Though clearly taken off-guard, Skitter did not resist, and obligingly followed Tattletale as the blonde villainess led her out of the room, fingers entwined. Nobody moved to stop them. After a moment, Grue and Regent both shrugged and casually followed them out, Bitch and her dogs trailing behind as she smouldered with barely contained fury.
Legend let out a long-suffering sigh as he turned to Armsmaster, who was currently being pelted by water bottles and rolls of used bandages from all directions.
"Armsmaster. We need to talk."
Kaiser flopped on the floor of the hospital bathroom, naked as the day he was born. Blood and viscera covered him from head to toe, making him slip on the tiles, but he didn't feel pain anywhere, except where he jabbed himself on the bits of sharp metal littering the floor.
"What...?"
He raised a hand to his head, feeling his skull where he remembered Leviathan slicing him open, and then his face, where he had just—
The shock of the memory made him flip onto his back, and he stared up with wide eyes as he took in the sight of his own corpse slumped in front of the mirror. The other Kaiser stood there, upright, impaled through the forehead on a blade jutting out of the broken mirror - one he himself had summoned for the express purpose of ending his own life. The dead Kaiser was still clad in a suit of metal from the neck down, but the back of the armour had seemingly burst open, and his spine and innards were visible inside, dripping down onto the floor and stinking of blood and shit.
Kaiser stared for a minute, unblinking, and then raised his own bloody hands to look down at them, and then at the rest of his body.
"...Fuck."
Well, at least he was thinking somewhat clearly again. The past few hours were something of a haze to him, but he distinctly remembered being scared, confused, and unable to make sense of anything. He remembered despair. A despair deep enough to drive him to kill himself. Compared to that, this was... an improvement?
Yeah, it had to be.
Standing up, Kaiser approached the other Kaiser's corpse, and leaned around to get a better look at it. His other self's expression was frozen in a final moment of terror and anguish. He found the sight disquieting, but not altogether unexpected.
Reaching out, Kaiser pressed a finger to the armour, and gently pushed it. The blade slid easily out of the other Kaiser's head, and the body dropped to the floor with a loud clang.
He winced.
Somebody would've heard that.
He had to move fast. Kaiser still wasn't sure what had happened to him, but there was no scenario where getting caught in the bathroom with a corpse ended well for him, especially his own corpse. He had to get out before someone came back.
Was somebody coming back? He couldn't quite remember.
Shrugging it off, he began growing the delicate latticework of metal around himself with a brief exertion of his power, covering the filthy and naked form of Max Anders with the pristine armour of Kaiser once more. The power came to him quicker than it usually did, for which he was grateful. Then, that finished, he formed a crude hook to loop around the corpse's neck and drag it behind him, hoping he wouldn't decapitate it.
Kaiser surreptitiously cracked open the bathroom door and peeked out. The hospital was still busy in the wake of the Endbringer attack, but this particular corridor was not high in traffic. He just had to wait for the single overworked nurse outside to pass him by. Then as soon as the coast was clear and nobody was directly watching the door, he made his move. He shuffled out and dragged the other Kaiser's body behind him as quickly as he could, smearing a massive blood trail behind him and leaving gouge marks in the floor as he went.
Yeah, this is fine, he thought to himself. This will work. I've escaped worse situations.
He didn't know exactly what was happening or where he was going, so he just moved in the opposite direction from where the noise was coming from. His escape led him past a stairwell, and into a dimly lit corridor lined with windows. Outside, he could see the black and grey clouds over the skyline of Brockton Bay, and more importantly, the grass and flowerbeds of the hospital's front lawn three stories below him.
"...Fuck it," said Kaiser. "Good enough."
With a careless swing of his hook, he launched the corpse through the window, shattering the glass, and leaped out after it.
Taylor sighed as she and Lisa came to a stop outside the hospital, standing halfway between the building and the road as the rain spit down around them. The others were fast approaching behind them, but Lisa called out before they got close.
"Let me handle it. We'll catch up to you guys."
Brian stood still for a moment, darkness billowing around him a little more strongly than usual. Alec just stood with his hands in his pockets, while Rachel glared at Taylor in silent hate.
"This isn't over," said Brian. "We're talking about this later. All of us."
Turning his back on them, he trudged off into the rain, while Rachel simply snarled in their direction and followed him, Brutus and Judas at her heels. Alec stayed a moment, staring at them, before shrugging and walking off as well. A cloud of darkness billowed behind them all, covering their exit.
Sighing as well, Lisa folded her arms and turned to face Taylor, none of her usual smug confidence anywhere to be seen.
"So, I feel I owe you an explanation," she said.
"You owe me an explanation?" asked Taylor, incredulous. "I was the one who was planning to betray you guys... but you already knew that, didn't you?"
Lisa winced. "I had an idea."
Taylor swallowed, wondering how to even begin explaining her side of things.
"Lisa, I—"
Suddenly a window on the upper floor of the hospital shattered. Both girls stopped and turned to stare as a suspiciously human-shaped pile of metal fell three storeys and landed in a heap on the grass, immediately followed by a second one, this time screaming all the while as it fell. The second metal man's landing was accompanied by a loud thud and an agonised scream.
"Fuuuuuuuuck!" The man shouted as he clutched his leg and rolled around in the hospital's flower bed. "Fuu-u-u-ck! That was stupid! Oh fuck, my leg!"
"Is that... Kaiser?"
Lisa blinked slowly, and mutely nodded.
The two silently watched as Kaiser, audibly seething and swearing, forced himself to stand and limped over to the other body he had tossed out the window, which wore a suit of armour almost identical to his own. Paying no attention to his nearby audience at all, he grabbed a hook attached to the body, and dragged it along behind him, leaving a deep groove in the mud as he slowly crossed the hospital lawn.
Somehow, of all the many, many questions on Taylor's mind at that moment, the one that came to mind first was why had Kaiser hooked the body around the neck instead of under the arms? Was he trying to decapitate it?
They continued to watch as Kaiser dragged the corpse out into the middle of the road, now slowly descending the hill as he headed in the direction of the city, scarring the tarmac and smearing blood behind him as he went. Once he had all but disappeared from view, Taylor turned back to Lisa, who still stared blankly into the distance.
"...Lisa, what the fuck just happened?"
For once, Lisa was lost for answers.
Kayden groaned as she entered the main ward where the capes were, the mother of all headaches still pounding through her skull. The nurses were still checking up on and helping the people who had evidently collapsed, and teams gathered in every corner to chatter and whisper to each other. Kayden looked around until she spotted Krieg's distinctive gasmask and trench uniform, and approached his bed.
"The hell happened?" she asked.
"Skitter," he answered in an obviously fake German accent.
Kayden tilted her head.
"From the Undersiders? The bug girl?"
"Ja." Krieg nodded. "She vas an undercover hero, infiltrating zhem. Armsmaster revealed her secret, und she triggered."
"A second trigger?" Kayden's eyes widened. "That's... rare... How did the Undersiders respond?"
"She left vith zhem." Kayden thought she detected a hint of a sneer in his voice. "Cozying up vith Tattletale. Vhatever heroic ambitions she may have once had, it seems she's abandoned zhem now. Threw zhem away for ze first lesbian whore to spread her legs for her."
Kayden frowned. She tried to imagine the scene just now, but was having trouble picturing it. Not that she knew Skitter or the Undersiders very well to begin with, but the news still didn't really fit her conception of them. Skitter? A hero? Wasn't she the one that had carved out Lung's eyes?
Still, she felt bad for the girl. A trigger event was usually the worst day of a cape's life. You had to be a special kind of unlucky to go through that twice.
And her problems probably wouldn't end there, if what Krieg said about her and Tattletale was true. While Kayden did hope to mitigate some of the Empire's more egregious actions now that she would be stepping up to Max's position, being "out" in Brockton Bay was still dangerous, even for parahumans. They were painting a target on their own backs, and Kayden doubted that she could entirely stop the Empire from trying to make examples of them. Krieg certainly sounded like he wanted to do something about it.
It was a shame, really. The Undersiders had done right by her when the authorities took Aster. She had wanted to repay the favour. Still did, really. But this was just what happened when their kind couldn't keep their perverted interests behind closed doors where it belonged.
Krieg sat up with a grunt.
"Vhere is Kaiser?" he asked. "Did you leave him somevhere?"
Kayden's eyes widened in realisaton. "Oh, shit!"
Krieg called out after her as she rushed out the ward, off to the bathroom where she'd left Max. She couldn't believe herself. She'd just been looking for a crowbar or something to help snap his blade armour off, but she'd completely forgotten about him in all the confusion. He must've been knocked out by the trigger event too. What if he'd been hurt again? She had to make sure he was okay.
She hated this feeling. Max was a bastard. She knew she didn't owe him anything. But she couldn't leave him to fend for himself in that pitiful state, either. He didn't deserve that, no matter what that freckled bitch said, and she couldn't consider herself any kind of hero if she didn't try to do her best for him now.
When she got to the bathroom, Kayden covered her mouth and stared in horror, paralyzed. A trail of half-dried blood led away from the bathroom door, and inside it was a horror show, with blood and entrails not just smeared over the floor tiles, but over the jagged metal spikes jutting out from every wall around them as well. Whatever had occurred here, it looked like Max had put up a fight.
Two minutes. I left him alone for two minutes.
Fury welled up in her, outrage that someone would dare attack the leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight here and now, at his most vulnerable, during an Endbringer truce no less. Light burst from her skin as Purity floated into the air, power welling through her as she was fed by the hospital ceiling lights. Shoving her way back into the corridor, she flew in the direction of the blood trail as quickly as she could in the confined space. Whoever or whatever had done this, they were close, and she was going to find them.
And whatever state Max was in... she'd deal with that when she found him.
Kaiser grunted, lifting his doppelganger's corpse overhead and dropping it in the dumpster with a crash. He was outside some residential home on what looked like Captain's Hill, the hospital far behind him and the city sprawling out below. The evening light was getting low now, and the rain still drizzled around him, creating a gentle patter on the concrete that he would have found calming were he not currently going through the most stressful situation he could possibly imagine.
The dumpster lid slammed close, and Kaiser leaned back on it to pant and catch his breath. This wasn't the first time he'd had to get rid of a body, but he wasn't as young as he used to be. He didn't think he was that old, but he was definitely past the age to be personally hauling corpses through the street. Especially when it was his own corpse, and covered in over a hundred pounds of metal.
It had been a weird day.
"Fuck you," Kaiser muttered, banging a fist on the dumpster. "Fuck you and the blade you went out on. I hope it hurt, you dumb bastard."
He tried to step away, but his leg still hurt from the fall. Wincing, Kaiser leaned back again and lifted his broken leg into the air, holding it out as straight as he could. With some mental effort, he shifted some bone around, and tried to repair some more of the fractures. Nothing he hadn't done before, and yet, something about it felt different this time. His control over his internal biology had always been shit for anything other than blood iron, but it felt smoother this time, like he didn't have to fight it as much, which came as a pleasant surprise in the circumstances.
Still, even if the power was responding quicker than usual, fixing his bones was still much too slow and exhausting to do all at once. He was definitely no Marquis; that man could have fixed worse than this in his sleep.
And now he was actually missing Lavere of all people. What had his life come to?
His metal boot hit the ground, the pain softer this time, and Kaiser let out a sigh. It would have to do for now. He had to figure out what he was doing next. Probably finding some fresh clothes. He wondered how likely he was to receive help if he knocked on a random door around here?
"Hi! I'm Max Anders, noted local white supremacist supervillain. I was just dropping a corpse in your dumpster, and I wondered if maybe you had some clean underwear I could borrow?"
No... No, that probably wouldn't go well. Knowing his luck, the person answering the door would be black, and the conversation would be instantly ruined. Likely by a punch to the face. Which, he wouldn't exactly blame anyone for under the circumstances.
Just then, there was a blinding flash of light in the sky. Kaiser covered his eyes, but slowly lowered his hands as the light dimmed and a voice called out to him.
"Max? Is that you?"
"...Kayden?"
Purity lowered to the ground in front of him, lights dimming more and more until her face was fully visible, furrowed in an expression of confusion and worry.
"Max, what the hell happened to you?"
"K-Kayden..."
He wasn't sure what he was feeling right now. Fear? Relief? Awe? Sadness? Maybe a little bit of anger? Whatever it was, he stumbled forward, ignoring her shocked expression, and pulled her into a sudden embrace, and something about it was just so carthatic.
"...Max?" Kayden stammered out. "You're... alright?"
"No." Kaiser's voice came out dry and scratchy, and he resisted the urge to squeeze her tighter while covered in sharp metal. "I'm pretty far from alright."
Hesitantly, Kayden lifted a hand to place on his shoulder.
"You're... speaking again," she whispered. "I thought... the brain damage...?"
She pulled back and looked at him imploringly.
"I don't know what happened either." Kaiser shook his head. "Some... esoteric application of my power, maybe?"
Kayden fully let go and stepped back from him.
"How does summoning metal from surfaces let you regrow part of your brain?"
"That's never been my only ability," said Kaiser, letting his arms fall limply to his sides. "I have a minor changer power. Some... loose control over my internal biology. Not good for much, but I've used it to heal a small amount of damage now and then... Might've been what allowed me to survive Leviathan? Clotted the blood quicker? Shifted some essential brain functions to the part that survived? I don't know. I've been pretty out of it for the past few hours..."
Kayden crossed her arms and frowned.
"Why did you never tell me about this?"
Kaiser turned his back to her, head bowed and leaning on the dumpster with both hands.
"Because I didn't trust you?" he said, shrugging. "Because I knew you'd leave me, like you did? Because I am the leader of the Empire Eighty-Eight, and I always keep a trick up my sleeve for emergencies? I suppose I'm just.. too used to secrets."
Kayden scoffed.
"You didn't trust me?" There was a hard edge to her voice now. "I trusted you completely back then. I followed you into the Empire. I left my family for you. I married you. You're the one who betrayed that trust. Can you seriously blame me for leaving after everything you did?"
She floated closer, a centimetre off the ground, as he turned back around to face her.
Max didn't answer for a moment. The metal of his armour was cold on his skin, and he trembled slightly from the chill.
"Please don't leave me again," he whispered.
"...What?"
Reaching up, Kaiser pulled the helmet from his head. His face was wet and dirty, and his hair was crusty with dried blood, but it was the tears in his eyes that most seemed to shock Kayden, who stared at him with her mouth hanging open.
"Please," he said, stepping closer to her. "I'm sorry. For everything. Please just... stay with me? I need you right now."
He reached out to grab her hands, holding them in his own.
"Max... what happened to you in there?" she asked, eyes swimming with confusion.
He gave her a soft smile, which wavered as he briefly glanced over at the dumpster. Kayden's eyes followed his look, but focused back on Max as he turned to her again.
"I'm not completely sure, but... I think I died..." he muttered.
Gently, carefully, Max pulled her into another embrace, which she did not resist. His chin rested on her shoulder as he breathed in her scent, and felt her hands on his shoulders again, a familiar feeling which he hadn't felt in much too long.
"And I think... maybe something else was born."
It was dawn in Brockton Bay, and Thomas Calvert was already having a shit day. A really shit day. Granted, he always felt like this before he had his morning coffee, but the situation he was waking up to was already terrible on its own. There was no way that dealing with the immediate aftermath of an Endbringer attack would be anything other than horrendous. He'd been awake all through the night in both timelines, helping direct and advise the PRT response in one, while riding out the storm as Coil from a safe distance in the other.
Ultimately, Leviathan had done no irreparable damage to his personal assets in either timeline, and his secretly precog-assisted efforts in the PRT timeline had made enough of a positive difference in the battle that dropping the other was the easy choice in the end. Besides which, it wouldn't do for Thomas Calvert to have been absent on an occasion so critical as an Endbringer attack. Not if he still intended to oust Piggot from her position and take over the city. The major problem now, he considered as he waited for his coffee to brew, was ensuring that Brockton Bay made it through the coming days, and that there would even still be a city worth ruling here in a month or two.
And of course there was the Skitter situation to deal with. He'd heard from Legend and Piggot about what happened with Armsmaster in the hospital (as well as heard Trickster's account of events), and he was quite annoyed that his Tattletale hadn't already informed him of that little development herself. Skitter being an undercover hero was a problem. Skitter being an undercover hero who'd apparently just had a second trigger event was a bigger problem. Even if Tattletale's charms seemed to have somehow ensnared her for now, he knew she vocally disapproved of him keeping his pet, and now she was even more powerful, with additional unknown abilities, and was potentially mentally unstable as well. Could she still be trusted to carry out his plans? Could either of them still be trusted?
No. Skitter was a liability, and he would need to deal with her sooner or later. And if his Tattletale had really become as intimate with her as the rumours suggested, then she was also a problem by proximity. An office romance could potentially bind Skitter to his cause, but it was equally likely that she would instead incite Tattletale (and possibly even the rest of the Undersiders) to rebel against him. He would have to get the numbers from his pet once she recovered before he knew for sure, but he strongly suspected that keeping Skitter around long term was a losing prospect.
He considered his options as he poured out his morning coffee. Options for Skitter and Tattletale, yes, but also options for how to approach the day. Obviously he would do what he always did, with one timeline as Coil at the base and one timeline as Thomas Calvert in the PRT, but what would he focus on for his long term plan? How would he approach this new post-Leviathan paradigm? He had been planning to take the fight to the Empire next, but with Kaiser's status currently uncertain, and Skitter's loyalties in question, he wasn't sure what to think.
Thomas stepped outside onto his porch, still in his dressing gown and slippers, holding his coffee as he surveyed the damage to the city. He lived far enough away from the coast to have avoided any direct damage to his home from Leviathan, but everything was still wet from the torrential rain. Fortunately he lived on a hill, so no actual flooding. Even still, the whole neighbourhood was running on noisy backup generators now since Leviathan had knocked out parts of the grid, which filled the morning air with their stuttering din.
Also, the newspaper hadn't been delivered. Not that he exactly expected it to be under the circumstances, but it was just one more thing making up Thomas Calvert's shit day. He idly reflected on that as he took a sip of his coffee. He at least hoped that the usual delivery boy had drowned in yesterday's attack. He'd always hated that Greg kid.
Which reminded him. When was the garbage collection this week? It would normally be today, but there was no way that Brockton Bay's municipal services wouldn't be disrupted by an Endbringer attack. Thomas checked his watch for the date to confirm, and considered the problem.
Well, might as well take out the garbage anyway, he thought. They'll get it when they get it.
Not bothering to close the door, Thomas headed back inside, leaving his coffee on the kitchen counter and quickly emptying the garbage. A minute later, he walked up the garden path once more, now carrying two full garbage bags. Placing one on the ground, he lifted the lid of the dumpster with his free hand, and then stopped dead. He dropped the other bag too.
"Oh." He blinked. "That's a corpse. That's Kaiser's corpse. That's Kaiser's corpse in my dumpster, outside my civilian identity's home address."
Thomas Calvert was having a really shit day.
Author's notes:
Chapter theme:
Elton John - I'm Still Standing
So if it wasn't obvious already, despite the occasional heavy scene, this Kaiser is a deeply unserious individual, with an uncanny ability to make the world around him more surreal and insane from his mere proximity. I will be attempting a logical character throughline with him in this story that ends with him not being quite so much of an asshole anymore by the end, but this is still a shitpost through and through, so adjust your expectations accordingly. If you want an actual serious warts-and-all character study of Kaiser, go read Carnevale by MasterDuplicator instead. It's good.