Author's Note: Warning, this is what I myself classify as 'stupid funny'.
If You Meet A Parahuman In The Morning
Sometimes, being part of a multiversal conspiracy and being employed by the agency that said conspiracy had created and continued to clandestinely interfere with, while the agency was not aware of the conspiracy, made things complicated for Rebecca Costa-Brown. But plans within plans were plans within plans for a reason – that reason being alien parasites – and she had to work within the system her slightly stupider past self had helped design. If, sometimes, that meant that her right hand didn't quite understand what her left hand was doing, so be it. She could cope.
Such were her overly belabored thoughts one Friday afternoon, as she concluded a regional branch director performance review and prepared for the next by staring at the wall above her computer monitor.
Why did they the PRT continue to employ a patently obvious Simurgh bomb waiting to go off? And why did they keep him in charge of so many non-Simurgh-bomb people? It wasn't like he was subtle; Tagg had been fairly mild-mannered before his glancing encounter with the Simurgh while on holiday in Australia. His 'take no prisoners, this is war' mentality was a stark, dangerous change to his personality. If they had to keep him, they should have put him in charge of the janitors, or something.
She checked the little notepad she had been given that morning, flipping it open to a random page.
'He does more damage if kicked out of the PRT's bureaucracy,' that page read.
But if their bureaucracy wasn't so labyrinthine and ineffectual, it could actually deal with him outright… And more damage implied he was still going to do damage where he was. She turned the page.
'Janitors can go everywhere and see everything,' was the notepad's atemporal rebuke.
Rebecca very much wanted to continue arguing the point, but doing so with a notepad would be stupid, which was probably why she had been given a notepad instead of the advice being given by text message.
A profile picture popped up on her mostly-ignored computer screen; her next regional Director was waiting for her video conference review.
Rebecca took a moment to firmly put aside thoughts of Tagg, the Simurgh, and janitor rebellions, and went through what she knew of one Emily Piggot. Nilbog survivor, in charge of the PRT ENE, mildly predisposed to distrust parahumans… In charge of the one branch of the PRT unofficial policy said to mostly ignore, where they could get away with it. Coil was operating there, and Rebecca refused to admit that she no longer remembered why they were leaving him alone. Nobody could ever know that her perfect memory's one weakness was alcohol-induced blackouts. As long as she pretended she remembered why, nobody would know.
Emily, she thought as she turned on her webcam, really needed to take the time to pose for a better profile picture. That angry grimace was too similar to her everyday look, and her profile picture had been confused for her live presence more than once.
"Chief Director?" The profile picture spoke.
Oh no, it had happened again. Rebecca looked away from the screen, at the bare wall of her office, and feigned typing. Why did she keep doing that? She should have been able to tell the difference between a picture and a live feed of a still person! Once she had feigned typing for what felt like long enough, she looked back at the screen. Emily still hadn't moved a muscle aside from those required to speak. "At ease, Director Piggot. I'm with you now. Director Tagg left me with several important pieces of information that I needed to make a note of."
Emily nodded tersely. "I hope they were very important." Her ever-present scowl was growing more and more severe with every passing second. "I," she huffed, "am dealing," she glared, "with a full-fledged war and city-wide anarchy over here!"
Rebecca made an actual note of Emily's attempt to skip over the behavioral part of the performance review, and nodded serenely. "I see. Please elaborate."
"Elaborate?" Emily puffed up, seemed to remember who she was talking to, and visibly tamped down on her temper. "Yes. Assuming you have read my many, many reports, all of this should be old information, but I'll be thorough."
Rebecca had not in fact read any of these reports; she glanced down at her notepad, but didn't open it as this might be something 'Rebecca-who-knows-why' would already know, and thus something she had to pretend to know as well. "Proceed," she said loftily.
"I don't have a single Parahuman under my command as of last Monday," Emily said bluntly.
Rebecca nodded, then accidentally stubbed her toe on the floor on the leg of her desk as she flinched. "You what?" she demanded.
"Armsmaster quit after I disciplined him for almost killing Lung with an untested tranquilizer," Emily blurted out, red in the face. "Everything went to hell after that."
"Did the gangs attack?" Rebecca asked, frantically reaching for her notepad. What the hell was going on, and what the hell was she going to do? This was the kind of thing the Triumvirate got sent in for, but it had happened days ago!
"No," Emily admitted. "The problem is he didn't leave, he just quit. Legal said he had a right to all of the Tinkertech he built on his own time with materials he purchased personally, and it turns out that is… a substantial fraction of his lab."
"How substantial?" Rebecca asked. The next page of the notepad said 'Keep asking questions' which was singularly unhelpful.
"He arranged for some hired help to cut his lab out of the rig after he converted it into a seaworthy vessel, then sailed away on it." Emily shifted guiltily in her seat. "We weren't paying him for overtime, and we were short on funds when he needed to rebuild his lab after an accident with Leet's technology… All of his on-the-clock hours were spent patrolling, not Tinkering, so…"
"So one hundred percent of his technology is his. At least he is a respected hero, we can trust he won't misuse it." Rebecca was trying to find the bright side of this situation, but… hell.
"That's the problem!" Emily burst out. "He's been taking the fight to the gangs all week! No accountability, no paperwork, he's out there twenty hours a day. Vista quit and joined him after he took down Hookwolf, claiming we were holding her back like we were holding him back."
"Losing a Ward is serious business–" Rebecca was interrupted by Piggot's somewhat frantic laugh.
"One Ward, no, I lost them all!" Emily admitted. "Vista went after Armsmaster to join him once she saw how much he was getting done, and he armed her with all of the things PR has been telling him he couldn't let her use. He picked up a new Parahuman too, a bug controller, and then he accused Shadow Stalker and half of my staff of corruption, which got Gallant to leave, and when Gallant went Clockblocker and Aegis followed. Browbeat's family pulled him out because they only wanted him there to be safe with a team. I ignored the accusations against Stalker, but she didn't, and nobody has seen her since that day."
"You also had Kid Win," Rebecca recalled.
"He quit two days after picking up Armsmaster's slack," Emily said.
"Armsmaster… The adult Tinker with decades of experience… That Armsmaster's slack?" Rebecca clarified.
"Yes, the little shit couldn't take the hundred-hour work week," Emily seethed. "Got half of the Protectorate to file complaints on his behalf, and some of my own people too. Working too hard, unsafe conditions, illegal unpaid overtime, all of the usual things children whine about when they're in a snit. The only thing he didn't complain about was the pay bump and being in charge of the remaining Protectorate members."
Rebecca looked down. 'No, that is not at all normal or sane.'
It was good to get confirmation from a notepad that she wasn't crazy. "Emily, have you seen a doctor recently?" she asked.
"Don't get me started on that brat Panacea," Emily seethed, turning to the new topic with a worrying amount of enthusiasm. "New Wave has stopped returning my calls, and they won't assist me in arresting Armsmaster or any of his Parahuman cronies, and it's all her fault. She must have complained that I always refuse her healing, the little liar. I've made a point of never being in the same room as her, so how could I refuse healing?"
'National stability requires we not call MS protocols on her,' the next page of the notepad reminded Rebecca. "How about a normal doctor?" she pressed.
"I'm fit to lead!" Emily stood from her chair, moving her worryingly red face out of view of the camera. "You need to send reinforcements, now!" she thundered from off-screen.
"You do seem short-staffed," Rebecca prevaricated. "How bad is the physical damage to the city? With all of the gangs–"
"There's just two right now, New Wave and Armsmaster's rebels," Emily interrupted her. "They dumped Oni Lee on my doorstep, the Empire is in pieces, and the Merchants have been forcibly sobered and kicked out of the city. Armsmaster has all but declared himself in charge of the city, and the rest of my Parahumans quit on Monday. I need the PRT, the Protectorate, the Military, and Scion himself to come here and put things back the way they were!"
Rebecca looked down. 'Call her fat.'
What?
She looked again, ignoring Emily. Sure enough, the page she had flipped to did indeed only contain those three words. She must have made a mistake. She closed her eyes, shook the pad to lose her place, and opened to another random spot.
'Insult her. Once should do it. Call her crazy if fat isn't working for you.'
Oddly enough, that did make Rebecca feel somewhat better about what she was about to do. "You're insane, Emily," she said.
"Well…" Emily leaned down, reached out, and as far as Rebecca could tell, grabbed the monitor containing her webcam with both hands. "Fuck you, then!"
The screen abruptly cut back to the static image of Piggot glaring.
'Now she won't ask for any more outside assistance,' the notepad's final page said.
That was, perhaps, the most unsatisfying conclusion to a performance review Rebecca had ever had. Worse, looking at the clock, she now had almost half an hour to kill before the next review, and the restless need to do something about everything she had just learned. She would not sit back and let Emily further implode a major city through sheer insanity. Forgotten reasons or not, they needed assistance down there.
A small dart sprung out of nowhere and jabbed itself into the side of her neck.
Elsewhere, Doctor Mother, Alexandria, and Number Man sat at a conference table. One wall of the room they occupied was a one-way mirror, looking into a close facsimile of Rebecca Costa-Brown's office.
"Well," Doctor Mother said, her hands crossed on her lap, "this one at least wasn't a total failure, even with all of her… quirks."
"I will not let someone that stupid pretend to be me for more than ten seconds," Alexandria said flatly. "Maybe you didn't notice substantial differences, but anyone with any observational skills will."
"It's not easy, creating a human duplicate that can pretend to be someone without actually being them," Number Man objected. "Or, by extension, knowing any of their secrets. Flaws and errors are to be expected while developing the right approach. This test was within tolerable limits."
"At least this approach avoids any accidental outings by way of using your power, as the duplicate is not you," Doctor Mother noted. "They know nothing of Cauldron, either."
A small portal opened above the conference room table. A note dropped through it.
Number Man reached out and took the note. "Time spent managing Rebecca Costa-Brown activities: down by thirty percent," he read. "So it seems that even the thorough micromanaging via notepad that this approach requires is less time-intensive than pathing to keep Alexandria and Rebecca Costa-Brown entirely separate identities when one person plays both parts."
Alexandria rose, casting a dismissive glance at the person sprawled across the floor of her makeshift office. "One thing," she said, "before I go. Why did you have her tranquilized? The experiment was supposed to run for another two hours, though I do agree that two more hours would be pointless given how it was going."
"She was going to interrupt the Brockton Bay experiment," Number Man explained.
"But she's in a closed system," Alexandria retorted. "It wouldn't do any actual harm."
"Actually…" Doctor Mother said. "We determined that it would be safe enough to test her out in a live environment, as it were. Contessa assured us that it wouldn't be a problem so long as we used our best judgment and cut it short if we felt it necessary."
"But Piggot was obviously fake," Alexandria retorted. "So it wasn't live. That entire scenario, while plausible enough to serve as a test of my double under pressure, would be ludicrous. We would never let the Bay deteriorate that far. Coil's little playground isn't that important, it's a curiosity and side-project at best."
Doctor Mother squirmed in her chair. "About that…"
The next ten seconds passed in utter silence as Alexandria, now floating a few inches above the ground, stared incredulously at Doctor Mother.
"Door me, fixing Cauldron's incredibly stupid fuck-ups," Alexandria gritted out.
Somewhere upwards of fifty individual portals popped into existence all over the room, each leading somewhere different.
"And someone start asking Clairvoyant and Doormaker for their input on our decisions," she said after a moment. "Clearly they have opinions." She flew through one at random.
And thus Piggot was placed on psychiatric leave, Coil was quietly moved to somewhere he could plot without ruining anything actually important, many other stupid decisions were corrected, and everything was, at least slightly, less shit on Earth Bet.
Alexandria did have to settle for the current iteration of her body double taking over Rebecca Costa-Brown's position full time, though, as she was now much too busy to do both jobs. Much to her intense frustration, nobody outside of Cauldron ever noticed the difference.
Author's Note: This is a combination of three different half-baked ideas layered together with some absurdity; I don't expect anyone to take it seriously, I certainly don't, but it makes me laugh, so I figured I would post it. Also, the title is a rewording of the saying: "If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you're the asshole." At some point, that was relevant to one of the fragments this absorbed.
Also, for those of you who don't follow anything else I write: I live! It's my resolution to post a chapter of something every Saturday this year, and so far I've been holding to that. I'm still intending to finish the Subnautica crossover, but seeing as that's not done yet, I've a few shorter, simpler things in the pipline for this collection in the meantime, in between posting other things. Next time, probably next week, we have a trimmed-down version of an idea I mentioned in an AN a long while back.