Scale 5.9

  Bryce Kiley

  2010, December 15: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

  I pointed the cops towards the Undersiders as the PRT arrived. It seemed that no matter the setting, cops arriving too late to the party was a damn near universal constant.

  I smiled sardonically as Armsmaster drove over. He cut an imposing figure in all his several feet of cobalt-blue power armor. He stepped off the bike and pulled out his halberd but kept the point aimed down. From Coil’s files, I knew that Piggot had a “live and let live” policy where I was concerned.

  Good for him, because I still had the Pledge Regalia. I was no Kururu, but by now, I was confident I could seriously wreck his armor from the inside out. Maybe not tear it apart piece by piece like a LEGO statue, but cause enough damage to make repairs very expensive? Definitely.

  Behind him, Triumph also got out of a nearby van. Dauntless wasn’t anywhere to be found. I supposed that Piggot held Dauntless back because as their flyer, he could quickly address other issues across the city if they cropped up.

  “Creed,” the Protectorate leader said curtly. He looked like he was swallowing a lemon just talking to me. I was everything he disapproved of in a way, a “chaotic” tinker who’d been “redeemed” by a heroic thinker, someone who was inefficient in the utmost.

  “Heya, Halbeard,” I said, offering him a jaunty wave. Just because I was a hero now didn’t mean I’d stop poking fun at the overly serious man. The way his beard twitched with annoyance was reward aplenty.

  “You’ve captured the Undersiders.”

  “I have, and now I’m passing them off to the Protectorate. Do try to hang onto them, won’t you?”

  “They will not escape.”

  “Of course not,” I said, with complete and utter sincerity. “The PRT’s ability to retain prisoners is not in doubt. Not one bit. We have complete faith in your vigilance.”

  “Your sarcasm is noted and unappreciated.”

  “Fine, I know when I’m not wanted. Have fun, Halbeard.”

  “Hold. We have questions for The GOAT.”

  “Hmm? I’d imagine you have many. Did you manage to repurpose your nanothorn project?”

  “I did. The GOAT’s advice has caused me to reexamine my budget,” he said grudgingly. He seemed reluctant to tell me more, which was honestly expected. He’d probably revamped his security and started another super-secret project involving nanomachines. “What are your immediate plans now that you are a hero?”

  I chuckled. I liked Armsmaster. Sure, he was a bit of a brick wall, and he sure as hell didn’t like me back, but he was forthright in a way most people weren’t. Gently probing me for information probably didn’t even occur to him.

  I decided to reward his frankness in turn.

  “In the immediate, we’d best round up Coil’s mercenaries. Three pairs, pretty sure they were trying to snipe me. They’re in that building, that building, and that building,” I said, pointing out each in turn. “Also, there are bombs in the south entrance of the gallery that I haven’t had time to defuse yet.”

  “Noted.” He spoke quickly into his mic, sending a squad to the base of each building. “I will handle the bombs personally. The GOAT believes Coil is their employer?”

  “Yup, have fun with that info.”

  “Wait. We have more questions.”

  “Hmm… Nah, toodles~”

  I waved with exaggerated cheer, knowing that kind of effervescent energy would get under his skin the most. A plume of mist and the camouflage module masked my exit.

  Coil’s mercenaries might get away from the PRT, or they might not. It didn’t matter too much; the Undersiders were in custody and that was all I wanted out of this mess.

  X

  It didn’t take long for Coil to address me over PHO. Or rather, The GOAT. As strange as it was to imagine a supervillain contacting a hero over what amounted to Reddit, there really weren’t any other options for fast, secure, and reliable communication between capes of different factions. Not that I hadn’t known what he wanted already.

  It was funny in a way; I had his account thoroughly bugged by now, with so many holes in his security that SAINT could move in and out of his base without Coil’s notice.

  “Air-gapped?” Was there such a thing when SAINT had already visited that closed network once already? Perhaps, in a month or several, one of Coil’s men would notice the backdoor access he’d left behind that subtly broadcasted to the broader web, but that’d be much too late.

  The gist of Coil’s demand was that The GOAT should back the fuck off. He included an encrypted file which listed the names of everyone in the Empire, chiefly of course, Max Anders. Effectively, he was saying that if I struck at him or his organization again, he would release it all under The GOAT’s name, making me responsible for the chaos in the city and undoing all my good work.

  That put us at an impasse, at least on the cape front. I could go to the PRT with this of course, tell them that Coil was threatening to out the Empire, but so what? Their response would be exactly what he wanted: Leave Coil alone then!

  Coil was laying out his cards on the table, guaranteeing mutually assured destruction. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t truly the one culpable and could prove it with this message. Ultimately, as a hero, my job was to save lives and protect this city, to make this a city where my sister could live without worries. Sure, Coil would die for this, but the price would be too heavy to accept.

  The same went for if I went to the Empire. Would Kaiser really sit on his hands while someone knew who he was? Would Hookwolf? Krieg? Of course not. I didn’t trust their intelligence. They’d rampage and storm Coil’s base, resulting in the exact riot I wanted to prevent.

  I couldn’t touch him or his organization, or the entire city would blow up in my face.

  So, I gave him everything he wanted: I promised, pinky promised, not to attack his organization ever again.

  I giggled as I skated along the power lines, invisible in the darkness. “Coil must be feeling pretty damn safe now, eh, SAINT?”

  “Pory,” he trilled gleefully.

  “You have access?”

  “Gon.”

  “Good. You know what to do, bud.”

  “Gon,” he left my pokenav, headed back to Coil’s base for hopefully the last time.

  “Things have gone well enough,” I mused. “Let’s bring it home.”

  X

  Thomas Calvert

  I was done. The novelty of having a thinker opponent had thoroughly worn off. Nilbog remained the greatest focus of my hatred, but The GOAT had become a close second.

  Not only had they eliminated most of my moles and rendered much of my criminal assets under investigation, they’d also flipped my ambush for Creed, costing me my caped muscle. That must have been why The GOAT began with a probing attack, to get me to test Creed in turn. I didn’t see how that fed into their plans, but it’d worked.

  Damage control was the name of the game now. I’d had to call in a favor from Accord to identify officers within the PRT who could be persuaded to aid me. I preferred to pay for my information with upfront cash, but needs must. The Undersiders needed to be secured. Tattletale needed to be silenced.

  The best move available to me now was to force The GOAT back. I’d had to reveal my willingness to break the unwritten rules, but if I went down, they’d go down with me.

  Even that wasn’t foolproof security. The GOAT was cunning in a way I’d not seen since Accord. And unlike Accord, our morals were diametrically opposed. There was no negotiating with them.

  That was why I’d retired from my base entirely. After taking care of some last minute security checks, I’d headed home for the night as Thomas Calvert.

  My home was in the suburbs. It was a simple, three-room house with a bedroom, guest room, and home office, not that I’d ever host a guest. It had everything necessary to not raise eyebrows: I kept up to date with HOA fees, kept my lawn manicured, and the gutters cleaned. It was all to keep people from prying; a civilian’s greatest form of security was anonymity, after all.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  I made myself a quick dinner and took a shower before pouring myself a glass of gin before bed. I stepped into the master bedroom.

  Then, as I stepped past my dresser mirror, I froze. There were two of me in the mirror. One face morphed into a rictus of surprise as the other offered me a grin with far too many teeth.

  Instinct kicked in. As out of practice as I was, I’d been a trooper back in the day, one “privileged” to be selected for the subjugation of Nilbog. I lashed out, fist aimed at the imposter’s throat.

  The imposter caught my fist in a hand of iron. I couldn’t move, a stranger-brute then. His hand balled into a fist and I felt the crunch of bone. Then, before I could scream, his other hand closed around my throat.

  My throat constricted to the width of a string as I thrashed helplessly. I kept a holdout pistol in my nightstand but that was too far away. Then, as if to take even that last, helpless struggle from me, an arc of electricity danced along my body, paralyzing me like a mouse before a cobra.

  As my vision swam and the last gasp of air left my lungs, I saw the imposter’s face sputter out into static, revealing a familiar, gray-orange helmet.

  X

  Bryce Kiley

  Coil, Thomas Calvert, was the second person I’ve killed thus far. I couldn’t say he didn’t deserve it. I’d resolved myself to murder, but I couldn’t help feeling a little unsettled by it anyway.

  I thought about lots of different ways I could have killed him. Bullets were out; I didn’t want lae enforcement investigating this for any kind of murder. If anyone bothered to check in the future, Thomas Calvert would have arrived home and simply vanished into thin air. No blood, no murder weapon, and no criminal case to be had.

  I’d seriously considered doing this as Tattletale, while wearing her face. Not that I felt I owed her for “stealing” her revenge or something, but because a part of me felt it’d be poetic to make the face of his victim be the last face he saw.

  Minutes later, I had a dead body to dispose of.

  Fortunately, this was the simple part. Seeing how he wasn’t alive anymore, I didn’t have to be delicate. I contorted his body into the rough shape of a cube and began to ossify his muscles. I turned him into a cube of bone before slowly compacting him by drawing out the water. It took a while, but that was fine; I had time.

  Eventually, I had a desiccated cube of bone that I could stuff inside my expanded bag. Disposing of it would be as simple as turning all the carbon to ashes and scattering it into the bay.

  After that, I once again turned invisible and hopped out of the window. SAINT had already begun the process of dismantling his electronic assets and various dead man’s switches by this point. Any agents Coil still had that might have enacted some of his contingency plans wouldn’t know about Coil’s death until at least tomorrow, and by then, we’d have tracked them down.

  I arrived at Coil’s base to find SAINT waiting for me. The best duck opened the gate beneath an apartment complex parking garage to welcome me inside.

  There, I slipped off my gloves and put on a fresh set. These had an entirely different set of alchemy circles engraved on the back of the hands. They were ideal for material transmutation, particularly earth, and were the ones used by Major Louis Armstrong, the “Strongarm Alchemist.”

  I slammed my fists down onto the earth. Aura mixed with tectonic force, converting it until what I did became indistinguishable from Toph’s earthbending. A giant slab of stone, more than three feet thick, rose up to cover the entrance.

  That was what I did for several minutes. I became invisible, snuck my way through the base to reach each exit, and closed it off. All the while, SAINT manipulated the cameras to ensure that no one noticed the new stone walls where the doors should be.

  Then, when I was done, I had SAINT blare the fire alarms, waking all but the night guards.

  “This is The GOAT and Creed. Coil has been dealt with,” I spoke into the intercom. “You are under arrest. Resist and die.”

  Their actions didn’t matter in the end. Nothing they had could deal with an eviolite-enhanced porygon-2, never mind a king-level storm rider. With all contact to the outside world severed and the various bombs disarmed, they had no recourse but to struggle fruitlessly or kneel like good little minions. Either way, arresting them all would be a pain in the ass.

  Thank god for winter break.

  X

  Lisa Wilbourn

  2010, December 16: Brockton Bay, NH, USA

  Honestly, a part of me didn’t expect to wake up this morning. There were even odds that I’d be silenced in my sleep. It wasn’t as if Coil didn’t have any use for me anymore, but if he ever thought he’d lose his hold on me, I knew he’d much rather kill me than let me go.

  I lounged in my cell, shared with Bitch, as I thought about my options. Regent and Grue were in the cell next door, but that wasn’t much help. Bitch’s dogs had obviously been taken away, and without them, we effectively had zero muscle.

  “We shouldn’t have taken that job,” Grue muttered. My power told me he was sitting with his back flush against our shared wall; useless power. “Tats, ETA on breakout?”

  I remained silent. Grue… really wasn’t all that bright. We were being recorded. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find they knew who each of us were; the masks were just theater at this point.

  This was all basic stuff. They’d let us sweat it out here for a day or so and talk about all the terrible things that might happen. If we began accusing each other, or even better, talked about anything incriminating, it’d naturally be used against us later.

  [Coil no longer has moles in the PRT. Coil has connections with the PRT. Coil works for the PRT. Coil has plans to reestablish contacts within the PRT.]

  I groaned. That explained it then. He hadn’t killed me, not because he planned on breaking us out necessarily, but because he hadn’t gotten around to reestablishing contacts within the PRT yet. So this was more of a stay of execution then.

  I wondered how long it’d take for him to get someone to off us. If The GOAT was such a great thinker, they’d have thought of that, surely. Coil thought they wanted to recruit us, make us heroes. I wasn’t sure, but that didn’t seem like an impossibility. Then they would have a way to secure us in prison before giving us an offer, right?

  That seemed logical, but I didn’t know how they thought, not really. For all I knew, they could have decided that we weren’t worth the hassle. Regent had the Heartbreaker issue. Grue had his sister who’d always be priority number one. Bitch had a murder charge. I was…

  Actually, there wasn’t anything tying me down. It wasn’t as though I hated these people, but… but was I willing to die for them?

  No.

  If I waited here, Coil would kill me to keep me quiet. If I didn’t, if I showed The GOAT that I’d be willing to work with them, then…

  [The PRT is monitoring you. The cameras are being monitored by no one else.]

  I slumped. That was a pain. I didn’t have a way to reach out to them. Hell, telling the PRT that I’d like to switch sides might not help. I’d be negotiating from a nearly worthless position. Theoretically, I knew a great deal about Coil’s organization, but it was all outdated information. Coil’s moles? Outed, arrested, and killed in some cases. Illicit finances? Under investigation.

  It was funny. The GOAT’s cyberattack was why Coil hadn’t killed me off yet, but it was also why I’d ended up here, arrested and without a single bargaining chip to offer for my freedom.

  As the hours passed by, I thought back on the battle, on Creed. The GOAT was so much of a mystery that their pet tinker was the only avenue of investigation.

  Creed’s specialization remained a mystery the more I saw him. He was able to navigate Grue’s darkness by using that tombstone-like sonic emitter on his back. His aim also improved a great deal, almost to the point that it was like two different people were doing the firing.

  One was human, and hampered by the poor vision, while the other didn’t seem to care. Or maybe, Creed could integrate other data such as air pressure and echolocation on the fly.

  Then there was the shield and drone, the duck-like object that emerged to block a sniper’s bullet for Creed. I knew it could double as a turret; it had in Damascus. It also released a powerful, paralyzing wave that stunned all of us at once. We’d never had a chance.

  [Sniper’s aim was perfect. Creed did not take you seriously. Knew about the snipers. Was baiting the snipers like you were baiting Creed. Waited for the bullet.]

  Yeah, that sounded about right. The GOAT knew and warned him.

  I let out a bitter laugh. It must have been nice, having a thinker overseer who wasn’t willing to have you tortured or killed off the moment you became inconvenient.

  [Creed’s reaction is superhuman. Creed is not fast enough to block a sniper’s bullet. Duck was an automatic response.]

  That also tracked. Creed was always exceptionally acrobatic, but though his feats of agility beggared belief sometimes, he wasn’t stop a sniper cold fast.

  Question was, how many tinkers were behind him? How could he keep all their various tinkertech straight in his head to use them optimally? For fuck’s sake, the maintenance alone must have been galling.

  No, maybe that wasn’t right. Maybe there was just one tinker? Two or three at most, with Creed taking the spotlight for some reason.

  His agility could be explained by some kind of in-built gyroscope. Maybe that was why his skates were thicker than normal. But even accounting for that, Creed had to process so much information that he practically merited a thinker rating on his own. There was the echolocation thing, the aimbot, and his turret probably fed him tons of data. Even if it was semi-autonomous, it had to sync with his systems to receive orders.

  There was always the possibility that one of The GOAT’s mysterious tinker pals piloted the duck.

  [Incorrect. Duck is autonomous. No one pilots the duck.]

  That… That changed things. Now that I thought about it, Creed had been busy wrestling Angelica when the sniper struck. Then, when the duck shocked us into unconsciousness, he’d been dealing with the dogs, using his bio-manipulation gloves to shut them down.

  He couldn’t have possibly been feeding the duck commands.

  If… If Creed hadn’t had the bandwidth to control his turret, and no one else was piloting the duck, then… then there was only one conclusion I could come to, the first bit of information I’d noticed today that might possibly come in handy: The balloon-duck was an AI.

  Creed had an AI.

  Author’s Note

  Coil attributes qualities to The GOAT that probably aren’t there. It is said that man’s greatest fear is the unknown, not because it might harm us, but because we are free to imagine the most visceral, personal sorts of danger.

  I don’t know why, I think of Coil as the type of guy to drink gin neat, not because he likes the flavor, but because he thinks it makes him look sophisticated.

  Lisa obviously has no idea that Coil’s “missing.” That said, she now heavily suspects that SAINT is a fully sentient AI.

  Animal Fact: Foxes smell like shit. I know foxgirls are really popular in anime and whatnot for being “waifus,” but they’d smell terrible, especially nine-tailed variants.

  Foxes have a scent gland at the base of their tails that emit a sickly, musty odor. They use this to mark territory and communicate with each other. Nine tails, nine scent glands.

  There’s actually an Inuit myth about this. A fox shed her skin to become a woman and married a hunter. She did everything a wife should do, prepare the house, cook great food, etc. until the hunter mentioned that the house always smelled bad. The fox, offended, said that the odor was from her because she’s a fox. She picked up her skin and changed back before leaving, never to be seen again.

  Weird, but it’s supposed to be about not judging people for things they can’t control… or something… Idk, I’m not Inuit.

  Thank you for reading. To reach a wider audience, and because I enjoy a more forum-like setup to facilitate discussion, I like to crosspost to a wide variety of websites. You can find them all on my Link Tree: .