What would you do, if you ran a multidimensional conspiracy that manufactured powers, traded in the darkest and most secretive of favours, and had a history of deeply unethical human experimentation and some of the most powerful parahumans in existence as members?
The answer probably isn't "go into the pizza delivery business", but what if it was?
It would not be inaccurate to say that Coil was, in a general sense, mostly unafraid of other capes. Oh, he acknowledged that there were few of them he could take in a straight-up physical confrontation, but by and large he was convinced he was smart enough to avoid a straight up physical confrontation, or at worst have it happen only in a single timeline while he got away in a safe one.
Timeline-splitting was handy like that. Most problems could be solved pretty easily that way, when one got right down to it, including other capes.
There was, however, one cape above all others that he truly, deeply feared. There were some that he would concede were (almost) in his league in terms of plotting and intellect, and a few who weren't who he nonetheless had to be very careful with. But there was only one who was absolutely, unquestionably better than him.
And she was in his base, going through his hired guns like a hot knife through butter. His men were trained special forces, outfitted with the very best of military technology and more Tinkertech than one could shake a stick at. They were vicious, resilient, and creative. They had thrown every countermeasure imaginable at the suited woman, and hadn't so much as mussed up her hair.
The woman, along with her suit, her fedora, and the brightly coloured insulated bag she carried didn't have so much as a single speck of powder or drop of blood touch them as she casually incapacitated an entire company's worth of some the finest, and most expensive, non-powered mercenaries in North America.
That they were actually managing to slow her down was honestly far more than he'd expected when he realised just who was assaulting his base. It seemed she wanted to make a show of things.
Escape was in all likelihood impossible, but in case it wasn't he split the timeline. One of him made for one of his secret escape tunnels, the other for his greatest asset.
The first died in a hail of automatic weapon fire within seconds. From what the other him saw, the woman had seized Brown's arm and redirected an entire clip meant for her into the wall the first him had been passing.
That the holes left afterwards formed a perfect inverted Omega told him he was meant to notice what she'd done.
Another twenty-seven timelines ended painfully as the surviving iteration made his way to the Alcott girl's cell. He felt the time she'd kicked a flashbang into a rip in his suit less than three inches long was particularly mean-spirited. Clearly, she was deliberately sending a message.
Coil just hoped he'd survive the experience. He didn't even know what he'd done. He had kept to the terms of his agreement with Cauldron, in letter and spirit, with the most fastidious of attention. He had not, as far as he knew, interfered with any of their operations. He would have granted any favor they asked for, but they hadn't asked for anything. The woman had just shown up in his base out of the blue and taken down the first man who tried to stop her progress with a ballpoint pen.
And she was heading for the Alcott cell. That much was clear now.
He supposed it made a sort of sense. The girl was undeniably valuable, and perhaps to the minds behind the suited woman she was more so than himself. But why didn't they just call in one of the favors he owed them?
He would have resented it, would have tried to wriggle his way out, but they could have forced the issue without issue, at least for them.
Actually, now that he thought about it, why hadn't they simply grabbed her before he did? It wasn't like it would have been difficult, not compared to this. Not for them.
Not for the woman in the suit.
Although, in all honesty, he had to wonder if anything could truly be considered "difficult" for her.
He barely even noticed as he relocked the cell door behind him. It wasn't like it would stop her.
He drew his pistol as he turned to ask the Alcott girl a question. He didn't know what he was going to ask, he didn't know what he could ask that could actually help him, but it didn't matter.
He never got the chance. The second his lips split, the woman had a finger over them. A part of Coil, a very small and insignificant part, resented being shushed like a child.
The rest of him was too terrified to disobey.
It felt like an eternity before the woman spoke, but in all likelihood it was at most a second.
"Small Meatlovers with Extra Cheese for Dinah Alcott?"
Wait, what?
"That's me."
"That'll be 15.97$"
Thomas Calvert still hadn't processed that first statement, and so was in no way ready to resist when Dinah Alcott walked up to him, unzipped his costume, and stole his wallet.
He had just started reeling from the audacity of that when the child pulled out a hundred dollar bill, his hundred dollar bill, handed it to the woman, and said "keep the change".
By the time the woman opened up her insulated bag, removed a slightly steaming flat white cardboard box, and put it on the bed, he was just starting to recover. Slightly.
Only for the youngest precognitive in the room to open the box, pull out a slice of admittedly excellent-looking pizza, and bite down.
"... Phank yu, ish delishouss."
And the women, the terrifying woman, the woman who had just singlehandedly stormed his base without so much as her getting her suit dirty, patted Dinah on the head and walked out of the room.
Thomas Calvert quite literally collapsed in sheer relief. He was going to live. He had no idea what just happened, and he suspected he never would, but he was going to live.
A few feet away, a cute little extremely powerful Thinker swallowed her food, reluctantly put off taking another bite, and looked at the pistol she had in her other hand. She was really glad the nice lady hadn't made a fuss about her taking it, she wasn't supposed to touch guns outside a firing range until she was sixteen, let alone steal them from distracted adults. But she felt the circumstances warranted it.
"Odds that I can shoot this meanie in the head a bunch of times and not get in trouble for it?" she asked herself.
She smiled as she said "98.724%"
At the time, neither of the remaining Thinkers in the room noticed the business card taped to the side of the box. It was a very nice business card, clearly professionally done and printed with extremely fancy ink on extremely fancy paper. It was even laminated, and very nicely laminated at that. It was, in short, just about the best quality business card imaginable.
Cauldron Cooking & Pizza: The Best of Foodstuffs at the Most Reasonable of Prices
We Deliver Anywhere, in Thirty Minutes or Less, Guaranteed
Ask About our 5% Discount for Case 53s
Order now at 555-228-5376, Or Check out Our Website Today!
Sadly, the effort that went into the card was to be for naught. Unfortunately for him, Coil wouldn't be in any position to check it out any time soon, and Dinah Alcott was already determined: she was totally gonna be a repeat customer.
Parahumanly fast pizza delivery service.
5 minutes flat pizza delivery or double your money back, no matter where you are in America*. Call now and order the pizza our Thinker already put into the oven.
We even deliver pizza in all non S threat emergencies. *Unless you are in prison or an area restricted by law.
Thank you, you two, for inspiring the idea behind this story and my return to it, respectively. This would not have happened without you.
(It's still totally my fault though, if you have to blame somebody blame me. Unlike some author's, I have no intention of throwing my inspirations under the bus. Give them a share of the credit if you must, but the blame is all mine.)
Ow hell, wow! That... that actually have some sense, thinking about it.
But I'm way too busy suppressing a hysterical laugh now, so can't actually think.
Awesome!
Thomas Calvert still hadn't processed that first statement, and so was in no way ready to resist when Dinah Alcott walked up to him, unzipped his costume, and stole his wallet.
He had just started reeling from the audacity of that when the child pulled out a hundred dollar bill, his hundred dollar bill, handed it to the woman, and said "keep the change".
It's customary to increase your tip when the route is particularly difficult, the service is especially good, or you just blatantly stole the money you're using to pay the delivery person right in front of them without even blinking an eye.
Emily Piggot liked to think she was a patient, reasonable woman, one who was, to be blunt, capable of putting up with a truly extraordinary amount of bull. It was somewhat of a job requirement for any PRT director, and in Brockton Bay there was no "somewhat" about it. Even on a good day, Brockton Bay produced almost as much of the stuff as New York, the largest PRT department in existence, a city with more than fifty times its population and almost five times as many capes.
On a bad day, it could be multiple orders of magnitude worse.
This was not a good day.
It wasn't the worst sort of day, mind you. On that kind of day there would be bodies to deal with. A lot of bodies to deal with. Today there were only two bodies that were matters for police to handle, and neither of them were Emily's problem. One was a hit-and-run, and the other was definitely a case of severe workplace negligence but probably not deliberate violence, and there was no sign of Parahuman involvement in either. Those were going to be a headache for sure, but they weren't going to be her headache, so Emily couldn't bring herself to care.
Emily's headache called herself Pizza Girl.
Nobody knew where Pizza Girl had come from. Or, at least, nobody who was talking to the PRT. One day there was nothing, the next a solid chunk of downtown was under her saucy, flavor-filled fist. Her logo adorned some of the city's most valuable commercial real estate, and half a dozen residential neighborhoods had soon followed suit.
That the PRT ENE didn't know where she'd come from was not, in and of itself, particularly unusual. Inconvenient, to be sure, but not unusual. Triggers didn't seem to be entirely random, but they were close enough to it that it made no difference from a law-enforcement perspective. New capes popped up all the time, and most of them seemed to come out of nowhere.
Very few, however, had the kind of resources Pizza Girl possessed.
Weapons, and not just the usual pistols, carbines, hunting rifles, and shotguns, but assault rifles, rocket launchers, squad support weapons, anti-materiel rifles, and, if certain indications were accurate, at least one piece of full out field artillery. Body armor, good body armor, better than Emily could afford to issue. All sorts of vehicles, up to and including military grade Armored Personnel Carriers.
And, even less explicably, the people to use her copious amounts of materiel. A solidly well-trained core of clearly ex-military troops plus a growing number of poached personnel from the lesser gangs of the city, made exponentially more dangerous with better equipment, better training, and better leadership.
And she had capes. Pizza Girl herself was rumored to be a powerful Thinker, and The Undersiders, Uber & Leet, and Circus were all at least willing to work with her forces. Even if Pizza Girl herself didn't take the field, that was enough capes to outnumber the Protectorate wholesale.
Pizza Girl's gang probably wasn't the most powerful in the city. Not yet. But, in less than a week, she'd gone from a complete unknown to undeniably one of the top three, and she was more powerful than all the gangs in the city except the other two jockeying for the top spot put together. And she was gaining in strength quickly.
And nobody knew where any of it was coming from. Or where it went when it wasn't out enforcing her will. Pizza Girl had no apparent source of income that could possibly cover even the maintenance costs on her troops' weapons, let alone everything else. She didn't sell drugs, didn't run fights, didn't seem to be involved in trafficking or even mundane prostitution, didn't run robberies, didn't even charge the people in her territory "protection" money. All she did was keep the other gangs out of her staked-out territory and get into fights on the internet. Sometimes with callout videos.
It was a mystery. Emily Piggot very much did not appreciate mysteries. Especially ones relating to supervillains in her jurisdiction.
She also didn't appreciate being bamboozled by a twelve year old. Because that was what Pizza Girl was. Atwelve year old. She'd literally and publicly proclaimed as much after Assault had accused her of being "like, ten or something". Like it was such a big difference.
Children. Both of them.
Unfortunately, these particular children were very good at covering up their tracks, and Battery hadn't been anywhere near as successful at uncovering Pizza Girl's as she usually was with Assault's.
There was only a single lead. Business cards and delivery menus for a pizza restaurant had been distributed throughout the city, on a timeframe that very loosely matched up with Pizza Girl's first appearance. No address was listed, and no delivery area was mentioned, which was apparently unusual. Emily couldn't speak to that personally, she hadn't had pizza of any sort in years.
It was not a good lead. It wasn't even a mediocre lead. It barely qualified as a lead at all. But it was the only one she had, so she'd ordered an investigation.
The fact City Hall had no record of the place's existence, let alone address, did not point to it being legitimate.
Which, in and of itself, was hardly unusual. But that sort of fly-by-night operation rarely advertised, and certainly not on the scale of sending a pamphlet to every residence in the entire city. Even Emily herself had gotten one, though she'd had to dig it out of her vast pile of takeout menus she'd never used.
(She told herself it was in case she ever had guests over. She had never had guests over. In all likelihood, she never would have guests over. But she held onto them anyway, because she'd loved the stuff back when it was safe for her to eat restaurant food, and she couldn't bear to throw them away.)
The fact that nobody had been able to find an address, or even any sort of location, for them at all definitely indicated something was up. Nor did anybody know who worked for them, where they got their ingredients, or even how the menus and cards had even been delivered. "Cauldron Cooking and Pizza" was proving even more elusive and mysterious than Pizza Girl.
That did not feel like a coincidence. Nor did the fact that the local sanitation department removed hundreds of boxes with their logo from Pizza Girl's territory every day, more than the entire rest of the city combined.
It was stupid. Pizza and supervillainy did not go together. Maybe as a convenient and delicious food for meetings, rushed moments, and celebrations, the way it was for the rest of the world, but not as an active element.
Except, apparently, they did in fact go together. Really well, if Pizza Girl's success was any indicator. Like peanut butter and chocolate, or jalapeño and pineapple.
So Emily had, reluctantly, taken the only option she had left. At her request, Armsmaster had placed an order using his special phone, the one with the ridiculous name that was supposed to be able to trace anything.
That it hadn't worked was, frankly, extremely suspicious, but there was still the delivery person to extract information from.
Downstairs, there was a particular door that was always used on those occasions when takeout-style food was delivered to PRT Headquarters.
(Most of the food consumed in the building came from the cafeteria, which had a much larger dedicated delivery door of its own, and most of the rest came from the vending machines or was brought to work by various personnel, but it was a big building with a lot of people and it did come up from time to time.)
By this door, three seasoned, highly trained, and very busy PRT agents lay in wait. One openly, to talk with the delivery person, pay, and receive the food, and two concealed, to plant trackers, bugs, and make observations.
It was a colossal waste of their talents, but Emily didn't trust anybody else to do the job without being noticed.
And now she just had to wait.
Waiting was boring, but she was used to it. The PRT wasn't as "hurry up and wait" as the army, but that was a tremendously low bar to clear. As a trooper, Emliy had taken it to an art form, and she had even learned to instantly snap out of it when something important (or orders from a superior) came along.
"Uhh, ma'am?" came Matthias Beck's voice on the intercom. She'd forgotten she'd had to slot the greenie in to replace her secretary, who'd been arrested for feeding the seagulls.
Again.
Emily suspected Officer Hays might be carrying a bit of a grudge for the time Sally had given him the runaround about one of Emily's cases he wasn't supposed to be looking into for three hours straight. Sally didn't even like birds, she was just a bit careless with leaving food around.
"Yes, Beck?"
"The, uhh, the Chief Director is here to see you."
...
"This had better not be a prank, Beck"
Matthias Beck wasn't the pranking type, not by himself, but he was easily peer pressured. It wasn't inconceivable that Assault or Clockblocker had convinced him to do something stupid.
It was a lot more likely than the notoriously busy Rebecca Costa-Brown showing up at Emily's office out of nowhere.
Right?
Wrong, apparently. Because Rebecca Costa-Brown was walking into Emily Piggot's office without so much as a by-your-leave.
"A medium Jalapeño and Pineapple, 'Kidney-Safe' Reduced Sodium Version for Emily Piggot?" spoke the single most powerful woman in the United States, in exactly the same tone Emily Piggot had heard her issue Kill Orders in on more than a dozen occasions, hefting a colorful food delivery satchel emblazoned with what Emily, with dawning horror, recognised as the same logo that had been on the flier.
Wrong, apparently. Because Rebecca Costa-Brown was walking into Emily Piggot's office without so much as a by-your-leave.
"A medium Jalapeño and Pineapple, 'Kidney-Safe' Reduced Sodium Version for Emily Piggot?" spoke the single most powerful woman in the United States, in exactly the same tone Emily Piggot had heard her issue Kill Orders in on more than a dozen occasions, hefting a colorful food delivery satchel emblazoned with what Emily, with dawning horror, recognised as the same logo that had been on the flier.
