Effigy - 1.X
thor8797
Canadian Sterotype
Effigy – 1.X
Director Emily Piggot was standing in the PRT building's sixth floor break room lost in thought and participating in one of the oldest traditions known to the office workplace.
Wasting time waiting for the coffee machine to finish making a full pot.
A beep pulled everyone's attention to the coffee maker; conversation tapered off and the line of people shuffled forward to fill their mugs.
Emily strode back to her office, a steaming mug in one hand and a file folder stuffed with today's work in the other she moved past the cubicles and offices that housed the various clerks who ensured the PRT continued to run; the gears in the eternal engine that took in paperwork and spewed out five times more.
"Morning", said Emily's secretary upon spotting her.
"Morning Daniels", she replied stepping past him into her own office. Windows covered by blinds made up the two walls opposite to the door while the remaining two where the same neutral blue as the rest of the building and bare of any decoration.
Dropping heavily into her chair she booted up the computer and flipped open the folder; the first sheet was a notice from the head office that Slaughterhouse was expected to re-emerge sometime in the next year and a half and all branches should be on the lookout for any suspicious cape disappearances. Emily didn't even bother to read the whole thing before tossing it in the garbage.
Capes disappeared all the time for any number of reasons, they'd never caught Jack Slash before Slaughterhouse went on one of their rampages and she wasn't sure why anyone thought they would now.
The second memo was just as redundant as the first, reminding every office that the third Endbringer attack of the year was due to happen soon; it quickly joined the first memo in the garbage.
Shaking her head she moved on to the next order of business; the paperwork assigning Hannah Smith, mid-level Protectorate office drone who was certainly not Miss Militia, as Taylor Hebert's guardian had made their way through the legal department. They just needed a few more signatures, flipping through the surprisingly small sheaf of papers to the lines indicated by the helpful 'sign here' arrows she filled them in with a practiced efficiency before dropping the bundle into the 'out' bin. The form still required signatures from Colin, Hannah and Taylor but at least it was out of her hair now.
'God only knows why they need my signature.'
Third order of business was the results and fallout of the recent gang war. Turning to her computer she hunted down the related files and used the office's projector to put the city map up on the wall before grabbing the file and moving to stand in front of it; it was definitely easier to see the big picture this way rather than squint at it on her monitor.
Territory hadn't shifted that much, a few streets in either direction at most. Only a few major fights, kept mostly out of the public eye thankfully; plenty of skirmishes, not too many suspected fatalities. Fortunately most of the aftermath investigations and arrests could be handled by the BBPD; she only needed to worry about what the cities' parahumans had been doing.
Reading further into the written report revealed some interesting things from their informants. Cricket was dead her apparent inability to wear a helmet finally catching up with her, Grue had done some enforcer work for the Silver Dragons and been paid with a set of tinker-material body armor of all things. And as usual Lung hadn't even bothered to leave his base, content with being the sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's head.
Finishing up the report she gave a sigh and walked over to the corner formed by the windows, tapping a button on her desk as she passed it. The blinds soundlessly pulled themselves up revealing downtown Brocton Bay, the bay itself and the Rig blinking with aircraft warning lights; all of it spread out before her and bathed in the morning light. It was almost beautiful if you could ignore the slightly dilapidated look of some of the buildings downtown, the fact that some of the buildings down by the docks had outright collapsed and the ship graveyard blocking sea access to the docks themselves.
It was rather depressing how little meaningful impact the PRT and Protectorate had had on the city especially in the last year or so. The Protectorate was dangerously undermanned with only three full members and three Wards they were outnumbered roughly four to one. Fortunately they would be getting reinforcements in the next few months and while Taylor Hebert hadn't officially joined the wards yet (she had needed a guardian first) there was little doubt in her mind that the girl would.
A stray thought caused her lips to curl up into an amused smirk, poor Ms. Hebert was going to end up as the darling of the PR department if nothing else; she was photogenic, had a non-objectionable power set, by all accounts was fairly pleasant to be around and came with a built in theme.
Emily's thought process was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Come in", she called.
Daniels poked his head in, "Just reminding you that you have a lunch appointment with Mr. Calvert at 11:30 ma'am." He spoke quickly before ducking out of the office, he had held his position long enough to realise that his boss loathed the man.
Back inside her office Emily's smirk had disappeared in an instant and been replaced with a scowl.
'There goes any chance of today being an alright day.'
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Colin Walis stood just inside the entrance to the labs with a mug of super coffee in one hand, a prototype piece of equipment in the other and a questioning eyebrow raised at the scene in front of him.
"Umm. . .", one of the lab techs said eloquently as he quickly shut off the blowtorch he had been holding to Taylor's forearm. The two techs monitoring the sensors were both trying to surreptitiously move into one of the side labs, Taylor herself gave Colin a small wave using her other arm causing some of the wires attached to the sensors on her to sway.
"Care to explain?" Colin asked the only reason he hadn't rushed in to stop the experiment (by force if necessary) was that Taylor didn't seem to be in any pain and by all appearances was a willing participant. Not that he wouldn't put a stop to the experiment if they didn't have a legitimate reason.
"We're trying to pick up on any kind of nervous signal", the tech explained, getting straight to the point to avoid irritating Colin. "We started off with motor responses before moving on to the other senses outside of taste without picking up anything. Mike over there was the one who suggested the pain response", the tech in question froze.
"A blowtorch seems extreme", prompted Colin.
"Well we didn't start with that, we started with a hot pad that would sting but not burn; we tested it ourselves first", he said a bit defensively when Colin's eyebrow returned to its raised position. "After that we found out that it didn't hurt her so we kept incrementing the heat on the pad up and checking for damage every time she touched it."
At that point the tech paused and looked back at Taylor, his colleagues and the equipment (especially the blowtorch) before turning back to Colin. "We may have gotten a bit sidetracked", He said holding his index and thumb slightly apart.
"We do have signed permission from both Taylor and Miss Militia", interjected lab tech number three (James) as he held up a sheaf of papers.
Colin had been on the other side of this situation when he gave Taylor her file, "And did you tell them the details of the experiments beforehand?"
"No but all of the clauses in here", he said shaking the pages for emphasis. "Say we can't cause any physical or psychological harm, Taylor needs to agree to every experiment and that she can back out at any time."
"Taylor?" Colin questioned.
"It doesn't hurt", she said. "I mean I know it should but I just feel heat not pain, there isn't even any damage", she held up her arm for inspection and true to her word the ceramic appeared pristine.
"Very well", Colin said, satisfied that that despite the questionable usefulness of the experiment itself they had at least covered all of their pre-test bases; given that they were testing in the Protectorate base it would reflect badly on him if they didn't. With that out of the way he returned to his original train of thought, "I need volunteers to test my current lie detector prototype software."
"Sure what exactly do you need?" James asked followed by general noises of agreement from the other techs and Taylor.
"Simply answer a few questions to help refine the software", Colin said holding the device up.
Testing the techs didn't take very long as they were only asked questions that were obvious truths or lies; Colin was pleased to see that his prototype was correct each time.
Taylor was up last since her responses would likely be the hardest for the lie detector to identify.
"Same type of questions as before", Colin said motioning for her to begin.
"My name is Taylor." True
"The sky is hot pink." True
"My hair is dark brown." True
"The world is flat." False
Colin frowned at the second response; he quickly went over what the problem could be before coming up with a short list of probable causes. The most likely reason was that the program just wasn't very good at coming to a conclusion based solely on body language, the second was a simple software glitch; it was still alpha level code after all.
"You ok?" Taylor asked, Colin having been lost in thought.
"Yes, thank you all for your cooperation", he said still ruminating on how to improve the code as he headed back to his lab. On the plus side it gave him the opportunity to work on another project with Dragon.
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In one timeline Thomas Calvert went to his lunch meeting with Director Piggot and considered ways to work around the latest complication to his plans; in the other he sat in his office and considered ways to remove the complication. The complication in question was of course Taylor Hebert or more accurately, her sensory power.
He liked to keep tabs on the city's parahuman population for exactly that reason; wildcards that came out of nowhere and ruined previously well-established plans. A few favours burned in a discarded timeline had gained him access to the doll-girl's file and more importantly, knowledge about her powers.
Piggot and Armsmaster would have to be complete idiots not to abuse her powers to identify all of the capes in the city; the only way to avoid it would be to not have a secret identity.
Timeline A Calvert took that idea and ran with it; did he need a secret identity, or rather did he need one beyond a name?
Timeline B Calvert considered eliminating his problem with explosives or arranging for an 'accident'.
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Time; there never seemed to be enough of it.
Doctor Mother looked at the scattered stacks of papers that covered her desk; reports, requests, theories, observations, updates and more.
Bonesaw was asking for some more unpowered samples so that she could do a practical test on her method of forcing an agent to connect to a host. If it worked it would allow them to grant powers without the same risks that came with taking one of their vials, on top of that it would bring them closer to their ultimate goal; manipulating the programming of the agents themselves.
"Dragon", she spoke to the empty room.
"Yes?" Came Dragon's reply her voice carrying a trace of irritation. She couldn't decide who she despised more; Saint for being a self-righteous, deluded, petty asshole on a power trip, or Cauldron as a whole and Doctor Mother in particular. While they definitely had higher goals than Saint (not a difficult achievement all things considered) there apparently wasn't a single moral or ethical line they wouldn't cross in pursuit of it.
The fact that Cauldron were the ones holding her leash now rankled on several levels.
Doctor Mother knew that Dragon's irritation was directed at her and ignored it, "Send a message to Fortuna that I would like her to create an operational plan for the Headhunters' next mission; she'll know the details."
"I'll do that", Dragon replied her voice flat; revising her earlier thoughts she added a bit of pettiness to the other woman's list of faults.
The door to the office opened and in stepped on of Bonesaw's creations; a robotic body topped with a blank faced human head. Within the chassis sat all of the artificial organs needed to keep the former experiment alive; this particular sample had been used to test Cauldron's new method of forcing agents to disconnect from a host without killing them.
Doctor Mother subtly leaned away from the mindless cyborg as it walked up to her desk to place the stack of papers it had been carrying on one of the few remaining clear spots on the desk before leaving the office. The woman behind the desk watched it go with a frown; in all honesty she found some of the girl's side projects to be unnecessarily creepy. At least it kept her occupied when she wasn't working on their main project and didn't require much in the way of resources beyond what could be recycled from previous experiments.
Who knew, one of those side projects might end up helping to save humanity.
Doctor Mother pulled the first sheet off the stack and began reading; and thus began another day for Cauldron.
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A/N: I'd like to apologise for how long this took.