Omake - The Silver Spider
Three week. That's how long it took me to find out Coil's secret identity. I would have gone after him eventually, and I wouldn't have done it to his CID, but after the stuff Lisa told me about, I didn't honestly care.
<You know, with all the trouble you're going to to help Tattletale out, one might almost think...>
'I. Am not. Gay.' I hissed back. Joyous Uncertainty's habit of trying to hook me up with various people of the feminine persuasion had gotten old a long time ago.
<If you say so.>
When I first got Quicksilver Sap Transfusion, I never imagined I would use it. The idea of using a highly lethal poison was so anathema to me that I almost didn't take the charm in the first place. It was only because that in order to get access to improved durability and regeneration that I even considered it. What tipped the decision for me was that it gave me access to the ability to give my regenerative abilities to other. I had both met and worked with most of the heroes in Brockton Bay, but what Panacea did for my dad while I was in the chrysalis made the biggest difference of all. I couldn't heal people on the scale she did; my healing worked a lot slower than hers did and it literally had to pay for it in blood, but if I could do for just one person what she had done for me, then it was worth it. Today, however, I was going to be using that charm for its original purpose.
The problem with trying to go after Coil was that he was practically untouchable. With his power to maintain two timelines, if something went wrong in one timeline, then he would just drop it and keep the other, and he had the incredibly annoying habit of keeping up 'safe' timelines. This meant that going after him with conventional means was basically impossible. In order to beat him, I had to hit him with something that could affect both of his timelines, and the only way to guarantee I could do that was to hit him before he split his timelines, but he would only keep the timeline I had hit him in if he didn't know it. Basically, I had to kill him far in advance of his body actually dropping dead. That left me with one option: poison.
Coil was paranoid. This was a well understood fact by anyone who bother to take a look at the man's actions. He had a pretty extensive home security system, but he never expected to be going up against both myself and Tattletale. Besides, I made is a habit not to advertise the full extent of my powers. Impulse Infusion Pnuematics is great for defeating security systems. That combined with the information Tattletale got for me meant I could buy myself a 15 minute loop of all clear. After doing so, I walk up to the front door (in disguise, of course), slid the bump-key into the lock, and let myself in to Thomas Calvert's humble abode.
I walked down the front hall and through the first door on the left, into the kitchen. Lisa had it on good authority that Calvert had the same thing for breakfast every morning. If he had a pattern, it would be easier for him to notice any discrepancies. It also made him predictable. I opened the fridge and poured the vial of blood I had in my jacket pocket into the already open carton of orange juice. If Coil had breakfast at home any time in the next couple of days, he was a goner. It would also take several days to take effect, so unless he kept his timelines split for several days at a time, which Lisa assured me he simply never did, then he was already dead.
As I left the house and dropped my disguise, I stated my long, pre-planned walk to the rehab clinic. I knew that the healing effects of my blood could clear out poisons, but I wanted to make sure that it would work on addictive drugs.
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So, this is obviously a 'what if' story, based on what Taylor could do with Szoreny Charms. Please excuse me if I did impossible things with the charms, I don't have any experience with Exalted.
