Apprentice 2.A Interlude Kaiser

It had not been a good start for the year for the Empire Eighty-Eight. The Merchants were causing trouble, getting bold enough to attack several Empire properties and meeting places. Firebombing, drive-by attacks, kicking in doors and rushing in so high on drugs they didn't even realize they'd been shot before they collapsed on the ground, but doped up to a point where they managed to cause serious damage in a number of cases.

Several of their men were dead or badly hurt. Victor was in charge of guarding Othala and Othala was in turn taking care of their injured. It was a slow process, enough that he had considered contacting Faultline and hiring the healer she had managed to hire recently. Perhaps see if he could convince the man to join the Empire, after all, there had been some leaks suggesting that the Merchants had run into the man before, and noted he was a white guy.

The damaged properties, ruined business and general damages were getting annoying. Then suddenly there had been a series of attacks against the Merchants, even destroying several of their vehicles. He wasn't sure if it was some Vigilante targeting the Merchants to reduce collateral damage to the civilian populace or an Empire sympathizer looking to prove themselves, but this night he'd got his answer.

There had been an attack at a laboratory that Kaiser had sought to keep secret, a place he had only sent trusted veterans to watch over. A laboratory that had helped turn a shipment of drugs into a rather foul patch they had intended to 'leak' into Merchant territory, a drug shipment that would have spread to a number of those damned junkies quickly, and that would have then had them all coughing out blood in two or three weeks. A rather long delay to make them miss the insidious additions, but it would have taken down a number of Merchant thugs and customers in one go.

That was secondary however to the fact that the attack had resulted in capture of both Hookwolf and Cricket. Of the two, he had report that Cricket had at least managed to strike and injure the enemy, but Hookwolf had been taken down in one nasty shot, and Stormtiger had been attacked from behind by one of the Ward brats.

The damned bitch had tried to tranquilize Stormtiger while the man had been diverting any fire from the Empire men firing up the staircase after the first group had been blasted back by what had been reported to have been some sort of an incendiary grenade that had knocked them back scorched but still alive.

The whole situation was annoying. The Empire was busy with the Merchants and these attacks had made Krieg complain, and Hookwolf had been snarling mad before. Alabaster had discouraged more than a few raids by Merchants, and been on the counter attack along with Rune, who had bombarded a few known Merchant drug houses from the air before flying off, while Empire recruits had got their baptism by fire in raiding and shooting up Merchant scum.

Alabaster and Crusader would join Stormtiger in striking back against the PRT later, but first he'd want Rune to be back, along with Fenja and Menja returning from their own assignment. After the recent fighting, the ABB had began to sniff around a few Empire properties, and the twins showing up in costume managed to clear out the crowd of ABB watchers in a hurry. After all, the last thing Kaiser wanted was a war on all fronts.

Still, the insult against the Empire couldn't be forgiven so easily. This 'Blackjack' had gone from a possible convert to a target, maybe not a priority one right away, but he was sure that Hookwolf would be looking for a rematch, and Cricket too possibly.

"Boss! Boss!" The doors opened to let in a hurried messenger, who swallowed nervously holding out a fax he hurriedly brought to the desk. "I just got this, and look, boss, this is bad, this-" The man only paused as a metal blade emerged from Kaiser's desk and stopped just short of cutting into his throat.

"Calm down Gregory, and let me read that." Kaiser took up the paper and frowned, wondering what could set off this lieutenant like this, before his eyes widened at what was listed on the fax. His fingers clenched crumbling the fax lightly while he felt a cold sweat start to gather, and swallowed audibly.

"The PRT captured those containers, and did so intact?! I thought the instructions were for those to be evacuated as soon as there was the first sign of trouble! And why am I only hearing this now!?"

Armsmaster

The night had started out well enough, capture of two Empire capes and thugs, a shipment of drugs off the street was another good addition, and Shadow Stalker had even managed to snatch something interesting that he would have to examine later, a case containing tinkertech canisters with unknown fluid contents.

The problem was that after the capture of those Empire capes they had also taken down a vigilante who had been reportedly behaving in a rather suspicious manner and potentially alienating Shadow Stalker from the Wards and drawing her back into a life of a vigilante. A man who's intentions were rather uncertain as well. He had found it best to take the man down and interrogate him later with more effective lie-detection tech he had. None of it was miniaturized enough to fit in his armor or halberd, yet, but he was close. The earlier prototype was functional, but with too high margin of error for false readings.

The moment things had gone wrong was when on their way back to the PRT HQ he had been holding the case when there was an alarm in the van holding the prisoners. They had been in a hurry, and loaded up the three sedated foes into a van to escape because the word was that Stormtiger had already left to get reinforcements, and Rune had been reported in the air nearby. Waiting around could have risked potentially losing all of their captives.

Yet one of them was on the move, and then the damn ceiling had exploded in the van. A figure had flown in the air, and the driver and the man riding shotgun had thrown their con-foam grenades right away only to watch the grenades detonate impacting something in the air before the man, and fall down harmlessly.

Seeing the man fly in the air like that, and then vanish, Armsmaster was checking his helmet camera's recording to confirm whether it was instant acceleration meaning a very high mover rating, or a stranger effect of some sort, but he was having no luck.

The infra-red, ultraviolet and low-light vision modes recorded each gave him nothing, the infra-red had at least shown the air had been hot where the man had been a moment earlier, but no signs of where he'd vanished, no trail, no signs of heat emanating from a particular direction.

As if that had not been annoying enough, they had been attacked on the way back to PRT HQ by Rune pelting their cars with metal, but had to retreat when additional forces showed up and Armsmaster was joined by Assault and Battery.

He had expected at least some gratitude for returning with two Empire captives, but instead he had only just finished a long talk with the Director, a talk involving some rather heated words and chastisements. Worse, she had been livid he had alienated a potential recruit, and one that apparently had a number of powers.

The fact remained their Thinkers were already reporting that the man in question was heroically inclined but one who would likely not take an attack on his person very well. The Thinkers were stumped at how he would react, half of them were inclined to reply 'liable to hold a grudge' while the other half were stating 'may be salvageable if kept away from Armsmaster'.

Which meant that his stock with the PRT and Protectorate had taken a plunge, despite the capture. He had been yelling at Shadow Stalker for being out on patrol without informing the PRT about it in advance, and about meeting with a man who had unknown motives. The fact she'd simply glared at him had not helped, she was prone to explode in anger but this time, she had seethed and then arriving to PRT, she had given a full report, but not to him, but Miss Militia.

And here he was, in his lab, working on his tech while distracted by the recent scolding and finding himself receiving a number of glares and suspicious looks. The Director had almost called out Master Stranger protocols on him, if not for Dragon convincing her that there had been something else going on, but they had sent him out of the room rather than letting him hear what it was, refusing to talk about it with him right away.

It was frustrating how inefficient things were right now, and how the distractions were slowing his tinkering pace down further. Thankfully Miracle was at least able to help him dodge the maintenance work and focus on the improvements instead, otherwise he might have had to shelve the upgrades and focus on the maintenance routine for a while given how distracted he felt. The pace of his work was just not up to the usual standards, and he was annoyed even further by this.

Faultline

'Medic' had been a stranger when he arrived, but he had proven himself willing to negotiate, and kept up his part. When Faultline had received the job offer that would take her out of the city, she had suspected something might happen, but she was still annoyed by the fact Medic had decided to walk away in their absence.

Still, his scrolls had proven useful, and she had already confirmed they worked. The fact he could create those scrolls was puzzling, but she could not help but find them useful. The utility powers could help prepare for unexpected circumstances, having a healing one around would mean taking care of immediate wounds and preventing someone from dying if they were still alive when the scroll was used was a very useful power indeed.

The fact Medic had contacted her again, and was willing to return, at least part time, was a matter that left her somewhat torn. She appreciated the goose laying golden eggs returning, but she was also aware he was unlikely to remain under her watchful eye all the time now. Still, healing, and producing those scrolls would benefit her team and would benefit him as well. The scrolls were something she would have to ask some questions about first though, and she was unwilling to risk marketing those. But they would be very useful to keep at hand for her crew in a crisis.

As for the answers she had demanded, he had promised to share some with her, but had insisted on keeping others to himself, for now. Nevertheless, she was looking forward to continuing at least the healing practice for a while. PRT had managed to snatch another healer of their own, but they would undoubtedly want to snatch up Medic as well given half a chance. Same with the Empire, she thought somewhat bitterly. She had almost expected to find him in their rows on return, despite his prior comments about not supporting the Empire's agenda.

Nevertheless, the man owed her and the crew some proper answers to get any trust back after running.

"What do you mean the path has changed?" Doctor Mother asked entirely serious while staring at Contessa intently, as did everyone else in the room as well.

"The recent events in Jamestown and Brockton Bay have sent off their own share of ripples. Jamestown incident has resulted in a spread of conflict, which is expected to result in a number of additional triggers, but also a number of new issues involving the stability of the current regime. The 'Firestarter' is a problem who needs to be brought down quickly, or they may cause additional trouble. Thankfully they remain easy enough to path to some dead ends, but no path so far has seen their complete eradication happen." Contessa answered in a serious tone of voice, holding a small icebag to the side of her head, her usual fedora resting on the table before her.

"What about the Brockton Bay? I am unaware of any important events there, the Parahuman Feudalism experiment is proceeding as expected is it not?" Eidolon looked at Contessa a bit troubled by the fact the usually immaculate look she had was currently far less so.

"Brockton Bay is hard to path. Attempts to path known individuals still works for most part, but the city itself is changing. There's a growing blank spot around the city area which has been causing short gaps in the path resulting in the path resetting with subtle changes only to reset again." Contessa shook her head.

"A new blind spot means a threat to the scenario and the experiment. We will need to locate the source of the interference and deal with them promptly." Alexandria glanced at the others and was met with a nod.

"We could call in a favor from Battery from the Protectorate, and one of the favors that Coil still owes us. Additionally, the Merchants could potentially make use of one of our recent customers joining their ranks, and he would likely be willing in exchange for a suitable payment and us writing off one of the favors owed to us." Numberman remarked this briefly.

"The problem is that there's not one blindspot that could be tracked down, but hundreds if not thousands. They're short ranged but disrupt pathing around them, making them a problem." Contessa stated while putting the ice bag down for a moment, looking a bit ill.

"You don't look so good." Eidolon felt a need to state the obvious.

"I am currently trying to adjust paths to ignore Brockton Bay area and focus on achieving our goals outside of the territory. However, the fact of the matter remains that while Brockton Bay area needs to be checked for the source of these blind spots there, it is Firestarter who is a more serious issue. At the current rate he is going to start causing additional steps through interference in several main paths within months, and if not stopped before April is likely to result in loss of some substantial assets. Individual paths to destroy him have only returned unacceptable losses with little permanent results, capture and containment however are an option as long as he can be taken down before he realizes the threat." Contessa got up on her feet after this, hurriedly walking out of the room a hand over her mouth and shuddering.

"This is becoming a serious issue. We cannot allow this disruption to our activities to go unchecked. I am authorizing the release of subjects E-38, E-51 and E-116 if that is what it takes to subdue Firestarter." Doctor Mother's words saw Eidolon jump on his feet.

"ARE YOU MAD? E-class is the sort of monsters we DON'T want to allow out of their cells, A through D I could understand dumping outside once we are done examining them and finding out what went wrong, even if I still recommend euthanizing the D class, but E was specifically excluded from release due to the potential hazard they pose and the fact we haven't found a proper way to destroy them yet!"

Doctor Mother cast a sharp glare at Eidolon who had been shouting for a moment, before dryly answering him in a few sharp words.

"Unlike Firebringer, they should still be possible to destroy as long as Legend is willing to not hold back and blast them from the air. None of them have ranged attacks or are capable of escaping from the area before intervention if we time things right."

Eidolon grit his teeth together but chose not to argue. Still, if he had a choice about it the E-class would not see any release, ever. Hell, some of them were worse than Crawler, but without a real intellect to guide them, only a sense of hatred towards all other living beings.

E-class was Cauldron's mistake of making monsters without any humanity remaining after having been administered a potent vial for experimental purposes. Then again, they were also the class that had lead to most break-throughs in their research, despite the risk and difficulty of containment.

Author's Note: Tried a few attempts at PHO interlude, but the end results were more than a little unsatisfactory. Not too many about the Interlude split among so many points of view with so little to say either, but in the end it was either this or nothing tonight, and I decided I would rather move onto the next chapter than attempt to put together a PHO interlude without the cliche appearances, or add in more points of view. I also cut off a couple of rants from Director Piggot I had considered adding and then cut out as they added very little of actual value to the story.[/hr][/hr][/hr][/hr]