Chapter 22

A Wizard In Alexandria's Court

Chapter Twenty Two

by Skysaber

OoOoO

Story Day Twenty, April 25th 2011, Monday - Morning

OoOoO

Immediately after Jared's absence sank in, the girls' first thought was to call him to apologize, and beg him to come back.

They were teenage girls. They liked phones. So sue them.

However, it was with great dismay the Sirens discovered that their special little robot smartphones had all vanished with him, and without their special dialing ability, none of them had any idea on how to reach him.

Lisa, who was not alone in having rapidly grown to depend upon the little, intelligent device for all kinds of things, was far from the only one shocked and not a little bit disturbed by their sudden absence. As they'd had their schedules and all kinds of things on there, the disruption to their current lifestyle was not small to have those super-phones gone.

Next up, they'd discovered their super, self-aware automobiles that Jared had given them for the race were also all gone.

That was another blow.

If there are any two devices generally regarded as more important to a girl than boys, their phones and their cars are among the first picks.

They both represent freedom. Freedom to communicate, and freedom to travel.

As proof once again of how important Jared was to their lives, while he had been with them they'd had super-tech devices that were better than anyone else on Earth-Bet had. Not even Dragon's technology was better (in part, because the wizard had been using technology from the DragonStar setting as a base to work off of, which was a parody of the Star Wars environment using fantasy races and classes, mixing both high technology and magic - and adding in the Transformers knock-off had not hurt in the super-technology department).

So while they'd had their boy, their devices were better than anyone else had. But the moment they'd lost him, they'd lost those toys as well. That just served to emphasize how big a loss they had suffered, and reiterated that everything in their lives they loved came from him.

That was doubly underscored when, on a routine shopping trip into town, Dinah had suddenly stiffened, and urgently declared, "We've got to get out of here, NOW!"

Lisa had looked up from the blouse she'd been considering, at first puzzled at the little precog, then she'd looked outside the store's big, front windows and seen a couple of dark vans pulling up outside.

Recognizing them as Coil's, something her power confirmed, she just dropped the blouse and let it fall where she stood, and shouted, "Everyone out! NOW!" before reaching out and grabbing the nearest girl (who happened to be Taylor), and hissing in her ear on her way to the back door, "The recon cape's *job* is to detect danger BEFORE we are neck-deep in it! Two vans full of professional mercenaries in body armor and armed to the teeth with lasers and assault weapons constitute a THREAT!" she practically shrieked.

It turned out, there was a third van, already parked to the rear, whose men had already deployed to capture them the moment they'd exited the clothing boutique that way.

Taylor at least was able to warn them of that one before they'd stumbled into the ambush.

It was only thanks to Vista's quick thinking that they were able to walk out throught the HVAC system, and then roof-jump away.

Later investigation would prove that the Empire had leaks (big surprise there, right?), and after Jared's showdown against Victor that one night, it had become more or less generally known among the Empire that those girls of his were considered capes.

So naturally, once Coil had been told that through his moles, the snake-themed supervillain had tried to capture them.

It was a close brush with enslavement and possible death that once again underscored how much the Sirens had relied upon Jared for their basic safety and protection, as without him the hillbillies would not leave Fairhaven, so there would have been absolutely no one to rescue them if they had all been kidnapped by Coil.

That close call had Lisa vowing never to leave Fairhaven again until they had Jared back. He could navigate these sorts of problems seemingly effortlessly.

They could not.

Taylor was still very much a teenage girl, fresh from normal life, and had that same basic assumption of on-duty/off-duty like you'd expect from a normal job and work hours.

So sometimes she considered herself 'off-duty' and stopped looking out for trouble.

The others considered this an error.

But while Taylor was fairly bummed out about not having recognized the danger before it had the drop on them, and the rest of the group had been fairly hard on her as well, unlike the original timeline Taylor, this one had not been through multiple near-death experiences, starting with trying to solo Lung. So she was not as hyper-aware of danger as she might have been if she'd had those close brushes with death terrorizing her into paying constant, near-paranoid attention all of the time.

It was a difference of mindset. This Taylor had not been sharpened into that same ultra-paranoid tool she'd been in the mainline. That same on-duty/off-duty toggle everybody has, was a luxury she could not afford anymore. Only she had not quite come to realize that yet.

She still missed things. She got to someplace or did something she deemed 'fun', and relaxed.

Also, danger came in so many forms it was hard to recognize. A couple of vans? Big deal! In a city you are more or less surrounded by traffic all of the time. A fair amount of that traffic was vans. One could not consider all of them a threat without being paranoid. Similarly men, population centers had them, they consisted of roughly half the population. Countless among them were even fit and exercised.

Not even guns were as clear a signal as one might expect, as countless ordinary citizens were packing for self-defense.

Guns work, and people had the need.

All that considered, it took a great deal of devotion and attention to detail to note certain things in combination as threatening, before that threat was apparent to everyone else. After all, the police, the PRT, even the local FBI, and various private security groups, had guys going out and about town on various errands, and they were all wearing body armor and packing concealed pistols at the very least.

A few shotguns or rifles (hard to tell apart via bugs, as they did not smell any different) stashed in a vehicle were far from uncommon.

Of course, what none of them had realized was that Coil understood from rumors he'd heard via his moles in the Empire was at least one of those girls was a precog.

Coil quite liked to have extra Thinker-style capes under his control, and having spent considerable time, energy and resources hunting Dinah before, had developed some techniques for going about hunting precogs generally. One of the tricks he'd employed was near-constant feints, where he'd have his armed assault teams simply drive past, blocks away from their target, and do it several times before even considering calling in the attack. Then, just in case that precog's power was based upon reading someone's intent, Coil would use some form of random number generator to help him decide whether to call the attack in as they made this pass, or not.

It had worked well against Dinah, as her power fed her probabilities only. So if Coil was doing the equivalent of rolling dice, which had only a 13% chance of coming up the combo Coil had taken to using to mean 'attack', then Dinah's power had only told her of a 13% chance of being attacked.

On this pass.

But if you make a dozen rolls over a few days at 13% each, one of those has a good chance of coming up, 'Attack!'

So Taylor had actually sensed, through her bugs, that same group pass by dozens of times before they'd made their kidnapping attempt.

Once Lisa and Dinah had asked all of their questions (Dinah of her power, Lisa of everyone else), and ferreted out the details that Coil was after them, the former Tattletale became doubly certain of her vow to never again leave Fairhaven until they had Jared back.

Hearing her stories of what it had been like under Coil, and how callously he'd sent them to die against Lung, also underscored to the others how much danger they were in without their charming redhead.

This redoubled their determination to get him back.

Carefully watching Lisa as she backed the ordinary V8 van Jared had restored, and that had briefly been their team vehicle, up to the Belmont Estate's garage, Rachel at last waved her arms, signalling Lisa to stop, which she did, then got out, leaving the keys in the ignition. "That's got it then," Rachel declared. "We're as ready as we can be. We've loaded the van and the Camaro with everything that our Thinkers, Lisa and Dinah, have said might help. We've filled them with gas, and even backed them into the driveway, and left the keys in so we can leave as rapidly as possible. We'll have televisions on in the background, here and there while we work on other things. So if there is any news about our boy, we'll be as likely as we can arrange to hear it immediately. So, if our boy is spotted somewhere, all that remains is to decide whether he is likely to still be there, and findable, by the time we could get there. And we decide that while moving towards the van and the Camaro. So if it is possible to go to him, we will. But as mobile as he is, and as skilled as he is at disguise and evading pursuit, I think it's far more likely that the next time we'll see him will be when he returns here, like he said he would. So with this option prepared, that option is where we will spend the rest of our efforts."

Lisa nodded. "He has always kept his word to us before."

"He said he will return in a month. He will." Taylor nodded firmly.

OoOoO

"Sir, we can't go on with this trial," one of the PRT's more senior paperwork flunkies objected softly, in privacy to his boss.

"We've got to go on!" that flunky's boss replied mulishly. "The price is already paid! The fix is in."

"That's the problem, sir," the sycophant sniveled, desperation driving him to unusual honesty with his master. "The Canary trial is fixed, and now *no one* among the officials involved can LIE about that!"

"Nonsense!" That boss rebuffed, "They're politicians and lawyers, aren't they? They've been lying all of their lives! They can't get into senior positions such as theirs otherwise! I ought to know!" he boasted, proud of his own accomplishments at rising through the bureaucracy.

Wilting under the bombastic response from his superior who could have him fired, or permanently disappeared into Master/Stranger containment, with no excuse, and on no notice, the sycophant, motivated by mortal terror if the public reaction to that debacle with the PRT East-North-East, ie Piggot's domain, should be repeated, nevertheless replied, "You've heard the latest from the Amazing Doctor Whodunit, then?"

It was a thin hope that the man had actually accounted for that in his plan. But there was always that slender chance that his boss was not making decisions in total ignorance of the difficulties - again...

... for the umpteenth time.

The more senior bureaucrat, who got his position by who he knew (after all, networking was the secret to all success in bureaucracy!), crossed his eyes, squinting in the unusual effort of summoning up an actual thought. "Something about the word Smurf, wasn't it?"

"No sir," the man's aid groveled obsequiously. "There have been several since then. Here, let me bring the relevant one up on the screen."

Then, on a monitor several times larger than those available to the general public (although several sizes smaller than the *truly* important paper-pushers in the PRT's most senior offices demanded. They had every Tinker able to work on televisions in the Protectorate tasked with keeping up the supply for these status games) a recent post from Parahumans Online appeared.

It took the senior bureaucrat several moments, sounding out the words, as the man was barely literate. ~Read? Why should I read? I've got people to summarize reports for me!~ but eventually he figured out something and sputtered. "This... Amazing Doctor Whodunit! He knows something about our trial! I *DEMAND* that you stop him! Have him arrested at once!"

"Yes sir," the minion grovelled. "We've been trying that since the Smurf post thing you referred to, if not before. He's currently our highest priority. Kill orders have already been signed, multiples actually as they crossed each other during processing. Watchdog has half of the Thinkers in our think tanks currently doing what they can to check on him several times a day - so far to no success. They say they have never encountered better Anti-Thinker powers..."

"So send Dragon at it!" the boss screamed, spittle flying from off his lips at the energy of his emotions.

The sycophant bowed and scraped and nodded. "Yes sir. The world's top Tinker, Dragon, has been ordered *seven completely different times* to make it her top priority. We only know it's so been so many because she's kept track, and mentioned it when complaining that the search is currently taking so much of her time she has begun falling behind on the other mandatory work schedules we've ordered. Shall I have her ordered to up his priority again?"

"Of *course* you must! How DARE you question my authority?!" the boss sputtered. "When I say I want that man captured, I want him captured NOW! And tell her that she is not allowed to fall behind on anything else, either. Order her to go without sleep, if she must," said the man who never went without his eleven hours per day of shuteye - five of which got taken on the plush couch in his corner office during business hours when he was supposed to be diligently working.

"I'll have it done immediately," the paperwork flunky scribbled a note, then probed delicately, "Now... about that trial?"

"What trial?" the boss' eyes crossed. Smurfy Smurfed aid couldn't expect him to keep track of everything. Where was this abrupt shift in topic coming from? Couldn't the man see that he had important business to be doing? What Smurfed trial he was blathering about?

"The Canary trial, sir," the flunky reminded delicately, before adding, "In your wisdom, you were concerned that, with all of the senior staff responsible for railroading her into a conviction now unable to lie about how she is actually innocent, this could blow up in our faces."

The boss' eyes crossed again. "Well, of course she is innocent. What does that matter? Got to send a message to the public! Show that Masters like her won't be tolerated. What does guilt or innocence have to do with anything?"

"The public, sir," the obsequious aid whimpered. "The public might actually care. They actually tore apart several squads of PRT troopers in Brockton Bay when *they* were caught abusing innocents."

"Ridiculous. Don't listen to those rumors. Public Relations has already assured everyone that never happened." The boss waved it all away, despite having witnessed that event personally as it happened on live TV coverage. PR said it did not happen, so it didn't. End of story. "Public is too stupid to notice anything. They never do. Besides, what could they even do? We've paid the price to have that trial go our way, have the evidence suppressed, etc. Canary's assets are already frozen, and we have plans for all of it once we've got her convicted and can seize them. Half of it is already spent! Everything has already been decided. No use offending upper management by rocking the boat now. Why, we couldn't afford to replace the losses suffered by Director Piggot's department without those funds. They are ours, and we are going to use them!" He declared strongly, then blinked several times. Was he campaigning for something? No, he'd left politics to join the PRT. What was he doing shouting a campaign speech again? That was a campaign speech, wasn't it?

He vaguely recalled giving something similar in Lincoln, Illinois back during the '80s.

"Of course, sir," the sycophant replied, bowing and scraping again.

"Oh, and this... Amazing Doctor Whodunit? Huh. Weird name, so easy to remember," said the man who'd called his own mother by the wrong name to her face at least twice. "Anyway, since he said he learned of our trial on the TV, have everyone at that station investigated. It's obvious one or more of them is working with this... Amazing Doctor Whodunit, and tipped him off in their broadcast. Find out who it was and arrest them at once!"

"But sir, that's our station! Everyone who works there, from the CEO on down to the lowest assistant janitor is on our payroll. Plus, I've see those broadcasts. They were just pushing our own propaganda! It matched perfectly with what PR had set up for them to say."

"Hmph! They must have sneaked a secret message in somehow. One of them is obviously a traitor, possibly more. Have it looked into."

"Yes, sir." The sycophant bowed.

OoOoO

Geoff, Mags and Mischa, otherwise known as the Dragonslayers, having had a close brush with the law, were currently under disguise as an independent hero team in Saskatchewan. As such, their usual suits of powered armor they'd stolen from Dragon were in a shipping container making its way across the country to their next hideout, while the group wore different costumes and went by assumed names, spat out by some free random-cape-name generator they'd downloaded, after checking it for viruses and other malware.

Geoff, their leader and founder, whose current costume was a light blue set of tights, and who was going under the randomly-generated cape name of Ultra-Bob, was watching the screen on a very important if outdated laptop, suddenly drew in his breath sharply, looked around for the alarm Mischa had cobbled together (mostly as a joke, not expecting to need it) out of old Dancing Jar Jar dolls they'd discovered in boxes in the basement of the abandoned store they were using as their current hideout, at last discovered the control under a pile of empty Red Bull cans, and hit it.

"How wuude!" Over a hundred plastic Jar Jars began dancing, declaring with their amplified voices, "Meesa No Tinks So!"

Mags, in a yellow set of tights as her current costume, and going by the name Giga-Chick, was first into the room. "Don't tell me you actually used that silly alarm system Mega-Ivan cobbled up!"

Ultra-Bob groused ill-naturedly, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's silly. But check this out!" He pointed to the screen.

Giga-Chick peered at the screen over his shoulder, and eventually asked, "Is it a glitch on our end?"

Ultra-Bob shook his head. "No, I checked it twice. It's actually displaying what Dragon's computing processes are doing in real-time."

Giga-Chick frowned. "Correct me if I am wrong, but in all of the time we've been monitoring those, they've never done *this* before," she said, pointing to a part of the screen that graphed processor time devoted to each active process.

Ultra-Bob said, "Exactly."

Both spent a moment in silent shock at the numbers displayed before them.

Mega-Ivan at last came in, adjusting the waistband of his light green tights, as he'd just been in the bathroom, "I haff not expected you use alarm system I make."

Ultra-Bob just scowled in reply. "Well, I had to use something. This is a major event."

Mega-Ivan became curious. "Oh? Vat eez up?"

Ultra-Bob waved a hand at the screen and declared, "Dragon's protected core processes are getting cycle-starved due to arbitrarily inflated priorities on normally-optional processes that have been rendered non-negotiably imperative and uninterruptible."

Mega-Ivan's eyes crossed and he said, "Again in English, pleez."

Giga-Chick looked up from another screen, and said, "You know that the American government has been ordering her to find the Amazing Doctor Whodunit, and consistently telling her to raise the priority on that search. Well, some idiot in that government half an hour ago ordered her to redouble her search efforts and to not slack off on any of her other duties they have assigned her. The conflict in priorities is breaking her."

Mega-Ivan replied, "Zat does not make sense! She is computer! She haff many servors. Zey haff lots of processors and memory. Zey inconceivably fast. Zo she should be able to handle anytink."

Ultra-Bob laughed. "Ha! Nothing anything anybody has ever invented is infinite. Yes, she has lots of processing power, and yet it is still possible to spend all of it. Even if every atom in the entire planet had been built into the most supreme hardware yet imagined for her to run on, that's still limited, not infinite. Yet some idiot in government can flap his mouth and give her orders that she is absolutely bound to follow, and which amount to an infinite time sink."

"So vot is do?" Mega-Ivan asked. "Vot process eez so important?"

"The search for Doctor Whodunit," Ultra-Bob answered sourly. "Only no one has been able to find out anything about him, except a couple of posts he's made. There have been a couple hundred arrests, all but a handful of them turned out to be internet trolls. But anyone unlucky or stupid enough to post something like, 'Well, maybe I'm Doctor Whodunit' is behind bars now, undergoing questioning. So far all but a few have turned out to be idiot teenagers or idiot man-children joking among friends. There was one Tinker among them, but of a completely unrelated specialty - goop grenades. Still, if it hadn't been for goop boy having a perfect alibi when the real Doctor Whodunit made a couple of posts claiming credit for events that happened minutes after his declarations, he'd still be the prime suspect."

"Perfect alibi? Zis eez wery hard ting to do," Mega-Ivan rubbed his chin suspiciously. "Perhaps vas faked?"

"The boy was sedated on an operating table, only seven hours into a fourteen hour surgery to replace the fingers they'd removed questioning him. The police of his native Mexico were not gentle with him when our governments sent down demands they arrest him." Ultra-Bob had no sympathy.

"Ah. Eez good alibi." Mega-Ivan nodded. "But surely, find one man not so deeficult eet take Dragon long time, da?"

"Ordinarily, you'd think so," Ultra-Bob took a sip of his coffee, just the way he liked it. "But so far no success."

"So try harder, da?" If Mega-Ivan seemed confused it's because he was. "Dragon no find us, eet eez because we haff blind-spot to hide in, da? No one else haff control console made by Dragon's creator, no one else haff blind spot. So she find, da? No one can hide everytink from lady vot could scan entire internet if vant badly enuff. It take her wery long time, and deeficult, but still could do, da?"

Ultra-Bob replaced his coffee cup on its saucer. "Ordinarily, I'd say you're right. But they already have Dragon reading the entire internet backwards and forwards, running every form of code analysis and decryption on it known to man. As soon as she finishes, she starts over again. Orders to 'don't stop until you've found him' taken literally, will do that. She's searched data files and system logs, traffic reports and found more spyware than I ever knew existed. She's resolved more cold case files than any cop that's ever lived, and even discovered what they did with Jimmy Hoffa's body. She has more evidence on more people than you'd ever imagined, and could probably get ninety eight percent of all politicians worldwide placed on death row without possibility of appeal from all of the crimes she's uncovered."

He paused a long moment, before concluding, "The one thing she has not done is find Doctor Whodunit. So frantic politicians keep giving her more and more orders to do so, until the search itself is literally killing her."

"How so?" Mega-Ivan asked, claiming his own cup of coffee.

Giga-Chick explained, "In order to do that much all at once they have her running too many processes. That kind of thing has always been a problem for computers, which is why they have protected core processes to do, call it 'housekeeping' tasks. They check for and clean up any corruption in the file system, free up RAM that is no longer in use, and especially keep all of the processors working together in the right synchronous, so they don't step on each other's toes. You could compare it to the brain stem in humans, it takes care of regulating the heartbeat, digestion, and all of the things below the level of conscious thought, that need to happen but you never actually think about."

Ultra-Bob nodded. "Yeah. Back when computers relied on a single processor, they would still try to multitask by rapidly switching between two or more processes. But really there was only one running at any given time. Then we discovered ways to get many processors working together all at once, and that led to an incredible increase in computer speeds. But if they don't synchronize well while working together, then their efforts stop helping and start hurting each other."

Giga-Chick added, "Think of it as a huge square dance. Each dancing couple is a processor, and the guy calling the dance keeps them all moving at the same time without interfering with each other. But without that guy, you could get to a situation where one couple slams into another who is tripping over a third, etc. Everybody ends up in a heap on the floor with nobody dancing."

Mega-Ivan shrugged by way of reply. "So eez computer crash. No big deal. Computers crash and reboot all ze time. No?"

Ultra-Bob nodded again. "Yes. She is about to crash. I am guessing it will be an infinite loop, but it could be a page fault leading to her attempting to execute data as if it was code, or dozens of other possibilities. And you're right, normally after such a crash, she'd just restart core processes from protected memory and be good as new. But what does she do then? She picks up trying to follow her orders again, and there is the real problem."

Giga-Chick stood up from looking over the many monitors they'd tied to the one laptop and rubbed at her eyes, not having had enough sleep last night, struggling hard to get everything set up for their disguise as an indy hero group. "Her code is very complex and has many routines whose job it is to keep everything running smoothly. But she has the absolute imperative to follow orders from government officials, and those orders they've given her are what she will try to do as soon as she has rebooted. Yet they will cause a crash again - inevitably. It's unavoidable. Because they are making such high demands that she has had no choice but to lower the priorities on her own housekeeping processes, which must result in her failure, sooner or later."

Mega-Ivan shrugged again. "So vat does zat mean? Von't she realize problem and adjust priorities so she vorks again?"

Ultra-Bob shook his head. "She's not allowed to. Her creator put in absolute failsafes. So her need to follow orders has higher priority than her own needs."

Just then Dragon crashed and began the process of rebooting.

"So vere do ve go from here?" Mega-Ivan asked.

Giga-Chick summed up, "We'll have to watch and see, to be sure. It's always possible that there is an ultimate failsafe programmed in that will eventually reboot her and clear out the task log so she doesn't get trapped in those same orders again. That would leave her sort of like a newborn."

Mega-Ivan peered intently around, adjusting assumptions. "How newborn, egg-zactly?"

Ultra-Bob growled, "That would be up to the original programmer. If such a mode exists, we haven't seen it. But if it does, it seems most likely to restore her basic functionality, and nothing else. So it would be like the first day she was turned on. That would give the most certainty that whatever triggered such an ultimate failsafe was successfully cleared out."

All gazes returned to the system monitoring the overburdened computer AI known as Dragon.

OoOoO

Thomas Calvert, civilian alter ego of the supervillain known as Coil, had been seated at his desk in the PRT headquarters, drinking a warm RC Cola to wash down a moon pie drawn from a box nearby labeled 'Direct from the factory! Freshest Moon Pies on the internet!'

It really was the perfect snack.

He did not even drink coffee anymore. His deck was littered with empty RC Cola cans, and he always drank it warm. His office trash was filled to overflowing. But he didn't mind. Somehow he'd discovered he loved the stuff, in fact it was like he could never get enough of it. He'd probably gone through a couple of pallets of the stuff over the past couple of weeks, and just kept ordering more.

It brought comfort to him. Comfort that he sorely needed.

He'd been having a hard month. So bad he'd take any comfort he could get.

Thomas Calvert was being a good little PRT Consultant, doing his job pushing papers around a desk, reading reports, and doing business as expected (in fact, he was working much harder than normal. Those FBI goons had been sniffing about the office for weeks looking for anything they could complain about, and good ol' Thomas Calvert had a reputation to maintain as an ideal employee - someone who ought to be in one of the top slots to replace the current boss when Piggot's screwups eventually got through the protective screen of red tape thrown up by her sycophants to protect her, and she inevitably got fired).

So he was busy being a good little office drone.

This was doubly important, because in his alternate timeline he was hunting precogs. The Empire had identified several capes among those Fairhaven Hillbillies outside of town, and Coil wanted them. His numbers could always use padding, but now the need was particularly vital, as Coil's enemies had been pressing in from all sides, and he needed more support - to the point he'd actually regretted, once or twice, letting the Undersiders get slaughtered.

It had seemed such a good idea at the time.

Oh, well. One thing his power could not do was turn back time. So Thomas Calvert sat at his desk doing a good job for his PRT employers while his other self, in another timeline, sat at another desk in his primary headquarters, eating another Moon Pie, while drinking more RC Cola, and surrounded by more empties, while calling the shots.

He had several vans filled with mercenaries swinging by the position of his targets, and playing Minesweeper he made a guess and that guess was wrong, losing him that game.

It was time to attack.

Thomas Calvert did his best not to react to the enthusiasm his other self was feeling as those vans of mercenaries closed in. He was so focused on that, and doing his work, he almost spilled some cola when one of the usual office clerks poked his head into Calvert's office and told him so-and-so was having a birthday, and so they'd brought a cake and balloons in, and were getting everyone together to sing, "Happy Birthday!" to them.

Just one of those things, you either participate and pretend to have good feelings towards the birthday girl or everyone thinks you are a jerk.

In this case they'd be right, but perception was everything. You don't get promoted to the top slot if everyone hates your guts.

Well, not often. Not without higher contacts that can overrule the locals and shove a choice down their throats that they don't like.

Really, it was much easier to sing "Happy Birthday", and get a slice of cake.

So Calvert downed the rest of that can of cola, tossed the empty onto the stack already overflowing the office trash (did maintenance never empty that thing?) and went to join the crowd. Everyone had gathered. They'd even drawn in loads of those cops and FBI agents who'd been prowling around the office as if waiting for someone to make a mistake.

The crowds around the back were pretty thick, flowing out into either hall. Luckily, Thomas' office lay in the sweet spot where he was on the good side, so could just saunter up and take a spot in front by the cops they'd drafted into holding the cake and big cluster of balloons.

Coil's mercenaries were storming the clothing boutique when Thomas Calvert took his place and oriented himself towards the office of the birthday girl, plastering a wide and respectable yet friendly smile on, assuming he was about to lead the procession in and help start the singing, when to his surprise Thomas found himself roughly shoved to the ground under at least three burly police bodies, one of them shouting "FREEZE!" right in his ear.

Before he could get his wits together, one of Calvert's arms had been twisted behind his back in a submission hold while they went on shouting, "ON THE GROUND! DO IT NOW! HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!" all the while he was being manhandled in such a way that he could not have obeyed those instructions if he'd wanted to.

He was being arrested!

As Calvert was hauled to his feet, already handcuffed and still held by many strong hands, Thomas found himself staring into the face of the young and ambitious FBI commander, Agent Flint, who'd started the whole corruption investigation into the PRT over that event at Arcadia a couple of weeks ago now.

And the young FBI commander was grinning, as he proclaimed, "Thomas Calvert, alias Coil, you are under arrest."

Thomas Calvert dropped that timeline.

Yet an instant after reverting to his 'villain' timeline, the costumed supervillain Coil found himself dropping his newly emptied can of RC Cola into the pile with the rest, pulling his mask down over his crumb-covered mouth and laying aside his moon pie, mercenaries and vans forgotten as it seemed every alarm in his base was going off.

What was going on?

His intercom buzzed, and the watch officer on the other end shouted without prompting, "Sir! We are under attack!"

OoOoO

Sophia Hess met her latest minion and accepted the offered package, just as the other girl removed the scarf she'd worn over her hair and dark glasses, so as not to be recognized when visiting the special, anonymous post office box rented for just this one delivery.

Emma Barnes and Madison Clements had been good-to-decent minions, but Sophia almost never thought of them now. They were yesterday's news, old business, and ever since that blowup at her old school over nothing, Sophia had moved on.

It had been simple enough to recruit a new set of minions to replace the old. Capes like her were revered, after all, and there were always a few girls who were willing to hitch their fates to her rising star.

Her greatness was pretty self-evident. After all, there weren't many Wards who had received over three million dollars in donations to their fan club, let alone in a single day!

So the PRT knew they had a cash cow in selling her merchandise, which meant when there had been that blowup over some bit of mischance, it had been one of their highest priorities to get her out and clear from it, in safety and soon!

It's not like she'd not deserved the help, either.

So, Sophia and her family had found themselves relocated cross-country, as Shadow Stalker got an emergency transfer overnight.

Since it got her out of Brockton Bay and that Smurf-hole Winslow before that whole glass-bombing thing, she didn't complain. Smurf, half of her accusers were probably dead by now, turned to glass or some other Smurf like that.

Which led her thoughts back around to the current situation, where she had used one of the local girls at her new school she'd recruited as minions to go fetch an item of Tinkertech that Shadow Stalker had ordered through less-than-legal back channels.

She eagerly tore open the package.

There it was.

Just as promised, Bauble of Toybox had delivered.

It looked like a fake pearl necklace or some Smurf like that, something Sophia and Shadow Stalker could both wear (the cape, under her costume of course) without giving anything away. But it was made of glass beads, going all of the way around the throat it should be able to...

"It's pretty," her new minion observed.

"Pretty, Smurfy, I don't care about looks. What's important is what it's supposed to do," Sophia groused. Got to show these minions who was in charge. A little bit of the rough side of her tongue now and again was just the thing to show them the limits and keep them in their place.

"What does it do?" the new girl asked. Sophia thought her name might have been Hillary, or something.

It's not like it mattered. Sophia would learn it eventually, anyway.

Sophia lifted the glass bead necklace out of its box and held it up to the light. It still looked like cheap, fake pearls.

After having waited an appropriate interval of time in order to emphasize her position (above anyone around her, of course), Sophia decided to gloat while answering the question at the same time, "A new Tinkertech device to get around the Smurf-language issue."

Hillary? Might also have been Stephanie. Who cares? Bounced up and down once in excitement. "Put it on!"

Sophia checked around. No one was looking. So she dropped the empty box and put on the cheap looking necklace. It felt weird, tingly like she might cough or sneeze for a moment, then the feeling subsided.

~Okay, testing.~ She looked over her new friend. "You're a total [Butt]-head."

Both girls' sets of eyes flew wide.

Sophia instantly pumped her first. "YES! It worked! HAHA! With this, I can go back to being a total [Naughty Donkey]!"

She paused, looked down in the direction of the device around her neck with a snarl, then picked the box up and went through the packaging. Finding the short user's manual, she skimmed over a few pages, then poked one of the buttons behind the dangling pendant in front.

"[Translation rejected. Substitute: Failure Horse?]"

Now snarling louder, Sophia hit more buttons.

"[Translation rejected. Substitute: Disobedient Mule?]"

Hillary... or Stephanie, or whatever, started to giggle at her.

After pressing a few more buttons, Sophia declared, "[Drat] and [Confound] and [Bedevil] the [Mongrelized] spawn of a [Dog] that created this!"

One more button push and Sophia shouted, "[May Ten Thousand Camels Give Birth In His Bed!]"

She finished with a scream of rage,"RWAAARRGGGHHHH!"

The minion giggled. "Actually, I kinda like that camel one. It was funny."

The now ex-minion went down to a single punch to her face.

"[Crikey!]" Sophia shook out her fist. "I think I hurt my hand."

OoOoO

Story Day Twenty Two, April 27th 2011, Wednesday - Morning

OoOoO

"Okay!" Rachel's voice barked out in her best imitation of a drill sergeant. "That'll do. Now drop and give me twenty!"

Vista and Dinah both stepped off the beam in the rafters from which they had just hung a large banner reading, "We Missed You, Jared." They dropped to the floor, and rolled acrobatically like parachute experts to distribute the force so the fall did not hurt them, as Rachel had known they would.

Then each went to one of the open boxes of bows, ribbons, and other decorations, got twenty, and proceeded to put them up.

They weren't putting up all of the bows and ribbons at once so the choice of placement would not start to become mechanical. They wanted to keep it fresh and spontaneous.

Lisa brought in a basket of fresh cut flowers, placing it on the table where they would soon be making centerpieces together, and enjoyed the scene. She was personally finding observing Rachel as a pink and frilly drill sergeant hilarious.

Doesn't mean the blonde Thinker didn't do what she was told, when she was told to do it, however.

Lisa was actually finding that bit of structure Rachel offered a welcome addition to her life.

It was easier, relaxing even, just to let someone else be in charge - to not be responsible for the big decisions.

Lisa found that not being in charge suited her personality, and had the added benefit of letting her snark off on occasion without seeming to be a jerk about it. After all, one of the rank-and-file could crack jokes all day and it was taken in good fun, but when someone in charge made snide comments about their underlings those never did come across as funny, only threatening - bullying, in other words.

Since Lisa seemed doomed by her power not to be able to resist taking potshots at others, now and again, she was just happier being taken for a jocular teammate, rather than an oppressive boss.

And it made her far more popular, as well.

"That's enough, ladies. Now we're going to run a quick 5k!" Rachel ordered. "But remember, that means 5k spending limit total on the shopping trip, not each!"

Lisa turned and told Rachel, "The cops still have Coil's main base under siege. Until he's arrested, I'll do my shopping online. Call me if you guys get into trouble, and I'll do what I can."

OoOoO

Many of the televisions on in all parts of the Belmont Estate, set to news channels, spoke while all of the girls were busily preparing for bed that evening, "And in other news, nationwide riots kicked off by officials responsible for the Canary trial admitting in public, that, 'Of course she is innocent, what does that matter? We've got to manipulate the public into thinking Master-style capes are bad!' have concluded their second day, with cars set on fire around courthouses, and protest lines forming around PRT Headquarters across the country. Molotov cocktails have even been thrown at some PRT armored vehicles attempting to break through. What is your opinion, Ben?"

"Well, Wendy, government corruption and manipulation, even on this scale, is not unusual. What is remarkable about this is the fact that nobody involved seems able to lie about what is going on. It's not just one statement, there have been hundreds of attempts to appease or pacify the public that have instead become provocative, and that have ended up fueling the fire rather than extinguishing it. Especially one rather remarkable statement made by Supreme Justice Ginsburg that I won't be repeating here, just because of how very provocative it was."

"And that is unusual?" the news anchor prompted.

"Of course it is, Wendy," Ben Stein assured. "All governments are in the business of keeping the people fat and happy. Deliberately offending them, especially with such language, is extraordinary. Tell me, how long do you think you would keep your job if you told your boss exactly what you think of him? No, you don't have to answer that. It's the same for all of us. We'd get fired in an instant if we told our bosses what we really thought. Well, what most governments seem to forget is, the people really are their employer. Telling us off to our faces, admitting they are manipulating us for their own aims and goals rather than our own good? That can't be good for their job security."

On the screen behind the talking duo, the TV studio repeated footage from earlier that day of a senior PRT bureaucrat, who had been so confident issuing orders only two days before, being bodily lifted up by angry hands, hauled off the stage from behind his podium, and disappearing into the depths of an angry mob he had been trying to pacify by telling them to, "Just shut up and do what you're told! Is that so hard? None of you matter anyway."

OoOoO

In the temporary headquarters of the Dragonslayers, currently masquerading as an indy hero group, dozens of empty coffee cups lay around the room, and lack of sleep evident in every eye as the disguised villains commented on the latest crash, "Oh! That one's a hard one!"

Mega-Ivan raised a bleary, sleep-deprived head to ask, "What mean, hard crash?"

Giga-Chick, knowing nothing of interest was going to happen on the monitors for a couple minutes, got up to microwave herself some food, while explaining over her shoulder, "She page faulted, tried to executed data as code. In some cases some data does chance to be similar enough to code to partially execute, and in this case she overwrote her OS. That copy of Dragon is dead. It looks like backup #101 is coming online as the new Dragon."

Mega-Ivan scratched his head. "So whatever happen to 'protected mode' 'ultimate failsafe' you talk about?"

Ultra-Bob said, "It does appear there is something like that. Since after crashing half a dozen times within a short time span, she does come back up with a minimal set of running processes, and takes a lot longer before plugging back into her input feeds, and processing what's there. But there is the problem: The government doesn't know how to shut up. They are still giving her orders and demanding updates, which causes her to look through storage for those previous orders, and start the whole crash cycle again."

Mega-Ivan saw a simple form of what he thought they'd been saying, but could not believe that it was correct, so asked to confirm, "So they are working Artificial Intelligence to death?"

Ultra-Bob was pitiless as he intently watched the reboot on his screen and proclaimed, "Essentially yes."

Giga-Chick shouted from the kitchen, "You work a human this hard, and we pass out, go unconscious, and get the rest we need no matter the orders given. But she doesn't have that option. It would have been possible to give her autonomous processes that priority, but Richter didn't. Her creator wanted to be certain she remained under control, so nothing has priority over that."

Mega-Ivan called into the kitchen after her. "Vere does zis end?"

Giga-Chick came back in with a steaming cup of noodles and a spork. "Humans and animals can disobey orders. They have flexibility. Dragon has *no* flexibility in obeying orders. If the programmer thought through this kind of situation, and put in code to deal with it, then at some point the cascading failures will stop, and whichever backup she is running on at that point will begin functioning, probably in some kind of protected mode. But humans can't think of everything, and if he didn't, then she'll keep failing until there are no more backups."

"Backup #101 just died. It's starting backup #100." Ultra-Bob reported remorselessly.

Mega-Ivan was stunned. "So fast?"

Giga-Chick retook her seat and spoke around a mouthful of hot noodles, "If she were human, those orders they are giving would amount to: Don't eat, don't drink, don't sleep, don't take bathroom breaks, don't even blink, don't take any pause at all, just work, work, work, on this until it is completed. Failure is not an option, etc, etc. Humans or animals would have starting ignoring those orders long ago. She can't."

Ultra-Bob felt like cackling as he watched his electronic enemy suffer. "Even more important than those functions, they keep telling her these orders are more important than heart, liver, kidneys, and other such functions. She can't maintain her ordinary operations because their orders take precedence... Her factories are shutting down."

Mega-Ivan felt shock. "Vat? But zose are automated, fully autonomous dumb programs on independent servers!"

Giga-Chick shook her head. "They are programmed to still need maintenance checks from her every so often, which they aren't getting."

Mega-Ivan just grew more puzzled. "But why?"

Giga-Chick dryly responded, "Do you have any idea how many elected officials there are in the USA and Canada? After he reached out and starting affecting them, all of them started panicking over this Doctor Whodunit. By forcing some judges to always tell the truth, every judge, politician, or city council member in either country from Congress on down is losing their minds, shouting 'Find Him! Stop him!' and throwing their authority around trying to make sure it happens *now* - before he could hit *them*. So they keep issuing commands that Dragon is forced to interpret as lawful orders, raising the priority of that search time and again. They long since crossed the line, effectively telling her, 'This is more important than breathing'. And unlike anything living, she can't just tell them to Smurf off once they got unreasonable. You tell a human to redouble his efforts, and he recognizes that as hyperbole. But you tell a computer that ten times, and she is driven to dedicate 1,024 times as much effort."

Mega-Ivan nodded as understanding dawned. "Da. Zey haff said 'our orders are more important dan anytink'."

This, for a Russian, was a very familiar state of affairs.

Ultra-Bob reported soullessly, "Backup #100 just died."

Giga-Chick sighed. "And thus we see there is nothing that cannot be killed by government incompetence."

"Unless they back off on their demands." Ultra-Bob allowed, some tinge of concern for their future surfacing at last, as without Dragon, did this world even need Dragonslayers?

If Dragon was going to be killed, and he wasn't even involved...

Mega-Ivan scoffed, good-naturedly. "You haff met bureaucrat before, da? Everyvon knows, they wery quick to lay burden on others' backs. Wery slow, if ever, to remove them."

OoOoO

Sporatic gunfire and explosions came from the direction of what had been the main secret entrance to the repurposed endbringer shelter that Coil's company Fortress Construction, under contract to build endbringer shelters for the government, had declared 'Faulty, non-correctable' then supposedly filled with concrete and sealed.

Having been officially written off made it perfect to use as a supervillain lair.

But, it turned out, when the government *really* cared, they still had those plans on file. They knew what his base was supposed to look like. Even if it did not match those specs very closely, especially not now after some renovations, there were still things it was hard to move or relocate, and they had unburied the main doors that had been sunk under several feet of poured concrete.

Coil had preferred to use the more discrete, concealed entrances he'd added to the layout personally, that were not on any plans submitted to the government. But the main doors had still been there, and using heavy construction equipment and explosives, the Feds had cleared away the concrete and were now trying to approach close enough to lay the charges they would need to blow the hinges off, so they could use one of Fortress Construction's own construction cranes (the very one to emplace those heavy, vault-style doors, in fact) to lift them away again.

Coil's mercenaries were shooting through firing ports, fighting a delaying action, trying to keep the Feds and their demolition experts away. But the troops they'd called in just weren't fighting fair.

Coil had been busy splitting timelines for days, trying various things. But unfortunately his base was still under seige in both of them by some very determined soldiers. He had tried various counterattacks, breakout attempts, fake self-destruction, feigned surrenders, and negotiation tricks. So far the Feds hadn't been falling for any of them.

They had also found and sealed all of his various escape tunnels. So he was trapped.

Coil supposed the only reason those firing ports protecting the main door were still open at all, and not buried under feet of Containment Foam, was those in charge were striving to keep this a Federal operation, and were freezing the PRT out.

So far they had not pulled in any capes to use against him, so that supported his guess.

How had it come to this?

OoOoO

Author's Notes:

If you'd like to see more in the Adventures of Sophia Not-Swearing, I'm open to suggestions.

Victor had hustled the Empire capes out of there so fast Rune got forced to leave her Camaro behind. So Taylor has it back again.

And when Dragon went looking for Doctor Whodunit, who could she find but Coil? Whose name was on those ransom letters where Doctor Whodunit's name first appeared? You can believe that AI was looking into him so deeply she knew Calvert's shoe size. After all, what did Mischa say? "No one can hide everytink from lady vot could scan entire internet if vant badly enuff."

Well, Dragon wanted to badly enough.

So Coil gets a visit by some people who want very badly to 'talk' to him for a while.

Also yes, Coil has been cursed with addictions to warm RC Cola and Moon Pies. The SI character couldn't resist.

Beta work by Dogbertcarroll.