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The Sith of Brockton Bay

Phase 03: A game of Sith

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AN: Betaed by ProdigiousThunder on the space battles forums! Thank you very much!

Part 3

11:50, January 16, 2011

Conference room

Conference Room

PRT HQ

Brockton Bay

When I stepped back in the HQ alarms started blaring – bloody irritating ones too. To my utter lack of surprise the foam dispensers in the ceilings roared to life and did their best to cover me with fast hardening substance. Fortunately I had foreseen such a turn of events - it was a logical step from my new friends in the PRT after all. so I had a dome of Force energy surrounding me when I cam through the portal. The foam hardened around it, becoming much stronger than steel reinforced concrete.

All it took to shatter it was a "light" telekinetic push from the inside and I was free again.

Trolling the local heroes wasn't the best plan that I ever had, however after meeting Zash on this world of all places, I didn't really care. Not after I was briefed on how fucked this place was.

On the bright side, Alexandria promised that she would be smoothing things with the locals and spinning my encounter with Lung in a favorable light. Speaking about the dragon… the Number Man mentioned that he had been retrieved still alive and was recovering in a Cauldron facility. That was impressive. There weren't a lot of beings that could survive the amount of damage I caused him.

The foam dispensers tried to make me into a modern statue for a second time and I turned them in a pieces of expensive junk.

What little patience I had left had went the way of the dinosaurs during my meeting with Cauldron. The fact that not only the Dark Side but the shard of an eldritch horror stuck in my head were pushing me to be more aggressive than reasonable wasn't helping my position.

In fact I needed to kill something or get laid in order to decompress but neither was in the cards right now. Dealing with the heroes and checking on my daughter were the immediate priorities. I just hoped that Alexandria was going to keep her word and she would have dealt with the locals by now. Doing so would be a measure of the political power that Cauldron held in this world.

On the bright side, I had recovered enough to have more than reasonable chance of breaking out if everything went to hell.

At lest I could indulge in the time-honored tradition of trolling and have a bit of fun along the way. Doing so wasn't going to make me any friends within the local heroes, yet considering how I fucked up the earlier "meeting" I didn't think that was in the cards anyway.

I sat down on the nearest clean chair, sipped the drink I smuggled from the Cauldron HQ and waited for my greeting committee. They wouldn't be too long.

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11:40, January 16, 2011

Director Piggot's Office

PRT HQ

Brockton Bay

Emily stared at her computer's screen with a blank expression on her face. For what was worth, the Chief Director didn't look much happier with the orders than she felt. That however was a scarce comfort.

"Chief-Director…" Piggot trailed off. She fought to swallow her fury. That man had helped burn down the docks, admitted to killing a big group of people, even if they were merchants, was partly responsible for dozens if not hundreds of deaths…. And all that was going to be sidelined?!

Not to mention that he simply vanished from custody a few hours ago...

"I don't like this any more than you, Emily." Costa-Brown sighed. "After our thinkers saw his fight with Lung and concentrated on Hebert… We had to act. One of our assets retrieved him for a chat."

So, her latest parahuman headache didn't escape and her people were left wasting time and resources for noting in a futile attempt to locate him. Piggot glared at her nominal superior. "That's something I should have been told before you whisked him away."

"That was a luxury we didn't have at the time." The Chief director looked disgruntled. "Thinkers..." She growled. "He should be returned back to your building soon."

"A bit of warning this time would be appreciated. What are we supposed to do with him? The man is a menace."

"Use him to clean up Brockton Bay."

"That's easier said than done. Even with someone as powerful as him, we're heavily outnumbered by the gangs as you well know."

"He'll have some ideas about that." Costa-Brown interjected.

"Despite all his power, he's a civilian." Piggot wasn't convinced. Besides if Hebert's attitude so far was anything to go by, burning the whole city to deal with the gangs would be something he might even enjoy.

"I have reasons to believe that isn't really the case."

That gave Emily a pause. She speculatively raised an eyebrow and stared at the Chief Director.

"All I know at the moment is that he had some military training in the past and had been working with at least one of our thinkers before settling down as a family man."

"That's new. There was no hint of such activities in his past as far as we could find." Emily frowned. That only made the man even more dangerous when combined with his obvious instability.

"It came as a surprise to me too." Costa-Brown looked less than pleased.

Before Emily could ask her next questions, the HQ was drowned in the roar of alarms. She grabbed her phone, pressed the red button on it.

"Report!"

"We've got intruder in Conference room one. Foam launchers are engaging."

"Sent the QRF to secure the area and evacuate the civilian personnel. Parahumans on site?"

"Miss Militia is heading to engage. We're recalling Armsmaster, he's the closest other cape we have."

"That might be our current problem returning." Costa-Brown winced from the screen.

Piggot bit off a curse and called the camera feed from the conference room and glared at the image.

Sure enough, it was Hebert. He was sitting in a chair and waved at the camera. The room itself was a mess – almost everything was covered with chunks of containment foam and there was no sight of the substance on the man. At least now she knew that it didn't work on him.

"It's him, all right." Emily growled.

"May I suggest that you don't needlessly antagonize him?" Costa-Brown statement was more of a question than order.

"Before or after he ruin what's left of Brockton Bay?" Emily snipped, before ordering her people to stand down and sent Miss Militia to babysit Hebert.

"Like it or not, he's working with us now. You'll be getting the paperwork sometime tomorrow."

"I won't be held responsible for his actions!" There was no way in hell that Emily was going down with that menace. "What's his status anyway?"

"Consultant. High level asset." The emphasis was on the latter.

"How do you intend to sell that to the other directors, Washington and the public?" Emily asked, wondering if her superiors were losing it.

"Our thinkers believe that he can be a source of mass producible tinker tech and he would be useful against Endbirngers and other high level threats."

That by itself would have Washington jumping at the opportunity and damn the collateral. Piggot knew that there were a lot of people in there who had already written off Brockton Bay as unsalvageable unless they sent the army to clean up the mess and that wasn't something that they were willing to do.

"You're assuming that he could be controlled." Emily didn't even try to hide the disbelief in her voice.

"Control him? That may not be practical. Aiming him at the correct targets on the other hand..." The Chief Director shrugged. "Our thinkers believe that the latter has merit."

Emily started considering turning in her resignation while she had a shred of sanity left.

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Interlude: Contessa

Contessa finished her bland lunch, stood up and called Doormaker, without paying any attention to her surroundings. The moment she invoked the Path that had been guiding her actions for decades, such trivialities didn't matter any more. After all, there were just a few minutes a day, at best, when she was allowed to be herself – and that was only when her shard was busy calculating the best path to the next goal along the route to victory.

She hoped so anyway. It wasn't like she could do anything to stop it from re-taking control when it was done and using her as a puppet to get the job done.

Path to ensuring Cauldron's anonimity.

The world went dark.

Step One: She passed through the portal.

Step Two: Contessa pulled out the short baton she usually carried and slammed it in the back of the scull of a security guard busy watching camera feeds. A loud crack sounded. The man slumped over the control terminal for the security system.

Step Three: Disable security.

The precog pushed the uncouncious body from the keyboard and started typing commands. Her fingers were guided by her shard into typing passwords and bypassing protections.

Within moments, it was done.

Step Four: Contessa moved next to the door and waited for 21.3 seconds.

The door slid open and a security guard carrying two cups of steaming coffee entered.

Step Five: She swung her baton again, catching the man in the solar plexus before he could process that his buddy was knocked out. The guard doubled over – momentarily paralyzed by pain. The cups flew from his hands and scalding hot coffee painted the floor brown. Another strike and he was out for the count.

Step Six: Contessa dragged the second guard inside.

Step Seven: She took his keycard.

Step Eight: Contessa closed the door behind her and turned right.

Step Nine: The precog walked until she reached the first junction leading left and took it.

Step Ten: Contessa reached a sealed, armored door and used the keykard on it, then she typed in a code she had no business knowing.

Step Eleven: She pulled a silenced pistol from a holster hidden by her coat.

The door opened with a quiet sound of operating hydraulic systems.

A man who had been busy working on a computer turned around. An angry rant froze on his tongue when he saw who interrupted his work.

Step Twelve: Contessa shot him once in the head. The hollow point bullet penetrated his forehead and expanded once it was through the bone, then it proceeded to shred the unlucky man's brain.

Step Thirteen: Contessa sheathed her weapon and pulled an USB drive from one of her pockets. She inserted it in the computer and started dismantling the protections which would have stopped the viruses on the drive from successfully attacking the system.

Soon enough it was done – any shred of information concerning Cauldron was purged from the system and overriten with incriminating data that would serve their agenda.

Step Fourteen: "Door to Brockton Bay, Danny Hebert, beyond his visual range."

A portal appeared next to the precog.

Final Step: All that was left was to leave and it would be done. Cauldron would be safe for another day. Contessa took a step towards the portal, when an invisible wall of energy passed through it and slammed into her body.

Error… Warning, intrusion detected... Executing Security protocols…

Contessa's connection with her shard was cut from the other side when something unknown tried to interface with it. The woman collapsed as a wall was shattered and a torrent of information poured into her mind.

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Interlude: Zash

"Oww..." Zash groaned and opened a bleary eye. Her head hadn't hurt so much since the last time she attempted to possess her favorite apprentice.

Her nose and face hurt too.

The Sith Lord blinked in confusion. She had no idea where she was or how she got there.

Generally that wasn't a good thing, so she touched the Force and let it flow through her aching body.

A wave of raw power flowed into her body and chased the aches away. Zash smiled, then frowned.

The Force felt different… Younger? That wasn't possible, right? She shook her head, which made it pound with dull ache. It didn't matter. She needed to find out what the kriff was happening.

First she let her awareness expand as she searched for any nearby threats. While there was a vague sense of danger, she could feel nothing immediately threatening. Zash pulled herself into a sitting position and looked around.

She was in a brightly lit room, laying on white tiles. There was a cooling corpse slumped on the ground nearby a computer terminal which looked strange – she certainly didn't remember seeing one like it before.

No, that wasn't right. It was more or less standard looking computer…

The Sith frowned. Where did that thought come from? Something was wrong. She closed her eyes and concentrated on tightening up her mental shields… Which were shredded.

The frown deepened. It was almost like she had just taken over a new body – that was one of the side-effects. A temporally confusion was understandable too, especially if the ritual had gone a bit askew…

Zash shuddered at the thought of ending in the wrong body again. Her time sharing a mind with her apprentice's assassin wasn't a pleasant one.

The Sith concentrated on examining her own mind, on trying to recall what the kriff happened to her.

What Zash found, infuriated her. There were whole chasms where memories were supposed to be – blank pieces, not simply removed or replaced but simply missing as if they were never there. Whoever, whatever was responsible, was going to pay!

Small wonder that she couldn't recall what the kriff was happening!

The very thought that someone had apparently mind-raped her, infuriated the Sith Lord. When she got her hands on whoever was responsible… The Force Adept snarled, then forced her rage back under control. She wasn't a brute of a warrior to let her passion rule her! She was the master of her emotions!

Zash did her best to reinforce her mental defenses. No one was going to mess with her head again!

Once that was done, she swept the surrounding area. Still no immediate danger that she could feel. For a moment Zash considered leaving immediately, but considering she knew nothing of her current circumstances, she decided that doing so might not be the brightest idea. Instead she concentrated on her own mind and started digging around the bank spots.

She needed more information!

It took her a few minutes, but she found it. There were bits and pieces of memories around the blank spots. A few minutes of awareness spread on uneven intervals, or at least that was what she could remember.

Those pieces of information painted a grim picture. Whoever she was possessing, had been aware for minutes every day. At best. The rest of the time, they were under someone elses' control and Zash was damn sure that it wasn't hers. The very thought that she might be used as a meat puppet too infuriated her almost to the point of losing it.

Zash dug deeper and went further and further back and eventually she found what she was searching for.

It was like a glass ceiling she was unaware existed suddenly shattered and she was plunged into a sea of memories. She remembered a woman who called herself Fortuna, before one wrong decision transformed her into Contessa and threw her into decades of living nightmare.

Zash remembered everything. Eden. Zion. Cauldron. The Path of Victory...

With every bit of memory she recalled, her fury grew. She wasn't possessing the woman who become Contessa. She was Contessa, though that was impossible, right?

The room she was in, no the whole building started shacking as Zash drew more and more of the Force. She would not be a puppet! Never again!

Her Shard chose that moment to re-establish connection with its Agent and got Zash's undivided attention as it tried and failed to breach her mental defenses.