glowfic | witch's cape, not hat

She gets a sudden urge to connect every point in a room's worth of bulletin boards with color-coded pieces of string.

The power does help, though. It focuses on a single target, which conveniently enough is Coil. He's operating from the shadows as much as possible, arranging for people to do things without them knowing it's at Coil's behest. Capes are harder to control, but the PRT gives access, and, depending on position, ability to affect what the heroes do. If Coil is working in the PRT, it's because he thinks the PRT is the place to go to get the influence he wants. He's not just working there, he's in a position of power. Might be the Deputy Director, any of the department heads, even the Director, but he's definitely someone important.

But there was a recent change of Directors, shortly after Coil vanished. Assuming that benefited him, it clicks. Coil is Director Calvert.

...Interesting. And now the question is, what's the best way to get him? A director in the PRT's word against a relatively new independent hero, if a powerful and successful one, with good reason for a grudge. It could go either way, but it'd probably swing Coil's way. And she doesn't have contacts... Er, make that reliable contacts, with anyone who's good at spy games.

There's always the direct approach, but assaulting a PRT director would get her in all kinds of trouble if she can't prove without a doubt that he's Coil. And probably even if she can.

Ugh. Spy games are giving her a headache. But she sets to gathering evidence in her spare time, leaning heavily on Tattletale's power and enhanced senses (and what internet prowess she got from Cranial's instant tech education), trying to find something to connect Coil to Calvert. Even if it wouldn't hold up in court, a healthy amount of suspicion on him would be enough revenge.

Well, Coil appeared in Brockton Bay shortly after Calvert did. That doesn't say much. Coil's operations tended to be high-risk, high-reward, start suddenly, and of course always pay off. After Calvert became the Director, the heroes shifted more toward following the same pattern. And Calvert is a large investor in the construction company that built Brockton Bay's Endbringer shelters and Coil's old underground base.

Asking Tattletale's power for an inference, it jumps to yep, that's the guy easily.

Okay, that's pretty suspicious, but not quite enough that she'd feel confident in the public opinion fight that's going to happen. She fishes around for something else to connect the two, if it's at all findable. Has that construction company been getting better-than-average deals with the PRT lately, or anything like that?

Nothing like that, he isn't sloppy.

Coil's allies are getting better treatment from the Protectorate lately, though. It's subtle, but it's there. Enough that relevant superpowers can pick up on it. The cells of the Elite that hired Coil's agents are a little more likely to be classified as the non-villainous kind of Elite, that it's safe to do business with instead of fighting. The heroes are a little more willing to leave Accord be in favor of pursuing other threats. These aren't things that the Brockton Bay director could manage directly, but Calvert was a PRT consultant before he was a PRT head and maybe he's offering suggestions they're listening to.

The Undersiders' continuing escapes would fit very well in this category, if not for the fact that there's no obvious way for him to let them get away after every loss. He can't exactly be ordering the heroes to do it.

Well maybe he's deliberately being sloppy and letting Tattletale work out the Heroes' actions.

...Maybe he's Tattletale's inside source. There's no good way to try to verify this without risking getting discovered by either party, though. And pushing Tattletale's power too far might lead to bad answers. She notes it as 'possible' though.

To hell with it. She wraps up everything she has on this matter, from Coil's list of crimes (plus evidence) to the connections (all the evidence, right there) into a neatly-presented little bundle of informative research with a little help from Uber's power. She's no writer, but it should be easy to understand at least.

She uses Tattletale's power to identify the capes and any important non-capes most likely to believe her about Coil.

Edited 2016-01-15 02:05 (UTC)

The Undersiders do always seem to know the heroes' plans. This is generally assumed to be some combination of Tattletale and Skitter, but since few people know exactly what Tattletale's power even is nobody knows for sure.

It's slow going. She has to check candidates one at a time, looking into whatever she can find on them and extrapolating to what would they do if they found out their boss was a supervillain. Would be easier if she could meet them in person safely.

It turns out that plenty of the relevant parties will take her seriously. Miss Militia is thoroughly Lawful Good and will consider it her responsibility to find out if it's true, Armsmaster would love the chance to capture a supervillain who crossed as many lines as Coil did, but would be a bit displeased if someone else did and it came out that he had been taking orders from one. Convincing them it's true is going to be harder, especially with all the evidence being so circumstantial. Armsmaster would be a good candidate there; he'd at least be able to tell that Gren believes it.

Most of the Brockton Bay PRT non-capes would either reject this as crackpottery or just inform their boss that he has an enemy. Coil's superiors are an option, but the Chief Director probably isn't in the habit of listening to unknown thinker powers borrowed by strangers.

She can try to talk to Armsmaster and Miss Militia, then. She never liked Armsmaster much, but one takes what allies they can get.

She waits until they're on patrol, and starts a whisper-spell to them. She happens to find Armsmaster first. After waiting for a good moment where he won't be distracted,

"Armsmaster, this is Copycat. I have sensitive information I'd like to discuss with you. It's about Coil."

"Coil? As far as we know he's been inactive since we raided his base."

"I believe he's still active. I have evidence, partially gathered from a copied version of Tattletale's power. Most of it's circumstantial, but it'd be an awful lot of coincidence. Will you listen to my evidence if I tell you what I think Coil's doing lately, even if it seems absurd at first?"

"Of course. Can you land so I can see you? And it might be a good idea to start with what Tattletale's power does, since it's relying on that."

She lands in an alley. When Armsmaster approaches, "Tattletale's power is about inferences. It makes intuitive leaps of logic that derive information from the smallest of cues, alarmingly quickly. Things you might notice if you thought carefully for hours, it discovers instantly. Even things you never would have thought of, but that make sense once the power gives them. I'm not sure they're always right, but clearly they usually are, given her success. As to Coil... I believe Coil is Thomas Calvert."

If he doesn't interrupt her, she goes on to lay out the broad strokes of the chain of evidence, presenting him with a neatly printed packet of papers that fill in the details.

Edited 2016-01-15 02:44 (UTC)

He does, occasionally, asking for clarification or justification where called for. Details on how her teleportation works, for instance, and whether Coil might have misdirected it to PRT HQ since he clearly already has some method of interfering.

When she's done, "The Undersiders. You said you suspected they were working for Coil? It was their attack that got Calvert his promotion, when Director Piggot had to step down. They said she was a target, and we never did find out what they meant."

"Again, circumstantial. When I talked to Skitter a couple weeks ago she had a far more emotional reaction to my accusing Coil of things than I would expect from someone hearing about a random villain. Finding out her boss was doing that fits her reaction more.
And they have to be getting their money from somewhere. Tattletale's power said Tattletale was making glaring omissions when discussing Coil. It's possible he's redirecting my teleport since he's interfering with it at all. I don't know how much harder it would be to make the give a wrong answer than to fail to give a clear answer at all."

"Before making any moves that can't be taken back, you should try teleporting to Coil more often. You could try it now; the Director is out of the building. If it tracks his location, then he's either Coil or being very impressively framed."

"Alright." She closes her eyes and tries to teleport to Coil. This time the frame of the world shrinks to a thin line of Downtown, stretching from PRT HQ to City Hall. She frowns and investigates the feeling of... Vague confusion? Ah. The teleport is trying to track two different people.

...She asks it for the man who dressed as Coil and asked her questions and gets a man at a desk, doing paperwork. She asks it for Coil, with the new knowledge that he probably used a body double, and gets Thomas Calvert listening to a speech in City Hall.

She reports all this to Armsmaster.

"You can see people as well as tell whether it works?
You're right about the Director's location, and if the man who introduced himself as Coil is at the PRT it's verifiable without having to do anything drastic like arrest Director Calvert before being certain. Can you describe him?"

"I can't see anything around him, but he's maybe five foot eleven, rather thin-" She goes on to accurately describe one of the PRT's mid-level officers in significant detail.

It's not anything like an exact description of Director Calvert, but if Gren is right this man would at all relevant times be wearing a full-body suit designed to make him look like the real Coil,

"I can talk to the mole, see how far I can get before he finds out he's a suspect. If you come it'll tip him off that something's out of the ordinary. Will you be able to keep an eye on Calvert remotely?"

"Using my teleport power as a scry is tricky as hell. Not what it's meant for. Like being about to move your arm, really meaning to, tensing the muscles, but not actually doing anything. I doubt I could hold it for an extended period of time but I can check every half hour or so. I have an actual scry - but that only targets areas, for some reason it won't meld with the teleport's person-targetting. Cape powers are much more finicky about combining with other things than Witch specials."

"It's low priority, if he doesn't know he's suspected he'll probably keep acting as normal.

How good is Tattletale's power at finding out what people are hiding? I'll know if the suspect lies, or if he's hiding something, but might not catch what. If it would help, I can patch you in through a helmet camera."

"It's pretty good, especially if you ask pointed questions. I can't do it for more than five minutes at a time though, thinker headache. Audio only was enough for Tattletale and I to have a very, very subtext-laden conversation, but the helmet cam would help."

"Good. We'll have to assume he knows to avoid direct lies at the very least, but five minutes should be enough."

He mounts his motorcycle and points it toward the PRT building. "Want a ride, or would you rather fly?"

"I'll fly. Might have to leave suddenly, by the way. Unlikely but possible. I've got a few emergency medical response contracts, get called in about once a week. If that happens a recording will be better than nothing." Her steelwing picks itself up again.

They arrive at the replacement PRT HQ in approximately no time at all. Before walking in as if nothing is wrong, Armsmaster hands her a screen showing the view from his helmet.

He finds the person Gren's teleportation thinks has masqueraded as Coil, addresses him by name, and asks about recent villain activity. Apparently this is one of the people to ask about that. Armsmaster pretends to be looking for information on some previously unaffiliated villains who allied against the Undersiders, and tries to lead him into consciously not saying that he has been to a truce like that one as a participant.

It'll be obvious to Gren-as-Tattletale that this was also Coil's stand-in when the alliance against the ABB was negotiated, but Armsmaster won't have that verified until she tells him.

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