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Bio Forge Master (Rewrite) by Throwaway1971

Books » Private Rated: M, English, Romance, Words: 137k+, Favs: 57, Follows: 75, Published: Dec 12, 2023 Updated: Mar 15, 2024

29Chapter 31: 25

Bio Forge Master

Behind the Scenes

Thomas Calvart/Coil

He never was the most empathetic individual, some would even go so far as to call him sociopathic, and they would probably be correct from a medical standpoint. But he didn't see it that way, no he saw it as him being the Master of his own Destiny. He possessed the ability to control fate itself, how could anyone with such abilities ever be in the wrong? After all, all his choices were correct and objectively the best ones, and with that his heart and actions were utterly unclouded.

He never thought himself as a God, but if others thought it well it wasn't his place to correct them it was only natural. Only small minded fools and simpletons who lived in a constant fear of destiny would think him a God with his powers to choose his fate!

Binary choice, option A or option B, truly well worth the money and favors he owed his secret patrons, a power worthy of a grand chess master!

However, despite how effective his power is, it was not as infallible as his simple-minded minions and tools believed. If it were truly as infallible as they believed, things wouldn't be in such a sad state of affairs. Having survived that Hell called Elisburg, he had feared no man or parahuman, not even the Slaughterhouse 9 provoked the same bone chilling sense of dread.

He never imagined he would ever feel that again, and now another monster in the guise of a man. A thing covered in surgical scars with multiple arms, it tried to play friendly and just wanted to help but he wasn't fooled!

Coil refused to let the thing make a fool out of him, no matter if it was purely accidental. He was the master of his emotions! Not the other way around! He had sent his mercenaries to deal with the thing, and things seemed to go smoothly until it turned into a spider monster and started manhandling his mercenaries which led to him canceling that timeline.

After much consideration he decided to not poke the beehive, as much as he wanted to be rid of the thing. It wasn't going out of its way to disrupt his operations. And solely due to that fact alone he decided it earned a stay of execution.

Then things started to go to shit, he still didn't understand how it had happened! The thing was a Biotinker, and yes Tinker are bullshit, but he figured the thing was a new trigger hand simply hadn't had the time or resources to build up enough to disrupt his operations!

Regardless, his men tasked with keeping an eye on it were discovered, his network was attacked every time he tried to remove the pest, and it wasn't until he posted publicly about his Mind-Machine interface did things become clear! The worst part was that unlike other capes… he would fight to the death against his mercenaries! It was strange though to see such a PR-minded cape being so utterly remoreless as he ripped his men apart like they were made of cardboard, something even Lung and Hookwolf didn't do on a whim!

Then finally, a few weeks ago he finally reached his wits end! Whenever one of his men would follow it, they'd be discovered, as would whatever contact Coil had with him, and even just having his men take the same bus as his civilian persona caused them to be discovered almost immediately!

Which is something that still puzzled him, as Patches and its civilian identity were seen at the same time in Boston and Brockton Bay! Had he not known, he would've assumed they were two entirely separate parahumans!

However, all the stress and anxiety that it has caused him culminated when he was looking right at him before the Lung fight! It looked directly at the camera he was observing from and spoke, and despite the lack of a microphone and speaker Coil knew it was directed at him specifically.

"Close this timeline." He mouthed, though Coil could imagine his tone would've been blank and lifeless.

Coil didn't sleep well for the next three days; his power was known and the one who knew about it was so certain in their superiority they were fully willing to let him know! It was such a power move, if it was from anyone else Coil would've been impressed at the sheer gall!

However, it didn't impress him, no. It frightened him, made him uncertain and nervous. It caused the ghosts he thought he long since buried to rise from his subconscious and torment him once more. Unbidden memories of that childlike hell, the adorable monsters, and the psychotic demands of the man-child Rinke!

(That was the one thing he agreed with Piggot over, he refused to call that psychotic monster by its childish moniker. Honestly, Goblin spelled backwards… as expected of a man-child suffering a psychotic break!)

In a desire to secure himself (and not because he was scared) he hired more men, he even hired the Travelers as extra insurance against Patches, surely their own pet monster would be a match against the multi-limbed monster!

But as much as Patches was a thorn in his side, he was the least of his problems. Uppercrust had arrived in town, a dangerous parahuman to have in his city but ultimately harmless. The man couldn't justify making any moves in the Bay for the same reason as no other company did. It simply wasn't viable to invest in a port city without a port!

So, when the rotting carcass of the cargo ship was moved, he almost fainted, a cold sweat developed, and his hands shook!

And it was in this moment of weakness did Trickster come across him, normally he would've closed the timeline but… he needed the interaction, anything to distract him from the madness that had just manifested itself in his city. He told the cape of his fears of Patches, and how Uppercrust threatened to destroy everything he had worked so long for!

He had underestimated Trickster, perhaps it was due to his own current weakness or the parahuman was just that good at playing the fool, but the man calmly listened before giving some advice that Coil found… surprisingly appealing. Uppercrust's poor health was well known and given that he was seeing Patches as a surgeon, it went without saying that there would be a point where Uppercrust would be in surgery, and therefore both would be vulnerable and locked into a single location for hours.

He liked the advice and insight so much he even chose to keep that timeline simply so he could reward Trickster! Admittedly the possible retaliation for Uppercrust's death would be terrible as the Elite weren't simply ones to forgive a slight like that, but Coil was an old hat at redirecting fault.

And well, it wasn't like the Travelers would know of his duplicity given that they would either be killed or constantly harassed by Elite-backed kill teams.

To make everything even better Piggot had finally gone over the edge, she had been straddling it for days now. The fact that it was a cat picture of all things made her decide that losing her job was preferable to coexisting with Patches almost made him laugh so hard he nearly cried!

What's more, he thanked the heavens for its providence, as his moles in both the E88 and the Merchants informed him that the leaders (Kaiser and Skidmark) were out for the day and could easily be assassinated!

Honestly how easily the Travelers were convinced to attack the neo-nazi gang, it was so simple he almost felt a smidgen of guilt over it. All he had to do was make a comment about how their wheelchair bound friend would've been executed by men wearing the gang symbol alone.

(Honestly why Accord has gotten rid of such easily manipulated pawns he had no idea)

(That was a lie, he knew his exact reasoning)

And while the Travelers were dealing with the E88 he would have Skidmark easily assassinated by a sniper he had in place! Truly, the feeling of a successful plan was like a balm to the soul!

Then there was the matter of Armsmaster and Miss Militia being stuck in the hospital, he considered removing them from the board entirely. With their deaths the Protectorate would be in a weaker position and would break whatever political weight they had in the city. He would send a few mercenaries to care it out, but he wasn't overly invested in it either way.

Whether they lived or died, he would still have control of the PRT.

Besides, Miss Militia was a dutiful soldier that knew to follow orders and Armsmaster wouldn't care as long as he had funds to tinker and continued to receive accolades for his heroic endeavors!

So even with them still on the board, he would rule unopposed!

Having intercepted the order to attack Patches, Coil felt like he should add some amendments of his own. In actuality his amendments weren't obvious as the original order itself was the same, the wording nearly identical actually. However, every police department had bells and whistles to allow the officers to know when they were to arrest a suspect or "arrest" a suspect, there was no shame in it as every police department in America had it even before Scion appeared.

The PRT also had the very same bells and whistles the police department had as well, and it wasn't something that had ever caused them legal problems for the person issuing the order.

It only helped that Piggot was only sending handpicked PRT agents, a platoon at most, consisting of loyalists towards him and Piggot, the foolish Director had a habit of gathering people that served in the Elisburg Containment Zone that transferred away due to psychological reasonings, and this fact made them completely willing to take matters in their own hands.

Anyone that had seen the horror that Elisburg had become, would refuse to allow their city to become another Elisburg.

All it took was a change of emphasis here, an exclamation point there, a few quotation marks, and he could guarantee that Patches would be killed instead of arrested, truly Piggot made things too easy on occasion.

The battle with Patches began when their APCs broke through the checkpoint, one of the foolish Elite capes then tried to talk the men down and was reduced to a mist by the M2 mounted on the APC.

The battle was fierce, but ultimately his men made their way to Patches hospital whilst the capes in the hospital prioritized evacuating any civilian personnel on site. Even Uppercrusts supposedly loyal men were soft and prioritized defending idiotic civilians instead of the man that paid their bills.

However ultimately, they didn't matter, as long as he could eliminate both of the problem capes, all other actions could fail, and nothing mattered as long as they died!

Which is when Alexandria came out of nowhere.

A cold sweat gathered again as Coil chewed on his lip, she wasn't supposed to be in the city! She was supposed to check on the parahuman that moved the cargo ship before returning to LA! So WHY WAS SHE STILL IN HIS CITY! SHE COULD RUIN EVERYTHING!

The one of his men had the most ASTOUNDING BRILLIANT IDEA, the SHEER FUCKING GENIUS used the anti-Purity stinger missile on her! The fool, if that idiot survived this somehow Coil was going to murder him himself! And it would be a slow and torturous death!

Then Coil's heart nearly stopped.

"This is Alexandria, I hereby order the entire Protectorate to ignore the orders of the PRT ENE for the next seventy-two hours until a thorough investigation can be concluded as a result of Blue on Blue violence, the Protectorate is hereby ordered to arrest the PRT high command under the Kings Clothes and Troy protocols, all ongoing PRT operations are hereby suspended, and agents are compelled to obey the nearest member of the Protectorate." She spoke stoically into the open PRT/Protectorate channel.

No! Nononono! This can't be happening, this fucked everything! The entire department would have every single Thinker in the fucking country focusing on them! Why now!? The larger organization didn't give a rat's ass about the Bay, so why the fuck was Alexandria here in the first-

The internal alarm, she hadn't been sent here. She came on her own in response to an internal alarm, but that made absolutely no sense, as the only internal alarm was the one in the Rig and PRT building… unless she was listening in somehow? How could she have responded so quickly otherwise?

Then a realization dawned on him, and he felt a chill run down his spine, "Alexandria is Costa-Brown…" He said in shock in Timeline B, his safe timeline, where he sat alone in the cafeteria of the PRT building.

It made so much sense, no matter how he desperately wished it didn't. Costa-Brown's lazy eye, the same hair, how the fuck had no one seen it yet!?

The more alarms sounded as a white door opened behind him, the sound of a gun rang out, and the timeline closed, fuck! No not now! He needed that timeline! He wanted to scream in pure rage but kept his mouth shut, and after a few seconds the door failed to appear in the now true timeline.

Alone in his office Coil wished he could cry but resisted.

"Sir." He shook his head when one of his men called him using an air-gapped communicator, tinkertech that he always felt was a worthy investment that didn't connect through the internet and was thus untraceable.

He had bought them specifically to counter Patches odd ability to mess with his network, "Report." Coil said calmly, pointedly ignoring the fact that his hands were shaky, and he had broken out in a cold sweat.

"Sir, the Targets are not here." The man reported.

Coil blanked out, no… this wasn't happening. He didn't just… go through all this for absolutely no payoff!

Shaking his head, "What do you mean they're not there!?" Coil hissed.

"Sir, the surgery room shows signs of being prepared but neither of the targets are present." The man reported.

Coil didn't respond, busy staring into nothing as tears started building in his eyes.

He… he's finished, there is absolutely no possible victory scenario for him now. Uppercrust surviving meant that he would destroy the city before letting him have it. And Patches would discover his actions and would come for him.

He started heaving, ignoring the mercenary asking for his status and for further orders, he… he had to leave. He had to escape! Ignoring the mercenary still connected, Coil turned to his computer and started initiating his scorched earth protocol. He released every identity of all known capes, set his base to detonate, deleted every important file, and erased every scrap of evidence that could be used against him.

He then fled through an escape tunnel that would lead to the sewers, where he then made his way towards a helicopter pad a few miles away from his base. Pulling out a communicator he punched in a few numbers.

"H-Hello?" The scared voice asked, which stood at odds given Coil knew the girl was just a giant monster of flesh pretending to be a girl. He sealed her in a massive vault that was 'rated' for Endbringers, well as much as anything could be rated against them.

"Noelle, it's horrible!" His tears weren't crocodile tears but genuine ones for the first time in a long time. He didn't give a rat's ass about the Travelers but his precious shiny city on a hill was lost to him now. So, he opted to burn it down before it was tainted by the incompetence of lesser men.

"What happened?" She asked, her voice showing nothing but concern, after all who wouldn't show concern when a supervillain cried.

"They're dead, the Travelers. All of them. The Empire and Protectorate killed them." He said all the while he fumed.

All his plans were ruined, all because of that goddamn Brick Bitch!

"W-What?" The concern was slowly replaced by hysteria and anger, which Coil had hoped would happen!

"They killed them." He repeated, "There is no justice anymore, avenge them! Rip and tear until it is done!" Was he getting a little hammy? Perhaps but frankly, he didn't care anymore.

Though the quote from that stupid video game he saw the Travelers playing in passing was simply too appropriate to let pass.

Using his communicator he quickly inserted the code to unlock the vault door before shutting the com down. And then he pressed a button, and the self-destruction countdown became audible to those inside, a bluffing tactic but one that would compel everyone in his employee to leave.

With that done he focused on making his way through the sewers and to his eventual getaway, and the tragic unjust end of Coil came to its conclusion, and as he walked, he wept. Truly he was suffering the most out of all the people in the city!

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