“Yes that, right now, but also cover doesn’t matter, the bullet came through a portal. Which can open anywhere. So I just need to be where they don’t expect. Ive had this power like a few hours dude, if its confusing to you then it’s worse for me. I have to actually think like this. Prophecy procedure is what we need and then someone can call dragon by sticking a phone out the window. Or get Armsmaster. He can tell her later.” And let’s focus on the immediate problems and not how close you are to death at all times. Yep. No thinking about mortality.

Okay. Well, if cover doesn't matter, then Trooper Hammonds can radio an update to dispatch, and then take Andrea through the facility at a fast jog to an isolated secure terminal.

She beeps her badge and switches to 'guest' mode before searching for the relevant policy manual.

"Alright — there you are," she tells him. "I'll cover you while you read, and let you know when the base goes off lockdown or we reestablish communication with Dragon."

The PRT Anti-pre-conditioned precognition preparedness procedures were almost certainly named by someone with a dry, bureaucratic sense of humor. They are also all about containing and isolating the causal effects of a prediction — getting the most use out of a prediction while causing the fewest butterfly effects. There are some genuinely clever ideas. They do not seem like the kind of ideas that will do much against the Simurgh.

“Okay uhm… maybe telling you the Simurghs attack location would not help?…. Or…. If I don’t tell you until right at the last second. Which… I'm not sure even helps that much…. Not much time for Evac…”

Hmmm… all he has is an RNG machine, a consequence enormity sense, and a personal danger sense. To fight a fucking precognitive malignant alien intelligence.

Okay, you know what? If the Simurgh hasn’t already changed plans to attack somewhere else….

Rng machine, give me a number of hours before I will choose to tell them. And then when that time is up he will use the RNG machine to decide even IF he should tell them. Really make things impossible to predict. Double things up so its harder to plan for every eventuality.

Wait no, RNG a number of hours under a day, before using RNG to find out a number of minutes, before using RNG to decide on another waiting period to be decided between minutes and hours. Then RNG the number of hours or minutes. Before RNG deciding wether to tell them. That seems like enough steps.

His fiat backed RNG affecting dragons programs was enough to make path to victory freak out, it has to do something. When you have a hammer every problem is solved by RNGeesus take the wheel. Also every problem is foresight, so it really can’t hurt to just make things harder for foresight in general.

Once Canberra is dealt with he can make other plans, but making long term plans before a Simurgh attack is actively counter productive. Canberra first, then who knows, try to talk to Taylor or Amy Dallon or something, get those butterflies moving in better directions.

Oh since he did almost die, he should probably tell someone the secret of now proven to work anti precog, maybe they can get a tinker solution if he dies. “Oh by the way in case I die. My anti precog plan is based on power backed randomness, I’m using it to make choices for me. If I die you could maybe get a tinker to make a true random number generator that is not based on deterministic principles. It might work to at least make Simurghs plots harder to pull off if you use a power backed truly random coinflip for some decisions.”

WHY DID HE HAVE TO SHOW UP LITERALLY JUST BEFORE A SIMURGH ATTACK! if he got here two days in the future he’d have months to prepare for Leviathan! He could have layed low. Helped some people who he knew the futures of. Maybe texted Armsy tips on how to be a better person. Probably tried to figure out how to free dragon and failed to come up with any good ideas. But nooooooo, he had to be here just before the Canberra attack and be unable to let it happen. And now his life is like THIS. Relying on RNGeesus is hurting his brain! Not literally, it’s not a thinker headache, but thinking in terms of future sight sucks! It sucks so much!

Trooper Hammonds is fairly sure that the P.R.T. has in fact tried this and it didn't help. But she makes a note of it anyway.

"Okay. What do you need now? More information? Time to plan?"

“How long will the lockdown be? Or can we stick a phone out the window? Because honestly Dragon is my best bet here to muddy up the future and Simurghs precog enough that I’d feel safe telling her. If I even do because maybe that makes things worse, the shitbird can plan around it. Fuck I hate dealing with time bullshit. I’ve had powers for hours and instead of doing baby cape stuff I’m dealing with the Ziz. Fuck my life.” Woooo rambling. Because watching what he says is just too much effort now, being normal is an thing he can pretend to be just fine when he has effort to spare, he has no effort to spare.

“But uhhh in case I suddenly get killed, maybe I should tell someone else all the other huge secrets I know. Is Armsmaster or Miss Militia still coming? I’d even take calling Piggot at this point even if she will probably hate my guts.” Jack slash needs to die, it’ll put off the golden morning for YEARS. He needs to tell them how to kill him. Even cauldron can’t complain about that.

It sucks that he has to think about spilling the future knowledge right this second and giving away leverage over the PRT, Instead of being able to take things slow and calmly. But he couldn’t let Canberra die and now he is at risk of dying himself.

"I'm not actually sure where they are, but I can ask."

She exchanges a few words with dispatch, while keeping a wary eye out for whatever it is that's going to happen next.

"So apparently there's a technical malfunction that is preventing the lockdown from being lifted. And the lockdown involves steel shutters over most exterior access points. But Armsmaster is working on the roof access —" because he's stuck on the roof "— and Miss Millitia is en route."

“Fucking boogeyman.” He curses under his breath. How did path to victory even manage this? “Armsmaster should be able to get through steel relatively quickly. I don’t want to jynx things though by being too hopeful.”

Okay while Andrea waits, he will query RNG for a number under 24. For the amount of hours until the second step.

15.6868992 (15 hours, 41 minutes, 12 seconds)

Trooper Hammonds says nothing. She's pretty sure that Armsmaster did something to the shutters to make them more resilient, but she isn't going to go around just giving that information to poorly vetted parahumans.

They don't have to wait more than another moment for a woman with a flag bandanna wrapped around her face and a green-and-black taser on her hip to come jogging down the corridor, accompanied by two more black-helmeted troopers.

"Good morning," she says. "I'm afraid I was off-duty, and haven't been briefed, but I'm told that there's a matter of some urgency?"

“Hi, sorry I outed your identity to this trooper but it was urgent and I needed to be believed about my thinker bullshit. Seriously sorry, you are one of the good ones. Anyway I have some serious thinker bullshit going on, so I know a bunch of stuff, Including the next Simurgh attack location, and I’ve been deliberately fucking with how other powers simulate the future in an attempt to throw off the Simurgh. It pissed off another precog who tried to kill me just now. So I should tell someone with clearance the other big secrets I know in case another assassination attempt is successful. I still haven’t figured out if or how to tell anyone about the Simurgh attack location because she could just plan around it or change targets. I hate precog nonsense so much.” Deep breath after saying all that in one go. Also still stepping around the room randomly, in case of portal shooting. Leg muscles ache that he didn’t even know he had.

It is probably super weird to look at because the human brain would keep looking for patterns, and using RNGeesus to decide how to step means there can’t be long term patterns.

So he doesn't actually need her, he just asked for her because she's 'one of the good ones'.

It's not really very reassuring for a newly-triggered Thinker's list of "capes who can be trusted with secrets" to be three people long.

"I'll do my best," she promises, because she is one of the good ones. "How classified do these things need to be? Will a secure conference room do?"

“I’m less worried about mundane spying than thinkers. Probably? Oh yeah one of the things I wanted to tell you was about your trigger vision. You aren’t crazy, it was real, it’s pretty bad news. It’s related to other stuff I know.”

Contessa already wanted to kill him, screw cauldron wanting to keep this secret. If you can’t trust miss militia who can you trust. Wow that was parasocial as hell.

Random duck just in case of portal shooting? No gun? That’s good. Andrea’s calves are burning something fierce from all these movements though. 

Miss Millitia blinks.

"H-How did you know about that?" she asks, before gathering her wits and gesturing Andrea toward one such secure conference room. "I've told a very limited number of people." She signals the troopers to wait outside.

“Thinker bullshit.” It’s not like it would stop Contessa, but Andrea closes the door to the room, just in case. “By the way, what you saw is the source of powers. Turns out everyone who triggers sees it, they just are forced to forget what they saw by their powers unless you are a noctis cape. This is big picture important but not immediately important.”

Okay, what is immediately useful knowledge if he dies… and what probably isn’t a good idea for the PRT to know about… They don’t need to know about Taylor, or Amy, or Lisa/Sarah. They do need to know about Jack Slash and Coil. Definitely should’t know about Dragon.

”Jack slash needs to die or the world will end in a few years, all the worlds, Aleph and all the others too. He’s a master, a strong one. He can manipulate capes through their powers so they ALWAYS mess up killing him, range doesn’t matter, you will fail. You need regular human snipers, or troopers with suicide vests. Even drones piloted by Dragon won’t work. Has to be a normal unpowered person without any parahuman in their chain of command to attempt to kill him, or he will know. Nobody with powers should know the plan to kill him. Nobody with family who has powers. And it should be planned fairly low down on the chain of command if possible because then there’s less chance for anyone with powers to intercept the data. If a mole to a villain sees the plan and tells their boss, Slash will avoid it.

He needs to die. If you have to nuke him that sucks but it puts off the death of trillions. That’s the most important thing I know.

What else…

Coil is Thomas Calvert. Who also needs to die like yesterday. He’s used his power to counter factually torture kids. Coils power is precog based. He runs two simulations then picks the one with the outcome he likes better. He experiences it as alternate timelines. He can’t run simulations inside simulations so how you get him is to get him to ‘split’ his timeline just before something unavoidable. So no matter what he does there’s not enough time for him to change things. Also he uses his ‘timelines’ to torture information out of people and it really seems like he enjoys it. He’s coercing one of his capes under threat of death, and has tortured them a bunch in simulations to know all their secrets. Be nice to them if you find out who it is.

Accord is a terrible person but his power is actually very strong, maybe the PRT should actually try some of his plans. He would probably kill less people if he could enact his plans and his power wasn’t making him so crazy.

The group known as the Travellers are Simurgh bombs, Noelle can become an S class threat if we don’t find a way to remove her powers. Which is possible to do.

Uhhh…. Oh! Blasto can clone capes. You need to recruit him. At all costs. Seriously. Army of Alexandria’s. I don’t actually know for sure if that helps put off the end of the world, unlike killing Jack Slash, but an army Alexandrias seems useful for Endbringers at least.”

It’s getting hard to remember all the relevant plot points. Oh… the extra Endbringers. Does he want to tell them about this? He… he should trust an adult, for once in his life.

 “This next one I think you should keep secret so society doesn’t collapse. But I trust you to probably know when is best to reveal this if I happen to die. There’s a LOT more Endbringers. If you kill one, the extra’s start to get activated. So you need a really good sure fire way to kill them all once that ball gets rolling. The next one is a fat baby looking thing that has Spheres that trap you in accelerated time. You turn to skeletons and dust if caught in it. Also he can teleport all over the world during his attacks. Real bullshit stuff. The next ones are a pair, one copies 3 powers around it and another is terrain manipulation and setting up traps. Endbringer grade traps. There’s more of them but I don’t know their powers.

I’m sorry to just dump this massive world altering choice on you but seriously if I got killed and had told nobody I’d be really stupid and kinda evil.”

He doesn’t know if he should tell her about Eidolon, and he is not sure Eidolon can even turn the endbringers off. It’s Implied he turns new ones on? He needs to have a way to talk to Cauldron. The Protectorate and PRT can’t handle Eidolon.

His brain is so worn out, it hasn't even been a whole day since he appeared in the alley. He is sure he is missing something big.

”I know too many things, so many things. If there’s some secret you can imagine that Protectorate doesn’t know that it should know, ask me? I seriously might know it. And I just don’t remember how important it is and that I should tell you about it. It’s seriously too much info at once to figure it all out and I’m sure I've forgotten to tell you something important.”

Fuck it, the portal attack can just shoot him if it’s coming. He is going to slump into a chair. Random pacing is exhausting and he is worn out. If he dies now plenty of people were probably saved.

"... right."

Well, maybe it does actually make sense for him to ask for her, since that was a lot and she has a good memory.

"You've implied that you know the source of powers?" she asks, definitely because it's important information for the P.R.T. to have and only slightly because it's personally relevant.

“Yep, it’s the things you saw in your trigger vision. They come to planets with intelligent life on them and shed parts of themselves that infect the natives. Thats the powers. They collect new data on power use by forcing the natives into conflict. Then once they have enough data or most of the people are dead, they eat every version of that planet across all the dimensions and move on. Powers are from hostile giant planet sized multi dimensional aliens. Jack Slash triggers the end early. Like maybe 15 years early optimistically. He needs to die. Even just a few years delay could make a big big difference in the final fight, especially in civilian death counts.

There are already people who know about the apocalypse and are planning for it, but they need time, if it triggers early it’s real bad.”

Technically the earths survive, but Scion kills so many people across all the earths that it’s still the majority of humanity that dies. He has to believe they can do better than that. Dinah predicted that maybe billions on this earth could survive the end if Jack Slash dies. That has to be way more people alive across all the earths.

Taylor is still alive so Khepri can still possibly kill Scion. But with more time to prepare. The Dinah predictions with Jack Slash dead all seemed better than the canon timeline, so there must be a way to kill scion even without Taylor. Because she couldn’t have been alive in all those futures. Cauldron had to have some power combo or plan right? Or else what are they even for.

He is definitely saving lives instead of dooming them by butterflying away the one known future with a pyrrhic victory. He has to be.

“Probably bad things happen if you tell people about the source of powers or that the Apocalypse eventually happens even with Jack slash dead. But Jack slash needs to die and theres good odds on the Apocalypse being wayyyyy less bad if he dies. And like… with 15 years I feel like I could come up with something. There’s hope. I already figured out how Blasto could help. I’ve got all kinds of power interaction knowledge, I just need to remember it all.”

He lays his head on the table. “I feel like I probably need a super genius like Dragon to help with figuring this out. Also for foiling the Simurgh’s simulations. She’s great at maximising the ripples of my anti determinism. Precogs are very very scary.”

She probably thinks he is a precog too. Hah, none of his powers are foresight actually, somehow that is reassuring, the shards didn’t give him this knowledge so it feels safer to use.

Andrea still has 15 whole hours until he has to do step two in the anti Simurgh plan . If RNG is kind and the Simurgh hasn’t changed ALL her plans, then Canberra can  hopefully have some time to evacuate.

"... oh."

She wants to protest. She has always personally believed that the great beings she saw — spiraling through the void to save her at her moment of greatest need — were angels. America is not a religious nation, not by Kurdish standards, and so she has always been ... quiet, about her belief. But it has buoyed her through some of her darkest moments, the thought that God has a plan for her.

So she does not accept the things Andrea tells her. Or, not totally. That Jack Slash is an evil man she can well believe. That the angels she saw will doom the human race ...

Ultimately, it's not her call. Andrea believes it, and she will put it in a report, and it will go to someone who will make a decision. She does her duty to the country that saved her.

"Are there any other ... not 'imminent' threats, per se, but priority targets like Jack Slash?"

“Stopping Coil is one…. Blasto recruitment is another…Oh shit uh yeah Lung has a new recruit, or will have a new recruit. March 23rd-ish. Not world ending threat but like a few hundred people die so it’s still a big deal. Tinker 6 bomb tinker, she puts bombs in peoples head to forcibly recruit them into the ABB and use as hostages. She triggers at Cornell university. Might have already happened?

Her bombs can help kill Crawler though. So if it all possible take her workshop? She might not have done this yet but she triggers bombs with a toe ring. Cut her foot off first try, or she will deadmans switch her bombs to a heart monitor or something.  If you want to enrage her, poke her about being stupid or a failure, one of those real has to be the smartest person in the room inferiority complex type tinkers.

Heartbreakers kid Cherie is a Slaughterhouse 9 future recruit. She’s out there somewhere. Emotion manipulation that’s real subtle. Can pavlovs dog you into wanting almost anything. It’s more powerful than you’d think.

Also if she isn't already mysteriously missing. someone check on Mouse Protector? This might have already happened but Ravager hires the nine to kill her, they get her and then Bonesaw fuses her body to Ravager for daring to think they could be hired. I really hope that hasn’t happened yet… She seemed cool.

Honestly most of the Slaughterhouse 9 rely on Jack’s master power to avoid ambushes, besides crawler they really are very killable without him. Oh fuck just remembered! The Siberian is a projection, the master is in a van nearby the slaughterhouse 9 at all times. He's a old man. Kill him and she pops.

I can’t think of anything else…. Nothing that doesn't already require Dragon. Or Armsmaster for another thing.”

Andrea would reveal Kaisers identity, but like, it actually IS a good idea for the Protectorate and PRT to respect secret identities, Coil gets an exception because he is actively infiltrating them using his power. You don’t get to use your secret identity offensively. He can figure out a way to personally fuck over Kaiser and Medhall later.