“Please, pet, this is important.  To one decimal point.”

“Twenty two point six percent.  Thirty point nine percent chance some of them die.”

Terrible odds, those.

Undersiders?

“And the Undersiders?”

“Eleven point nine percent chance they succeed.  Fifty five point four percent chance they die if they fight those people.”

Sounds about right. I told you the Travelers had better chances. When you’re up against these kinds of people, you need the heavy hitters.

Also, Dinah didn’t say “some of them” for the Undersiders. It sounds like she means a 55.4% chance that all of them die.

Coil sighed, then straightened.  He looked at the middle-aged man, handed him the computer, “I strongly recommend you get what information you can on the group.  Any detail in the PRT records could be invaluable.  Lose sleep if you have to.”

Yeah, holy hell, this just became so much more important.

Tattletale spoke up, “He’s the catalyst for something else, then.”

Catalyst, yeah, that’s a better word.

“Is it always successful, pet?  This something that kills everyone on Earth?”

She shook her head, “Not always, not all the way.  Sometimes more people live.  Sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands, sometimes billions.  But millions or billions always die when it happens.”

Even on a good day.

So this means it is possible to stop it from bringing total destruction. That seems like a good end goal for the story.

Endbringers move over, the threat scale of Worm has just increased drastically once again.

“If I were to send the Travellers?  How likely would they be to kill him?”

“My head hurts.”

No wonder.

“You said if he’s alive.  What if we killed him?  Now?  To one decimal point.  If I use my power.”

“Thirty one point two percent chance someone kills him before he leaves the city, if you use your power.

Huh. If that number would change without Coil’s power, it means it’s gotta be someone Coil sent, such as the Undersiders or the Travelers. (The Travelers seem better suited for this job.)

It doesn’t happen until fifteen years from now, if you do.”

…I see. So whatever Jack has to do with this, it’s only a hastening factor, and the end of the human species on Earth will just be delayed by his death.

“So it still happens?” Coil asked.

“Yes.  Always happens.”

Well, shit.

Hm. I have a feeling Jack’s not going to get killed after all. This seems like a story-climactic thing being planned out – although yes, I’m still aware that this story is written by the seat of Wildbow’s pants – and I doubt we’ll be going until fifteen years from now (in-universe).

“Unless he somehow cuts the planet in half,” Tattletale mused.

…I swear, I came up with that idea separately.

But yeah, I really don’t think that would actually do anything of note, besides making a massive slice through the ground that goes around the planet.

That was disquieting.

“No,” Dinah spoke.  “He doesn’t.”

Thank you.

“I think we need more numbers if we’re to understand this, pet.  What is the likelihood that he succeeds in this?  To one decimal point.”

That assumes that this is something he’s actually trying to do. We can’t make that assumption yet, no matter how insane and murderous the guy is.

“Eighty three point four percent.”

Doesn’t look like Dinah has trouble with that assumption, though.

“Shh, pet.  I think we understand what you’re saying.  Quiet now, unless you think of something important.  We need to consider this.”

Yeah, we definitely do.

Well, with a prediction like that, it seems we really need to take out Jack Slash. Holy shit.

Silence reigned for a few long seconds.  You could have heard a pin drop.

No shit. This was quite the heavy thing to get dumped on us all of a sudden.

I’m shaken. A little stirred, too. I’d be a subpar vodka martini now.

“His power isn’t all that, I don’t think,” Grue spoke, slowly, as if considering the words as he spoke.  “Space warping effect, so any blades he’s holding have an edge that extends a horrendously long distance, all with the optimal force behind the swing.

Interesting. Shaker, then, right?

Swings his knife, cuts through an entire crowd.  Doesn’t make sense that he’d be able to murder everyone on Earth.”

The most ridiculous scenario I can think of: Getting hold of a ridiculously sharp blade and cutting through the entire Earth. And even that probably wouldn’t do much to end life on Earth, since the Earth isn’t held together by a force you can just cut through.

They thought nothing of descending on an elementary school, just because they could.  When the heroes came for them, they came with lethal force.

Basically, the worst kind of sickos, all bunched together in one team.

Great, when’s the meet ‘n’ greet?

“Mmm,” Dinah said.

“What is it, pet?” Coil murmured.

“It’s him.”

What?

“Who?”

She pointed at the screen, at Jack Slash.  “Him.”

I actually guessed that it would be that specific “him”, but that doesn’t get me any closer to answering the more pressing “what about him”.

“You’re going to have to explain it to us, pet.  What about him?”

“He’s the one who makes everyone die.”

I shivered.  What?

…shit, is that a prediction?

I mean sure, it’s an accurate enough statement coming from anybody, but this is coming from a girl who sees potential futures. Is she seeing a whole bunch of futures where Jack Slash causes loads of death and suffering in Brockton Bay?

There were parahumans who were fucked up before powers entered the picture, like Bitch, and there were parahumans who became monsters after they got their powers, like Bakuda.  Then there were the really dangerous ones, the people who had probably been monsters before powers were even on the table, and then they got worse.

Oh jeez, yeah.

Are you talking about all the Fellowship members now? (I didn’t count, did we make it through all nine?)

And if that wasn’t bad enough, you had Bonesaw, who was like some kind of artist, as psychopaths went.  The sort of person that drew other lunatics to her, just because they wanted to see what she would do next.

…and once the lunatics are together, they form a team.

Even that wouldn’t normally work as a dynamic, but as I understood it, Jack somehow managed to play them off one another and keep the group more or less intact.

So Bonesaw is the heart of the group, bringing them together in a fucked up way just by being herself. Jack is the head, scheming ways to keep things together.

He was familiar enough with the psychology of his group and just plain charismatic enough to keep them from killing one another.

Yeah… sometimes that’s necessary. When it is, that doesn’t bode well.

“Jack Slash.”  Jack looked like someone on the attractive side of average, his dark hair cut short and styled with gel.

“Jack” and “Slash” together make me think of Jacks using knives or swords, such as the ones in Homestuck… or more prominently, Jack the Ripper. As such, I’d expect this one to have a habit of mutilations (as expected from any Slaughterhouse member) such as “deep throat slashes, abdominal and genital-area mutilation, removal of internal organs, and progressive facial mutilations”.

Hm, I guess that would be the corpse whose gender was unidentifiable.

His beard and moustache were immaculately trimmed so that each had a serrated edge, and his shirt was wrinkled, only half buttoned so his hairless upper chest showed.  He had kind of a Johnny Depp look to him, though he had more of a widow’s peak, a longer face and lighter eyes.

Even his facial hair is edgy.

Maybe he could get along with Hookwolf.

Good looking, if you looked past the fact that he was a mass murderer.  He held a small kitchen knife in the photo.

That’s probably only the beginning of his toolkit.

Also, headcanon that Johnny Depp used to be (and maybe still is) Taylor’s celebrity crush.