“Coil?” Tattletale spoke.  She looked a little pale.

“Tattletale, do you know why the numbers would change?  Does your power tell you anything?”

She shook her head, started to speak, but was interrupted.

…?

“Then go,” he ordered her, ordered us.  “I will contact you later, and we will finish this conversation then.”

“I-”

Oh yeah, cutting off the person who knows stuff like this always turns out well. Sure.

“Please,” he stressed the word, “See yourselves out.  This situation, whatever it is, demands my attention.”

Good jorb, Coil.

By the way, I’m hoping we’re going to get a name for this girl. I’m getting sick of just calling her “the girl”, and bringing her up later would be awkward.

“The numbers are wrong, pet.”

She shook her head, raised her voice in a surprisingly sudden fit of anger, “No!  They’re right!  You just don’t want to give me any candy!”

Hehe.

Coil put a hand on her shoulder.  She pulled away, but he held her firm.  He had to raise her voice to be heard over her squeals, and he shook her just a little to be sure she was listening, “Last question, then you’ll get your candy, I promise.”

Better make it count, Coil – not sure that little accident with the last two questions is gonna make the Undersiders much more confident in your abilities.

She began to settle, and Coil was calmer when he spoke again, more like his usual, reasonable self, “Just give me the number, again, if I sent the Undersiders out to fight Kaiser, without giving them my help.  What percentage, that they come back intact?”

“Twelve point three one three three percent-”

Yep, there we go. This time he kept the terms the same as for the last two questions, and she answered accordingly.

Coil stood, swiftly.  He turned to the soldier that stood nearby, “Give her what she wants.”

The soldier guided the girl back through the door.

Coil muttered to himself, “There’s some anomaly at work, here.  The numbers can’t skew that much, that fast.  More than a thirty percent drop…”

It’s a simple case of having to be careful about exactly what you ask for.

I hugged my arms close to my body.  When I glanced at the girl, I caught her looking at me.  I looked away.

“Candy, now?”  She started to bite at her thumbnail.  Looking at her other hand, I saw her nails were bitten to the quick.

Hrm.

He moved her hand away from her mouth, “Four more questions, pet, then candy.  Tell me the numbers for the same situation, but if I sent the Travelers instead.”

“pet”? …not sure how to feel about that.

“Sixty point two one zero zero nine percent chance they all come back.  Forty-four point one seven four three percent chance but someone gets hurt or killed.”

So in other words, the Travelers would be better suited for this job. Makes sense, really. Sundancer’s power, for instance, would be a thousand times better against Kaiser himself than Skitter’s.

“Good girl,” he turned to look at us, “The Travelers are powerful, so it stands to reason their chances are higher.  But I’ve found that your group benefits more from a use of my power.

Interesting. So that means it’s not a constant +x p.p. boost to an outcome’s probability, but it can be represented in such a way, just with varying efficiency. Which also tells me that he can’t simply decide the outcome entirely – there is still room for failure.

As for why the Undersiders benefit more than the Travellers, maybe it’s that the Undersiders rely more on luck?

Pet, tell me the numbers for the same scenario, for both the Travelers and the Undersiders, but let’s say I was helping them in my usual manner.”

“That’s two questions.  Two teams, two questions.  No cheating.  I get really bad headaches when I try to get too many numbers.”

Yeah, I agree with the girl, this is two.

“Okay.  Answer those two, then there’s one more before you get your candy.  I just need to know the chances that the teams will come back intact.”

The girl nodded, a little too quickly and eagerly, “Those people there have a thirty-two point zero zero five eight three percent chance to come back with nobody dead or seriously hurt if you help them.  The Travelers have a forty-one point-”

Wait, did the numbers go down? Maybe it’s because she didn’t specify “nobody seriously hurt” in the last batches.

Which kind of messes up what Coil was trying to do here.

“No, stop,” Coil stopped her, “That doesn’t make any sense.  You gave me different numbers before.  Those numbers are lower than the ones they’d have if I didn’t help.”

“It’s the numbers in my head.”

When adjusting one variable to demonstrate the effect of that adjustment, you need to make sure the terms of the experiment and all other variables are the same. Coil’s mistake, as far as I can tell, was the word “intact”.

Coil bent down and pushed the hair away from the girl’s face.  She looked at him, then looked away.

She absolutely doesn’t seem like she wants to be here.

I… feel like I should mention that I watched all of Stranger Things 2 yesterday, so the topic of young girls having had their powers experimented on is kind of fresh in my mind.

“I need some numbers,” Coil spoke, gently.

“I want candy.”

Numbers?

At least it sounds like they’re treating the girl well enough that demanding candy seems reasonable. Good sign.

“Alright.  Candy after six questions.”

“Three,” she grew more agitated, turned as if to walk away, then turned back in his direction.  She was fidgeting more.

Got a little businesswoman here.

“Five questions.  Is that fair?”  Coil turned and sat on the metal walkway, beside where the girl stood.

“Okay.  Five.”

Nice.

The soldier came through the door, with a girl in tow.  Twelve years old or so, she had dark circles under her eyes, and straight, dark brown hair that was in need of a trim.

Hm. There’s that whole thing that was discussed when Vista was introduced, about parahumans who got their powers at younger ages generally being stronger, and this girl is the same age.

…oh jeez, now that I think about it, that’s another potential motivation behind Heartbreaker’s disgusting behavior. Not only does he try to get an army of parahuman offspring as quickly as possible, but if he can get their trigger event to happen early, he can expect them to be more powerful.

She wore a white long sleeved shirt, white pajama bottoms and white slippers.  She didn’t make eye contact with anyone, staring at the ground.

I’m getting human guinea pig vibes here.

Her right hand gripped her left elbow, and the fingers of her left hand drummed an inconsistent beat against her thigh.

This is a piece of body language that I’ve personally found interesting for a while – for some reason, one hand on the opposite elbow seems to be a universal signal of nervousness or the like, but why?

“Sure,” I replied, noncommittal.

“Now, that leaves one us final issue to remedy.  Your worries for your safety.  I wish to show you that you are in good hands, and I’m prepared to reveal one of my secret weapons,”  Coil came to a stop outside a door.  A soldier stood nearby, smoking a cigarette.

Ooh, this oughta be good.

“Fetch her,” Coil ordered.  The soldier nodded, squashed the cigarette against the wall, pocketed the butt and went through the doorway. 

Her? So is this “secret weapon” a particularly powerful parahuman?

Also, the fact that cigarette stumps are called butts will never stop being funny. “Ugh, I hate how people keep dropping their butts all over the sidewalks.”

Coil walked over to the wall where the soldier had extinguished the cigarette and used his thumb to wipe the smudge on the wall away.

Heh. Good man. Keep that shit off the building.

He spoke to us, “If I told you I knew where Kaiser was hiding out from the heroes, alongside his bodyguards and perhaps a handful of his lieutenants, that I wanted you to defeat them in a nighttime ambush, this would be an example of the sort of situation you’re concerned about facing?”

Yeah, that might be a bit too much for the Undersiders.

“Yep,” Tattletale replied, “Even with your power-”

“-You have your worries, yes,” Coil finished for her.  “Forgive me if I do not elaborate on the subject of my abilities, or give Tattletale permission to do so.  We- ah, here she is.”

Dang it, I wanna know 😦

“That’s it?  You say ‘I’m sorry’ and we’re just supposed to accept it?” Regent spoke for the first time since we’d arrived.

What else do you expect that isn’t already covered by the deal?

It seems to me that if you want something more in restitution, you’ll need to tell him what.

Coil stopped, and we were forced to stop or we would have walked right into him.  He spoke, “If you accept my deal, I will undertake no plan of this scale without first consulting you, the Travelers and the independent villains that work for me.  It is my hope that you would be able to inform me about any flaws or unintended consequences regarding my schemes.”

Sounds reasonable.

Grue unfolded his arms, “I can’t say for sure.  Maybe.”

I spoke, “I like the idea, but no offense, I’m not sure I trust you that far.  And don’t say that Tattletale would find out and tell us if you bent the rules and tried to slip something past us.  She’s not infallible.  Sorry, Tattle.”

It’s true – there’s been plenty of things Tattle failed to Know. Taylor might be more aware of that than most.

Tattletale shrugged at that.

“I’ll leave you to think on the idea,” Coil spoke, “There’s no action or gesture I can really take that will earn your trust in one fell swoop. 

All I can do is to work with you, giving you no more reason to distrust me.”

Yeah, that’s how trust works.

My efforts with the local heroes were no better, if for different reasons.

So he’s been attempting to unmask the heroes too…

“For some time, aside from regular payments and some direction, my attention was elsewhere.  It was only two weeks ago that I was contacted by my investigators and told that I had what I wanted on Empire Eighty-Eight.

Okay.

To have it come together at that time, when the Empire was one of the sole barriers remaining before me, it seemed to be serendipity.  I jumped on the opportunity.”

I see, so you’re saying that you’ve been working on this for a long time, and because it just so happened to be ready just when you were at war with the Empire, you didn’t take the time to think through the consequences? Which you could’ve done for almost four years, and pride yourself on doing as a self-proclaimed chessmaster?

I’m not buying it, Coil.

Grue spoke to Coil’s back, “And you forgot about us.  What it might look like.”

Coil turned his head, “Yes.  I’ll admit I am not proud of my failure to see the bigger picture, and I assure you, it is not a mistake I am prepared to make again.”

To be fair, though, every chess player forgets the bigger picture once in a while.