Cutscene - Introspections III (PREVIEW DRAFT) (Patreon)

Cutscene - Introspections III

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The corridor stretched before him, pristine white walls and gleaming glass partitions painting a picture of clinical efficiency that bordered on the futuristic. Each step of his white Oxfords echoed softly on the polished floor as he took his time, no need or desire to hurry. His pale gray suit, carefully selected to embody Medhall's ethos of elegant performance, melded seamlessly with the sterile surroundings. The silk tie, its color and pattern meticulously matched to his bespoke suit, lay perfectly flat against the crisp white shirt, a portrait of unerring attention to detail.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Anders.”

Maximilian Anders tilted his head in the slightest of nods, his lips upturning just a hair in recognition. "Michelle."

The attractive executive assistant smiled wider at his acknowledgement, a pretty flush hitting her cheeks as she continued past him, the sharp click of her heels punctuating her path.

As she finally walked past him and the click of her heels began to fade away as she rounded the corner, the smile he wore — the ghost of it, at the very least — vanished, his mouth its usual blank line.

Max held her image in his mind for a moment, considering. She was certainly attractive enough, in a generic, surgically-enhanced way - perhaps falling within the lower range of his admittedly high standards. But…

But her procedures were amateurish, noticeable to his discerning eye. Any personal attention she received from him never exceeded the usual half hour every other week, or when the need took him. Too little distance, and she might start having ideas.

As Max continued his procession down the long hallway to his office, he engaged in the expected ritual - nods of acknowledgment, exchanges of polite greetings and respectful deference from the executives and researchers who crossed his path. Outwardly, he projected an air of composed authority, the very picture of a leader in effortless command of his domain. But in the privacy of his own mind, contempt simmered, a persistent anger bubbling just beneath the surface.

These sycophants, with their fawning smiles and eager-to-please demeanors, were so pathetically transparent in their toadying. He would say he despised their obsequious pandering, the way they postured in a vain attempt to earn his favor or catch his eye, but then he’d be the one lying to himself. If only they knew the depths of his disdain for their pitiful displays. The sheep, prostrating themselves before a wolf in tailored wool...

Unbidden, his thoughts turned to his father, and Max fought the urge to curl his lip. His father had never been one to indulge in the power plays, at least in this manner, too hard-headed in pursuit of his endgame, his goal to “focus on what was important.” No, Richard Anders was too harsh, petty, and savage of a man to apply any sort of give to any aspect of his life.

But then, his father never truly understood the importance of appearances, of theater - that perception was its own reality.

Max knew better. He understood the necessity of cultivating an image, of playing a role. Out there, he might don his armor, seize his birthright. But here, in this world of wealth and influence, he wore a different kind of armor - bespoke suits and a veneer of respectability, a polished mask for the ugliness that lurked beneath. 

In this arena, he was master of the game, king and kingmaker both.

"Morrison," he greeted, his voice a deep timbre that filled the expanse, acknowledging the head of R&D lingering by the door of an elevator. The scientist, caught mid-step, paused and straightened, a flicker of pride lighting up his eyes before he nodded back with a respectful “Mr. Anders”, before disappearing behind the door that hummed softly as it closed.

"Walters," Max Anders spoke again as he continued, his gaze shifting to the finance director who emerged from a side office, clutching a tablet like a lifeline.

Max noted the tension in her shoulders, the stress lining her face. Good. Let them feel the pressure, the weight of his expectations. He would accept nothing less than their best, their total dedication to his vision. 

“M-Mr. Anders, good afternoon.” Anita Walters straightened her pantsuit and offered him a smile nearly as tight as his own along with a nod, stress visible on her face as she quickly made her way past him.

“To you as well, Anita.”

Each name he uttered reinforced the hierarchy in place, every executive on his floor acknowledging him with a respectful nod at the very least.

Reaching his office, the CEO paused, hand hovering over the biometric scanner as he stared at his reflection in the glass door. Light blond hair with not a strand out of place, teeth as white as his shirt, handsome face unmarred by the garishness of cheap surgery… Perfection.

The door slid open with a silent grace, revealing an office that was an extension of the corridor's aesthetic — sleek, modern, and bathed in the natural light from his floor-to-ceiling windows.

He stepped inside, the door closing shut behind him with barely a whisper behind him as he strode over the far end of the room, soles clicking on the gleaming polished floor. He paused for a moment as he reached the end of his path, casting a glance over to the large glass and steel desk at his side, before turning his gaze to the window and looking out over the city that sprawled below. This view, a testament to his life's work and his family’s legacy, filled him with a profound sense of purpose.

Here, in this citadel of glass and steel, he was more than a name; he was a vision brought to life, a force of raw power, prestige and dignity.

And despite it all, he was filled with all this unyielding rage.

He was a man of wealth, composure, power and sheer will. In an ideal world, he would never have a moment of stress or discontent, given the means at his command.

Yet, the world was far from ideal and he knew that much. Still, he made sure that potential problems were mitigated, loose ends were tied up and issues were resolved in such a way that if they were not already, they would handle themselves in time.

So it was not often that such a mess of a situation was dumped on his lap without notice, because of pure incompetence, no less, from his own appointed lieutenant.

Max had always known James to be an intelligent man, dutiful, controlled — nearly as poised as himself but far less charismatic — all in all, the ideal subordinate. Far less trouble to manage than Brad, but that was just damning with faint praise to say the least. The sort of insult that could only be understood as comparing a dutiful butler to a mad dog on a tight leash.

He had never had a bad word for the man, not in his civilian guise, and certainly not in costume as Krieg, the man nearly as capable in both aspects of his life as Kaiser was. To make matters even better, the man was loyal to a fault with seemingly no mind to usurp his position, which was more than he could say for some. 

Ignoring Hookwolf’s own grumbles, he’d often had to worry about Kayden sometimes…

Nevertheless, Krieg was his best man, his right hand even.

Skilled, dutiful, and composed.

Never had he expected anything less from the taciturn man.

Which was why he felt stunned to his core that a simple ambush and a simple initiation event had gone so unimaginably wrong just five days prior.

The plan had been relatively simple, when Krieg had floated it to him weeks ago.

With Lung out of the way and the ABB in tatters, the Empire needed to step in and make it clear that they were a dominant power before any other force within or without the city could rise up. Part of this involved striking fear into the remnants of the ABB before they could properly solidify, and another part necessitated the indoctrination of many entrants into the fold of the Empire proper.

The timeline for the plan had been rushed ahead when some idiot child in a mask and motorcycle leathers decided to announce his enmity towards the Empire and Kaiser himself by not only affiliating with the ABB but taking it over as their new leader, of all things, publicly declaring as much with a video of him hurling a van into Empire-owned property and causing a massive conflagration that took down a good portion of an Empire-owned block.

If the destruction had not been enough of a statement, what had been graffitied on the van certainly made the point clear.

So, really, it was only understandable that he had not been feeling entirely composed when he ordered Krieg to make the boy and the ABB pay. Still, he had never thought it would lead to this…

Maximillian Anders let out a long sigh, the man directing his gaze to the far side of the Bay, eyes searching towards where he knew the Docks were.

This humiliation.

Stormtiger beaten and broken was one thing. It certainly hadn’t been the first time the musclebound Blaster got too cocky and received a beating. But a brand new Empire cape left in critical condition and possibly dead if not for Othala’s healing hands?

One adolescent rookie cape who seemed about as intelligent as one could expect from a lower-class child in this city against two experienced and powerful parahumans along with two more rookies as force multipliers? It should have been a done deal. Especially with one of the boy’s own traitorous and opportunistic lieutenants informing the Empire of his movements as well as when and where to strike?

On paper, it was excessive.

And, in truth, it had been.

Just in a direction he hadn’t expected.

If it had ended there, things would have been fine. Really, he might have been satisfied. At the very least, they had more information on a new threat, and the only cost was some humiliation at the hands of a rising figure and no more damage that couldn’t be fixed with a session under Othala’s care.

But no, of course not, it couldn’t simply end there.

It never did in situations like this.

At the very least, he did learn something else from the situation. The child clearly took his role as leader of the ABB seriously.

Extremely so.

The precautions taken had been well-thought out and well-implemented.

Dozens of white vans throughout the city, most of them acting as decoys and most of them entirely unaffiliated with one another. Most importantly, none of them related to or owned by anyone even tangentially affiliated with the Empire.

The perfect location to carry out the initiation, far from what could be considered PRT-held territory and equidistant from ABB stomping grounds and Empire land alike, while also being in such a run-down part of town that only Merchants and no-name street gangs would even bother trying to “hold” it.

The idea of anyone seeing or hearing anything was unlikely, and that anyone would care enough to call for help even less so. Even the idea of law enforcement and cape support making it there was theoretical, at best.

Unfortunately, unlikelihoods and theoreticals were not impossibilities. 

Two of his men literally torn apart, six times that number murdered, and almost three times that number, mostly Empire initiates, in various degrees of serious injury. One apparently hurled from a rooftop, at that.

Even as his blood pressure had risen from sheer rage that same early Saturday morning, he couldn’t help but admire the sheer brutality. It was something worthy of Allfather or Marquis, as much as he despised giving that fop any credit.

Considering he had heard from those who escaped that the ABB adolescents had taken to calling him the “Blue Eyes White Dragon”, it wasn’t quite unexpected, in hindsight.

Regrettable, of course.

But not entirely unexpected.

Max frowned as he stared off into the city as Brockton Bay stretched to the horizon, a patchwork quilt of faded glory and tarnished dreams. The Downtown skyline gleamed in the late afternoon light, steel and glass monuments to wealth and power thrusting upwards like an insult to the heavens. But even from this lofty perch, Max could see the rot setting in at the edges from the Docks and the other side of the city, the slow, inexorable decay that crept through the city's bones.

A fitting enough metaphor, he mused, for an organism beset by disease, by parasites feeding on its lifeblood.

His gaze traced over the distant Docks, skeletal and rusting, the once-thriving heart of the city's blue-collar identity now little more than a graveyard of broken dreams and shattered lives. And who fills that void, hmm? Pushers and pimps, thugs and thieves, drug-addled fools desperate for their fix.

Max's lip curled, a sneer of aristocratic disdain. Pathetic. A city of sheep, bleating for a shepherd to save them from the wolves at the door. Wolves like that arrogant child and his band of mongrels.

Fury simmered in his veins, slow and sulfurous. It had been days since he'd received the report from Krieg, days since he'd learned of the ignominious defeat dealt to his Empire by a boy playing at being a warlord. The wounds to his soldiers' flesh had been healed by Othala's gracious touch, but the blow to their pride, to his pride, was not so easily mended.

That an upstart like him could challenge me, could spill the blood of my men on the streets of my city...it's unforgivable. 

Intolerable. 

His hands tightened behind his back, knuckles whitening. He remembered well the surge of anger, of indignation, when Krieg had first brought him the news. The sheer effrontery of it, the unmitigated gall. That this child, this insect, could believe himself a match for the Empire, for Maximilian Anders...

Arrogance. Hubris of the highest order. But what else can one expect, from the product of such inferior stock? The son of a whore and a bastard, without a doubt, gutter trash that lucked into powers and foolish enough to grasp beyond his station.

His newest burner phone had buzzed that night, an unwelcome intrusion to his sleep. Krieg's name on the display, bearing news of the defeat, another humiliation visited on Max's soldiers. Stormtiger, beaten to within an inch of his life, Nordwind, nearly comatose. Their informant within Hardkour's ranks, gone silent, likely dispatched with extreme prejudice.

At the time, Max had listened to Krieg's report with a face carved from ice, his voice betraying not a flicker of the incandescent rage simmering within. Only after ending the call had he permitted himself to feel it, to stoke the flames of his fury until they burned white-hot behind his eyes.

Now, days later, that anger had crystallized into something diamond-hard and unforgiving. 

He exhaled slowly, a frozen sigh. 

The sun dipped lower on the horizon, shadows lengthening across the city like grasping fingers. Max watched the light fade and felt only a grim sense of purpose.

He raised his head slightly, gaze rising from the bottom of his windowsill to the proper view of Brockton Bay in the late afternoon sunlight once more. Light blue eyes narrowed as they took in the city’s skyline, a dwindling little thing even after years and years of effort on his part.

This city could have been another great, he mused. Not quite a New York or a Los Angeles, but at the very least, the San Diego of the East Coast. He remembered his adolescence, a time when that seemed like a possibility for the city he was born and raised in. When shipping was vibrant, capes were barely a decade old concept, and Brockton Bay was a thriving, growing living organism of a city on the cusp of greatness. 

Even after the “Golden Age of Parahumans” ended, that didn’t really affect a thing within the city proper.

Now, Leviathan…

The CEO let out a quiet sigh as his eyes focused again, gaze locked firmly on the city in front of him. A sea of encroaching red appeared in his mind’s eye as it flooded over the city, its origin point being the building he stood in up to the point where it came to a sudden stop several blocks away from the Docks.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, indeed, he closed his eyes as he dwelled on the thought, the visual of Empire territory unfading from his mind. It would have come down to this anyway, he told himself. With the musclehead of a dragon gone and territory up for grabs, it would have only been a matter of time before the unpowered thugs and the capes themselves started questioning why he wasn’t expanding the Empire’s demesne.

He scoffed at the thought. And that would only lead to them questioning me as a leader.

Max let out another scoff, this one far less audible. As if most of those fools could think past the next morning with any degree of clarity.

It was obvious to anyone with even two brain cells to rub together, meaning himself, Krieg, and Victor, for the most part, that their interests benefited from Lung far more than they lost, both immediately and in the long-term. Every empire needed an enemy to focus their efforts on lest they become prone to infighting due to a lack of challenge. Unfortunately, his Empire was no different. 

A perfectly detestable, powerful, monstrous illegal immigrant from a nation known historically as either a covert or overt enemy, entering their homeland with a wave of bodies, killing their brothers, kidnapping their wives, sisters and daughters for lascivious purposes, along with poisoning their friends using back-alley drugs?

With the Empire already largely in control of the areas of town that mattered, and Lung being there to publicly split PRT attention and draw more people to his ranks, there wasn’t much else he really felt the need for. The dragon and his cronies were basically a walking advertisement for the Empire. Almost too perfect, honestly. Really, what more could any ruler ask for than a ready-made enemy with a loyal army hand-crafted to incite racial tensions and shift otherwise neutral or friendly figures into ardent fighters or sympathizers for the cause? 

Aside from the worthless gang of drug dealing nobodies that cropped up in the last year, who else would the Empire have to fight? A largely Caucasian Protectorate, a superhero family that was just as white as his own, and a hidden figure in the form of Coil that most of the city didn’t even know existed. All the way down to the mayor and PRT director, this city was so Caucasian, the war was effectively already won from the time his own father had triggered.

Truth be told, if he had been a more petty man, he would have put Lung on his Christmas list, simply for making his job so much easier over the last decade. Not that the dragon-man wouldn’t have simply burnt said gift rather than risk opening it, but the look of confusion on his face would have been worth it.

He had tried picturing how Lung would look if he actually did it, but it just couldn’t match up to the sheer knowledge that it was actually done and that the man would have been too baffled to know how to respond. Just not the same, he thought with a shake of his head.

Max allowed himself a moment of private amusement at the thought, a razor-thin smile slicing across his face. Ah, the little things in life. Still, he knew better than to let flights of fancy distract him from the task at hand. The Empire's position was strong, yes, but it was not unassailable. Not yet.

Recent events had made that all too clear.

Maximilian Anders knew what he had to do.

Granted, the public’s attention had shifted towards mocking the Protectorate after the travesty that was the fundraiser, but that didn’t change the fact that there were still plenty of laughing fingers being pointed in his Empire’s direction.

Letting the ABB’s new pet parahuman go without reprisal would make his Empire look weak.

It would make him look weak.

And if there was one thing he learned from his father, it was that weakness kills.

Scouts had reported what seemed to be Asians of varying types scouting out the edges of his territory, and considering the “White Dragon’s” attacks on his men, there was war on the horizon. Max's lip curled at the thought, a sneer of aristocratic disdain. As if those mongrels could hope to challenge the might of the Empire. But still, the insult could not be borne. This 'Hardkour' needed to be taught the error of his ways, and swiftly.

It was obvious to anyone with a working brain that the already unstable gang would crumble without a parahuman at the helm. Above all else, they would devolve into infighting, or simply vanish into obscurity without a powered hand to guide them.

His Empire was in no real danger.

But that would only last as long as he made a decisive strike.

He would teach the new "White Dragon" a lesson that he had avoided teaching Lung. A lesson written in blood and pain, a message that would reverberate through the underworld like a thunderclap. Cross the Empire, and pay the price. It was a simple calculus, really. But then, simpletons often required a firmer hand to grasp the complexities of the world.

The Asians would be taught their place.

And anyone that dared to laugh would understand why the name Kaiser was one to be feared.

His Empire would not fall.

He would-

“Welcome to Channel 5 News: Brockton Bay's CapeWatch Channel.”

He was about to turn his mind to the specifics of his plan, to the necessary steps that would need to be taken, when a sound from the far corner of his office drew his attention. A droning voice, the unmistakable cadence of a news anchor, emanating from the sleek tablet perched in pudgy hands.

“Chip Walker here, am I coming in clear?” The voice was tinny, slightly distorted by the device's speakers, but still recognizable as that insufferable Walker. Max felt a flicker of irritation, his jaw tightening imperceptibly. 

“Loud and clear, Chip.” The tablet's volume increased slightly and Max had to actively resist the urge to grind his teeth. His gaze flicked to the couch, to the hunched figure sitting there in a gray hoodie, engrossed in the screen.

Theo. His son and heir, in body if not in spirit.

Max took in the boy's soft, rounded features, the pale blond hair so like his own, and felt a now-familiar rush of disappointment, tinged with an emotion he refused to name. Fifteen years old and still so childish.

It was Max's own failing, he knew. 

He had been too lenient, too forgiving of the boy's weaknesses. He had allowed sentiment to color his judgment, permitted the potential his beloved Heith had birthed into the world a chance to falter out of a desire to avoid being the monster his own father had been.

Thus far, Theo had proven a decidedly poor investment.

“It seems like the city is always on fire, and that’s why the news is always hot.”

The news program droned on, Theo's doughy face rapt with attention. Max felt his irritation calcify into something harder, more unforgiving. The boy was too soft, both in body and mind. He lacked the killer instinct, the iron-spined ruthlessness that had seen him succeed. He spent his days sequestered in his room, face buried in books or glued to a screen, insensate to the realities of the world outside their gilded walls.

“Two people died in what seems to be a double homicide, their bodies found outside-”

Max's eye twitched, the inane chatter scraping at his nerves like nails on slate. He had indulged this distraction for long enough. He whipped around, eyes narrowed as he kept his hands clenched firmly behind his back. “Theophilus!”

He kept his voice level, but imbued the single word with an unmistakable note of command. The effect was immediate and gratifying.

Theo jerked upwards, grip tightening around his tablet for a moment, the device still blaring with the news program, before he glanced over in the direction of his father, his expression blank but distinctly nervous despite showing little emotion otherwise. "Uh-uh, y-yes, sir?"

Max allowed the moment to stretch, his gaze boring into the boy's wide grey eyes. He noted the way Theo seemed to shrink into himself, the subtle hunching of his shoulders, the unconscious attempt to minimize his presence, and his frown deepened at the sight of it all. Pathetic.

"I believe I made myself clear, Theophilus," he said at last, each word precise and razor-edged. "These meetings are not to be interrupted by such frivolous distractions. You are here to learn, to observe, to begin the process of preparing yourself for the duties that will one day fall to you as my heir. Not to idle away your time with pointless drivel."