VT - Chapter 4 : The one with the Quinjet..... (Patreon)

Disclaimer: Worm belongs to the one and only absolute chad, Wildblow. Enough said.

Earth Bet

–Simon–

“Superpowers, Simon! They will change your life, Simon! Living in a different world after filling out a CYOA will be a great thing, Simon.” He groaned, cursing his drunk self once more, as he put the car in drive before beginning the process.

The process of making a small hidden workshop for him. See, the moment he knew that he was on an Earth with a human population, which was easy to confirm since all he had to do was follow the trail and reach the road, and then watch as multiple vintage type cars passed by with distinctly humanoid people inside them, he knew that he was going to have to hide himself.

Contessa was a thing here, the boogeywoman herself, and he had no idea of her reach. Theoretically, she should easily be able to find him, or technically, she should have already found him and guided his actions somehow. He preferred not to think of the possibility that he was already playing into the hands of Contessa, as that would just send him down a spiralling circle of depression.

So, he worked on the assumption that he was some kind of blind spot to Contessa and had to hide himself from all other methods of detection. That was the one that kept most of his sanity intact, otherwise, he would just stop doing anything, as it was extremely demoralising to feel that none of your actions were your own.

Shaking his head, he moved forward and continued to dig into the small hill in front of him. The entrance was going to be much smaller, but the interior was big enough to house a small aircraft if need be. Of course, he was going to have to be careful to make sure that a single landslide wouldn’t bury him, or the entire place was dependent on a single air hole, or some other rookie mistake.

He was sure that he was missing something, but he supposed that he was going to be out of here soon enough anyway. The sooner he was done with a Quinjet, an Arc powered Quinjet with cloaking technology, the sooner he could move out of here and move to some remote part of the planet and continue cooking stuff, until eventually he would be able to affect stuff on a large scale.

With one final shove, the drill went straight through the rock, before revealing a small crevice. He smiled as he continued drilling, knowing full well that he had little time and could not afford to waste time resting.

It was too bad that the radio did not work this far into the forest, and he did not wish to remain closer to the roads or any city nearby just to gain a bit more information, not without having a means to protect himself from some cape. He felt practically naked without a single weapon on him, and felt this forest far safer than going to the middle of a city with capes roaming around in plain sight.

Atleast, in the forest, he could just hole up in his car, and then make some knives, or better yet, just shove the drill in them, and eviscerate any animal stupid enough to approach and scare him.

Once he was done with shelter, the first thing he was going to build was a proper PC system inside the Quinjet. Thankfully, a quick glimpse inside the vast library of information regarding Vehicles and anything Vehicle adjacent told him that he could build a very powerful computer system inside the Quinjet without any issue, as the biggest issue was solved by the very thing that was going to propel the Quinjet.

The Arc Reactor resolved any power issues, and the repulsor system made manoeuvring the Quinjet a child’s play. He would have been worried about piloting some of the vehicles in his catalogue, if not for the fact that he could drive everything he could build, simple as that.

It didn’t matter that he could somehow build an entire Helicarrier from the Marvel Universe and that it normally took hundreds of staff. 

If I can build it, I can drive it.

It simplified things a lot. Either way, he was going to have to build something first, before he could worry about some of the more humongous constructs that he could apparently build. Spending just a few days with his power had given him a far deeper understanding of his power, and the depths of it as well. It was exciting, making him work that much harder to finish making this stupid cave so he could finally build something of note.

____XX____

It took him an entire week, but here he was, standing proudly, with his hands on his hips, caked in dirt, not to mention blood from various injuries he had accumulated during the whole thing, but he finally had not just a workshop of his own, one that was not going to collapse and kill him instantly, and enough matter to make his very first vehicle. 

Well, the first that would be of any note anyway. After he had realised the amount of work ahead of him, he had looked at his own distinctly human body and realised that this was going to be impossible without some tools, especially since he had to both excavate massive amounts of Earth with a car that was built for, at best, hardcore-ish off roading, not industrial work, and then manipulate that matter to make the parts and the tools for the Quinjet.

This way, he would have made parts of the Quinjet and avoided any suspicions by any peeping Tom who would constantly be spying to spot any Tinker who decided to hole up in the wild.

It wasn’t paranoia if they really were out to get you, and in his case, a lot of people were out to get him. Hell, even if he was some kind of blind spot, he was sure that Contessa must have noticed the ripple effects of his mere existence, not to mention the chaos he was going to bring forth in a few months.

Once he had the Quinjet up and running, only then was he going to turn on the Communication networks, because he did not want to be distracted by anything before he had a functioning weaponised jet between him and most of the threats in the verse.

The Slaughterhouse Nine alone kept him up at night, not to mention the Machine Army, but he took one step at a time.

The step now, was to take the parts and tools gathered in front of him and put them all together, in the form of a highly advanced Jet that had VTOL capabilities, on top of stealth capabilities literally out of this world, though he was sure that there were some people that had stealth surpassing that of the Quinjet but he was just going to hope that he was not going to be found and go ahead with it.

Cracking his neck, he winced at the gesture, holding onto his neck muscles as he had pulled something yesterday trying to get one of the parts to align properly, straining his meagre strength to do so. The cocktail of muscle pain included a lack of sleep, dehydration, hunger, not enough sun exposure, and a frantic urge to get it done at any cost.

But finally, he was done with everything, even if some parts failed to work, he could cobble together a working jet.

So…that’s what he did.

Over the course of three days, he put together the most advanced version of the Quinjet that was inside the catalogue of vehicles he had in his mind. 

The reason it took three days instead of the estimated two was because halfway through, he fell asleep and woke up sleeping on the hull of the Quinjet, in the singular spot where sunlight shone in the middle of the day. He was still extremely famished then, so he had crawled out of the cave and just lounged in the sun for the rest of the day, asleep in the mud, uncaring of any threat that could have come across him and just killed him.

In his defense, he was groggy from a lack of sleep and was not thinking properly, as he felt the relief from the sun hitting his skin and promptly fell asleep.

The moment he woke up, though, he created a glass pipe that would take sunlight from the small hole in the ceiling of his cave and evenly distribute it across a small area that he designated as a rest area. Thankfully, the most taxing thing in terms of stamina was manipulating matter, which is why he did that first.

Anyway, here he was, standing in front of a completely silent floating Quinjet. As it turns out, piloting any vehicle was possible, as there were multitudes of mental piloting methods in his mind, but the Quinjet did not need one, and more importantly, some of the more accurate ones needed surgical implants, something he was not capable of doing right now, so manual control it is.

Well, as much manual as it could possibly be inside a Quinjet that could fly, dodge, fire, land, and more on its own. It had an impossibly advanced Virtual Algorithm that helped it do anything and everything.

Looking down at the tab in his hand, he tapped a few buttons as the Quinjet slowly turned around, raising some dust before the ramp at its rear opened up, lining up with the soil below. 

Grinning at that, he went back and stepped into his car, Tab sitting on the passenger seat, as he put the car into drive and slowly drove it forward. The engine, despite the original perk boasting of the car’s reliability for hundreds of thousands of miles, clearly sounded like it had seen better days as he drove the car into the Quinjet, the space more than enough to house multiple such cars, and it had two levels, so space was not at a premium right now.

The tab pinged multiple times as the Quinjet’s quad repulsor arrays had to adjust for the added weight, not to mention the uneven distribution as he parked the car in the corner before hopping out, and pressing a button to close the ramp. Placing his palm on the door inside the rear compartment of the Quinjet that led to the cockpit, he waited for it to scan everything, even his eyes, before the door opened up.

Once inside, he quickly grabbed two bands that signalled his authority inside the Quinjet as the Supreme Leader of his humble Quinjet and settled into his seat. An absolutely top of the line seat capable of shocking him back to life if his heart ever stopped.

Comfort wise, it was fine. The chair he wanted with the whole massage functions was way too time consuming, not to mention much bigger than the current chair, hence the pedestrian variant of just ventilated seats, but that was fine.

He could always build a better one for his next vehicle.

Right now, though, he just wanted to get out of here, out of this big hole in the ground with a few holes for air and a single hole for sunlight. Man, this was one sad place, which is why he was happy that it was going to be destroyed.

Taking hold of the joystick, he manoeuvred the Quinjet properly, as a compartment below the Quinjet’s nose opened up, revealing a massive repulsor array. Massive, as in Tony Stark’s UniBeam had nothing on it.

Flicking the glass top off, he hesitated for just a moment before pressing the bright red button, activating the array and blasting the gathered trash, turning everything into molten lava within seconds. Even though his Matter Manipulation power worked far better on material he had already used his power on, he wanted to start fresh and he had recycled as much as he could for the Quinjet itself, so he wanted to leave this behind as a symbolic end to his hobo days.

Satisfied that he had left no traces behind, save for little specks of blood and sweat, he pressed a few buttons that made the Repulsor array retract, and a separate compartment on the top of the Quinjet opened up, revealing a similarly sized repulsor array. Another switch turned on the Camouflage of the Quinjet.

Then, another press of the shiny red button blasted the roof of this cave, as he flew out of the Cave, a happy laugh escaping his lips.

Free, at last!