VT - Chapter 5 : Paranoiamaxxing.... (Patreon)

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

Earth Bet

–Simon–

As he watched the rapidly shrinking forest he had found himself in, the urge to just blast off into space and not have to worry about any of the incoming disasters was huge, but his delusions were doused with a healthy dose of reality in the form of his meta knowledge. Or, well, what little he knew from reading dozens of fanfictions anyway.

He slammed the metaphorical brakes, grinning as he felt the repulsor arrays in action, halting the Quinjet at the push of a button, as well as the inertial dampeners doing their jobs, not pushing all of his internal organs out of his mouth as he abruptly stopped the Quinjet’s ascent. 

The inertial dampeners brought him to Tony’s suit that allowed him to become a one man army, but alas, he did not have the most advanced versions of the Iron Man suit, like the Uru ones or the ones capable of outright teleportation or the most OP of them all, which was an amalgamation of science and magic in the vast repertoire of vehicles within his power’s memory banks. The other suits, up to the nanosuit version, were available to him, which was good at least. It must be because of the fact that dimensional travel of any kind was forbidden to him. It remained to be seen if he could somehow learn and then integrate some other teleporting tech into his creations, but it would probably need some extraordinary cape like Dragon to do so and he was not going to be in a position to trust someone like her anytime soon.Some of Disney’s intellectual property, it would seem, shall not be infringed upon even in a different multiversal cluster.

Snorting at his lame internal joke, he looked at the open sky in front of him, the color blue visible as far as he could see, before dropping altitude immediately and flying inland a bit, away from the domain of both the Simurgh and Leviathan. He absolutely wanted to avoid those two, or any of the Enderbingers, until he felt confident enough. He might never feel confident enough to approach either one of them, what with his squishy body, but if Tony Stark could do that while being inside his suit, he could certainly send in some of his creations and fight from a distance. It was the least he could do.

After all, he had taken the first step of survival here with the creation of this Quinjet, but with very little prep time, at least relatively, he should be able to ramp up quite well, and well, let’s just say that in the face of a Helicarrier, with a repulsor array the size of a building, even Leviathan would have to dodge.

Or, so he hoped.

He still had no idea if this was some kind of AU world, or if his information, taken from fanon, was worth anything here or not. First order of business, while the Quinjet just flew in a straight line and then landed on a nice clearing in the middle of nowhere, was to press the one button that would activate the Quinjet’s radios and establish contact with the current world, if they had the internet anyway.

If not, then even better, as radio was a pretty good source of information before the internet, and bonus points for not having to worry about an AI just hacking into his systems instantly, which was why he had built the whole thing with a mechanical kill switch, on top of the air-gapped systems.

No way to map the insides of the Quinjet either, as it had no internal radio, and it was only a single radio, meant to latch onto a single connection, not to multiple ones, so that positioning systems like GPS cannot be used to track down the Quinjet.

As one might expect, he was extremely paranoid and careful when it came to creating what was essentially a ping to the wider internet, because if he was not careful, he might just become yet another tragic story of a good intentioned individual worn down and eventually disposed of by this cruel, vengeful universe.

The computer instantly picked up a bunch of signals before hitting a radio channel, and since he was paranoid enough to think that the Simurgh might just use this opportunity to give him the worst possible news to turn him into some kind of nutjob, he did not listen to it.

Nope, he just kept the engines on standby, the weapons ready, and a tense frame as he looked at all the multiple camera angles on the giant projected screen in front of him.

All to make sure that he was not being tracked, and that a government or, in this case, a secret Illuminati drone did not come looking for him anyway. Theoretically, if he was not hunted down by now, he should be all but invisible to the precogs of this place, but one could never be too cautious.

If he was going to die anyway, he would like to go out swinging and have all his weapons on standby to go out in a spectacular Arc reactor explosion. Once he’d ramped up enough, he would have the same deterrence, but by then, he would have enough to go out with a bang, equivalent to the power of a small city.

Anyway, after standing and looking at everything for almost a dozen minutes, he finally relaxed, then tensed up again just in case they wanted him to do that, only to relax again as he realised that he was just being silly and tapping the connect button, connecting him to the internet once more. 

His paranoia was still in play as he just used the computer to download as much traffic as it could, from that single connection, for just under an hour, before taking off from the location. He went back to his previous location, still unsure about flying through the city and learning from the locals, before finally opening the data dump to parse through it.

The Virtual Intelligence, sadly, had to be purged before he could even open the downloaded file, as he could not risk anything. Thanking the VI for its service and sacrifice, he opened the download file and saw the check note. It was a list of primary tasks he’d assigned to the VI.

The first step was to download the maps of the region, before a wider net, before the entire country’s maps had to be downloaded. This was completed because, as it turns out, maps were very lightweight in comparison to other media. 

He now had maps of the entire country, and from what he could see, there were signs that he was in an age where computers were ubiquitous, at the very least. Data centers were everywhere, so the internet was a thing, hopefully. 

The famous cities were there, and a quick search later, yup. There it was. Brockton Bay. 

All the famous landmarks matched. The Medhall HQ. Fugly Bob’s Burger Joint. Broadwalk. PRT HQ(though it was present in most big cities, he presumed). The Boat Graveyard.

Seriously, someone at some point landmarked a point called the Boat Graveyard viewing point, as if someone was going to come and see the death of a thriving coastal economy for funsies. 

….Who was he kidding? Worm was full of people like that.

Shaking his head, his gaze lasered in on the timestamp at the bottom. His eyes widened a bit as he read it to be March 22nd, 2011. 

So, after Taylor triggered from that horrible incident, something he wouldn't wish on any human, let alone an isolated, lonely teenager. If things were canon, which they could also not be, but assuming they were, he had maybe two weeks, give or take a day or two, before Taylor finally succumbed to the conflict drive of her shard and sneaked out of her house in the middle of the night to fight crime.

He could honestly admit to himself that he just wasn't built for that, neither physically nor mentally. A squishy human going out to essentially hunt down people while piloting a multi ton state of the art Quinjet sounds like overkill, until you remember that his world’s criminals were not just run of the mill humans who preyed on those weaker than them. No, this world contained people with powers that preyed on everyone weaker than them. Some had some truly absurd powers such as being able to infect people’s minds as long as they looked at you or perceived you in any way.

Seeing. Sensing. Smelling. Tasting. Touching and more. All methods that can be used by a particular deranged and dangerous cape who was one of the more pant shitting capes he had read about. A power like that was catastrophic to even think of, especially in a world full of superpowers.

Apparently, she could even work her power through cameras? He couldn't really recall much aside from her being able to work her power on the person looking through the camera, but the efficacy was reduced? Or was there some other requirement, like having to look real close at the image? 

Either way, he was going to have to figure out a way to account for her, obviously. It wouldn't do for someone of that moral derangement to gain access to his power. He would much rather kill himself before letting that happen.

After all, even if his powers wouldn't amount to much in the face of Scion himself, they were more than enough to stand against the Endbringers, well, as long as they do not unlock all their limiters and reveal to the world that they had been sandbagging all along. Then, it might be problematic but even then, he could think of half a dozen different ways he could at least hurt them enough to force a retreat.

An explosion capable of wiping out the planet, as well as an energy explosion so large as to force a spatial tear, should be enough to destroy even the hardened crystal stuff that their core was made out of.

Shaking his head, he noted the threat of Mama Mathers in the back of his mind, before moving past the maps and then to the next packet of information.

Even in that short period of time, the VI managed to get most of the information he wanted, and he would need the rest of the day and half the night to get through the important bits. Internet speeds were decent here, or the Quinjet just had really strong antennas. He bet on the latter option, as he knew what he had built.

___xx__

……So, he was right when it came to this world being canon, as far as he could tell from the news articles (just text) that the VI pulled up before being terminated(once again, commend its sacrifice).

Hero was dead.

The three Endbringers were accounted for.

The PRT hierarchy was more or less the same. Rebecca Costa Brown and Alexandria. Two faces controlling two very powerful organisations.

No mention of the S9, Nilbog, or the Machine Army. It might be because they just depressed everyone and reminded the normal people that their vaunted heroes were useless in the face of monsters in human or goblin skin, and some machines as well.

Butcher existed. Same for Lung.

Kyushu was drowned by Leviathan. The world economy was never the same afterwards. The reason it was in recent news articles was because someone from that island had burned himself in front of Lung’s biggest casino, with their final message being a plea for Lung to fight Leviathan once more and end it. A fruitless one, as Lung had mentally given up long back, and was content sitting around lording his power over humans and waiting for the end to come, all the while he indulged in his base desires, or so he had read.

He felt a little angry at that. To think there were likely millions more affected by that single attack, and this world was somehow handling multiple such catastrophes on a yearly basis, without crumbling on itself.

The version of the Illuminati that was Cauldron was doing their job quite well, in some categories anyway.

Shaking his head, he showered, put on warm clothes, and then proceeded to knock himself out in a very cold room, perks of having nearly unlimited clean energy at all times, as well as a matter manipulation perk. Water for the shower was taken from a nearby creek, and then purified by the onboard systems before it was used to shower.

The information dump had clearly taken its toll, as he did not want to stay awake and read something a bit more tragic than the last one anymore, and as such, he was choosing to do the one thing that most humans did when they were exhausted mentally and could not bear dealing with something any longer.

He went to sleep.

After activating all the defense systems of the Jet, obviously. He was not an idiot.

Edit - Edited the part out about MC not being able to acess Iron Man as I have used it in the later chapters :)