VT - Chapter 8 : Making First Moves.... (Patreon)

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

Brockton Bay

–Taylor Hebert–

She refused to engage with the phone, even as he basically confirmed that he knew that she had powers. Also, his previous words could mean that he could somehow see the bugs that were acting differently, meaning he had some kind of enhanced vision power? Something that could help him see underground? Or maybe they had tinkertech that could do that? Or–

“Taylor,” She froze, the exhaustion and resignation in that tone of voice somehow breaking her out of her thoughts, “Please take the phone and say something. I did not go through all this trouble just to spook you and make you take some wrong step that will render everything moot.”

She eyed the phone like it was a serpent, the bad connotations with that device rushing to the forefront of her mind, even though she knew it was just silly to think that all phones were responsible for—

She took a deep breath and then, as if to stop her mind from going back, her hand shot out and grabbed the phone immediately. Deactivating the emotion numbing portion of her power, she flinched a bit as the panic, anger, despair, and more just rose up, but she managed to keep it together long enough to put the phone to her ear.

“Hello. Who is this?”

“Hello, Taylor. Thankfully, you stopped doing that with your power. Trust me, nothing good can come out of suppressing your emotions all the time. Maybe in times of extreme emergency, like an Endbringer attack where absolute logic is necessary but to do so for—Ahem,” The man just rambled on for a while before he seemed to realise what he was doing, something that made her relax a bit as well. Then, she tensed up immediately, realising that it could just be a ploy on the tinker’s part to make her lower her guard.

“Sorry, I haven’t talked to a lot of people recently. Anyway, as I was saying, Hello Taylor, it is nice to talk to you.”

“You know my name, my power, my address, but I don’t know anything about you.” She stated coldly, still a bit miffed about the way she was exposed by a stranger.

The voice replied sheepishly, “Yeah, that is my bad. Anyway, you can call me VT; it is a cape name. Don’t worry, I am not going to expose you. In fact, I want to help you. I will understand if you reject my offer; that is fine. You do you. I just wanted you to have this phone. If you will see the back of it.” She turned the phone around, seeing a grey patch on the black back of the phone.

“That grey patch is a direct SOS line to me. If you think that you need assistance of any sort. Be it monetary, in a fight, or even just wanting to talk or anything else, you can press the patch, and it will connect you to me. Anyway, I just wanted you to know  that.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing else.”

“How do I know that this patch isn’t some poison that will slowly kill me?”

A sigh echoed in the kitchen, the sound rather familiar to her. “I don’t know how I can make you trust me, Taylor. The best I can do is prove it through actions, if you will allow me. I just wanted you to have this, just in case. I know you have been planning to enter the cape scene soon. Your armour is….nice looking.”

She snorted out loud at the rather bland compliment, as if the man was looking for some kind of compliment to give to her armour, knowing it was not sufficient to act as armour.

“I know it is not the best. You can say it.”

“No! No, that’s not what I wanted to say at all.”

She nodded. “What happens if I press the patch?” She took the patch out and examined it from both sides, finding nothing alarming, but with what Tinkers could create, this could be a mass of nanomachines for all she knew, even if she knew that even in a world of Tinkers, anything nano was extremely rare to find, as that was an extremely difficult thing to create and maintain.

“As I said, it connects directly to me, and I will come to your rescue, not that you are a damsel in distress or anything! Ahem, anyway, I just wanted you to have this. You have my word that I will not be spying on you or anything. Anyways, I will hang up now.”

The line went dead as she immediately went up, separated every single part of the phone, and stored them in different compartments before looking at the grey patch in her hand hesitatingly, before stashing it in her drawer as well.

After that, she went back down to the kitchen, and after mournfully staring at the now ruined breakfast, she cleaned it up and decided to get ready. She still had to go to the library today. If she missed the last bus then—

She halted midstep, her eyes on the windowsill once more, more specifically, the envelope near the windowsill. Hesitantly, she snatched it and tore it open, only to find a bunch of cash along with a note there.

Sorry for the food - VT.

____xx___

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon—

Staring at the screen showing the phone being promptly disconnected after he hung up on that rather disastrous call, he rubbed his face in total embarrassment. He couldn't believe that, after months of spending time by himself, he had let his conversation skills deteriorate to the point that Taylor Hebert, THE social pariah of Winslow, found it awkward.

He couldn't believe just how stupid and awkward and plain bad that whole interaction had gone. He had given her nothing concrete, no information about himself, no help whatsoever. He had just knocked on her front door, basically told her that he was aware of her cape identity and also of her power, and then fucked right off without showing his face, or telling her what he wanted from her.

Of course, she would be suspicious about everything. Hell, anyone would, and this was Taylor Hebert he was talking about, the Paranoid Bug Master. She had every reason to hate this unknown tinker who had invaded the sanctity of her home and basically threatened her with her identity being leaked even before she took a single step out of her home as a cape.

He groaned out loud, cursing himself for that decision.

Why the fuck did he have to even do that?!

He could have taken things slow, moved a few assets to Brockton Bay and the East Coast, took out a few S-Class threats, made a name for himself, before approaching the most skittish girl of her class. 

Looking at what the Trio had done to her, no wonder she was so paranoid. She was far stronger mentally than he was. He would have taken some step long before the tipping point that led to the Locker.

Speaking of the Locker, he took his hands off his face and looked up at the sea of projections in front of him, showing just how much of a dumbass Sophia Hess and her handlers were, not to mention the PRT.

Why on Earth someone like Dragon was not given access to all communication between Wards and Ward handlers was a mystery to him, because those were the weak points in the system. Wards were wards of the state and, as such, within government authority and had no privacy from the system. The handlers, unfortunately, were social workers. Government workers, part of a union that had, atleast on the surface, privacy rights, and to the world, Dragon was just some reclusive tinker, not an AI that could monitor all Ward Chats at all times without much issue.

Shaking his head, he compiled all the evidence before standing up and heading towards his bedroom, safely stowed away on his ship, an absolute masterpiece, the best he could have made in the past month or so.

The best he could make right now.

It had all the defenses he needed right now.

Anti-spatial tech. Anti-telepath tech. Cloaking fields. Unlimited power. And more.

And it was only three times the size of a standard Quinjet. 

The only reason it even took him the better part of a month to build everything was because of the systems.

See, no matter how much he wracked his brain, he couldn't find a single thing that fulfilled all his criteria. Nothing in the big database of his power had all those defences stacked into a single ship. Some advanced versions of Quinjets had teleport defenses, but no Mind defenses. Some other ships had anti-telepath defenses but no teleport defenses.

He knew that there were vehicles out there that had all those defences and more built into a single vehicle, but the problem with those vehicles was that they could also traverse the multiverse or were atleast capable of travel on that level.

That must be the limiter on his power, so that he remained unable to build something that could take him home or even to other multiversal clusters. Whoever gave him this power, they wanted him to remain here and, as such, took steps to downright nerf his power.

Because what do you mean I can’t even build a TARDIS?!

That was the very first thing that came to mind when he thought of building something that could transport people from point A to point B.

It had everything he could ever want and more, but that was excluded from his powerset for the same reason all the other universe traversing vehicles were. They just did not want him to leave.

That was fine. That just meant that this was all he had, and he had to make sure this world did not go up in flames, like in canon.

So, after making sure that he had the most elementary of defenses, on top of the secrecy he was blessed with, what did he do? He spied on a teenager during her morning run and contacted her using a made up name and sent her a phone, a grey patch that acted as a direct line of contact to him, and some cash for the food he ruined.

…..God, he was being a creep, wasn’t he?

Shaking his head, he got out of the shower and then stepped onto a particular part of the flooring, as the flooring took him down a few levels, right up until it stopped on a glass level, with the sunlight from outside the currently unnamed beamed directly on him.

The temperature was very low in the glass room, so the direct sunlight hit did not bother him one bit, as he stood there for a few minutes before heading right up. Too much sunlight could make him feel bloated, and since he was a regular human with no superpower, he had to watch his food, or in this case, energy intake. Especially since he could absorb a lot of sunlight when he was naked and even a few minutes here and there mattered.

He had other responsibilities that could not be hampered by something as mundane as a food coma, even if it felt very good to be stuffed full of sunlight that he felt like slipping into a coma for days.

Shaking his head, he put on some clothing before walking back to the captain’s deck, ready to take the next steps.

He had sent a couple of ships to Brockton Bay, along with the small bot that delivered everything to Taylor.

Taylor could one day grow strong enough to threaten Sion, but he could do so many things to postpone Sion’s snapping, and while going after the Slaughterhouse Nine was tempting, he hadn't found their location yet. 

He had some special weapons ready for Jack Slash, and while the monster was undeserving of a quick death, he couldn't risk anything with Jack’s powers being what they were, so a quick death to the entire Nine was going to have to suffice.

It would also quickly boost his reputation when he made an account on PHO and sent in the footage.

Well, his fame could rise when he dealt with some of the Bay’s issues as well, so it was a race between what happened first.

Will he deal with the Nine first? Or will he deal with the Bay first?

The Bay was far more complicated than the Nine, as there, he just had to point, shoot, and shoot some more, until the area around them was glass.

The Bay’s issues, on the other hand, were manifold, but an overall reduction in crime should be enough for a starting point.

He also had to find some deserving candidates to gift some of the Suits he’d made. This world was in dire need of a lot of true heroes, and most of them were unfortunately not capes.

So, that’s where he was going to come in.

What was better than a single cape? A ton of capes, that’s what.