VT - Chapter 10 : Nine No Mo[2] (Patreon)

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

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon—

Half a dozen pings later, he grinned as the first wave of assets, the fastest, had reached the location, and he made the mistake of letting the video feed from the suits reach him, as he had to promptly turn around and retch on the floor. Even before he was done, the ship’s inbuilt cleaning systems had begun working.

Huffing, he waved his hands, closing the footage of someone flaying someone alive and then taking their skin for themselves. A cape he had not known of beforehand.

Shaking his head, he ignored the horror in his mind before activating the protocol.

“Activate Protocol Clown.”

A beep signalled the confirmation, as he just sat in his chair and tried not to think of what he saw, as the suits began doing their tasks by locating all the members.

The ones targeted for the first volley were the decidedly human members, and the one who needed immediate containment.

Bonesaw, because of the viruses she had stored inside of her body as a fail safe. 

Shatterbird. Burnscar. Jack Slash. William Manton.

After spotting the truck that was the most important part of the equation, one of the suits immediately flew down, slowly and carefully, to the target currently sitting in the driver’s seat, eating a sandwich somehow, as his projection was doing the same with a human body.

His fists clenched in disgust and rage, as he barely controlled himself from bombing the whole van. Instead, he let the protocol do its job; as the suit reached the street, and after aiming properly, it sent a repulsor blast through the head of the sick fuck, killing William Manton and popping the Siberian at the same time.

The suit moved to collect the body, as he had a message to send with that body, as the other five jumped into action, having already moved into position beforehand.

Another ping brought his attention from the suits to the arrival of the Juggernaut, aptly named to deal with the likes of Crawler.

With a sinister grin on his face, he authorised the activation of the platform and leaned back to watch the show, even as dozens of other bogies were en route to the town to provide medical and transportation for the victims of the town.

Even in the minutes it had taken for him to arrive in the town, dozens had already lost their lives, and many more would have been dead had the Slaughterhouse Nine not had a habit of playing with their food.

He watched as Bonesaw was enclosed in one of the suits, designed to be completely airtight to make sure nothing escaped the containment suit, her scream being cut off at seeing Siberian popping like a balloon. The same happened with Jack, though his suit, or rather, his coffin, was far bigger and reinforced than the one used to hold Bonesaw, just in case he had some tinkertech knife. Jack managed to react in time, but it would seem that today was not Jack’s day, as he was immediately enveloped in the suit that promptly severed his wrists with the inbuilt blades. 

Both suits immediately shot right up in the air at full speed, with both of them glowing hot red within seconds, as the Arc Reactor within them overloaded itself to make sure nothing of them remained behind, certainly not Bonesaw’s remains.

Burnscar and Shatterbird were enveloped with standard issue suits as well, the suits giving them the same treatment as Jack Slash and Bonesaw, though in Burnscar’s case, she reflexively summoned her fire, only to be killed immediately by the blades inside the suit. Scatterbird was the same, before both the suits exploded in a spectacular shower of sparks, barely leaving anything behind of the monsters who didn't deserve to be called humans.

As he had said before, he was graced with the gift and curse of overthinking, and that thinking translated into the making of all the means installed in the suits as well. Every single one of those suits had multiple ways to kill any human inside, as he had guaranteed that once they were inside, all of them were going to die.

One of the remaining two lightweight suits had taken care of that unknown cape who was flaying people to become some kind of skin monster, and the other was currently taking potshots at Crawler, drawing the beast as far away from the town as possible.

That was six down. Leaving behind Crawler, Mannequin, and Hatchet Face.

All three of them had some kind of superhuman durability, far more so than what Bonesaw gave the others. 

Mannequin and Bonesaw were two members of the current roster he pitied the most, what with one being a victim of the Simurgh, and the other of Jack Slash. Unfortunately, they were far too dangerous to be left alive in their current forms. The pity he had for them did not make him hesitate at all.

The Juggernaut was something that consisted of the Hulkbuster Armour from Marvel, with the modular platform floating nearby, along with a special weapon that was probably the most dangerous one he had built so far, and for good reason. Making it and, more importantly, transferring it into a small enough vehicle was such a hassle that he would rather never have to do that again, but he knew intellectually that it was just a matter of time until he had to vaporise someone.

As for Mannequin and Hatchet Face, both of them were right next to each other, staring at the suits in the air with solemn looks on their faces- well, on Hatchet Face’s face anyway. Mannequin had no face to see; just a flat plate. Mannequin's many limbs twitched to no avail.

Hatchet Face had likely realised that his powers were not working, so he jumped forward first for some reason, fist reared back for a punch at the nearest suit, only for the suit’s hands to go straight into his torso, grabbing the spine before pulling it out, as the other hand of that suit turned the head of Hatchet Face to mist.

Mannequin, seeing that, immediately jumped away in a bid to escape, but unfortunately, his ceramic plating armour was not going to save him this time. The armour heated up immediately after getting hit with repulsors, before one of the suits just grabbed Mannequin and suffered from extreme cuts due to some tinkertech weaponry. Either way, one of the suits gathered the remains of the shattered suit as the others peppered Mannequin with repulsor blasts, overheating his systems.

Once capable and willing to build self-sustaining ecosystems on the Moon to act as a second home and kind of like Noah's Ark for humanity, Mannequin had built his body to be a self sustaining machine after turning into this version due to Simurgh's meddling and, thus, lasted the second longest amongst the entire roster of S9, before eventually slowing down due to overheating.

After that, it was only a matter of time before Mannequin died, slowly cooked inside his own armour.

Cruel? Yes. But, once again, he was paranoid, and he was not going to let any of the tech come anywhere close to a Tinker, even if the specialty was different.

A dull roar made him look towards the last surviving member of the S9, Crawler. An abomination capable of adaptive regeneration, to the point that he had decreed fighting and injuring the thing pointless.

The Hulkbuster was not in good condition, with most of its innards exposed, the monster happily laughing as he was being constantly damaged from all sides by repulsor attacks of varying intensity.

The damage was never the primary goal, though. The primary goal was to take him away from civilization, into the upper ranges of the atmosphere, though not high enough to gain Simurgh’s attention, where…

One moment, the maniacally laughing Crawler was enveloped by the Hulkbuster and its parts that were being rapidly destroyed and replaced by new modular parts, and the next, a small glowing sphere shaped ship was revealed, into which Crawler was summarily deposited. A moment later, the entire sphere glowed a violent purple, a forcefield projected on top of it by another larger ship that showed itself to be floating above the sphere, which too showed signs of breaking.

The purple glow died down after a minute or so, revealing nothing, not even ash. 

He sighed in relief, slumping in his seat, as he pressed the land button, as he knew that escaping for all the ships was foolish, with both Legend and Alexandra on their way. Plus, he built the whole Juggernaut platform with self destruction in mind, so no risk of his tech being exposed.

As it turns out, even the likes of Crawler can be turned to non existence when enough energy is released in a confined space to tear space apart, with the spatial tears ensuring that Crawler’s body was torn and thrown in hundreds of different tears, ending him permanently.

Or, so he hoped. There had to be a limit somewhere, to Crawler’s adaptation. He hoped that it was enough, because if Crawler could somehow survive being torn into thousands of pieces flung in different spaces in between dimensions, then he was one of, if not the strongest capes in Bet.

For now, though, Crawler was gone, and that was for the best. He was not going to risk imprisoning the beast, so this was the next best thing in his opinion, or at least the next thing he could have built at the moment.

He could have tried the Death Ray, but that would have been….extravagant, as that giant thing was not even capable of killing an Endbringer for all the lengths he would have to go to build something like that. It was totally impractical.

A dozen more bogies shot out of the large ship and into the town below, speakers blaring as they worked on getting people to safety, while he waited for Alexandria to arrive. 

The ship had halted midair, with all the suits returning into the bigger aircraft, save for the one with Manton’s body, which was headed away, by its lonesome, towards another asset primed to receive that body.

After all, Cauldron did need a wake up call, and what better way than to shove their hypocrisy in their faces. Legend’s role would be crucial in that.

For that, though, he needed to establish contact with them.

Which is why, the moment Legend stopped in front of the ship, still in his Breaker Form, a much older suit flew down. It was the very first one that Tony Stark built, in a cave with scrap! 

It was just outfitted with a comms system. 

Legend tensed at the suit’s appearance as Alexandria flew from behind him, flying so close that a forcefield had to be activated from the larger ship above, making the flying brick bounce a bit before she righted herself and floated right next to Legend.

One of the sensor suites showed Eidolon finally arriving in a ball of green, having teleported here, and was currently doing his best to dismantle his bogies and rescuing people from them.

He rolled his eyes and ordered every bogie to retreat, dumping the people right then and there, drawing a confused glance from Eidolon, but the hero did not miss a beat, moving on from destroying the bogies and focusing on reassuring the people below.

It was evident that the traumatised people preferred a familiar face, as everyone immediately relaxed subconsciously.  

“What are you?” Alexandria asked him.

What, not Who.

So, they probably knew that there were no life signs in any suit nearby, hence the cavalier attitude with the armour. 

He shrugged, before replying, his voice modulated of course, “We are Grand Chariot.”

Legend interjected here, “We heard about the Slaughterhouse Nine. Where are they? Did you finally kill them?” The hope in the man’s voice was real, and nice to hear.

In response, a series of videos were projected for their viewing, showing them how each and every single member of the S9 was dealt with, systematically and without any casualties on his side, well, save for the 40+ people that died before he arrived.

Legend’s eyes widened to the max, while Alexandria’s eye only minutely twitched when he showed Siberian popping like a balloon out of nowhere, likely because of what happened the last time they fought.

He deliberately excluded Manton from the footage, as that was going to be another message.

“You killed them,” Legend whispered, shocked and awed somewhat, or atleast, that’s what the ship’s facial recognition software told him.

He made the suit nod. “They were a blight on this world; hence we removed them.”

“And who is this 'we' ?” Alexandria floated forward threateningly.

Bingo! Time to get to work.