VT - Chapter 11 : Good Cop, Bad Cop Routine & Path to creating more Capes.... (Patreon)

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

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon—

He eyed the menacing form of Alexandria, as well as the neutral yet far more subdued look on Legend’s face, and realised that despite his view of Legend being the one good apple left in Cauldron at this point, he was not above playing the cliché good cop, bad cop routine. It was too bad he had no way of expressing his amusement, either through visual clues or through sound, as his voice was totally modulated.

He couldn't risk getting video or audio out when interacting with interdimensional human traffickers, who don’t hesitate one bit to discard the failed experiments.

As for answering Alexandria’s question, “We are concerned citizens. As we said before, the S9 were a blight on this world, and as such, we took it upon ourselves to remove them.”

“You want to tell me that—” Alexandria was just about to launch into a tirade when Legend stepped forward and put a hand on Alexandria, making the invulnerable flying brick pause her words. It was likely theatre, but damn was it good acting. He supposed that any politician worth their weight would be a great actor, and what were the Triumvirate, if not high-level politicians?

“What my colleague means to ask is who you are, and how you came about in possession of such technology. Ofcourse, we are extremely grateful to you for finally removing the terror on our lands, but you have to understand that the world will not take kindly to someone of your strength suddenly appearing out of nowhere. We need–”

And here comes the good cop routine, with some reasonable sounding talking points. Either way, this just removed what little guilt he was going to feel for dropping such a big bomb on Legend’s lap and destabilising Cauldron for a little bit, as Legend was quite an important part of Cauldron, being the most liked member of the Triumvirate, as per multiple polls, despite being an openly gay man. North America on Earth Bet was pretty progressive, it would seem.

“And that is not our concern. We do not care if some politician in some air conditioned office is worried about a new power coming out and killing a horrible group of monsters, one of whom was flaying a still alive person when we found them.” For reference, he displayed the video feed he had the misfortune of seeing first, and while Alexandria’s face tightened and Legend openly grimaced, none of them had a reaction as extreme as his, which meant that these guys were used to seeing this.

Man, what a fucked up world this was.

Legend tried once more, “Be that as it may. We can’t just let you operate in the country with impunity. There are rules and regulations for a reason. We can see about letting your group register as a rogue organisation with the PRT, and–”

“We think you are forgetting something, Legend. There is nothing you can do to force us to register with the incompetent, if not outright failure of an organisation."

Legend’s face tightened at the insult. “Look here, the PRT might not succeed all the time, but we are trying our best. You can’t just–”

“Enough of this.” Alexandria apparently did not get the memo and just smashed into him the second time, only to get rebuffed by the force field projected by the larger ship above, once again. Switching targets, Alexandria shot up the ship, her form a blur and yet far slower than her peak.

Legend looked like he wanted her to stop, one hand outstretched towards her flying form, with a frustrated expression on his face, but that was just that. He just looked like that. If he had truly wanted to stop her, he could have easily caught up to her, and if Alexandria wanted to, she could have circled the ship a dozen times at her top speed. No, this too was part of the spectacle, and he was amused enough to let them continue.

After all…

A purple flash occurred above the armour, as he, back in the Grand Chariot, had first class seats to watch as Alexandria’s fist hit the forcefield around the ship and was promptly rebuffed. Sure, that punch alone reduced the capacity of the shields by 0.5%, and Alexandria could certainly punch at that level 200 times, but once the shield reached 70% integrity, the kinetic energy could then be absorbed to strengthen the shield once more. 

“As we said before, there is not much you can do to stop us, Legend.” Legend looked serious now, realising that the threat was much bigger than they had assumed. Honestly, the fact that he had taken out the S9 in less time than it had taken a man who could literally become light to reach here should have clued them in on his threat rating. He had taken care of Crawler, somewhat, so it should have been no surprise to them that he had anti brute protocols in place.

Hell, Alexandria was actually a very easy fix for him. Just sic the Mark 85 on Alexandria, and program the nanites to enter her throat and asphyxiate her, a surprisingly simple solution for a seemingly invulnerable heroine. Fortunately for them, he had no wish to kill her, not right now anyway.

Finally, realising that it was futile, Alexandria floated back down to glare at his form. Unfettered by that, he continued, “As I am sure you have realised, we are not here in physical capacity. These are just one of our few mobile centers that he mobilised the moment we heard chatter about Jack Slash’s newest victims.”

“A force of your calibre and size does not appear out of nowhere. How come no one knows of you?”

He smiled at them, though they couldn't see it. “You are correct in that it takes time to build things. As for where we have been, we have been…building. Yes, building would be the right term. It took us a while, but we finally managed to build something we felt was decent. After that, we immediately took action and destroyed one of the S-class threats plaguing the country. I can assure you that I will soon move on to the others.”

Legend spoke up, “You plan to go after other S-class threats? Our goals align, then. Let us help you so that–”

“We need no help, Legend. You can help the same way you did today, with the cleanup. One thing we do not have is the familiarity you people have with the people. You would do well to use it wisely.”

Saying so, the Iron Man Mk1 suit, the clunky steel behemoth that had no place around his other tech, began floating up to the larger ship. Legend followed suit as well, hovering closer, his hands now glowing faintly, for a windup of a larger attack or as a warning, he did not know; neither did he care.

“Wait! What about the bounty?”

The suit paused, floating at that, making Legend smile, as if mere money could stop him. “There is a massive bounty on individual members of the S9. Collectively, I am sure they will increase it further. Furthermore, I am sure that the President himself will wish to honor you with accolades. After all, you have done the nation a great—”

“Donate it to legitimate charities.” Legend’s words stopped as he continued floating up, slowly, on purpose. “Make sure the money is used properly, else we might find ourselves sending something to send a message.”

Saying so, the suit shot up in the ship ahead. At the same time, Eidolon flew up to join the other two, floating in front of the ship. Aside from the Legend, the glare coming from the other two was sizable, as they positioned themselves in front of the ship, as if trying to stop the ship from leaving.

That particular bit made him lean forward in interest, thousands of miles away, sitting in the Grand Chariot, as he pressed a few buttons, making the forcefield around the ship shine even more.

The Triumvirate tensed as well, likely taking that as a sign of the ship trying to leave, when it was anything but. He smiled as a green crackling ball of energy appeared in Eidolon’s hands, the other two taking Eidolon’s lead, as Legend slipped back into his Breaker State, shining brightly, while Alexandira just assumed a combat stance, which was stupid since the ship was not human.

Anyway, he smiled as he watched the counter finally reach 0, and then a glow appeared from within the ship. The cameras from within the ship glitched out as he switched to satellite view, as the forcefield glowed a brilliant white and yellow, as the ship was destroyed from the inside out, until finally, the forcefield was gone as well, leaving behind nothing but ash.

Nothing that Cauldron could use to figure out his origins, nothing they could use to track him down or gain a shred of information from him.

Yes, it was expensive, both in terms of time spent to get all that material and then build it, and also in terms of the opportunity cost. That same ship could have been used for far greater purposes, but he was a coward at heart. He did not feel bad accepting it.

His safety was paramount, especially since in the grand scheme of things, destroying one of those ships was nothing noteworthy. Desiring it totally meant he would be assured that Cauldron would not be on his tail. That they would not be able to use some bullshit Thinker or Tinker power to—

His thoughts paused as he saw Eidolon freeze slightly before looking straight up at him.

“Shit!” He cursed and cut the feed, as well as the connection to the internet that was used to hack into government websites. He had forgotten about Eidolon’s bullshit Thinker abilities as well. Even if Eidolon was unable to truly track down his exact location, he could at least figure out, using his abilities, that he was being watched.

That one look alone wiped out any delusions he might have had about his place in this deathworld. He was getting a little too happy with getting one over Cauldron’s head, not realising that they were the Boogeymen of this world.

If he was not careful, he might just find himself on the receiving end of the pistol wielded by a Fedora wearing woman, who was part human and part shard at this point, what with most of her life dictated by the Path.

Shaking his head, he wiped his suddenly sweaty palm on his shirt before activating another internet connection and hopping onto the internet. He had a PHO account to create, verify his identity, and then send in a lot of high quality footage for the world to see.

Also, he had to send a gift to Cauldron. He supposed that sending them the corpse of one of their ex members was morbid, but it should serve as a nice wake up call to Legend when he accused the other members of Cauldron of knowing about the Siberian's weakness and keeping them active only to make sure more and more capes were created from the trauma that the S9 left behind in every single town they found themselves in.

And the best part was that it would work even better, because it was partially true. The Path was literally being used to make sure that Earth Bet had the best chance at defeating Cauldron’s foes, and the best way for that was to make sure they had the best soldiers.

And how does one get the best soldiers or capes, in this case?

Since no one could control the power people could get from natural triggers, the best way to get the best capes was to just choose the best capes from a much larger pool of candidates. The pool had to be big for that, and how does one ensure that? Making sure more people underwent enough trauma to go through Trigger Events.

Frankly, it was all there; Legend only needed someone to connect the dots for him, and he would gladly be the one.