VT - Chapter 16 : Teenage Confusion & JUSTICE! (Patreon)

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

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

Looking at all the data that Taylor’s phone was transmitting to him in real time, he realised that she was not being kidnapped or coerced into doing this, which meant that Cauldron had not yet caught up to this particular mistake of his. It was one of the things that he constantly berated himself for, getting second hand embarrassment whenever he thought of how the first thing he did when he got some semblance of defense was to generate a communication package and try and talk a teenage girl into accepting it, so that he could help her in her time of need.

It didn’t matter that the same teenage girl could one day grow up, within a decade, become the de facto ruler and warlord of a medium sized city, and commit many crimes, and a few atrocities as well, only to eventually be subsumed by her shard and then go on to wage a war against a Multiversal entity, and win. She literally fought the impossible war and managed to win, all for the measly cost of billions of deaths, and losing herself to become some kind of shard-human hybrid who was then promptly put out of her misery by a woman with a similar arrangement with her shard.

Contessa must really be more shard than human right now, what with every single one of her actions being dictated by the most powerful Thinker shard active right now. PtV was a really broken power, and he was really glad for the somewhat limited yet very effective power he had that stopped Contessa from opening a portal right next to his head with a bullet with his name on it the moment he had found himself in this reality.

Shaking his head, he focused on the here and now. He couldn't let himself be blinded by what she could become in the future and forget what she was right now. A newbie cape and a teenage cape at that. The stats for teenage capes going out as independents instead of joining the Wards program made him wince, but then again, he didn’t really think it would have been the right choice to force Taylor into the Wards program, what with Sophia Hess being there already. It would have collapsed the PRT’s image in her mind, and likely led to a total breakdown, far ahead of schedule compared to the canon timeline.

“Hi. I still don’t know your name.” Taylor said with an emotionless voice, and that told him that she was once again using her powers to offload her emotions onto her bugs, creating that dangerous liability, but he supposed he couldn't really do anything to dissuade her from using, from her perspective atleast, one of the most useful facets of her power. The lack of emotions also meant that her words were not really coherent or interconnected to each other. 

“I am John. That is all that you are going to get out of me.” While it was risky to do so, he wanted to see where this was going to lead. He was still not sure about just who to use to empower using his tech, considering the heat they were undoubtedly going to gain the moment they tried to use his tech.

“I assume you called for a reason?”

“Yes.” Even with all the emotional offloading, he could imagine Taylor’s frustrations at not being the one in control of the conversation. That just made him wonder why she called him anyway. There had been no new cape events in Brockton Bay, so she clearly hadn't had her debut, and no major news regarding Lung as well. He had a background filter on news from Brockton Bay, just in case he missed her first entanglement with Lung, if it even happened anyway.

After all, he was a very big butterfly flapping his wings right now.

“Do you know about the Grand Chariot group?”

He scoffed, “Who doesn’t?” He was curious as to what she wanted from him. No one was tracking the connection or tapping her phone right now, so he could afford to indulge her for a bit longer before he had to get to working on the idea he had from earlier.

“Do you know who they really are?”

“Why are you asking me this?”

He heard silence on the other end for a bit before Taylor hung up, and a moment later, the phone’s connection was cut off, meaning she had removed the batteries as well. Man, what a confusing interaction. She basically did nothing but waste his time. Then again, she was a teenager.

He shrugged, ignoring confusing behavior from teenagers before focusing on the task at hand. Sure, Taylor was important, but aside from intervening in case she was on the verge of death, he was not going to interfere much in her life. If he had known about her before she suffered through that horrible trigger event? Then, yeah, sure. He would have ripped apart the Trio for that, but now the damage was already done, and he was not sure if any extra actions on his part to seek justice for Taylor would be appreciated or not.

…..Well, he might not have to do anything on his own. He had other people who could do the homework for him if he just nudged the right people in the right direction.

A few finger gestures opened up the current Protectorate roster in Brockton Bay. He immediately dismissed Armsmaster for being too stuck up and worried about his reputation and appearance, Battery for being a vial cape, and Assault for being Battery’s husband and, as such, within Cauldron’s sphere of influence. Then again, realistically, the entire PRT could be considered as within Cauldron’s sphere of influence.

The Wards were out of the question, which left behind quite a few capes who had both the power, as well as the conviction to do what was necessary. He could have gone with Dauntless, and he was about to, but on a whim, he chose Militia. Sure, she was quite the law abiding, maybe even to a fault, but it would be quite easy to make sure they did not bury this. A single threat to unleash all the info to the wider public from his PHO account would ensure that every single person in the country would be talking about it within the day.

Smirking at his first act of justice outside of the S9, he got to typing. The mode of delivery would obviously be an Iron Man suit, the disposable kind, not that he was going to have it explode the moment he was done giving her the message. It would be kind of wasteful. The only reason he had gone through with destroying an entire ship along with the suits was because he wanted to make a grand statement to Cauldron and the world watching.

And it had worked too. The entire world was set ablaze with whispers about the hidden strength of the so-called Grand Chariot, as everyone was on edge about the appearance of a new player who thought of something so capable as disposable. The statement clearly worked, so he was not too worried about that. 

The one he was going to send to Brockton Bay would be used as experimental material to ascertain the depths of Leviathan’s power. After all, the Bay conveniently had a, well, Bay, that the suit could dive deep into and see if Leviathan was as aware of everything happening inside the sea that everyone thought he was. It was more likely that the Simurgh fed him the information, but he wasn’t really sure about that, hence the experimentation.

Thankfully, he already had a few suits stashed around the Bay, so it didn’t take much time for him to draft the message and send in the suit. 

Coincidentally, Miss Militia was on a patrol as well, so the interaction would be quite public.

With the button pressed, he turned to the work he had been putting off for a while now.

Time to deal with yet another S-Class threat that the PRT thought to quarantine and leave by itself.

Nilbog.

Now, how would one go about destroying everything in a set area, the size of a small city, making sure that not even a microbe got out of the incineration zone?

Something to think about as he got to researching what really made Nilbog such a dangerous being.

___xx___

Brockton Bay

–Miss Militia–

It was the end of the day, and while the social atmosphere in the city would always leave one desiring for more, the actual weather was quite decent by the Bay’s standards. If one could ignore the decaying Docks, as well as the environmental disaster there, no one wanted to touch, the Bay was a decent place to live.

It was just something she told herself, as she patrolled all around the city, forced to stick to pre-determined routes, which, coincidentally or not, always passed by the areas where the rich and powerful lived.

She sighed as she passed the Mayor’s residence for the second time in her patrol schedule, while the entire Dock area was ignored. Unless an active call was dispatched to the PRT about some parahuman related crime, she couldn't deviate from the preplanned route and, as such, was forced to patrol the areas that already had historically low levels of crime.

Politics.

It was an integral part of their organisation, no matter how politically neutral they pretended to be. It was simply a fact of life that the people in power would be able to command the organisations under them, and the PRT, while maintaining some degree of autonomy from even the Executive Branch of the government, still had to work with the government to some degree. Cooperation between local law enforcement and bureaucrats for any PRT branch to operate was necessary, and as such, she could understand the assigned patrol routes.

It was just that they had the people to be able to cover more area and maybe even investigate some crimes that were suspected to be done by Parahumans instead of the ones confirmed to be done by Parahumans.

The BBPD had an alarming number of cases that could be parahuman related and by all rights, should be handed over to the PRT, but due to some reason or another, unless it was too big to hide, all parahuman related cases were swept under the rug.

A frustrated breath escaped her, the weapons on her arms in a constant state of green flux due to her shifting emotions, as she turned around the corner and followed the route that she knew by heart now. If only—

She slammed the brakes on her bike, the bike’s suspension working overtime to make sure the bike did not tip over, as she looked at the floating humanoid suit in front of her with wide, shocked eyes. Her power seemed to have a tough time calculating the threat level of the suit in front of her.

She, on the other hand, was more than aware of the destructive potential of a single suit. After all, the Slaughterhouse Nine, an infamous S-class threat, was taken care of by a bunch of the same suits. She could not afford to make any mistakes here. 

This might just be history defining, as so far, they had nothing on the Grand Chariot group save for their actions in killing the S9. Tonight might be the night they would finally know about the intentions of the mysterious group that had turned the cape community upside down.

She dismounted the bike, putting her hands at her sides to appear as non-threatening as possible, but before she could get a word in, the suit spoke, the voice clearly artificial or modulated.

“Miss Militia. We have some important information regarding a Ward under the custody of your PRT Branch.”

She blinked, her thoughts immediately going to the kids, who, while mischievous and sometimes duty shirking, were nowhere near important enough to gain the attention of someone on the level of the Grand Chariot.

So, she spoke carefully, Console in her ear having gone completely silent, likely due to the suit in front of her. From what she had seen from them so far, jamming her comms was the least shocking thing here.

“May I know what this is about?”

The suit opened up, revealing an entirely empty compartment, in the shape of a human, which confirmed some of the theories floating around the office about the suits holding humans. Well, atleast they were capable of being piloted around by actual humans instead of just being piloted remotely.

The suit’s arm just reached into its chest cavity before retrieving a standard issue manilla folder and threw it at her. Her hand shot out to catch it as she looked at the suit for some more information.

Instead, she received a warning, “If we do not see concrete and, more importantly, public action on that intel in the next 48 hours, you can expect a visit from us. Good luck, Militia.”

“Wait–” Her words were drowned out by the suit rocketing straight into the sky before turning abruptly on the spot, heading towards the Docks.

Console came back to life. “Miltia! I repeat, Militia! Armsmaster is en route. He should be—”

The words were unnecessary as she turned around and saw Armsmaster arriving on his tinker tech bike.

Well, atleast today’s Patrol route was interesting.

She could already imagine PHO exploding because of this.