VT - Chapter 18 : Influencer? Lol. (Patreon)

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

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

He was in the middle of planning a raid to gather more information for his next S-class threat extinction plan when he heard a ping. Turning around, he tapped the terminal, and his eyebrows rose as reports about Shadow Stalker being charged with multiple crimes by the PRT and sent to juvenile detention were made public.

There was also quite the uproar from the Youth Guard organisation about the government submitting petitions to make sure that Shadow Stalker was tried as an adult, because of the severity of her crimes as well as the implications of her being an unregulated superpowered cape. It was a reach, because as far as he knew, Wards had a very high level of protection, and stripping that away before they reached majority age was next to impossible.

Still, this atleast showed that the PRT had taken his warning seriously, and had inflicted the maximum possible damage on itself to make sure that his visit did not come to fruition. A shame, as it would have allowed him to take care of some of the pests on his way there. 

Still, this told him that Cauldron and Triumvirate were taking everything he said seriously, probably because by now they were told by Contessa that she could not locate him. That alone would put Cauldron on edge, as this would be the first time they had to deal with something beyond the reach of their most powerful cape, outside of the Endbringers and Scion, obviously. 

So, they were willing to throw a local PRT branch under the bus to avoid any issues with him. There were calls for Piggot’s head on a pike, as well as Armsmaster’s, even though the specifics of Sophia’s crimes were not revealed. After all, she was, in the eyes of the law, still a minor and, as such, only a judge could unseal those records.

This whole thing had obviously lit a fire under PHO, as most of the country had zeroed in on Brockton Bay when it was revealed that one of his suits had handed something to Militia, and a day later, one of the Wards was being charged with serious charges. There were people rightly guessing that Grand Chariot was the reason behind the charges, and that had the local villain groups somehow mobilising or gaining support on PHO. The E88, in particular, were acting as if this was the only confirmation they needed to show the rest of the world just how corrupt, useless and unneeded the local PRT chapter was.

It was cute, he supposed.

Speaking of the suit he sent into the deep sea, to see just what Leviathan would do. The results were quite normal for the first day or so, as the suit began travelling along the sea floor, making maximum disturbances in the water, using a plethora of sensors on its body to record and transmit everything, which wasn’t much in terms of visual data, as it was so deep; nothing could be seen. Light simply did not travel that deep into the water.

As per some reports on PHO, Leviathan did not actively travel the world underwater. No, it followed the quarterly Endbringer attack cycle, and once it retreated after an attack, it would settle down in a single position until it was either disturbed or it had to attack another city once more.

Obviously, that was false because then why would the global shipping industry suffer so much? No, it was obviously a psy op from the government to make sure that the common people did not think that Leviathan was as dangerous as he should be. The shipping industry was still there, of course. The world would not function without it, but the ship sizes had continued to shrink until the current ships were a fraction of the mega carriers that used to carry oil, food, cars, raw materials, and more across the entire world.

Now, the global economy had to account for the fact that at any random point in time, a Kaiju would come out of the water and destroy a ship without any chance of recovery. The only option after that would be to send out another ship with the same stuff. 

Any important items were transported by air, and most of the world had figured out how to become as self sufficient as possible. The Americas were luckier than most when it came to that, as there was no dearth of natural resources here, and they could mostly build everything on their own. In this world, the whole China is the world’s factory did not take off, simply because of Leviathan’s existence.

China could build everything and anything, but what use would it be if the end product simply could not be taken to their customers? So, domestic manufacturing was still a thing in America, which was probably why the country hadn’t fractured into multiple smaller unions of States, competing based on resources, population, and hero presence.

He could definitely see someone on the level of Alexandria becoming the de facto King of a small coalition of states. It was probably only due to the interference of Cauldron that the entire country remained together.

Which was probably why they had the whole Parahuman feudalism experiment happening in Brockton Bay. What an idiotic thing to do, especially since similar things were happening in Africa. That place had warlords before, and it does now as well. Only now, the warlords themselves were capes and had cape underlings to enforce their will, which made that region all the more dangerous.

Dismissing those thoughts, as pondering about all the problems that plagued this world and how he could do something about them would only lead to him taking some kind of hasty action, and that would only lead to him being discovered by Cauldron, and he shuddered to think what might happen after that. After all, the existence of the Slug was worrying on its own.

Plus, with the kind of ideas that Cauldron had, including the Nemesis program, he could definitely see them putting on some kind of show that showed off the Grand Chariot group as some kind of evil group, and then moving in to take all of them into custody. They would then erode all the publicity using all the resources they had at their disposal, and voila! Now, they had a Tinker that could potentially give them the silver Bullet they so desperately wanted. 

Maybe not the silver bullet directly, but he could certainly point them in the direction, and then make a vehicle that had a self destruction so powerful that it would help kill off Zion. Even then, Scion would need to be docile and suicidal, which happened only because of the knowledge of Eden. He wondered at what stage he should reveal that information to Cauldron?

Sighing, he flopped his head back, staring into the ceiling, as he felt so mentally drained that his mind continued to focus only on the negatives and cons of every single thing that plagued the world, and then that would just bum him out. Shaking his head, he got out of the office, splashed some cold water on his face, before going back to the office, ready to look at the gathered data with a somewhat fresh perspective.

Dismissing PHO, as he could spend days on that website without getting bored, he focused on the data the suit sent before it stopped transmitting any data. There was no visual cue, not even a disturbance in the water. What the suit did record before it was probably crunched in half was the existence of a solid wall of some sort approaching the suit at very high speeds.

It was obvious that the suit’s sensors could not accurately gauge and scan the material that the Endbringers seemed to be made out of. He knew it was some kind of hyper dense crystalline substance that only seemed to get denser the closer someone went to the core of all Endbringers. It would be very impressive if a mere Iron Man suit, and not even the higher tier one, could scan the makeup of an Endbringer. 

That was not the objective of the suit. He had sent the suit to gauge the rough location of the Endbringer, and while he could send in a volley of missiles and more, he knew it would just be useless, and he was not going to be the one to whip up an Endbringer into a frenzy, especially since the world was barely hanging on as is, even with the Monsters sandbagging.

The world’s morale would probably break the moment they realised that the Monsters the world could barely push back after thousands of casualties at a minimum were sandbagging and could be dozens of times more destructive if they used all their power.

Man, fuck Eidolon.

…..he noted the last known location before moving on to the task at hand. He had another S-class threat to take care of. 

For now, he was just going through all the data that the government had on all S-class quarantine locations, so he could decide which one he could hit first.

Heartbreaker, while not explicitly an S-class threat, could be the easiest one on the list to finish in one go. It wouldn’t even take an afternoon to take care of Heartbreaker and his harem, and his group of psychopathic children.

Nilbog’s quarantine site could be turned to glass with ease, but then he would have to make sure that the PRT branch built to maintain the quarantine would be evacuated ahead of time. The element of surprise was necessary to make sure that, just like Bonesaw, nothing of Nilbog remained on the planet. If the information about his impending attack somehow reached Nilbog’s ears, he might just unleash a biokinetic on the rest of the country, something that was sure to result in tens of thousands or maybe even more casualties.

The Machine Army was another thing that he was hesitant to touch with a ten foot pole, or even a hundred foot one. His power was simply a very bad match for that kind of threat. As far as he could recall, that threat was not dealt with even post Golden Morning, so he was unsure how they could realistically handle that threat.

Out of the three threats that he had the most data on, Heartbreaker seemed like the easiest option to locate, finish, and hand over to the relevant authorities without much fuss. 

Nuking an entire city to make sure nothing but glass remained would surely draw more flak than simply breaking into some mansion, and subduing some people and killing one to make sure that the Human Master could not torment people around him any longer. All he would need after that would be first responders and mental health professionals, as he could definitely see many of his thralls resorting to suicide the moment clarity returned to their thoughts.

If he was not wrong, the death of Heartbreaker should break all active applications of his power, but the human mind was not really built like that. There was no real off switch for human emotions, especially if they had been under Heartbreaker’s control for a long period of time. The brain would simply get used to that level of emotion, and even if they were intellectually aware that they were being mind controlled to feel that, the emotion does not simply go away.

Standing up, he looked at the options once more before pressing a button, and just like that, Heartbreaker’s death warrant was signed.

His assets began moving to Quebec, Canada. The governments were aware of his general location, but deliberately kept his exact location out of any database, probably to make sure no idiotic righteous cape tried to kill Heartbreaker and gift the Human Master a cape shield. No one wanted that.

The general position of the government was that defeating Heartbreaker would turn into a messy affair right now, and he was just not worth the cost of doing so right now, with all the other world ending threats on the horizon. Basically, as long as Heartbreaker did not rock the boat too much and did not target anyone important, the government had given him an indirect go ahead with his activities. 

Understandable yet Disgusting.

As he saw the ETA of his assets reaching Quebec, he began typing the message he would post on PHO. 

….Huh. I suppose, in a fucked up way, I too am an Influencer. Lol.