VT - Chapter 20 : Case 53s...... (Patreon)

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Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

As he watched the authorities round up the Heartbroken, taking special care to make sure that the capes, conveniently knocked out with a full body mask that appeared on their faces, were handled carefully by the cops before the PRT vans reached the place. Identifying a cape was hilariously easy when you had a bunch of suits flying around that could do deep tissue scans from the air.

Sure, the risk of some exceptionally sensitive energy cape detecting the scans was there, but as far as he knew, all the capes here were his kids, so it stood to reason that most of them would have similar powers. He wondered what the government would do with the kids who had actual Human Master powers. 

With that in mind, he spoke through the sole Iron Man suit he’d kept on site, with all the others leaving immediately after every one of the Heartbroken were properly restrained and the entire body was scanned thoroughly to make sure that he did not miss anything, like a dungeon or something. That would be really bad.

Thankfully, no such thing existed. So, he’d kept the single suit here just to act as his spokesperson. Once more, this suit was scheduled to just dive deep into the ocean, only this time, the Arc Reactor was prepped to explode the moment something crunched around it. It might be an unfortunate marine animal looking for a quick snack, or it might just be Leviathan.

Either way, he was not going to let this suit be tracked by any government. The others were also similarly underwater, but in far shallower areas, with protocols to self-destruct in case anyone came close to them when they were in hibernation mode.

Dragon had arrived minutes after the local law enforcement had reached the area, armed to the teeth, some even with Tinkertech weaponry, confirming that the government had created that entire town and force for the express purpose of dealing with Nikos, should the Human Master ever step out of line.

Dragon’s suit was armed to the teeth as well, measuring a humongous 15 feet tall, with an amorphous shape that told him that she had everything and the kitchen sink in that single suit. The Dragon suit landing right in front of his Iron Man suit, which looked positively puny in front of that suit, was likely done on purpose.

He was unfazed because he had suits that could turn that entire expensive weapons platform to slag. Even the smaller recon suit in front of Dragon’s platform was more than capable of wrecking that platform as well, owing mainly to the much higher mobility and the much denser power source.

The power source was one of the things that he planned to distribute to the rest of the world soon enough, especially since he was the only one who could make the Palladium alternative that was necessary for the really higher output Arc Reactors. Even without that, though, the ability to just create a bunch of car sized Arc Reactors and manage the power output for the post disaster operations of a medium sized city should be a game changer in and of itself.

He was wary of that action drawing the attention of the Power Plant destroyer, but it was not like he was not planning right now to deal with the Endbringers next when they show their ugly mugs. Right now, his focus was mainly on the scaly fucker living under the oceans, because, if he was recalling correctly, the next in line for an endbinger attack was Leviathan, and the target this time was Brockton Bay.

An already shitty city that would turn into an outright war zone if Leviathan ever made landfall in that city. If and when that attack happened, he was going to have to make sure that Leviathan did not reach the city itself, and in the likely scenario that it did, he would have enough assets in place to make sure that most of the citizens were safely evacuated, or atleast that was the hope.

Shaking his head, he concluded that more than enough time had been given for them to prepare before sending in the PHO post, no video this time. The first time he’d done that, it was to make sure he had credibility. Right now, the news itself would give him credibility.

With that done, he just added a message at the bottom of the PHO post, warning PRT and the Canadian government against discriminating against the survivors, simply because of their blood relation. Then, a private message was sent to Dragon, as well as the Guild Leader, Narwhal, about what he considered acceptable treatment for Human Masters and teenagers who had their worldviews warped by one of the most vile human beings to exist over their entire lives.

After that, within minutes of his PHO post, as well as the general location of the raid being in Quebec, Canada, media was already clamoring for more information, waiting at the barricaded line. This way, they would not be able to hide it even if they wanted to.

He then moved on from there, in search of his next S-class or equivalent threat to care of, aside from the Endbringers ofcourse. 

He was still working on replicating the spatial collapse bomb that he had used for Crawler, for much bigger targets. The issue was the container to make sure that the energy bomb did not level the city.

___xx__

There was a lot of hubbub on the internet about the death of Nikos, or rather, the assassination of Heartbreaker. He had never thought it was possible that someone, much less women, would defend the killing of Nikos, all because there was no official bounty on Heartbreaker’s head. Some even complained about the manner in which he went about doing the job, trying to advocate for detention rather than extrajudicial killing.

Well, he considered that just hot air blowing out of people’s mouths who just wanted their two minutes of fame. The government’s stance was made plenty clear when the Premier of Quebec herself announced a big, fat check in his name, thanking him for clearing their province of a monster. The federal government also had some monetary reward, but both of them combined paled in the face of the monster reward that was announced by the US government for taking care of the S9.

Apparently, the US government as well as PRT were being unusually proactive by detailing the spending of every single dollar donated to the charities, and then the charities themselves had begun updating their websites far faster than before. It was clearly out of fear of retaliation on his part, and that worked out just fine for him.

Billions of Dollars was a very big amount, and if used correctly, could change the lives of many humans.

PHO had, predictably, heated up with discussions about his powers, his creations, and the manner with which the entire group was dismantled. Some of them clearly guessed that with his current power levels, he should be able to quietly and easily dismantle many PRT chapters all around the North American continent.

Save for the areas where the Triumvirate lived, he should be able to just use the same kidnapping and knocking out tactic for the majority of the capes continent wide, and take over multiple towns, with startling ease. Something that must be known to the governments worldwide, hence the bending over for Grand Chariot.

Speaking of worldwide organisations, Cauldron had been really quiet lately, with no new appearances of Case 53s worldwide. Sure, the reporting mechanisms were really borked in Asia, and some parts of Europe, not to mention the sheer size of Russia meant it was practically impossible to keep track of anything down there, even if all parties were of the cooperative sort, but even so, there should have been some news of Case 53s, considering the frequency with which they were released before.

Now, he knew that Cauldron could not just stop releasing Case 53s out in the wild, just like they couldn't stop experimenting with the vial capes, both to further their understanding of vial powers, and also to fuel the programs they had created based on the existence of the Case 53s.

Aside from the Nemesis program, which was just a really shady and disgusting thing to do, the reason for the somewhat equitable distribution of Case 53s across the world was because of Scion, or rather, Scion’s gaze.  

See, from what he could recall, Scion had multiple long distance observation powers, to the point that he could probably look through multiple Earths at the same time, if he wished to do so. But Scion was also a depressed Entity, currently mourning the absence of his mate, Eden.

Eden’s powers were bottled into a vial and then given to people. Failed applications led to the creation of Case 53s, and as they were a twisted version of shard based powers that Eden would have handed out had she not been killed upon their arrival, Scion did not like to look at them at all. 

This allowed Cauldron to spread them all around multiple Earths, for two purposes. 

One was to keep their original activities hidden from the Entity, which all but confirmed that the Cauldron Compound likely had dozens, if not hundreds, of Case 53s, all there to keep Scion’s gaze from locking down the compound, which housed the capes that were all currently defiling the corpse of his mate, as well as planning to bring about his demise.

The second was more of an attempt to make sure some hidden, remote areas were hidden from Scion’s gaze, if he went on a rampage. With that, Cauldron probably sought to make sure that some pockets of humanity were spared Scion’s inevitable rampage.

The second one was obviously doomed to fail, but the first goal was successfully met, considering that Scion hadn’t destroyed Cauldron in its entirety.

Sighing, he got up from his desk, and after taking one look at the deluge of pages that had accumulated on his second post on PHO, he decided to just take a nap instead of dealing with that.