VT - Chapter 21 : What would Peter do? (Patreon)

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

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

The first roadblock he ran into when he wanted to make more capes, as was his intention, was finding worthy people who could use the suits. The How and the Where were particularly frustrating questions to answer. He could freely admit that he was not the best judge of character. He was no Peter Parker, the shining bastion of morality despite possessing more than enough power.

Plus, he had more power than Peter. Peter would not have hesitated to take care of the many threats that plagued this world, without thinking much about his own well being in return. He would have ignored, or maybe atleast tried to circumvent, the threat that Cauldron posed to his well being. Alas, he was not Peter Parker. Nor would he ever become one. And that was fine by him, but not for this world.

This world desperately needed a god like Peter Parker, with all the morality and tenacity that would come with that. Unfortunately, this world got Cauldron and him. An utterly ruthless group with a one tone determination to see their goal completed, by hook or crook. Their goal too was something that Peter would loathe. Cauldron’s goal was the continued survival of humanity after Scion.

Peter would try and save everyone, and maybe, or most likely, fail along the way, but he would have no regrets. 

Shaking his head, he slapped himself before looking up at the terminal floating in front of him, showing a rotating carousel of eligible candidates that the VI responsible for the Quinjet had scrounged up from the web. He had input a few parameters and let the VI run wild on the world’s internet, all so he could have a pool of candidates to choose from.

The good thing about the VI used for this version of the Quinjet was that it had zero chance of ever becoming sentient. It was built that way. Sure, that also severely removed some of the best advantages that came with having a digital buddy, but it also removed all the risks and disadvantages that came with having a digital enemy, especially one who was aware of everything about him.

It would be a disaster all around, hence his preference for dumb VIs. Unfortunately, due to the same dumb nature, he couldn't just utter a sentence and expect the VI to come up with good results, especially with something as complex and human as morality and eligibility to become a hero.

So, he had to task the VI to scour the world’s social media websites for heroic acts, including even environmental conservation for some reason. He supposed that if animals could just love a human so much, then maybe that person was a good human being.

….Not the greatest filtering parameter, but it was hard enough to come up with stuff on his own when it was anything but tinkering things that were less vehicles and more weapons. Weapons capable of taking out entire PRT branches on his own, no less. So, he offloaded part of the filtering process on animals.

Of course, he also had to account for the fact that during the course of their fight against crime and evil, these capes might just trigger on their own, and he did not want someone with the power to track him down to trigger with one of his suits. It would be like hitting himself on the head. An extremely clear indication of a moron.

Then, he had to restrict himself to a single country or continent for now. The North American one. Once he was successful here, he could see about expanding the whole program. Plus, anyone who got his suits and had to work as capes would not face that much resistance here in America, compared to some place like Africa with all the warlords there, or China, with the Yangban ruling there with an iron fist. 

He also had to account for the fact that he would have minimal control over the cape’s actions, save for something extreme that would just have him evict the person and initiate a self-destruct for the suit. So, he would be relying on the person piloting the whole thing for judgement. 

He would have to make sure that no one got too overzealous and began taking down entire organisations, entirely disregarding collateral damage in the process. After all, most of these candidates were just regular people, with families, educations and in some cases, jobs as well, so he couldn't expect them to act as if they were special forces trained in urban warfare.

And they were going to focus on urban warfare. Anything that required glassing an entire city or area to clear out, he was going to take care of that. He had the big guns required to do that. Obviously, he was going to have to keep an open line to these people, but it was going to be text only, no video or audio calls, with two-way voice modulation to make sure that the Fallen did not get hold of him.

There were also going to be a ton of guidelines about straightaway attacking the biggest threat, or requesting backup from him or from other heroes from the same group, and more. It was all such a huge thing that took entire nights away from him just to make sure the guidelines were properly written, and even then, he knew that most of them were going to end up with changes anyway.

The whole problem with this program was that he was entirely untrusting of anyone. He was not going to go out and just ask for help from anyone, not now, and maybe not for a long time from now as well. The fear of Human Masters was always going to haunt his shadow. The best he could do was either talk to them using tech, or bring them here, in his home, where they could be monitored and killed if they tried to even touch him. Even then, the Human Master element came into play, as he could not tell, even now, if someone was being actively mastered or not. Even beyond mastering, there was the good old brainwashing and sleeper cells.

His point was that humanity was scary, and the thought of trusting another human, powered or not, with all the power he had at his fingertips as well as the weapons he could and was going to build in the future, was never going to sound appealing to him. It had stressed him so much that he had even thought of somehow building something that would remove his powers and turn him normal, so he could live out the rest of his life without fearing the world ending under his hands.

Of course, he promptly went to his bedroom and slept after that, as the lack of sleep at that point was making him think such negative thoughts. But part of that was true. As long as he had these powers, he was never going to live a normal life, not even the kind of life that most capes with families lived. With this power, he was going to be pretty much lonely and all by himself for a few decades at least.

The prime of his life, spent like this, with the only reward being power, and the continued existence of a world he was most probably never going to be a part of.

…..Huh. Maybe he was a bit like Peter Parker in that regard, then. Just with far better tech, practically unlimited resources, entirely hidden from enemies, and no relatives or weak points for anyone to target.

Sighing, he idly scrolled through the whole list, which was being updated and added to in real time as the VI was still working on the mountain of data it had. He was still filtering some of the search parameters at this point, as the VI had, at one point, begun adding people who could only be described as this world’s bloodthirsty Frank Castles. And while he somewhat agreed with Frank’s whole shtick for the Marvel universe, he was still not comfortable handing over partially unlimited firepower into the hands of someone who had created rivers of blood using plain old guns.

The VI had gotten confused due to many people on the internet thinking of them as their hero for ridding the world of others. It was a complicated issue all around, hence his lamenting at not having a super smart AI like Jarvis. 

He was just so indecisive, and more of a coward than he would have thought of himself, as the thought of making a choice to choose someone and then that someone doing something terrible terrified him. So, what did he do?

Instead of doing something that might mostly turn out to be a positive, he wasted time while focusing on the negatives and simply did not start the program at all. Even now, he was just moments away from focusing back on clearing out entire criminal organisations and pulling them from the roots, instead of starting this program.

It was just so easy to just kill capes, and knock people out, incarcerate the criminals, order the existing law enforcement to take care of everything, and fuck off, instead of actually taking responsibility and doing something he knew was going to be a net positive for the world.

Sighing, he decided to just pick without looking and go ahead with it, with the thought that he would just watch the first candidate’s moves at first, and keep most of the suit’s functions locked so they would not be able to do much damage.

Just like MCU Peter Parker and Tony Stark, his mind supplied him; before he looked down, closed his eyes, and just picked a candidate and pulled the template away from the carousel, before looking up as the file expanded to show him all the details.

Ashley Brent, a 27 year old woman, living by herself. In Brockton Bay itself. 

Working at the Brockton Bay General Hospital, the same place where Amy Dallon worked. That was yet another bomb he had to defuse, as doing that single thing would lead to a wildly different and maybe even better future when it came to the future of the Dallon and the Pelham families.

Moving down, he sighed as he saw her brother being admitted to the same hospital she worked at. Brain Damage, from an encounter with the ABB. This explained why the boy was still in a coma instead of out on the streets after being healed by Amy. The boy was only 10 years old when he was assaulted as well. It had been 3 years since then.

Ashley had been interning at the same hospital at the time. Their mother passed away shortly after, and with that, they lost the pension that ran their household.

Ashley had to sell their paid off house to pay for the medical treatments, and barely had any savings even now. No boyfriend, no extended family. Nothing.

No House. No car. No social life. No parents. No savings. 

It was, by all means, an extremely tragic story, and yet, Brockton Bay, or Earth Bet for that matter, had a ton of these kinds of stories. That alone would not have had the VI pick her profile from the very large pool of candidates. 

Getting to the bottom of the profile, he clicked on the parameters and sighed when he saw why she was picked up. Her profile was picked up from extremely good online chatter. She had an active funding page up, and in there, there were regular testimonies from her coworkers about how she deserved happiness, and how despite her brother being a victim of ABB, she did not show any of that bias when she regularly had to treat members of the same gang.

There was even a comment from Amy Dallon, along with a 200$ dollar donation, depicting how this particular nurse was tolerable.

It would seem that Amy Dallon of this world was quite the repressed individual as well. 

…..He just sat there, looking at the profile for a long time, before he decided to go ahead with some surveillance so he could verify the information and choose her as the first candidate of his program. He had decided that he was going to pick blindly, so he was going to stick to his choice.

Starting the program was the biggest hurdle. Once he was done with her, he could have greater scrutiny for the next candidate of the program, who was currently unnamed.

Let’s hope Ashley here becomes the best hero possible, especially since she would not have the pesky conflict drive thing.