VT - Chapter 26 : Buridan's ass.... (Patreon)

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Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

He was practising with the least used power he had. The ability to teleport stuff to his hands as long as it was within his line of sight was not attached to something that could not be easily disconnected from, and had a weight limit of 5.89 kg, or about 13 pounds, so all in all, more than enough to just move an automatic rifle from storage directly into the palm of his hand. Plus, while it worked on grass, plants, and even smaller trees, it did not work on animals or humans. He hadn’t actually checked on humans so far, never had the chance to do so, but animal testing he’d done plenty.

It was always funny to watch a medium sized dog be startled and then do the adorable 45 degree head tilt to better understand what had happened around it. He’d released all the animals later on after he was done with his testing, right next to food preferably, so he knew that his power only worked on inanimate objects and flora.

He did not foresee an event where he would be forced to use this power, but it was always better to be prepared for any eventuality. One could never know just what slight advantage could turn the whole game. Now, he did not expect his measly power to work to defeat Scion or Zion, but it should be just enough to help him tip the scales on his side if he encountered all the other boogeymen on the Planet, even though the chances of that actually happening were very small.

The chances of him being discovered were still uncomfortably high, especially since he continued to expand his operations instead of just hunkering down and waiting for the final battle, which would have been downright logical. If he had limited the scope of his engagement, then the chances of someone discovering him were pretty low.

Alas, while he was cowardly enough to just surround himself in armour all the time, he was not cowardly enough to just ignore the outside world, especially since it was within his power to do something without immediately endangering himself.

Ofcourse, even with that, practice was important. Hence, all the practice he did with weaponry he could build right now. Guns, knives, bombs, and more were all sacrificed to gain practice with them. He did want to try flying the Iron Man suit and fly above cities and watch people move about their lives. It would be such an awesome experience.

Alas, if only he wasn’t such a big coward to do so. He did not have enough space inside the quinjet, where he had installed the Quantum Tunneling jamming to block or atleast restrict teleportations, where he had installed the psionic scramblers, and the ability to constantly keep watch over his brain activity to make sure he was not being mind controlled.

If the systems did detect that he was being mind controlled despite all the precautions in place, then it was programmed to knock him out and start the protocols to keep him as well as the ship safe.

If he wanted enough space to fly an Iron Man suit inside the ship, then he might just have to actually build a Helicarrier and then use its interior space to practice stuff that required more space than his current ship could provide.

It would be such a headache to build that, though. The only reason he hadn’t built bigger and bigger ships for his use was that he simply did not need them. It would be useless to have more space for him. It would be far more beneficial if he could just build more gear that could then be given to other capes or people he was going to hire as part of his Suit distribution program.

Plus, he might have built all of this without raising attention from the likes of Cauldron, but he was pretty sure that they were keeping a hawkish gaze on most of the Earths they had access to, to make sure they could find some trace of all the materials required to build all this. 

Still, he knew that an upgrade cycle was overdue, especially since he wanted to create something that could help with the Endbringer battles. 

There was also an ethical dilemma there, just waiting for him when he began the project. 

See, it was well known that Endbringers, atleast the currently active ones, were sandbagging hard during all the fights. Even with that nerf, they were absolutely crushing humanity and its capes, almost always doing devastating damage and most times, destroying the city and finishing their objectives before finally leaving. Yes, they left. They were not driven away by any stretch of anyone’s imagination, no matter what the governments tried to tell people or the people tried to tell themselves.

So, the problem arose when he thought of building something to either attack the Endbringer, so he could destroy the problem at the root itself, or to defend against its attacks. See, the first one seemed the obvious option, but only until he remembered that there were more where those Endbringers came from. As far as he could recall, there were more than twenty such conflict engines.

So, if he destroyed one, and that spurred maybe 2 or three more into action, then wouldn't that be a net negative in the end? Also, what if doing so alerts Zion about his methods, rendering anything he might do in the future to attack him useless?

If his out of context powers alerted Scion about something and he did something catastrophic like trying to end all Earths instantly, then all his efforts would be for naught. He might have saved a hundred thousand people by killing one Endbringer prematurely, but in doing so, might just have doomed trillions more to an early death, as everyone was caught unprepared by Scion’s early actions.

This was the high risk, and immediate reward option.

Then the other was to go on the Defense. To build more and more forcefield generators, like the Nova Corps ships that could double up to become shield generators, and use them to defend the city and its evacuation efforts. This way, the casualties will be there, and the city might still be lost, but atleast the people’s lives will be saved.

This way, he would be able to reduce the casualty count in the interim, while making sure that the shard network was not alarmed by this new development, and all the juicy DATA in front of them. This way, they would be able to see that DATA is being generated, but with fewer casualties, as they would be more focused on the new thing in front of them, instead of just the usual cape attack cape and Endbringer combo, or so he hoped. It might just be that they see the defensive measures as a threat and begin using more and more of their abilities to the point that even whatever defensive structures he’d managed to erect were no more.

It was just such a big gamble that he had no idea what he should do. He just simply did not have enough DATA to make such an important decision. There were plenty of ways it could go wrong even if he chose either one of those options.

The Endbringers might take his defense as a sign of offence and stop sandbagging. The Endbringers might get interested in the new thing on the block, and then poke it with more and more power behind the pokes, ultimately resulting in the same thing.

After all, there was no way in hell he was going to be able to convince a bunch of capes from around the world, and especially the domestic ones, to just sit back and watch as the Endbringer destroyed more and more of their home, all because this was the best strategy to minimize any casualties. He would sound mad to them, and they would jump in the fray anyway.

He needed a way to reduce casualties, but in a way that did not alert the Shard network about the new data on the block, which would force the shards to pay more attention to his creations, which might then lead them to him, which would be the worst thing in the world for him, as it would likely lead to his demise.

He also could not stay at home and then just watch the destruction playing out from afar. He needed to do something, but doing too much risked the Endbringers turning up the Hard Mode and just killing capes en masse, and he knew that some of the capes that frequented the Endbringer battles might just turn out to be really important for the final battle.

It was just so….paralysing, to have all this information, and yet not enough. To have all these means of defense and offense, and transport, and yet, not be enough.

It was partly why he had even bothered with creating the new cape program. It allowed him to gather more data on real world conditions, do his good deed in the form of empowering good people to do some more good in this world, and do so in a manner that did not result in the world’s Thinkers tracking him down, and then forcing him to churn out weapons en masse.

He valued his freedom too much to do that, not that his freedom would matter once he was caught. He knew about the existence of the Slug, and what that particular cape did. The thought of losing his mind, his personality, or having his personality edited out to turn him into a mindless drone to do Cauldron’s bidding made him shudder endlessly and had more than once woken him up in a sweat.

Shaking his head, he looked at the small gun in his hand before setting it down and looking at the terminals in front of him, showing high definition recordings of Ashley’s escapades through Brockton Bay. In just two weeks of activity, she had racked up quite the count of criminals being arrested and crimes being stopped.

He patted himself on the back for having the foresight of having multiple cameras constantly tailing Ashley as she went about Brockton Bay, stopping crimes, helping people who were clearly on drugs, and more.

His smile softened as he watched a video recording of Ashley taking out stuff from one of the floating platforms that was usually meant for the Hulkbuster armour, and handing out medicines and performing first aid, CPR, and more for people until the first responders arrived. It helped that she had access to police records that allowed her to check if the person in question had any prior crime history or not. Based on that, she decided whether they needed to be treated and restrained, or treated and let go.

Her arrival had clearly taken the entire city by storm, as she worked on helping people more and attacking criminals less. It was a clear pattern that was established and analysed on PHO to death, as villain activity continued to rise steadily after it had dipped to an all time low. 

Sure, there were no longer any large scale attacks from any cape gang on another cape gang, but he was of the opinion that it was only a matter of time, and while Ashley projected confidence in dealing with that eventuality, she was plain not ready to do so. Well, he had other assets in the area ready in case that happened, but based on the communications he had intercepted between other gangs, the chances of that happening in the near future were low.

Even Gesellschaft, the German Nazi organisation that reinforced the E88 whenever a crisis too big for their local members appeared in the Bay, had quietly told Max Anders that it would be better for everyone involved to lay low until the situation stabilised.

ABB had ratcheted down their trafficking operations and were no longer just snatching people off the streets. 

Ashley was, obviously, over the moon when he told her of all the side effects of her presence, but he didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was only going to be temporary. Sooner or later, something was going to give, and he was actually rather surprised that capes with an eldritch entity enforced conflict drive had managed to keep themselves quiet for so long.

Maybe it had something to do with the PHO discussions about Ashley and how he’d confirmed in one word that yes, she was linked to Grand Chariot in some way. He hadn’t explained the specifics, but Cauldron must have known by now that she was not a cape and was just someone who was gifted the suit and told to go ham on the local criminals.

Brockton Bay was also an excellent place to conduct said experiment, as Cauldron had already written off the entire city in the name of an experiment on Parahuman Feudalism, also known as the Terminus Project.

He scoffed at that. As if there weren’t dozens of cape ruled outfits in Africa they could study, instead of letting a perfectly good mid sized city rot to its slow death.