VT - Chapter 32 : Escalation King..... (Patreon)

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

Undersiders’ Lair, Brockton Bay

–Lisa “Tattle” Wilbourn–

“What the fuck, Lisa?!” She sighed as Brian practically hissed those words out as soon as they had entered their lair. It was just the two of them even now, so he just did not have to be so loud right now, not with what had just happened, and what she had witnessed.

Her power had been blaring incessantly when it came to those capes, and those suits in particular. It was very interested in the power source of both the suits, even if it was mostly hidden away by plating. She could tell that some effort had been made to hide the design flaw.

It was as if the original design had an exposed power core, and it was a power core. Some sort of cold fusion tech that had a ridiculous energy density, and could probably power entire homes for years, at full tilt. Plus, it did not seem tinkertech in any way.

Her power had not deduced that when she first saw Blue Shield, but after seeing the second suit, she could tell that the power core was somehow not tinker tech and yet, if scaled properly, capable of being Behemoth’s wet dream.

The original design had an exposed power core in an armour that was designed for more active war zones rather than urban fights, which just seemed too dumb for Grand Chariot. That design, as well as that power core alone, raised so many questions within her and her power, it wasn’t even funny.

Still, as much as she would love to just pass the fuck out and then wake up tomorrow morning to use her power to learn more about Grand Chariot, she could not just disregard Brian’s concerns. They were valid as well.

Turning around, she plopped her ass on the couch, wiggling her butt on the spot that Alec viciously defended against everyone, and turned to Brian, “Sit. Then ask all the questions you have.”

After all, Brian was the de facto muscle of the group, well, atleast in human form anyway. Bitch’s dogs were any day stronger than any of them, but they were not inconspicuous and could not be taken anywhere without being outed or at least suspected of being a cape. Brian, on the other hand, would be immensely helpful if she did decide to make a run for it.

“What was that? What did your power tell you? Why does the Boss want to take them on anyway? You saw how big that freaking thing was. I don’t think all of us combined could take it on, even as a distraction.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, don’t flatter yourself, Brian. No one can take that suit on in a one to tone fight. You would have to be a really strong A-tier cape with the right power to take on that suit. You’d basically have to be Lung to have a shot at soundly defeating that suit. And even then, how does anyone plan on dealing with the fallout?”

She waved her hands at Briani, “But that is neither here nor there. The point is that no one will be foolish enough to provoke those suits, to the point that they phone the Mother ship and then we find ourselves under a floating aircraft carrier capable of tanking blows from Lugn, and creating nuclear bomb level energy blasts.”

Brian’s face went progressively pale as he realised just how close they had come to people who were apparently part of the same group with such capabilities.

Ugh. Now she had to deal with Brian’s delicate feelings without setting him off. 

She paused as she heard an alert on her phone, one that was specifically designed to ring only when a certain account posted on PHO. Scrambling off the couch, she ran towards the computer, prompting a confused noise from Brian, but she was far too gone to care about that.

This was the Grand Chariot she was talking about, and this was going to be their second ever original post. She had to know what it was about.

___xx__

–Michael Harrison–

Flying off into the night, he wondered if he had done the right thing. The kids were villains. Small time, sure, but still villains. Kids with powers meant that they had undergone those horrible trigger events, and he wouldn’t really blame a minor for choosing the easy way out, especially after having to suffer through a trigger event, but it just made his mind go to the worst of the worst when he saw who they were.

Sighing, he floated high up in the air, looking at the beautiful view in front of him, appreciating just how quickly a life could change. Just a short while ago, he was a cripple, barely waiting for death to come, only for a single conversation to turn his life around, and how he somehow had, within his hands, enough firepower to turn this entire city upside down.

That was without saying the extremely powerful backing and resources he had at his disposal, if he so wished. Just the amount of options he had as part of the Grand Chariot resource sharing program would have taken him days to go through. He was always the action type anyway, hence the loss of his leg, but he was just raring to go, after years of being powerless to do anything but watch, jump back into the fray and defend innocent people from evil.

It was extremely fulfilling to know that he could once more help people now. 

Moving on from these thoughts, though he made sure to remind himself daily just how lucky he was, he looked towards the deeper information scan he had ordered for the Undersiders, and soon enough, the report was compiled, and he got to reading.

His eyesight was good, one of the few things right about his body, but he was not used to reading stuff on bright screens at very high speed, so it took him a while to go through everything, and at the end of it, he was extremely angry, both at Coil and at himself. Then, he noticed a small tab as well as a warning at the end of the report.

About Coil.

Opening it, he read the summary, and it basically said that Coil was an extremely paranoid and well prepared Thinker, and it was inadvisable to confront him inside his own base, not without many preparations. At the end of that summary was an option that could be used to contact Grand Chariot directly and have them deal with the problem at hand.

He debated doing just that. From the looks of it, this cape was somehow a well regarded member of the PRT as well, and must have ingrained himself in the ruling structure. He could risk turning the PRT, the government, as well as the common public against himself if he tried to rush things haphazardly.

Plus, even if he could just accept leaving Brockton and moving somewhere else, he knew Blue Shield would not agree to that. She was a truly good soul, and she did not deserve any harm coming her way.

The way things were headed, most villains, the sane ones anyway, would know not to target her. In the event someone did do that, though, her suit was more than capable of defending against most capes out there. Even Lung, she could likely escape with ease, as long as she did not wait for Lung to ramp up fully.

Sighing, he restrained himself and ordered a full comms hack into Coil and his servers. The screen flashed with many complicated numbers, most of which he could not make heads or tails of, but from what he could tell, most of Coil’s data was on air-gapped servers with encryption designed to break at the first sign of intrusion.

The data that was available, however, was more than enough to make his blood boil.

There was someone locked in that bunker of his. They referred to them as an animal and gave them meat, as if they were some kind of animal. Then, there was the fact that Coil had blackmailed Lisa into service and was currently planning a way to make sure that Brian could never get custody of his sister.

It was all kinds of fucked up, and the cherry on top of that cake was his plans, distributed to the mercenaries who worked for him.

They were going to kidnap a young cape. Another Thinker. The Mayor’s niece, no less.

Then, he dug more into those files and saw what Coil had planned for that little girl.

Tinkertech drugs, brainwashing, mental and physical harm, and more. 

It was…..disgusting.

He had no idea exactly when he’d turned course, and decided what he was going to do. He had no idea when the bunker came into his sight, and he scanned the building above the bunker, and when the suit confirmed that there was no one in the building, and even in the surrounding ones, he gave the go ahead for all the weapons that had been primed in advance.

His thrusters compensated for the backlash of sending forth all the missiles and an actual bunker buster he had in the suit, as he then dove into the massive explosion that destroyed the office building, and blew a hole straight into the Endbringer bunker. He made sure that the weapons would not reach the lower levels, where another person was kept imprisoned.

Diving into the hole in the Endbringer bunker, he shot at all the mercenaries he could identify as being serial killers and rapists, before abruptly halting and shooting out into the sky.

Coil’s power had worked as the bastard was currently in a pipe headed out of the city, with the bunker itself set on self destruct.

Atleast, he had the good sense to make sure that Blue Shield was informed, who was on her way, and knew what to do to make sure that the bunker did not self-destruct.

There were no people around, but he would not take Coil’s threats lightly. He might just have enough firepower behind that self-destruct button to collapse the whole block or do something even more heinous, like poisoning the water supply of the city, or collapsing the grid of the city.

The man certainly had a cruel streak a mile long.

___xx___

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

His eyes groggily opened, as he tried to rub the sleep out of them, the extremely shrill alarm waking him up from his sleep. It was a great sleep too! The temperature was just right, and the mattress was nice as well. He had just eaten a great meal, a rare event since he had to risk his security whenever he had to procure some ingredients to cook for himself.

“Whyyy,” He whined to himself before getting out of the bedroom, and stepped into his office, only to be blinded with the sheer amount of red warning signs he could see. His eyes grew wide as he instantly became aware and rushed to the terminal to see what in the Nine Hells had prompted so many alarms to ring at once.

It was just his luck to have such a massive crisis during the one night he decided to have a deep sleep and turn off the smaller, preventive alarms. He figured that keeping the bigger, overarching important alarms would be enough for just one night. But NOPE!

His eyes widened as he saw hundreds of web pages flash by, and he saw War Machine crash into the Endbringer bunker that Coil had commissioned.

The area was destroyed, and War Machine had then tracked down the bastard and killed him off before Coil could even get a word in or get to his getaway vehicle. Not even Contessa had come when Coil had called for them.

Coil’s death alone would not have been such a cause for concern, if only the proper preparations had been done.

Well, atleast Blue Shield had stopped the self-destruct, as well as the dissemination of information from the base, but that was not the case of concern here. Coil was not one to rely on a single thing.

Turning the voice modulator on, he opened a line of communication with both the members of the yet to be named group.

“You all are not yet out of trouble. War Machine, we will be having a talk about following obvious warnings. Right now, make sure you are staying above the bunker, and calm any of the first responders headed your way. Wait for further instructions. DO NOT ENGAGE with anyone.”

After that, he activated multiple Iron Man suits he had buried around the city, flying towards the people he knew Coil had planted in the city as well as the nearby towns, with explicit orders to be executed in case of Coil’s death.

Already, the automated security programs had stopped multiple cape identities from being exposed.

Even so, he knew that Coil was not a simple beast, and he had simply not devoted enough time to Coil’s many contingencies. He had figured that Coil was simply too close and important an asset to Cauldron to risk too close a surveillance. Clearly, he was wrong.

Coil died like a dog, and no one in a Fedora appeared to save his ass.

The suits were to target over a dozen people, all of whom had begun moving the moment Coil had died, despite Michael using the large scale jamming tech implanted into the suit. It meant that either tinkertech was involved, or a cape was involved.

Either way, he had to be quick; otherwise—

Another red alert had him looking up as he slumped in his suit, even as his fingers flew across the terminal, trying everything he could do to stop the leak.

Alas, in his opinion, once that kind of information was out there, it was extremely hard to get rid of it, especially since an actual Thinker had designed all of those protocols keeping in mind that he could be stopped by people who would have actual capes and Thinker backup capable of stopping his protocols.

Speed was clearly prioritised here, and it had worked.

Slumping in his seat, he looked at the damage being done in real time, and realised with grim certainty that he was going to have to step in now, bringing him just that one step closer to being discovered by the biggest villains of this world, and likely, to his death as well.

Mental or Physical, it mattered not. Death was death.

He sighed and pressed a few buttons, activating all the assets he had in Brockton Bay, with more on the way.

His words of taking over an entire city to dissuade and stop all violence had come true. He just had never expected it to come so soon, and in such a manner.

Done so by the people he had choosen of his own free will!

Grimdark World, indeed.