VT - Chapter 40 : Triumvirate POV & Squealer Secured.... (Patreon)

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Brockton Bay

–Legend–

He watched on the screen as Max Anders confessed to basically duping all his followers into a scam, which was being part of a gang. His fears of there being anarchy in the streets were reduced considerably as the ideological part of the E88 was basically destroyed by Max Anders’ own words.

A very good move, he must say, if the goal was to make sure that the more rabid followers of the E88 did not come onto the street and even if they did come, not many would follow them, making it easier for everyone involved to make sure they were behind bars once more. Already, he’d heard reports about the BBPD running out of space to store inmates, having to resort to transporting people out of the city to keep them imprisoned.

The Governor had given the BBPD broad powers to make sure that the city itself did not burn down. The Governor was doing his part in making sure that one of the cities under his command did not go up in flames. Meanwhile, the PRT and the federal government were out there playing games, even at such a sensitive time.

A slight sound made him aware of the presence of the fellow members of the Triumvirate, as he knew they were coming.

“Did you give out the orders?” He asked them, knowing full well that the only one who could issue such an order was Alexandria, using her authority as the Chief Director of the PRT.

Both of them stood by his side as they looked at the massive screen in front of them, showing the various activities inside Brockton Bay. Everything from the PRT capes, the PRT troopers, the BBPD, and even ordinary traffic that was steadily increasing in the city.

Then, it switched to showing the video that was sent to every single news channel, showing Max Anders publicly calling his own supporters stupid and moronic. There was no coming back from that. Now, even if they somehow lost the captured capes, there would be no chance of them coming back to rebuild their gang in any city.

It also meant that should they fumble the ball and lose the captured capes, they would have to deal with a potentially angry Grand Chariot, as well as a bunch of angry capes who had literally nothing but their lives to lose. Which is why it was paramount to make sure that the capes as well as their family members were secured ahead of time.

Fortunately, Grand Chariot had thought ahead of time and moved not just the capes themselves, but also their family members. Wives, husbands, FWBs, sons, and in one case, a young daughter, were all secured long before the city knew what was up.

Now, people were waking up, and while the atmosphere was tense in E88 territory, he could see law and order being maintained, simply because of Grand Chariot’s very public presence.

When Alexandria just stood by his side and did not reply to his question, he turned slightly to her, giving her a pointed look, which finally made her reply, “We needed more information on their operations. At this stage, all we know is what they want us to know.”

“So, we endanger common people for that?”

David replied, “There was no danger to anyone involved here. I mean, look at them,” David pointed at the screen, showing the people around the city actually cheering for the suits, even though there was a massive multi-thousand-ton flying ship above that could crush them and destroy the entire city in one fell swoop.

The suits were doing their jobs, in conjunction with BBPD, allowing the cops to catch criminals in the act itself, as the suits were fast and seemingly omnipresent.

“The coordination necessary to pilot all those suits at once, without ever failing. It is not the work of a human mind, even if they were a cape. There is almost certainly an artificial intelligence involved here.”

“Great,” David exclaimed, “Why don’t we add Artificial Intelligence Tinker to the list of suspected Tinkers in their group? Or do we still want to pretend that a single Super Tinker is doing all of this?”

He shook his head at that. “Yeah, I don't think a single tinker can do this. But even a group of Tinkers, as we have seen earlier, cannot work together to such a degree without some outside interference. According to some of the theories that Watchdog has about them, they must have no less than 40 different Tinker tech specialties to be able to build all of that, and sustain it.”

Alexandria, “Which is why I gave the order for our forces to stand down. We need to know more about them. Like it or not, they could be our silver bullet, but they are outside of our control. Their talk with you confirmed that they know not just us, but about the Entities and Scion as well, so they should be on our side, but we have not come so far by trusting people we know nothing about.”

“Well, your orders meant that the Merchants were able to get quite far before they were picked up by Grand Chariot. Congrats. We now know about their ability to project forcefields from that ship, as well as lift people with it.” He replied, only to pause as he heard an alert ring around them.

He looked to the screen as the aircraft carrier above them shone with that light once more, before it shot out into a corner of the docks. The software calibrated instantly, telling him that it was a known Merchant activity hotspot, full of abandoned warehouses. A moment later, feed stitched together from cameras showed them someone else being pulled in through the beam as well.

They are slowly gaining mass as well.

Intel identified them as Mush, another Merchant cape. 

“So,” he continued once it was confirmed that it was indeed Mush who was captured by Grand Chariot, “Now we have two gangs of the city who have been captured by Grand Chariot. Quite handily, at that. And they haven’t even used anything offensively yet. How is this supposed to give us more intelligence on their organisation?” he asked her but received no answer, likely because she herself did not have any.

Now, hopefully, this public display of power and humiliation would push Merchants out of the city, and also deter Lung from coming out. After all, Lung in his fully escalated form was a fearsome foe, but it took time to reach that level. Time that Grand Chariot was certainly not going to give him. It was much more likely that they would take one look at Lung, see what he could do if given enough time, and just resort to the lethal option.

Past experiences had made it pretty clear what their default response would be to people who were far too gone to be imprisoned. Heartbreaker technically did not have a Bounty on his head, but that was only because it would be counterproductive to send more capes his way, as that would just be adding to his forces instead of killing Nikos. The S9 all had active bounties.

While Lung did not have an official bounty on his head, he was pretty much a standard shoo-in fit for the type of people that Grand Chariot could kill and not get any blame whatsoever.

Shaking his head, he just hoped that Lung had the good sense to keep himself hidden, and if he did, then he hoped that Grand Chariot had the good sense to put down Lung, once and for all.

___xx___

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

With the broadcast done, it was made final that the E88 would no longer have a place in Brockton Bay after this. Even if by some miracle Max Anders escaped custody, he would have his powers, but no secret identity and no cult-like following to fall back on.

This effectively destroyed the E88.

That meant that now there was a power vacuum. With Coil already gone, his territory was up for grabs.

The Merchants were already retrieved. All three of their capes were imprisoned, leaving behind just a single cape gang. The ABB, headed by Lung.

Shaking his head, he moved onto the Merchants, who were currently being scanned top to bottom, after being thoroughly decontaminated, obviously. Who knows what kind of diseases they were carrying, what with their general lack of hygiene. Looking at the Tinkertech monstrosity that Squealer had built up, he found himself being drawn towards the vehicle, but more specifically towards its many flaws that he could identify from just a single glance.

He was interested in Squealer and her particular brand of Tinkertech for obvious reasons. He just never had a reason to abduct her before this, but now he did. The Merchants were gone, obviously. 

He was going to make sure that they were all behind bars, save for Squealer. He was going to see just how far she could push her power, once she did not have the crippling dependency on drugs hampering her powers.

Skidmark’s power had pretty interesting applications, and he would have been able to become quite a force if he wasn’t gone in the head. Mush was someone he picked up only because the simple minded cape was in the process of gathering as many people and as much mass to become stronger. He was going to fail anyway, so he just picked the cape from the staging ground, which conveniently dispersed any follower who had followed Mush.

Looking at the city’s maps, he could see that only a single gang was left, ruling over a third of the city’s population and a quarter of the city’s overall mass, with the other factions gone for good this time.

And it wasn’t even morning.

The sensors on the Helicarrier had picked up a few spatial disturbances around the city, which meant that either Krieg was back with some backup from Germany using the same Mover they used to get Krieg out of the city, or the more likely option, which was that Legend had called in the rest of the Triumvirate.

He wondered what they were going to do now.

Already, they had ordered their capes to stand down and let Grand Chariot handle everything. A transparent way to get more info on him, but that was fine. As long as he himself did not go there, he should be safe.

Even so, he was not going to let the Carrier remain there for long. There was the question of getting away from surveillance now that it was visible and most likely the center of attention of the entire planet, but he was sure he could figure something out.

Then, his attention moved to Michael, and how he was beating himself up over everything. Well, he was right that all of this happened because he ignored warnings and moved in without any backup or communication with others, when the option was right there! Available at all times!

But now that the deed was done, they could get past it and make sure that the maximum amount of advantage was taken from the situation being what it is.

Studying how Squealer’s powers worked alone could make all of this worth it. Taking out two gangs would just be the cherry on top.

Also, if he wasn’t already deathly afraid of Thinkers and how they might just perceive him one day, sending in shockwaves in the Shard network that would bring down Scion’s power over him, he might have done something about Dinah as well.

As things stood, he was going to just keep watch over her to make sure another villain gang did not get their hands on her, and that included Cauldron as well.

Yawning, he realised that he had been woken up in the middle of his sleep, and after taking a look at everything, he groaned out loud as he realised that he would not be able to sleep until the Helicarrier was safe and out of danger.

As of right now, it was at risk of being attacked by the Triumvirate. Even if actually getting past the forcefield would take quite the effort, they had other means that could destroy the entire thing from within. He had a limited number of them, and he would much rather keep them secured for the important battles.