VT - Chapter 41 : Do they not have a dedicated HR department? (Patreon)

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

Brockton Bay

–Ashley Brent–

She sighed while being inside of her suit, overlooking the city. The overlay on top of her HUD told her of the many Grand Chariot assets moving about the city. It was not just the suits themselves, but the smaller drones, bigger relief bogies, as well as the gigantic Helicarrier floating silently above them.

She still had to crane her neck all the way to look at the Helicarrier, and even then, she was unable to see the end of it. The sheer scale of a flying boat of that class was incredibly hard to comprehend. And the most absurd thing about that was the number 4 attached to the Helicarrier name.

Now, she was not really sure about the systems used by Grand Chariot to designate their assets, but if common sense was followed, then it meant that Grand Chariot somehow had no less than four of these monsters hidden somewhere. How and where are they hiding all this?  

Even beyond all the fancy tech obviously installed there, how did they even get all the energy necessary to keep that boat afloat? How are they doing all this without being detected by the entire world?! After all, with how things have been progressing, she would have to be blind to think the entire world was not taking notice and digging into Grand Chariot and their background, if they had one anyway.

Some of the theories about Grand Chariot being from other Earths do seem to ring true, because how else would they be able to field all this without being discovered beforehand?

A silver blur entered her vision as the flying form of Glory Girl was chasing after one of the suits that was empty and, as such, incapable of actually responding to her. Did she not know that? Glory Girl was followed by Laserdream as New Wave was out in full force to make sure that the city did not descend into anarchy while the gang once known as the E88 was systematically destroyed.

She looked down, and her suit identified three people walking towards a store, with guns hidden on them. Before she could get a move, a suit swooped down from the sky, blasting the men that knocked them on their asses, and had confiscated the guns and had the men secured in seconds.

A call went out to the BBPD, and a Cruiser was assigned to the case immediately, with the ETA being less than 2 minutes. She could see all of this happening in real time on her HUD as the BBPD, for once, worked like a well oiled machine and made sure that they were not behind Grand Chariot.

Landing on the rooftop of a nearby building, she sighed and stepped out of her suit. Leaning on the edge, she looked at the very busy skyline of her city and lamented the reasons why such a deployment was necessary. It should not be necessary to have a force capable of taking over most countries just to make sure a mid-sized city did not burn down due to a gang being exposed to the world, and then subsequently imploding due to their ideology being declared fake.

Hell, in an ideal world, there would be no gangs, certainly no Nazi gangs. 

The sound of another suit landing behind her had her turning around to see War Machine standing in front of her. Now that she was out of her suit, it was certainly an intimidating suit, with devastating offensive capabilities. Knowing what she did about it, though, she was not really impressed. It just looked dangerous.

Sure, it was more powerful than her own suit, but not by much. The added bulk also reduced its ability to move as fast as she did, and it was certainly not as agile. Its mass would just work against it in a pure urban setting. She supposed that its appearance alone would send most criminals running away, so there was that.

“Well?” Michael from inside the suit said, after a long period of awkward silence between them as she just stared up at the suit, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

She took a moment to reply before asking, “About?”

The faceplate slid off, revealing the red eyed, and anxious form of one Michael Harrison. A vet, with a solid track record of community help, even after his own circumstances were far from ideal. A solid candidate on paper, but as it had been made clear recently, things on paper did not always translate to real life. The man could certainly use more impulse control, and a little less anger.

Sure, she could understand his anger a bit, especially when she went through Coil’s whole file. Especially the part about targeting and exploiting multiple minor capes, to the point that she was of the opinion that Coil was just as, if not more, dangerous than the other cape gangs in the city, but she was also capable of reading a freaking warning label.

Also, that warning label came from Grand Chariot, a group that was probably synonymous with doing whatever the hell they wanted without thinking of any other authority. If they put a warning label on something, then anyone sane should pause and read that first before rushing headfirst into danger. Of course, she was not going to say that to Michael's face. He was beating himself up enough for the two of them.

“About the way I rushed in without thinking! About the fact that I messed up! That it is my fault that all of this is happening! That all of this could have been avoided if I had just taken a step back and used my head! That it is my fault that Grand Chariot had to use all these resources, and now they are being exposed to the world.” Michael practically shouted the last few parts, and she sighed once more, the exhaustion catching up with her.

Now, she had cut back hours from her job since she was getting more than enough money from Grand Chariot, but the mental exhaustion of all this was weighing on her. She was of the opinion that it was the inactivity that was hurting her. If she had to be the one running around the city, patching people up, she would have had far less time to be worrying about these things.

Instead, she was standing here, in front of a man who was probably one bad conversation away from a mental breakdown, and she had to be the one to deal with it. Doesn’t Grand Chariot have some kind of HR department that could deal with this instead? They must have something, right? After all, a mid-sized hospital needs a proper HR department to function properly; then how many HR people must an organisation the size of Grand Chariot have?

Looking straight up at the Helicarrier, she wagered that they must have a few dozen HR people at least. To do all that and keep it secret must be a really tough job.

She wondered if she could somehow offload this onto them? 

She began, her tone exhausted, “Look, I don’t claim to know better, but what I can tell you is that you should be least worried about Grand Chariot and this affecting them. From what I know of them, they would never have sent all this if they truly just cared about themselves. They would have just sent in a few disposable suits and controlled the situation before anyone could realise what had happened. Also, we would not be talking but flying around doing our tasks. The fact that they did all this must have some other motive. I refuse to believe that they needed all this just to prevent anarchy. 

I won’t condone it, but a few examples made in the streets using their suits would have been more than enough to quell the masses and remove the risk of any riots. So, don't worry too much about Grand Chariot and how this might hamper them in some way.

Trust me when I say that an organisation of that size must have contingency after contingency for situations like these. I would not be surprised if they managed to come out on top even now, when they were clearly surprised.”

Michael looked at her, his face thoughtful. “You really think so?”

She nodded, “Yup. As for your other points? Yeah, I do think you should have taken a moment to think through your actions before jumping into the fray. A few seconds of thought might have saved all of us a lot of trouble. Alas, time travel is not really possible right now, so the best we can do is learn from it and move forward. Unless you have something else in mind?” She added the last bit after a thought entered her mind.

Michael gave her a look before his neck topo craned up to take in the entirety of the Helicarrier above them. He took a moment to bask in the sheer size of that thing before looking down at her. “Yeah, I’ve given it some thought. Maybe I could give it back? Maybe I was the wrong pick? They should have picked someone who was trained for this, and not some washed up veteran from the street.”

Oh. Ohhh. That was not good.

“Don’t you think they would have done that if they wanted to? You think there would be a shortage of candidates if they just wanted the best combatant, the best under-pressure decision-maker? The best SEALS would have lined up for the opportunity you have received. But they didn't do that. They chose you, and there must be a reason for that.” She assured him before she could see a live meltdown in the form of a man who was questioning every single good thing in his life. She had seen this happen in real life before, and the end result was never pretty, and those were pretty normal people. Right now, the same was happening to someone who was piloting a suit capable of destroying a small town on its lonesome.

Sure, Grand Chariot would probably step in before anything happened, but she would much rather nothing happened at all. The world could use a few more stable heroes, and with the newly gained information on just how capes came to be, she would prefer most heroes to be non capes from now on, as that would just guarantee a much higher level of baseline stability and sanity that capes simply could not provide.

The decision to just arm regular people with some chosen parameters was one of the smartest decisions that Grand Chariot could have taken, which was one of the reasons she was pretty sure they had an entire department of people dedicated to Cape mentality. How else would they have all these insights into Cape and Cape behaviour?

“I guess,” Michael replied softly, his eyes a bit glassy. If she hadn’t already known that he was being given all the medication he needed, she would have thought he was having some kind of episode.

Speaking of medication, she had a pharmacy run scheduled today; otherwise, the seniors in the building would not have enough insulin and meds to last the rest of the week. It was her way of giving back to the community that helped her when she had nothing, now that she was making decent money from being Blue Shield. Sure, the money was obviously not legally obtained, but the cash was green, and if the bank didn’t care, she didn’t care as well.

She was about to head back home, to do some chores and get some sleep in before she looked up at the sound of distant thunder.

A moment later, she yelped, and so did Michael as the faceplate slid on his face, almost violently, as she was once more wrapped up safely in her armour, the HUD coming online almost immediately.

On instinct, she was moving her fingers and hands to pilot the suit, but it was not listening to her commands, as the suit began moving up at very high speeds.

She was about to curse out loud, only to pause as the HUD finally came online, making her blood run cold at the warning written in bright red letters.

The warning coincided with sirens ringing all around her, as she saw movement in the vision that was not occupied by the warning. It read - 

Leviathan Incoming. Brace for impact.

A/N - Yup. I escalated there. Let’s see if my fic survives the fic killer.

Also, Simon is just sitting there, looking up at dozens of screens with squinted eyes, trying to get past the massive amount of work he has to do all by himself because he doesn’t trust AIs, only to be asked by Ashley about the availability of an HR person who could handle the mental breakdown of a guilty Michael, since they MUST have HR, right? RIGHT?!

Lol.