VT - Chapter 42 : A lost opportunity.... (Patreon)

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Brockton Bay

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

Shit! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!

He swore as his fingers ran around the many terminals in front of him, as he activated asset after asset, protocol after protocol, and began locating the main participants who must be present here, in Brockton Bay for the city to not be a flooded wasteland after Leviathan was done with it.

As he watched the Endbringer Siren register all across Brockton Bay, and the panic set in, not just amongst the cape population but also amongst the civilian population, he sighed before pressing the button as the Helicarrier jerked into motion, the engines moving into overdrive.

None of the other Helicarriers would reach in time, and while he did have the option of just letting the PRT handle this while he kept the Helicarrier as just a backup staging place that could attack the Leviathan from behind the front lines, just to save the Helicarrier since using the carrier’s full power from the start was just going to result in the Endbringer bringing forth even greater amounts of power to bear, he did not want that.

So far, he had been operating under the assumption that he would be prepared for the next Endbringer battle, which was supposed to happen in Brockton Bay, and he had been even making moves for the same. IT was supposed to be this glorious introduction to the serious stages of the world, as he made sure that Leviathan was unable to sink yet another city. It would have been enough to elevate his standing to the same level as a nation-state.

Even now, while he had proved his power, it was not enough. He needed more prestige to be treated on the same stage as the PRT. Only once he had proven himself to be a viable alternative to the PRT, he would be able to compete with them and prove to the rest of the world just how the PRT was run by an interdimensional shadowy organisation that had a vested interest in making sure that more and more capes were created and remained alive, regardless of whether they were heroes or villains.

Then, he would have been able to do something to remove their chokehold on global politics and economics. All that would have been a slow process, the start of which would have happened when the world saw that a totally unknown entity was somehow able to rebuff an Endbringer attack without losing an entire city to it. That would have given him the foundation to steer the world towards a better future, not one that was created by a power that came from the other half of the Entity whose main goal was to harvest data, not save humanity.

It was entirely plausible to think that Contessa, even with her power, was just a pawn to Eden. An eldritch monstrosity like that did not just fall over and die like that. He was pretty sure that Contessa’s Path to Victory was deliberately engineering everything so that even if humanity was saved at the end of everything, the path taken towards that goal was the most violent, chaotic, and damaging path it could have given to Contessa.

Only Caouldon had this blind trust in COntessa’s power that they wouldn’t even think to doubt her, resulting in the current condition of Earth Bet. Because he refused to believe that the utterly dangerous and damaging path Contessa engineered in the canon timeline was the only possible way to end Scion.

Shaking his head, he watched as a call went out to all the assets in the region, even the hidden ones, including Michael and Ashley, as everything that was not designated to take care of the civilian evacuation began gathering on top of the Helicarrier.

He looked at the prisoners he had taken and sighed before pressing a button to send the information to the TV they had in their prison room, before opening a line of communication: “Max, Leviathan is headed towards Brockton Bay. I can no longer guarantee your safety aboard the ship. I can get you out of the city, or you can stay and fight.”

Max jerked at the news but recovered remarkably quickly before replying, “What benefit do I get from staying?”

He slumped back in his ship. “I could have offered you a path to erase all your crimes, but you are right. You don’t get anything out of this. I hope you have a safe flight. I will deposit you in your safehouse on the outskirts of the city. You can choose what you want to do after that.”

He shook his head, chastising himself for even considering that Max Anders, Kaiser, a man who’d gleefully ordered the deaths of multiple people, all because of their skin color, would ever think of staying and defending the city he no longer had anything in.

Sending in the command to have a bogie escort the couple with their kids to the safe house Max had on the outskirts of the city for specifically such occasions, unknown to any of his allies, he focused on the other prisoners at hand, realising that he was going to have to release them in some capacity.

He couldn't have them up here just taking space without contributing, especially since the Truce was going to be up and running anytime soon.

Grumbling at the situation, he tensely began drafting the message before sending it to them as an automated message, along with a line of inquiry towards the PRT about them, and what could be done about them.

After that, he looked at the self destruct protocols of the Helicarrier, and all the ways he’d made sure that nothing taken from it could be reverse engineered, and after double checking that everything was working properly, he gave the go ahead for the Helicarrier to assume position at the forefront of everything.

He was under no delusions that the Helicarrier was going to be fine after the battle. Even in the best case scenario, a heavily damaged Helicarrier at the end of this fight was going to be a huge liability to him and his other assets. The stealth systems were a delicate piece of machinery that were going to be damaged and rendered useless instantly, so the Helicarrier was not going to come limping back to him, to be repaired or salvaged.

No, he was going to destroy the whole thing right then and there, and what better way to do that than using it to severely injure a freaking Endbringer. It was also a good opportunity to study the levels to which his Blank-ish perk would work. 

He just hoped that he had more time to deal with all the other stuff he had in the pipeline. Glancing at the projects that were still not ready, he sighed before getting to work and making sure that he could help as much as possible with the evacuation processes. People were stupid, messy, petty, and really emotional, so telling hundreds of thousands of people to calm down, be orderly, and not go back to get valuable stuff was pointless.

At such times, a firm hand and a little intimidation factor went hand in hand to make sure that everything was happening quickly. They had less than an hour to do everything, and bogies capable of transferring less than 20 thousand people on board the HElicarrier.

Good news was that Brockton Bay had a train track ready to be used to take people out of the city, along with many smaller roads. Now, the roads were going to be choked soon, and while the heroes could have acted as glorified traffic police, he had better ways to manage traffic.

The Helicarrier should be in position to intercept the first line of waves that Leviathan was generating within a couple of minutes, which should also be more than enough time for the first volley of capes to arrive at the city, using Strider’s services, of course.

The fact that Cauldron had the likes of Clairvoyant and Doormaker but could not use them because they were deathly terrified of Scion getting wind of their operations and finding Eden’s corpse basically being harvested for parts was such a shame. Plus, he knew that for Cauldron, the Endbringers were not the end goal.

Sure, they were slowly whittling away at civilisation itself, making dents in overall morale all across the planet, on top of outright destroying major cities, but their vision was tunneled towards Scion, and as such, all they wanted out of the Endbringer fights was the least number of deaths.

Least number of civilian deaths, yes, but more importantly, they wanted Cape casualties to be low, so they could be used in the final battle against Scion.

Ashley and Michael were aboard the helicarrier, being outfitted with additions to their suits, sacrificing agility in exchange for protection and insurance in the form of an escape hatch built right into their suits that will, at the press of a button, take them far away using an overpowered repulsor array that will burn itself out with a single use.

The abrupt force would also knock both of them out of commission temporarily, but they were not really the main fighting force here. They were just going to be two suits in the middle of hundreds, as over 200 suits were being called in from all parts of the Eastern seaboard.

His line of communications opened directly with Dragon, Piggot, as well as the Triumvirate finally connected, as he watched the video feed of an entire meeting room, with the Triumvirate, Armsmaster, Director Piggot, and Dragon in her anime waifu avatar. So, they had chosen to club his different requests into a single one.

Fine.

Dragon began, “Grand Chariot. I thank you for the early warning. Your systems managed to record Leviathan’s path 3 minutes 12 seconds before my systems did. I would love to know more so I can improve on my prediction algorithm. That being said, we are here to discuss the Endbringer attack, and your role in it. Our question is - will you be staying?”

Hmm?

He took a moment to reply because he was confused. Did they really think that he was inside the Helicarrier? Did their Thinkers not give them more information?

Getting past the confusion, he replied, “Yes, the Helicarrier will be staying here for protection. It will be the staging ground for all the forces I have pulled towards Brockton Bay.”

“What forces exactly?” Alexandria asked him.

He sent the info packet to Dragon before replying, “I have sent everything relevant to Dragon here. I don’t think we can have coordination in something as chaotic as the Endbringer fight, so I will make a few things clear. One, the Helicarrier will be staged at the front lines, as I am sure you have seen. It is both an offensive and a defensive tool. My suits will primarily be working on civilian evacuation, cape evacuation, logistics, and more. They might have severe destructive prowess, but getting past Endbringer hide is impossible for them. My job is to make sure as many people as possible survive this attack.”

“I see. That makes sense. With your coordination, you can make sure that capes are brought back to the healing center as quickly as possible." Legend replied.

He then added, “Ah, yes, about that. Dragon, I have sent you another data packet. It is a custom designed recovery center, built for Endbriner battles. It is capable of high speed flight, is multiple stories big, has on board water filtration and food storage facilities, and is its own power source. It is armoured, and has energy shielding. I think this should be the place to field the likes of Panacea so that one of the most important capes in the world is not injured.”

He watched as Dragon played the schematics he had given her, wasting important time, but that was fine. This too was necessary to make sure he had their cooperation; otherwise it would just waste time later on, and time in the battlefield was far more valuable than right now.

In the meantime, capes were quickly gathering around the Rig, as Strider worked overtime to bring in capes from all around the world. This time, the interest was clearly much higher, amongst the media as well as the capes, as this was going to be the first Endbringer fight of Grand Chariot.

“Urgh,” he groaned out loud, as he gave a longing look at the project he had earmarked for this very battle. If only he had been able to synthesise Vibranium in big enough quantities all the time, without getting knocked out for it.

He would have loved to have his own Megazord duking it out with an Endbringer, even if he was not going to be in the Megazord itself.

It would have been sooo glorious!

Getting away from his fantasies and into the reality where a large number of people were about to die, he kept an ear out on the meeting with the PRT and focused on the evacuation numbers.

The PRT was trying to shove people into cramped Endbringer bunkers, only for their workers to be rebuffed by his suits, as people were instantly shoved into recovery bogies that would quickly zoom away and deposit them about 30 miles away from the city.

He had created a clearing in that area with plenty of water, food, and armoured attendants to make sure that a fight did not break out. The last thing he needed, especially after doing so much to save innocent lives, was to lose more of them because people panicked, even after escaping the area where Leviathan was about to make land fall on.

Hmm. Maybe it was a better idea to have humans in charge of a place full of panicked people, instead of relying on VIs who were inherently incapable of understanding human nature and adapting to it, to make decisions on the spot. He could program hundreds of behavioral patterns into the VIs and succeed for most of them, but he wanted the least casualties today, and for that, the human touch was necessary.

A thought occurred to him before he pressed a few buttons and spoke up, “Michael. Ashley. I have a task for you. Make sure you do not desert your duty. This goes for both of you.”

“What?” “What?”

Both of them spoke up, and then he immediately muted them as their suits zoomed away at full speed, towards the clearing. It would be best if both of them maintained law and order rather than try to do something that other autonomous drones could do.

This was the second time the control of their suits was snatched from them, especially since he had told them from the start that user autonomy was a big part of the whole program, but what could he do? Extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures.