VT - Chapter 43 : Evacuation sites, Hope, Helicarrier abilities & Many things on the plate.... (Patreon)

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Brockton Bay

Brockton Bay outskirts

–Michael Harrison–

“No!” He shouted as he was once again locked out of his suit, as they were both- he and Ashley- zooming away from Brockton Bay, towards the site created specifically to handle the influx of civilians who were being evacuated rapidly from the city.

He understood the reasoning behind it, as Grand Chariot thought it prudent to keep humans in charge of so many panicked, stressed humans packed together in a small space without the comfort and safety of their homes to calm them down, but why did it have to be the two of them?

Hell, why does it have to be him? Ashley alone was more than competent enough to take care of any issues that might arise here, not to mention she had other robots who could help her. Even if some cape was hidden in the crowd, she was protected, and her suit alone was more than capable of silencing anyone who thought otherwise.

His suit might have looked intimidating, but hers was not to be underestimated. He knew that because Grand Chariot had a shared knowledge repository that gave him tons of information that not even governments around the world must know of, and what did he go ahead and do with all that knowledge?

He didn’t even fucking read it before jumping headfirst into the first villainous cape he found, which just snowballed stuff until things came to this point.

“Ahh!” He just couldn’t help but scream in anger about that, only to be silenced by a “HEY!” from Ashley. It was quite an aggressive Hey! as Ashley continued.

“Look, stuff is bad, and I am not equipped to deal with thousands of panicked people and a panicked you as well, so let me keep things short here. I want you to keep just one thing in mind before doing anything. That you might have messed up by killing Coil, but doing that meant that Grand Chariot brought that massive ship here early. That meant that hours before the Endbringer attack, we had a massive boat here, ready to deploy all these resources from. Think of the tens of thousands of people who are now guaranteed to live just because you killed Coil and invited such a response from Grand Chariot.”

He fell silent at her rebuttal, as she asked to confirm once more, “Got it?”

He snapped out of it. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.”

“Good. Because come on, we need to help each other here. These people are all panicking, and not even Grand Chariot can somehow summon enough resources for the tens of thousands of people who are being carried out of the city. I have already received reports of this place filling up soon, and a second and a third one planned further away. We have to manage not just a single staging site, but potentially five or more, given the population. It all depends on just what kind of support we receive from Boston, or the federal government.”

She was right. His HUD lit up as the same information was shown to him, as Grand Chariot had quickly identified more spots to keep more people in, for the short term anyway.

Even with the best efforts from Grand Chariot and all the other capes who were undoubtedly on their way to Brockton Bay, he knew that atleast some part of the city was going to be destroyed.

While the appearance of that massive boat did give him hope that this particular Endbringer battle was not going to be as one sided as previous ones, he was still unsure if they could actually win and push Leviathan back before it destroyed the majority of the city.

Winning was not even on his mind. It had never happened before, and even with the firepower that the Helicarrier was purported to have, he had no delusions that they could kill Leviathan. Even beyond its durability, the moment it sensed that it was about to be killed, it would flee into the ocean. Its ability to move unhindered around coastal cities as heroes desperately did everything they could to defend the city and the evacuating civilians was unmatched.

“Alright, guys, I leave this to you now. I have sent in a couple of bogies that have all the essential stuff you might need to drill for water, and the drilling sites have been identified already. The water from those places is potable, but just in case you have a medical emergency, some of those bogies have on-board water filtration systems. Remember, make sure you have all the information about the tools you have on hand before doing something.”

Why did it feel like the reminder was pointedly for him and not for Ashley?

Grand Chariot continued in their modulated voice, “Your fight is here. I have locked your suits from flying towards the battlefield. You can only move away. I entrust the people here to you. I will be unavailable as I have to focus on the fight, but all the other resources are available to you. Godspeed!”

Saying so, the call cut off, and just as they were told, the suits were locked from moving towards the city, even though they were largely given back control over the suits.

“We need more water. Get to drilling. The bogies are right on track. I’ll figure out a way to get that water to the other sites.” Ashley ordered him as he moved to comply.

She was clearly the senior figure here, so he deferred to her judgment, especially when it came to people management. 

Even as he went about his work, he could see the news coverage of all that was happening within Brockton Bay. The Governor and the PRt were both cooperating with Grand Chariot, which was out in full force, making sure that everyone was out of the city before Leviathan reached the city.

Not even the reporters were spared, as the news channels were instead provided with live feeds from traffic cameras and selected suit cameras, which did draw some flak, but it was smothered by the sheer amount of support that was being shown for Grand Chariot.

The world was excited to see what Grand Chariot could bring to bear against an Endbringer.

And even if none of them were voicing it out loud, the people were clearly hopeful that Grand Chariot could bring about some kind of miracle and defeat Leviathan in one fell swoop.

He prayed for the same as well. After all, victory, in this case, could range from reducing casualty counts for both civilians and capes, keeping the city mostly intact, pushing back Leviathan, to outright killing Leviathan.

Either way, he was hopeful that Grand Chariot would be able to clinch a victory in some shape, manner, or form.

Because the world desperately needed a win against these monsters, and if Grand Chariot managed to make that dream come true, then there was no stopping them. They would be even more unstoppable than they are now. He could foresee the interest in being recruited for their suits to shoot up even beyond what it is now.

__xx__

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

With the evacuation sites taken care of, he watched as the Triumvirate finally ended the meeting after confirming every single tiny thing, such as the chain of command, the abilities of his suits, and just how much use they would be in the face of the razor thin waves of water that Leviathan sometimes used to turn everyone in a large area into mincemeat, and more.

They were particularly interested in the power source of the suits and just what destroying them would do. He assured them that they were all sufficiently secured and that he had protocols in place in case the power cores themselves were damaged. He could see that his answer did not satisfy them, but he knew that there was nothing that would really satisfy Cauldron, so he had stonewalled them until they realised he was not going to budge, which finally led to the more important parts of the meeting.

Which is why the capes who had already arrived were out of the Rig, looking up at the Helicarrier that was floating right up in front of the Bay, with hundreds of glowing silver suits floating alongside the Helicarrier.

He had a couple of specialised units, but honestly, nothing that he could access from the stuff that Tony Stark could build with his suits was going to be enough to deal with the likes of Endbringer flesh, well. He would need the likes of the Magic Uru armour to really make a dent in the Endbringer.

Honestly, had he been given even 2 years more before he was thrust into this fight, he would have had a brand spanking new Helicarrier, maybe smaller than the current one, but one that was built with Vibranium for the inner shell, and Adamantium for the outer shell. It would have been the perfect combination, as Adamantium was hard and almost unbreakable, and Vibranium was not as tough but capable of absorbing any shock waves that would travel through the Adamantium. Those shockwaves would have eventually powered the Helicarrier itself.

It was an image he had in his mind, but alas, he could no longer afford the material and time required to build something like that. 

The rough ETA Dragon provided to him had reached 30 minutes. Honestly, this was the highest preparation time that Endbringers had ever given to humanity, and the fact that Leviathan was taking so long to reach the Bay was worrying in and of itself. The same had come up during the meeting, but they had nothing that could explain the change, except the existence of the Hellicarrier itself.

It was something that had entered his mind as well. The next Endbringer cycle still had a solid month left in it, if they look at the loose rule that Endbringer attacks seemed to follow. The only notable thing that happened in the Bay that could have prompted an Endbringer attack was the killing of Coil and the subsequent show of force on his part to make sure that a city did not suffer because of the actions of his agent.

He had figured that since Thinkers could see and comprehend his creations, and were just unable to look for him, the Endbringers would not really focus too much on him. Sure, he had expected to eventually catch the attention of the likes of Simurgh,  but that was only after he had done something that was supposed to be impossible, like outright deleting one of the Endbringers, not because he parked a floating Aircraft carrier right above Brockton Bay.

It was a worrying thought, but he didn’t let that bother him, as he couldn't go back and change the past now. So, all he could do was focus on the here and now.

A ping from the terminals told him that the Arc Reactors were finally done preparing for the massive overboost he was about to give to the shields. They were also primed to explode with maximum possible force just in case he had to ram the whole thing into Leviathan.

If that had to happen, he had suits ready to transport as many capes as possible away from the blast site, along with the Medic Wing as well.

There was a reason why he had them take Panacea as well as the other healers and put them into a dedicated bogie. It was a massive rectangular floating platform that was also three stories tall, full of medical supplies. Thankfully, unlike fresh food, he could easily create a stockpile of the most commonly needed medical supplies and keep them stored in that Medical wing.

It was still not going to be enough, but that was the best he could do for now.

The downpour above Brockton Bay had turned into torrential rains now, reducing visibility. All people could see from below were four massive glowing Arc Reactors in the sky, with the occasional flash of lightning showing the massive shape of the Helicarrier.

The Arc Reactors were overloaded to the point that their glow was able to escape their secured housing, an eventuality he had accounted for, so there was no danger of the housings melting and dropping Cold fusion reactors below, right on top of the city.

That would be disastrous.

Waters had already receded from the city’s beaches, and satellite data showed him the magnitude of the waves that Leviathan was creating. It was on par with its previous attacks, so he was not seeing any change in attack strategy due to his presence.

Everything on the Helicarrier was charged and was just waiting for him to press a button, so that the shields could come online. He wanted to make sure that Leviathan couldn’t change plans at the last moment, so he was waiting for the scaly bastard to show its face.

Until then, all he could do was catalogue the capes that kept on arriving by the dozens as Strider worked overtime. The number of capes participating in the battle was obviously higher than usual, and that could be attributed to a number of factors.

Only half of the E88 members he had in custody had agreed to fight the Endbringer battle, especially once they were told that Max and Kayden were both gone.

Lung and Oni Lee, as expected, were both nowhere to be seen.

The Merchants were not going to be of any use even if they did participate, and they were not in a conscious enough state, in his opinion, to actually consent to being released and fighting in a battle with such a high degree of fatality.

Which is why, even with the Truce up and running, only about half of the total capes in Brockton Bay came to the fight.

The PRT had even fielded the Wards to the fight, and that…..just did not sit right with him. When it came up during the meeting, they told him that parents’ consent was the only thing the Wards needed if they wished to fight in an Endbriner battle.

More than half of the Wards were present, so were the minor members of the E88.

Knowing full well that he was going to regret doing this, he couldn’t just leave these kids out there, defenseless, when he could do something about it.

He was about to contact Miss Militia when he felt an alert with a specific tone to it, making his head snap up to the screen showing Taylor’s face.

Walking up to the terminal, he tapped a few buttons and saw that Taylor was still in the city. Danny Hebert was gone and was now safe in containment site 2, with Ashley running things.

Opening the line of communication, he began, “What are you doing still in–”

Only to be interrupted by the rather determined girl, “I want to fight.”

He sighed. Yet another willful minor cape to deal with.

As if he did not have other stuff on his plate.