VT - Chapter 47 : A Swear, Puppy & A different target.... (Patreon)

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

Brockton Bay outskirts

–Ashley Brent–

“Holy Fuck!” She didn’t even have the energy to reprimand the person who cursed out loud, especially in the presence of all the children who were within earshot distance, and were also watching the live stream that she could access from the massive pool of cameras that Grand Chariot had hacked into or sent out all around the city.

The large number of sensor suites told her the same thing as the cameras did, and yet, it beggared belief.

She had known since the beginning that Grand Chariot was, somehow, larger than the world thought them to be. The entire world had been underestimating them. She knew that because she was given access to information she honestly should not have been given access to. She had no business knowing just how many warships Grand Chariot could field at any given moment, and just how many countries they could effectively capture if they were pushed, and just what kind of weapons they currently had in stock, and what they were currently building, and what those weapons could do, and more.

It was as if an organisation the size of Grand Chariot did not understand info security, and had given her the same level of access as the creator of Grand Chariot had. It was particularly confusing and a little frustrating, as she had to actively stop herself from seeking out information to questions that were way above her pay grade, especially since she knew that they were just out there, waiting for her to seek them out.

She had even thought about writing a feedback email to Grand Chariot about the whole thing but had refrained from doing so because she had been the sole member of the program, and she thought that they just hadn't come around to properly setting up information security protocols for it.

Then, Michael happened. So, she had decided to write that email after all, only for the fucking Leviathan to come knocking on their doors. It was great that Grand Chariot was here to reduce the damage considerably, but even she knew that there was no winning here. The best they were going to get was a damaged or maybe even a condemned city with hundreds of thousands of refugees without their homes, or any of their property with them.

So, there she was, in the third evacuation zone, which was the one that had the most capes in it, who were all sufficiently warned of the consequences of trying to breach peace and had all sworn that they were not going to start anything, which also held the highest number of children who were all understandably upset, panicked, and thus, crying.

She had an idea and, after confirming a few things, set up a delayed steam to the frontlines, stitched together from the hundreds of video feeds she had access to. She noticed that she also had access to Dragon’s feeds, but it came with a warning that said only to use it for emergencies, so she refrained from pressing that button.

Unlike a certain someone, she knew how to read and properly follow warnings, especially ones that came from someone as powerful and accomplished as Grand Chariot. There must be a reason why that warning existed, after all.

So, she had cleared a small space and had streamed a video feed about the whole battle.

The Helicarrier preparation. The higher-than-usual capes arriving at the frontlines. The Triumvirate. Dragon’s suits. And more.

The appearance of the Triumvirate and Dragon had caused most of the kids to stop crying and start cheering instead, especially once Helicarrier’s force fields came into being and stopped the most damaging factor of any Leviathan attack. The Tsunamis.

The high risk water waves were the initial attack that came long before Leviathan showed its face, and were the prime reason for deaths amongst the lower powered capes in the frontlines. Usually, for the waves, the higher tier capes had to be deployed so that the city was not instantly gone, but that just left the frontlines somewhat vulnerable to Leviathan’s assault.

Once the heavy hitters were busy with the water waves, Leviathan either used its water manipulation or just jumped into the fray itself to attack and kill dozens of capes in one fell swoop. It was basically a choice between letting Leviathan attack capes, killing many of them, and letting the first tsunamis hit the city, destroying most of the city in one go. 

Most of the coastal cities in the world had dense buildings near the coast, and in that case, it was more often the case that there were still people just a bit away from the coastline, desperately trying to get out of the city or into an Endbringer shelter.

Which is why she and many other people here were so happy that atleast the waves were neutralised. Even if Leviathan wanted to, it would take a while for it to create waves that large, and by then, it would have lost the surprise factor, which meant that heroes would just ignore the property damage and attack the Endbringer directly.

And even the population evacuation this time was off the charts. From Dragon’s own calculations, they were well above 80%. Basically, they were in unprecedented territory, no matter how one looked at it.

Cape Participation. Civilian Evacuation. Damage mitigation. Casualties during Evacuation. Casualties during preparation. Cape incidents. 

Everything about this was unprecedented.

Then, Grand Chariot went ahead and attacked Leviathan with something that was only listed in the directories as high energy weapon.

Just a basic name like that for an attack that led to the sky turning white, illuminating everything for miles on end, even near them, despite the more than 30 miles of distance between the coastline and their evacuation sites.

It was mind boggling to even think of the amount of energy being released by that single attack.

Some of the people here cried out, but in her curiosity, and with the desperate hope that it would be enough, she did not turn the feed off, letting everyone around them see the battle.

It helped that as long as everyone around her was focused on the live feeds, none of them would commit crimes, increase the anxiety of everyone around them, or try to create panic.

Puppy, as she had named the massive modular platform that followed her everywhere she went, had, for some reason, dozens of live stream projectors that allowed her to project the scenes of the battle across all the evacuation sites. Michael had reported an immediate drop in pushing, crowding, panicked ramblings, and more as the streams got all the people hooked.

She was so engrossed and invested in seeing the result of that attack that she was simply shell shocked when she saw the condition of Leviathan and forgot to shut down the delayed stream, leading to the multitude of curses and cheers in equal measure as everyone in the evacuation sites saw the condition of Leviathan.

Snapping out of it, she shut down the live stream and put it on a loop, much to people’s dismay, but it was a far better reaction than what she might have gotten if she had simply shut the feeds down.

After this loop was done, she put on some children’s show on the queue as she floated out of the evacuation site, her heart pounding after she saw the live feed of the front lines.

Even if she had hoped that Leviathan would die from that attack, she knew there was no chance of that happening. But even so, she hadn’t expected the attack to damage Leviathan to that degree.

Most of its face was gone. One side of its body was charred beyond recovery, or so she hoped. She had seen the monster recover from any injury inflicted upon it, mostly by Eidolon, but those were mere scratches compared to what the Helicarrier had put on it.

Unfortunately, the attack came at a high cost. She watched as the Helicarrier posted multiple warnings, as a series of automated protocols activated on their own.

Most of the front part of the Helicarrier was simply slag, and only one of the Reactors was actively working, and it was pushing the helicarrier towards the Endbringer.

It was obvious why that was happening. The power cores slowly ramping up told her what Grand Chariot was planning on doing.

It would have been a heroic sacrifice, had any people actually been aboard that ship. In true Grand Chariot fashion, there was not a single living being on that ship, so all she did was watch in anticipation as the massive Helicarrier began diving down on a crash course towards Leviathan.

Contrary to her fears of Leviathan simply diving deep into the water or swimming away to avoid the worst of the impact, it decided to use water as sharp knives to attack the Leviathan, completely missing the point of what the Helicarrier was doing.

As long as the cores were within a certain distance of the Endbringer, it would not matter if the rest of the carrier was in dozens of pieces. The power cores were independent bombs that did not need connections. By the time it could realise what was wrong, it would be too late.

She was almost leaving forward in anticipation when she jerked back in the suit because of a warning that abruptly appeared on her HUD.

She would have hit her head on hard metal due to her surprise had it not been for the padding there. Whoever built this suit must have had thousands of hours of real-time flight data in all kinds of situations. Which told her that Grand Chariot does have experienced pilots for all their vehicles. They just choose not to deploy them in the field, instead relying on automation, which just works fine.

The pilots must just be used for product testing and development, which probably led to this iteration of suits that had most of the issues solved.

As she read the warning, her eyes widened as she shot up in the air, tasking Michael to calm down her evacuation site, as 4 other suits joined her on her command.

Before the Helciarrier moved into position, Grand Chariot had warned her about some of the prisoners on board being transported away from the frontlines. Those were the Merchant capes, half of the E88 cape roster, and a cape that was so dangerous that, in case of any risk of them escaping, she was explicitly ordered to use everything she had in her arsenal to destroy them on the spot, even if it cost her life.

Preliminary analysis told her that the dangerous being inside, if free and rampaging, could result in a quarantine situation, which was just another phrase for S-class threat.

Which is why, when she got the alert that both the Quinjets carrying the precious cargo had lost contact with the wider array, despite the hundreds of relays in all directions that were deployed by Grand Chariot to make sure nothing could escape their sight, she chose to target the Quinjet that held the S-class threat.

The warning did say that the contained being was a threat only if they were out of their cage, so when she saw the two Quinjets, flying straight ahead, with their escort suits following them, but not responding to any of her commands, she just charged on ahead, blowing a hole in the Quinjet ramp, and flying inside, ready to blast back at a moment’s notice, and give the order for the entire Quinjet as well as the other suits to be self destroyed to contain the threat, only to see the cage intact, with no warnings in sight.

Still, she called in another suit as it moved forward, and inspected the whole thing, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. Eventually, she just pushed the open button, as a small slit in the cage opened up, showing pitch black inside, but her thermal as well as motion sensors showed her a different story.

A quick link up with Grand Chariot told her that subject Noelle was fine and accounted for.

The suit that had followed her had already sat in the pilot’s seat, as it began manually flying the thing as she flew out of the Quinjet, only to see the other Quinjet in the process of turning around.

Curious, she flew inside, only for her eyes to widen as she saw corpses instead of prisoners.

Her suit scanned the bodies and told her that all of them died of a bullet to the head. Point black execution.

So, the real target was the capes?

Someone ignored a S-class threat and killed a bunch of capes, all the while somehow jamming Grand Chariot tech, and entering and leaving without any trace?

It was obviously the work of a Mover.

“Ashley, get back to the evacuation sites. I will take over from here. Make sure Subject Noelle is in your sights at all times. I will send in as many as I can spare to guard her.” She could tell that the voice was tired, even through the voice modulation, as she nodded and left for the evacuation sites.

Someone had just attacked capes in Grand Chariot custody, and she had a hunch that Grand Chariot was not happy, especially since it was done while an Endbringer Truce was in place.

They also demonstrated that they could hack into Grand Chariot tech, which elevated their threat level in her mind a lot.

To be able to do that to a premier Tinker group’s tech, they were obviously well connected and resourceful.