VT - Chapter 49 : Cauldron's Shadowy Hands, Turning Tail & Running.... (Patreon)

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Cauldron Base

–Doctor Mother–

She watched calmly as Contessa stepped out of the portal and stood in front of her. “The Path was successfully completed.”

She sighed in relief, the sound echoing in the vast meeting room, as she simply nodded at Contessa, who got the message and left through a Door- to where? She did not know, but she trusted Contessa’s Path to Victory enough that, outside of outliers, it would guide them on the right path.

Even with the sudden occurrence of some group that threatened to upend everything they had painstakingly built, she was confident in Contessa and her ability to guide them all to victory.

All of it was to make sure Scion/Zion was gone.

When Grand Chariot’s agents had first appeared in Brockton Bay, she had barely controlled herself from rushing forth and ordering their apprehension, and the decision to do that had been quite beneficial. The fact that Contessa could path the suits, as well as their users, told them that Grand Chariot’s creations and their users could be Pathed around, but not the creators.

No matter what they did, they were unable to look for Grand Chariot’s base. It was likely, given the display of advanced technology from the group, that they might have some secured, isolated place from the rest of the world. A pocket dimension, perhaps?

Either way, Grand Chariot’s actions in Brockton Bay meant that they were able to run a number of tests on Grand Chariot creations without any danger, and while they were unable to learn a lot, they were able to tell that Grand Chariot had some kind of vested interest in Brockton Bay.

It was disappointing that the users of those armours were truly random individuals chosen by Grand Chariot, instead of having a link to the mysterious group, but that just meant they were able to guide their actions. Contessa was able to use her power on them just like everyone else, which made sense since both of them were just unpowered humans without any connection to a shard.

One of them didn’t even have the organ necessary to trigger in the first place. The other one did, which is why she and Contessa had a lengthy discussion on what they could be manipulated into doing to somehow force Grand Chariot out of hiding. The group was far more informed than they should have been, being aware of secrets that not even Legend was aware of.

It was because of the group that they had to stop sending out any new Case 53s into the wild. That led to reduced experimentation, and while it won’t be an issue if they paused that for a few months, it might result in substandard results for the experiments they were running regarding Case 53s and their introduction to society.

They could afford to take a step back in the face of a mighty foe that was also a blank wall to them, while most of their own secrets were clearly exposed to the other party. She might have suspected a leak had it not been for Contessa.

That left her with having to navigate around a variable she had zero intel on, with only two people and their armour to go off on, both based out of Brockton Bay. So, she pressed the trigger and watched as Contessa did her work. 

Keeping in mind the heavy reliance on technology, they made sure to keep the involvement of Doorman to a minimum, just in case Grand Chariot was able to detect spatial fluctuations, and set into motion a few events that eventually culminated in the armoured figure known as War Machine stumbling upon a few teenagers who were being coerced into working for a villainous figure with no scruples about exploiting minors for his own cause.

Contessa had already pathed Michael Harrison and knew what his mindset was regarding kids, and what he would do when he realised what Coil was up to. They knew that all the armour had a direct link to Grand Chariot’s knowledge repository that was bound to have ample evidence of Coil’s crimes, so all they had to do was nudge a few things here and there.

Just as expected, Michael took the bait and demonstrated to the rest of the city just why that armour was called War Machine, demolishing multiple buildings and killing Coil in one fell swoop. Michael’s actions suggested that he was aware of what Coil’s power was and how it worked, presumably because of the shared repository.

If the repository was easily accessible, she would have been tempted to steal the suits, but she knew Grand Chariot had multiple failsafes in place to make sure neither the knowledge of that repository nor the technology of the suits could fall into the wrong hands.

After one of their agents had killed Coil in anger, and that led to the release of the identities of every single cape member of the gang known as the E88, in the middle of the night, she had obviously expected a response from them. 

Especially since the resulting chaos was going to be pinned on their head. They were going to make sure it was going to be framed that way. It definitely didn’t help matters that the agent had barely been active for a week before he went ahead and lit off the powder keg that was Brockton Bay and their gangs, especially since it was made public that Grand Chariot had a public presence in the city.

All the gangs had been doing their part in avoiding the agents of Grand Chariot out of fear, only for one of the agents to outright kill the villains. It was not going to go over well with the local PRT Director, as they didn't even need to tell her anything for her to go on the offensive.

She had expected more of those armours, and maybe one or two of their bigger Jets along with a public warning on PHO, to calm things down a bit. She knew that expecting one of the members themselves to appear was a fool’s errand, which is why they had planned to fan the flames further using that same absence as the spark.

The initial response was well within their expectations. They were able to map out the hiding spots of those suits of armour, as well as the Jets, as a result of closely monitoring Brockton Bay and its surroundings.

The suits had taken over the city and had taken the E88 into custody, doing a good job of making sure that the chaos that was inevitable did not swallow the entire city. Everything up to that part was going well, and was well within their expectations.

What happened next was certainly not.

The appearance of that flying aircraft carrier had derailed their plans quite a bit. The fact that Grand Chariot could field something of that calibre in such a short period of time meant that they had to mobilise the entire Triumvirate, just as a show of force to show the country that the PRT were not paper tigers.

Contessa’s path did not account for that, and the leading theory was that she could not account for weapons that Grand Chariot made that were called from their base. It also explained their reluctance to leave their bases, as it might make them vulnerable to the Path to Victory.

That single fact meant that everyone around her had scrambled to find the origin of the flying aircraft carrier, as that might give them a clue to the location of the base that had technology capable of scrambling even PATH to Victory. It was imperative that they got their hands on that technology, as Contessa’s power was crucial to keeping their world running and prepared for the eventual fight with Scion/Zion.

Their plans to turn the public against Grand Chariot, since that was one of the things they actually responded to, failed as soon as that flying aircraft carrier arrived. With that thing flying above the city, no villain would be foolish enough to try anything. No sane villain anyway.

Which is why she was not surprised when she was told that the Merchants had decided to go out into the city for some reason, while she was in the middle of a meeting as her people looked for Grand Chariot’s base of operations.

The fact that the Merchant capes, as well as all the other E88 capes, had been captured alive did not surprise her one bit, as Grand Chariot was more than capable of taking all of them alive.

The ideological destruction of E88 was the most obvious way to defuse things in the city as well.

What was most surprising was Leviathan. The Endbringer making an appearance in Brockton Bay, over a month in advance, was a surprise, and yet, it was also a welcome opportunity to actually see Grand Chariot in action. They might be capable of overcoming any singular cape with their tech, but seeing them fight an Endbringer would have told her more than any Thinker out there, especially with that Anti-Thinker tech that Grand Chariot used.

The technology that Grand Chariot showcased after that, both to block the tsunamis, as well as the energy beams that managed to injure Leviathan, and push him back from the city were impressive. Unfortunately, it looked like they were single use ones.

Probably because Grand Chariot did not expect to use their Helicarrier for an Endbringer? Did they have other weapons that are more specialised in dealing with Endbringers? Was the Helicarrier designed with urban warfare in mind, with crowd suppression in mind?

As the Helicarrier dove towards Leviathan, in a clear bid to self destruct and deal one more blow to the Endbringer before it became just a heap of scrap, Contessa was hard at work, killing all the capes in Grand Chariot’s custody, except for Noelle. 

There were a few reasons for doing so. They could point to this as breaking the Endbringer Truce. They could rob Grand Chariot of yet another cape that was a Vehicle Tinker, and create the grounds for yet another opportunity for them to learn more about Grand Chariot and its operations. 

After all, the prevailing theory right now is that Grand Chariot is a group of Tinkers, manned by a Super Tinker or a Super Master, who made sure every single Tinker they had in their group worked together to devastating effect, creating the technology they needed and, in a manner, it seamlessly blended with all vehicles and armours.

She had to admit that if the theory was true, then that Tinker was a far greater Tinker than even Hero could ever be.

___xx__

Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

As he watched Leviathan’s hunched-over form become finally visible, in the midst of a rushing wave of water rushing forward to fill the void, he kept an eye on the evacuation numbers, and after the third sweep by the suits, he smiled in relief as he saw that all the humans in the city had been evacuated, along with all the pets that the suits could find, with either thermal sensors or by simply following the sounds of animals.

He had no idea what he was going to do with those animals, as it was likely that humans who could be cruel enough to abandon their pets would also refuse to take them back. In the face of their own lives, humans could do many things that might even surprise themselves.

As the last of the holes in the ocean was filled, all that was visible to them was the upper body of Leviathan, still smoking and unmoving. The damage this time was more severe than the last attack, which was expected, as they could no longer spot any eyes or any other facial features.

One of its arms was simply gone, and it looked like Leviathan had actually lost height. He leaned forward in his seat in anticipation of what Leviathan might do here. He had a couple of possibilities in mind.

Everyone else on the front lines, including the Triumvirate, floated forward and watched in tense silence, expecting Leviathan to lash out suddenly, as an eerie silence reigned supreme on the battlefield.

It was the first time in history that an Endbringer was injured to such a degree, and most of the civilians were evacuated, long before it even touched the city it was about to attack.

So, unless Leviathan actually chased the Evacuation sites, the maximum number of casualties it could inflict right now was in the hundreds, instead of the thousands.

Hopefully, it just—

He froze in his seat as a sudden cracking sound echoed all around the battlefield. It was quite loud. Then, it repeated once more, until he saw the grey exterior of Leviathan begin to crack, until those cracks spread everywhere. The grey, smoking exterior of the Endbringer abruptly shattered, revealing a pale, white, shifting mass underneath that quickly spread everywhere, restoring the eyes, the hands, and the height; within moments, an entirely rejuvenated Leviathan stood in front of everyone.

It was quite the intimidating sight, as Leviathan’s gaze moved from the entire frontline towards the suits, and it looked like Leviathan was staring directly into his soul, despite there being multiple distortion layers baked into the live camera feeds to make sure he was not Mastered by the Mathers woman.

Then….Leviathan simply turned tail and swam away, quickly disappearing from sight and every single sensor suite he had access to.

There was silence on the battlefield before cheers rang across the entire country, as for the first time in history, Leviathan was forced back without a single death or part of the city destroyed.

It was….monumental.

And he couldn't help but smile and slump in relief as he had actually thwarted an Endbringer attack all by himself.