VT - Chapter 54 : Pawning off tasks, Accounting & A Yap course on Grand Chariot Defenses.... (Patreon)

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Somewhere on Earth Bet

–Simon–

With the immediate issue resolved, he had one last thing before he could finally succumb to sleep, and that was taking care of the hundred plus suits that were still in the city. The suits had to be destroyed, but he supposed he could do the city a solid and let the capes, as well as the law enforcement, rest a bit from the massive stress they must have endured during the Endbringer Battle.

It was a different thing that none of them had to actually step foot on the front lines, and as such, suffered no physical injury.

Quickly pining Ashley, who was coordinating things with Panacea, looked very bored as hordes of people lined up to get treated by the very large coalition of doctors who had gathered to treat the injured from the Endbringer battle. But since no injuries were reported from the battle itself, Ashley had taken it upon herself to task the doctors who were anyway here to see any patient in the city for free. 

All of the doctors were all too happy to help, which was nice, as he noted, to divert any medical supplies he could get his hands on to the medical wing, which was still the flying fortress he had created to safeguard the strongest biokinetic in North America. 

The same biokinetic, who was capable of unleashing eldritch horrors upon the country, was currently being hugged to death by her sister, Glory Girl. All of the second Gen New Wave were there, with Amy, as the adults dealt with the capes gathered here.

He could clearly see a tense atmosphere brewing as the PRT now had to deal with many villainous capes who came here for the battle, but were now wary of something happening to them since the Endbringer battle was basically confined to a flying aircraft carrier and the Endbringer.

Someone also had to deal with that, and make sure that the tension did not spill over into the streets or lead to a stupid fight. Fortunately, the person he was going to pawn off that responsibility to was wide awake and quite passionate about protecting the city, even if she clearly had distaste for some of the more on hand part of the job.

“Hi,” Ashley spoke up, now much more comfortable talking to the boogeyman that was Grand Chariot than she was when she first got the suit, “What’s up? I see Michael has left for Boston. I assume everything is alright?”

Ah. Michael and the course curriculum for his reading. Another thing that poor Ashley had to do. Oh, well, she was young and full of energy. She should be more than capable of handling the multiple burdens he was about to place on her.

“Michael has been given leave to make sure he has read up on everything he needs to be aware of before resuming duty. We are asking you to compile a list of things he must know beforehand, as well as the final examination that will decide if he can handle the armour or not.”

“W-Wha—”

“Aside from that, you are to remain the custodian of all the assets in the city. We trust you to make sure the city remains safe until the Endbringer Truce ends. Everything you need is there in the repository. If you need help, and only if you truly need help, you can ping us.”

“B-But!”

“Aside from that, we have diverted all the medical supplies we could find towards the medical zone. We approve of your initiative of getting the poor treated. You do good work.”

“W-Wha. Thank you! But, listen! I can’t just–”

“We have urgent matters that will be needing all our attention for the next 24 hours. We emphasise that while we are always available for help, we would like you to call us only as a last resort. We expect a better city when we come back.”

Saying so, he cut the call, even as Ashley opened and closed her mouth, her fingers twitching as if she wanted to call him, but had better control over herself. She was obviously overwhelmed by the scope of the task, as taking temporary command of over 100 suits was far easier and more palatable than doing the same for 15 days. She obviously wanted to go home, but since she chose to take the job, she had to take the bad with the good.

Shrugging, he erased the last bit of guilt or remorse he might have felt for essentially dumping his work on someone else, and after doing some last minute changes to make sure that Cauldron, or rather, the PRT, were not planning on doing anything shady while he was asleep, he turned that particular terminal off before moving to the other one.

Even while shutting everything down, he had to do it one by one, lest he lose track of what he had done and what was still pending. It was moments like these when he envied the people who could trust AIs to do their jobs correctly, especially with a vast disparity in the thinking and action speeds of an AI versus an actual baseline, vanilla human brain.

The next task in line was to send an email to the PRT official handles, as well as to the Chief Director’s office, and just to seal the deal, to the State and Federal governments as well, about the continued deployment of Grand Chariot assets in the region, tasked specifically to make sure that with the recent upheaval in Gang structure in Brockton Bay, nothing like the Boston Games happens, even with the Truce in place.

He didn’t say what would happen after the Truce was over, as they did not need to know that. He was sure there would be questions, but since the only way they were going to get any was through Ashley, who had control of over a hundred suits, he was sure that the most he was going to get was a pointed email rather than some strong-arming from the Protectorate or the PRT or the Federal or State government.

Man, it was so liberating to be fully off the grid, and beholden to not a single authority figure? No one who could tell him what to do and what not to do. If he so wished, he could live out the rest of his short life on this planet in peace and luxury, including in any and all of his wishes.

Imagining that life, he smiled before shaking his head, literally shaking his thoughts out of those delusions. There would be no point to that, and he knew it; hence all the efforts in making sure that he had something to help this world from the Entities.

With the email sent, he closed that particular terminal before moving onto the other one. The one that documented the whole thing. 

Accounting. Ugh.

That was yet another part of running such a massive thing all by himself, with just a couple of VIs doing the manual work, was that he had to account for everything. He did not want to find out later on, when he was exhausting himself daily for some material, that he already had that in stock, or it was just installed in some piece of junk he didn’t even use anymore.

He had to account for the assets deployed, assets destroyed, assets still in one piece, assets scheduled for self destruction, assets confirmed destroyed just in case someone tried to reverse engineer them. 

Then came the accounting for the people. This was new to him, so he had to take an extra fine comb over all the details. People rescued, people evacuated, people brought back, people helped, people dead and the reasons as to why, and a lot more. He had to count everything and make sure that his numbers were accurate enough, just in case the government or the PRT tried to fudge them.

He anticipated a lot of shady data fudging activities in the future, as the people in power did everything they could to not appear useless.

He wanted the numbers ready to be released before the Truce ended, so that the PRT got the message not to mess with anything else.

After a few minutes, he decided that it looked good enough for now, so he put a pin in the accounting session and closed that particular terminal as well, moving onto the final terminal that he saved for last, every time he wanted to do a deep clean of all the activities he had to keep track of in the background.

The personal security terminal. The place where he documented, monitored, and overall noted the specifics of his security systems. The systems that ensured he was protected, isolated, and away from the monsters of this world.

Sure, he did not have Eden's corpse to hide from the gaze of Scion, but at the moment, he didn’t need to. That was the thing with knowing things that could happen in the future. He knew that right now, his biggest concern was humans and monsters in human skin, not the Eldritch Entity, at least when it came to his personal security. There were two components to this. The active safety measures and the passive ones.

The active safety measures protected him from being teleported out of his home, from someone barging into his home, from being Mastered remotely, or mind controlled and more. Thankfully, he had never had to use these active measures for his safety, which meant his paranoia was working to keep all the predators away from him.

The passive measures were the ones he had used many times beforehand. Destroying the suits as well as the helicarrier fell into these measures. The world was a big place, and he wanted to make sure that he did not always rely on his metaknowledge to make big decisions regarding everything, so he had sent out suits, bogies, and even Quinjets all around the world to gather more information.

The measures had been very successful, but in doing so, he had come across multiple capes with powers who could potentially breach his safety measures, just because he was looking at them. Unfortunately, he hadn't been able to locate the Mathers woman and, as such, constantly had to be on the lookout for any data entering his terminals that could be tampered with.

Logging in the destruction of the suits as a passive defensive cost, he closed down that terminal before finally getting off his butt and stretching with all his might.

Yawning, he snapped his fingers, shutting down the lights before walking off to his bedroom. As the door to his cabin closed behind him, he got into the shower for a nice, relaxing hot water shower before jumping into the bed.

As he snuggled into the blankets, after setting the temperature of the room to be very cold, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep, only for the concerns about the suits, as well as the schemes Cauldron might be cooking up after his tremendous success, to keep him up.

Groaning out loud miserably, he tossed and turned until finally, he could feel his body simply shutting down from being exhausted.