"Leet, listen to me. What you're doing is Evil. I'm trying to protect this city, and you're trying to blow it up. Or rather, the demon controlling you is trying to blow it up using your hands."

Acid had already reached Leet's knees, but the angel controlling his body wasn't giving up, completely ignoring the dissolving flesh. He only paused for a second to tie both legs with a cord, preventing blood loss.

"If you want Good to triumph, you must stop the demon. Leet, I know you've always wanted to be a hero. Your pranks and appearing as heroes from video games are manifestations of your desire to be a real hero. A hero who saves lives, not one who goes out to seek fame. Leet, right now you have a chance to be a real hero." - The tinker's hand trembled, and the wrench slipped from it, plunging into the acid pool. - "Just don't let the demon blow up the city. And you'll be a hero who truly saves lives, not just brags about it. Leet, I know you can do it!"

This last sentence was the 'code phrase' I used to activate the 'hypnoprogram' embedded in the tinker's consciousness, allowing him to control his shard. And it worked. Leet's hands froze, and he stared at the bomb in front of him, which was now being approached by the acid, reaching up to his waist.

"I am a hero" - his lips whispered.

"No! Don't listen to him! If you don't let me blow up the bomb, you'll go to hell! I am an angel! I am God's will!" - Leet screamed, but his hands remained still.

Leet's hand twitched and, with jerky movements, reached for the big red button on the bomb's upper casing. Uber, from his 'perch,' was rooting for his 'teammate,' but couldn't help because the button was on the opposite side, and he couldn't even throw a shoe at it.

There were only a few centimeters left to the cherished button, but then Leet's lips whispered again, - "I am a hero" - and his knees buckled, causing his entire body to collapse into the acid. The hydrogen released in the reaction accumulated in the basement in sufficient quantity to detonate from a spark in the wiring, causing the entire basement to explode. The bomb did not detonate and instead sank into the acid, starting to dissolve.

Leet died, and his soul left his body, along with the angel's soul and the shard. One last time, as a ghost, he glanced over the entire city and whispered - "I saved them. I am a hero!"

I was the only one who heard his words because I was partly a spiritual being myself. Smiling one last time, Leet departed... to the Squeezer, to endure the torments of an unspeakable hell. Yes, the angel was right. Ahead lay only Hell, and the destruction of the city was indeed the God's will.

Sighing in relief, I ordered the replicators to 'clean the area' then went to rest. It had been a very nerve-wracking day. One could easily go gray from such stress.

The following days were surprisingly calm. The replicators closely monitored the activities of every hero and villain in the city to prevent another situation like Leet's. It turned out he had managed to create a device that 'repelled mechanical bugs.' Funny, but it worked, so the replicators left his basement without even alerting their controlling 'hive mind.' As I feared, technicians could influence the replicators, and so far, no one had reprogrammed them simply because they didn't even know of their existence.

After this incident, I implemented even more paranoid security protocols into their programming, so that in any danger of exposure, they would self-destruct and, if possible, eliminate all witnesses. The funniest part was that people still believed that the Men in Black were dockworkers consciously or forcibly working for me. Local 'telepaths' burned out their brains trying to take over my army. But since my suit, according to circulated rumors, completely protected people from mental influence, no one even considered that there was essentially nothing to influence.

Now, in Brockton Bay, apart from the Undersiders team and Trickster team, there were the capes of the Wards, New Wave heroes, a couple of local Rogues, and two Protectorate capes - Armsmaster and Battery. Any newcomers, regardless of 'alignment' I either asked to leave or 'left' with a bullet to the forehead. People got the message and were satisfied with the situation. I specifically didn't destroy all the angels to have a tighter control over their actions.

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If they planned anything, they would likely act through existing agents rather than implant new ones. Meanwhile, all capes had colonies of replicators living in their guts, ready to cause 'intestinal twists' or even 'brain twists' if necessary. These replicators had a special chemical composition close to organic matter, making them almost impossible to detect.

In this calm environment, a couple more weeks passed, and then the Endbringer attacked the city. It was Leviathan, approaching Brockton Bay from the sea. Strangely, the heroes issued a general call and began gathering a crowd to fight the Endbringer. Perhaps this was because the angels were trying their best to maintain a positive image. They couldn't deny that my 'rule' had indeed improved the lives of the city's residents. So they tried every way to show that the heroes also fought for the life and prosperity of ordinary people.

Either way, people began gathering in the city, even preliminarily agreeing with me that I wouldn't kill them all. Of course, I promised this because the request was transmitted through the media, and otherwise, I would have lost face. Although it all depended on whether I could handle Leviathan myself or not.

I might have risked facing him one-on-one, but there was a 'small' problem. I couldn't enhance my shard beyond the allowed parameters. To 'grow broader,' I needed to consume other shards, but capes didn't rush to my city because they were greeted with a bullet to the forehead.

So, during the battle with the Endbringer, I planned to feed my shard with free food by consuming the shards of fallen heroes. Shards couldn't consume 'ownerless' relatives since only a shard recently deprived of its host was vulnerable enough for this.

On D-Day, Hour H, the Endbringer appeared in the bay and sent a tsunami wave towards the city. I deployed a clone to heroically battle the evil enemy, Black Cloak, while I moved through the tunnels dug by the replicators, constantly staying beneath Leviathan. My 'spiritual tentacles,' which I usually used to devour souls, were great for grabbing shards too. I even devoured a couple of these creatures but didn't gain any abilities from them. So, as soon as another hero suicided against the Endbringer, I immediately grabbed his shard and fed it to my passenger.

It quickly became apparent that the Endbringer also liked snacking on hero shards. He just couldn't figure out who was stealing his prey, making him even more furious. As a result, I let him consume one shard out of ten, while planning how to feed the Endbringer to my shard. Why not? Leviathan could be food too.

More heroes than usual arrived for the battle against the Endbringer. After all, this was Brockton Bay - the city with the happiest people on Earth. I even spread rumors that those heroes who distinguished themselves in the fight against Leviathan would be allowed to stay in the city. The feast was successful. Two hours in, when most of the angels were dead, and the Endbringer had reduced half the city to rubble, I decided it was time to act. Fortunately, the city's residents were mostly unharmed because they were all in underground shelters built by the replicators. They could have easily survived an invasion of ten Endbringer at once.

My shard was already strong enough for me to rival the Endbringer. Of course, he had been consuming capes for years, while I had just started, but my shard could go all out, while Leviathan couldn't boast high efficiency.

First, I released a hundred clones that surrounded the Endbringer. Then they started producing 'steel tentacles,' which began to entangle the evil amphibian from all sides. Leviathan tried to break free but was surprised to find that even he couldn't tear apart these steel cables. Initially, he pretended to be weak, letting the capes believe in the possibility of victory, but when he decided it was time to kill my clones, he discovered that he couldn't break such an amount of metal.

To give the correct scale, Leviathan was ten meters tall and about fifteen meters long, including the tail. I wrapped him like a ball of yarn into a sphere with a diameter of a hundred meters. Then this entire sphere became a monolithic piece of metal, continuing to grow. From the outside, it looked... epic. The tallest buildings in Brockton Bay, when they were still standing and not piles of rubble, were half the height of this sphere. Its weight pushed the ground down so much that the future pit should turn into a large lake. The sphere didn't stop at a hundred meters, but its growth 'upwards' was offset by more and more ground being pushed down.

When I decided that the size of the 'prison' was sufficient, I began compressing Leviathan with all the power available to me. I didn't just want to 'compact' him into a ball but rather tried to dismember him. But all this was essentially just a distraction because the main attack direction was the shard's soul. Although this creature wasn't exactly human or animal, it had some kind of soul. And when I tried to devour it, the Endbringer panicked, opened up, and... became a victim of my shard, which actually started devouring him alive