Against the original idea, the next person to be summoned wasn’t Overhaul. They needed them for healing, but… they also needed to establish a believable lie to fool the civilians. And that required something else.
Revenant eventually planned to summon every major villain available (minus outliers like Archvile and Jormungandr). But for now, that would elevate their numbers too high for them to pretend to be a squad of elites.
Besides, this isn’t a manga. You can expect elite units to be composed of anything but military mavericks with clashing personalities.
But an officer corpse of a small mercenary army? Together with a group of heavies to be used as shocktroopers, a group of hanger-ons with useful skills? Yes, that could work. But they needed someone else, someone to pretend to form the bulk of their army. Like, say, the elite mooks of the VAA and its subsidiary groups.
In Destro’s opinion, that Revenant shared, Lieutenant Colonel Palmer basically had to start suspecting that something was odd. Especially if the members of their unit continued to appear one by one.
So, they decided to summon a group of VAA elite mooks, part of Revenant’s personal praetorian guard. Seven former members of the organization, elite conventional combatants that they could actually equip with stuff they’ve got from the pirates.
Allowing them to test their powers against well-trained conventional combatants in a controlled environment.
In the meantime, they had other things to do while waiting for their first test batch of mooks. Such as, in Revenant’s case, being simultaneously surprised (and not surprised at all) by his bed being empty for a night.
***
Onslaught’s tendency to weaponize hugs and sleeping together (in the chaste meaning) against Revenant, for the purpose of both character development and emotional support, didn’t come from nowhere.
It was perfectly chaste sleeping together with Hypothermia. Pretty much a sleepover of two close friends, if those happened every (or almost every) night. Hypothermia needed closeness, physical and emotional alike. And Onslaught?
It was… comforting. Someone to see for her at a moment’s notice. Someone to help hop onto her wheelchair faster if she woke up feeling nature’s call. And, well, someone to cuddle with in general.
Say what you want about it, but damn, Hypothermia was a big one to hug. Absolutely delightful. It’s as if she was a large body pillow that only Onslaught could use. Warm too, however surprising that was.
No, she wasn’t wearing her ice clothes. Wearing those to bed would be… bad. Way too cold for Onslaught, and they would probably melt without a conscious Hypothermia to hold it in shape.
Thankfully, the pirates they killed left them some stuff behind. Pillaging their wardrobes was one way of asserting dominance over the crushed Red Vipers remnant force. It certainly helped them a lot, allowing them to get a change of clothes. And, even more importantly, a change of underwear.
They got everything from simple boxers through sexy lingeries to some new age body-fitting bodysuits covering only the body (limbs were free) while also making you feel as if you weren’t wearing anything at all.
Hypothermia settled for some conservative black pajamas, probably because they found nothing cuter. Yes, Onslaught still remembers the kitten pajamas that Hypothermia got for a birthday present not long after being freed from her parents, the ones that she had to be bribed with food to take off for laundry because it was the prettiest and nicest thing she ever wore.
Hypothermia loved cute clothes, she just didn’t like showing them to people that she wasn’t close with.
Onslaught in the meantime complained loudly about none of the few sexy lingeries (garter belt and all) fitting her small body, which included some angry pouting until Hypothermia gave her a hug.
Eventually she ended up with perfectly normal pajamas that actually matched Hypothermia in color (not like it mattered to her, for obvious reasons).
Now it’s Onslaught that feels as if she was a body pillow.
“Hey, I’m not going to disappear if you let go of me, Thermy.” Onslaught says. Hypothermia refuses to cooperate and still lies on her side right next to her, holding her as if her life depended on it.
“You did, last time.” Hypothermia replies quietly.
Big oof. Biggest oof.
“But I’m back, right?” Onslaught replies. “So it was just… an unexpectedly long journey! I didn’t get to tell you before leaving, it was just in such a hurry. And now I’m back!”
Hypothermia says nothing. Onslaught reads her answer from her body. She really isn’t buying it at all. It wouldn’t be even nearly as easy.
“Look, I have an idea.” Onslaught then says. It’s time for a big one. “We’re now free to make decisions for ourselves, without any meddling Author, right? So we can do things that we weren’t allowed to do in the past, yes? Because it wasn’t part of the plot back then, hmm?”
Hypothermia lets out a very faint ‘mm-hmm’. She doesn’t seem very interested in the implications of her newly found freedom. She is, in the end, a person of simple tastes. She just wants them to be happy.
Her own happiness was always secondary. Then again, when Onslaught was happy, she was happy. Eternal bystander. One of the many things that they’ll have to deal with together.
Humility mentioned that people tend to live for up to two centuries nowadays. Onslaught had a lot of time to work on Hypothermia to make sure that she would stop being a dumbass. And she was going to do it. As soon as possible (so that she could be happy for the longest possible time).
Her Revy had his grand quest of getting them all off this planet. Onslaught just made her own grand quest of making sure that those close to her would stop being dumbasses. She was going to make Revy happy, she was going to make Hypothermia happy and…
… honestly, jokes about Virtue becoming her mommy aside, her dad would probably benefit from finding someone for himself. He swore off all social life after her mother died, dedicating himself fully to being the best father he could be… and to the concept of overthrowing the US Government. It couldn’t be healthy for him in the long term!
And, well, it sort of wasn’t.
“Soooo… I figured it out.” Onslaught then says. “Do you want to be my big sister officially and legally?”
Hypothermia stays quiet for several seconds. Nothing but confusion in her body. Onslaught gives her a moment to fully process it.
“Huh?” Is what she gets out of it.
“Look, you were always pretty much my big sister.” Onslaught replies. “Calm, dependable, helpful, someone I could always rely on. So I want to make it official. I talked with dad already, he is alright with it. And I think that you deserve having a proper father, even if it’s plenty late.”
“Uhm.” Hypothermia glances to the side. Or, more like, suddenly has problems looking at Onslaught. Thankfully, Onslaught remains utterly unaware of it due to her blindness. “W-what about Iceberg?”
“Do you want him on your family tree?” Onslaught replies with a question. While Hypothermia is pondering the answer to it, her bestie snuggles even closer to her, rubbing her head into her chin.
Hey! Hypothermia is really big and cuddly. Onslaught loves taking advantage of it. She knows well enough that so does her bestie. The dreaded ice queen was way more touch starved than should be humanly possible.
“Not really.” Hypothermia eventually replies quietly. “Years and we barely know each other.”
Way to spark sibling rivalry. Lock them in a rat race for the title of the strongest individuality user of their parents' silly little cult. Iceberg tried to be the stronger one, but wasn’t. Hypothermia didn’t care about being the stronger one, but she was. No wonder it escalated nearly into murder attempts.
“I’d prefer having you.” Hypothermia says. Then she sees Onslaught’s face morph into a shit eating grin, so she decides to add the necessary clarification. “As a sibling.”
“Aww, there go all my hopes and dreams.” Onslaught says before chuckling loudly. “So, is that an agreement?”
“Y-yes.” Hypothermia replies, so quietly that it’s barely audible. In Onslaught’s opinion, it’s an incredible progress for her. Onslaught’s just so damn proud of her… of her sister! Holy shit that’s awesome!
She can’t wait to tell Revy about what just happened! He’ll be overjoyed, even if in his own emotionally stunted way.
Wait a moment, why is almost everyone around her having issues displaying their emotions? Even her dad had shades of that, although it might have been hard to believe with how well he trained his mask.
Onslaught will have to be emotional for them all then!
Moments later Onslaught decides that it’s enough of it and she promptly demonstrates that Hypothermia can be incredibly expressive when you know where to tickle her.
***
Revenant got his seven elite mooks in the morning (naturally, mornings were a matter of convention this deep into the planet). No mindless puppets as he feared, instead seven well-trained people.
According to Humility, there were certain settings to the elite mooks spawning. In line with the original game. Different elite mook units to be spawned, with slightly different composition. What they got this time was Revenant’s personal guard, seven members of it.
He only recruited people from the special ops units to it. Delta Force and the likes. No particular specialization, just former operatives. Guns, explosives, comms, first aid, driving, they could do everything. None of them had individualities. But they reached the peak of what regular humans could do, making them pretty much as good as many villain lieutenants.
US Government’s biggest mistake, one that most countries in the world committed at the time? When the Wishgranter came, the three military alliances that divided the Solar System between them were busy gearing up to the inevitable military confrontation. The Fourth World War. And what happened when the individualities start appearing?
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
They stopped. They chose peace and focused on the wave of new internal problems that the individualities brought. And when the initial chaos caused a spike in governmental spending? What was one of the first things that the governments scaled down on?
Armies. Because when you planned to deploy your forces on domestic soil, you needed police, the local equivalents of the FBI and SWAT units. Deploying the army required announcing a martial law, and doing that without sufficiently big reasons would only destabilize the country.
Besides, the army on the street was an escalation. An announcement that the government was losing control and was ready to risk large collateral damage to regain it.
So, when the individualities caused chaos in the countries, when they caused ruin of the cities, when they caused a spike in crime and destruction of property… the governments cut down the spending on their armed forces.
There was going to be no Fourth World War, everyone knew it at the time. No one was ready for it, not while their countries were in chaos. Not when the supervillains were running rampant.
If you scaled down on fighter jets, warships and tanks, you could deploy better funded police officers to the streets. You could pay them well enough that they were ready to risk their lives on the street in the world of bullshit that the individualities brought. You could also finance hospitals better to deal with suddenly way more varied injuries and medical issues. You could funnel funds into outreach programs to help metahumans that went through nasty things to not switch into villainy.
You needed fighter jets, warships and tanks to deal with the hostile armies. But in the world of supervillains, the priorities were different. Enough for the army to continue existing, but with numbers and financing of slightly more peaceful times.
That was a costly mistake that everyone realized once it was too late to roll it back. No one expected the situation to deteriorate to this degree. Thousands of well-trained people were released to the streets in times of individuality-induced crisis. Some of them managed to find a job in suddenly expanded police departments, in the newly formed Metahuman Suppression Unit etc. But many choose other options.
The People's Liberation Front built an army out of those people. Dozens of villain organizations got themselves elite mooks made mostly of demobilized soldiers. Especially those more bloodthirsty. Especially those that felt like missing the World War robbed them of something.
The existence of the National Guard alone turned out to be a pain in the ass. So many pre-trained people throughout the population. Just waiting to be picked up and reforged into an army once the tensions rose.
Revenant preferred those less bloodthirsty. People that grew to dislike the Government for personal reasons, people with problems that he could solve. Family members cured from terminal diseases with Overhaul’s individuality. That one officer that fucked things up in the past which led to their teammates’ deaths, choking on their own blood in some distant basement. This sort of thing.
People with a level of loyalty that money alone couldn’t buy. And yet he still used other means to make sure that they couldn’t backstab him. There were individualities to ensure loyalty. He left nothing to chance.
He told Decay to help them get over it. They worked together several times. Looked down on him at the beginning, then he earned a reasonable degree of professional respect. Though they still worked for Revenant, not for his dragon.
He’ll get them to figure out the new equipment and so on later. He could do it himself (he did use a lot of it on the way here), but… they had more experience when connecting equipment into a combat doctrine was involved. Revenant was a marksman with benefits of his individuality, but they were the actual professionals.
Humility set up Overhaul as the next resurrection target. Then he heard the message that things took a turn towards complicated.
***
Their little group was doing more than just resurrecting more comrades and performing unexpected adult adoptions. Revenant was capable of multitasking pretty well, and he had enough people to act as his hands and legs.
Destro was slowly getting to know the Triumvirate in charge of their friendly local civilian population, the man making sure to keep the cooperation as smooth as possible while learning all he could about the New Springfield. Soon, he was going to be Revenant’s actual political advisor.
Virtue temporarily lost her usefulness in farming, thanks to Revenant seizing control of a fully developed enviro section of the ship (which, apparently, covered both the aeroponics and life support). She left dealing with it to Thorn, instead taking an active role in patrols.
They had close to a hundred people to help with it. The locals already had something resembling a map of the tunnels, the pirates only further expanding on it. They continued their work. Cameras and maps, Humility then helping parse the whole thing into an ever growing map.
A few more days, and they’d have it large enough to start deciding on chokepoints, traps, potential outposts aside from the two frigates, perhaps on a number of tunnels to be demolished in a controlled way to channel potential enemy forces where they wanted them in.
Except, before that happened, they encountered something out of place. The patrol, despite being composed entirely of the locals, acted smart. Secured the place, and called for backup. Less than an hour later, Revenant departs from Ball Python together with a pair of his bodyguards (he had only seven people, and yet he preferred to stick to 8h workday unless it was time for a battle), Lieutenant Colonel Palmer and Humility.
The bodyguards all picked the closest equivalent of their own old equipment that they could find among the pirate equipment. Not enough time to get the new stuff tested. For now, they’ve focused on familiar things.
***
“Well, well, well.” Revenant comments dryly once they arrive at the scene. Some of Palmer’s militiamen were there to meet them, clearly having issues with their discovery and trying to not look at it. “There was a lot of anger in this room.”
Palmer glances at the arterial bloodsplatter all over the ceiling. It was at least three meters above the floor.
“Controlled anger.” The soldier says. His military fatigues are worn, but the man has clearly stopped looking so much like a walking mess underneath them. “The cuts are precise.”
Revenant noticed the same thing.
Three pirates, dead most likely since the day of their battle, despite the brief war never reaching this area. First of them gunned down with what looked like a heavy machine gun. Second one slammed into the wall with enough strength to dent the wall behind him. Third one killed with a single slash that practically beheaded the man.
He glances at one of his men.
“Judging from the positioning of bodies, it was an attack from behind.” Roderick Chapman replies. He was a former police officer. From Chicago Police Department’s Homicide Division to the city’s SWAT unit to, well, this. The closest thing Revenant had as an assistant when criminology was involved. A lucky roll on the mook gacha. “Someone gunned down that one during the approach, slammed the second one into the wall and then sliced the third one, in this order.” He tilts the head a little while thinking it over. “Good planning. Took potential covers into account. Slaughtered them without giving them time to respond.”
Second opinion is important. Revenant is acutely aware that he isn’t perfect. He makes mistakes. He might be good, but sometimes he is too good to notice obvious things. And sometimes a fresh perspective means more than skills.
One of the members of the local equivalent of the National Guard that found the corpses raises her hand.
“There are more of them.” She says when Palmer nods at her to speak. “We’ve counted seventeen thus far, but there might be more, we didn’t go far. All of them with similar injuries. Ammunition of similar caliber, blunt force trauma, clean arterial slices, either alone or in groups of two to three. Few more dead by directed explosions, possibly mines or IEDs.”
Sounds knowledgeable about the subject. On her armor’s armpiece, a cross signifying a field medic. Might be some civilian doctor of appropriate age and fitness. Useful skills of this nature made you a better soldier in the times of need.
When they heard that corpses were found, Revenant and Humility made a plan. It was best for Revenant to stay quiet until Humility speaks. If it was some known threat, they might have outed themselves as someone of a not-local disposition. So… he does his best to look smart… while staying quiet.
How did the saying go? Better stay quiet and make people suspect that you’re stupid than to open your mouth and prove that for certain?
“Uh-oh.” Humility says a moment later. “Powered armor suited for mobility. Engaging multiple enemies in melee. Launching multiple attacks, slowly whittling down their numbers.”
“That doesn’t narrow it down even nearly as much as I’d like it to.” Palmer replies. He is still clearly on-guard if not downright hostile when Humility is involved. “That’s a relatively common tactic for the heavies in an environment like this.”
“We found something more.” The medic says. “And I think that you should see it.”
***
The pirate’s last stand was as much of a failure as the rest of their battle. They passed by a lot more corpses along the way. All of them torn to shreds in the same way, with a number of other ways of dying mixed in. Mostly explosives.
There was a slightly heavier armored pirate where the medic led them to. Bulky built too. Judging from how the gangsters typically operated, he had to be someone important in the gang. The leader of the group.
Someone chopped his head off. Clean cut, with something extremely sharp guided by a body with a lot of strength - it’s not easy to cut a neck this cleanly with one swipe of a weapon, unless you had at least a minor superstrength individuality.
That guy was wearing their armor at the time, the blade going through the armor and everything else. Sure, the neck had to be allowed to bend, so it wasn’t thick armor, but… still.
At least an equivalent of a middle-grade physical amp individuality. Not bad. Powered armor? Genetic improvements? Cyberware or bioware implants? He had a lot of questions, especially as he still hadn't fully gauged what the future tech was capable of.
The assailant disposed of him quickly and brutally. Then (the way blood was splattered around confirmed it to both Revenant Chapman), once the pirate expired, dismembered the corpse before nailing each part of it to the wall with a long spike.
There was a note attached to each and every one of them.
‘Murderer’ on his right arm. ‘Rapist’ on his left arm. ‘Slaver’ on his right leg. ‘Thief’ on his left leg. ‘Pirate’ on his chest. ‘Sinner’ on the final nail, the one going right through his forehead. .
Damn. This brings back memories from his old world. He knew of a few vigilantes that marked their victims' crimes, even if they typically weren’t this… graphic. Mostly to remind themselves that they were punishing evil, or in a vain hope that they’d be treated differently by the police and the heroes if they made it clear what their allegiance was.
It's the Killcounter affair all over again, isn’t it?
“Well, that narrows it down.” Humility says. The AI has approached the corpse a moment earlier, looking all over the body up close. “There is only one group that has this as their MO.” It glances towards Palmer. “No issues on your side?”
“Not really, no.” The officer replies, Surprisingly calm, despite his genocidal hatred towards transhumans (that, tbh, they earned and in big part deserved). “They are a pain in the ass and a bunch of unpredictable mavericks, but when everything goes fubar you can’t help but be happy to see them.”
Revenant still has no idea who they are talking about. Is this some sort of comedy movie thing, where they are talking about something without mentioning the name, and then you discover that they were talking about different things? It would be fun.
Revenant isn’t used to finding such simple things fun. His pre-death self’s definition of humor was putting Mastermind and Lady Murder on the opposite sides of the same table during the meetings of the VAA’s Board of Executives, forcing them to see each other for hours at end, just to see them seethe hate at each other while being unable to commit a murder.
For the full image of this… practical joke, Mastermind was a bigot espousing supremacy of normal humans over the mutants, while Lady Murder was a bigot espousing supremacy of mutants over normal humans. Seeing their suffering was one of the few guilty pleasures that the old Revenant had and considered to be ‘fun’.
He still remembers the hard fight to bottle the laughter down when Decay interrupted one of their rounds of snark-to-snark combat by telling them to get a room. Lady Murder almost leaped at him with a sword over the table, while Mastermind started dry-heaving in the background.
Even today, remembering their suffering fuels his engines a little. But he would rather spend time watching Onslaught’s antics, especially with Hypothermia around to make them funnier.
This is the fucking character development thing at play, isn’t it?
In the meantime, he does his best to look like he has any idea what’s going on. As the old saying goes, it’s better to stay quiet and make people suspect that you’re dumb than open your mouth and confirm their suspicions.
“Why didn’t they just pop up at our base?” Palmer then asks suddenly. “They should have,
we’d certainly do our best to host them.” And yes, Revenant is still missing context for this.
“There was only one attacker.” Humility comments. That… suddenly makes shit real, especially as the number of slaughtered pirates was actually significant. That was some SS-Rank threat level. “Might be a remnant of a larger unit. As for the ‘popping up’ bit… they might be investigating us before making contact.”
And he can’t even ask, because if some random officer of some random ethnopolity knows them, it’s probably something that’s widely known. God fucking dammit, is this how a cliffhanger feels to a character in-story?
***
I mean, why not?
Lieutenant Colonel Ferris Palmer :P
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