Vice Bunker 51 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 51

-VB-

 Eri Kasamoto

This world was … in a worse shape than her home world. 

Sure, her old world had alien invasions, constant wars, and comically evil generals, but this world was just … it was close to dead.

She stared out into the frozen wasteland that, according to her “summoner” and the locals, was a verdant pine forest mere twelve months ago. And the closer to her was the ruins of “Brockton Bay” in New Hampshire, USA. 

It honestly made her sad to see the world turned into this all because of … someone held the moon as a ransom and the government didn’t pay. 

It was a crazy story about a crazier world. 

But it was a crazy world that was trying to claw itself back to normalcy, and the people of “New Brockton Bay” was trying that under the rule of her master.

It felt odd to refer to someone as master because she certainly didn’t like the idea of bending the knee to someone, but considering that she wasn’t … 

She was real, but not as real as her original self could be. She knew that she was a clone, whether she came about as a result of supernatural feat or supernatural science was discussing semantics. And being a clone, she didn’t have any of the obligations and duties that her original self might have. After all, her original self might still be alive out there in the great multiverse, which meant that she didn’t need to try to escape this place to take her original’s place.

Because she wasn’t sure how her original might handle her existence after the, uh, original cloning shenanigans they went through because of the aliens. 

Besides, it wasn’t like she even knew how to get back, not even vaguely. Even Alan, her master, said that his power wasn’t something specific. It chose her randomly out of the entire universe to copy. 

It was … 

Confusing. 

… Oh well, she had a job to do here.

She turned back to the maggots who were gasping and panting like dogs in heat.

“What are all of you doing rolling on the ground?! Get the fuck back up on your feet!” she roared, and the struggling recruits did just that. 

Her master instituted a new recruitment program for both supernatural parahumans, colloquially called capes, and regular people. While there was no need for a military force as her master and the voluntary capes acted as his fiefdom’s security force, it would be remiss of the people themselves if they did not take their own safety into their hands. 

And after a vote among the people and approval from her master, it was declared that there would be a mandatory militia service for all young men ages 26 to 5 for four years each. But since there would be only a hundred militiamen in the first “rotation,” most of the men were spared, especially if someone from their family already volunteered. 

There were a lot of exceptions (if the man in question was the only man in the household, if they worked at a “critical” industry, and whatever whatever) but those exceptions didn’t apply to most. 

There were volunteers among the women, too, and they actually made up a quarter of the recruits as well as the ones who she was given the responsibility of training. 

“Stand at attention!” she snapped, and the shivering and gasping women quickly did as they were told. “Good! Stamina is the foundation of a soldier! It is why soldiers are fed when civilians are left to starve! Soldiers fight for hours on end if not days on end! By the time your basic training is done, all of you will be able to run for hours on end without stop and none of you will leave basic until all of you leave! There will be no exception except in death!”

-VB-

Manuela

Magic existed in this world, she thought with a hum as she waved her wand. 

Instead of teaching anyone, her new master had asked her to perform research into how magic can be harnessed and utilized by the locals and himself. 

Which, in her opinion, didn’t make sense. Summoning was a magical art that took focus, large mana reservoir, and an understanding of what the summoner was doing. The very idea that her master didn’t have two of the three didn’t make sense to her…

But then again, he did prove that magic was not something he knew how to perform outside of his summonings. 

Knock knock.

She paused her ruminations and experiment when she heard the knocks on her lab. “Come in,” she said, and the door pushed inward. Walking into the lab was none other than her master, Alan Marris. 

He was … a very unique figure. 

He appeared human above his waist, even with gray-ish skin, and looked like a giant octopus beneath his waist. He could occasionally focus extremely to change his octopus legs into human legs, clothed of course, but he told her that he considered that a meaningless waist of his efforts that could be used elsewhere. Like coordinating a dozen bodies.

His body was also not “living” like hers and everyone else’s. He told her that it was made out of tiny things called “nanites,” but she didn’t understand much other than the fact that they were a metallic version of how biology worked. Kind of. 

“How are your experiments going?” he asked her as he stood a respectful distance from her lab table. 

“It is going well,” she replied. “Magic definitely exists in your world, but it is hard to gather them in the usual ways.”

“Tell me more.”

“Back in my world, everyone accumulates magic. The rate depends on their magic affinity, practice, and other lesser factors, but it is almost passive. Here, mana is … it almost feels like a desert. I have to strain to pull even an iota of mana. This is not a matter of active pull but a strenuous pull,” she explained.

He nodded along, listening attentively and asking questions.

It was boys and girls like him that made teaching fun.