A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay 14: Home Invaders (Patreon)

A Lewd Cultivator in Brockton Bay
Chapter 14: Home Invaders

-VB-

The attack came in the morning. 

I was just getting up after finishing an all nighter, but I heard something from beyond my house. 

I knew something was up when boots pounded the asphalt outside of the house.

And it turned out to be a very mean business these people wanted when the first bullet shattered my front window and destroyed the coffee machine.

Cussing up a storm, I rushed to the basement door and flung it open. In seconds, I was heading deep underground in search of my power armor. 

Above, I heard boots thunder into my house, and shouted orders of unfamiliar people telling others to look for me by title. 

“FIND THAT NEW WAVE RECRUIT!” 

Oh yeah, they wanted me, but I wasn’t about to let them find me unarmed!

“He’s in the basement!” someone shouted.

How the fuck did they hear me?! I was already two stories down!

I jumped down the last flight of stairs to the “official” lowest basement floor and then pushed open the secret entrance. I jumped down those stairs too, a feat made possible by my improved body, and landed on the ground floor with a thump.

A normal person would have tripped trying to run forward, but my ki reinforced muscles and skin blew off the stress like it was a cool spring breeze and pushed me forward with the burst of a pouncing jaguar. 

In seconds, I was in front of the mechanized locker holding my power armor and I pressed the button.

Wheeeerrrr….

“Come on…!” I hissed as I heard the rushed stomping of boots coming down the stairs grow louder each second.

Wheeeeerrrrrr….

“Are you fuckng serious-?!” I hissed before grabbing a wrench I’d left here last time I visited and threw it at the stairs just as the first of the home invaders came down to this floor. The wrench struck the unarmored head of the vanguard and caved the cranium in with the same ease of a child smashing in a watermelon with a hammer. 

Chu-kung!

“Finally-!” I shouted and then jumped into the now open and blue light-lit cabinet, where my open power armor was waiting for me. My jump took me directly into the power armor with precision only controlled push could have achieved.

Bullets were flying, but they had been aiming for where I had been, not where I was now.

As soon as the entirety of my body made its way into the power armor with that jump, the power armor snapped shut.

There was a whirl of hydraulics and electronics coming online while the sounds of bullets bouncing off of the armor plates rained in the background.

A deep bass voice that threatened unsettling levels of violence with its tone alone rumbled from the power armor as it came fully online.

“{Close Quarter Combat Veteran Armor Mark 2, all systems online and ready for combat. Waiting for biometric confirmation...}”

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c1/5d/e8/c15de8276bd66ecd23de5dfbcf57f635.jpg

The blue lights on the armor lit up red.

“{Confirmed. Welcome back, operator.}”

“Hello to you, too, sonny,” I mumbled before I charged out of the cabinet.

The gangsters in my base were allowed half a second to gawk and realized how fucked they were before I punched the closest of them.. 

I noticed before his head exploded that it was a skinhead with the E88 tattooed on the left temple of his head. 

The two ton armor hissed and vented out superheated air made by the sudden explosion of movement. 

Turning on the exterior comms, I growled.

“You should have run when you had the chance.”

-VB-

I charged up the stairs, bashing aside anyone who got in my way and disabling anyone who didn’t die in the first hit. 

Then I was back to the first floor of the house, and my furniture was trashed. I looked around. My work station and laptop were in pieces!

I didn’t save the last program!

“I didn’t know you were a Tinker, too.” 

I snapped towards the owner of the voice in anger, and narrowed my eyes behind my helmet. 

Standing there with a small retinue of armed E88 gangster was a masked man dressed up with claws and fur.

“Stormtiger,” I grunted. “What is the meaning of this?”

“It’s because of you that the Empire is suffering. If it wasn’t for you, then no one would have known anything.”

“And this makes your situation better?” I asked incredulously.

“No, but it makes us feel better when we hang you up for your girlfriend to see! And if we’re going down, we’re taking you down with us!” he shouted and lunged at me. 

“Too slow,” I growled as, even with my power armor, slid underneath him on my knees with speed that surprised the Empire’s fastest cape, and punched up into his sternum.

There was a sickening crack and blood splattered down onto me and from the man’s back. He gagged and spat blood before I whirled around in place and slammed Stormtiger onto the floor. 

With a squelch, I pulled my fist out of the cape’s chest cavity and watched as the lights in his eyes faded away into stillness.

Looking up, I stared at the Empire gunners.

“All of you are dead!” I roared and lunged.

-VB-

The first Protectorate hero to arrive was Velocity, which made sense. Fastest hero arrived first to assess the situation and whatnot. 

Unfortunately for Velocity, the one-sided fight was over by the time he arrived. The moment he entered my house from the broken front door, he nearly slipped on the pool of blood that one of the dead Empire gunners made when I tore his face apart.

Apparently, people still lived for a bit even after the front quarter of their face was ripped apart. His scream hadn’t been pleasant at all.

Velocity looked around the bloodstained and body-ridden living room and kitchen in horror. 

“What the fuck…”

“You’re here,” I called out as I walked out of the basement with the bodies of the dead.

“What the-?!” he quicktimed his words, but I understood them nonetheless because he didn’t speak too fast. “Who are you?!”

“Alan Marris,” I replied easily as I dumped the bodies on the floor. “Owner of the house.”

Velocity blurred a little bit before he relaxed. “Oh. Right. Umm…” he looked around. The exposed lower half of his face paled as he really took in the scene and came to the logical solution. “The Empire attacked you in your own home…?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Stormtiger there,” I gestured to the body Velocity was staring at with wide eyes. “Blamed me for the Empire’s situation and said something about taking me down with them.”

“That’s… That’s…”

“Stupid, I know,” I scoffed before I headed downstairs to collect more bodies.

“You killed them all.”

“Most, not all,” I replied.

“But you’re a hero-”

“And this hero is also a person who just had his home invaded. Save the propaganda for the appropriate occasion,” I snapped before I fully went down the basement. 

When I came back up with the two survivors of this assault, I dropped them onto the ground in front of Velocity’s feet. 

“Deal with them how you will, but if I see them again, then they are dead.”

Velocity’s pale face hardened just a bit to make him look more professional. “Don’t threaten others in front of me.”

I stared at him for a moment before nodding. “At least you have the balls to say what you want, not the law.”

Mere minutes later, both New Wave and PRT arrived in droves. As I watched them arrive, I felt my nerves grow more and more tattered as the adrenalin ran out and the heavy weight of killing made itself known on my mind.

I would break down later. Not now. 

I gulped silently underneath power armor and soldiered on for now.