Vice Bunker 1 (Patreon)

Commissioned by Definitely not Dio

Vice Bunker
Chapter 1

-VB-

Taylor stared at the Case-53 smiling down at her.

She also tried not to look across the street at where she’d seen him fight Lung, the parahuman warlord who fought toe-to-toe with the Endbringer “Island Sinker” Leviathan.

She shivered as the uncountable number of hands sprouting from this cape’s back slowly but surely changed back to black tentacles that lowered themselves down to the ground to act as … the cape’s feet? Legs?

“Who are you?” she asked instead.

“I’m new,” he replied. “I don’t remember a cape like you out and about in the bay, either, so both of us must be new.” His too wide eyes continued to stare down at her without a single movement of his pupils. He tilted his head just a tiny bit, but it was too obviously artificial to be natural. “What is your cape name?”

She didn’t have one and pushed whatever she was feeling - helpless, weak, terrified, fearful - into her bugs, sending them into a minor frenzy at the edges of her control radius, because it felt as if she didn’t have an adequate enough answer, then this monster cape was going to do to her what he did to Lung.

She did not want to be shown on the newspaper and TV news with fingers and hands sprouting out of her mouth and eyes.

Lung still wasn’t moving.

Was he dead?

She wasn’t sure what to do.

He - not it - noticed that she wasn’t looking at him and looked around. He noticed Lung and … smiled as it turned back to look at her. “He’s alive,” he replied. “Heroic of you to consider your enemy’s life over yours.”

“Heroes… don’t kill.”

“I am not a hero.”

She noticed.

“W-What are you then?”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

She gritted her teeth. The way he was pressing his questions against her made her … upset. Frustrated. Angry.

Her anger quickly drained when she saw the still visible two rail cannons jutting out from between some of his tentacles. Or some of the tentacles were rail cannons. He looked scary, basically. She stowed her own feelings, because she didn’t want to piss off the cape who used his organic-tech weapons(?) to punch holes through a cape whose metallic scales withstood multiple Endbringer punches.

“I…” she didn’t know what to call herself.

“Alimena is a species name of a beautiful blue butterfly. You could shorten it to Alia and then add a lady in front of it. Lady Alia.”

… It sounded good to her. However, she wasn’t going to accept a suggestion from a stranger. She would think about it.

“Just call me Lady for now then.”

He nodded, eyes still wide and smile still big and … unnerving.

As the tentacles all slowly started to withdraw into him, she noticed that his weapons disappeared, too. Was he some kind of cyborg tinker?

He turned back to Lung, walked over to him with a gait that made her eyes itch, and then knelt down, covering his face from her.

She heard a squelch, and when he stood back up, she saw the hands and fingers that had sprouted out of Lung’s orifices had disappeared, leaving an unconscious man free of abnormal digits.

He turned back to look at her and smiled even wider, and then he stared up.

She did, too.

Taylor took in the night sky and the broken moon adorned it. Oh, and the millions of moon fragments that now made a ring around the planet. She remembered when the moon didn’t use to be like that. She remembered how there was no ring around Earth.

All of it happened because now-dead-bitch demanded a ransom for her to not use her apocalyptic tinkertech. Of course, the government refused, and she, in turn, used it on the moon. Her G-Drive or something.

And the apocalypse that began was slowly starting to rain down on Earth.

When she was like twelve, one hundred meteors had struck Earth, none of them bigger than a football. By the time she graduated middle school (which happened a year ago), the annual rate of meteor showers had exponentially increased. Brockton Bay alone suffered fifty meteor strikes, and each of those meteors were bigger than they have been before.

It was why she was out here in the night. Criminals had money she could take, so why couldn’t she be a hero and make money at the same time? She would use that money to buy herself and dad tickets to bunkers.

She shuddered, remembering that it was only last year that a giant meteor the heroes had failed to break up quickly enough managed to strike Ireland. Or rather, there was now an Ireland without a Dublin. The rest of the British isles still suffered from the fallout of a calamity; all coastal towns along the Irish Sea got flooded by tsunamis.

The meteors also threw up dust into the air, and the world got colder each year. It was April here in Brockton Bay, New Hampshire, but the temperature was only hovering at fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

She looked back down and saw the cape.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

He looked back down. He didn’t have a smile anymore. His Changer transformation had ended, and he looked more normal now. Except for his wide black eyes and red irises staring into her soul. And pitch black skin with a purplish tint. And the tentacles for legs thing. He wore a vest and all, which she supposed was better than some monstrous capes that didn’t even wear anything.

“Call me Yal’Manus. Or Manus. It’s a reference.” He paused. “Still, you are a hero?”

“I am.”

He nodded.

“I have a bunker. Would you like to join me? That is, if you work for me, then I’ll open up some rooms for you and your friends,” he said as he reached into his vest and pulled out a card.

She froze as she took his card. It was a simple business card with a phone number and his name.

This guy … had a bunker?

“I… I need to think about it.”

He nodded and then paused again as he looked up. For the first time since she saw him tonight, he frowned as he spoke. “A meteor shower is starting. You might want to get undercover.”

She looked back up and also saw the telltale signs of meteor showers that everyone had come to learn these days.

“Bye,” she hastily spoke before she ran home.

She barely made it before the streets and rooftops got pelted by millions of space rock pebbles.

Mrs. Grinncons, who lived across the street from her, didn’t make it when her house collapsed after being hit by too many big meteors.

Seeing something like that happen right across the street…

When dad woke up, she showed him the card and told him that she got an offer.