Vice Bunker 11 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 11

-VB-

While Jack Slash and Bonesaw died…

“MORE!”

Colin - Armsmaster while in costume and/or power armor - rolled out of the way thrice in a row, dodging four different bites from Crawler.

The giant, pillbug-like cape roared as he chased after him.

Armsmaster slammed the butt of his halberd into the ground and then backpedaled quickly, and Crawler charged after him, but the monster didn’t realize that he’d stepped on something and quickly tumbled forward as Armsmaster’s “foam mine” expanded rapidly and covered the entirety of the limb that stepped on the mine.

And then Crawler tugged once with his giant muscles, and the entire asphalt road underneath the foam broke away from the rest of the road and tore away the rock-hard foam with his teeth.

While Crawler was busy with that, Armsmaster quickly rejoined the rest of his team.

As much as he wanted to be the one to score the killing blow on Crawler, he knew that it was not possible in the current situation.

“Where’s the rest of the Nine?” he asked Miss Militia, who was peppering Crawler’s back with incendiary armor-piercing rounds to no effect.

“No idea. The Rig is offline, the console is offline, rest of the communications are offline, radio is crackling but nothing intelligible is coming through-”

She stopped listing as Crawler finally freed himself.

KHOOM KHOOM KHOO-!

Armsmaster whirled around, surprised by the explosions.

KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM-!

That didn’t end.

No one in the bay used explosives on that scale, not even Oni Lee. Lung might, but he’s been out of commission ever since he’s been defeated by the bunker-managing C53 cape, Yal’Manus… who could make artillery inside himself.

“Yal’Manus must be fighting one of the Nine,” he muttered to himself before turning back to Crawler who was standing there, waiting for them.

“Are you two done gawking?” the unrepentant killer growled. “Come on! I wanna fight some more!”

“Masochistic piece of shit,” Armsmaster snapped with uncharacteristic cuss. He stepped forward and spun his halberd around.

“HA HA HA!” Crawler laughed as he charged the two of them. His many feet scratched and tore chunks out of the road, asphalt and concrete. He moved faster than most low-tier Movers and was upon them.

Crawler opened his maw, but Armsmaster knew what was coming. He dodged out of the way, and as he did so, he pressed a button on his halberd. A small panel opened up, and a canister shot out of the shaft and into Crawler’s open maw.

Crawler blitzed right through where Armsmaster had been previously standing toward Miss Militia.

The heroine in question pulled out a rocket launcher from her power and blasted him some fifteen yards from her position.

Smoke and fire erupted, and she quickly rolled out of the way as the juggernaut Brute plowed right through without a hint of discomfort or pain.

And this was about when Armsmaster’s canister did its job.

See, it was something he had prepared specifically for this fight. Something from years ago. It’s why he was using an old halberd.

Because this halberd, for all of the same appearance as his usual halberd, was one dedicated solely to the Slaughterhouse Nine.

The canister in question was his omni-solution to Crawler. It wasn’t supposed to explode, excrete poison, or even discharge shock. The canister was designed to fail because it contained within its core 1.05 milligrams of antimatter.

Crawler stood still for a moment and then turned around. “Now where did you all go?” he sniffed and then smiled cruelly as his eyes landed upon Miss Militia. “Found y-.”

And then Armsmaster used the distraction to run up to the two… and then grabbed Miss Militia before pushing everything into his power armor’s legs and ran.

Crawler stared at them - Colin could see the monster staring at them through the posterior head camera - and then moved to chase.

That’s when the canister containing the antimatter ran out of power and failed.

And 43 tons of TNT worth of energy ignited.

One moment, it was just the three of them fighting in a desolate and snowy street in Brockton Bay’s abandoned surface city.

In the next moment, Colin used his power armor and body to shield Miss Militia from an explosion ripping apart the street and the buildings. His vision simply came over with smoke and fire for a brief moment as his power armor deployed an energy shield, but even that failed after a moment.

When the explosion ended, he found his armor in critical condition.

“Hannah?” he called softly.

“... WOUNDED BUT ALIVE,” she replied back to him loudly because she probably lost her hearing in the explosion they had been less than a hundred yards from.

KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM-

The rhythmic explosions in the distance felt even weaker and smaller now after he experienced 40 tons of TNT worth of it within a hundred yards of his position.

Slowly, he got up, took up his halberd again, and turned to face Crawler (or whatever was left of him).

As the smoke cleared from the street in the snowy winds that were becoming depressingly familiar, the two heroes looked on … and saw Crawler’s corpse, mangled beyond repair.

Hell, even most of his bones were gone.

“YOU DID IT,” she “muttered.” “... WHAT EVEN WAS THAT?”

“Antimatter.”

“... CRAZY IDIOT.” Colin was sure that she meant to say that under her breath, but he was too tired to correct her on his intellect. The last time he tested for his IQ, it was 111.

He snorted before wincing in pain. His armor had done well in absorbing shock, but much like car seats and emergency airbags, his armor had mitigated much of the shock, not all of it.

KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM KHOOM-

“WHO THE HELL IS DOING THAT?” Miss Militia grumbled irritably while her ears bled.

-VB-

I stared down at the site of the collapsed building and what I had correctly assumed was Bonesaw’s little gift from the afterlife.

I was not as successful as I would have liked in eradicating whatever it was.

I watched as the few people who were still on the surface mutated and started making more of the gaseous pathogen within themselves. It was a virus that acted on the organism level, using the entire organism as a host and coordinating when they should burst to infect more people. Each of the infected reminded me of Boomers from Left 4 Dead. I gave them the only mercy I could provide.

I needed to cleanse the area around here as well.

Still, this was the end of the Slaughterhouse Nine. With Jack, Bonesaw, and Siberian dead, no one else would be able to lead the rest of Nine, if they survived.

“I suppose that’s it then,” I hummed out loud, causing the New Wave’s new generation to turn toward me. “Jack Slash, Siberian, and Bonesaw are dead. This is the end of their rule… and Brockton Bay is their grave.”

Glory Girl snorted and relaxed as did Eric but Laserdream didn’t.

“What about the others?” the eldest of the second generation asked.

“We’ll worry about them later,” I replied as I geared up for another barrage. “Bonesaw’s plague needs to be neutralized, which means that we have to level the entire area and burn it.”

Glory Girl sighed. “This was one of the less bad neighborhoods.”

BOOOM

I paused and then stared at my own barrels. That wasn’t me.

“Over there!”

I turned to look and saw Eric pointing to a new smoke column rising up on the other side of the city.

“That’s not any of the Nine’s powers…” Laserdream muttered.

“... The three of you can go on if you want to. They might need help, and I’m just dealing with the aftermath.”

The three looked at me, looked at each other, nodded to themselves and then to me, and finally flew away.

I looked back on the ground where wisps of the plague still lingered.

My howitzer barrels came right back down.

“Loading incendiary shells.”