Vice Bunker 22 (Patreon)

Vice Bunker

Chapter 22

-VB-

I didn’t regret opening up to the PRT’s bunker too much.

However, certain instances made me question myself.

“No, you don’t get to enforce your rules here,” Harley reiterated for the sake of the PRT officers decked out in armor and foam launchers that were stopped at the halfway point of the tunnel.

“Look, you’re just a psychologist,” the squad leader grunted. “We are supposed to be in h-”

“No, you’re not.”

All of them but Harley tensed up as I poured myself out of the cracks and seams in the tunnel. This body of mine fell from the top of the tunnel and splashed right in between Harley and the squad leader before growing into a more Cthulhu-esque form sans the wings that nearly took up the entire height and width of the tunnel, and formed that body in under ten seconds.

I have been experimenting with nanotechnology lately and got some pretty tasty upgrades.

The squad leader - I read “09 Jason” from his name tag - stared up at me without moving his face up.

“And who are you?”

“Me? I’m Yal’Manus,” I smiled, and the four fed goons behind him almost pulled their weapons up. “Now, I don’t remember giving your people any permission to come over to my side lately, so I’m going to have to ask you to turn around and go back.”

I could feel the literal hate pouring out of the squad leader and the goons.

It was in moments like this that I regretted just a little making this tunnel. Why? Because the PRT ENE didn’t have its house in order. The extreme environment, cabin fever, limited food and water, and less-than-ideal living conditions had radicalized quite a number of PRT’s own shardless soldiers.

This was not the first time members of the PRT tried to muscle their way into my tunnel, and it certainly won’t be the last.

Worse, this group seemed to have a distinct hate for anything cape, because they didn’t exude their current hostility when they were just talking with Harley.

“Or are you rogue members of the PRT?” I asked, and my threat was clear in the way my muscles bulged and claws lengthened noticeably.

The five PRT troopers held their ground-.

“What is happening here?!”

I looked up from the squad leader to a costumed woman running up the tunnel. It wasn’t Miss Militia, Battery, or Vista. It was a new trigger who got inducted into the Protectorate ENE from within the bunker.

The ginger-haired woman - mature teenager? - came to a stop five yards behind the backmost trooper and looked around with her hands on her waist in an obvious display of condescending disappointment.

This only made the troopers who looked behind them even more upset. However, with their faces covered, they didn’t show it directly to Tasha, the latest member of Protectorate ENE.

Tasha, a ginger with more tits and ass than sense, was a Brute and Changer; her power was partially making herself as mature-looking and sexy as possible, but this extra biomass almost buffed up her strength, endurance, and durability. Sure, she was only Brute/Changer 3, but that was weak among Protectorate ENE’s roster. She was there, wearing a costume and wielding authority, more as a figure for people to look up to and get distracted by in a bleak -.

This felt too much like the rules of the surface world.

And the PRT troopers knew that very well.

As they turned to argue with her, I kept that body there in case Harley needed protection and focused on my other bodies.

Right now, two bodies roamed the surface, disguised as mutated cannibals. I needed to keep my eyes on the cannibals because even if they didn’t grow in numbers exponentially due to the current lunar apocalypse, they were still a threat with multiple capes hellbent on anarchy if only to make those who were lucky and drag them down to the mud.

It was like communism only with cannibalism, forever winter, and no hope for the future.

And if they grew too big like they did last month? I’ll sabotage one of their heat generators or add poison to their water supply again. Or just detonate one of their own bombs.

I also had two more bodies working within my bunker, one of which was the original “small” body. The other small body tried to gauge the mood within my bunker, usually by sneaking around the corridors, public chambers, outside restrooms, and dining halls when none of my women, my “cronies,” or I were around. Found out a lot of about people that way, but the overall diagnostic of my bunker’s mental and physical health was, according to its own people, good. Not great (they wanted to see the sun) but not middling or bad.

When I focused back on the body with Harley, I noticed that Tasha and the PRT squad were on a standoff against each other rather than us. This was to be expected because, despite their grumbling about law and order, Protectorate ENE was firmly on my side.

Why? Well… I give them food. For me, it wasn’t about making a profit or charity but rather keeping PRT bunker solvent and pliable enough that they won’t spill over to my bunker because they were starving.

Imagine these two bickering groups united in an effort to take my bunker.

By feeding them, I kept the radicals and the moderates butting heads in their bunker. I didn’t want to deal with people who didn’t want to compromise. It made for a messy clean-up when they inevitably caused problems.

I turned back to Harley. “So why were you down here today?” I asked her. With her job as a psychologist in a bunker where people were growing depressed regularly from a lack of sunlight, she would normally be busy.

“Their director asked me to come around for a day,” she rolled her eyes. “And I did ask if you were okay with that. I guess you weren’t listening.”

I chuckled nervously. It’s never good to have someone find out you might not be listening to them.

“Well-”

PWOMF

I turned around and my eyes widened.

The PRT soldiers just fired on Tasha, and the containment foam was rapidly expanding.

She looked just as shocked as I was, and my other eye on the back of my head saw how shocked Harley was. Her jaws didn’t drop for almost anything.

Then the goons turned towards us.

And they pulled out actual guns.

“Oh, you sons of bitches,” I sighed.

Did they think mere pistols and submachine guns would work? They should bring at least artillery pieces! Hell, even a dynamite stick would work better than their peashooters.