A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: 44 (Patreon)

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: 44

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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Cardio.

You’d think that I wouldn’t be very good at it.

And, you’d be wrong.

My usual plan when it came to problems was to run away and/or hide, therefore I made sure that I could commit to that plan when necessary.

So, when my Geiger counter started to spike and the air started to ionize enough for smaller particulates in the air to start burning, I burst into a sprint.

The invisibility of the quadrotor that just flash-fried my fellow teleporter stopped suddenly, and I did all that I could intensify the flow of the stream of barriers over my body. No, I’m not going to die of radiation poisoning.

“I need the closest source of water, now!” I ran through the streets, all too aware of the quaking ground and the movement of massive aerial fortresses towards my direction. A random blast of some weapon wrecked a building right to my left, then a boulder composed of stone wrecked a building to my right. The armored gynoids started firing into the air and some heavy weapons started getting deployed, while wrecks started falling around me. “I can teleport once I’m inside, as long as its not electrified!”

‘That would’ve been good for planning, if you shared it earlier.’

“Why do you think my safehouses are always near beaches!?” Energizing the whole ocean was nearly impossible. Not only that, but I knew that water was a good insulator against radiation. If I had any particles on me, making gaps in my defenses, the plan was to dunk myself in open ocean then to a safehouse. “Body of water now, please!”

‘Keep running forward. Creating a point of entry.’ A gynoid body leapt ahead and reared back its arm in mid-air. A second later it smashed through the road and went straight through with boosters on its armor flaring. The sewer. I didn’t hesitate and leapt in, just as more explosions and thrown, massive projectiles hit me on the way out. I splashed into knee-deep water and hit the deck, regardless of the contents. It flowed over my barriers, consuming energy, but through it I sent a probe in every direct. I took hold of the drone following me around and sent myself through all the pipes and water to an outlet… outside of the city. ‘Impressive.’

“No. Not impressive. That was way too close, even if you did manage to kill the other guy.” I wicked away the rest of the water and sewage from me and cast my power around the city. A growing field of radiation and ionization saturated the place now. I wasn’t getting in there. The sewer was rapidly filling up from the point of entry we’d made, too. “How many people are still over there?”

‘I am currently escorting the remaining people out with all due haste—

“Parvati, that place is getting ionized and irradiated to hell and back. In a few minutes, only Maelstrom can wade in there. ‘All due haste’ isn’t going to cut it.” I normally didn’t interrupt people, but I broke that rule when lives were on the line. “If there’s any time to start using the assets you’ve put into orbit, it’s now. People are going to die. Tell me you can think of something.”

‘…I see. Deploying strategic weaponry.’ The drone directed upward and so did the gynoids who managed to sprint their way over to my direction. The soft clicking of my Geiger counter intensified their presence. It was close to ten now outside of the radiation field. ‘I have also contacted Maelstrom. I have decontamination units ready to be deployed.’

“I’m willing to deploy everything you’re willing to send over here. I know that it’ll show off too much strength, but we don’t have any options.” We didn’t expect the counter to my power and that of other teleporters was to literally irradiate battlefields. This was the sort of madness that I’d hoped to avoid in my life, simply because of how many human casualties was involved. I’ll be needing so much therapy after this. “We hold back, and things will just get worse.”

Years and years were disappearing from the lives of everyone still in the city.

Shin might’ve launched the attack and planned to counter the Shogun’s teleporter, but it was me going around dropping off Parvati’s troops and evacuating civilians that set off the countermeasures. The Shogun wouldn’t have deployed his own counter measure, if his teleporter was still alive, but we’d killed him and set things into motion. I knew that it wasn’t entirely my fault, but guilt was rarely rational, and I didn’t exactly have a therapist to help me through traumas of getting a whole city murdered.

So, I committed to ending this fight as fast as possible.

‘Confirmed. I will have my warrior forms ready. However, first, take cover.’ Parvati’s words heralded stars falling from the sky wreathed in emerald flame. Speeding through the sky, the projectiles from the satellites were magnetic bottles that contained plasma. Upon impact it would release kinetic energy and thermal energy at once. That was my theoretical knowledge on the matter, anyway. In practice, they slammed into the giant war machine of the Shogun and the flying fortresses’s shields with enough force to send shockwaves flying in every direction. Tiles flew off of roofs, gusts of winds hurled in every direction, clouds parted in the sky, and trees bent. ‘The majority of the civilians were protected by my deployed troops by taking cover and erecting shields. However, sustained bombardment will compromise their positions. I need to unleash the entirety of the loaded payload to overcome the enemy.’

Did I expect this to turn into a rescue mission?

Honestly, yeah. I did.

This was what happened when superhumans decided to duke it out. People got caught up in the crossfire, as people with power decided to fight people who wanted to take what wasn’t theirs. Ever since the dawn of time, people have been fighting nature, against animals, and against each other with all the things that they could get their hands on, so now that superhumans were normal, we fought each other with what we now naturally had… and more. Superhumans backed by corporations or nations, superhumans backing nations or corporations, it didn’t matter. More than nuclear weapons, superhumans sent society back to the stone age as the rule of law was replaced by the survival of the fittest.

Times like this reminded me very clearly why I just stayed in a bunker with a dog, instead of continuing to interact with humanity. Still, as I ruminated while a city was ravaged by orbital fire, radiation, a giant biomechanical monster, and flying fortresses spewing out endless legions of machines, there was a reason why I wasn’t back in the bunker. A reason that still persisted, despite everything that went wrong, and who could maybe help fix things up so that people would at least not die off because of hunger.

Kaede Walker.

And, I suppose, Parvati.

Between these two, maybe, the world had a chance of being remade better and more capable of handling the power that it now had.

Maybe.

…

Stars continued to fall from the sky upon the Shogun’s biomechanical titan and Shin’s flying fortresses. They were being suppressed by the barrage, instead of being destroyed, because any more additional firepower would mean the civilian population of the city being destroyed. However, with Maelstrom’s arrival, Parvati didn’t need to upgrade their output. Just Maelstrom alone was enough to turn the tide of battle.

Both foes focused on defeating her, while shouldering the attacks, because if they did otherwise they’d lose.

Maelstrom should be able to defeat them, but there was an issue.

If she didn’t hold back, then she’d kill all the people she was trying to save.

The fight against Anderson went as easily as did, because we fought in the ruins of Vegas. No one was there, so she could easily use as much of her strength as she needed to restrain and defeat her opponents. As powerful as she was, her powers weren’t completely out of the control of the laws of physics. A blow from her that could shatter the armor and jaw of the biomechanical Shogun would generate a shockwave that could tear apart buildings. If she decided to punch through an aerial fortress, it’s likely that it’ll start falling through the sky, and it probably wasn’t built to be carried away with one hand.

So, Parvati’s forces and I were clearing the way forward.

Or, to be more exact, I was a mobile evacuation site.

“More over here!” Parvati’s warrior forms were like the four-armed, large humanoids with blue skin. Covered in muscle, but also feminine curves, it told me all I needed to know about Shiva when I first saw it. The man had been a pervert for the chassis, but he didn’t skimp on the weaponry and the physique of the creatures. Half-machine and half-heavily-genetically-altered human, the creatures might’ve all been linked and coordinated via Parvati, but they were generally more independent than all the forks that Parvati had. I suppose supersoldiers without brains kinda lessened their tactical value. “Star purifying the area! We’ve sighted a drone swarm coming in from the north and Shogunate forces massing on the west! Be ready!”

Massive amounts of interference permeated the battlefield now. GPS was jammed, radio was jammed, radiation outside of cleared areas was enough to kill someone in a few years, if they were exposed for more than a few minutes. Decontamination units were running nonstop at the safehouse location, while those heavily irradiated were actually interred regenerative fluids that Parvati used to repair its warriors. Only time will tell if that was a good choice, but between dying a death via radiation poisoning and a dunk in pink slime, I knew what I would pick.

“There’s a room in the basement. Get everyone in here and clear it out.” It felt strange to address one of Parvati’s forks at a time, but it was a necessity. The electronic jamming systems essentially had all the forks functioning on a local system. They could still coordinate and speak to one another just fine via some sort of short-wave communication system, but they lost a lot. They had to send each other messages, coordinate instead of just move as one, and more. Still, it didn’t lessen their firepower. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, Egress!” The warrior form growled my way, and there was a rush of the armored, humanoids that could blend amongst humans. They carried or escorted grown adults and children and elderly with ease towards the room that I’d found beneath the building. They were followed by Drones that were saturating the air with some sort of mist that soaked in radiation, as well as others that emitted shields. The Geiger counter lessened in their presence. One came by and just enrobed me with the stuff, even though I had my barriers going and had all my seals checked. “There!”

I gave the warrior form a nod, before following after the congregation, only for something to get through the defenses and send the roof caving down towards the entrance of the basement.

I didn’t hesitate, extended my field as much as I could over the entrance, and let the crumbling detritus fall into the fields. I felt the solid chunks were cut, ripped apart, sent to other fields, and other places all at once. Not exactly withholding my abilities in front of hundreds of pairs of eyes, many of which were attached to brains with perfect memory, but protecting secrets vs. keeping other people alive was an easy choice.

I followed after them into the basement and got the people off to safety, before popping back into the same place.

The moment I came back, the drones and the normal units began to file out, along with the reinforcements I brought along.
By my count, there were over fifty warrior-forms present in the city and they were very capable war machines. Shiva’s intentions were to use them to conquer the world and it showed. Their bodies could hardly get hurt by anything short of the main guns of the flying fortresses, or the direct fire of the biomechanical Shogun. They made short work of the enemy troops, whether normal humans in power armor or drones, and in numbers they were able to overcome the superhumans sent our way.

That didn’t mean we could hold our position, though.

“More of the enemy’s attention is being sent our way and we are only seventy percent done with the evacuation. They are surely realizing that Maelstrom will cease holding back once the civilians are gone. They are actively stopping us from taking them, and some civilians are now trying to resist.” The infiltrator unit I was speaking to had its helmet off and half its face was wrapped up in bandages. Earlier, I’d seen it with its jaw hanging off by a thread, but by now most of its face was back in order. If you weren’t careful dealing with these gynoids/cyborgs/hybrids, they could easily get up after you thought that you killed them. “I need to constrain suppressive fire from orbit for the supporting salvo that will support Maelstorm when we succeed, too.”

“Tell me what you need.” Tactically and strategically, I was out of my depth, so I just left my skill usage to the forks of the super-intelligent AI. “I’ll make it happen.”

“I need you to be a distraction.”

“Except that.”

“Designation: Egress, the remaining civilians can be escorted out of the city bey my existing forces. To constrain damage and ensure their safety, it’s better than they focus on more on another person such as Maelstrom.”

“I don’t exactly qualify to be another Maelstrom. I can’t take that much punishment.”

“I understand, but it needs to happen. You will be supported by the majority of my forces.” As if on cue, as I kept running alongside the infiltrator model, from the rooftops came most of the warrior forms and many drones designed to dissipate radiation and project shields. “I’ll leave them to you. You wish to save these people as much as I do, so you know we have little other option.”

I gritted my teeth.

I wanted to refuse, since being on the frontline was very much against my personal interests, but so was letting thousands of people die.

I wanted to live a comfortable life.

“Fine.”

Regretting not saving people right in front of me would be anathema to that.