Collateral Damage (Patreon)

 Part One: Blowback

[A/N: AU elements are introduced in the text. You won’t even have to look hard.]

[A/N 2: This chapter has not been beta-read, because I just wrote it to get it out of my head. Further chapters will probably be beta’ed. If I write them.]

The city stretched out in all directions. At one time, it had been thriving. It might even have been beautiful. Now, it was anything but thriving, and any definition of ‘beautiful’ it might meet would be suspect in the extreme. Enormous swathes of it had been extirpated down to the bedrock and beyond. Smoke and dust hung overhead in great palls, the former fed by fires which had broken out here and there.

The man standing on the rooftop, at the centre of the destruction, might have called it beautiful had there been anyone to ask him. He was tall, over six feet. Heavy black leather armour covered him from neck to toe, though it did less to protect him than the angular metal harness that rested on his shoulders. The harness, made of flexible metal straps and heavy plates, supported a transparent sphere containing a deep indigo vortex in the middle of his chest. Covering his head and most of his face was a grey-black helmet that showed his eyes behind a translucent visor, yet concealed the majority of his features. Over each shoulder, on top of the harness, was a pair of bandoleers, each with loops for a dozen cylinders. Each cylinder was six inches long and two thick. Half a dozen cylinders lay scattered behind him and to his right, smoking and discoloured. These matched the seven empty loops in the bandoleers, with one to spare.

In his arms rested a weapon that could be likened to a rifle or shotgun, save that it was almost as tall as its owner, and bore odd mechanisms up and down its length. He braced it with his right arm and pushed down on the barrel with his left; with a deep k-chak, the weapon broke open. Pushed by some internal force, the seventh cylinder popped out of the breech of the long-arm and arced neatly over his shoulder to join the other six. As part of the same move, he withdrew another cylinder from the bandoleer and slotted it into the weapon. Pushing it home with his thumb, he straightened the gun with another k-chak. A high rising hum emanated from the weapon.

“Ragnarok. Stand down.”

The words were in English, which was why he did not turn and fire on the instant. Slowly, keeping the weapon at the ready, he inclined his head to look behind him. Three figures of modern-day myth and legend hung there in the air, hovering over the street far below. The Triumvirate. Some would say, the most powerful heroes in the world. He agreed with this, as he was no hero.

“Why?” All the pain in the world crackled in his reply.

Legend drifted half a pace forward. Wisely, he showed no sign of any intent to attack. “You’ve destroyed three-quarters of the city. Killed half the population. They’ll be decades in the rebuilding.”

He might have said more, but the leather-armoured man wasn’t listening. Half a dozen brightly-costumed figures were arrowing in from over the horizon, moving at well over the speed of sound. They flew close together, in tight formation. This was their undoing.

Smoothly, he raised the weapon to his shoulder. There was no need to lead the shot, as they were closing directly on his position. Less than half a second after he registered their existence, he pulled the trigger.

The weapon didn’t make any noise, at least in the conventional sense. A coruscating violet beam imprinted itself on the world—and on the retinas of the Triumvirate—for a good three seconds. When it vanished, the six figures no longer existed. Nor did any clouds in that direction, and a cookie-bite had been taken out of a mountain on the horizon. The k-k-k-k-KRACKKK-BOOOOMMMMMMMMmmmm that followed was the result of air rushing into the vacuum that had been created within the passage of the beam.

Again, he broke the weapon open, allowing the expended power cartridge to eject itself, then reloaded once more. Notably, none of the Triumvirate attempted to stop him doing this. It appeared that they could learn.

“They started it,” he said flatly. “I’m finishing it.”

“‘They’? What ‘they’?” demanded Eidolon. He gestured, showing reasonable manual dexterity with the arm that had been blown off, once upon a time. That had been a warning shot; a rare concession. It was why Eidolon was exercising the restraint that he was. The next shot, everyone knew, would not be a warning.

“The CUI,” retorted Ragnarok. He raised the weapon to his shoulder and began to sight in on his next target.

“Wait, you can’t just decide to declare war on an entire country,” Legend protested.

“Why not? They declared war on me. Fair’s fair.”

“But … most of them didn’t even know what was going on.”

The steel helmet turned to face him. “They should have. Their leaders should’ve known not to mess with me. They tried it. Now I’m hitting back.” Every word radiated absolute certainty.

“For God’s sake, haven’t you killed enough of them already?” Legend sounded near tears.

“Is she alive again? Has my wife been brought back from the dead?”

Eidolon grimaced. He’d tried hard enough, to no avail. “No.”

“Then, no. I haven’t killed enough of them. When their leadership finally realises that the only way to stop me is use their capes to bring her back, then I’ll stop killing them.”

Alexandria drifted in front of Legend. “Listen. You destroyed their entire command and control three shots ago. Even if they had a cape with that ability, you killed them two shots ago. Right now, all you’re doing is kicking a corpse. Once we leave, every neighbouring nation is going to descend on this city, on this country, and tear it to shreds. You’ve won.”

“They’re not a crater yet.” Pain was still evident in his voice. “Then I’ll be done.”

“What, like Houston?” Eidolon clenched his fists. “It’s still a radioactive crater.”

“I killed Behemoth.” The statement was matter-of-fact. I stepped on a cockroach.

“Along with eight million people! Not to mention three-quarters of the capes who showed up that day!” Eidolon was shouting. “You killed more than he’d done in his previous three attacks!”

Legend put a hand on Eidolon’s chest and pressed him backward. “We appreciate the fact that you destroyed an Endbringer, but the fact of the matter is, your tech is far too destructive to everythingaround you, not just the target. This is why we asked you to retire, the last time.”

“And I would’ve stayed retired,” retorted the man called Ragnarok. “But you had to keep tabs on me, didn’t you? And someone talked. And someone else listened. And the CUI had to try the stupid ploy of kidnapping my wife to get leverage over me.”

They’d fucked it up, of course. In what was perhaps the most idiotic move ever performed by any human organisation anywhere, they’d accidentally killed their prospective kidnappee. Worse, he’d found out about it. The PRT had promptly told him who was responsible (more as a matter of self-preservation than anything else) and he’d gone on the warpath. Both figuratively and literally.

A streak of energy arced over the horizon, traced around, and homed in on Ragnarok. “Oh, shit! Cover!” shouted Alexandria. Eidolon disappeared inside a green bubble, Legend vanished into the distance in a streak of light, and the flying brick braced herself with her arms crossed over her eyes.

The explosion was impressive, destroying a chunk of the surrounding area, but somehow touching neither the man in the steel helmet or the building he was standing on. As Alexandria brought her arms away from her eyes, she saw energy building in a globe around Ragnarok. It intensified, brighter and brighter, before streaking away in a reverse path to the way the attack had come in by. A moment later, from over the horizon, there was a distant concussion, followed by a mushroom cloud rising into the air.

“You need to stand down,” Alexandria said. “These idiots will keep escalating until they kill not just themselves but everyone within a hundred miles of them. And some of them might decide to go to Brockton Bay for revenge. After all, you still have Taylor—”

She broke off, mainly because she was suddenly looking down the barrel of the gun he was holding.

“You don’t talk about my little girl,” he whispered. “You don’t even think about going near her.”

“That wasn’t a threat,” she assured him hastily. “Just … advice. Do you want to bring war back to your home town? Your daughter can’t count on your protection forever. Let it go. Stand down. Please.”

Behind the helmet, he grimaced. “You know what they did.”

“And they’ve paid.” She gestured at the devastation. “You’ve done more to them than a thousand enemies over a thousand years.”

His long slow sigh was a sign of surrender. “Fine. You win. I’ll retire and be a dad again. Do my normal job. And I won’t kill anyone at all.”

She let out a sigh of her own. “Thank you.”

“You might want to step back,” he said, and slung the gun over his shoulder. “I’m about to make a crater.”

She obeyed, pulling hastily back. Actinic light glared from the sphere in the middle of his chest, then with a flash, he was gone. So was the building he’d been standing on. She turned and flew off. There was nothing more to be done here.

Hopefully, this time, Ragnarok would stay retired.

<><>

Two and a Half Years Later

“Oh, shit.”

Alexandria looked up. It was rare indeed that Legend swore, but the look on his face showed that it wasn’t some random impulse. His eyes were wide and he looked as though he were in shock.

“What?” she asked.

“Taylor Hebert,” he said hollowly. “Someone locked her in her locker with some pretty nasty stuff. She’s in the hospital now. Psych ward.”

“Motherfucker!” She stepped forward to scan the report he’d been reading. “Why are we learning about this from a police followup report? Why isn’t Director Piggot burning up the phone lines to my office already? How the fuck did this even happen? I thought we had a Ward in that damn school!”

“We do!” protested Legend. “I made sure of it myself!”

“Then why weren’t they keeping a closer eye on her?”

“Because the Brockton Bay PRT doesn’t know about Ragnarok. We don’t want another damn leak.”

Alexandria wanted to scream, or break something. Damned if they did, damned if they didn’t. “Okay. Damage control. Contact Danny Hebert post-haste. Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid before we find the perpetrator and make a very fucking thorough example of them.”

“On it. Doorway to Brockton Bay.”

Alexandria watched as Legend disappeared through the portal. They’d once tried using a similar portal to exile Ragnarok on a different Earth, but his weapons had proven capable of blasting their way through the dimensional barrier back to Earth Bet. Attacking him merely invited a thoroughly disproportionate response, and the mere concept of attempting to Birdcage the man brought her out in a cold sweat. Even the Simurgh stayed over the horizon from wherever he was at all times.

She just had to hope that Legend could make Ragnarok listen to reason.

The alternative had too many bad endings to be contemplated.
 

 Part 2