Hero Within, Monster Without Chapter 12 (Patreon)

My AI-driven drones followed me utterly silently and under a visual optic cloaking technology that I made using my Galvin and Juryrig form as I likewise with utter silence trailed over the rooftops of Brockton Bay at an utterly blinding speed as I was in a new form that I decided would be perfect for breaking the Archers Bridge Merchants Gang apart.

With the E-88 I used intelligence and tracking to systematically break the gang and already not even two days after that purge... They were gone, the E-88 gang members broke knowing that I had their cellphones, voices, and identities... And when some racist prick decided to go lynch someone for their skin color and they ended by the one lynched on a street light for the news to broadcast their slow painful deaths via my AI hacking the local news networks.

I had become the fucking boogeyman to Brockton Bay. I honestly had zero doubts about that at all as I was being called the Changer Eidolon of the 'Rogues' as I went about 'cleaning' up this city as I made it perfectly clear that I only responded to actual villains and people doing stuff that would lead to them being in prison for the rest of their lives anyway.

This world was utterly fucked and letting people just rot in prison was a waste of precious resources... They were a waste and I wasn't going to bother with them.

I had taken the form of the Wraith from Evolve as I knew the monster would be perfect as the Merchants were drug-fueled animals. And animals would mentally break far easier than the E-88 would. So following the directions from my AI I went to where Squealer and Skidmark were. As like before with the E-88 I had collected voice samples of them and then their own cellphones picked up their voices along with pinpointing their locations.

I landed across from the safe house Skidmark and Squealer were at which was an old abandoned welding workshop that fitted as it was perfect for Squealer to make her Tinkertech vehicles. But as I looked over at the building my head tilted with my four upper limbs undulating as the AI blinked at a priority message.

[Menagerie... Jake please don't do that.]

I tilted my head to the side and then I made an 'ah' noise of understanding as I realized that someone had hacked the nearby cameras and was someone I actually 'knew'.

"Well well Dragon, what can I do for you?" I spoke aloud wondering the old camera's in the area could actually pick up my voice and then a reply came through the email she sent to me on PHO.

[I cannot hear you... But I see your new form and I know this is a Merchant safe house. Jake please don't do anything, we can talk this out and you can get help.']

My monstrous head tilted to the side before I chuckled as I read the words and my clawed hand gently took my drone in hand as I turned on the stream as I couldn't type at all in this form on a holographic keyboard. "Dragon come on and join the stream," I spoke and in a moment I saw a PHO account with the name [Dragon] and all the tags of being verified and part of the Guild was next to the handle along with hundreds and then thousands more joining the stream but with some care I set the chat to only allow Dragon to speak.

"So Dragon, please tell me why I shouldn't kill the Merchant Gang Leaders tonight. And then kill Lung and Oni-Lee tomorrow so that there will be no more gang leaders in Brockton Bay?" I asked bluntly as I settled in to allow Dragon to give her two pieces... I did actually respect and like her to be honest.

So I actually didn't want to snub her if I could help it.

Dragon didn't use my real name she obviously got from the PRT in the stream chat but she was obviously unsure exactly what to say to my line of questions except for the 'moral' and 'just' options of due process.

[Dragon- You are going beyond the lines of a Rogue and are entering the lines of a mass murder Menagerie. You can still turn yourself in and with your prior psych profile I know you can still be a hero and join the PRT after rehabilitation.]

And to that I just laughed as I retorted. "No no no Dragon... I am not a mass murderer, I am a hero. I am the hero of old in Heracles, Ghenghis Khan, and Alexander the Great. The execution of those without morals and those who live to only bring suffering to others are not a crime... But either way if you actually cared about dealing with villains you would have just locked a silent and invisible drone like my own over the Nine and just had the military bomb them endlessly."

I flexed my long shoulder-mounted arms that had wicked blades on them and then I continued. "Your cross-country boyfriend in Armsmaster has been in Brockton Bay for more than a decade and in all that time what has he actually accomplished? All these gangs may have changed names slightly but they are the same gangs since more than a decade ago in the ages of Marquis. I will break all the gangs within a fucking week of arriving and then I am upping the scales... I want to see how I stack up to a monster maker in Nilbog."

Turning towards the safe house I said more softly. "Dragon... The Birdcage doesn't work, it's not a threat that matters when psychopaths don't care about their own lives to say nothing of others." I looked into the microlenses array of my drone as I read Dragon's following response.

[The PRT is discussing giving you a Kill Order.] She said bluntly and the numbers in my stream in not even a minute as I contemplated that knowledge swelled from fifteen thousand viewers to more than fifty thousand. As no longer was this some random psycho Case 53 killing villains.

No, now I was being labeled as a villain who had the order to kill on sight.

'I wonder if Cauldron is pushing for a Kill Order because I am naturally a Blank?' I thought before shrugging as I finally responded coldly. "Well... Then maybe when I finish killing all your S class threats you guys can actually manage to have the resources to do something. But if I manage to kill Lung, I know that you all will be too chicken shit to do anything to me. Now Dragon... Have a good night, I have work to do."

I only had one last thing to say as I sighed and said almost wistfully. "You know... I almost used my powers to just heal in the same hospital Panacea works in. I wasn't going to go out fighting Villains or anything else. I was going to heal in the hospital using my special forms that could regrow limbs and then maybe illegally clean out all the boats killing the bay but the hospital refused to pay me a wage and sent me away."

And with that, I drowned out anything Dragon could say in my AI-controlled stream as the chat opened up to more than fifty thousand viewers that she couldn't control due to Galvin technology and coding... Being far beyond what she could so easily hack into.

My body split into two somewhat smaller clones and with a horrible shrieking noise I flew down from the building with my clone going around the back of the building... Squealer and Skidmark wouldn't survive this night as an Evolve monster was far more than a match for an unprepared Tinker, and someone whose powers weren't effective on this form at all.