How to Beat Fried Worms
Disclaimer: Worm is owned by Wildbow because nobody else wants it.
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Chapter 95: Hope
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Handling the kids took place over about six hours, with Minerva napping about two hours in. Alec stopped by one of the Brockton Bay Police Departments and made a show about finding a kid in the snow. He had to deal with about a dozen different officers introducing themselves, asking him questions, requesting he fill out paperwork...
Which meant there were now a dozen different officers in Brockton Bay that had been Gifted with permanent powers.
[Prototypist], [Gunwyrm], [Environmental Engineer], [Vehicle Mechanics] and [Armorer], specifically.
Nothing directly combat applicable. Nothing visibly obvious. But, if any of those officers ever wanted to try a different lifestyle? Become gunsmiths, mechanics of pretty much any flavor, construction contractors...
Well, they'd have a little jump on the competition.
Or they'd stick to being cops. Alec didn't know what their futures looked like.
Once he got bored of playing their little song and 'sign here please', Alec made an excuse to use the restroom, opened the window and teleported back to his van.
He still had two kids to distribute, and they needed to be fed and have their diapers changed. A set of tasks that Minerva had been gracious enough to take care of while he'd been dealing with the Birdcage but, since he was back, it was his turn.
It was 2 AM by the time Alec reached Concord, New Hampshire to repeat his little hand-off. The cops there were a lot more suspicious, they tried to give him the ol' third degree. They wanted to know why he had a baby, who it belonged to, where were her parents.
Questions he really didn't want to answer. And offering to take the little girl back where he'd found her just made the officers really upset for some reason.
When about three of them started shouting conflicting commands at him at once while the fourth hit him with a taser? Alec may have... lost his temper. Just a bit.
Nobody died. Nobody was maimed. Too much. Alec may have just eaten a few guns while he was in his dragon form. And left the nightshift police sitting in puddles of their own urine.
He ended up taking Marble's baby girl and going to the hospital. The night shift nurses there gave him some shit, sure, but there weren't any cops involved.
Finally, after handling that ordeal, Alec made his way further north-east. He hit Lewiston, Maine by about 4 AM. The cops there were a lot calmer and quieter about things. Nobody had to be threatened, nobody did any yelling. Alec just made up a story about some methed up drug addict offering to sell him the baby for twenty bucks and they bought it.
He didn't know if they believed him. And Alec didn't care.
Now kid free like a recent divorcee, Alec had to figure out what to say to Dragon.
Actually, Alec decided as he ignored the flashing lights of numerous squad cars and Protectorate vans showing up at the precinct.
"Unknown Parahuman!" some random schmuck shouted as a few kids in costumes lined up to skip school. "We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands up! We will enter forcefully if-"
Alec decided he was done with people for the day. Snapping his fingers once, Alec reappeared in the driver's seat of his van. Snapping his fingers a second time, he reappeared in Waldo, Pennsylvania.
Stepping out of his van, snow crunching under foot, Alec took a deep breath of cold, bracing air.
Snapping his fingers once, Alec was surrounded by ten Wraiths. Activating Darksider as his copies activated [Healing Aura], Alec snapped his fingers again and was surrounded by -twelve- Wraiths.
"Let's get the mill powered up," Alec said, needlessly. His Wraiths formed with full knowledge of their goals and purposes. Alec just needed to verbalize what he was thinking, to make it more solid as a task, as a goal. "Find the old vehicles still intact and fix them. Invest in them if we have to. Guns- [Gunwyrm] will level up if we do repairs, I'm pretty sure it'll level up as we modify firearms, too."
Dozens more Wraiths appeared, turning the surroundings into a sea of gray.
"So, add and remove scopes. Strip down, oil and rebuild. We still have most of Victor's firearms, now let's put 'em to use." Dozens more Wraiths appeared and Alec had to stop for a moment, to take a breath and wait for his HP to refill. Once he was comfortable again, Alec snapped his fingers and, again, dozens upon dozens of gray-clad copies of himself appeared nearby.
Rather than wait for him to issue any orders, they took off into the decaying ruin of Waldo, copies of the Omni-Tool going with them. They would be repairing the houses, grinding up [Environmental Engineer].
Alec didn't bother snapping his fingers as he called up five-dozen copies to go and work on beating out armor plates and working on styles he hadn't touched yet. He didn't want to have to think about [Armorer] or [Prototypist] but they were nearly done. They were nearly ready for him to finish one of his projects.
He just... needed to get a few more parts from Dragon. Which meant he needed to call Dragon. Which would involve talking with her and he needed to decompress after the shit-show in the Birdcage and the cops and...
Alec was unpleasantly sure that he would say or do something that would burn his bridge with Dragon if he spoke to her right now.
The man crossed his left arm over his belly and then pinched the bridge of his nose with his right hand.
Useful. Productive. Useful. Productive.
Alec inhaled, slowly, and held his breath for a moment before exhaling just as slow.
No, no. He wasn't going to fall down that rabbit hole. He was stressed, yes, and Ziz was on her merry way. But he had a plan to deal with her.
It was fine. So.
What could Alec do that was useful, productive and cathartic?
With a small nod and a growing grin, Alec snapped his fingers-
and appeared on the moon.
He didn't fight as the air was pulled out of his lungs. Rather, Alec just looked up, to the Earth hanging over head. From his vantage point, the world looked so small. So... fragile.
And it was anything but. The Earth and its inhabitants would fight with everything they had. They would pull out every dirty trick, every lie and manipulation. The people would sacrifice anything and everything and they wouldn't even be doing it to win.
Just fighting to ensure their foes lost as badly as they did.
It was petty and spiteful but, somehow, admirable in the spirit of tenacity.
Alec's form grew larger, his suit fading away as his body turned a deep, inky black. Slowly, small sparks ignited within him, turning into stars as he grew to a towering 9 meters tall. The man held his hand out in front of him, slowly turning it over as he tilted his blank, expressionless head to consider it. His hand closed into a fist and he nodded to himself before sinking his hand into his inventory and coming back up with a massive, spherical ruby.
Reaching into himself, Alec could feel the form of the Paragamer system, laid atop his Gamer system and, even deeper than that, the light of his soul. He teased a wisp of light free, a spark of magic, and focused it upon the ruby-
Which turned into a swirling gateway made of lights.
The large, twilight form squeezed into the gateway. To a world filled with the flaws and imperfections that had formed within the artificial gemstone.
