It had been three days since the detonation of Coil's base and the all-out brawl among the big factions of the city, and the world seemed chaotic. Gangsters fought in such a large area that the small local branch of the PRT struggled to keep up with the constant fighting, even with the help of the police and firefighters. There were now very important people calling for national help.
Like bringing in an army level of help.
Unfortunately, the VIP calls for help were getting nowhere.
This was fortunate for me, because I could use the chaos to my advantage, despite wanting to "go rogue."
First off, in the three days, I had more or less exhausted all of the safe houses and caches that gangs had in Shantytown, which was a lot. I had maybe $65,000, ten small crates of drugs I was never going to touch, and three small crates of weapons ranging from pistols and SMG to grenades and assault rifles.
But it wasn't enough for me to really set up a business of my own, at least legally. Sparsely populated and underdeveloped as it may be, Shantytown was in close proximity to the Downtown with low crime in comparison to the rest of the city. So a house or a building in the Shantytown was worth nearly twice the value of its equivalent in the Docks or the Docks South while half of its equivalent in the Downtown areas.
This was troublesome for me because no building in Shantytown was worth less than seventy-five thousand dollars. I was ten thousand dollars short, never mind the tax and whatnot. If not for business, then at least for a house of my own to live in because I was not going to pay rent.
I could certainly just squat on a property and just use my powers to dissuade anyone from removing me, but that would put me square in the eyesight of the PRT and the Protectorate once this crisis was over.
No, no, no, no, that wouldn't do. I had to lay low and manage my territory, and causing the PRT to come after me would not help me manage my territory.
To that end, I was looking for gangsters in Shantytown to shake up for petty change or dealers making money.
I knew that in the age of the internet, the smart dealers didn't come out to buy and sell drugs on the streets.
Keyword: smart.
There were a lot of dumb dealers, too.
As I slowly drove around the cheap and overgrown neighborhood in the noon, I noticed something. There were sounds of fighting ahead of me, which was deeper inside the Shantytown. Frowning, I sped up the car just a little bit more to investigate.
The sound of fighting louder before dying down rapidly, replaced by jeering and mocking. Soon, there were screams.
I stopped my car, parked it, and got out. I jogged the short distance and turned a corner.
"Fuck," I muttered to myself before quickly going back and hiding behind the corner.
The moment I had turned around the corner, I had spotted group of looters in ragtag weapons and scrap metal armors. They were also killing people senselessly, if the dozens of bodies around them said anything.
That … wasn't anything anyone did around here. Not even Merchants killed people by the dozens.
"Hey, there's someone around the corner," someone grunted. I cursed and quickly ran for it to my car.
PAIN.
"GAH!" I screamed as I tripped and rolled forward.
Cackling looters and murderers rounded the corner and began to circle me like sharks. All of them were wearing bone necklaces-.
Ah shit.
It's the fucking Teeth.
"What have we got here, hmm?" one of them, a one-eyed man, snickered as he reached down to me.
Pained by something as I was, I was still conscious enough and lucid enough to direct my powers.
I was also lucid enough to notice someone with a big ass bow further back, whose description sounded too much like the Butcher from Worm canon.
All of these bastards were in my field of Vector Control. I mentally targeted their weapons and armor, gave all of them my max speed, and let them fly towards the closest Teeth raider bodies.
For most of them, their bodies flattened as plates of armor, sharp spikes, sharp weapons, and even guns flung to their bodies at over 110 mph.
Ever see someone get stuck between two objects flying at them at 110 mph?
I never did until now.
With the exception of one killer, the rest of the Teeth surrounding me exploded into gore and blood and that one killer that didn't explode gagged as spikes on her armor pierced through her chest at nine different points.
I quickly scrambled back, boosting my vectors to make my slow crawling on asphalt into speeding car level of getaway crawling. I saw the Butcher, who was drawing her bow. The bitch hadn't even flinched at the sight of her underlings getting slaughtered-!
The arrow flew at me, entered my field of vector control, and just dropped to the ground.
"Fuck you too, Butcher!" I shouted at her as I pulled the door of my car open, got in, and turned on the engine. '
The Butcher disappeared from where she was, and reappeared on top of my car. Her arrival heralded window shattering explosion, and I gritted my teeth as my mind worked overtime to control all of the vectors. I never controlled this many particles before s-!
With a silent hiss, I blasted everything away from me. The Butcher, the broken windows, and the car tore apart and just flew away in all directions. Broken pieces of my (stolen) car's frame flew away, striking the road and buildings alike, and I fell to the asphalt road on my feet, just barely managing to stay upright.
The Butcher, flying up into the sky, teleported again, this time to the ground a few yards outside of my vector range and caused another explosion there. Despite having been scratched by a hundred broken glass fragments, the Butcher looked no worse than she did before. In fact, her skin wasn't even scratched.
"Intriguing," she said before -.
"Fucking Asshole!" I shouted as pain erupted everywhere in my body, and I fell on my knees again.
The Butcher stood outside of my control range, obviously contemplating on how to kill me.
I wanted to kill this bitch, but I knew that I couldn't. The Butcher, if I remembered correctly, transferred itself to the person responsible for its death or the nearest person if no one was responsible.
I was not going to become the next Butcher!
Groaning, I pushed the Vectors on myself and flew up into the sky and away. As I flew away, the pain faded away as the Butcher grew smaller in my vision.
"... Fuck, I guess that's another player in the game," I grumbled in annoyance and tiredness, having been just put through a rather stressful situation even though I came out it unscathed.
"T-The Butcher is in town?" Taylor squeaked when I relayed her the news. "How did you get away from her?!"
I grinned tiredly. I really was tired. "Butcher doesn't have anything that can hurt me," I replied as I laid on the couch with my head on Taylor's lap. "This feels nice."
She blushed and narrowed her eyes at me. "On topic, Alan."
"Right, right. So the Butcher and the Teeth are in town, even though I killed like nine of them-" I wasn't really sure because when I killed them, I was kind of on the ground and suffering from the Butcher's aura of pain. "-but I don't think I took out any of their capes."
Taylor frowned in consternation. "You … had to kill," she said sadly.
"Not my first time," I said reassuringly before realizing that it really wasn't reassuring to someone like Taylor who wanted to be a hero and had grown up on Earth Bet's theatrical cape scene. Wait, she grew up in Brockton Bay, which was a shithole, so maybe she knew more about the nasty bits of capes?
".. I'm glad you're okay," she mumbled as she stroked my hair.
I was glad, too, and it was nice to hear her say that to me.
"We need a plan," I said as I sat up. Taylor followed me, turning her eyes and head to track me. "I probably have an answer to the Butcher, but I can't go against her on my own." I looked at her in the eyes. "I need your help."
She looked at me before she paled a bit. "Y-You want my help?" she asked. "But I only control bugs! I don't have anything that can hurt the Butcher!"
"I just need you to take care of everyone else, Taylor."
"That's not better!" she shrieked.
"Taylor, you don't even have to be on the field to do that."
She stopped hyperventilating and looked at me curiously. "I … don't?"
"How big is your range?"
"About 3 blocks." A pause. "Oh." She blushed in embarrassment. "How did you even know about that?"
"I just do," I replied with a shrug and a smile. "So will you?"
"... How are you going to defeat the Butcher anyway?"
I grinned. "Why, I can alter powers!"
She shrieked in surprise.