Chaotic Clusterfuck 25

Commissioned by Definitely Not Dio

Chaotic Clusterfuck

Chapter 25

-VB-

I let out a sigh. 

A day had passed since the Protectorate barged into my compound yesterday, and I was fearing about … a lot of things.

None of those included me losing anything, because I knew exactly the kind of position I held. 

At one hundred-thirty-six superpowered clones with so much power and potential that they could individually be called mini-Eidolon and each clone’s obedient if prankster ajins, I had nearly three hundred capes under my command. And more than half of those clones had trained enough to be considered an equal match for Protectorate branch leaders. The oldest ones, the Four Musketeers, currently had forty levels from constant fighting and training (which put them squarely in the “median” bracket among unverified internet charts for other restricted and nerfed Gamers/Players) on top of intellectual advancements shared by all clones for alchemy, magecraft, and chakra. 

A single command would be enough to devastate anything anywhere. 

The only reason why I wasn’t going on a conquest spree was because A) I didn’t care about conquering, B) my girls preferred it if they didn’t become targets, and C) that’s a lot of work I have to do. I’m trying to live a debaucherous life, not achieve something great.

Well, yes, I would eventually make it there simply by the virtue of being too big to not be great, but that’s not the goal.

I have a good business. I have an army of clones. I even have sexy redheads sucking my dick when I wasn’t the one sucking their clits. 

Where was I going with this…?

Oh, right. 

I was fearing a lot of things. 

Most of the “fear” had to do with how much work I would have to do to make sure this didn’t become any bigger and how much more work I would have to do if this did get bigger. 

“Ugh,” I muttered as I stared at the incessantly ringing smartphone. Very few people had my phone number, and this particular phone was for my business. I answered it. “Hello, this is Alan Marris.”

“Mister Marris, this is Director Emily Piggot of Parahuman Response Team, ENE Branch.”

I blinked. With a sigh, I stood up from the bed where I had been peacefully sleeping with my nude girls, and walked out into the living room. I gestured, and one of the Bounded Fields in the corridor activated, muffling any sound that passed it. I walked out of it and into the living room where half a dozen clones hung around as security.

Well, they were security when they weren’t taking their turn with Emma, Anne, or Zoe. 

“So why are you calling me?” I asked her. “After you decided to pull that?” 

“I was only carrying out my duties as a PRT director. Armsmaster was not lying to you when he told you that you were in possession of illegal substance.”

“You make it sound like I had narcotics. I had element zero. That I legally salvaged.”

“Alien equipments are not legal salvage.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Alright, why don’t you go and get them back from the Empire? They have some. Why didn’t you go after them? You came after me.”

“Our operational-.”

“I was a civilian, so you thought I was an easy mark. That’s what it is. Am I wrong?” I asked bluntly. “I’m not in the mood to deal with bullshit. So don’t even start with the PR business talk. You thought I was an easy mark and came after me. Like a fucking gang.”

There was a pause on the other side. “What you believe regarding the situation is irrelevant. You are still in possession of substance that you are not supposed to have by law. Hand it over before this escalates.”

“... How about I become my own gang? Do you want that kind of escalation?” 

“Mister Marris, do not joke with me-!”

“Armsmaster told you how many capes I had in employment. Your heroes lost in under three minutes of engagement after your heroes attacked me without prior warning. If you think you can twist the story, then I would like to fucking remind you that I have security cameras with microphones around my compound.”

“The PRT is not going to do something underhanded like that.”

“You mean like with Bad Canary? Someone that PRT knows has not a single rating in physical parahuman abilities getting brute rating 

“That case is out of my jurisdiction. Talking to me about it will not change anything,” she drawled. “And that is not the point of this call.”

“If you want the eezo, then buy it fair and square in the market. Oh, except I’m not going to sell it to you even if you offer a fair price because you attacked me on my own property,” I hissed at her. 

“... Very well. Expect to hear from us soon.”

And then she hung up on me. 

I grunted as I set the phone aside. “The bitch is definitely going to pull something stupid.”

The clone closest to me, and also the one lounging from arm to arm on the longest sofa, shrugged while laying down and looking at fanfiction on his smartphone, one of many used by my clones. “Stupid to us because we know our strength, yeah, but not stupid to them.”

“They already saw how varied we are, including how advanced our magecraft is compared to other people here.”

And we were advanced. 

The internet was packed to the brim with people trying to figure out how to use their powers. The vanilla capes, the ones who showed up first, were generally not involved in this kind of power conversation unless it was directly related to how they might counter the threats they represented. 

The Quirk-based capes were the second least loud when it came to their powers, because while they were far more numerous compared to trauma-borne Shard capes, their powers were weaker on average and median. 

The average vanilla cape rated 7 - on the internet - using the combined ratings of PRT threat assessment. For example, Shadow Stalker, who was still active despite me taking Emma for myself, was Breaker 3 and Flashbang from New Wave was a Blaster 5 while Vista was a Shaker 9. On the other hand, Quirk users were all under 20 years old and not a single one of them has yet to be rated over 7 in any category. The strongest Quirk-user was some Dagestani Russian soldier who was Brute 7, Mover 4, and Blaster 4. His combined rating of 15 equaled Glory Girl’s, who might be called Mini-Alexandria but who was also not exactly the cream of the crop.

Chakra parahumans were more wishy-washy about what they could do, because a lot of what they could do, while it depended on experimentation, depended more on physical improvements. And even with superpowers that incentivized, a lot of Americans didn’t improve themselves. 

The most talkative among the parahumans were the magecraft users. They preferred the term mage to refer to themselves.

They realized early on that they were most dependent on information, much more than any other power systems. While this could have started off a cult or something similar in vacuum, Earth Bet wasn’t into that, especially since, unlike Nasuverse, magecraft didn’t degrade when more people knew about it, not that the locals knew about that possibility. 

And what did I find after trudging through countless internet forums and video platforms? 

If I were to use the Clock Tower ranking system, because that’s where magecraft originates from, none of the mages reached Fes, which were the fourth rank in the Clock Tower’s seven ranks.

For reference, Lord El-Melloi II - a man whose lineage outright sucked and had to make up for it with hard work and innate, if somewhat mundane, talents to reach the title of Archmagus despite having the lowest quality and lowest count of magic circuits-  ranked as a Fes. 

Or to put it more succinctly, none of the “open” mages currently boasting about their skills online, either because their organization did it on their behalf (Protectorate) or they did it personally for recognition, could fight in any significant manner on the parahuman stage. A regular human with a gun will take out all of them. Any combat they could perform needed a ton of preparation beforehand, which was why most people in Bet did not see mages in offense but rather defense. Because if given enough time and resource, they made the best fortresses.

So what did that make all of my clones and myself who could fire off spells in combat, create makeshift Bounded Field on the fly, and even curse individuals? 

Monsters by their definition.

The Protectorate, of course, didn’t know this. 

Even if I underestimated myself, I still had half the number of the entire Protectorate on the Appalachian Island.* 

Director Piggot and Armsmaster stepped on a tiger’s tail, and they didn’t even know it. 

So how was I going to screw them over for trying to make my life hard…?

…

… I’ll do exactly as I said. I’ll sell “all” of my eezo to the highest bidder who wasn’t them. 

-VB-

A/N: *America became six big islands.