Vice Bunker 47

Vice Bunker

Chapter 47

-VB-

Alan Marris

As time passed by, the city became more habitable and warmer. People both in the bunker and those who chose to live once again on the surface found themselves slowly enjoying living again.

Of course, life wouldn’t be life if there wasn’t problems to solve.

“People are growing agitated and restless,” Kali sighed as she brought her right leg over her left leg, pushing up her thigh to support her now late-stage pregnancy belly. She wasn’t the only one among my women with a pregnant belly like that. All of them did. But maybe it was because she’d done this before, Kali moved and worked as if it didn’t bother her too much. It would be impossible not to be bothered by the extra ten pounds protruding out from the abdomen and shifting the center of gravity.

Kali Belladonna was always working in the background as my administrator, making ties with the locals despite not being a local herself. I knew that I alone would have never been able to keep all of these people with me, and would have had some kind of mutiny long before today if it hadn’t been for her and Danny (who had a vested interest in ensuring that Taylor - and by extension, I - did well).

It’s been a few months since I opened up the bunker and began to fix the city, and almost nine months since the first moon fragments began to hit Earth. Oh, most of the region around us was still covered in snow, which I suspect was because of how deeply the North Atlantic Current was disrupted and even damaged beyond repair if enough chunks landed on the North Atlantic. I wagered that Brockton Bay would become something of an arctic port if nothing changed.

And I wasn’t sure if I was powerful and knowledgeable enough to recreate the North Atlantic Current if it really did collapse.

And I was thinking about the NAC because the weather outside the city? There was no sign of warming up even a little bit. If anything, despite the fact that we were now approaching the late days of spring, it felt even colder than before. If the NAC was still operating even at a lower capacity, then the cold would be kept at bay once the NAC brought warmth from the equator and the early summer days began to shine more light.

But what if the NAC had flagged before and was now failing? Heading to collapse if it didn’t collapse already?

Then it would explain the current weather.

And make my job that much harder.

That’s on top of the current issue plaguing my residents, too.

“Nothing to do, huh?”

Kali nodded. “It’s having an effect on their morale. It’s one thing to sit by and wait but it’s another thing when they know that they can do nothing and their waiting may take years if not decades.”

“... Do you think that I should scale back my participation in the upkeep of the bunker and the city?” I asked her.

She nodded.

Because of what and who I was, maintenance was a walk in the park for me. Nanites alone made fixing and repairing not even worth mentioning, and all of my other techs made work by anyone else redundant if not wasteful. After all, resource that could go to me and develop into a very efficient and powerful tool would only result in a mediocre and outdated tool in the hands of the regular people and only moderately useful in the hands of Tinkers.

But my maintenance was what kept the city and the bunker that we inhabited in tip-top shape. There were also many critical functions that I didn’t want to leave in the hands of -.

I frowned.

Was I always so guarded? So paranoid and dismissive?

“Alright,” I told her. “We’ll experiment with … surface section 1 through 3. That should be fine, right? I’ll scale back while they learn how to fix and make everything themselves?”

She nodded. “You’ll need to provide materials but that should be fine, too.”

Materials.

… Couldn’t that be something they could do as well?

“How about mining?”

She blinked. “Mining?”

“Yes, mining. While the earth and rocks around Brockton Bay is not exactly a good source of materials outside of maybe silicon and iron, at the very least mined out rocks can be ground down and used as construction material, right?”

I hadn’t done that so far because all of the materials that I dug out as I made the bunker and the deeper levels below had been used by me for my tech. My main body was still down there, still digging, but doing it horizontally as well.

“That… actually should be fine,” she hummed. “But I don’t know if there are any among the people who are miners or versed in mining operations. We’ll have to learn from scratch and we don’t exactly have the internet right now.”

I frowned. That was also true.

But something was missing.

“... You know what? Let’s bring in some of the people and ask them how they think we can go about solving this,” I said with a nod. “If they don’t have any idea, then we’ll go with what we discussed in this meeting.”

Kali smiled. “Sounds good to me.”

-VB-

Danny Hebert

He felt embarrassed on behalf of the rest of the people because who was in the meeting with him.

When he heard that Alan was calling a meeting to discuss the future of his bunker and the city, Danny knew that he could expect some shenanigans but that it would mostly move forward productively.

He’d been wrong about that.

Try as he had, he couldn’t keep a few of the union members from shutting their mouth and complaining to everyone and anyone who might even give them a second about what they saw as “injustice.”

He was this fucking close to dragging them out of the meeting himself.

“So you think that I should hand over the bunker to you?” Alan asked in his Yal’Manus form, a towering and monstrous quarter-man, quarter-machine, quarter-octopus, and quarter-abomination form, at the two union members and four non-union members who had spoken up against the owner of the bunker who was trying his best to accommodate everyone.

And what was their reason for doing so?

Well, they weren’t going to say it. They gave a list of reasons that might make a little bit of sense individually but little to no sense when put together.

But Danny knew what this was about.

This was politics.

They just wanted power. Power to do as they pleased.

“... Alright.”

Danny turned his head toward Alan in shock. Everyone looked shocked.

“You can live in Section 13. I hereby appoint Jennifer Qi, Thomas Reuten, William Voccana, Bob Scalar, Ronald Howen, Eric Gayem, and their families to Section 3. They will form a council in Section 13 and make laws and rules that do not interfere with the rest of the New Brockton Bay.”

When some of the people - not the six but others - protested, he raised a hand and silenced them.

Alan continued to speak in that double reverb, but he sounded deep and dark now. “I will provide no power. I will provide no water. I will provide no food. You will live there as you see fit and I will not bother you.”

Danny felt his stomach drop.

That … that was a death sentence.

“Wait, Manus, that’s too harsh!” he spoke up as he stood up from his seat three seats down from him in the half-circle Alan and his “inner circle” sat in while facing the rest of the meeting’s participants. “They’ll die if you kick them out like that!”

“I know.”

“Then-?!”

“But they want power more than security and safety,” he continued while looking over the now rapidly paling six people. “You heard them, Mr. Hebert. What they want is to do as they want. They want to waste energy. They want to waste food. They are completely disconnected from reality. I don’t want them near me. I want them gone.”

Danny’s mouth opened and closed.

It was hard to forget but he still did it at times.

Brockton Bay was currently under the rule of a single man, an autocrat, who provided everyone with what they needed to survive. Half of the things necessary for their survival wouldn’t even work without Alan, too.

Which was why he couldn’t fight this. Not really. Even if he fought against the decision, what was he going to do?

But didn’t he still have to try?

“It’s just words! They haven’t done anything yet!”

“Words have power, and the pen has often been mightier than the sword,” Alan replied with a rolling rumble. “There is malicious intent behind what they sought, and would have spread to others if they didn’t get what they want. I am not interested in harboring malcontents who have been enjoying my good graces at no cost to themselves. I saved their lives. I gave them food, entertainment, and safety. And what did I get, Mr. Hebert? I got demands from them to remove myself from where I rightfully belonged.”

It was a cold fury, and Danny knew that meetings like these would now become even rarer than before. All because of the six idiots in front of them.

“Please, reconsider! At the very least, their families have nothing to do with their decision to be here!”

Alan glanced at him.

Then he spoke up after a moment, ignoring the crowd’s divided response of outrage and quiet acceptance.

“Very well. They can join these six if they want, but I won’t kick them out.”

Then, as if on cue, tentacles rose from the floor and wrapped around their six’s wrists. They screamed and thrashed but the strong disembodied tentacles dragged out without any problem and continued to drag them toward Section 13 of the surface.

Section 13 wasn’t even a finished part of the city. It was all ruins.

Alan rumbled again, making most in the meeting focus back on him as the doors of the meeting room closed shut. “If there is anyone else who thinks that they can make demands of me, then they are welcome to follow those six to Section 13 and beyond. I won’t bother you but I will not accept unproductive political shits in my city. If you want to play political games, then you will make it productive at the very least. There will no second chance or warnings.”

With that, he stood up and left by the side doors, leaving a scared (but not terrified) people behind.

“Good riddance.”

Danny’s head snapped toward Old Olaf, one of the oldest people in the meeting and the rest of the city under Alan’s control.

“Olaf, how-?”

“Danny boy, did you not notice how Big Manus there didn’t explicitly forbid them from returning?” Olaf drawled.

Danny paused.

He … didn’t. He’d been too focused on the implications of what was happening that he didn’t focus on what wasn’t said or done.

“If they come to their senses and come back crawling, the Big Man probably won’t keep them out,” Olaf grumbled as he stood up. “But let that be a lesson to you all. We are still in a crisis. Big Man’s not interested in dipshits ruining the fragile system he has, and neither should any of you.”

“But we’re in America…” someone muttered.

Olaf glared at the speaker, who straightened his back.

“America’s dead, son,” the old man drawled but it sounded sad in Danny’s ears. “If you still haven’t gotten used to living like this, then I want to know what the fuck you have in your noggins.” With that last bit tossed out there, he turned around and left the meeting room himself through the front doors.

Danny sighed as he stood up to leave, too.

-VB-

“... I feel like an idiot,” I muttered to myself while in bed with my secondary body. Sitting next to me were my girls as we all prepared for the night.

There were certainly good people like Danny and Rosenritter, a Jewish accountant, who had good ideas and have been helpful, but I forgot that there were more shits in society than treasures. An open meeting like that was not going to work in the future.

“Alan, why not just assign people as representatives so you know you can handle them and not have to deal with everyone?” Harley asked. “Like lieutenants!”

I blinked.

“I don’t think that’s going to solve anything,” I told her. “As much as I would like to talk to fewer people, putting in a hierarchy like that would only allow corruption to fester and actual problems to not be heard even when the lieutenants do their jobs. Adding in more middlemen to the equation may be necessary, but Kali and Danny are enough right now for the amount of people we have.”

Harley pouted. “Well, then what do you think we should do?”

“... Do you have to?”

We looked at Taylor, who didn’t look flustered by the sudden attention she was receiving. And just like Harley and Kali, her pregnant belly prominently curved out from under her swelling tits down to her crotch.

“What do you mean?” I asked her.

“Do you have to communicate with them? Do you have to listen to every little thing they say and want?”

I thought about it.

No. I didn’t.

“So … just ignore them if it is not important and I do my own thing?”

“Yes.”

It was a solution that I didn’t think Taylor would have thought up had this been canon… but then again, she also watched me, Kali, and her dad constantly deal with some of the most ungrateful and some of the most thankful people on the people when she wasn’t getting her pussy stuffed with my tentacle dick. Could she have gotten some distaste for the general populace to warrant this non-heroic response?

… Well, eight months was a lot of time for people to change, especially in crisis like this.

“You know what? I think I’ll do half of that and half of what Harley suggested.”

“Really?” Harley looked surprised.

“Why not, right? I won’t have a whole cadre of lieutenants. I’ll just ask New Wave to act as the “voice” of the people. They certainly would like that kind of title.”

-VB-

A/N: in which Alan tried to be a benevolent ruler but Karens reared their ugly heads.