The App 8

The App
Chapter 8

-VB-

Assault.

Ethan loved how well it mashed with Battery.

It would continue to be his greatest practical joke bar none.

Jeanne, of course, didn’t think so. She groans and elbows whenever he calls them together “Assault and Battery.” When the inevitable question gets asked, he gladly responds that Battery came before Assault.

‘To be honest, I joke because jokes come easily for me,’ Ethan thought as he patrolled alongside Battery. They patrolled, but he knew that it was kind of redundant considering what was happening.

Brockton Bay was quiet as of late, and Mel was to thank for that.

Ask Mel! was famous for her ability to answer seemingly anything and everything if you paid the right amount of money and had the right kind of connections and jobs. She started information warfare among everyone who cared for information. He wouldn’t have cared too much if it wasn’t for the fact that cape’s civilian identities were apparently available to those high enough on the subscriber hierarchy. Not that anyone knew anyone who was up there past the Secretive subscription.

And then just a month ago, Mel and The App, the PHO handle for the creator of Ask Mel! put out two new extensions to Ask Mel!: Me’s Tavern and the Tournament of Titans.

The latter was the reason why there just weren’t as many criminals as before. Many of those criminals committed crimes out of need or because they were in a horrible place.

But when the Tournament of Titans came out, the need to survive suddenly wasn’t powerful for most criminals anymore because the Tournament provided rewards.

Sure, there were still crimes, but new capes, in particular, didn’t need to come out in costumes. Why would they when they could join a Tournament and earn both cash and glory with none of the risks of real-life “capeing”?

In Brockton Bay alone, there’s been a thirteen percent drop on average across all crimes. It used to be more than that, but once the first week of Tournaments were over, people came back with their toys and started showing it off.

He and Jeanne also tried their hands at the Tournament. Along with Miss Militia, Triumph, and Armsmaster as a team, they participated in a “Team Battle Royale.” Set in some kind of a lightly forested mountain by a lakeside, only one team got to achieve victory while the map shrunk as it broke apart at the edges, falling into the abyssal depths below.

It was … one of the most fun he’s had in a long while.

Assault grinned as he looked across the valley at the Empire Eighty-Eight capes that had formed their own team to fight in the regional tournament: Crusader, Rune, Hookwolf, Stormtiger, and Cricket.

“Look at who we ha-!” Crusader snarked.

But Assault knew the rules of the game by this point. There was no holding back. No one could die in one of these games, after all.

He unleashed half of the kinetic energy he’s stored up to this point and jumped forward like a bullet before slamming into the shocked Master with the other half of his energy.

Crusader’s head crumpled and then exploded from force of a crashing semi-truck.

“ASSAULT!” Battery shrieked as she too rushed into action. She was going to -. “That’s not fair!”

He stared at her in shock. “What?” he asked.

Miss Militia opened fire with depleted uranium rounds. For some reason, those armor piercing and radioactive rounds glowed brighter than her normal projection-bullets. Hookwolf barely got himself transformed halfway through before those bullets punched through his armor like it was paper.

“You can’t just jump in like that! I wanted to punch his face!”

Assault looked at her before he felt a smile bloom. “Puppy!” he cried out in joy as he jumped to bear hug her.

“Not in here!” she snarled as she ducked under his duck and then slammed her charged fist into the ground. As her pent up energy exploded out and threw the ground up into a screen, she burst through it as her charge was about to run out and slammed into Rune who’d taken off from the ground but hadn’t yet flown high enough to be out of reach.

“Oh shi-!” Rune squeaked before Battery was upon her and punched the teen out of her stone platform.

Cricket screamed and Assault winced as the world wobbled, but it also quickly cut off. When he turned to look, he shivered at the sight of Armsmaster with blood splattering his front and his halberd brimming with energy. Stormtiger was also out.

Soon, all of the defeated bodies pixelated and then disappeared.

“That’s one team down,” Armsmaster grunted.

Assault thought he was absolutely excited about this game because what was offered as reward: a compact and no-maintenance-required tinkertech power source.

Ethan sighed fondly at how they’d wrecked through multiple teams from all over Northeastern U.S..

… And then they ran into Legend when it was just them and him.

He showed them - and the world, as the match had been video streamed at that point - why he was a member of the Triumvirate (still Triumvirate, because Myrddin had been promoted to Triumvirate status).

He shivered again.

Legend apparently had a flair for the dramatics, because he created a bright halo behind his head and then struck down the entire arena in a single move that he called “Laser Halo.”

Yeah, no one in the Protectorate ENE team had been ready to deal with a laser disc that was actually a shit ton of lasers spinning around in a circle.

Legend was gracious, though, because after his televised victory, he gave the reward to Armsmaster.

The said leader of Protectorate ENE hadn’t come out of his tinker lab since.

“Hey, puppy. When do you think we can have another go at the Tournament again?” he asked her as they neared finishing the patrol.

She paused in looking around before shrugging. “I’m not really interested in tinkertech.”

“Oh~?” he crooned. “But you are interested in other things? I remember seeing you looking at a tournament reward for a bottle of youthful aging~.”

She elbowed him, and he half-faked being in pain.

“Puppy! I’m just looking out for you!” And it certainly wouldn’t go amiss if he were to try to get her that for their next marriage anniversary, no?