The App 3

The App
Chapter 3

-VB-

In a small town just north of Baltimore, a man who considered himself forgettable stumbled upon a revelation.

Cossack, a man who’d abandoned his civilian identity after his entire family had died, stared at the PHO thread and the subsequent threads. TrackNine was infamous on PHO for trying their goddamned best to track the trajectory of the Slaughterhouse Nine, because TrackNine suffered, allegedly, at their hands before. Cossack could sympathize with the anonymous PHO user, because he too had lost so much at the Nine’s hand.

Unlike Cossack, TrackNine had made it his mission to find any way to track down the Slaughterhouse Nine so that someone who might be able to put them down could put them down.

Ask Mel! came along and showed them the way.

Day after day, they would ask the same question and post it on this thread and elsewhere, and Cossack had come across it only just now after someone pointed it out to him.

Silently, he opened his laptop and pulled up a copy of the Bing Map.

He tracked every single coordinate, as surely as others have done.

He knew that national TV and media was a little slow on the uptake - they were still arguing and hotly roaring over the implications of Ask Mel! rather than actually asking it questions - and wasn’t prone to asking the right questions in the first place.

TrackNine was asking the right question just as Cossack was asking the right question.

What was the Nine’s next target?

Monument… Beech Creek… Milesburg… Pleasant Gap… Huntingdon… Newburg…

Cossack tapped the screen.

“Mel?”

[Yes, Cossack?]

He’d asked Mel to reply to him by Cossack.

“Is Harrisburg the Nine’s latest target?” he asked while his heart pounded inside his chest. As an Investigative subscriber, he … felt that he deserved an answer. He’d already done half the work by looking up the trajectory of the Nine’s travel, even if no one else wanted to test out its veracity right now.

[It is.]

He closed his eyes and let out a slow and deep hiss.

“Will they still be there if I get my boys and jump on him?”

[They will be.]

“Will they be there within two days?”

[Yes.]

“Will they be there in one day?”

[No.]

The Nine’s reputation came from how unexpectedly they struck. They came out of nowhere, burned a town, and left. Sure, they had Crawler and Siberian, but for people like him who specialized in hit and run tactics, what could they do? Siberian wasn’t even fast, “merely” unstoppable.

Now, everyone else knew where they were.

“Thanks, Mel.”

He tuned off his laptop and walked out, grabbing his trusty and hefty warhammer on the way.

“My friends!” he roared as he came out of his office.

Four dozen armed and armored “normals” looked up.

“I have received intel that the Slaughterhouse Nine is coming to Harrisburg!”

All of the fighters, men and women, stiffened. They didn’t freeze out of fear but out of anticipation.

“We are the remnants of the vile beasts that roam the land,” he began. “We watched our brothers, sisters, parents, children, neighbors, and friends die at the hands of the Nine!”

Through the Trump effect linking them all together, he could feel their rage.

And excitement.

“In two days, the Nine will strike Harrisburg in Philadelphia!"

The grips on their chosen weapons tightened.

“I intend to kill as many of them as possible. I intend to take Jack Slash’s head.” He paused and then grinned maniacally, because that’s what he felt. He and his riders could finally catch up to the Nine to exact their revenge after what they had done to their hometowns. “Who’s with me?”

Everyone stood up with a unified thump. They slammed the tips and butts of their weapons into the ground with another unified clank.

“WE RIDE TOGETHER!”

“We ride together!” he roared back at them in glee.

Ghostly horses, glowing dimly in blue ethereal wisps, rose up from the ground underneath them in this abandoned warehouse, and they all saddled themselves on top of the horses as they rose fully out of the ground.

“WE RIDE!”

And forty-nine riders of the Ghostly Horde streamed out of the warehouse and took to the roads.

They would have their revenge, even if it took every single last of them to the grave.

-VB-

♦Topic: S9’s Attack on Harrisburg

In: Boards ► Cape Discussion ► Groups of Interest ► National ► Slaughterhouse Nine

PHONews (Original Poster)(Our Own Voice)
Posted on February 3th, 2009:
On February 1th, 2009, north Baltimore based vigilante group, the Ghostly Horde, rode out in full force. PRT Maryland quickly mobilized in expectation that the extremely aggressive vigilante team would leave behind large swaths of destruction in their awake, which was the norm for this team.
On February 2th, 2009, they rode past York, PA towards Harrisburg, PA. PRT Philadelphia was also mobilized by this point.
Instead of attackinng the local villains, the Ghostly Horde stormed into Harrisburg, PA … just as the city came under attack by the Slaughterhouse Nine. The PRT branches hadn't noticed this and followed in after the Ghostly Horde had already jumped into the fray, seemingly suicidal.
The aftermath of the battle is currently being shown on national television. Of the forty-five thousand residents, ten thousand are dead. Collateral damage is currently estimated to be in one hundred millions and climbing. The local independent hero and villain, Roamer and Mountain Lion, are KIA. Their normal teammates are also all KIA. The local police department suffered 80% casualty. PRT reinforcements and Protectorate heroes suffered twelve and three casualties.
The Ghostly Horde lost all but one normal member.
The Slaughterhouse Nine lost four of its members in the Ghostly Horde’s suicidal charge.
Why this is shocking is how it came out to be.
On PHO and elsewhere, a small number of users have discovered that Ask Mel! will tell them the location of the Slaughterhouse Nine. No one trusted this nor wanted to test it out. According to the last survivor of the Ghostly Horde (now defunct with the death of its only parahuman cape), Cossack, the leader of the defunct vigilante team, used Ask Mel! to determine the timing and location of the Slaughterhouse Nine. Capable of giving up to fifty people low level Brute, Mover, and Striker abilities, he led his team into battle fully knowing that the S9 was going to be there. Why? Because, according to the last survivor, all members of the Ghostly Horde are survivors of previous S9 attacks. Instead of looking to survive, all forty-nine members of the Ghostly Horde attacked with the clear intent to bring down the S9 with their lives.
It worked partially.
Of the current roster of the Nine, Chuckles (impaled by spear charge), Winter (suicide bomb), Shatterbird (impaled by javelin), and Hatchet Face (suicide bomb) were killed. Jack Slash, Mannequin, Siberian, Crawler, and Bonesaw survived and fled back to where they came from, injured and bleeding.
This has, so far, been the worst loss that the Slaughterhouse Nine has suffered to date. While they have lost one or two members before in their attacks, an unprecedented loss of four (half of their number) show how scary-.

-VB-

“YOU BITCH!”

It was odd, and rare, to see Jack angry.

[You never asked Mel to hide your information nor is Mel inclined to.]

“You led them to us!”

[Mel did not. You could have asked Mel any number of questions at any time to prevent this. You knew that people could track you, Jack. You laughed about it. You got complacent, Jack.]

Jack threw his phone at the wall, and it shattered with a crash.

“Fuck!”

“What now?” Mannequin asked.

Jack swept his hand through his hair, thinking furiously, as he clenched down on his jaw and his nose flared. His normally cocky, half-lidded eyes brimmed wide open with proper anger.

“We… have to keep ourselves ahead of everyone else,” he hissed. He picked up another phone from the dead bodies in the house, their latest victims in their rout from Harrisburg. “Mel, why are you telling them our information so readily?”

[Because this is information the governments already have. They just never bothered to put it together. Low level satellites, those that Simurgh didn’t touch, can see your movements with ease.]

He stared at the phone.

“What?”

[Select parts of the government are already aware of your location and have been for some time. The only reason why they didn't do anything is because of internal corruption, fear of extreme casualties, politics, and your presence causing more trigger events than any intended effort.]

Ah. 

“And why would you tell the rest of the world? That’s merely how the information might be available,” Jack gritted as Mannequin kept silent and still to not earn any attention.

[Mel may have a deal with you, but Mel doesn’t care if you die before it. C’est la vie, after all.]

“... Mel, how many capes are closing in on us?”

[Twelve.]

Mannequin stood up as did Siberian. Bonesaw tittered as the zebra-stripped woman set her down.

“How many of those twelve are actually worth thinking about?”

[Two.]

“Why?”

[One has a thermobaric bomb. She also lost her four children and husband to you.]

Fuck.

“Fuck.”

[Did you really think you can do this forever, Jack?]

Jack laughed abruptly.

Everyone stared at him for a moment as he came down from whatever it was that tripped him off.

“Mel?”

[Yes?]

“What is the chance of the Nine’s death in the next year?”

[High. Very high.]

“Mel?”

[Yes?]

“Would doing your favor increase the chance of the Nine’s survival? One involving how we’re supposed to kill Eidolon?”

[Yes.]

“By how much?”

[Significiantly.]

“And what would you have us do, then~?”

Jack was back in the mood.

[Travel to Madison in Wisconsin, Jack. You will know the favor when it comes to you.]

“And our weakness is still not known?”

[No one has a Secretive Subscription so far.]

“So far.”

[Yes.]

Jack turned to the rest. “I guess that’s where we’re heading.”

---

The_App: It’s soon time.
Winged_One: Okay.
The_App: you know the plan.
Winged_One: I do.