Apocalypse Redux - Chapter 319: Interlude Unsung Heroes

Day 1

“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, how about we calm down,” Jason called out to the angry mob. It didn’t work, obviously, but keeping his [Aura] going at full blast was thankfully sufficiently intimidating that no one tried charging at him. Yet.

The problem with mobs was that they were only as smart as their dumbest members, and if they charged, he’d have to run, but that was a risk he’d have to take. His interference could hardly have made things worse. But it might help calm them back down.

“I know things are rough at the moment, but you’re on the opposite side of the globe from the fighting. It’s not a matter of if they’ll kill the Leviathan, but when, and all this’ll achieve is land you in hot wa- …”

Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at him. He caught it, plucked out the burning rag, and gave the mob a disappointed look.

Then another twenty or so flew his way and he decided to not even fight it anymore. He had a whole lot of glue bombs infused with potions that helped those caught in it heal small injuries and removed their need to breathe for as long as they were submerged. It hadn’t been approved for general use due to concern about the optics of essentially trapping people in honey for up to an hour, but there’d been enough manufactured that stealing them had been worth it.

And he used them to trap a good half of the thousand-plus people trying to trash a local IRS office before the rest ran.

It had required most of his supply, almost all of it, in fact, but honestly, trying to stop another mob was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

Maybe, just maybe, someone would see this on TV and think twice before sacrificing their brain on the altar of mob idiocy, because once they were outside and a part of one, that was it.

He took a few seconds to pose for the camera, threw a mock salute, and made to leave.

That’s when he noticed a few police officers were getting batton-happy, so he gooped them too, before leaving.

There were riots everywhere right now, people getting genuinely upset about real problems or just deciding the potential apocalypse was the time to cut loose, and he wasn’t built to deal with any of it. This had been his attempt at a warning shot, he’d tried, and now he was done with that specifically.

For several days at the very least, he’d be running all over the world, making as many examples as possible, fixing as many situations as he could, with Zambon working in the background to either locate targets or, when necessary, play merry havoc with the command structures with anyone trying to attack their neighbors.

It’d be a busy few days, but he was Level 185, and only needed a few seconds of sleep per day. Things should be fine.

***

Day 2

Time to check in on what the Russians were doing. Again.

They’d stayed out of a global crisis for some reason, and while that might just be down to selfishness, they might also be planning something. Checking this out was decidedly important, and their information security was good enough that either Jason or Zambon needed to get in range to get some information.

He ran into a full two-thirds of Russia’s S-Rankers a few steps into the building. So two in total.

One was a hulking brute who looked like he’d just stepped out of a recruiting poster, though Jason knew that was just cosmetic surgery, the other a wiry woman who looked practically mummified, arcane symbols stitched into her clothing.

This entire place was likely drowning in wards, that was how they’d noticed him.

On one hand, someone was clearly worried about S-ranked snoops. On the other hand, if they were here, they couldn’t be fucking around anywhere else.

“Who are you? CIA, MI6, Mossad?” the woman asked, threads already manifesting around her hands as she got ready to go after him.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“You do realize that name recognition is not a good thing for an intelligence agency?” Jason asked with a cocky grin while activating a couple of [Skills] to get the hell out there.

Thankfully, [French Exit] worked together perfectly with [Rougish Avatar], allowing him to get the hell out of dodge without leaving a gap between him vanishing and the avatar appearing.

So while Jason strode off into the sunset, he made the avatar do the “I’m watching you” gesture of pointing at his eyes with two fingers, and then pointing the same fingers at the people standing across from him.

And then, he dissolved the avatar and moved on.

***

“Do you think there’s a record for the most governments toppled in a day?” Jason wondered.

“I’d say you’ve certainly got the one for most heads of state stink-bombed in one day,” Zambon said.

“Hey, there’s a reason for that,” Jason shot back, “I could tell them they’re vulnerable, I could injure them, I could even cut off fingers, but the worse the stuff I do is, the more I look like a monster. And in time, they’ll start feeling like maybe I’m not all that much of a threat.

“But an alchemical stink bomb that’s incredibly difficult to clean will be a constant reminder for weeks, every time they take a breath in their offices, they’ll know I can get to them. And while I might not be able to get to them all, I sure as shit can go for any given asshole who decides to use a global crisis to enrich himself.”

“I’m not arguing that point,” Zambon replied, “It’s just that you’re getting a bit of a reputation …”

“Ah, who cares,” Jason shrugged, “I’ve already got a weird one, being a little erratic can’t hurt. Makes it harder to predict what I’m going to do next. Anyway, do you have another target for me?”

“Unless you’ve got something else you desperately need to get to, one of those Congo warlords decided to ignore your warning and try to absorb his rival’s territory.”

“Oh, frick,” Jason sighed, picked himself up, and headed off in search of the nearest person with [Portal] while reaching into one of his storage rings for some suitable Aspects to bribe them with once he found them.

A while ago, Zambon’d collected a pretty thorough list of all people with that [Skill], the locations they liked to hang out, and what to bribe them with.

Was it intrusive as hell? Yeah, but it was the only thing that made zapping around the globe possible. And he sincerely doubted anyone regretted the trade, considering what he paid them.

***

Day 3

“Okay, okay, okay, I know that this seems like a good idea in your mind, that there’s ‘historical support’ and maybe even some ‘divine right’ in play that makes you think you can pull this shit, but you can either cut the crap, or I can cut apart your entire military command structure,” Jason rattled off even amidst fisticuffs with the so-called “security detail”.

He’d run out of alchemical stink bombs hours ago, so he was sticking to random chemicals he’d been able to steal in passing. And on one occasion, a skunk he’d kidnapped from the local zoo and let loose in his target’s office.

***

Day 4

“… We should act now, the Americans have blown a good chunk of their nuclear arsenal, and all the idiots who decided to fight the boss will have blown all their cooldown [Skills]. We should be able to keep everything we secure within the next few days, but parts of the world are unusually unified at the moment. If they recover from the battle and we’re still fighting, we …”

The General wearing an embarrassing number of exceedingly gaudy medals broke off as Jason stumbled into the office, looking like death warmed over. Not due to injuries, he was just tired. Though his clothing was quite badly torn at the moment.

“Okay, so, I’ve had a really shitty few days, so I’m going to make this real short. There are people who don’t feel like having the world explode into chaos, I am one of those people, and if you make me come back here, you won’t like what happens.”

Jason lazily swayed to the side to avoid his outfit from being ruined by any of the bullets fired at him, and snapped his fingers.

Every water cooler, sink, and toilet in the building exploded. Especially the toilets.

Elena might have been perfectly capable of fighting against the Leviathan, but that was with a combination of all her [Skills], copying any single one would not have helped matters. So he’d been left with the ability to copy her as a trump card.

This time, several elemental spells were mixed in amidst the gunfire, courtesy of the small little balding man who styled himself “president” of this place, despite having decidedly not been democratically elected.

“Mr. President, if I may use that word despite it fitting you as well as it would a dog turd, I’m an S-Ranker. An actual one, unlike you, who might claim to be one but it’s just that no one in your immediate circle dares tell you otherwise. And the international media are done running this story a hundred times over.”

He dodged another barrage and grinned.

“I’m an S-Ranker, and I’m not at the big fight because they could spare me. That’s how far you are from the kind of power needed to do any of your plans.”

And with that, he jumped out of the window while using Elena’s hydrokinesis to direct all the sewage that had blasted out of various toilets into the main office.

Sure, flooding a historic building that had been constructed all the way back in 1849, along with its attached museum, with all sorts of unmentionable crap would probably land him in historical infamy for decades or centuries, but holy shit, that had been fun.

***

The snake was done, and so was he. Time to fall into a bed and sleep like the dead.