My Weekly Gag Villain Job Is Pretty Fulfilling: Chapter 8

My Weekly Gag Villain Job Is Pretty Fulfilling: Chapter 8

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Commissioned by Arksoul

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Man, it feels really good to see a plan come together.

The IHA and the Sentinels were working together and really showcasing how strong both sides were.

The Sentinels were more than capable of dealing with the regular mobs, but they needed help to deal with the converted alien weapons and tanks. The IHA had Thunderer come in to take out the projectiles and provide artillery, which even let me unleash the Big Arm.

It was too early in the series to go throwing around giant monsters, even with flying airships in play, but a teaser should be good.

The Big Arm was just a shadow construct that was a giant, clawed hand that dragged on all the alien weapons. Like a mobile artillery tower and an armored hand, it was able to sweep the town, cause havoc, and fire weapons all at the same time.

It was too much for the Sentinels as they were, but by working together with the IHA, they were able to confront it head-on.

Oh, and we were also seeing just how strong the IHA was when they brought in their big guns.

The massive, ten-story armored arm was absolutely getting slammed by lightning bolts, while the Sentinels were cutting at its surface with beams and weapons. They were like streaks of light twisting and turning across the surface of the armored limb. Lightning and multi-colored beams of light slammed into the arm, breaking apart the alien weapons and unveiling the shadow beneath.

I made the shadow a bit weaker on purpose.

It wouldn’t do to make the armor weaker than the flesh beneath.

It also lessened the number of Imps that I had to use to make it. A full-powered limb for a titan would take, like, twenty Imps. This one barely needed ten. At fifty percent durability and damage resistance, the IHA was able to contribute to its destruction, especially with its flying ship firing from the distance.

The airship was cool.

I had eyes on it in a few clouds, and it was obviously patched up in order to be a good firing platform for the occasion. It sported a few holes through the hull, was smoking in several places, and one of the engines keeping it aloft was offline. Still, it was firing some pretty big guns with incredible accuracy while being incredibly far from the actual battle itself.

I idly considered taking it down to escalate the fight, but that just sounded like a lot of trouble.

A ship going down with all its crew was different from wounding one of the IHA’s heroes.

“I wondered where you were. It seems that you’re doing something notable for once.” Ebb chimed in and ascended from my shadow. The baleful eye between two giant bat-like wings glared, and I became aware that it was seeing through all my current minions on the field. “That singular limb is doing impressive amounts of damage for the number of Imps you’ve used to create it.”

“Thanks. I mean, we’ve got a whole world to scavenge materials from. Might as well make use of it all, right?” I stated, and Ebb grunted. The cannons on the underside of the airship crackled with energy before firing off rounds of material that superheated and gained a plasma shell as they flew through the atmosphere. I read up on those. Hypervelocity guns that fired off materials that were meant to ignite and feed the plasma shell created by going super-fast while in the atmosphere. They only went in a straight line, but they hit with both kinetic force and immense amounts of heat. “Take a look at that. Mass-produced weapons are actually doing damage to the titan.”

“A titan’s limb at half its proper strength.” Ebb argued, but I could tell its attention was on the weapon. “No force encountered by the Legion has ever faced this kind of weapon before.”

“Yeah, probably because you guys hit the whole world super-hard at the start and wreck everything before normal people can get countermeasures up. Unfortunately, in this world, everyone’s been dealing with superhuman antics for a long time.” Was it four or five generations? I remember in my history class that the first ones popped up around the 1st World War, and apparently they were just in secret for the most part throughout history? A booming population, more eyes, and more ears everywhere, and all those things apparently just unveiled them all to the world, then the crazy hijinks started. I heard in a few documentaries that gods were likely to be just superhumans. “They’ve had to get creative and mass those sorts of weapons and more up. Not to mention the nukes.”

“As you remind me all the time.” Ebb groused and shook. Nuclear weapons were a pretty big deal. I could count on one hand and have two fingers left over for people who could overcome thermonuclear weapons. Even then, there were the ones that were enhanced with everything from super science to magic the military used to definitively stop interdimensional incursions. I think the last one they used to smash the planet on the other side so hard that we were willing to take in refugees. The monopoly over violence was definitively in the hands of the government. “Within two centuries, it will not matter. Especially with the swarm that you envision.”

As much as Ebb and I butted heads, the fact remained that we were both working under the singular purpose of ending this world.

“It’ll just take time. We’ll need a trillion.” I affirmed while watching the fight. The blasts from the ship struck the limb dead on. The immense, spindly arm was actually pushed back, and all the armor shattered and melted. Multiple airships were deployed against the invasion, and wherever they went, the aliens had little answer. Superhumans on the ground as a hybrid of infantry and tanks, while supported by artillery in the air that couldn’t be reached. The aliens came expecting fast response troops with APCs and guns, but they got the real hammer instead. “Maybe more. They’ll notice the food eventually if we keep up what we’re doing. We need to set up shipments of grain. Container ship sizes. That’ll take a lot of capital.”

“The conquest of a nation should be considered, then. One with plenty of arable land. Perhaps in places humanity considers lost.” Ebb was referring to swathes of land in South America or Africa where the initial response to invasions was too weak, or the invaders in question were too different to have generic responses to. It was so bad in both places that they had people traveling through time and space to assist in pushing back, and they were barely creeping forward and taking land back. “We will need to know how our forces react to this ‘psionic’ power in the future. Otherwise, when the swarm is unleashed, we’ll find them ineffective against two continents in their entirety.”

I really didn’t want to go to either continent, but Ebb made a good point.

We couldn’t do all this work and put an end to this world’s suffering if we found out we had another hard counter besides the Sentinels.

The swarm will be enough to swamp every airship, destroy every missile silo, and take out the vast majority of people across the world in an instant.

Painless, quick, and unstoppable.

A clean end for this crazy world.

Naturally, I couldn’t cut any corners.

…

Interlude: Chroma Scarlet: Aine Campbell

…

No matter what I did, I couldn’t help but think of that thing that I saw at the alien base.

That figure in robes made of shadow itself was stuck in my head like a wart on the nose.

Just there all the time, no matter how much you wanted to ignore the thing.

We brought the great, armored arm down with the IHA providing the artillery. With the armor shredded, our beams were able to score plenty of hits, and even though we were prepared for the rest of the giant to come out of the ground… the limb faded away and revealed solid ground beneath it.

Hell, that was probably more terrifying.

No need for a head and a torso. Just limbs that can sprout from the ground and start swinging or throwing around buildings?

The Legion of Shadows was smarter now.

They were experimenting.

Taking from other alien forces.

Avoiding overt expressions of force.

That made them all the more terrifying.

It was probably because the Darkness made a ‘Chroma’ of their own like the Light did with us.

“Aine, are you okay?” Tsubaki’s voice brought me out of my thoughts. I looked her way and found her brow bent a bit as she looked at me. “Are you hurt?”

“Nah, I’m as fit as a horse.” I made a show of flexing a bicep but just got silence in return. She really perfected being able to say everything with just a stare. “Alright, I give. I’m worried. Remember the person I showed you?”

“The leader or our equivalent from the Legion?” Tsubaki asked, and I nodded. She looked about. Calm and controlled. Always on the mission. Great lieutenant and a good leader if something happened to me. “If that being were here, would they not have shown while their monster remained?”

She had her hand on her sword, obviously ready to try and cut down the thing that left me frozen in shock after just laying my eyes on it.

Do or die.

Nothing in between.

Guess that’s the mindset you need to have your island nation secure next to all the craziness in Asia. The number of superhuman warlords in Asia fighting over every little thing was just crazy. Hasn’t stopped in nearly an entire century. Japan tried to go in there during the Second World War and got involved before getting kicked out by an alliance that fractured later. That’s why they went for colonial holdings and even Australia.

Her majesty herself fought against them in Singapore, if I last recall, and the Yanks fought them all over the Pacific until the first atom bombs were dropped on them.

It's hard to believe that Japan is one of the most esteemed allies of both the United Kingdom and the United States.

Though I suppose becoming the world’s high-tech industrial center helped a lot.

I shook my head.

Da and his lectures always popped up in my mind at the strangest times.

The lecture in question did let me nip a problem in the bud, though.

“Don’t go charging at that thing when you see it. I know you’re brave. Braver than me, but that thing is something all five of us need to take on to stand a chance.” I put my foot down, and Tsubaki took a moment, but she nodded and relaxed. Instead, I gestured at the latest monster conjured up from the depths. “I was thinking that we’re fighting something new. We’ve prepared for giant monsters and got ready to blast them apart. Next thing we know, we’re fighting all over North America in small towns, fighting the legion while they rob banks.”

Most of the initial weeks since we got our power were spent training in our crystal palace between dimensions. Learning how to harness light and shoot it at giant monsters was easy. The Light made sure to prepare for our deployment against the Shadow Legion. We were supposed to watch out for a massive swarm of giant monsters that dwarfed skyscrapers or a legion of the smaller ones swarming across the land, but instead we got… probing attacks all over the strongest nation on the planet.

Everything about the situation stank.

“They’re getting our measure, taking tech from factions that the rest of the world doesn’t care about, and they’re innovating. We’re not facing the massive tide of destruction that we saw in the memory crystals. This is clever, cunning, and intelligent.” Da always told me to look at a situation as far and as deeply as I could. Always discover the ‘why’ by placing yourself in their shoes, he’d say. “Remember what we were saying when we first transformed and we got told what was going to happen?”

Tsubaki’s answer was sharp and decisive.

“Such an invasion would be met with overwhelming force from the entire world. It would be stopped.” Tsubaki nodded. She believed in that answer. So did I. She realized what I was implying, and her eyes narrowed. “I see. The Legion has taken someone from our world as its willing host and is using them.”

“Not just someone normal. Someone who’s willing and who has the skills to back it up.” We were all chosen for our roles by the Light. Heiresses with access to the defense industry, a literal princess, and finally the daughter of a retired general who filled his daughter’s head with history and battle overviews instead of ponies and rainbows. “We have someone who’s willing to destroy the entire world and who has the backing to get it done. It probably picked some missing supervillain or something!”

Tsubaki’s eyes narrowed at my words, and her teeth gritted.

“I see. Yes, that is indeed a more terrifying foe than I expected.” Tsubaki admitted it with her grip on her sword’s handle tight. She looked back at where the creature we destroyed remained. It went from a combined arms assault using alien small arms and vehicles to a giant monster covered in armor and weapons. The former was for fighting against armed, regular people supported by some street-level supers. The latter was for the international strike force and us. “We are being tested and searched for weaknesses. Not once have we made a single feint or undersold our strength.”

Tsubaki’s words made my throat clench up a bit, and this time it felt like two hands wrapping around my neck and starting to squeeze.

“We need to work with the IHA and get them and everyone else on our side. After this, the Legion will probably lay low and go to ground. Or, they’ll start doing small-time things again.” They didn’t even kill police officers or staff in the factories that they hit. They disrupted the place and corrupted it, and we fixed it up with a bit of effort after we left. In everyone’s eyes, what they do is basically just irritating, when the fact was that they were a world-ending threat testing our defenses. “We can’t just let this continue.”

Tsubaki was quiet for a while at my words before a sigh left her lips.

“I will arrange an appointment with my father and see if I can have him listen.”

I very nearly cracked my neck as I spun to look her way.

“I said we need help! Not a brigade of cyborg mercenaries with a battleship dropping in from the sky!”

“Of the four of us, my family would provide the least. You must acknowledge that.”

I could only groan at Tsubaki’s words.

She was right.

She was only the heiress to one of the world’s largest military-industrial complexes.