chapter 6

Wyrm

April 27, 2011

The world around me shook as my casual flick of my tail destroyed an entire section of the building's wall as I dug my way down to Coil's hidden base. The earth and the rocks moved out of my way as I willed them to, and I dove deeper and deeper as I pushed myself further down. Through the vibrations in the earth, I heard the villain's base getting ready for my presence as were the capes within it.

Yes, I knew that Coil had already hired capes but so what? With the exception of Labyrinth in this city, no one could harm me!

My elongated snout hit concrete and burst through.

As my head broke through the secret base's concrete ceiling and landed on the concrete floor, I realized that the corridor here was too small.

How the hell was I supposed to fit into a corridor that was only nine feet across and high when I was already ten feet in diameter?

Growling in irritation, I turned my attention to the people who appeared in my vision. They were Coil's mercenaries wielding the laser tinkertech weapons.

"Shoot!" one of them shouted.

I snorted before I pushed the earth above them downward. Pillars no thicker than one foot across broke through the ceiling and struck the top of the heads of the mercenaries, dazing them. Then I opened my mouth and breathed my dragon fire. Yellow-red fire burst forward and I heard the screams of the mercenaries as they were roasted on the spot.

I paid them no more attention and instead paid attention to the vibrations of the earth.

I knew that at this point in the timeline that Coil was supposed to have the Travelers with him in his base. Of them, the ones I was interested in was Noelle and Sundancer. The former I had to kill to prevent her from causing issue. By extension, I had to kill Trickster because he was a Simurgh bomb. Sundancer was tricky. She was powerful, only weaker than me in my current second stage wyrmling form and Labyrinth.

At the same time, I wanted her as my woman too. A powerful woman cape? It was like a fire to my dragon instinct.

Of course, I was also here to kill Coil as well.

I pushed forward, breaking the corridor as I forced myself to travel through the hallways of his secret base. I roared gleefully as I grew even bigger and ran over mercenaries who were too slow to flee. I felt their bodies get crushed beneath my scales while some had the misfortune of being in front of my open maw.

As I grew, my senses and control over the elements grew as well.

And it was with this newly regained heightened sense that I saw Noelle.

I wasted no time.

I broke through the concrete and the earth and plowed to her. I watched as several individuals made their way to the giant weight on the earth, which had to be Noelle. I pushed myself faster and broke down to the corridor between Noelle's containment chamber and where the Travelers were.

Oh, they had been close. If they had started this run only ten seconds earlier, then they would have been at the containment chamber's entrance.

I didn't even speak. I had no reason nor the capacity to. All I saw was future danger to me and mine in the form of the tophat wearing Trickster, and I blasted fire.

The red and black wearing Sundancer jumped forward and stopped the fire.

I growled, and she froze, leaving me to use earth to crush Trickster. Several pillars of rocks burst through the walls and ceilings of the corridor and slammed down onto Trickster, and I watched gleefully as the man twitched before falling silent.

Humans were so fragile~.

Sundancer whirled around, saw Trickster's dead body between pillars of stones, and turned back to me. She shouted and created suns…

And just as she did to mine, I canceled her suns out.

She stood there with an arm outstretched but without any effect. Frozen in horror, she looked at me before slowly backing away.

I let her and her companions go. I had a bigger target to worry about. I turned around, breaking the walls of the corridor as I faced the blast doors between Noelle and myself.

The containment blast doors bulged outward as Noelle slammed into it.

I didn't care.

I bellowed out a continuous stream of fire towards the blast door, and the door melted away. Something screamed on the other side before that too died down.

I grinned triumphantly when I smelled cooked pork.

With Noelle and Trickster dead, I only had one target left. My reptilian need to remove a threat spurred me onward even when I wasn't thinking properly. I destroyed every exit. I destroyed every volatile substance in the base.

It wasn't long until I found him. I cornered him in his office whose escape I'd cut off. It was just large enough for me to move my head around without hitting the walls.

He screamed with his back to the wall while I roared at him. He shot at me with a gun but they may as well have been pebbles for all they did. He said things that my wyrm mind didn't understand anymore.

That was alright.

I came here to kill him anyways.

Still roaring, I dove forward and devoured the snake along with his office desk and chair.

There could be only one underground snake in this city, after all.

… Gammy.

With my job done, I left the scene.

-VB-

Armsmaster

When he got there, it was just in time to see Wyrm crawling out of the ruined building. Despite the dust and rubble surrounding them, Wyrm looked no worse for wear besides the blood leaking out of his mouth.

Blood that wasn't his if the tattered clothes stuck between his teeth was any indication.

"Wyrm, surrender yourself to the authority-!" he began.

Wyrm ignored him and began to leave.

Seeing as Wyrm was not reacting to him, Armsmaster decided to strike. With his improved but incomplete Nanothorn, he should be able to damage-!

Even before he could land a blow, he saw something from the side and dodged as his combat program screamed at him to. It was still too late. Having been too focused on striking Wyrm's elongated body, he forgot that the dragon had tail.

The tail came whipping around, and clipped him in the shoulder. He was sent sprawling from the force of the blow. The thrusters on his powered armor came online and quickly righted him before he could tumble through the air, and he performed a three-point landing.

Then he froze as he realized that Wyrm was staring at him, no longer leaving the scene.

"Wyrm-!"

Two dozen "missiles" of light appeared above Wyrm's draconic head, and Armsmaster shut up. He'd seen those missiles before.

In the video of the Battle of Canberra.

Wyrm was threatening him. If he released those, then they would either hit him or the area around him, which was the Downtown.

If they hit him, then he was dead. He'd seen the destructive powers and there were too many of them for his powered armor to tank.

If they didn't hit him, then the entire Downtown area around him would be devastated. If Wyrm tactically struck one building with each of those missiles, then the casualties would be devastating, nevermind the disruption of commerce and perceived safety of the Downtown area surrounding the PRT ENE headquarters.

Despite the anger and frustration he felt, he had to let Wyrm go. The devastation wasn't worth it.

"You know that you can't get away with this," he bit out.

Wyrm shrunk a little. An oddity. His helmet's video recorded this. Instead of the fifteen feet thick and nearly two hundred feet long giant dragon, he was a much more manageable and smaller thirty feet long and eight feet thick.

"There is nothing for me to flee from," Wyrm replied with a mocking snort. "You are too weak to punish me."

Armsmaster really wanted to fight Wyrm, but he didn't become a Protectorate leader on his Tinkering ability alone.

"The Triumvirate-"

"Are weaker than me. Unless you intend to destroy this entire city with me in one strike so powerful that would see me destroyed in an instant, you can't," Wyrm replied before turning away. "Just pray that I don't strike down more of the villains you were responsible for in the first place."

Wyrm slithered away before disappearing between the alleys.

-VB-

Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown

"Leave him alone," she told Director Piggot.

Piggot looked incensed by the order. Honestly, she had every right to be but Wyrm was … too valuable to lose on a petty skirmish like this. He was too valuable for the final battle.

Coil had thrown his die, and he'd be dead for it.

"Chief Director, we have a villain destroying buildings-" Piggot started.

"But not cities," Rebecca cut her off. "Did you know that Watchdog has a file on him?" she changed the subject conversationally. "It's actually because Wyrm is a contributor to the economy, unlike the rest of the villains and their criminal organizations in your city."

Piggot looked incredulous.

"That is ridiculous."

"But it's true," she replied. "For example, in the two months that he's been there - and the one and a half month period of he set up his base in your city - there has been a lot of money that has been exchanged between an unknown underground organization and mineral markets in Boston."

Piggot stared blankly before she looked horrified. "He's engaging in mining in my city…?!"

Rebecca actually had the same reaction.

Mining was not a pretty process. It scarred the land, there was no long term prosperity for towns that lived off of it, and left toxic materials behind.

"Indeed, but he has produced none of the toxic wastes of normal mines for the quantity of palladium, copper, and gold he brought out of the earth."

Piggot's face blanked at the mention of the mineral. She should know, because she had two Tinkers in her Protectorate department.

"Wait, you mean he's the one who's responsible for bringing down the prices of …?"

"Of minerals used in electronics? Like those our Tinkers need? Yes. I intend to order the Boston branch to start buying it directly from them."

"Ma'am, they're villains!"

Rebecca knew that the idea of the government buying from villains was distasteful, but buying the conductor minerals from Wyrm's "Dragonteeth" would decrease the national Protectorate expenditure by one percent. It was significant enough that she was willing to ignore it for now.

"Outside of Wyrm's own attack and murder of Kaiser, Coil, and their criminal minions, he's been a help to the New England economy. Many dangerous homeless in your city have been hired off the streets while Boston is enjoying a resurgence of the refinery industry. While we won't be thanking him for those, we can keep him contained in your city at the least."

Piggot looked like she was about to blow a gasket at the idea.

Sucked to be her, eh?

"Just send Wyrm a warning, Director Piggot. We can only tolerate so much drama at once before we must act on it."

"Yes, ma'am," the PRT ENE director bit out before the connection severed.

Rebecca leaned back into her comfortable leather chair with a huff. It wasn't that she didn't understand Piggot's situation. Wyrm's latest rampage was sure to cause PRT ENE a lot of headaches. Everything from PR to patrol adjustments would be affected.

She wrote a note on the side.

'Add 5% additional to PRT ENE budget.' It wouldn't affect the Cauldron's experiment in the city.

She and others in Cauldron have talked about Wyrm. Number Man ranked him higher than all of the Triumvirate and Contessa's Path encouraged the fostering of his organization.

Because they intended to push volatile villains against him like they had done to Coil. With this conflict, they learned that Wyrm's ability to change his size was extremely flexible.

This led Cauldron to the next question: just how far could he grow in one go?