Chapter 17: Secret Meetings

-POV Chubster-

Ben was never one to take himself too seriously.

Heck, it was practically in his name! He had chosen Chubster as his hero identity precisely because he didn’t want to get a big head. He also thought the PRT could use some humour after the death of Vikare and Hero. Those were some grim times.

Where was he going with this?

Ah yes! He didn’t like to take himself too seriously, but he could when the situation called for it.

A meeting involving Alexandria and the rest of Quick Response Team Bravo was one of those situations where he was forced to be serious.

Quick Response Teams weren’t something you would find information about by trawling through PHO or Wikipedia. They were teams designed to act quickly in order to prevent certain situations from getting too out of hand.

Rogue biotinker creations, interdimensional portals, artificial intelligence, memetic control agents and more were the sort of thing they were called in for. They actually had a fairly good track record too. For every S-Class threat which had ballooned into the public consciousness there were at least ten more which had been nipped in the bud.

As a top tier Brute Ben had been called in to occasionally lend a hand, even if he wasn’t a full time member of a team, and yes he was aware of the irony that Chubster had worked in a Quick Response Team.

It’s a real shame he had to sign all of those NDA’s, he’d make a killing on all of the jokes he could come up with for that!

Ben settled into his chair, wiggling around to find the most comfortable position to sit in and leaned back.

The room was brewing with nervous energy. Several new members were fidgeting, their eyes occasionally darting between the veteran members of the team and Alexandria. A few even sent confused looks his way, not having served with him before.

The older members were more still, but he could tell they were still on edge. It was blindingly obvious to everyone in the room that this meeting would be about what was happening in China.

It wasn’t every day that a capital city got ransacked by a single person, the fact that it happened to the C.U.I only made it more unbelievable, except that was the problem.

It had already happened.

Quick Response Units were meant to be deployed against developing threats, not something that had already reached this level.

So the real question was: what developing threat in China was currently under everybody’s noses.

Alexandria glanced at him, before clearing her throat and signalling the beginning of the debrief.

“Greetings. Thank you all for coming today. At 0400 hours today a single parahuman single handedly defeated the combined forces present in the Capital of the C.U.I, attacked The Emperor, defaced the Imperial Palace and then left to engage other military forces to the west,” Alexandria began stiffly.

She gestured to the screen behind her, featuring a grainy picture of a large figure dressed in resplendent robes and carrying a golden staff.

Ben squinted at the picture, there was something odd about the man but the poor quality of the photograph was preventing him from seeing what it was.

“This will no doubt affect China, as well as the entire Eurasian continent, going forwards. The entity we have named ‘Sun Wukong’ for his resemblance to the fictional character of the same name will no doubt warrant his own debrief, but that is not we are here for today,” Alexandria continued, ignoring the many eyes that widened at that statement.

Ben himself leaned forwards, more than a little curious.

Alexandria’s eyes panned across the room, ensuring everyone was paying attention before she continued.

“At the same time all penal camps across China reported the disappearances of all inmates, and the camps in Jinzhou went completely dark.”

Huh. Well Ben wouldn’t have expected a continent wide prison break out, but this was at least better than he had feared.

“So do you believe what’s happening in China is a coordinated insurgency?”

The question was asked by one of the many in the back, Ben craned his neck to try an find who had asked it. Alas, he was too fat.

At that question Alexandria paused before continuing.

“That is indeed possible,” Alexandria responded, “however what is of true concern is who is coordinating all of this.”

At that the slide behind Alexandria shifted to show…a bunch of squiggly lines. There was a lot of scientific reading to the left of it, statistics and numbers that made his head spin.

Ben decided not to question it, Alexandria would no doubt explain what the hell they were looking at.

The deadpan stare he received from Alexandria only received a shrug from him. That was the great thing about Thinkers, they typically gave you the answer before you even asked and knew what you were thinking without you having to say it.

Some found that creepy. He found it convenient.

“To anyone who doesn’t know, this a geomorphological map. It shows evidence of a man made structure of truly staggering proportions underneath the East China Sea.”

The slide once more changed to a map of Eurasia, unchanged save for a single red line.

He traced that line, beginning suspiciously close to China’s capital and following it downwards until his eyes widened as he reached Kyushu.

There were gasps across the room, eyes widening and narrowing in thought.

“On July 6th Kyushu was restored and raised from the seafloor, along with a city that had not been present beforehand. All of you are already aware of New Fukuoka and the ripple effect it’s had on the world. You’ve all read the documents. By far the largest mystery regarding this event were the architects behind this city, and now we believe we have found them.”

Ben stared at the map. To say the Tinkers (or rather the Parahumans) responsible for raising Kyushu were shrouded in mystery would be far from an understatement. It would be a lie. Numerous organisations had invested millions into uncovering who had been responsible. Tinkertech sensors designed to trace the exotic energies released from teleportation or pocket dimensions had been funnelled into Kyushu and found nothing.

At the time it was assumed that the creators were simply using yet more advanced means to defy detection, but now it seemed they had simply chosen a very simple means to leave New Fukuoka.

Ben didn’t know whether to call this an overestimation of the architects or a grave underestimation. Either way he knew there were going to be plenty of analysts crying into their pillows tonight for not having thought of such a straightforward escape plan.

“We now believe that this group is focused on destabilising China for a yet unknown reason,” At that Alexandria once more changed the screen to a final image.

Ben felt his mouth grow dry at the sight.

It was a wall, that was the factual statement of what he was seeing and yet it didn’t do the sight justice. He could see the forest and trees surrounding the blackened wall reaching feebly upwards, and not even reach a tenth of the height of the gargantuan edifice.

The height alone was intimidating enough, but the wall itself set off every alarm bell in his head. The black material seemed almost…grown in the way it melded with the surrounding environment, the vast honeycomb structure of the bulwark only served to emphasise this.

The bright green glowing sigils etched into the wall only exacerbated his nervousness. They were Chinese, of that he was sure, and yet the smoothness of it and the stark contrast of the blackened canvas only seemed to elevate the alien nature of this construct.

From the whispers and shuffles he could hear around the room, he wasn’t the only one unsettled.

How had they built something so stupidly massive in such a short amount of time?

“The radius of this wall is enough to encircle a small country, in addition is the parahuman effect of the wall itself. From what little information our Thinkers have been able to puzzle together there is a spatial anomaly surrounding the wall, ensuring travelling to it is effectively impossible.”

The faces of many veterans in the conference room grew grim at that, as did Ben’s.

Large spatial effects were never a good sign when it came to Tinkers, it usually preceded either a fatal failure of the Tinkertech or interdimensional effects. The latter was far worse than the former.

“In addition, as you have likely surmised already, there are stranger effects tied to this barrier. The first blocks most forms of Thinker powers while the second causes feeling of dread and awe in anybody who views the walls. We believe this is a method to deter potential intruders,” Alexandria said, looking mildly pained as she explained the difficulty the Thinkers had been having.

Well, he couldn’t really blame her, Watchdog and similar organizations had been coming under fire recently for failing to predict or locate the group responsible for New Fukuoka. Now that there was an entire region they were unable to figure out that would only continue.

He wondered if this would effect PRT policy going forwards. If Thinkers were able to be blocked by more than just the usual methods (Those being Scion, Endbringers and Triggers) then their reliability could be called into question. After all organisations like the PRT made heavy use of precognitive support, but if the secrets to whatever technology allowed for their disruption was spread by this mysterious group then they would become almost useless overnight.

Briefly he sent a prayer to Costa-Brown. The women was already fighting off vultures trying to steal portions of the PRT’s budget and this would only make it worse for her.

After that brief side tangent, Ben spoke up.

“So I assume you want us to investigate this personally?”

All eyes turned to him at that, but he shrugged off the attention. He knew it wasn’t exactly proper etiquette to interrupt a debriefing session until the end, but in this particular case organisational culture could eat a dick. If he was being told to deploy on the C.U.I’s equivalent of a front lawn then he wanted to be told up front.

“Yes, each member of this team has been hand picked for this mission. Shade will ensure none of you are noticed while you are investigating. Shuffle will be present for quick exfiltration, should it become necessary. Scope, Orwell, and Remote will be the primary parahumans carrying out the investigation, we believe their powers are unlikely to be effected by this blindspot. You, Pyroclast, Atlas and Wayfarer will be combat support as a last resort.”

She looked around the room.

“I should stress that this is a reconnaissance mission only. You are not to involve yourself in any local affairs and you are not to be seen by anyone,” the order was spoken with an iron certainty.

For a moment Ben considered refusing. Yes he had gone to fight S-Class threats in the past, but that had always been with support. In Jinzhou they would be alone, surrounded by both the C.U.I and a mysterious Tinker group who no one knew anything about.

Above all else he thought of Charley, his daughter. How she constantly worried whenever he left to fight an Endbringer battle, how she had cried the first time he had gotten laid up in the hospital. There were acceptable risks, and then there was this.

He sat up, preparing to give his refusal before Alexandria cut him off with her next sentence.

“I don’t think I can quite overstate exactly how important this mission is. Yes gaining information on a new, potentially destabilising group, would be useful. However the ability to quickly construct massive structures and produce blindspots, seemingly at will, could be invaluable in our struggle against the Simurgh.

Ben froze at that, remembering the fights he had participated in against that thing. How the sharp scream had threatened to carve itself into him brain. How he had been forced to run, eschewing his Brute power simply to leave her radius before his own allies killed him. He remembered the fear, the desperate prayers and the screams of families as they were separated from each other.

Numbly he glanced up, only now realising he had slumped in his seat.

Alexandria’s eyes met his own in a silent challenge.

He almost cursed her then, he knew what she was doing. She wasn’t even trying to be subtle.

But as he glanced back to that alien wall spanning the horizon he knew she didn’t have to be. He had already made up his mind.

AN: So yeah, the PRT is putting together a team to investigate Jinzhou. Alexandria is being a manipulative piece of shit, as usual. Girlboss gotta Girlboss, I guess. The PRT isn’t stupid, despite us fans loving to rage on them, if they’re incompetent it’s largely because they’re meant to be by Cauldron. However when Cauldron wants something done you get a PRT that can get shit done.

Also now that they’ve deduced how Alexander gets around they’re going to be able to guess where he’s going next, and even meet him there. Such a shame Alexander doesn’t know that.