Chapter 23

The Lord of Vermilion’s Test 6

-:-

4 Days Later

Lunch Time

Inside a container truck

Highway heading into Vermilion City

50 people clad in black sat in the container.

Naturally, being packed like sardines was not a pleasing experience.

Being trapped with a bunch of muscular sweaty men on a high protein diet was not fun at all.

Due to the comprehensive briefing they received earlier, there were no more words needed.

All of them were battle hardened after all.

All that was left to do was to put those plans unto action.

40 of the 50 would charge into the FNN building and execute the mission.

The last 10, who all belonged to the Lord’s group, would do miscellaneous task such as datamining and a like.

Unlike the 40, the 10 would escape the millisecond they have accomplished their mission.

Also, unlike the 40 battle ready strike force, the 10 were dressed in clothes that blended with the FNN workers.

To give the mercenaries some incentives to do better, Lord paid them 50 thousand rooks up front for their services.

Sadly, this bonus didn’t apply to Theo, Diego and the 2 of Lord’s subordinates.

They were secretly given a different set of goals to accomplish with a payment to match

Only Theo would receive nothing from this mission.

It was his firebombing the Dionaea building kick started the whole Anti-Superhero bonanza in the first place.

Thus, not only was he going to do this without pay, he was also going to undertake the most dangerous job of the entire mission.

He was quite cocky when he volunteered for the job.

That confidence only lasted until he knew of the details.

And given the stuff on Theo’s plate today, it couldn’t be helped that he was way beyond nervous.

He did sneak in a few times into the FNN the last 4 days to set up some insurance policies, but this wasn’t like the Dionaea incident.

He couldn’t cover up the evidence of his retreat by bombing the FNN building sky high.

Unlike the Dionaea incident where everyone inside the building was enemies, the FNN was filled to the brim with innocent civilians.

He cant just transmute his way into the sewers and expect that he wouldn’t leave a trail.

And given his job this time around, he couldn’t just hightail and run when things went south.

His current mission was not to beat down his enemies with swift and brutal efficiency. His job was to send a message to the fools that dare capitalize on the Anti-Superhero rhetoric.

Sounds cool and righteous, right?

Not for Theo.

“*sigh*…. I can already feel my bones breaking….” Said the depressed Theo while his voice scrambler was active.

“Hahaha. Just think of it as penance for your sins Boss. It’ll be fine!” replied Diego who looked weird when wearing a black mask.

His riot armor could barely contain his overflowing manly muscles.

“Said the guy who can regenerate after getting hit by a truck head on.” said Theo.

“We all have our difficulties.”

“That’s so empty coming from you.”

“Hahaha”

The container truck stopped at a recently made ruin of an abandoned building 3 blocks from the FNN building.

Apparently some superheroes fought some supervillains here 2 days ago.

Just another ‘peaceful’ day in one of the richest city in the Commonwealth.

The 10 that didn’t belong to the assault group went to the FNN via many different and legal means. They were literally going to walk through the front door and no one would now the wiser.

Theo, Diego and everyone else that belonged to the assault group went into one of the collapsed buildings.

They shifted a suspiciously out-of-place partially destroyed car out of the way in order to access the trapped door underneath it.

A simple camouflage but a surpassingly effective one.

From there, they went through Theo’s least favorite place in Vermilion City: The Sewers.

The trip through the shitter was filled with numerous complaints from all the participants.

The fragrant smell of rotting poop and dead rats was universally despised for a reason.

After 10 minutes, the assault group split into 4 and began heading in different locations.

“See you later Diego. Don’t die now.” Said Theo as he waved at his hulking comrade.

“Says the guy who would die if someone hurls a cheese sandwich at you hard enough.” Replied Diego

“That only happens if you super powered nutjobs hurl it at me!”

Theo and his group traveled for another 10 minutes before they reached a recently excavated tunnel that led to an underground area of a parking building right next to one of the FNN headquarters.

The business district of Vermilion City was relatively cramped.

It was common practice for an extremely large company to make their own exclusive parking lot because it was literally impossible to find a regular parking space in Vermilion City’s claustrophobic city.

Unlike the state of the art FNN building, the parking lot building was clearly neglected except for one aspect.

The group used the stairs and went to the 20th and the highest floor of the parking building.

It was generally accepted that office people were physically unfit, thus the reason why a mere parking building had 4 extra-large high tech elevators. This was the only thing that was well maintained in the building.

As such, the stairs was largely vacant and the group went undetected.

At the 20th floor, they used a rope ladder that was set by one of Lord’s men a few days ago to climb to the roof top.

At that point, the group took a break while waiting for the signal.

No matter how fit you are, it was still a bit exhausting to climb 20 floors worth of stairs in one go while fully decked out in combat gear.

Theo made use of this last pit stop to do a quick rundown of his tools.

1 grappling gun

1 high frequency blade

4 Glock 17 pistols

1 AK47

All the add-ons he made to his power armor

4 stealth spy drones positioned in different buildings 500 meters to 1 kilometer away from the FNN building.

If you add the 9 mercenaries in his team, you could say that Theo was much better off this time around.

He does have some gripes tough.

Most of it were stupid personal nitpicks that had absolutely no bearing to the mission.

One of his gripes was that he couldn’t bring any explosives.

Why?

There were simply too many civilians that could be caught in the blast.

Theo had no control as to where the shrapnel would fly off, thus no stuff that made things go boom.

It was a real shame.

Another gripe was the choices in weapons.

The AK47 was one of the toughest and most reliable assault rifles in modern history.

The very fact that it has existed since 1949 and was still being produced up to this day was a testament of its battle tested history.

However, Theo found it wanting in the accuracy, feel and looks department

Theo used guns as his primary means of fighting.

While he had cybernetics to boost his hit rate, a gun that had problems with accuracy was small but annoying headache.

The AK47 was easy and cheap to manufacture but cared very little for its ease of use.

The magazine was harder to insert compared to other guns and it had quite a bit of recoil.

Lastly, Theo simply didn’t like how the AK47 looked.

It lacked the sleek sexy high-tech vibe of other guns.

This was how he viewed the Glock 17 as well.

Theo didn’t have any problem with the Glock 17 in terms of function. It just didn’t look sexy enough for him.

He did state earlier that the reasons were relatively stupid.

As Theo was thinking of stupid things, the signal was heard via the comms.

“Time to dance. I repeat, time to dance”

Time to dance indeed.