Fics I Read 2.0

FanFiction.Net

Just In

Community

Forum

V

More

Bio Forge Master (Rewrite) by Throwaway1971

Books » Private Rated: M, English, Romance, Words: 137k+, Favs: 57, Follows: 75, Published: Dec 12, 2023 Updated: Mar 15, 2024

29Chapter 34: 27

Bio Forge Master

No More Fucks to Give/The Confrontation

Fran Moss/Dr. Patches

The thing about hyper focusing on any task is that you block out everything that can distract you, and in this state, it takes a very big shock to pull you out of it. It wasn't the gunfire that pulled me out, or the sound of a missile exploding that did it either.

It was the massive explosion that made the entire building seem to tremble like an earthquake was happening and shattering all the windows (which would be a pain to replace honestly). It was at that moment I received some reports from the Twins (that were basically the robots from Atomic Heart) about the PRT laying siege on the building.

He immediately ordered the Twins to protect the children at all costs, and that anyone dared to target them were to be subdued and put in stasis for spare parts and experimentation.

It's amazing how quickly he could go through entire trains of thought while the entire world seemed to come to a near-standstill. He couldn't understand why the PRT was doing this! He simply couldn't believe it! He tried so fucking hard to be the hero, he had actively chosen to help everyone he could regardless of their status as Hero or Villain, and despite that he still had a government fucking agency trying to kill him for no good goddamn reason!

He was done with this; he legitimately didn't give a single solitary fuck anymore.

As the world returned to its normal speed, he opened a portal to his workshop in front of Uppercrust's bodyguards, thoughts of secrecy not even registering as he started using his telekinesis to move Uppercrust and opening a portal to and moving Uppercrust into his workshop.

He didn't even have to say a word as the bodyguards followed along, he would later look back and realize with some amusement they were like little children following their teacher or ducklings following after their mother duck.

"Holy shit." Yellowjacket, if he recalled correctly, said, "You dealt with Toybox?" It wasn't even a surprising conclusion for him to come to honestly. In fact, he was technically correct, which was the best sort of correct really, but now he had to figure out a method to prevent anyone from just breaking into his workshop through dimensional fuckery!

"Eh, not really. I just thought the idea was good and used it." Dr. Patches said with a shrug as he placed Uppercrust on an operating table and resumed his work, "Don't touch anything."

He detected her before she fully entered, the bodyguards tensed at the appearance of Rabbit. She looked at the bodyguards with a concerned eye, and Dr. Patches just sent the overall situation back to her. She nodded and left, through a portal back to the hospital. She would help the security detail with the unwelcome guests and mostly keep them updated on the situation.

As the bodyguards continued to gawk and look around, Dr. Patches considered the sequence of events. He acknowledged it was entirely possible this was a result of Cauldron's influence since there'd been no way the PRT, knowing that Uppercrust was being operated on, would choose to attack him. It would destroy the economy, turn the entire political and economic establishment against them for openly trying to execute the single man responsible for ensuring coastal cities were still able to function in the United States!

Another possibility could be that this might be a Simurgh plot of some sort, as she had tried to kill Uppercrust multiple times. He'd even gone so far as to have everyone go through a thorough background check designed specifically to identify her victims and to remove them. It was horrible and discriminatory, but it was an understandable thing for Uppercrust of all people to do due to going through multiple assassination attempts, most of which were linked to Simurgh victims.

But back to the surgery, and since he was long longer concerned about the recording of the surgery or the secrecy of his telekinesis, he could finish things much faster. The removal of the rust was incredibly simple with telekinesis allowing him to manipulate the rest itself all at once. Turning an hours long surgery into a fifteen minute one, not including suturing and the closure proceedings of course which to an hour by itself. By the end Dr. Patches transferred him to The Cradle and after making some minor adjustments he sealed it so the man could regenerate and clear any lingering issues he couldn't address before returning to the space where the bodyguards were gathered.

To their credit they followed etiquette very well, they didn't touch anything or wander about, and tried not to make any noise. That most likely being something that had been imparted by Uppercrust over however many years they had worked for him.

His two other bodies, since he re-established control over them, were busy. His civilian body was working on a purely biological mask that would increase the speed of thought (thankfully he was in a different section of the workshop and wasn't seen by the bodyguards) and had tremendous telepathic bandwidth. Meanwhile his Esper body was in Salem, Massachusetts digging up one of the Butcher's many buried caches. Admittedly most of them were worthless since dollar bills didn't actually last so many years under wet sandy soil, something which future Butchers would learn from and go with gold, while far more difficult to turn into cash but lasted practically forever.

He briefly considered bringing Esper in but decided against it, people would get suspicious if Esper came whenever he was in trouble. They might even start considering him a part of the city's roster of capes when Dr. Patches wanted Esper to be the nomad so he could experience traveling and looting without having to leave the city himself outside of medical situations. He could bring in 'Fran' but he had a civilian job that he couldn't just drop and had little combat potential anyway.

"Okay, the surgery is finished, the post–op recovery shouldn't take more than three or four hours in the… regeneration chamber, meanwhile I need to know what in the living fuck is going on goddamnit!?"

How he didn't scream he didn't know, but the bodyguards were shocked by seeing his temper slip but they seemed to understand why. In their minds they clearly empathized with him due to being affected by this more than they had seen so far and out of gratitude for operating on Uppercrust who they all seemed to hold in high esteem.

"Apparently the decision was made illegally by the director, Alexandria publicly denounced the local PRT and stripped her of her authority on open air. Apparently, the agents attacked her just outside the hos-" Time slowed down in Dr. Patches perception as his mind sped up to process and confirm what the man had told him.

In a fraction of a second Dr. Patches was already reviewing the hospital security tapes, fifteen people had died under his care! Four of them were small children who were deemed terminal and were brought here by desperate parents! The rage begins from the periphery, fingers and toes moving subconsciously, traveling up to his tensing shoulders as his jaw clenched and his cheek started ticking.

Normal time resumes.

The members of the Elite jump back in surprise as Dr. Patches let out a scream of pure rage, it only lasted for a second before he regained control of himself thanks to the Master of Masters.

Though in a second, he transmitted an order to one of the Twins (seriously he needed to give them individual designations sometime) to head out and start performing triage and attempt to stabilize everyone for him to work on after this shitshow!

Pulling the recording of Alexandria disavowing the PRT from the hospital's black box, it assured him that this was not part of a Cauldron plot or them trying to cover their asses. Maybe they were wanting to put him in a position of weakness? But if that were the case why attack Uppercrust? To force Dr. Patches to go villain? To make the Elite become more villainous?

But none of that made any sense, he couldn't for the life of him see how this situation could benefit them in any way! There were other ways that would be simpler or more efficient, but even still he couldn't discard the possibility of this being a very long meandering path of Fortuna's.

"Huh, Taylor's power has a few similarities to the Path to Victory…" A wild and very random thought.

Still, he never thought he would see Alexandria naked, he often wondered when he first arrived in Bet if he was in the 'standard' variation or the 'porn' variant. At least after discovering that Aisha and Taylor had some sort of relationship before he met them, so he started digging around, and apparently Alexandria fought naked enough due to her own body being tougher than any of the clothes.

Those photos and videos of Alexandria fighting naked were instantly deleted almost everywhere they were hosted, but as they say "The Internet is Forever" so there were still some pictures and videos floating around.

It wasn't a surprise in the slightest that Alexandria didn't care for modesty anymore, which explained her talking to my robots while essentially bottomless. Hopefully the kids were hiding, pretty sure Alexandria didn't want to deal with any upset parents about 'exposing herself' to their kids.

Speaking of where we…

The S-class alarm sounded, not a misfire this not. Thankfully not the Endbringer sirens, no this was something else.

Immediately going online, because he knew there was some idiot somewhere posting something, he immediately found a picture. Noelle, her body was different from what he had imagined. It reminded him of Alucard's Baskerville and the Fox Devil from Chainsaw Man, giant wolf heads covered in fur yet still attached to a gigantic version of John Carpenter's The Thing.

Then he saw it through a camera, some fool was streaming Noelle fighting against someone. He recognized those ears, he played with them often enough! Without pausing to explain anything to the frantic bodyguards Dr. Patches moved, busting through a wall like he was the Kool Aid man! But before he could hit the ground, he caught himself with telekinesis and immediately took off towards where Rabbit and Echidna were last seen!

He flew at incredible speeds, the air not touching him as he created a telekinetic shield shaped as a football around him, allowing the laminar flow to maintain stability and reduce drag.

And as he approached the site of the fighting, he used his telepathy to assess the situation as well as the minds before him. Noelle's mind was unassailable, an alien thing that truly wasn't human anymore. Likely being simulated by the shard in a similar manner as Alexandria.

But while the alien mind couldn't be attacked or damaged, it could still be read, Noelle was panicking, she was under the belief that the Empire had killed the Travelers and had attacked them. Including Kaiser in his civilian identity, only for the Travelers to be perfectly fine afterward. That's when Rabbit showed up, knocking three of the Travelers out of the fight when Trickster teleported her into one of Noelle's attacks, which took off an arm!

The concoction of bacteria that usually rendered capes unconscious still worked on Rabbit, but it took far longer due to her altered physiology and the augments she has undergone, not to mention her Brute rating wasn't suppressed, she managed to rip her own arm off rather than being consumed!

Granted, that is Metal as fuck, but Dr. Patches was going to have words with her after everything was over with! He did not want self-dismemberment to be a regular occurrence!

Beside Noelle was Krouse, and truly Dr. Patches felt for him in a way he never had before. The man's mind resembled sharp edges akin to broken glass, likely booby trapped by the Angel to keep anyone from trying to fix it. It made sense that the Simurgh would implant such safeguards in the people she targeted, and it made the name Simurgh bomb so much more appropriate.

Dr. Patches didn't have a method of disarming it, not a quick way which was a sad thing, and even then, he wasn't sure if he could disarm it. Chances are he'd put the man into a coma or kill him outright if he attempted, and there was no way he was tipping his hand on psionics to the Hope Killer.

Looking towards Rabbit, who had finally succumbed to Noelle's bacteria, missing an arm and about to be consumed by Echidna.

Something he refused to allow in any circumstance!

He never really pushed his psionic abilities after getting Master of Masters, while it didn't make his abilities easier to use or less demanding it did remove the risk of him accidentally slipping past the boundary of physical matter and becoming a psionic apparition like Alma had.

In the twenty seconds that he accelerated, the air around him broke and formed a mach cone around him, he adjusted his aim and hit the target.

He sympathizes greatly with Trickster, it wasn't his fault the Hope Killer twisted him into the caricature of what he is now, but he had killed many heroes in her name and was a massive emotional vulnerability for her. And it was a vulnerability he planned on exploiting!

He flew right through the man, turning his clothes into soaked rags in a fine red mist with small white fragments of bone. He then threw a mental attack at full power at Noelle, it had no effect, the shard was a computer the size of an island and capable of more computational power than all humans and computers were capable of in unison.

It still felt the attack, and so all its focus as well as Noelle's fell directly to him above all other things.

The exact second afterwards she realized her boyfriend was truly dead and a scream tore out of every mouth she possessed, creating a sonic boom.

While reading human minds isn't really like a book, the metaphor was appropriate for a sufficiently powerful telepath. Their minds are easy to read, and they are just as easy to rip apart, and following the metaphor, Noelle's mind is akin to a stone monument; impossible to destroy by hand but still fairly legible. Her movements were entirely predictable, and without Trickster to fuck with people around, she was extremely vulnerable to Dr. Patches.

He moved like a spider, with swift movements in between bursts of unnatural stillness. He didn't even remember having transformed or the exact moment when he did transform.

His telekinesis was split between movements to take Rabbit as far away from Echidna as possible, and when she was far enough away, he moved past the raging abomination of a parahuman, grabbed Rabbit, and retreated.

After a few blocks he stopped to make a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, her Human body having already reduced it and making his work easier. Taking an emergency teleport beacon he developed for moments like this he put it on Rabbit along with a note for the bodyguards to put her in the chamber as soon as Uppercrust woke up before activating it and sending her away.

Now alone, he returned his attention to Echidna (the Monster that was her power, not the poor girl Noelle). She had no way of tracking him since he wasn't a parahuman, in all honesty he could simply leave and let the Protectorate deal with it.

Then he looked around and saw people fleeing and hiding, one homeless man in the alley to his side was rocking back and forth. His mind shattered after what he witnessed, it would take years for him to recover by himself, and he likely would never receive the help he needed.

Dr. Patches was tired, God this entire day had been an utter nightmare, so in the end he'll have to make the best of what he could.

And so, he makes plans and goes to confront the horror that is Echidna.

He'd have to be a fool to fight Echidna without a plan, yes, he is angry which in turn fueled his psionic abilities (thankfully not compromising his control), however he refused to let his emotions get the better of him.

He would neutralize Echidna as a threat, but how is the question. Between her own Brute rating and regeneration, she was very difficult to put down. So obviously if he couldn't kill her, he would have to employ other methods to neutralize her.

Connecting to the computer that ran the Matrix he started running simulations before finding a possible method.

The Matrix itself had the ability to accelerate one's thoughts, this ability was never fully explored as generally speaking it would kill an ordinary person. Even he and his girls could tolerate it so long before their nerves started hurting despite the Human augments!

The only time he ever tested it resulted in him having to replace most of his nervous system, and Aisha along with Taylor essentially banishing him to the couch!

But the idea he had come from an old cyberpunk manual; get an assistant AI to pre-chew information before you plug in, which in turn allows you to operate at a much higher speed than what your neurons alone could manage! This was expanded further with Protodermis computers and Feel It Out allowing for a truly insane rate of over forty-eight times with a direct connection and three times the acceleration in combat through the neural link.

This would have been remedied in another few weeks, in fact one of the infamous weak areas in Worm is the lack of true speedsters (in fact if he wasn't mistaken isn't Velocity like… the only one?). Having the ability to move at triple the regular speed of a human with no downsides would put him at an advantage over a vast majority of parahumans. It was simply the most effective thing to do really, tailor your weapons to your enemies.

Besides, as a tinker the ability to have more time was an invaluable resource either way you look at it, so ultimately it is a very wise investment of resources.

Increased thinking speed came at a cost unfortunately, and that was the inability to combine his accelerated thinking with psionics. Not due to any compatibility issues but because it took too much focus to match the pre-processing of the AI, and psionics would mess with the timing required.

So, in essence here he is, moving at the speed of a walk through the air, whilst taking a relatively casual stroll through the city in his own perspective.

Super speed has a downside that rarely anyone actually considers, but it means that you are moving at a normal pace while everything else around you are frozen. Even if you could run across the entire world, you would experience it all from your own perspective which would be moving at a regular pace. No one realizes that it means speedsters experience Years if not Decades of social isolation from their perspective.

The whole trip to confront Echidna took over fifteen minutes of subjective time, a horribly long walk, especially since you can't do much every time you jump except wait for gravity to pull you pack down. But it did give Dr. Patches enough time to calm down and think of a plan, and he put a LOT of thought into it.

First: Disadvantages and Challenges.

Echidna is incredibly durable and capable of regeneration, any damage that he inflicted that wasn't permanent would likely be only temporary.

Then there were the potential clones of any capes she had already consumed, something he hit himself over not scanning her earlier, but Rabbit was his priority at the moment. The danger of Echidna wasn't so much herself but the parahuman army that she could create.

Third, her touch was coated in a bacteria capable of suppressing people, and it seemed to even work through Human augmentations as shown with Rabbit. Though admittedly he wasn't sure if her slowing down was more attributed to the bacteria or blood loss.

Due to the nature of her power, her mind was immune to psionic attacks. He could still read it and even talk to her, but he couldn't do anything that would actually affect her beyond catching her attention.

Same applied to his telekinesis sadly enough, he couldn't quite reach her core and crush while ignoring the rest of her body.

His advantages, while limited, were decidedly in his favor.

He wasn't a parahuman (though theoretically it was possible he was, just not in a traditional sense but he wasn't going to go down that rabbit hole of senseless speculation), so her touch wouldn't be able to suppress his abilities and she wouldn't be able to track him through scent. And while she was still immune to the SEP field, he could still use the element of surprise along with hit and run tactics.

He was unsure however if her cloning power would even work on him if he was consumed, psionics were never something the Entities had ever encountered (or at least he hoped that's the case), which meant that it was possible that could instantly adapt to it or be incapable of even understand it, and every other possibility between.

Dr. Patches is capable of outranging, out speeding, and out predicting her with almost casual ease. She shouldn't be able to hit him, but he also doesn't have anything that could truly take her out of commission.

Overall, not a very favorable outcome.

He arrived shortly not far away from Echidna, remaining hidden, and allowed himself to return to normal speeds. He focused his psionic powers entirely on Echidna's bulk and the possible parahumans she may have taken hostage. Her body proved surprisingly difficult for his psionics to work through, but he eventually successfully managed to grab a hold of the parahumans inside and to start reading their minds. Their unconsciousness worked in his favor.

Immediately a spear shot from the ground and would've impaled one of his hearts had he not dodged, then he saw a deformed man wearing Roman armor with a face mask appeared from around the corner to face him.

"Guess I should call you Caesar then?" He asked the man as more spikes jutted out of the walls and floor, the man letting out a gargling scream expected from a zombie as Dr. Patches rummaged through the head of the reverse nazi.

The cloning process was more basic than he had initially assumed, it basically took whatever feelings and opinions the person already had and inverted everything, a fragile set-up that would simply fail to any form of deeper logic and scrutiny. Clearly, they were meant to be made quickly and disposable, only stable due to the constant reinforcement of their minds.

They were simple things made by an idiot alien god; they could be torn apart easily with even the most basic forms of therapy!

It was at that exact moment a giant wolf head burst through the wall and tried to eat him, a psychic push propelling him while simultaneously keeping the wolf away!

"KILL HIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMM!" He heard Echidna scream, her entire being radiating rage and hatred focused exclusively on him. Noelle's love for the dead Krouse drove her towards surrendering completely to the monster within.

The part of her mind that was meant to control (however malformed and atrophied) her power was entirely consumed by rage, she didn't care for eating or for any of the shards' influence. Her hatred of Dr. Patches is as genuine as they are natural.

Good, that means she was entirely focused on him allowing more people time to evacuate the area.

Aiming his psionic abilities at every sensory organ in and on her body, he exploded them, her head especially turned into a fine red mist. While her durability might be amazing, he could crush diamonds with the right type of force, and he was a master of anatomy and knew that despite her durability the eyes were the weakest point in the body regardless of her unnatural anatomy!

In response to his brutal tactic a scream ripped from the maws and mouths covering her body, shattering every window in the vicinity if they hadn't already been broken.

His psionic abilities couldn't overwhelm or attack the mind of the half-human/half-charnel house that is Echidna, however he could read her entire nervous system, and could precisely identify the most sensitive and nerve-dense parts of her body.

It went without question; she would survive this.

He started moving away when panic entered his mind as what he thought was the Endbringer Bohu appeared before him, only to pass through it with no effect.

Taking a second look he understood what happened, an expression of Crusader's power inverted by Echidna, since he should've been captured at the same time as Kaiser. He is either rushed or delayed, meaning she had to either have held back or is rushing now, the mask could be seen through the eyes on the back of his head (an augment he honestly never thought he would actually use.

A white turban with a simple green tunic?

'Jihadist' he called it in his head, he subconsciously wondered how much energy the shard spent on making elaborate 'reverse' costumes for its duplicate. A tactic that may have worked in another time and culture, but not today and not with him.

Jumping atop of a multi-story building, this entire fight would likely kill thousands but thinking that would only slow him down. His discipline powered by his unending will allows him to keep going.

He jumped from the building's other end, and a dark mass of horns came from below him. Meeting his horizontal jump with a vertical one of its own, its horns were like those of cattle and water buffalo in an always rotating motion that looked painful, and with a constant cloning sound of keratin with keratin.

Taking a pause to look, it looked bovine but with features of a man reminding him of the Minotaur of legend. It ran at him too fast for him to effectively dodge, so he used the same trick as earlier and aimed a psionic punch towards the creature.

Without anything else to really push against, the energies of the mind pushed down on the 'mino-horn' as he called it and pushed himself far higher while diminishing the monster's own lead. He had forgotten the beast he was fighting was a woman, and one who was considered strategically gifted. As then a small sedan flew at him.

The impact of a car on a human being is generally indicated on what speed the car is moving, and if the person is either pulled under, over, or simply being pushed by the car in question. Even with his vast experience with medicine failed to describe what the damage was as the nose of the car crumpled around his midsection like a trident thrown by an angry god (which wasn't an entirely wrong metaphor), pinning him to the wall of another apartment.

After the destruction was over, he could see that he had finally landed in a family home, the little girl was screaming as he had been punted through both of her parents. A stark reminder of the cost of fighting.

He freed himself from the twisted metal jaws of the car and jumped down to the street (all the while wishing he could console the girl) and proceeded to jump from side to side as he dodged the other cars Echidna threw at him. He almost got to her when the clones all attacked at once, the Caesar clone erecting a palisade of swords moving up and down like a wave, three swords coming up from the ground at an angle to stab him at chest height.

The black monstrosity with red eyes jumped from the nearby building with both its arms stretched out, in a motion that almost looked like they were made in wires by Hollywood, its back curved and claws extended. Raising its arms above him ready for the finishing blow, its fingers made of small horns that receded back into its palm while new ones grew in the back of its hand in a constant rotating motion.

A second clone of Crusader, also with a Muslim theme like the first, was sending ghostly camel cavalry. All of them well formed and looking anatomically correct this time but with cartoonishly proportioned scimitars at him. It's likely the riders aren't even capable of reaching him due to the height difference of camels and horses.

It didn't matter as he could now see them all, in his mind's eye; Crusader, Hookwolf, Storm Tiger, Kaiser, Victor, Othalla, and Krieg. No sign of Purity, Rune, or Night and Fog.

All members of the E88, while not the only ones trapped inside, they were the ones that Dr. Patches psionics latched onto.

And now that his psionic energy filled their bodies, he ducks behind a corner and sends a burst of lethal intent to the psionic energy within the captive capes. And inside the monster known as Echidna, several brains were literally reduced to paste, their connections to the clones losing all semblance of structure.

Immediately Echidna bellowed out a scream of pure agony and momentarily lost consciousness. Likely due to the backlash of so many capes dying inside her having an effect similar to triggers. The clones attacking him immediately collapsed like puppets that just had their strings cut, each of their powers disappearing in different ways.

The ghost's glitch out of existence, like a video artifact being corrected. The blades shatter like glass, like prized Rupert's drops, into finer and finer dust particulates until they disappear completely.

And the creature of horns falls like a lion hit with a tranquilizer, its transformation receding to a nonexistent state, like what he assumed Hookwolfs transformation looked like only in reverse.

Dr. Patches capitalizes on this and lifts the now unconscious monster with his psionic power, spinning her unconscious body and pushes it. The amount he lifts is barely enough for someone to duck under.

He pushes again, she is lifted more. Her consciousness begins returning, he pushes her again and again, unrelenting even as the psionic pressure causes his nose to bleed. Then she is airborne like a particularly hideous UFO. Each psionic push inflicted on anyone else, but Echidna would've turned them to paste, but to the monster it simply translates to momentum.

Joining her in the air, Dr. Patches immediately heads far outside of the city, a zone without any civilians that could be hurt, and where he could show her his full power.

And that's when their fight would properly begin.

[Celestial Forge]

Acquired CP: 250

Available CP: 650

« First « Prev Ch 34 of 38 Next »

Review

Jump:

Share: Email . Facebook . Twitter

Story: Follow Favorite

Author: Follow Favorite

Contrast: Dark . Light

Font: Small . Medium . Large . XL

Twitter . Help . Sign Up . Cookies . Privacy . Terms of Service