Irradicator/Strength In Numbers
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
That suited Radek just fine. He couldn’t lord over so many hostages and rob this bank on his own, after all. The dead would serve as a warning. He also knew it would take time for this city’s authorities to marshal forces that could weather his radioactive trap. Irradicator brazenly made his way deeper into the bank, past its security cameras.
Good, let them see who casts them aside so easily.
His yellow-green power armor whirred and clanked while he passed the library of safety deposit boxes, passed beneath blinking and howling alarms. Gone were the weeping and wailing of the weak, the pathetic protests of the stalwart officers in their blue uniforms. Irradicator had silenced them all.
Now to the vault itself.
Radek’s eyes surveyed the monstrous door like another opponent - no - another victim. He had stress tested his armor’s strength amplifiers against a near-exact replica of this vault. He had studied countless bank robberies and noted the Paragon City Police Department’s response times. If Radek’s calculations were correct - and they always were - he’d be able to pry open this massive barrier and have his way with the riches of Founders Falls, leaving enough time to escape the city at top speed.
“Stay where you are, Irradicator!” A new voice dared shout from behind, followed by the marching of combat boots.
Hm. Police so soon? I could not have misjudged their response!
Radek meanwhile remained still, facing the vault door in his power armor, while his new enemies fanned out and surrounded him. Radek carefully turned his head, and saw a small horde of Arachnos soldiers training their maces and rifles on him. One bore the cybernetics of a Crab Spider, and he towered over the rest. The man who had shouted at him, Radek assumed, was the one who seemed to be in command; a dark skinned male in Arachnos armor, who favored a red beret instead of the anonymity of an arachnoid helmet.
Ah... Irradicator mused to himself. He hadn’t been wrong. Radek was never wrong. But this would present a challenge.
The soldier in the beret ordered two others, “Open that vault, be quick about it!”
Arachnos could delay him until the PPD arrived. Radek was not about to allow this.
“Ah. Today you are vultures, and not spiders.” Irradicator hissed through his facemask. "Hmph. Both require extermination." His eyes glared into the backs of the men who slapped a device onto the vault’s keypad. It blinked red - blinked red again - then green.
“Yeah yeah,” the Wolf Spider Commander tossed back, “We used you “Destined One”, just suck on that while we exterminate your income.” Greedy and arrogant. Irradicator noted, with fury welling in his chest.
The vault door gave a CLACK!, then another CLACK!, before one of the Arachnos men spun the lock. The door was now open! “Get in there and grab as much as you can!” The Commander barked and pointed with an enthused, demanding finger.
One by one his men filed into the vault, while he and the silent Crab Spider kept watch on Irradicator. The supervillain looked on as Arachnos took his plunder.
“I guess you should have brought backup, huh “Ivan”?” The man in the beret gloated at him. Meanwhile Irradicator remained stone still, letting his rage build as the Arachnos men stuffed cash and gold into black duffel bags. He counted just under two dozen. All occupied with their greedy task. Behind the precipice of the vault door. He peered down, and estimated the distance between him and the vault.
“Strength in numbers, my foolish foolish friend. Strength in numbers. Pity you didn’t take us up on our offer, you could be sharing in the treasure. If I had a dime for every one of you "Destined" who died for your precious autonomy? Well..." The man tapped his chin, before smirking wickedly. "I'd have almost as much as I'm taking from you, "Ivan"!”
Radek took in a breath, and marshaled that righteous vengeance boiling within. “I am not “Ivan”. I do not share.”
He dared to look the Commander right in the eye. “I am Radek Rykov. Remember that name; remember it well.”
Before either he or his Crab Spider bodyguard could reply, Irradicator had blasted forth from the floor - but not at them.
In a fit of decisive motion, with super strength and rocket speed from his thruster boots, Irradicator slammed shut the vault door - THUNK! - and spun the lock closed - TANG! - trapping the bulk of the Arachnos force inside.
He turned, held aloft by those same thrusters. Wrathful eyes fell upon his next targets - the last two Arachnos soldiers in the room.
“Now that your strength is gone, vulture, do you gloat!?” Irradicator snarled, raising his hands into the air triumphant.
The Commander’s eyes had gone wide, and he took a step back, pointing again with that finger, “Take him down!”
The Crab Spider stepped forward, and its four artificial appendages took aim. Irradicator flung himself forward at the cyborg, and his ray shields came alive as the Crab Spider’s arms flung plasma at him.
The salvo splashed and wicked past Irradicator’s armored frame. Irradicator brought his fist into the Crab Spider’s helmet like a hammer. Immediately, the Crab’s arms closed down on Radek, and slipped past his ray shields to SCREECH! and CLAMP! against the villain’s armor.
Radek’s boots erupted again. FWOOSH! He launched himself and the Crab Spider directly upward. The shockwave knocked the commander off his feet - and the beret right off his balding head.
CRACK! Radek could hear the grunt of the man within his armor as he was crumpled against the ceiling. The arachnid arms loosened their grip, and now Radek was free. As they fell to the ground, Irradicator took hold of this soldier’s collar, and with the help of his boot thrusters, ensured he would come out on top before they hit the ground. Their grapple did a twist in mid-fall.
THUMP! The soldier coughed harshly as he was pinned to the bank floor. Irradicator, with deep satisfaction, let loose his gauntlets’ power, dumping heated radioactive plasma into the Crab Spider’s collar, letting it eat through the fine mesh beneath, and burn its way beneath the armor, beneath the helmet.
Now the Crab Spider screamed.
There were no words, as this towering slave to Arachnos burned - melted - alive in his own armor. There were rarely any words from those who crossed Radek Rykov, whereas agony and death were assured.
The Commander was crawling backwards, eyes darting between his ally, quickly reaching the end of his half-life, and the locked vault door, with his minions, and all their plunder behind it. Those two dozen or so Arachnos soldiers banged against that massive door from the inside, and some began to discharge their weapons at it in an attempt to free themselves. But the door held for now.
Irradicator stood straight, his fists glowing iridescent yellow-green. His brown eyes locked onto the Wolf Spider Commander, and with decisive steps he approached his soon-to-be second victim. “No words? No insults?” Radek teased, though murder rather than mirth colored his voice. He gestured back to the fallen Crab Spider, whose remains glowed beneath a cloud of yellow-green. “No tears for your minion?”
The Wolf Spider Commander climbed to his feet then, but not in time to escape Radek’s hand closing around his throat. Irradicator lifted him from the floor with ease. The man’s face began to redden as he kicked, as he punched, all in vain.
Soon the PPD would be arriving. There would be no time to collect what Radek came for, between them and the remaining Arachnos.
“You have cost me a great deal today, fool. For that, you will die. Painfully.” Radek’s eyes drank in the sight of the man choking slowly to death in his hand, a hand that began to glow again. Ionizing radiation began to shine forth from Irradicator’s armor.
“While your organs fall apart from the inside, know this, and tell the rest of your pitiful army and your Lord Recluse: Radek Rykov is not to be crossed.”
The Wolf Spider Commander squirmed, and tried to scream as a subtler radiation burned at his skin. But the vice grip Irradicator had around this man’s throat wouldn’t allow it. Yet just before the Arachnos man passed out, Radek let him free. The soldier fell onto his back, coughing for air - a scalded outline of an armored hand still wrapped around his neck. The screams from this one, sadly, would be hours after Irradicator was gone. But thirty-three grays of ionized radiation made this fool’s death all but certain. Certain and excruciating.
Faint and already growing nauseous, the once proud Wolf Spider Commander tried to crawl away from Irradicator, who had already left him to his fate.
There will be an accounting for this Arachnos. You will know this man’s pain very soon. Irradicator promised, silently.
It was a setback, to be sure. But a choice between plunder and victory was no choice at all. Next time there wouldn’t need to be a choice. He would have both.
