Mod Superhero (Book 6 STUBBING on Oct 27th)

Chapter 6.39 - Milliseconds

MOD AND EMMETT PARALLEL TIMELINES ALIGNED

APPROXIMATELY +1.10.15 POST-INCIDENT

Mod vividly remembered seeing the heavy drones in action during the war with the Deep Ones. They were the crown jewels of Venture's drone army. Each one was a Class 4 threat, capable of leveling a city block in under a minute.

Mod approached most of his battles by targeting his opponent's weaknesses. Some were easy—take the mage's staff, cloud a shooter's sight, or use a brute's strength against them.

But heavy drones didn't have a weakness. Their armor was almost impenetrable, and they now had an electric defense field similar to the large biomechs. Then there was flight. They were exceptionally maneuverable for how large they were, and if Bastion wanted, they could rain destruction down from a mile in the air.

The approaching heavy drones weighed heavy on Mod's shoulders. For a moment, the gravity of the situation settled on him, like he was holding up their combined one hundred tons of armor and weaponry.

Mod shrugged it off.

He was already coordinating a battle plan with TINA. In a few more milliseconds, she'd shared it with Arsenal, Lock, and with Emmett... Thankfully, it looked like Emmett was going to cooperate.

Several things happened at once.

Emmett broke off part of his swarm and attached it to Dr. Venture. Then Lock and Arsenal escorted him inside the closest abandoned building and broke through into the underground access tunnels. Even if the building collapsed, he'd be safe beneath the surface.

While they did that, Mod leapt into the air, easily clearing ten stories. From there, he could see almost all of Belport—including the approaching heavy drones. Even from two miles away, the drones stood out like blemishes on the horizon. With his next gen eyes, he could see the smaller drones that made out the rest of the strike group.

There wasn't much Mod could do from such a distance—not against the heavy drones. But he could take out some of the smaller ones.

Mod's true body was little more than a highly durable skeleton that acted as a chassis. A thickly armored torso contained all his power and nanite manufacturing. His skull was just a similarly armored sphere that housed the majority of his processing. His limbs were thin and sleek, almost to the point of looking feeble—which made it even harder to believe that his skeleton alone was as strong and durable as Lock. And the entire thing was self-repairing. Unless he got obliterated by someone like Paragon, Mod could be back to 95% combat ready within three minutes.

But his true strength came from the specialized nanites that made up the bulk of his new body. Outside of his skeleton chassis, everything was nanites. They were a dozen different types, but they could be loosely classified into three groups: Armor, weapons, and power.

For the most part, Mod's armor worked in layers, with a hardened outer shell and additional impact dampening layers beneath. In many ways, it was the final iteration of Mod's old supersuit. But it was also adaptive, like an overhauled version of Mod's old supersuit. Thanks to his brain, Mod's armor could adapt to each new attack on the fly—even if the attacks were magical in nature.

Speaking of flying, Mod copied Arsenal's thinsuit design. Thin channels opened up in the legs and feet of his armor, and thrust came out. More channels opened up along the rest of his body so that when the time came, he could take evasive action. If Mod wanted to, he could've reconfigured himself for fast flight, but that meant sacrificing armor and it meant a potential firefight spilling out across the city. As for weapons and power... Well, the nanites were just as adaptive. Mod could create any number of weapons on the fly, and with his brain enhancement, he was instantly proficient with them. But Mod kept coming back to the classics—whips, staffs, kinetic rifles, and lasers.