***The overall mood that struck pretty much everyone when a major outbreak was in progress sucked. It was in the way technicians quietly did their job, you could spot it in how twitchy the security detail tends to grow just about everywhere, and the less said about medics, operatives, pilots, and other supporting staff that were actually deployed on ground zero, the better.It was even worse during eruptions.But that’s hardly surprising, is it? Most people in M.O.T.H. were recruited either right from the hospital after an outbreak or approached by our recruiters in their normal lives, with a folder filled with the same info that I originally received, all because their blood tests pinged positive for high-enough honkai resistance. In other words, everyone in the M.O.T.H. knew, either from briefings or from direct experience, how fucking horrifying Honkai was. The trend of where humanity was heading at this rate wasn’t exactly hidden, so each outbreak was a few more seconds crossed out from humanity’s collective lifespan. Everyone knew that, too. But I don’t think it was the reminder about any of that that truly got to people. It was the fact that we couldn’t fight back.Sure, I try not to think about it, and I am sure most people in the M.O.T.H. had the same idea, but it was hard to miss that we didn’t exactly have an enemy to strike back at. At best, we could defend and push the attackers off, but we couldn’t hurt Honkai back.No shit that now, when an allied country is being attacked, and we could only hope to minimize casualties and kill the attackers as fast as possible, our guys (and gals) were wound up, twitchy, and ready to lash out. I also knew that I was in a unique position to do something about that. I was the golden boy, after all. “Setting up just outside of Tokyo? Daamn you guys will have it cozy,~” I whistled, a wide grin on my face, as I shot a look towards Dave, “Seems to be a rich folks area too, on a beach of all things. Get me some barbecue, will ya?” Saying that, I tapped a few lines on the menu in my tablet, and an old not-GoPro photo of my own POV when I visited Japan appeared on the screen. But I barely noticed that, mostly focused as I was on the team of medics exchanging chuckles, as they waited for the trucks with supply crates and such to roll closer to the designated portal area, some shaking their heads in genuine - or mock - disappointment at my antics.The important part is that I had their attention, and they didn’t look like a bunch of coiled-up strings anymore.I knew most of those people - especially the operatives attached to them, mostly because I made it a point to get to know people around the HQ. With some, I shared a few words at briefings, with some I sat out in the canteen, I joined the morning runs sometimes, and I also spent time in the shooting range, showing off and… ultimately, just getting to know those folks. I wasn’t ordered to, no one advised me to do that, and there wasn’t anything calculated behind my behavior. I couldn’t care less about building an image. But it was common sense.I wanted to be there, with them, for them to know who the hell I was, that they can trust me to be me and to fight for them. “You'd better hope you don’t end up in our care,” Dasha responded, rolling her eyes, “I’m not sure what I will do with you and your pink goop.” She was, of course, referring to that one time I had Dot take the shape of Anderson and walk on her smoking indoors with the fire alarm covered with a condom.I ‘tsk’d theatrically, shaking my head. “Now now, Dasha, you know full well my pink isn’t purple, but healthy, whi-,” I didn’t bother dodging as, I think, a spare mag impacted me in the forehead, just comically threw my head back, chuckling.I could hear the rest of her squad outright breaking down into fits of giggles and such.Blushing, Dasha fumed.“Stop laughing at me, debil.” ‘Cute word, surely it means ‘sweetheart’,’ I thought with a shit-eating grin, glancing back at the woman, who looked adorable when flustered, “English is hard enough without having to think around your dirty mind.”I glanced towards the portal opening behind me, before erasing the smile from my face and looking at the guys.“Alright, can’t hold you up anymore, godspeed, guys.” I brought an arm up. The familiar faces, very much including Dave and Rashid, who were attached to that group, gave me high fives, as did a few medics I didn’t know, before passing into a huge fuck-off hole in space. I waited until the last supply truck rolled in before glancing around in annoyance.No other group I could spot.Closing the portal, I took out my smartphone and typed a familiar number.“Lab Rat,” Mobius picked up almost instantly, looking all displeased, video call activated a second of two later, with M.O.T.H. logo on screen. “Why are you using a phone? Stand by, wha-”I spoke up, interrupting her. “Mobius, you sent Elysia in there 10 minutes ago. Since then, I’ve sent fifteen different groups across the entire Tokyo,” I explained plainly, shaking a tablet in my other hand for her to see, “Why the fuck am I not deployed yet?” Oops, a bit of my nerves and genuine anger leaked out. I also forced myself to stop pacing.Mobius looked at me for a second.Then sighed.“Klein, handle the call from the Prime Minister,” she ordered, typing something on the keyboard, and receiving a quiet ‘okay’ in response, before turning to me.“...It’s not that urgent,” I tried, and Mobius’s look made me pause. “I can wait…”“If you weren’t on the brink of opening a portal and jumping into Tokyo yourself, you wouldn’t have called me directly, bypassing your HQ operator,” she replied simply, and, as always, was correct. “As long as Japan has three citizens, a new prime minister can be elected even if this one dies before the extraction forces get to him; you can’t be that easily replaced.” She looked me in the eyes, “I would have preferred having you here, in the command center, to observe the development, that would have saved us time on the briefing. But we genuinely need you operating portals. I may as well brief you now.”Mobius gestured, and a bunch of information appeared on my tablet. Mainly… livestream videos of a giant vortex of pitch-black storm clouds above Tokyo, that were igniting with lightning practically every second? No, there were some lightning arcs that just… kept being there non-stop. Pretty fucking sure that shouldn’t be physically possible.“The fuck…?” I muttered, glancing at the CROWDS of people and traffic, and then looking closely at the sky. “Also, are those… swarms of seraphs, cut down by pink shots?!”I snapped to Mobius immediately.“Mobius, send me in, I…” “No.” She interrupted me, grave certainty behind the word. I exploded.“The hell do you mean no?! I grew just about strong enough to snap a Herrscher in half with my bare hands. I’ll be fine! Let me go now while there are still people to help, and-”“Knightmare, use your head for a second! If I could have just sent you there, I would have!” Mobius snapped, making me shut up, the heat in my chest evaporating with each word from her, “Don’t you see it? There was an eruption in the city! Yet most civilians are still alive and don’t show any signs of honkai sickness! Moreover, the concentration of honkai ambient radiation is so low that street cameras and electricity still work! And it’s all because of this…” Mobius zoomed in on the pitch-black cloud stream, which I assumed was a live video from the satellite. She zoomed in very, very close… and beyond purple, unnatural lightning, it felt like it was shining, in the depths of the cloud. “The Third Herrscher, currently dubbed the Herrscher of Thunder, is gathering a colossal amount of energy in the upper atmosphere while concealing it from the ground and space. Somehow those clouds serve to attract the majority of the energy from the city and the beasts themselves, and are storing all of it, concentrating it…”I couldn’t take this any longer. “Mobius, for fuck’s sake, that just means I should’ve been there ten minutes ago when he only started to charge that spirit bomb!” The woman snapped, genuine hurt and anger appearing on her face, which, more than anything else, made me shut up. “The first Herrscher has been killed by strategic nuclear weapons,” she said, explaining slowly, “So the Second Herrscher could effortlessly send them back at us. The Second Herrscher has been killed by you. And now we have this…” she said, her voice cold.I shook my head.“So what, you are saying all of this is to counter me?” I said incredulously, “Because what, I am weak to lightning?”Mobius simply nodded.“Herrschers seem to draw energy from a centerpiece, the same one you described; we call it a ‘core’. You remember, correct?” She asked. I nodded, recalling quickly the briefings and casual chats I’ve shared with Mobius, Klein, and even Blanca on the subject. “Yeah, it’s… basically they can draw an unlimited amount of energy, but in limited quantities, right? The core is like a bucket with which they take honkai from the bottomless ocean for their use.”Mobius simply nodded.“Correct, Herrschers so far were inherently limited by how much Honkai Energy their core can channel. But this Herrscher… clearly, bypasses the limitation. It accumulates a tremendous amount of raw, accessible Honkai energy for it to use… convenient, considering you overpowered the previous Herrscher with raw strength, is it not?” she explained, making me freeze, “The clouds are a giant battery for their honkai energy that it stores in this pseudo-electric form. The Herrscher didn’t unleash this power on evacuating civilians, nor at Elysia. Then… who do you think all this power is for?”But… this was completely insane. For me? I mean, sure, the Honkai beasts did adapt to adamantium, but… …fuck, and this is just the dumbed down explanation, isn’t it? Mobius probably has charts with data, she just knows I wouldn’t really grasp those as easily anyway. “I can probably survive a little electrical shock… well, I can probably survive an electrical shock strong enough to evaporate a mountain,” I tell her, to which, to my surprise, she nods.“You likely can if the Herrscher merely unleashes all this power at the same instant, while you are in that physics-defying form. But if it keeps a sustained fire just strong enough to incinerate you once you run out of power, and revert back to your human form?” she asks simply, “Knightmare, you are quick, but you aren’t faster than lightning. This is the second tell of this one being created specifically to counter you. This Herrscher, a creature who can strike you with attacks that render your precognition almost useless as you can’t dodge, and have to block… which will turn it into a contest of pure strength that you can’t win…”I considered her words, tapping my fingers on the tablet.She was fucking right, too. If only I actually had a devil trigger form that didn’t suck me dry in seconds. Even if all this Herrscher could do was to throw lightning, which sounded pretty fucking weak for a Herrscher ability… Wait…“This Herrscher is Mei?” I asked, and saw, much to my relief, Mobius shake her head.Good, I really wasn’t ready to face that again.“That was one of the things I checked almost immediately. It seems you were wrong.” She offered.“Unless we find a way to make artificial Herrschers down the line or something, and then would be retarded enough to try doing that,” I shot back before shaking my head, “In any case, I can probably use Cap’s shield to last a while?” I offer. “Even if they use that dimensional trick, that would just start scratching and digging through it, not punch through altogether.” “Too dangerous. You won’t be able to engage holding a shield over your head, would you? And that’s if the Herrscher can only attack with this lightning from above, or even merely from one side at a time,” she shook her head, “Knightmare, trust us. We have a plan, we are evacuating the civilians and establishing control zones, and we know that the fight is likely unavoidable, but the Herrscher, it seems, has to focus on gathering the power to confront you. As long as this is the case, we keep you in reserve, like a threat of nuclear escalation,” Mobius closed her eyes. “In any case, we will deploy you… Once we pinpoint the Herrscher’s location, and prepare the battlefield in your favour as much as we possibly can.”Now that I could understand.I coughed into my fist, feeling a bit embarrassed.“I… am sorry for calling and interrupting you like that, Chief of Science Department Mobius,” I called out, genuinely feeling like shit, “I won’t be wasting any more of your time.”“There wasn’t a time or an opportunity to brief you yet; I was going to do it personally in any case….” She paused, “What I mean to say is, objectively,, this wasn’t a waste,” Mobius said simply. “Knowing what sort of man you are, I can’t blame you for being anxious and...” She hesitated for a second, “Thank you for calling, instead of just throwing yourself in there and apologizing afterwards.”…well, I mean, I know I can be impulsive, but I wouldn’t have done that… at least not without at least trying to talk to the HQ.“Feels weird to be thanked for doing something as basic as following the chain of command… ” I said, scratching my cheek, and willfully ignoring the whole ‘calling one of my direct bosses to ask ‘what the fuck’’. Mobius just chuckled humorlessly. “Funny. We are both aware that the hierarchy of the organisation barely concerns you.” She said the quiet part out loud! “From the very first day, you did as you pleased. This makes you a great liability… but it’s also your greatest strength, outside of cosmic powers, if nothing else, you are someone whose wants have to be considered. In any case, we’ll have time for idle chat later.”I nodded, having nothing to add to a brief, awkward silence, as I glanced towards a group of soldiers quietly assembling nearby.“Seems like I have another group here, thanks again.” I assured the woman, before giving her a roguish and, as I hoped, charming smile, “Call you later, Knightmare out.”And I dropped the call.Strange why my heart was going so fast, now that I think about it.Shaking my head, I slapped myself gently across my cheeks, hyping myself up.I needed to get this right. Not to act like I am in control and relaxed, but fucking feel it. I will handle this, I have it in the bag, I need to act like it, and make everyone feel that I’ve got this. I walked around a stack of containers.“Paul, Himeko!” I said, greeting both people I knew in the group, as I glanced at the tablet, “VIP extraction mission, fucking seriously? There are millions of civilians there, why the fuck would we waste manpower to grab anyone specifically?” I asked, genuinely annoyed, especially as my eyes traced across Himeko.“It’s pretty fucking ridiculous, but not as bad as you think,” Paul said, approaching and offering me a fist, which I bumped. “Guess who we are getting out?”“PM?” I tried, recalling Mobius mentioning something like that. He chuckled.“Nah, apparently they have JSDF and Americans escorting him and half of their… eh, whatever the fuck they have for congress out,” he explained. “No, we are getting the family of the emperor out, something-something, essential for the nation’s morale, can you believe that shit?” “Sergeant, we aren’t clear to share mission intel like this,” Himeko confronted Paul, glancing at me.I looked back, maybe a moment longer than I should, before smirking.“No-no, don’t get your panties in a twist, here at M.O.T.H., we have one of the worst opsec on the planet, it’s a point of pride,” I said, teasingly throwing my hands out, “If at least a quarter of those present here aren’t reporting back to their own national spooks - colour me fucking surprised. Besides, if it was something I am not allowed to know, our own in-house spooks will inform you separately.” Himeko didn’t look convinced, but Paul just nodded to that.“It’s actually a real thing. A few others and I were involved in designing tests for this fuckwit,” he said, gesturing with his thumb towards me, prompting an annoyed ‘hey’ from yours truly, “Mostly about how to do the whole paratrooper thing and how the chain of command works in the field, which is when we got to know that there is a specific ‘marked to not tell Knightmare’ designation.” Paul snickered at it, “M.O.T.H. is a circus, and we are its strongest clowns.” I checked the designation for the teleportation as he talked, making sure there were no hostiles around on the cams.“Shitting on how we are organized is also a tradition,” I explain to Himeko with a smirk, “Lots of redundancy and stupid shit, but it gets cleared out slowly. Still, until our internal sec starts fucking us up the ass without a lube for talking about shit we aren’t supposed to, no one is going to take the whole ‘don’t pass information around’ thing seriously.” I explained, giving Himeko a brief pat on the shoulder, “So don’t ride Paul’s ass too hard, he just might be into it, and good luck trying to tear that tick away once he gets attached.”“Fuck you!” Paul answered almost automatically, without much energy.Still, the tirade was also the objective truth.I glanced towards the trucks arriving, before glancing at the group of around twenty armed people who were observing the conversation, most with amusement. Pretty sure I’ve run with at least some of the guys.All of them also clearly knew me, at least by reputation, seeing that no one stared at the smoke oozing from my clothes. “Where are all of you from?” I asked the group, “Aussies?” One of them chuckles.“The fuck you mean, mate? I’ve been driving you around Wales for a day!” the blonde guy said, and recognition happened.“Wait, you are that guy who showed me a killer pub after work, right?” the man chuckled, nodding, “Ah, so you are all Brits?” I asked.“Some Irish, actually.” One guy at the back responded. pointing at the Arab-looking dude, “Some aren’t from the Isles at all.”I glanced at Himeko in confusion, and she smiled kindly.“It’s the normal rules of formation for tactical squads… sir,” that’s a fair hesitation, all things considered, “Everyone is hand-picked for the mission, the only essential part is that everyone can freely communicate in English.”I blinked at that.“But that’s just everyone in the Mu HQ, no?” I’ve yet to find a janitor who wouldn’t be able to speak English without an accent here, mostly because English is one of the two official languages on the continent, besides some form of Chinese that apparently was popular with the continent’s early Asian settlers. “Only right now,” one of the women in the squad corrected, “We’ve had a few barracks being built right now for a reason, apparently having everyone on hand in one spot is more useful to the HQ, now that portals are a thing.” She glanced at me curiously, “By the way, how? They say it’s magic but…”For a moment I considered it, after all, I was already taking a bit too long, but… fuck it.I showed her the Yukari Fumo, bringing the thing out of my bag. The woman blinked.“This is a youkai.” I said simply, “They are, like, Japanese supernatural creatures, kinda like fairies in the old tales in the isles, ask Himeko more if you aren’t a weeb. Or one of the guys, they probably goon to sexualized versions of youkai in anime.” I could see at least a few glances aside with my supernatural demon-ish vision, “This youkai is called Yukari. She can control boundaries, any boundaries, and loves mischief. I can coax her to do what I want, and she mostly stays in this form; in return, however, she does mischief and occasionally makes things around the base disappear to prank people. If you lost your second sock, chances are, she is responsible,” I shamelessly lie, much to the curiosity and confusion of the dudes. I know they aren’t sure if I was pulling their leg, so I pressed on, “The portals she creates are completely under her control, at any time, for no reason at all, she can technically send people into the sun. Or to appear inside a concrete wall.” I patted the fumo, “She is genuinely quite terrifying, and youkai aren’t always friendly to humans. Good thing I am safe, and bribe her regularly else it could’ve ended poorly.” I said, smiling at the assembled group, as the portal slowly, with a grinding sound of unzipping pants, opens behind me.“So, go secure the perimeter?”The group exchanged looks.“You are… fucking with us, right?” One of the guys in the group asked. “Nope.” I lied, “Don’t be too concerned, though, we have yet to have anyone disappear. Yukari behaves… for the most part.”It was Paul who broke the tension.“Alright, Knightmare, very funny, now fuck off from the service area,” he turned towards Himeko who nodded.Himeko spoke up.“Alright, Unit 3, Unit 5, through, secure the LZ. Two-hundred-meter sweep, call it clean. Unit 1, 4, you're on the convoy, roll in on green. The rest of you, on me, we go last.” She seemed to be incredibly on top of this, considering the leutenant’s identification on her uniform, that only made sense. “Move, move, those portals aren’t one way, I don’t want a honkai beast in HQ!”That certainly a side of the redhead I didn’t get to see before.The two lead fireteams jogged through without a word, weapons up, splitting left and right the second they crossed the threshold. A few beats later, Paul tapped his earpiece, listened, then waved the truck drivers forward, engines coughing as they rolled in one after the other, suspension groaning over the lip of the portal.
Last truck cleared. Paul shouldered his rifle and gestured the remaining squad in ahead of him.
He glanced back at me on his way past, smirked. “Don’t let Yukari eat my truck, asshole.”
Then he stepped through.
“Yeah, well, she is on a train diet,” I said, patting the fumo, as I saw the portal close, before I glanced down, “Don’t worry, I know I’ve been sort of an asshole not doing this before. You need fear to actually be, right? I’ll have Elysia and Mobius help out, we’ll make you an urban legend at least in no time. Maybe we can get a budget to make horror flicks with you… just, you know, without man-eating parts, that sort of fear can actually make you eat people, right?”The Fumo didn’t respond, just stared at me. I chuckled, gently flicking it on the forehead.“Yeah, I know you can hear. Once you get enough energy, start to actually fuck with people around the base if you can; it should help. You are part of M.O.T.H., too, you know? Taking care of your basic needs is the least we can do. I’ve been far too content keeping you in this state, I… well, wanted to do something about this before, but Ely had you most of the week, you know?” I heard polite coughing behind me and turned around, seeing a bunch of… armed dudes standing around.“Eh, Knightmare, sir, we’ve been told you will sort us through?” The man who spoke up to me looked to be in his forties. I quickly checked the tablet, yep, those were supposed to be our warriors to secure one of the corridors to get the civies the fuck out.“Yeah, sure, give it a minute,” I shook my tablet, “The AI is compiling the ideal place to push you guys out, considering the Honkai beasts' presence in the area and all that stuff.” I glanced behind the officer, before glancing back at him, unsurely. “Is that really all? Don’t you guys get at least a tank for medium-classes?”“They don’t.” A familiar, yet synthesized voice rang out, and from behind a truck… a mech walked out. The cockpit opened up, and from the inside, Ato, dressed in… what seems to be latex, waved at me, “We are establishing the corridor through the shitamachi, getting tanks or even BMPs through those streets is impossible, so… it’s just anti-tanks and me.” His voice still came out augmented by whatever stereo machine he had inbuilt there.I just studied his mech from afar, tilting my head.“You… for real?” I marveled. This was barely anything like my own exosuit MK.0 that he supposedly based it on. This looked like a genuine mech, what, five meters tall? Bigger? I mean, sure, it was white, had some of the details looking a bit mismatched, still has some yellow paint where the details were marked, and I think scorch marks from welding work on site and such…I disappeared in a snap, standing on a shadow-platform right next to Ato, making the man jump.“That’s so fucking cool,” I whispered, glancing inside, before glaring at the fucking nerd, “You promised I’ll be the first one around our combat department to see it, asshole.” Ato glanced aside, “Moreover, you said I’ll get to do that the moment you finish the combat tests and can make sure the machine holds.” I said, staring at him intensely, and seeing the man look further down, “Ato, is this thing even mission-ready? Why are you even piloting it, instead of literally anyone else? Does Blanca know you are here? Should I bring Vill here?”I could see him crack.“There is no one else who can operate the machine! I’ve been the only one who did the majority of the test-deployments, I am the only one familiar enough with the controls to operate it smoothly!” The man exploded, looking into my eyes, “This… this is a chance to make an impact, even Mobius approved!” I raised an eyebrow.“And did she get to see the test data or did she just trusted you not to be a retard when you reported the mech mission-ready?”Ato winced.“It is mission-ready. I didn’t have the time to stress test some functions, but… as a portable heavy weapon platform that can walk, shoot, and seek cover even under intense honkai radiation - the machine works,” Ato said, looking me in the eyes. I dropped my usual smile when I saw those eyes, slightly shaking from tension, genuine, full of conviction.“You know as well as I do that we don’t have everything perfectly ready. We never do,” he tells me, quietly, “Trust me, I’ve got this.”I measured him with a look before stepping back, grinning.“Now that’s the eyes I like to see!” I look across the mech, before dispelling the shadow platform and jumping down, between the soldiers, “You gave that one a name yet?”Ato chuckled.“It has a serial number.” He offered.“Lame, gay, possibly terminally so,” I shot down immediately, before glancing at the soldiers who were getting a free show, “Boys and girls, any suggestions?”One of the soldiers shrugged, scratching at the side of his neck. “Knight. It’s big, white and armoured, right?”“Too plain,” a woman in the back muttered, not looking up from the magazine she was thumbing rounds into. “I like wraith.”“Marshmallow,” someone else offered, completely deadpan, and got a snort from the guy next to him.“Fuck off with that,” the next guy shot back, elbowing him without looking. He tilted his chin towards the mech. “Something that sounds like it’ll actually be cool, please, I don’t want to get crushed under ‘cloud’ when that thing gets shot down when we take cover behind it.”“Pillow, then.” the marshmallow guy added, undeterred, expression not shifting an inch.“Tin Man,” another voice put in, somewhere in the middle of the group.“Biggus.” Someone who was probably British called out. “Just call it by the serial number, those things can stick too. Like with VT-nines.” Someone else in the back row laughed.
An older operative near the back, who hadn't spoken yet, kept his eyes on the mech for a long beat before speaking up. “Your wife’s name Blanca, right? Just call it that. It’s a blank thing for now, in any case, isn’t it?”“That’s a good one,” I immediately pointed at him, “That should be the one…”My tablet pinged, and I glanced down. Ah, shucks.“Right, seems like you guys will have to wait for a hot minute or two, apparently, the place they were going to deploy you in had a few mid-class beasts manifest, deploying you there before you can even secure the position is suicide, so they are trying to find some other place…”I trailed off, glancing at one of the guys standing by my side. He looked young. Like, just out of high school, young. The boy was fucking around with a spare magazine in his hand, clearly nervous, maybe on the edge of a panic attack, judging by how he was tapping his foot.With one gentle move, I took his rifle.“Eh…” He blinked, staring at me, as I inspected our standard issue rifle, pretending to be interested.“Damn, you guys get good shit ever since Vill took over, eh?” I said, fiddling with the rocket launcher underneath, “Been a while since I played around with actual gear instead of the bullshit I have to pull out of my ass.”“Eh, K-knightmare sir, w-what are you…?” The kid tried to ask, to which I just grinned at him.“Don’t worry about it, just checking out your gear. Check this out,” The rifle to me was light as a feather, so when I pointed it up, I wielded it pretty much like a pistol, as my thumb flicked the safety. Then shot.It wasn’t difficult at all for the current me. Was it practice with the shadow armour spell? The Force? My physical training? Maybe the demonic blood?I don’t really know the cause, but recently, bullets stopped being all that fast. So even as I shot, guided by an instinct I knew I shouldn’t have, and an intrinsic understanding, I conjured a shadow barrier in the bullet’s way. The bullet impacted and ricocheted. So I created another barrier. And another, and another.By the time it ricocheted the last time, it flew with a momentum of flicked peanut, and hit the boy right between the eyes, making him jump and recoil in horror…I caught the bullet in the air.“See? Nothing to worry about, you are bulletproof already!” I whistled, ignoring the cries of alarm all around, as I created a small needle in one hand, “Guess I have to up my game too…”A needle went through the side of the deformed bullet, and then morphed into a tiny interlinked shadow chain, which I, a moment later, turned to proto-adamantium.“Here.” I offered the chain to the boy, who looked like he just about shat himself, “Your lucky bullet.”It wasn’t really an explosion of reactions, more like an uneven cascade of nervous laughter, a few outright howls from the guys who knew me, and a lot more dudes just kind of standing there blinking like they weren’t sure what they just watched. A few were swearing under their breath. Pretty sure I caught somebody mutter “Jesus Christ” to nobody in particular.
The kid himself was just staring at the chain in his palm, then at me, then back at the chain. But it was good to look in his eyes now, focused.
I tapped him on the shoulder.“Now just keep focused, and you’ll be just fine,” I said, passing him a rifle after flicking its safety back on.
When I glanced up at the mech, Ato hadn’t said anything for a while, hadn't moved much either, still half-leaning out of the cockpit and staring at me with this slightly stunned look on his face.
“…shit, Knightmare, you couldn’t have, like, I don’t know… not shoot live rounds indoors?” He said it slowly, in the delayed cadence of a guy whose brain hadn’t quite caught up to his mouth yet. “Just talked or something?! Like a normal person.”I considered that for about half a second.“Wouldn’t have worked so well.” I glanced across the assembled soldiers, “Listen up, boys and girls, some of you, I am sure, are veterans, but the place you are going? Ain’t gonna be fun. Keep sharp, stay focused, and you’ll make it through. Worry about whatever the fuck your orders are, I’ll kill our big bad.” I told them all, checking the tablet. “They seem to find a good potential place for your helldive. Get in formation.”The old guy who greeted me initially immediately started to bark orders.“You heard the man, group 1 and 2…!”I tuned them out and instead typed out a quick message to the HQ that a shot wasn’t something for them to worry about.All the guys were still looking at me, I knew, but instead of engaging, I just jumped over them and across a few shadow-platforms I created for an instant, before landing at the designated portal spot.I could see all the dudes get focused on something I couldn’t hear; clearly, they were being briefed through the earpiece. Good enough for me.A ping on a tablet.“Alright, godspeed, men,” I said, having Yukari open the portal.I stood to the side, letting the men and their transport trucks pass.I fucking hated that I couldn’t go there myself.***“Knightmare reporting,” I said, giving Mobius and Anderson a lazy salute, trying to hide how wound up I was, “Am I getting deployed?”The pair exchanged glances.“Naturally.” Mobius offered, “We’ve gathered the intel you’ll need.”I lifted an eyebrow, to which Anderson stepped forward, the holoprojector igniting behind him, giving me a picture of a… rather fucked up looking remains of a building. Then the next picture, which showed a…“The Herrscher first appeared in the high school in…” I couldn’t help the sigh.“Of-fucking-course-he-did.” I muttered to myself.“... district, Elysia confirmed as much on sight with elevated honkai levels all around.” He finished. “Naturally, we can’t tell who transformed and why.”I really wanted to make a joke about an average Japanese protagonist, but I knew this would be in poor taste even for me. I tried not thinking about what, 500 or so dead kids on site, but I knew most people didn’t laugh away the fucked up stuff.“The honkai beast activity, however, shows other patterns,” Mobius said, showing some graphs over a map of the city and… “We only have so much data due to the satellites being effectively blocked from observing the area, but the things people filmes, CCTV footage, and public cameras are at our disposal.”I rubbed my cheek at that.“Yeah, I was wondering how we are going to cover that up.”Anderson sighed, looking dead inside.“We do as well. This isn’t important now,” He assured, pointing at the maps, “The point is, we know the general area where the Herrscher is, thanks to our analysis and Elysia’s observation. The good news is, you’ve been here, so you can open the portal past the majority of the honkai beasts. That, however, would leave an army behind your back. Which is why we have the Americans and our own forces simultaneously start an offensive on the district and strike the honkai beasts in the back.” He explained.I nodded to that, slowly.“Alright, I can see that working. But that still leaves the honkai battery and the Herrscher himself, right?” I asked, glancing at Mobius.The woman looked surprisingly relaxed and in control, and at my questioning look, just huffed.“Naturally, I have a plan, but I need to clarify something before we proceed. Now, you told me you can awaken the one inside your spear, did you not? Let me ask it something…”---Author Notes: Mostly a background chapter with overall set-ups. Hope it's enjoyable enough still.