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Partway between Remnant and Earth, aboard the Free Planetary State of Yiziba Starship Normandy, Tōkyō time: Monday, suppertime...
"Isaac?"
Lying on his rather utilitarian bed in his cabin, Isaac Thomas looked over from the novel he was reading to see his chief aide peeking in. "Hi, Mimir! What's up?" he asked as he sat up.
Trying not to blush on seeing his slender yet well-muscled form covered by a tank-top T-shirt and Camelot High School athletic shorts, Mimir Shepard nodded to his primary PAA on his desk. "We just received a signal from Brockton Bay," the curvy redhead twenty-something gynoid stated. "It's Taylor Hebert. She needs to talk to you about something concerning Sophia Hess. She's gone missing."
The native of Queens nodded his thanks, then slid himself onto his work chair, tapping the crystal to pull up a holographic screen, that displaying the image of an annoyed bespectacled woman with long wavy dark brown hair and brown eyes. She wasn't exceptionally beautiful, but still could turn eyes. "Hey, Isaac!" the current incarnation of the Mistress of the Mindless Legions, Lekero ("Skitter"), said with a wan smile. "Sorry to bug you right now, but I've got a bit of a problem."
"Concerning Sophia," Isaac affirmed with his own slightly amused smile.
"As I'm sure Mimir already told you, she's gone missing. Last check-in from her was about midnight my time." A quick glance to one corner of Isaac's screen confirmed it was four in the morning in Brockton Bay. "As to why she would vanish like this before a school day, I just can't understand. Even if we have to keep low cover in case all the security we've practised since we found out what happened to Tariko in April didn't work all the way, there are issues I'm worried about, especially of the Shōzoki variety."
The older man nodded in understanding. Brockton Bay, located at the estuary of the Essex River, was a once-humming seaport that gained prominence during the War of Independence, becoming an effective replacement for Boston even if movements from the area often had to run past Royal Navy blockading squadrons. Over the following century and a half, it remained the second-most important seaport in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as well as all of New England; its natural harbour and the aquifer that gave a large supply of fresh water was something that attracted new residents like a lodestone.
However, the area's economic luck turned sour in the Second World War. Brockton Bay was targeted three times by the Übermenschen Gruppe in their campaign to stop the Americans from supplying and reinforcing their allies in Europe. Since the docks were just as efficient as Boston's or any of the other main seaports in the northeast states, halting the movement of supplies and personnel was paramount. While the Liberty Legion and their allies in the War Hawks and the Soldiers of Freedom were able to extract bloody retribution for each of those attacks, those three fights had an unusual post-war side effect. Thanks to the mesonium within the blood that often was the source of metahuman powers for "mystery men" and specialized warfare warriors alike of the time period, instances of paranormal and metahuman activity became far more prominent in Brockton Bay than most other places in America before Tariko Katabarbe and people like her came along after the turn of the Millennium.
Isaac knew of ONE person who began his own casting change campaign in the area.
Leno Lu'umlo.
Thanks to the Mad Prophet of the Future, a considerable number of Brocktonites found themselves empowered and welcomed into the Great Show of Life, both as faces, anti-heels and pure heels. The lady Isaac was speaking to right now was one of Leno's recruits...even if she wasn't even from this multiverse! Having been ejected from her home universe — designated "Earth-Bet" — at the end of a climatic battle both badly wounded and rendered powerless thanks to one of her several enemies in her home dimension, she was alone in a much stranger world with no support whatsoever.
Reflecting on that, the Wise Lone Sage remembered what he wrote in his journal two years ago...
Taylor Hebert (Skitter)
Unlike the rest of the members of this group, she is the version from Earth-Bet. After all she had gone through in her home dimension, she was literally dumped into our multiverse, badly wounded from her last battle there. Not to mention effectively powerless thanks to the rather ugly method that was used to seal the source of her metahuman powers.
Fortunately (or unfortunately), her counterpart in this dimension had been in a fatal bus crash; at the time of Taylor's arrival, her other-self was in Brockton Bay Memorial Hospital, not long for this world.
Then, in yet ANOTHER wonderful demonstration of the man's precognitive and cosmic clairvoyant ability to guess out the best people to receive a Gift seed he collected from Yiziba's wilderness, Millennium came onto the scene. After realizing that he could only save ONE Taylor, he used his PAA to teleport both to Yiziba (along with the parents of the Taylor from here) before explaining the situation. To her credit, the native Taylor was more than willing to allow her other-self to take her place; even in a delirious state, she was cognizant enough to realize what was happening.
With that sleight of hand Leno is quite famous and equally quite notorious for, the Taylor from Earth-Bet was pre-Gifted and allowed to take her other-self's place in the hospital — where she 'miraculously recovered', of course — while our Taylor passed on, then was buried near the site of Millennium's old church on Yiziba. Our Taylor's parents accepted what had happened, mourned for their lost daughter, then welcomed their new daughter into their lives once she was released from medical care.
Taylor does act a bit like she did before that fateful betrayal which made her an effective loner in her own dimension, such influencing the course of her own life's journey until her transition here. However, her past experiences weigh heavily on her when it comes time to don the battlesuit. She is serious, calm and collected. She's also VERY cunning, skilled in using her powers in creative ways that helps demonstrate the skill she had to develop on Earth-Bet. There, where she only had the power to control insects, Taylor acquired the knowledge necessary to take down several more powerful opponents.
She is lethally good at the art of escalating a fight to her favour.
Her Gifts grant her the same type of psionic dominance abilities Professor Charles Xavier demonstrated in the X-Men movies, using that to mimic her original insect-control abilities, which helps her better adopt to the exponential increase of her overall power.
One thing to always note: Do NOT underestimate her. You will likely lose.
During the clashes between the Undersiders and the Wondercolts, she faced off against Lance Silva. Thanks to her experience in dealing with opponents who use force fields in battle acquired back in her birth universe, she got the win quite easily...
"HEY! You having a flashback scene, Isaac?!"
Isaac gargled before he focused once more on his permanently dimensional-challenged friend; thanks to Leno's Gift to her that made her a Terran-turned-Yizibajohei, Taylor had no choice but to reside here in lieu of being ejected back to her home dimension a solar year after her arrival. "Sorry, Taylor..."
"Uh-huh," the younger woman said as she gave him a knowing look.
He waved her down. "So what made Sophia disappear like that? When was your last meeting?"
"Saturday at eleven in the morning."
Isaac hummed. "That would be one in the afternoon Tōkyō time on Sunday..."
Taylor blinked. "What would that have to do with it?"
The New Yorker raised his hand to make the Bay Stater relax herself while he recalled what he had learned about the woman that was the subject of the latter's call for assistance...
Sophia Hess (Shadow Stalker)
Counterpart of the person that caused so much trouble for Taylor Hebert back on Earth-Bet, the one who made Taylor's friend turn on her with her beliefs of the strong conquering the weak. I have to admit I was surprised to learn she was a member of the Undersiders here. However, before Sophia was Gifted with Leno's help, Taylor helped her change her ways a bit.
Still, she still uses the same lines, which is most likely an ongoing show of ti'ibie...
Sophia uses her powers — which allow her to turn into a mist-like form that could phase through anything short of ebony mesonium or depleted neutronium — to surprise opponents before she makes use of multi-form crossbows mounted on the back of her gauntlets to stealthily take down opponents.
To say Sophia is "fight scene happy" is putting it lightly. Fortunately, she likes fighting to protect those who need protecting, like Tariko's would-be recruit Saotome Ranma was like when she met him in the spring of 2005. Because of this, she's one to act before thinking things through, though her respect for Taylor does give the Undersiders' leader the chance to calm her down.
Most of the time, unfortunately.
She was the one who accused Mackenzie Appleby of cheating which started the chain of events that had to be finally settled in the Battlezone between the Undersiders and the Wondercolts. In the last bout of that 'tournament', she faced off against Rita Diaz; both were rivals on the track field during that national tournament that was the scene of the original confrontation.
Thanks to Rita's powers allowing her to exploit Sophia's weakness to any form of lightning-based attacks — which forced her to 'de-phase' to escape being crippled — the former won that fight.
That actually earned Rita her respect as a worthy opponent.
Since that time when she's not bashing heads in Brockton Bay, going to school or playing video games (the bloodier said game is, the better she likes it), Sophia trains for a rematch against Rita...
"Did you guys talk about the Bullet Deniers?" he then asked.
She blinked. "Yes, I passed on what Kazuma told me about what happened on Phentax Two that needed Hinako and Captain Itō to go look into things. Everyone was shocked at the idea the captain put out concerning turning the Staff of Gihan of all things over to Phoebe of all people!"
"How did Sophia react to learning that Enoshima Junko is here?"
That made the Mistress of the Mindless Legions sit back in her chair before her eyes widened as it sank into her mind. "She went really, really, really still! Especially when I rattled off the names of those who were Gifted with Leno's help...!" Her face then paled, causing her freckles to show quite prominently. "Good God! You don't actually think that she'd challenge Junko of all people?!"
"To quote Captain Itō, 'You literally REEK of the blood of THOUSANDS'."
She hissed out, "Shit! Sophie, you IDIOT!"
"They're staying on Ōmure-jima, by the way," he warned.
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then...
"Oh, dear GOD! Is Chikage still there?!"
"No. She'll be in her first class back in Hogwarts spreading the news."
"Umbridge?"
"Beheaded."
That made the leader of the Brockton Undersiders breathe out. "Well, that's a relief..."
"Tariko just helped Fujinami Ryūnosuke and Shiowatari Nagisa be Gifted in Tomobiki. The sisters and the shipgirls are throwing a party at Welcome House to celebrate Ataru's freedom from that place."
Now the dimensional-challenged psychic was as white as a ghost. "Oh, Hell...!"
"Better get moving," the Wise Lone Sage warned, wryly smiling.
"Yeah...!"
Welcome House on Ōmure-jima, an hour later...
"Is she alright, Rinrin-chan?"
Hatoyama Rinrin sighed as she rubbed her forehead. "Yeah, she's okay, Aniki. I'd love to meet the jerk that programmed her with sleeper protocols, though. Doing that to a girl being sent into a town that's chock-full of androids and gynoids like Tomobiki was..." Here, the Technological Sorceress of the East shook her head. "Just plain stupid! With the way people's luck goes in that place, she WOULD have seen something that would have made her question what she was sooner or later!"
"Much less getting caught in the back-blast of Lum's temper tantrums," Moroboshi Ataru mused as he reached over to gently brush the long dark hair of Sŏ Yŏn'i. Once her systems had been stabilized at Tomobiki High School, she was transported by Rinrin to her private laboratory beside her bedroom in the rotunda of Welcome House for a more detailed examination before she would be given a chance to determine what to do next. In the meantime, Tariko Katabarbe invited the recently-Gifted Fujinami Ryūnosuke and Shiowatari Nagisa to come to Ōmure-jima and get the ten yen tour. The members of the Azuma Gang and the Scooby Gang returned home to prepare for school...and in the latter group's case, go to bed. Tsuruya Rumiko was still on the school grounds finishing up her initial modifications of the building; she would wait until later in the evening to repair the damage to the clock tower and the centre wing of the second floor so the school would be effectively brand-new come tomorrow morning.
Looking at the still gynoid's face, Rinrin blinked. "Ooh! She's got a crush, Aniki!"
He awked, then stared at Yŏn'i. Even if she had been placed in standby mode to allow her internal systems to do a full diagnostic to ensure the damage done to her by Kamiya Hokuto was repaired, her cheeks were reddening; her outer epidermal sensors were active as part of her self-defence protocols. "Rinrin!" he scolded as he gave her an annoyed look, earning him a playful tongue in response.
A knock echoed from the door leading to the technokinetic's bedroom. "Onii-sama?"
"Hai, Sakuya...huh?!"
An amused chuckle escaped the beautiful teenage girl Ataru's age as she swept into the laboratory. "Ataru-ya! Rinrin-a!" Kim Hyegyŏng called out as she moved to embrace and kiss the former before hugging the latter while the matriarch of the Moroboshi Clan stood at the doorway, grinning.
"What are you doing here, Hyegyŏng-a?!" Ataru demanded.
The Sandalwood Empress of the New Dawn — who was fashionably dressed in civilian clothing in lieu of her traditional reddish-brown battlesuit with hooded cape — winked playfully at him. Possessing shoulder-length dark brown hair she often wore pulled back to a short ponytail at the back of the head, she had tanned skin thanks to years living in southern China — rather permanently fixed in place due to her Gifting — and very intelligent, almost all-seeing dark brown eyes; being a reality warper with well-honed clairvoyance atop experience knowledge concerning cleansing things of naquadah, creating and modifying man-made things plus a mastery of Ancient, Goa'uld and Yizibajohei technology, that was expected. The only mar of her face was a birthmark under the bridge of her nose plus two dimples, one left of her mouth, the other below the corner of her lips. "When Rumiko-ya signalled me about what was going on with Tamako-ssi's replacement, I decided it was time to gut that project Harabŏji's people launched when Lum-ssi came here." Even if she spoke Japanese as fluently she did her native Korean and Yizibajohei as well as English and Portuguese, the niece of the current leader of the North used native honorifics, as her friends did addressing her directly. "I dare say Comrade Colonel Han is going to have some explaining to do to Comrade General Ri when he finds out that his 'prisoners' are gone."
"Is this guy a titemam, Hyegyŏng-chan?" Rinrin asked.
"Ne, of course not," she answered, shaking her head as an amused look crossed her very pretty face. "But according to my people in the Chŏngch'al Ch'ongguk..." — like many people who were multi-lingual, the reborn first king of both Kuorim and old Chosŏn tended to slip into native terms when she was referring to something specific; fortunately, even in civilian clothing, Ataru and his sisters had omniversal translators that allowed them to understand what was being said — "...the general is aware of the Shōzoki presence in the country — though not to the full extent I suspect they've moved in — and sees it as just another opportunity to pull the country out of the sewer pit Harabŏji and his father allowed it to fall into. Of course, with only the sŏngbun benefiting from such!" she derisively added.
And THERE was the big difference between Hyegyŏng and her uncle Kim Chŏng'ŭn, her hosts both knew. The concept of sŏngbun was ascribed to citizens of the North seen by the government as being "politically reliable", thus worthy of advancement in society, even in matters like receiving adequate food to eat. As declared by Hyegyŏng's great-grandfather Kim Ilsŏng in 1958, only twenty-five percent of the population of the DPRK was considered worthy to be seen as sŏngbun and form the core of the Worker's Party of the land; of the rest of the nation, fifty-five percent were "wavering" while the remaining twenty were "hostile", thus needing to be purged. That was something Hyegyŏng saw as a useless continuation of the rigid caste system that dominated pre-Occupation Korea in the latter Chosŏn era, the thing that left the country totally vulnerable for takeover by Japan in 1910.
"Shades of Ingsoc!" Tariko said in response to that to her new friend after they met in Macao.
After all, she taught herself to believe — even before she was Gifted and had her worldview altered by Yizibajohei concepts! — the basic tenet of true socialism was that ALL people were equal and ALL people had the right to live and advance according to their own potential and skill set, thus NO ONE would be left to fall into squalor to ensure harmony for the nation. In her eyes, this would allow true Chuch'e to develop while still opening the nation to finally engage with the outside world, promote badly needed trade, remove sanctions and properly reconcile with their brothers and sisters in the South.
And if there were those who couldn't handle such a change, there was such a thing as emigration!
Because of that, the reborn Sandalwood Empress had come to despise how much her relatives totally ABANDONED their duties to the people as a whole. To be a ruler, you damn hell had to ensure that those you ruled were happy and safe and put THEIR needs before your own; thanks to so many rulers on Yiziba forgetting that basic idea, the Dawn of Power ultimately happened! Never mind the whole "dynastic communism" that saw the whole country warped around to create an absolute monarchy in all but name — with mechanisms of government in place that could do things not even those who followed Kim Ilsŏng's inspiration and initial patron Iósif Vissariónovich Stálin ever DREAMED of, all to keep that man's descendants in power! — there was the question of people DYING in droves thanks to the government writing off a THIRD of the population simply because they were "undesirable".
Hyegyŏng had been born during the time of the March of Suffering in the mid-1990s, when the DPRK lost nearly a MILLION to starvation thanks to the end of Soviet support and her great-grandfather's abject REFUSAL to reform the system to allow the country to evolve like China was doing. Even as a child of the central party elite, she was uncommonly observant and knew right away that a lot of the flowery words being bestowed to the "great leader" masked something that simply didn't chime with basic fundamental humanity. As her own part of the family was banished from the land in 2003 thanks to her father's harsh criticism of her grandfather's rule in the wake of his ascension during the time of the March of Suffering, Hyegyŏng's questions and doubts grew exponentially, especially after she saw how other societies developed, even a nominally communist one like mainland China!
All such needed was a little extra push to launch revolution.
The Trickster of the Show gave her the chance to push...
...and she wasn't turning back.
"Who...are...you?"
The reborn ruler of Kuorim and founder of old Chosŏn perked on hearing Yŏn'i's robotic voice, shaking her out of her self-reflection to note that the "field agent" of the Reconnaissance General Bureau was now effectively awake and gazing in question at her. "Relax, Yŏn'i-ya," Ataru said as he reached over to grasp her hand, making the native of Taehongdan blush even more. "This is a friend of ours from your homeland, Kim Hyegyŏng-a. We met her in Macao a couple years ago."
That made the farmer's daughter from a small collective near the Tuman-gang blink in confusion before memory clicked in and she recalled where she had heard that name before being deployed to Japan after the turn of the New Year. "The...Mar-shall's...niece...?" she eeped...which sounded really weird since her systems were still running diagnostics, forcing her to speak in lock-step.
"Oh, relax, Yŏn'i-chan!" Rinrin said as she placed her hand over the gynoid's abdominal hatch, which was glowing as she moved to have the systems within the native of Ryanggang Province come on line, which would let her talk normally. "Hyegyŏng-chan's a friend of Aniki's and Aneki's. She doesn't want to destroy the North. She just wants to make it part of the wider world once more. After all, wouldn't you like it if your friends back home had access to all the cool stuff you got when you came here?"
That made the woman who pretended to be Inoue Tamako blink a couple times as she felt her internal systems come fully on-line, purged of useless sleeper protocols forced on her after her construction and activation to add an extra layer of "realism" to the gynoid "field agent". A set of protocols that began to fail thanks to the man whose hand she was now holding, when she peeked on him having sex with three female peers from Class 2-7 who were gynoids themselves in late April: Tōno Mizuki, Hayasaka Akira and Fujiwara Aya. With additional programming degradation thanks to infrequent exposure to Redet Lum and her bio-electricity — never mind shipgirls who had similar powers like the younger Akamatsu sisters Ikue and Inoue — the doubts the poor farmer's daughter had about what she was grew and grew; after all, she was residing in a city where contact with VERY advanced alien cultures was the norm, so the possibility of her being some sort of robot wasn't far-fetched. Finally, she discovered that Tamako's parents Takeichi and Sachiko — who had been inordinately willing to accept the Korean teen as their daughter, mysteriously returned after she "developed amnesia" shortly after the turn of the New Year — were AIs, drones programmed to perform as if they were pure-born organics but without true sentience of any sort; that was thanks to the backlash of the Pseudo War in mid-August.
"Well..." she began, her voice back to normal.
"We'll talk about it later, Comrade Sŏ," Hyegyŏng stated. "In the meantime, we have quite the surprise for such a loyal servant of the nation like you," she added with a wink.
Surprise crossed the other woman's face. "What...?"
"NUNA!"/"ŎNNI!"
Yŏn'i's head snapped over...
...then she screamed in delight as three younger people — a boy appearing to be a high school freshman, plus twin girls the same age as Saeru Hinako, all bearing Yŏn'i's same hair and eye colour — raced in to swamp her with hugs, they sobbing in relief on knowing that they were once more reunited with the effective matriarch of the Sŏ Clan of Taehongdan after over ten months being apart. As the "field agent" warmly embraced her brother Sŏ Chunch'ŏl and sisters Sŏ Hana and Sŏ Mina, footfalls heralded the arrival of someone else, making Yŏn'i look up before her jaw dropped.
"Tamako-chan...?!"
A warm smile crossed Inoue Tamako's face. "Yŏn'i-ya...!"
The younger siblings grinned as they pulled back, allowing Yŏn'i to surge up and swamp the woman whose life she had effectively stolen — even if Tamako herself was a gynoid; they had been activated the very same day in a laboratory somewhere in P'yŏng'yang, in fact! — with a hug. As they broke down and wept at the fact that their mad journey in life was finally over, the others seeing this smiled...
An hour later...
"Chunch'ŏl-san! It's silly to show your circuits in the open like that all the time! Close yourself up! What are you trying to do?! Get hurt like your sister got hurt?!"
The only surviving male of the Sŏ Clan of Taehongdan winced on hearing that admonishment by the Living Spirit of Innocence, then he flustered as he gazed on her while a smiling Nanami Chiaki and Iidabashi Tetsuya helped slip the abdominal hatch cover back into place on the amateur soccer star's stomach. "Um...I was just showing Chiaki-ssi and Tetsuya-ssi how my internal systems work, Hinako-ya...!" the effeminate man with the nicely-cropped brown hair and dark brown eyes feebled.
Saeru Hinako gave him a look before shaking her head in clear disapproval, then she headed over to where his sisters Sŏ Hana and Sŏ Mina were seated in the main dining room, eagerly eating the beautiful black forest cake they had been given by Osamu Shirayuki to get them properly pre-Gifted. As other people in the room giggled after seeing that — it was quite the crowd, but the new dining hall had been built to take in a couple hundred comfortably — the youngest members of the Sŏ Clan on Ōmure-jima gave the native of Niigata knowing looks. "Oppa always likes to show off his internal systems to anyone who wants to know about them, Hinako-ya," Hina explained as she hugged one of her near-namesake's small legion of VERY big teddy bears. "There were other Shōzoki at his high school he could interface with when he needed to do that sort of silly stuff, so he got into the habit of pulling that hatch off to make his boyfriends and girlfriends play with his master controls."
Hinako moaned as she slapped her head, then she smiled as Aria des Beauchamps patted her shoulder in sympathy. "Hina-chan, don't talk to Hina about that mushy stuff!" she pleaded as she gazed on her new friends. "Hina can't believe that those dorks that killed your mama and papa and turned you into gynoids and androids..." — it really wasn't that, everyone knew, but Hinako wanted to make her new friends feel fully accepted here in Welcome House — "...would force you to think of all that mushy stuff!" She then gazed in confusion at them. "Don't tell Hina you were made to do that!"
"No!" Mina squeaked in clearly childish disgust at speaking on such an "adult" topic; even if she and her sister were members of the Young Pioneer Corps — as was their brother as note their blue-and-red uniforms — they were still effectively second-year elementary school students, gynoids or no. Like her twin sister, her hair was cut in one of the fifteen "approved" styles permitted by the government in P'yŏng'yang, though they chose different looks; Hina wore a "tanbal" while Mina had a "porŭmdal", both looking somewhat alike with short cut hair to a taper, though Hina's was longer. While their eldest sister had been allowed to wear her "template's" hime-like waist-length cut with braided locks from the temples due to the need to not raise suspicion, she was the only one of the family to look "normal"; despite being quite effeminate for his physical age, Chunch'ŏl's hair was in a cropped "hŭrŭm" which was one of the fifteen approved male haircuts. "All our teachers had to do to keep our programming stabilized was kiss us when we needed to have our programming stabilized!"
Hinako's nose scrunched. "Adults did that to you, Mina-chan?! Eeew!"
"They didn't do naughty things to you, did they?" Aria asked.
"No!" Hina said, waving the older girl down. "They would be sent to the labour camps if they did something that hurt us, Aria-ya! We couldn't do as Ŏnni did if we had glitches in our programming!"
Hinako and Aria exchanged tired looks. Even if they had only lived together for several months since the latter came to Japan from France to be with their brother, they had developed a deep rapport with each other, which had been quite expected of the "kids" of Moroboshi Ataru's and Tariko Katabarbe's dozen half-sisters. "Now Aria knows how poor Ryōko-san felt when Stian-chan and Tove-chan were brought here from Norway after Maria-san, Trudl-san and Eva-san beat up those stupid Qar'to..."
Both Korean gynoids screeched as they bolted to their feet. "QAR'TO?!"
That made the room go quiet. "What's wrong?!" Sŏ Chunch'ŏl demanded.
"Oppa! Aria-ya said there were Qar'to here!" Hina snarled, pointing to Aria.
"And that's surprising?"
"Rinrin-chan!" Tenhiro Haruka scolded as she gazed at the technokinetic of the family. "They may not know about the Mor-Tax still being on this planet. Don't scold them about that!"
Hatoyama Rinrin snorted. "Relax, girls!" the Technological Sorceress of the East bade as she waved the younger Sŏ children down. "All the shipgirls know about the Qar'to being here! A bunch were found near Tromsø in Norway, where Maria-san was sunk late in 1944." At the curious looks from the three younger AIs, the native of Ōsaka flustered. "Um, she was battleship Tirpitz!"
That made three pairs of eyes brighten. "You mean Comrade Captain Bismarck's sister, Rinrin-ya?" Chunch'ŏl asked, earning the soccer player surprised looks. "Um, the androids and gynoids in our school always got updated about the haegun ch'ŏnyŏ that appeared in public...!"
"Bet you people don't know about Korean shipgirls," Moroboshi Ataru then teased.
People looked at him. "There are KOREAN shipgirls, Shirei-kan?!" Fukushima Fujiko demanded.
"Of course there would be, Fujiko-ya," Kim Hyegyŏng declared from where she was standing with the woman who gave her such a chance for herself and her nation as a whole, they also with the two latest "recruits" Tariko Katabarbe helped get Gifted. "Don't forget, the Americans were happy to turn over warships built in the Second World War to our southern brothers to aid in their defence against my great-grandfather's attempts at trying to reunify the nation." She gazed on Tariko. "Wasn't it that mudang you met in Taegu that started it all? The one Gifted as an actual Kuorim-mem nokyo?"
"Su Muwol," the Trickster of the Show answered.
"A real mudang?!" Chunch'ŏl exclaimed, wide-eyed.
"Ne, Chunch'ŏl-a," the Sandalwood Empress of the New Dawn affirmed.
"She even calls herself that in Korean even if she uses Shaman in English," Tariko added. "She was having a shinbyŏng experience when I met up with her three years ago, then I offered to pre-Gift her to help her control her abilities. Soon enough, the Conservator chimed in, then she was trained at a shrine on the slopes of T'aebaek-san before being allowed to open her own private shrine to Mother Sungmo down on Namhae Island in the ruins of the castle Hideyoshi's idiots set up there in the Imjin War." As the visitors from P'yŏng'yang nodded in understanding — their sister Yŏn'i was spending time alone with Inoue Tamako, both using Ataru's bedroom since it was private but gave them access to the dining hall in case something happened — Tariko added, "Shortly after Hinako-chan did her Golden Week Shipgirl Hunt, Muwol-a struck the mother lode!" She gazed knowingly at Ataru.
He moaned as all the shipgirls, Japanese and foreign, gazed expectantly at him. "Force ME to do the reveal scene, Onē-san?! You're lazy!" he scolded before he pulled out his PAA and put it on the table. Tapping the crystal there, he waited for the device to send a hyperwarp signal out.
A moment later, a voice called back with a musical mix of Kansai Japanese, Kyŏngsang Korean...and Tagalog accents! "Hai, Teitoku?! Is everything okay?! Are you out of that stupid school now?!"
He chuckled as many Japanese shipgirls exchanged looks while they tried to place the actual voice to a vessel they might be familiar with. "Where are you right now, Sumie-chan?" he asked, leaning his chin onto his palms while propping his arms on the table, an amused glitter in his eyes.
Foreheads furrowed in thought. The veterans of the Imperial Navy present at the party — most of the ones salvaged and Gifted to date save Itō Yoiko and the Matsubara sisters Kanako and Sumie, who were in space preparing their starship-selves for battle — had never heard the name "Sumie" applied to anyone of their specific class who had yet to return to duty. Given Ataru's behaviour about secrecy when it came to non-salvaged shipgirls, who this one could be was a bit of a mystery even if the accents gave a clue; whoever this was, she had been sunk somewhere close to the Philippines.
"I'm looking at this big freaking ball of really, really, REALLY dense metal some dumb idiot put around a SUN, Teitoku! One as big as Earth's orbit around our sun, too!" that voice called back, huffing. "Who was totally dorky enough to do something dumb like THAT, huh?! Suns need to BREATHE, you know! Can we get Ayumu-chan over here to wreck this thing to make the sun properly shine?!"
"A Dyson sphere...?!" Hachimori Yūka, the reborn experimental cruiser THG Yūbari, exclaimed.
"The Planet of Shadows, Yūka-chan," Tariko explained. "Where the Vosians stashed that version of the Staff of Gihan their first worldwide president found floating in space at the time of the Dawn of Power."
"Shouldn't we do something about that, Tariko-san?" Kuwana Nahoko, the reborn cruiser THG Nagara that survived Midway when the carriers of the Kidō Butai had fallen to the Americans, asked.
A shake of the head answered the tomboyish raven-haired girl with the short high ponytail, tanned skin and headband wrapped around her forehead. "Don't worry about it, Nahoko-chan. The circuits of this thing were fried by the old Sagussans before one of their head scientists tried to hide those things well away from that dust ball during the Clone Rights War. It's practically useless as a weapon even if it serves as quite the social symbol; that's why the Vosians stashed it there a series ago."
"Because of that dictator that took over, Tariko-san?" Hōjō Chiyo asked.
"Same idiot."
Giggles echoed through the room. "Relax, Sumie-chan," Ataru bade. "People live on the inside and it's designed to allow the solar wind and other radiation to be warped through the outer hull of that thing to keep the sun from going nova. Listen, are any of your sisters with you right now?!"
"Ne, Chedong-nim!" a new voice called out.
As the Sŏ siblings squealed in delight while the local shipgirls gaped on hearing the Korean word for "admiral" with the "-nim" honorific that was that language's version of "-sama", Ataru chuckled. "Oe, Ch'unghwa-ya!" he called out in Korean before switching back to Japanese. "I bet you and Sumie-chan can race here from the Planet of Shadows really, really, really fast! We're having a party!"
"YOSHI! WANNA RACE, CH'UNGHWA-YA?! I WON'T LOSE!"
"I'LL BEAT YOU THIS TIME, ŎNNI!"
The link was then cut; no doubt, the two girls — who sounded like reborn destroyers — had shifted into hyperspace, where normal PAA communications didn't work. "Okay! I'm confused here, Shirei-kan!" Chihaya Sarah stated. "I know for the fact that no surviving warship of the Imperial Navy was turned over to the Koreans! How the heck does Sumie-chan have a KOREAN sister?!"
Ataru winked at her. "Let's just say Muwol-a made a much BIGGER discovery when she summoned Sumie-chan from where she was sunk at Ormoc Bay, Sarah-san," he advised the adopted native of Ōtsu near Kyōto and Yokosuka, a knowing grin then crossing his face.
"Oh, this is NOT good, pyon...!"
People then gazed on the fourth of the Kisaragi sisters. "What do you mean, U-chan?" Hinako asked.
"It wouldn't be Yūzuki, Hinako-chan! She was sunk at Ormoc Bay back in 1944, pyon," Kisaragi Utako noted. "Shirei-kan named her Kisaragi Yū, pyon! She was built at Ōsaka..."
"Sumie-san had a Kansai accent," Chiyo's older sister Atsuko, the reborn THG Atago, noted.
"Hai, true, but Shirei-kan always tries to make our human names sound similar to our names as warships, Atsuko-san," Fujiko objected, holding up a finger in emphasis.
Sarah's sister Chihaya Isabel hummed as she gazed up to the ceiling. "The destroyers sunk at Ormoc Bay were Yūzuki, Wakatsuki, Hamanami, Naganami, Kuwa and..."
BOOM!
The whole building rattled hard as the island seemed to quake from a top-down blast of compressed air crashing right into the front lawn of the property, making everyone cry out in shock!
"SHIMAKAZE, DOCKED!"
"CH'UP'UNG, DOCKED!"
"...Shimakaze," Isabel finished as she adjusted her glasses.
Before people could race outside to see who just came in at such a fast clip, the main doors flew open as two girls the same physical age as the other destroyers smartly walked in. "KONBAN WA!" the blonde, grey-eyed of the pair hailed as she raised one gloved hand in greetings.
Her obvious twin sister — save for the fact that she had strawberry blonde-red hair and dark blue eyes — raised her hand in mirror of the just-arrived Toyama Sumie's actions. "ANNYŎNG HASEYO!"
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
Then...
"Um...Chedong-nim, why are they being so slow in saying 'hi'?"
That was a curious Sŭng Ch'unghwa, who had been given the Korean ship name TMK Ch'up'ung by the current incarnation of the Dancing Priestess of the New Dawn, Nokyo ("Mudang"), on her very CONSTRUCTION and Gifting during summer vacation. That was because the living kami of the never-built eighth of the Project V6 (or "Chō-Shimakaze") destroyers meant to follow THG Shimakaze was given the Japanese name Akikaze and the human name "Toyama Akiko" by Su Muwol and her own half-sister Sumie, the reborn swiftest vessel of her type in the Pacific War. Marking such origins was her accent, a mix of Chŏlla and Kyŏngsang Korean and Kansai Japanese in reflection of Sumie's voice.
Both girls were dressed in the same type of uniform Takino Tomo wore as Warwind: A single piece swimsuit with a halter top upper section and the hip cuts over the upper legs in a VERY high inverted V-shape to expose a considerable amount of skin fore and aft, part of such BARELY masked by the belts that were currently hanging loosely around their waists. They had mid-thigh length boots and bicep-length gloves. The colours were naturally different. Sumie's uniform was white overall with blue belt, blue-trimmed white boots and matching gloves; the boots had red racing stripes on them to the ankles. Ch'unghwa's uniform was a golden-orange shade with red belt, red-trimmed gold-orange boots (with dark blue racing stripes) and matching gloves. Both girls wore bandanas to partially pull back their waist-length hair, Sumie's black and Ch'unghwa's dark blue; Sumie's belt had a gold chrysanthemum blossom on the buckle while her sister had a gold mugunghwa flower. Their chest symbols displayed the attributes of their ship names: Sumie's had a blue volcanic island image with winds blowing down the slopes, her ship name 島風 in white-bordered black atop while Ch'unghwa's displayed a shower of falling red leaves between two trees, her ship name in han'gŭl 추풍 in gold-lined dark blue atop.
"Ne, Ŏnni?"
"Hai, Ch'unghwa-ya?"
"No one wants to say anything."
Sumie pointed down. "They're pretty fast."
The adopted native of P'ohang (where the Yŏn'il Sŭng Clan hailed, to which Sumie's sisters were adopted into) and Namhae (where she was built and Gifted) blinked before looking down to see two elementary school gynoids in the uniforms of the North's young pioneers hug her from both sides.
"I guess so, Ŏnni," Ch'unghwa noted, still blinking innocently.
That earned her roaring laughs from the non-shipgirls all in the room...
Brockton Bay (twenty-five kilometres northeast of Boston), that moment (local time: Dawn)...
Civil twilight was slowly creeping towards the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' second-largest seaport as the permanently dimension-displaced Mistress of the Mindless Legions typed furiously away at her PAA's holographic keyboard to get the precise location of one of her teammates. Gulping down some black coffee — Taylor Hebert had been looking forward to a quiet night to sleep, then going to classes at Brockton Bay Secondary School for a boring day of lectures and study halls before Sophia Hess decided to re-write everyone's schedules with her jaunt somewhere — the leader of the Brockton Bay Undersiders relaxed as information delivered fresh by Hasegawa Chisame rolled down her screen.
"Shit...!" she hissed out. "Damn it, Sophie, why are you doing something like this...?!"
Much that there WAS the odd chance that Isaac Thomas might have predicted things wrong, Taylor wasn't going to take a risk. The current incarnation of the Ghost of the Night was a very big fan of Danganronpa; she played it constantly when she got the chance and was pretty familiar with all the characters of both the first and second game. She was also someone who hungered to prove herself against all sorts of opponents; while it wasn't her other-self's philosophy of the strong ruling the weak, it was close in some places. The idea of being weak was something Sophie loathed, even when she had a good Gift handed to her like she did. Given how much Brockton Bay had fallen on hard times — it wasn't this Earth's version of Gotham City in another multiverse THAT way, but it was close in certain areas — that sort of "screw someone before you got screwed" survivalist attitude was common here.
Grunting as she glanced at the list of non-shipgirl metas currently at Welcome House fourteen time zones away, Taylor could only grimace; she did not want to feel her heart drop to her bowels if she saw the list of shipgirls present. If Sophia WAS on Ōmure-jima, she could end up dealing with Tariko Katabarbe, all her half-sisters save Hirosaki Chikage, the six transplanted "bullet deniers" from the universe where the Danganronpa fans from Ziegler's Cove on Phentax Two had dipped into with the Staff of Gihan to save lives...and Kim Hyegyŏng of all people! That ALONE spelled FOUR reality warpers — Tariko and Hyegyŏng, plus Enoshima Junko and now Celestia Ludenberg — never mind the near-cosmic level psychics who lived there like Saeru Hinako atop everyone else.
With Moroboshi Ataru still not Gifted and finally free of Tomobiki's insanity, the shipgirls on the island would be VERY determined to keep their spiritual admiral safe. If Sophia hurt him...
"She's screwed no matter which way you dice it."
Taylor blinked, then she sighed as Lisa Wilbourn leaned over her shoulder to gaze at the rather high-powered group of Terran-turned-Yizibajohei that their rather fight scene happy friend was most likely going to run into within the next few hours. "She'll probably hold off until the Bullet Deniers are back in their guest houses at the north end of the island," she said, pointing to a schematic of Ōmure-jima on the right side of the screen. "That puts distance between her and Welcome House, maybe enough to make Tariko and her friends decide it's 'not our fight scene' and leave it be. Sophie's not an idiot; she won't do anything in range of innocent civilians. If she IS gunning for Enoshima..."
"First up is her own sister," Lisa advised. Second in command of the Undersiders, she was the Collapsar of Knowledge, Tuonekror'be ("Tattletale"). A strategist with analytical skills that surpassed Yotsuba Dunn's teacher Sherlock Holmes, her ability to read things with her clairvoyance was of huge benefit when dealing with their hometown's situation. "Even if she'll be sore as hell for being sacrificed like that in the Killing School Life, Ikusaba loves Enoshima deeply. She won't abide anyone attacking her kin. In her mind — hell, in the minds of all her peers — if Enoshima goes off the deep end again and tries to unleash another Tragedy, it's THEIR responsibility to take her down, not anyone else."
"She's recently Gifted," Taylor noted.
"But has a skill-set that makes her equal to Rosarita Cisneros, Taylor," Lisa countered. As the leader of the Undersiders grimaced on being reminded of the famous FARC terrorist gifted by Tariko and Isaac after the Avalonian Liberation into becoming the Deadliest Woman Alive, Kikroherbe ("Caltrop"), the pretty blue-eyed blonde added, "That means Sophie's diving right into a major scrap if she tries to nail Enoshima with Ikusaba close by. Even if she could evade by phasing her body, you can lay bets our super-armourer would have sent all sorts of interesting ammo with Ikusaba's rifle after her Gifting."
"Yeah, Kamen does stay neutral in matters like that. You never know, after all," the raven-haired woman noted. "Okay, Yonaga and Iruma are pretty much unknowns since the game they would appear in hasn't shown up here and I can't find Isaac's notes about that. What about Ludenberg and Fukawa?"
"Fukawa Tōko equals Margo Black," Lisa noted.
That made Taylor wince. "Right! I should have guessed that right off..."
A hand patted her on the shoulder. "As for Ludenberg, I can't say. She's a chronic liar, so her actions are totally unpredictable. She might support Enoshima since they're both effective heels. She might oppose since Enoshima created the situation that saw Ludenberg killed back home." A sigh escaped her. "This can go any way, especially since the others of that class have yet to power up."
"Joy..."
That very moment, in Welcome House...
"AH-CHOO!"
"AH-CHOO!"
"AH-CHOO!"
"AH-CHOO!"
Perking on hearing that rapid-fire sneezing from four of his "classmates" at Hope's Peak, Naegi Makoto looked over his shoulder. "Junko-san? Mukuro-san? Tōko-san? Taeko-san? You guys okay?"
Moans escaped the empowered members of his group of "bullet deniers". "Damn! Some idiot's talking about me already?!" Enoshima Junko muttered before she nodded her thanks as Fukushima Shirayuki came up with snacks for the dimension-displaced victims of the Tragedy and its aftermath to enjoy.
"You're pretty memorable, Junko-san!" Fukawa Tōko teased.
A laugh escaped the Herald of Cosmic Doom. "Flatterer!"
"Keep feeding me people to kill, I'll always be that!" the Slaughterhouse Poet advised.
To the private horror of others who were reborn in this dimension, the poverty-born fashion model from Machida and the writer with the split personality from Edogawa evilly grinned as they shared a pinky-finger handshake. As Ikusaba Mukuro hummed before walking out of the dining room, Celestia Ludenberg smirked as she leaned over to whisper into Kirigiri Kyōko's ear, "Ti'ibie."
"Hard to tell with those two," the native of another universe's Kamakura muttered before she moved to walk out of the dining hall; the party had picked up again after the arrival of who were now known as the Cosmic Speed Demon of the Solar Wind, Guobo'o ("Shimakaze"), and her never-built-as-a-warship sister, the Cosmic Hurricane of the Fall, R'bobo'o ("Ch'up'ung"). Stopping to smile contently at the sight of Sŭng Ch'unghwa cuddling with both Sŏ Hana and her twin sister Mina on one couch nearby, the ultimate detective — before she had been deliberately blindsided by Monokuma to incapacitate her and prevent others from deducing what was happening far too soon — stepped outside.
The Ultimate Warrior was now standing in the effective wide "V" formed by the new and old rotundas as well as the west wing of the original commons, PAA in hand as she tapped something on the keyboard while her civilian clothes shifting to her battlesuit. Mukuro barely spared her peer a glance while she watched some data flow before her. "I arranged a surprise just in case something like this happened," the child soldier of Fenris warned, earning her a curious look from Kyōko.
"Chihiro-san, Chiaki-san or Tetsuya-san?"
The dark-haired tomboy gave her an eerie smile in answer, earning her an amused smirk in return. "Then I suppose I'll join you finally," the daughter of the headmaster of Hope's Peak stated as she drew out the Gift seed crystal that had been selected for her by Leno Lu'umlo. "Who?"
The PAA was turned slightly to allow the ultimate detective to read the screen. Seeing the report there, Kyōko's eyes widened in surprise. "Damn! Tōko-san was right all along, wasn't she?"
"'You got a whole fucking smörgåsbord of stuff in this universe, don't you?'" Mukuro quoted.
The two women gazed on each other, then snickers escaped them before Kyōko turned to head to where the old ferry landing was. "I'll go prepare things, Mukuro-san," she bade before turning away.
"You don't have to do it, Kyōko-san."
The silver-haired woman stopped. "Our society failed both you and your sister, Mukuro-san. Even if Otō-san abandoned his responsibilities concerning Junko-san, I won't fail in mine."
The former child soldier watched as her peer headed off...
Back in Tomobiki, at the Toranoseishin Finances Tower...
"My God...this is INSANE...!"
Miyake Shinobu blinked as comforting arms reached over to warmly pull her into Moroboshi Hiromi's embrace. "I'm sorry," the Swift Morpher whispered as she tenderly kissed the other woman's forehead while comforting her. "Believe me, if there were ways we could have done this without making a horrible situation even worse, we would have. People like you didn't deserve to face this."
Smiling as she felt the incredible strength of the would-be school guidance counsellor's body comfort her while they relaxed in the couch, the woman who could rightly say she was the second true victim of the alien presence in Tomobiki over the last year and more reached up to wipe her cheeks clear.
Staring at her — the two were relaxing in the lounge of Hiromi's quarters within the local headquarters complex of the Inshin Group's largest company — Moroboshi Ataru's film replica could only smile in admiration at how strong his former girlfriend really was. Battered as she had been emotionally thanks to the lunacy that rocked her life since the Tag Race, Shinobu hadn't broke even if she allowed herself to considerably bend to conform with the times; even the post-April confrontations she tried to force with her ex-boyfriend — such instances often leading with HER being hurt thanks to Ataru's growing group of real friends and family — hadn't broken her spirit as it might have a lesser person.
Even this evening's rolling tidal waves of revelations hadn't broken her.
It had come close in places...
...but with the overall plans Shinobu's REAL oldest childhood friend had put into place over a DECADE before now coming to fruition, what would happen in the next few days and afterwards would be the thing that would show not her but everyone in town there WAS a light at the end of the tunnel.
Point one: Redet Lum and her friends.
They were gone come Friday morning as of ten o'clock at the LATEST. Even if the warlord's daughter from Onishuto managed to escape her "fiancé" after he kidnapped her tomorrow morning, she wouldn't be long for Earth; Kasuga Ayumu would see to that with a worldwide Infinite Wave.
And with Lum gone, so would go her cousin Redet Ten, Aruka Ran, Seq Rei, Shigaten Benten, Oyuki of Neptune and the rest of that insane crowd from other planets. Three friends of Tariko Katabarbe's who were the current incarnations of Yiziba's true saviours from the Dawn of Power — one of them being Tsuruya Rumiko of all people! — would effectively slam the door shut on THAT regard!
The inner part of the solar system, from the orbit of the minor planet Ceres to the Sun itself, would become literally No Man's Land to any race of the local cluster save a trusted few species.
Lum's and Ran's people, Benten's people, Oyuki's people...
They were NOT on that list.
Not to mention those people's so-called "most faithful".
Learning of the Church of Lum...!
Shinobu had both laughed and cried when she learned of the Niphentaxians.
While that race's passion for all things Terran was actually quite flattering...
...their teenage former president Ōgi ot'ndai-Zkuhsbagh — a person Shinobu's age! — was someone who made Aisuru Satoshi or his friends among Lum's Stormtroopers seem the SANEST of people!
Especially given what Ōgi viewed Moroboshi Ataru/Tariko Katabarbe as...
...and that man's very ugly planned response should the "great evil" defeat his "goddess"!
Shinobu knew that the removal of a God-forsaken five hundred megaton equivalent antimatter bomb from the town Ginza, propelled BACK IN TIME to the anniversary of the invasion of Normandy in 1944 — to be done in PUBLIC before Lum and her friends were banished on Friday — would ram home the message that THIS TIME, they were the weak and vulnerable ones, not the people of Earth!
The celebration that would follow that would be INSANE...
...and while there would be the resulting depression from many — not to mention potential retribution on people like the Stormtroopers — all within this sad town would benefit in the long term.
Then, there was point two: The Shōzoki.
Shinobu hadn't really been surprised when Hiromi told her about the race of human-looking sentient AIs — virtually no different in many ways from the humanoid Cylons of the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica series first released nine years ago — who had been discovered living in large numbers across Earth since after the Second World War. Given her own personal experience with all types of aliens over the last year, the idea of a race of living machines didn't seem so far-fetched to her.
Especially after Hiromi started rattling off names...
While Shinobu had been horrified to learn what happened when a Terran-form Shōzoki was created — in almost EVERY circumstance, much to their everlasting regret — the Swift Morpher was adamant on one point: They were SENTIENT BEINGS, to be respected and helped as much as possible whenever they were encountered. Given that it was possible for a techno-organic being built from that planet's technology to be TRANSFORMED by the power of the Great Crystal of Power into FULLY ORGANIC beings, there really WAS no difference in the eyes of someone like Hiromi or her siblings.
Even learning what Shinobu's old boyfriend had to do to make sure the monster back on Shōzoran that sought to virtually subdue all of Creation Itself into a regime of raw, pure logic couldn't take control of a "free" descendant of that world such as Arakida Yui, Shirai Kōsuke or Gekasawa Kumiko...!
Well...it did bother her to an extent...!
"'A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR LOVERS?!'"
Hiromi had laughed at that outburst of silly indignation from Shinobu.
Next was point three: The Avalonians.
Shinobu had been stunned to learn of what REALLY had befallen Ataru/Tariko before s/he disappeared in the spring of 2001. How, on Valentine's Day, he had encountered a heroine from Uru of all planets named Aruka Noa, who died nine centuries before saving her people from cruel alien domination...only to be reborn as one of a HUNDRED THOUSAND would-be great mothers of a new RACE to help bring a dead planet beyond the galaxy's outer frontiers back to life. How Ataru had been so entranced during that visit to Sagussa that when he migrated to Yiziba on his birthday and be reborn as Tariko, she would concentrate on seeing GIRLS be empowered as adopted Children of the Forge to protect Earth.
But there was a DARK side to that encounter in the winter of 2001...
The Daishi'cha — as people like Noa were called — were resurrected CORPSES who were genetically modified to possess the psychic powers of the long-dead race that had lived on that world until about ten millennia ago. Because of that, Tariko turned her back on her first alien friends, driven by the common disgust all of Yiziba felt towards any form of "death cheating", which went contrary to the casting change cycle that had been practised on that planet for a little over two thousand years.
Atop that, there had been a whole factory ship buried on a planet within the galaxy proper that could have been used to create designer clone-like bioroids — pretty much no different than a Daishi'cha save in origins — which had been created by a lost race of people from Sagussa millennia before, such available to be used to repopulate that dead world over thirty thousand light-years from Earth!
A factory that had been ABANDONED...only to be discovered by Redet Lum's "most faithful"!
Where the women born of that factory — such a structure could never create men — were turned into a SLAVE RACE of sexual companions, hazardous environment workers, artisans and other "low" trades to propel the natives of the second world of the Phentax system to a place of prominence among allies.
Until Lum's truly "most faithful" ran afoul of Tariko Katabarbe...!
In a brutal campaign that lasted from mid-April to mid-August, natives of Phentax Two on Earth — over two hundred thousand in total — had been swept off the planet, blinding their homeworld and their allies on Uru to what was really going on with Earth and its inhabitants. Doing this would free over TWO MILLION Terran-form Avalonians living on Earth from slavery, they immediately turning around to help their adopted nations as well as their new Terran-turned-Yizibajohei friends to secure the third world of Sol from intrusion; they being joined later by over TWO BILLION more Avalonians after the Liberation, along with the factory ship itself and considerable remnants of their creator race's fleet.
And with what shipgirls like Itō Yoiko were also involved in...!
Finally, point four: The Goa'uld.
Shinobu had been sick when she learned about the "children of the gods" who had nearly CONQUERED Earth almost ten millennia ago. A race of aquatic serpents from a planet far away, they wound up possessing a reptilian humanoid race also native to their homeworld, then discovered the most important artifact left behind by a long-lost race of omnipotents known commonly as "Ancients":
The Stargate.
A wormhole-generating device similar to the Central Warp Chamber on Triton, such a device could be used to visit planets thousands of light-years away for whatever reason with the ease and convenience of going for a walk in the park! Using the network left behind by the Ancients millions of years ago, the Goa'uld would explode from their homeworld to carve out a mighty empire, adopting elements of technology from the Stargate's creators to become masters over thousands of worlds.
Then they discovered the third world of Sol...
In humans — "Tau'ri" to the Goa'uld — the serpentine race discovered the PERFECT host species for their eel-like bodies. Thus, they moved in en masse, their leaders becoming "gods" ruling over the tribes on Earth; hearing the names of the major system lords of that race active at the time made Shinobu shake her head in stunned disbelief at the numerous connections with the ancient myths of her homeworld. Because of that, Terrans were transplanted en masse by their "gods" to other worlds to provide not just host bodies, but slave warriors called Jaffa who were genetically modified to serve as incubators for newborn Goa'uld, they becoming the shock troopers of the "children of the Gods".
Such a race dominated Earth until five thousand years before, where two immortal warriors known today as Josef von Taserich and Hozan Hirosuke teamed up to drive the Goa'uld out. At the same time on Yiziba, a Goa'uld attempt to seize control of the Great Crystal of Power was defeated by a being known as Batae Erba, the Healer of Destruction. Someone who was a TRUE god brought to life, she would unleash a LEGION of synthetic warriors that wrecked the Goa'uld fleet and forced the "children of the gods" to retreat from the galaxy as a whole for millennia, barely interacting with other species...
...until an American expedition was launched four years before from an old United States Air Force missile silo through a Stargate recovered in Egypt in the 1920s to a planet named Abydos.
Thus, a terrible war began between Tau'ri and Goa'uld...
One the Americans and their supporters had easily kept TOP SECRET from humanity as a whole.
Even AFTER the Oni came into people's lives the previous fall!
And beyond the Goa'uld...!
Shinobu shook her head as she gazed once more on her companion. She knew that Hiromi had held back concerning the many other issues that attracted the attention of people Tariko and others like her helped see empowered over the past decade, from every nation on the planet.
The issue of Sunnydale and its Hellmouth — as told by Brooke Roberts and Chloe Zitzewitz earlier when they reunited with the others of Taffy Three, then met Ataru in Class 2-4 — but that was contained.
There were native hot spots of metahuman incidents across the planet. Shinobu knew that the most public of such locations was within the Middle East thanks to a group commonly called the "Angels of Darkness"; they were said to have been involved in the execution of Usāmah bin Lādin the previous spring and had been fighting the forces of al-Qā'idah in Iraq and neighbouring lands for years.
There was the issue of the hidden magical enclaves, especially in Britain where Hiromi's sister Hirosaki Chikage was currently going to school; the return of the Dark Lord Voldemort — denied venomously by the local magical ministry but believed by many people in the land, including Chikage's headmaster Albus Dumbledore — could easily relaunch the civil war that rocked the land in the 1980s and 1990s.
And more...
And more...
And more...
"Hiromi...?"
"Hai, Shinobu?"
"Make love to me, please?"
That request made the Swift Morpher pause. "Shinobu..."
"You said that because I had sex with Tariko-chan before Lum came, I'm pre-Gifted, right?"
A hesitant nod. "Hai..."
"And because Ataru-kun is a battle doll — which is what would block any hopes of Lum ever having a child with him, never mind this spell the Dragoness unleashed during the Dawn of Power — he's been able to pre-Gift and Gift a whole tonne of people? Including Yui-chan, Kumiko-chan, Kōsuke-kun..." — thinking of Ataru's "best friend" made Shinobu's cheeks immediately flush as red as cherries as she imagined what THAT particular "pillow scene" might have been like with another MAN — "...and all the freshmen like 'Amina-san and the others since he came back to Earth in April?"
Another hesitant nod. "Hai..."
"And no matter what people try, there's no way of me escaping from being like you, right?"
Hiromi grimaced. "Hai..."
Shinobu gazed at her. "Why hesitate about me?"
A tired sigh escaped the would-be school counsellor. "It's not because of Onii-san's feelings, Shinobu," Hiromi admitted as she gazed out at the cityscape around her home. "It's because what happened to you before Lum-san came is actually quite similar to what happened to Onē-san in a way."
Surprise answered her. "What do you mean?"
Her friend's frown deepened. "Even if Onē-san was more than willing to do what Mama asked of her when she moved to Kabe-koli in the first place, she was still too young to understand what it meant. She was never raised on Yiziba, so she didn't really comprehend all the implications at first. Not to mention her being too enamoured of Mama for what she did to refuse her." As Shinobu giggled at that observation, Hiromi took a calming breath. "But in the end, Onē-san never had the freedom of choice that all on Yiziba respect when it comes to being Gifted. Hai, the harshness of life there demands that anyone living on Yiziba — yes, even Nameless like Mama — find a way to gain metahuman powers, but there has always been the underlying respect that people have the RIGHT TO CHOOSE!
"Thanks to whatever idiot spiked the punch that night at Momoe-san's party..."
"In effect, I was denied that choice," Shinobu finished, a smile crossing her face.
Hiromi nodded. "Hai."
Silence fell as the devout Catholic descent of Kyūshū gazed on this incredible being before her. Born as a memory-copy of the man who had served as Shinobu's personal guiding star since they befriended each other in pre-kindergarten; yes, even during the decade that boy had been gone from Earth...with some mental modifications as Hiromi had been meant to fill the rôle of a school guidance counsellor, of course. Later saved from disappearing into nothingness by the benevolence of her childhood friend's first true friend, who believed in the preservation of life, even life not born by natural means. Transformed into a virtual replica of what SHE should have been all along hadn't a cabal of selfish traitors to humanity — worlds worse than what Lum's Stormtroopers had been accused of in recent months — butted in like they did, given a body specifically grown by a sect of a mad "church" that saw Shinobu's precious friend denounced as Evil incarnate. Then Gifted into becoming a metamorph, thus being able to step into her reborn brother's place over the last month or so, giving him a chance to be away from a selfish, naïve woman claiming to be his wife and parents who definitely did NOT deserve that title, allowing him to spend more time with his TRUE family and TRUE friends.
That incredible being that had become Shinobu's friend.
And much more.
"Take me..."
Hiromi gulped, earning her a laugh from Shinobu, which made the former fluster before she gave her friend a helpless shrug. "Well..." she began before shaking her head. "Far be it from me to refuse such a beautiful lady's request...!" she then exclaimed before blinking, then she leaned in.
Shinobu laughed before her lips seemed to explode with warmth as Hiromi's encompassed hers...
To Be Continued...
WRITER'S NOTES
Elements of this part were written by Dr. Tempo. A big thanks to him for introducing the characters of Worm into this series.
I based the Übermenschen Gruppe ("Group of Supermen") on the concept of Axis Amerika which first appeared in DC Comics' Young All-Stars series of the late 1980s. The Liberty Legion and its Canadian counterpart group, the Soldiers of Freedom, would correspond to the All-Star Squadron, the wartime equivalent of the Justice Society of America; to better flesh them out, I borrowed characters from the second Dial "H" For Hero fan-inspired series published in that same time period...though as I did with the Wrangler, I created real identities for each characters. Of course, the three Battles of Brockton Bay during World War two serve as this universe's counterpart to the events spoken of in Worm that allowed so many metahumans to appear on Earth-Bet.
As noted before, the Korean version of the Japanese "-chan" suffix honorific implying closeness has two forms. When a name or pronoun ends in a consonant, it's "-a"; i.e. Rinrin-a. When a name or pronoun ends in a vowel, it's "-ya", i.e. Ataru-ya. Other honorifics used in Korean are "-ssi" as rough equivalent of "-san" and "-nim" as equivalent of "-sama"; note in Korean, the "-nim" honorific is often also used when addressing someone by position titles, i.e. Sŏnsaeng-nim (their equivalent to "Sensei").
Translation list and source language: Chŏngch'al Ch'ongguk — Reconnaissance General Bureau of the General Staff Department, the DPRK's external intelligence agency (Korean); Harabŏji — Grandfather (Korean); Sŏngbun — Literally "constituent", the term actually is short for ch'ulshin-sŏngbun ("native constituent") (Korean); Ingsoc — English Socialism (English Newspeak); Nuna — Older sister (as addressed by a boy) (Korean); Ŏnni — Older sister (as addressed as a girl) (Korean); Oppa — Older brother (as addressed by a girl) (Korean); Tanbal — Bob haircut (Korean); Porŭmdal — Full moon (Korean); Hŭrŭm — Flow (Korean); Freiin — Daughter or unmarried aunt of a Freiherr ("free lord" AKA baron) (German); Gräfin — Countess (German); Haegun ch'ŏnyŏ — Fleet maiden (Korean); Mudang — Shaman/Sorceress (Korean); Kuorimmem — Native of Kuorim (Yizibajohei); Shinbyŏng — Literally "divine illness", this is the time when a god possesses someone to see them become a shaman (Korean); Chedong-nim — Admiral (written 제독님 [che-dok-nim], but a final syllabic "k" is said as "ng" before an initial syllabic "n") (Korean); Oe — Hey (Korean); Annyŏng haseyo — Literally "peace be with you", this is the standard greeting regardless of time of day (Korean); Mugunghwa — Korean rose AKA rose of Sharon, the national flower of the Republic of Korea (Korean).
As noted above, the March of Suffering (in Korean, Konan-ŭi Haenggun, literally "arduous march") is the official term to describe the famine that stuck the DPRK from 1994-98. The term is taken from a fable from the days Kim Ilsŏng (1912-94) lead a group of anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters. The fable is best described as "fighting against thousands of enemies in 20 degrees below zero cold, braving through a heavy snowfall and starvation, the red flag fluttering in front of the ranks."
Shipgirls introduced or spoken of in this chapter. First, from Japan:
Kisaragi Yū-chūsa DNTK (Tennō Heika Gunkan Yūzuki [KK-155])
Kumasaka Nami-chūsa DNTK (Tennō Heika Gunkan Naganami [KK-228])
Kumasaka Nahoko-chūsa DNTK (Tennō Heika Gunkan Hamanami [KK-237])
Akiyama Wakura-chūsa DNTK (Tennō Heika Gunkan Wakatsuki [KK-265])
Toyama Sumie-chūsa DNTK (Tennō Heika Gunkan Shimakaze [KK-292])
Yonei Kumiko-chūsa DNTK (Tennō Heika Gunkan Kuwa [KK-313])
Kumasaka Nami (THG Naganami), Kumasaka Nahoko (THG Hamanami) and Toyama Sumie (THG Shimakaze) resemble their Kantai Collection selves. Should they appear in this universe, Kisaragi Yū (THG Yūzuki) will resemble the Warship Girls interpretation of her eldest sister Kisaragi Mutsuko (THG Mutsuki) while Akiyama Wakura (THG Wakatsuki) will take after the Warship Girls interpretation of her eldest sister Akiyama Tokina (THG Akizuki).
Now from Germany:
Kapitän zur See Margarete Gertrude, Freiin von Scharnhorst KMDR (Kriegsmarineschiff Scharnhorst [pennant 60])
KptzS Eva Maria Neidhardt, Gräfin von Gneisenau KMDR (Kriegsmarineschiff Gneisenau [pennant 61])
KptzS Maria Augusta, Freiin von Tirpitz KMDR (Kriegsmarineschiff Tirpitz [pennant 63])
All three listed above resemble their Azur Lane selves.
And now from the Republic of Korea:
Sŭng Ch'unghwa-jungnyŏng THMK (Taehan Minguk Kunhan Ch'up'ung [KC-43])
Sŭng Ch'unghwa (TMK Ch'up'ung) resembles her elder half-sister Toyama Sumie (THG Shimakaze) save for difference of hair and eye colour. Her current service is the Republic of Korea Navy (Taehan Minguk Haegun, short-form THMK); all ships serving in that service in this universe have the ship prefix TMK (Taehan Minguk Kunhan ["Warship of the Republic of Korea"]). The service makes use of the American hull classification code system with native terms. The hull code KC means Kuch'uk'am ("Destroyer"); note that the word is written in han'gŭl as 구축함 (ku-ch'uk-ham), but an initial syllabic "h" falls silent when following a final syllabic "k". Ch'unghwa's rank in her service is Chungnyŏng ("mid-rank guide"), the equal of a navy commander. Note, this word has two interesting pronunciation issues. First, it is written as 중령 (chung-ryŏng); the initial syllabic "r" becomes "n" when following a final syllabic "ng". Second, the "ch" to "j" slide often occurs when the title is spoken after a person's name. Because Ch'unghwa is based on a Japanese design, she has a Japanese ship name (THG Akikaze) and a personal name, Toyama Akiko. Likewise, Sumie is known in Korea as Sŭng Sumi.
The Qar'to are a cannibalistic and cybernetic-augmented offshoot of the Mor-Tax as they appeared in the 1988-1990 syndicated television series War of the Worlds, based on H.G. Wells' famous novel of the same name. They first appeared in the story "The Angel of Death" (episode #24).
Su Muwol is a minor character from the first draft of The Ishinomaki Years. As an aside, Sungmo (literally "holy mother") is the elder mother goddess of Korean shamanism.
The Planet of Shadows was first mentioned in The Senior Year story "Nassur's Story";`it would actually appear in "Be Forever Nassur". As an aside, the "dictator that took over" Vos is the Mikado, who cameoed in "Dakejinzō's Story" before fully appearing in "Nassur's Story".
Worm character note: Lisa Wilbourn (Tattletale) first appeared in the fifth chapter of the first story arc, "Gestation". As an aside, Rosarita "Roberta" Cisneros (Caltrop) from Black Lagoon first appeared in this universe in the side story The Deadliest Woman Alive.