Off he went, as soon as he did something incredible, he vanished and then reappeared with more things that defied anything she knew about technological capabilities.

She knew that the technology in her hands shouldn't exist.

She was smart enough that the amount of energy in these card-like things shouldn't fit without them being as big as a building. That a flash forge and particle accelerator took enough energy to warrant their own nuclear reactors each. That they together couldn't make a projectile high explosive in the time it took to pull the trigger. That the speed at which the bullets were fired should
have turned the gun into slag.

That suit though, just what was powering it? How could it move in the air like it could on land? Such strength and speed would make it necessary for carbon nanotubes to be as thick as her own arm to achieve such performance, and not almost as thin as a layer of spandex. From what she remembered, her father had pioneered a design that would allow for such feats but the numbers had told her that it would need to be tethered to a constant supply of energy or strap on as much as its own weight on its body for anything more than 5 minutes of moving knew the joke that Americans got all the cool toys from alien tech stored in Area 51, that the ancient Germans tried to reverse engineer an UFO way back in the 1940s, that the Russians had put untraceable satellites to spy on everyone. That the UN had secret armies ready to take over the world.

Certainly, they could use any of those now.

Huh, in a sense, they were.

She hadn't told Yinsen, but they had been almost all out of ammo and down to their sidearms, back when they met. She hadn't known what to tell her squad, that they could try and escape with only sidearms when not even full belts of thirty cal would scratch those things. Or hold their position until their meager water supplies ran out. She'd lied when told her platoon that a runner with supplies had reached them, she'd scavenged the top floors for anything to eat or drink. They'd been far too tired to care where it all had come from.

Now that she knew about her, fuck Tango-Hotel, thunder and winds to fuck up everything but no water to at least refill her canteen, this was Japan, Damn her, typhoons are a staple of the place, dammit. Also fuck the one who cut off the city's water supply. Enjoy being zombie grub, asshole.

Kanata had let her team resupply with what he could spare (which wasn't much). But if they didn't get mauled by the monsters, they would eventually run out of ammo or be too thirsty to even raise a gun.

And then he came, like a knight in shining armor, giving them enough gun to at least not die alone in the middle of a dead city. He'd stopped her from having to tell her people to choose how to die.

And he'd given them a purpose, find the bitch behind all this shit. Kill her. Stop all this madness from spreading. Get a chance to go home.

And she knew, that Operative Yinsen had barely begun showing them whatever marvels his agency had magicked up.

She couldn't wait.

No really, she couldn't wait, this gun was a beautiful killing machine but holy shit, her whole arm was beginning to hurt.

I ran and gunned down as many of the monsters that came across my path. Another Horseshoe Crab Key was printed and slotted into the holder on my waist. More Honkai died, the Cycled Muffler hadn't stopped giving me that energy scarf effect as it drained whatever powered the monsters for us to use. More corpses died, another Raidriser was printed.

I finally got the seventh belt printed with 84 percent power still in my reserves, but at this pace I would never get to activate the damn S2 engine. I need to something, either a massive influx of energy, or a catalyst to kickstart the thing into working. If I tried facing the Herrscher without it, I could kiss my ass goodbye a second time, Rider Bullshit or not.

The clouds looked like another storm was coming. But it seemed that its eye was somewhere next to those skyscrapers over there…

Huh, now there's an idea, I thought as I ran back to the stadium with the spoils of monster hunting.

Maybe the name I chose for this clusterfuck isn't as cheeky as I thought.

"This is the Steel Locust Development-eXperimental (D-X) Raidriser Powered Armor Deployment System. Much like my own armaments, it uses this little piece of tech called Progrisekey as a guide to generate a set of power armor." I rattled as I showed Watchpoint-2 the Raidrisers. Thanks to not knowing the exact parameters of the suit, I was inspired and had Zea and Ark modify the Risers to stand a better chance against the Crusaders I'd found.

The belts and cards shone in their pelican case, it was covered in dust gashes where one of the damn Crusaders' swords had swatted me in the back and sent me through an office building. I returned the favor and shoved four of its own swords down where its throat would be in any common lifeform.

I had Wolf, Cheetah, and now: A Copy of Horseshoe Crab and Flying Falcon. I finally remembered that yes, them Herrschers loved to fly. Hopefully the Cycloneriser wouldn't shoot my parameters down to Zero-One's own Flying Falcon if I used that key on my driver. That would be lethal. For everyone.

I waited as everyone put on the Risers

"RAIDRISER!"

"Uh, Sir, why does it speak?" Someone asked, the Corporal, I think.

"My guess? The eggheads probably got lazy when reviewing footage and just put those in to know what was supposed to happen." My little lie seemed logical enough for them. "Now, Lieutenant... huh, sorry, I have never asked for you name." That was akward. in my defense: outbreak all around us.

"Its Aikawa, sir." ...Why do her eyes remind me of someone else?

Nevermind "Come over. I'll show you how to use it. Here" I handed Lieutenant Aikawa the last crab key.

She kept listening. "This designation: [Invading Horseshoe Crab – Ability: Hard]; It's both a name and a reminder for its specialization ." Operative Yinsen looked at everyone who had already gotten their key. "The Riser should already have booted up, so tell me if your HUD is showing" She raised her hand to confirm that yes, there was something showing up in her eyes.

[STEEL-MADE LOCUST THAT JUMPS TOWARDS THE SKY]

[ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO SECURE THE FUTURE IS TO TAKE A LEAP OF FAITH]

[MASKED RIDER PROJECT]
[RAIDRISER ARMOR DEPLOYMENT SYSTEM VER 1.1.71]
[U-COM SYSTEM BIOS V]

[CREATED BY TRINITY-C]
[LAST MODIFIED BY: ARK-ZEA INTELLIGENCE COOPERATIVE]

[IF FOUND: REPORT INMEDIATELY TO THE PROPER AUTHORITIES]
[WARNING: UNAUTHORIZED USE OF THIS PRODUCT CARRIES A FINE OF 90,000,000.00 USD OR EQUIVALENT AND UP TO 70 YEAR PRISON SENTENCE WITHOUT PAROLE OR EXECUTION ON TREASON CHARGES]

Well, that was… reassuring? "Uh sir, are these warnings true?" Could they truly get in that much trouble? Or would he for sharing this with them?

Yinsen looked at them and blinked. "Oh yeah, ahem, Voice command: Authorize new user profile. Await start up code voice recording. Equip. Equip." The belts beeped in acknowledgement of that order. "Now, press the button on the top left of your keys"

She complied.

"HARD!"

"Next, insert the keys in the slots on the right side of your Risers" As soon as she did, more things showed up on her eyes.

[PROGRISEKEY CONFIRMED: READY FOR RAID]

A somewhat foreboding tune came out of the belts. Yinsen looked at them "Don't mind the standby tune. Now, this is important. One by one each of you say this: EQUIP, once your voice is registered to your system it'll prompt you to initiate the final step to the transformation."

She took the initiative. "Equip!"

[VOICE COMMAND CONFIRMED. PRESS DOWN THE RAID LOADER TO BEGIN TRANSFORMATION]

A helpful diagram showed it meant the large red button on the side of the belt.

"RAIDRISE!"

"INVADING HORSHOE CRAB!"

Her world view exploded as tendrils of light surrounded her. she felt weights gradually appear on her whole body and strength filled her limbs. Suddenly she felt like she could suplex one of those Templars (as Yinsen called them)

"Heavy power armor equipped with extra combat specifications."

"Now, there is a silent mode to stop the last two parts from being spoken, but sometimes you may need a remainder of what is that you're going to use." The Operative kept going "The armor you're now wearing includes a Tridenta 5.7mm (5.7x58mm) Compact Assault Rifle with an underbarrel 30mm Energy Projector. The armor is tough enough to withstand a .300 Winchester at point blank and includes refractive coating in case you get hit by lasers on field." He waited as everyone now stood as a super-soldier right out of a videogame. "The left arm is more heavily armored, those plates can survive a 50 BGM but don't try to test that if you don't want your arm to come out as mush. The right arm carries a flash forger for Tridenta Magazines each with 50 rounds inside. Slot your empty mags in the forger and it will fill them in a minute. You can choose what kind of rounds to fill your mags with. Hypervelocity, AP, Semi-AP High Ex, and good ol' FMJ. There are slots for four and the one in the gun."

"This thing looks just like an upscaled Vector with extended barrel…" One of the soldiers began getting the feel of the gun. "A fatter mag and a 30 mike-mike somehow attached under the barrel…"

"Yeah, it was weird getting the eggheads to agree where to put the energy projector…"

"How do you use the 30 mike? There is no trigger for it." Another complained, looking at the gun from all angles.

"And that's where the Riser comes in. If you press the red button again, you get two options, one: your left arm gets a hardlight shield good enough to withstand fire from a GAU-12 25mm fire for 45 seconds before collapsing, so better find cover before then." Yinsen kept talking ignoring their disbelief. "Option two: The projector gets all the power that would go into the shield and instead fires either a ball or a stream of white-hot plasma." Everyone's heads turned to the Operative, the motion strangely comical now that they were wearing those ridiculous helmets. They looked so metal. "What? all that energy has to go somehwere."

"So, hunker down or melt everything in front of you into slag?" The speaking Private tilted her head, it looked strange in the armor. "I dig it."

Yinsen simply shrugged. "Yeah, just be careful with the power assist, you might punch something to get it off of you and end with up to your elbow inside its head"

Lieutenant Himeko Aikawa couldn't wait to try that on the monsters.