Log #1:
Adam Wang, referred to in this report as Subject Alpha Whiskey, has shown remarkable tenacity in his commitment to the experiment. Despite lack of notable progress, he has continuously provided valuable feedback as both a test subject and an individual by giving intelligent answers to the questions asked of him.
…
Recorded a 3% increase of honkai adaptability and body strengthening after seven days of serum acclimation. Expected to top out at at least 5%. Subject Alpha Whiskey shows signs of intracranial hypertension when serum injection reaches 25%. Continued injections using potentially flawed serums will put the subject's life in unnecessary danger. At this time, Project Einherjar has stalled and requires further time dedicated to analysis of past trials.
Requesting a project delay. Additional data is attached in the charts below.
…
After conducting several tests on blood samples extracted from Alpha Whiskey, I've discovered little in the way that might explain his innate resistance to honkai radiation. Although there is a slightly higher than average concentration of honkai antibodies in his blood, it should not meet the requirements necessary to counter honkai radiation.
This particular strain of antibodies does have a unique property; they are capable of absorbing ambient honkai energy at incredibly efficient rates, far more than the current strain of honkai antibodies used in our anti-honkai serums. Predicted conversion rates go as high as 300%. Further tests are required.
…
Addendum:
DNA analysis shows an extremely distant code of genomes matching with parts of the Kaslana gene and the Xuanyuan gene. The trace is so old however, that any possibility of a stigma mutation is near 100% impossible. Most likely, Alpha Whiskey had two very distant ancestors descended from said bloodlines that did not awaken to their potential.
This is not an implausible story. Throughout our long history, not every Kaslana was capable of or willing to bear the burden of the being Shicksal's First Knight. Not to mention the possibility of unrecorded bastard children. These forgotten members of the family are known to have disappeared with the passage of time. Perhaps they wandered off to eastern lands, where the 100 million descendants of Huangdi continue to carry the Wang clan name.
In addition, there are also DNA strains oddly similar to an individual I had the privilege to study many decades ago. Although I still have detailed files from that time, any DNA sample of said individual has been lost for some time. Luckily, a substitute sample can be obtained close by. Assuming that my colleague is willing to permit me and won't try to crush my head with a mechanical fist the moment I ask.
Further investigation is required to confirm these theories, however.
-Project Einherjar, Log Report #1 by Lieserl Albert Einstein
===:===:===
"How is he?"
Lieserl Einstein looked over her shoulder to see a certain ex-ME heiress walk into the lab. It was past midnight, and the place was mostly abandoned for the night except for a few robots milling about.
"Shouldn't you be asleep? Not exactly good habit for the principal of St Freya to run around sleep deprived." the raven-haired woman's response was to help herself to a small cup of coffee and down it in an instant.
"There's no helping it, so much work needs to get done. I've been finishing up a graduate assessment report to send off to Theresa. She'll be happy to get new, well-trained recruits soon," Mei answered, standing next to her, staring outside the now clear glass window and frowned. "You didn't answer my question."
The more petite of the two started to drink her coffee before saying anything else, allowing a moment to deftly articulate a response. "Well, good news is that he's had no unexpected side-effects from the procedures. Bad news is… well, exactly that. He's had almost no effects from the procedures."
"So it's a failure?" Mei almost sounded relieved. Too bad this girl was going to be disappointed.
"Not… quite." She despised vague talking, and here she was acting vague. As a woman of science and nearly a century old, Einstein has seen more than a lifetime's worth of bizarre phenomena and mind-bending science. Heck, she's responsible for some of that wacky science. Nothing should faze her anymore.
Einstein expected a lot of things from this experiment, but not… barely anything at all. A week had passed since Adam started taking the serum. He'd been officially excused from classes and had a good head on his shoulders, so he'd catch up just fine. Since today was part the weekend, he's been spending all of his time in the lab, being her adorable guinea pig.
Very endearing and quite smart. Willing to do whatever was asked of him within reason. Those kinds of people usually get used, abused, and die young. A shame, because Einstein actually enjoyed such company.
Today was going to be his ninth experimental dosage. As interesting as it would be to immediately jam the entire serum set into his neck and watch what happens, she actually wanted the boy to survive the process.
At the very least, there wasn't a total rejection to the procedure. His body's natural strength and resistance to honkai energies have increased slightly, but that was it. At best, he could be described as peak human performance in the same way one might describe an Olympic athlete. Not to say this wasn't an improvement, but said boon was rather pathetic compared to the expected results.
And when you compare him to real valkyries who can practically dance in the wind, it's a little underwhelming.
Something was missing. She wasn't sure if the gene therapy treatment wasn't strong enough or if the genetic formula was off. It's not like the previous-era people left behind step-by-step instructions for her to follow. Even if they did, it was probably confiscated or destroyed by that damned Otto.
Compared to the previous-era, they were woefully under equipped with the tech and know-how to authentically reproduce the super-soldiers of that time. At best, Project Einherjar could be considered only a shadow of Project MANTIS. They were pretty much experimenting near-blind and figuring out what happens next.
And this was not a painless procedure, so Einstein needed to be careful not to break her test subject.
Maybe he was too young, or perhaps not young enough? Bio-scans show increased intracranial pressure in his head every time they reach a certain point in the treatment. The boy said he could take it, but Einstein didn't want to have a kid with a ruptured brain lying on her laboratory floor.
Applying more treatments to Adam had opened up a new box of questions for them to solve and there weren't enough clues to solve them all. Einstein need time to sort out the data of past trials to see if she had missed anything.
In the meantime, she should probably start cutting back on the treatment pace from here on out. The boy was getting roughed up, even without her committing any major screw ups. At this point, it just wasn't worth it to test this treatment out on a wider scale and it was too early to come to any serious conclusions.
"Damn you Otto, at least leave behind something useful before you kick the bucket." Einstein could only bemoan the fact that the greatest archive of previous-era knowledge fell into the hands of a complete maniac before becoming lost forever.
If it weren't for the fact that the majority of that knowledge had been used to suppress humanity for decades, rather than uplift it, she'd have considered it a true tragedy for the world. Well, she still did but she also knew better than to obsess over spilled milk.
"How painful is it, for him?" Mei asked nervously as she stared past the glass windows below, watching the latest test.
"Well, he started out with headaches and puking his guts but after the first few times he's managed to keep it together. He went in knowing what he was getting into. Tough kid." the never-aging scientific genius answered as she nonchalantly as she drank some more coffee from her mug.
Should she act like she cared more? It's not like she enjoyed the pain of others, but after living through nearly a century of human suffering you just get completely numb to the whole thing. Might as well make the suffering productive.
The young man in question was strapped inside an isolation tank with all sorts of needles and tubes unceremoniously shoved into him, floating in a cryogenic solution of painkillers, sedatives, and hypertonic saline. He looked asleep, but the expression he was making was anything but peaceful.
Again, tough kid. For being able to keep up with her nonsense for so many hours. The pain should honestly be worse than than implanting artificial stigmata, and the girls who went through that process sometimes went vegetative in the end.
It was better now, with improved technology, but still not the ideal solution. Nothing they had was ever an ideal solution. It's why they were bothering with this in the first place.
If St Freya's principal held any illusion about what they were doing here, it was thoroughly shattered to pieces just now. She still held herself well, although her voice was slowly laced with bitter confusion.
"I just… don't understand. Why did Theresa approve of this? Shouldn't she of all people-"
Einstein cut her off before she tired herself out on another tirade.
"You know as well as I. Shicksal today is weaker than ever. The organization needs stronger, better warriors. More importantly, it needs a larger pool of manpower to tap into. For centuries the best defense against the Honkai we could come up with are a bunch of special girls with pointy sticks and the occasional special boy lucky enough to become a hero and die young. Then we discovered the god keys, built machines, and now we armed young girls with pointy sticks on fire or laser beams or some other extraordinary effect. Yet this group of people capable of actually fighting the Honkai directly has never exceeded a few thousand throughout history. Around five thousand at best, not including AE mechs, to defend an entire world from never-ending monstrosities."
To say that they were outgunned and undermanned did not even begin to scratch the surface of their problems.
Although, it was true that there was a more pressing reason that she couldn't disclose. A secret known only to her, Tesla, Welt, and Theresa. It paid to be prepared. The actions they were taking now were an investment, a precaution against the future. It still made even her shudder to think about what's out there.
"But if this works, we can create a real army. Not clones either. A diverse superhuman fighting force in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. Not only that, but potentially increase the power of existing valkyries by at least an entire rank. If the Honkai ever return-"
"They won't." Mei voiced her absolute belief in this statement.
Einstein, however, was quick to counter. "But if they do? Do you really think we can fight that kind of war all over again with humanity in the state it's currently in? Against an enemy that perfectly keeps pace? Do you really think we'll win?"
Both of them knew the most likely answer to that. It was one of the many reasons why they continued to work at Shicksal, at least for Einstein.
After the eternal nightmare known as the Honkai Era finally came to an end, she actually took the time to look back at their history under a new light. And the realizations were, frankly, quite horrifying in restrospect. Humanity's best line of defense against complete extinction has, for the longest time, been a thin line of adolescent girls, young women, and the occasional boy. Then big robots and flying planes were added to the mix, and yet they could never truly replace the valkyries and knights of Shicksal.
The sheer insanity of it made it all the baffling to figure out exactly how and why they managed to survive. Against mankind's greatest enemy, they'd basically been fending it off with sticks and stones and screwing around like a bunch of primates. Honestly, it's like the war effort was being led by a mad man who cared more about his personal ambitions than the survival of the human race.
Oh wait, that's right. Einstein had cussed out Otto so many times today that it felt like she was turning into Tesla. And she definitely wasn't drunk, she'd only drank coffee. Even so, she calmly kept the conversation going for Mei's benefit.
"That's not all. This was a request from the UNSC itself. We're not some clandestine organization operating in the shadows and outside the law anymore. We work with the United Nations now. The new Shicksal needs to provide the UN with proof of its ability to protect the world to receive continued support of our existence. It's a give and take relationship, and that means we have to compromise. We can't just go around deposing world leaders willy-nilly just because they disagree with us, and acting like the world's bogeyman to maintain power. We'd be no better than Otto."
Shicksal today may be a reformed organization, but the very name carries the bloodied legacy of centuries of conspiracy, lies, and deception. There are still a lotof people alive who have never forgiven Shicksal even after its reformations. Not that Einstein could really blame them.
Destiny left a mountain trail of shattered lives and broken futures in the pursuit of a mad man's dream. If not for Welt Yang's public support of Shicksal's reformation and bringing AE-affiliated nations under Theresa's wing, the organization might have completely collapsed under the weight of its sins.
Major nations and cities are coming back together just fine, but much of the world still remains in turmoil. Reconstruction efforts can't exactly get off the ground when they're getting targeted by terrorists and major criminal organizations. Some of which are now armed with shiny Shicksal weapons looted from somewhere, or worse, ex-Shicksal personnel who have disagreed with the organization's new direction.
Or just have a grudge. Or just couldn't give a damn about humanity.
Tesla's Titans can only be in so many places at once, even with valkyrie support.
The world wants insurance. A method to fight without relying entirely on Shicksal, in order to avoid a repeat of Otto's insane tyranny. It just so happened that the compensation they wanted came in the form of cutting-edge technology, advanced weapons, and micro-managing transparency.
Sometimes this did help the world, as with the introduction of honkai-powered reactors to areas in need, but often times it did the exact opposite.
Like the honkai-powered explosion that decimated part of Neo-Singapore.
"So we're forcing these children to clean up the hell we're responsible for? Even if it's for the sake of the world, this… this can't be right way for us to go." Mei choked on her words a bit, as if she didn't think she had the right to say such things.
The fact that even this little show was considerably more 'humane' than policies and actions taken during the Honkai Era was simply a sad fact of life.
"Those are the times we live in now. It's that, or we shutter Shicksal for good. Then we leave the nations of the world to their own devices and watch as the entire Earth is set on fire by idiots, power-mongers, and more malicious psychopaths." Einstein understood her conflict, but the final decision was out of their hands. The only thing they could do was make sure it didn't screw everyone over.
There was no way she'd let such people destroy everything she and her colleagues fought for their entire lives. Einstein was firm in her conviction to at least seeing humanity outlive her. Otherwise the past century of her life has been for nothing.
"That said, it's probably better that we're not making good progress. At least we'll have a real excuse for Theresa to give the Council." Mei clicked her tongue at that last statement, remembering all too well how her family fell apart due to scheming. She never voiced her opinion, but it probably never sat right with her, all of the politics and maneuvering.
Granted, the blue-haired science genius had every intention of flubbing, -ahem-, delaying the results to those old suits, especially if those results turned positive. She wasn't as outspoken about it as Tesla, but strong, trustworthy hands in the world are few and far between right now. Much less needs to be said about the power games being played in the highest levels of political power.
Einstein wasn't that naive. Ninety-something years old, remember? She might not care much for them, but she knew people.
If left to their own devices, these people would vie over the world with armies of genetically enhanced super-soldiers. It would be a new arms-race, except involving people of mass destruction instead of WMDs.
We'd finish the Honkai's job for them, ending humanity in the most pathetic way possible. They can't be trusted with the keys of the future, not yet.
Ironically, this kind of thing would never happen under Otto Apocalypse's iron fist hegemony. There are many thing you could say about the previous Overseer, but he knew politics well. Horribly malicious and psychopathic, but certainly not stupid.
It's like they trade one big bad for a bulk order of never-ending bit-players. Einstein still was on the fence about which one she preferred, unlike a certain someone.
Years after the Final Impact, and the world has still yet to truly see the brighter future her father and past friends worked so hard to achieve.
Her coffee tasted more bitter than usual.
This was a no-win solution. In the end, the boy was the one who volunteered. He knew what he was getting into, and Einstein respected those wishes. The least they could do is make the best of it.
"At any rate, this is enough for him to keep up with the other valkyries-in-training if he works hard, but he'll eventually need something else if we want to make him truly capable. At least enough to hold his own against a B-rank valkyrie equivalent." She finally a said as Mei leaned on the glass wall, her fists clenching up.
While they were going to continue the gene treatment under the table, it seemed like it was going to be more time-consuming than anticipated. Meanwhile, Adam was going to need a crutch to put him on an equal playing field with true super-humans.
"I'll reach out to the other labs to see if we can collaborate. A follow-up solution, probably a weapon of some sort. I know Tesla is still running her head in circles, trying to rework the Dead Sea Scroll equation into a simplified format."
An idea suddenly struck her, but it was too early to put it into words. If it panned out though…
"It'll be a good opportunity for everyone involved, and if necessary I can call in some favors. I know Myrkheim, St. 1504, and St. 7308 will be willing."
Mei did not look happy at all. "You want to conduct more experiments on him?! Are you actually trying to kill him?" For a moment, one could almost see a spark of lightning flash from her eyes.
Others might be frightened to see the normally kind and melancholy academy principal going near nuclear, even if it was for a good cause, but Einstein knew better. Mei could deceive others and even herself, but not this genius.
The shadow of wrath still lingered, no matter how deeply she tried burying it. Ever since the Final Impact, she'd buried herself in her work and the role Theresa handed to her. Always moving forward and never once taking a break or slowing down to just live.
As if she were punishing herself. Einstein genuinely wondered if the girl had given herself time to process the past few years of her life.
Perhaps more worrying is the idea that she didn't want to give herself time to think, process, and just grieve.
Still it wasn't time to open that can of antimatter just yet. Right now the always-mellow scientist needed to take a diplomatic approach.
"We're simply going to help offset his weaknesses by creating a suitable weapon. This will also give us a chance to test out some of the more theoretical weapon designs that never had a chance to be implemented during the war. This is for his benefit as much as Shicksal's. And yes, there will be risks but we'll avoid life-threatening stunts as much as possible."
"You-… I'm sorry," she said, her eyes calming down, slightly guilty at the outburst just now. "Do you promise?"
"I've proven my word good before, right? Besides, the boy is a once in a decade opportunity. There will be other things for him to do, and I can't work with a dead man." Well she could, but that was besides the point. At least, she wasn't lying. Diplomatic, remember?
Mei relaxed and seemed to consider those words for a moment before coming up with an unexpected offer herself. "Would it be of any help if I brought Mikoyan-ME into your fold?"
Einstein looked back at Mei with quite a bit of surprised confusion. It's no secret that she renounced her legal claim to ME Corp and completely severed her relationship with the entire Raiden Group.
"That… would depend on what kind of help is being offered. Besides how are you going to-" She paused momentarily, as if realizing something stupidly obvious.
"Oh right. That friend of yours is now the new CEO now, isn't she? And a professional e-sports competitor and commentator too, right? As expected of that person…"
Who knew a Russian would be so good at corporate business and marketing? Well, there was Cocolia, but Einstein didn't exactly consider her an outstanding role model. That woman's idea of business bordered on acting like rogue nations.
If not for the friend in question conducting a merger between Mikoyan and ME, Mei would have zero leverage to pull. As it stands, there was actually quite a good chance to get some help unless an internal struggle was happening.
Which, sadly, was a very real possibility.
"She's quite busy these days, but I know if I ask for her help, we'll have it." Mei said, showing supreme confidence in her words, but Einstein knew where she was coming from.
Still, a joint project between the research organs of Shicksal, old AE, and even part of the former World Serpent, huh? It's a small thing, but Einstein felt almost satisfied to see that become a possibility.
"We'll take what we can get. It's still a work in progress, so no promises." She took another sip from her mug only to come up empty. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get some more coffee to fight another all-nighter."
"Ah… right," Mei sighed as she recomposed herself. At least she was aware of her occasional rash-outburst. "Thank you for your hard work, Dr. Einstein. It may not have been under ideal circumstances, but I really am glad to see you again."
Despite everything, Mei would always be grateful to Einstein and Tesla for helping her all those years ago, especially concerning her father.
She only waved off the former ME heiress's concern like it was a simple matter of relativity. But as she was leaving the room, she stopped to ask one final question.
"Could you tell me, what beast Adam picked? To combine with his own DNA."
Einstein wordlessly looked over to the screen next to her. On it was a picture of a creature that resembled a giant white lion, wreathed in flames and roaring towards the sky.
[The Beast of Yang, Huodou. Emperor-class]
===:===:===
Author's Notes:
Lots of intrigue, but I tried to make it as interesting as possible to digest. Still, I'm satisfied with how it turned out.
Well, I'm all burnt out now. But not in a bad way. I feel like I wrote to my heart's content and had my fill. Definitely don't expect updates like I've been doing for the best week. I might come back, I might go back to lurking, who knows. But regardless, I'm grateful to those of you who've stuck around, however short it was.
Thanks to everyone who noticed and enjoyed this thing.
Peace out and until next time!