Chapter 20.

Dear god that was exhausting.

This wasn't my world, but damn, getting in a cabinet gathering, even a virtual one, was something I ever dreamed doing. Piloting mech? Becoming a Rider? Sure, usual dreams. Crashing into an US head of departments meeting? With their president attending? Oh man.

I kind of want to go back to chilling on my rig…

Ok, no. This might be tiresome but.

I haven't had this much fun in forever. I know that its kinda fucked up that I think like that about the end of the human race but… just the little things I can do, from waking up without the constant pain, to having people listening to me for once, having technological marvels that make my heart soar and…

Not being alone all the time.

I guess this is nice.

The conference ended and I was glad I chose White as the figurehead of this organization. Because oh man, keeping the stoic guy face make my nerves flare like my worst episodes. Of course, not having to deal with the consequences of too much stress on my body tomorrow is a good thing, the bad is now I am sort of in hero duty for the next operation.

I don't know when I uploaded my previous life's memories to the networks, but someone had watched Evangelion. This operation, named Operation: Tokyo-3 (Evangelion existed here too, somehow, and I hope I didn't need to use my abilities in front of someone that knew their stuff about the series), would be one hell of an undertaking. The Fourth Herrscher had slowed down for some reason, but that was good news for us and not an opportunity we would waste.

The US Military would find a proper place to fortify to the gills, weapon emplacements would be made to accommodate something worse than the Honkai killforms we had seen in Cuba. The might of the American war industry was being prepared to create something that wouldn't have been seen since the World wars.

The Intelligence agencies were looking for the missing Agent Kristoff Matthews, father to this Herrscher host, who was a dead man walking if her power was as high as we suspected. The CIA wouldn't be happy with Steel Locust, but I hoped that them seeing the kind of fight ahead might mellow their pride a bit. They had to give up the Core of Logic for the defense to work. It was something that they would have to learn that was too good to be true, even if you deal in shady stuff, you should know that.

The other Department Heads would begin moving their economy to a wartime disposition, I felt a bit bad for them, as convincing the Senate and Congress to basically declare war on an alien species with no particular point of origin other than 'They show up and murder a shit ton of people'. When the Honkai began attacking manufacturing countries or places where the Americans got their raw materials, they would be glad they had begun changing to a domestic manufacturing industry. I only hoped international relations wouldn't suffer much when they saw the US gearing for an invasion.

Mei told us we would have support from her people in the relocation, also that some of them might want to get a peek at the TSFs or the Pelicans. That was fine, we cheated when building them and you're maybe five hundred years before you can have any hope to make them o your own. Except Mei, she probably could do it in four years or less.

Now I was back at Arsenal City, thinking about what to do from there. we needed to keep both of the Herrscher's probable targets in one place, then find a way to kill her in the allotted time. We couldn't do that in the ocean with all the water being primed fuel for the hurricane (not that she really needed it but…). In land at least she would have to invest some energy to keep the Hurricane at top speeds. I was considering what kind of abomination the Fourth Herrscher would choose as her guardian. It seemed like dragons so far were the preferred type, but that could change. The Xenomorphs appearance had thrown me out of for a loop.

While everything got ready, Zea notified me of something. Someone had managed to contact her? huh… oh, ok. So, she hid a cipher inside the emails we sent as first warnings across the internet. Someone had found the cipher and decoded the contact method already? Wow.

A screen appeared in front of me, and a blue haired girl blinked a few times before regaining her composure. Her face had a little passivity, but her eyes were drinking my form. She looked a bit disappointed but then perked up at something. I simply blinked and waited for her to speak. I spent at least 5 minutes waiting but she just looked at everything around me. "…Are you really the first to solve the cipher?" My voice broke her out of her trance, and a cute little smile formed in her face.

"You're fascinating, you know?" Her voice was… nice, but she now sounded close to drowning in afterglow. "It wasn't easy to recover footage from your actions, but seeing how much you have accomplished in so little time, I can see that the room you are in doesn't have any marks of tooling, your uniform has no stiches despite having at least three kinds of fabrics and the weapons you showed in Cuba have no traces of where they came from…"

Ok that was kind of creepy, was the camera resolution good enough for her to pick those detail or was she just that good? My memories surfaced and I recognized the girls staring at me.

"Oh, apologies. I tend to go on tangents often. My name is Lizelle Maja Einstein, and I would like to join whatever endeavors you're working on"

Spoiler: Lizelle Maja Einstein

Huh. Really? "Ok, then prepare for inmediate transport."

Yua looked at the Thunderbolt she just finished doing maintenance on. While she could have multitasked with the construction platforms going around, she felt compelled to use her own personal platform to check the machines. The constructors had better sensor suites, but looking at the Surface Fighters by herself gave her a feeling of… satisfaction? She wondered were that part of her programming came from, but neither Core Zea nor Core Ark answered with concise data, only a single stream of what her expression catalogue identified as a giggle. For some reason that warmed up her processors.

The transporter pad at the entrance of the Hangars lit up in warning of incoming transition. In a flash, a computer setup along with bed, boxes and several other items materialized, the only organic of the transition fell along with its chair upon materialization. A squawk of surprise came from its (her?) mouth, and after the thump, several insults in a variety of human languages. A lump of blue hair emerged from the mess of technology, furniture and dirty clothing, her gaze looking around in fascination before zeroing in Yua's platform. The android had to doublecheck for any scanning hardware the organic might be using but came up with nothing even when using the other construction platforms around the hangar. When one of them made a little noise, that finally took the bluenette's attention away from Yua, who finally went to the walkways next to a Berkut.

Just who had the cores decided to bring home?

We had chosen Atlanta as the main core of our defenses. The military infrastructure around there meant we could rely on hardware and troops being available. Marines from Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville were being airlifted to the city while an evacuation was enacted on the cities the predicted path said would be hit. More than a few mayors dug their heels on giving the order until the military practically dragged their faces toward the widows facing the Gulf of Mexico, where even that far inland a dark tower of clouds, lightning and murderous intent slowly made its way towards them. It was distasteful because I had basically told them to sacrifice a city and all those on the way between it and the Herrscher, but it had to be done.

The Hurricane had hit Florida and practically dragged it beneath the waves, we had tried to assist on the evacuation, but it had quickly gone to hell with the winds tearing apart the cities most people around the world knew from celebrity TV or something like that. The president had declared DEFCON 1 when the hurricane had taken its time to center itself to fully hit Miami while only grazing the Bahamas. Tampa got hit by a wave of Beasts while the Navy and Coast Guard valiantly tried to hold the horde long enough for the civilians to escape. Jacksonville got the nastier surprise of all.

Almost like knowing where some of the best warriors humanity could field until then were stationed there, the womb finally gave birth to its contents. A massive beast, easily 120 meters long, it resembled a large turtle if it had its legs replaced with spider ones. Its mouth had opened, and a beam of energy vaporized the city in an instant, the only survivors being the Marines we had previously airlifted to Atlanta and the submarines that had been scrambled as soon as the Alarm had sounded.

The Fourth Herrscher had known where to hit to inflict the most damage to the country's defenses. Our own Pelicans couldn't keep up with the evacuations and Naki had had to bring out the Pelican's, bigger, uglier older brother: The D81-LRT Condor. Increased lift capacity and bigger engines at the cost of maneuverability were considered enough tradeoffs for the situation. Thousands of people were scattered across the neighboring states where no one was sure they could accommodate them.

We had tried some of our weapons on the beast, but they lacked the penetrating power to hurt the beast. Several flights of Pelicans and Flight Units had been downed when it had had enough of our tests. Our androids had safely uploaded to the Hiden Satellites before their wreckages hit the ground.

Naki now had picked something else from my memories, a weapon that had only one successful deployment which had still been dismissed as a failure: The EML-99X Electromagnetic Induction Launcher. I had drawn a blank on how to substitute the G-Element (Exotic matter from its home universe) components I suspected it used for its barrel and power source. Naki simply slapped a Greater Core of Thunder into the thing and used the Hiden alloys that Breaking Mammoth used to hover in-atmosphere. Freezing Bear's cooling abilities were used to keep the barrel from warping too quickly. The resulting gun now had an adornment on the front that looked like the mouth of a bear with its maw open. We had dedicated two of the Manufacturing Corridors to print as many of these Railguns as possible, which was easy, the hard part was printing the large amounts of ammunition they tended to chew through.

We had also decided to bring a bigger, static defense type to counter the large amounts of beasts we could see amassing in the overrun cities. The A-6 Intruder was upgraded with whatever tech we could shove into its enormous frame. It wouldn't outrun a beast horde, but it would give it something to die at. Six massive 36mm Shotrisers on each arm (twelve in total), two 120mm Attache Shotgun-based Cannons on its shoulder modules. It was monster that needed three Greater Shards of Thunder to operate but it could also deploy a Pseudo-AT Field that would give it a chance against the energy attacks from the Jacksonville monster. I had named the monster Bixi, despite not sharing much of what the name would imply (no relation to dragons, yet). The scanners on our satellites were busy trying to get a good reading on its armor to find just what we needed to kill it.

Sighing I stood up from my station atop the Operations center in Arsenal City and went over to the room our newest resident had taken as her room/lab. Lizelle Maja Einstein, who I had taken to call Liz, for short was now going over the data from our Mechanized units. Unlike her serious and methodical counterpart from the future, this Einstein was more expressive. She also had a strange fascination with robotics and computer systems than even Ark had taken a minute to finally interface with. She was a brilliant as someone not knowing her potential could feel, even before being told her last name. "The capabilities of these materials… once we can replicate them in a more mundane manner, the sheer number of possibilities! Quantum computers, Handheld Mass Accelerators, Androids and Teleportation! Just where did you manage to find all of this technology?"

I snorted "Would you believe that we had them developed before the Honkai attacked?"

She looked at me for a moment before going back to her screens "Please, the technological paths vary so much I would rather believe that you pulled them out of alternate universes rather than develop them on your own."

I smiled "Even with the GPD of the world on our hands?"

"Not even then."

"Then you have your answer." She kept quiet after that.

Yua looked at the newly constructed hangar, where the massive machines designated as Intruders would reside before transportation. They were slow, large and carried enough firepower to level cities alone. 40 new Tactical Surface Attackers shone in the artificial lightning, next to the armory which contained the guns only Naki could craft from Core YSN's databanks. Yua had tried to dive into the dataspace but had to pull out once something clogged her cognition processes.

Why was there someone with her platform's face in Core YSN's memories?

For some reason, she woke up next to a Constructor Platform with a Jackal progrisekey and a Shotriser in her hands.