Chapter 21

"Hey Mophead, the hell you mean when you say you got a job?" a redhaired girl walked into an apartment building in the poorer parts of Neuperlach, Munich. The building might look decent on the outside along with its neighboring copies, but once you got inside you would see the unpainted walls and rusting pipes. The girl talked into her cellphone as she walked up the stairs where her friend lived. Something came out of the speaker on her phone and drove the girl mad. "How did you even…? Why didn't you tell me? I finally got the yard's manager approval for scavenging spare parts for our project and suddenly you have a job? …You forgot, didn't you…" a sigh escaped the girls as she reached the last floor where her friend's apartment was. She took out her key and managed to pry open the door… to be greeted by a completely empty room. "What the shit… where is all your stuff!? Did you get evicted?! Hey Mophead! Lizelle! What the fuck you mean to keep calm? Where your stuff? Our stuff?! We must give back those things or we don't get paid! Hey! The hell you mean to brace myself for weird! Wha…"

A faint shine on the air interrupted it and a largely invisible beam captured her form and shifted her unto a quantum state optimal for transport. The residents of the nearby apartments noted the sudden end of the discussions of the noisy couple but think nothing of the sudden emptying of that apartment. It was getting very common for rooms to suddenly be available for rent the day after discussions like that erupted on every building. Such was the life in those parts.

Naki was walking up to the hangars, while she had used the City's network to simply ping Yua, she had been unresponsive for the last 2 hours, which to any digital existence, meant close to centuries. She was startled by the sudden activation of the transport pad lighting up with an incoming transition. Of which there none scheduled for the moment.

A scream followed by a loud thump echoed in the hangar as Naki finally saw its cause. A somewhat short female organic with red distinctions was sprawled in the pad. Bags of various odd and ends that told Naki that this organic was a scavenger of some sorts laid strewn around her and one had hit her on the head. A warning came across the net to look out for an organic bearing the same characteristics the unconscious one before Naki had. A quick scan told Naki that the organic would return to consciousness in 5 minutes, so she proceeded to lift her to a nearby ammunition crate and carefully recover the bags and their contents then place them next to her resting place. Satisfied with her efforts, Naki turned to find Yua's chassis last location. Finding her platform nearly drained of energy along with a burned wireless unit and KR hardware she remembered had no logs of printing. Taking her back to the android sized repair bays she would have to return for the organic too after she got lost on attempts at deciphering the Key's unknown origins.

Operation Tokyo-3 was one hot mess all around, but it was what we could do in such short notice that surprised me most. The Condors had enough power to lift the Intruders by themselves, Pelicans were being loaded with spare combat platforms, weapons like modified Trilobite Magear Combat knives and swords and the curious energy machine pistol they tended to carry. YoRHa weaponry like the Virtuous series, the Type-3s or the Type-4O were still catching up in terms of production but soon everyone would have either one of those kits. For now, they had to go out on semi mook gear: Shotrisers and Attache-series Caliburs and Shotguns. I felt bad about underequipping my forces but for now there was so much to do.

The Hurricane had stopped to a crawl, opting instead to flood us with beasts. The US forces reminded everyone of the importance of CAS as their Warthogs and AC-130s ripped into the hordes, until Bixi offered its way of long-range support by firing smaller lasers from somewhere in its shell, causing the air forces to withdraw to a perceived safe distance, as after 40 kilometers, the beast stopped firing on them. The Honkai now had an anti-air, anti-fortress Beast as a force multiplier. The Herrscher had a beachhead and was taunting the Americans with it.

Luckily our Pelicans had managed to rescue some of the crews from the boats that had been sunk. Getting them in contact with their peers was going to be difficult, so we just carried them to Atlanta-2 (joking name turned serious after someone made the connection). The mess of prefab structures that still managed to become a fortress was a testament to the Engineering Corps resourcefulness, multiplied when White authorized lending them the SFFCUs after they were repaired and given at least some guns to defend themselves. They had figured out the settings and were now printing military grade concrete with some Kevlar (I think?) lining it to give it better resistance against artillery, which I had told the military commanders was very real coming from the Honkai Ballista (Someone commented they should be called Catapults really…). Flaming balls of radioactive napalm, I had described them as such to the Commanders. The Engineers were having the time of their lives printing fortifications that would have taken them months to get approved and then be granted the requisitions.

Dobbins AFB had begun to grow as the nearby Moody and Albany bases were evacuated as they were directly in the path to get munched. It was a titanic effort as many materials and spare parts for the American war machine were housed there. The civilian evacuation made the transports by land a nightmare and even with our Condors helping with the transport, the number of resources that protocol demanded only be shifted by secure courier from Albany set back so much of our efforts. Meanwhile the guys at Moody were so much more used to working with bullshit conditions and managed to use the strengths of the Warthog's design to quickly turn a makeshift landing strip near Dobbins into a proper airfield.

Our section was now home to our own version of a firebase, pulled straight from my memories of Halo Wars 2. We used the Condors to drop the firebases and sort through the materials we had been pooling in. Warthogs, TSF, Flight Units, Pelicans and Condors made for quite the mishmash of color and designs that perhaps to the unobservant sold the image of being the remnants a compilation of multinational efforts. Which thanks to Einstein (damn, does it feel weird calling someone that last name, better call her by her nickname) I knew might not work on those brilliant enough.

The flight units were given maintenance and a paintjob to match the look of the Halo Tech tree, it was harder to do on the TSF but I overall like how they came out. The military green suited both the Berkut and the Thunderbolt. I imagine the personnel around our little place nearly got a heart when the Condors carrying the A-6 Intruders, which based on their modification I had taken to name A-12 Avenger, arrived and promptly caused a mini earthquake when they dropped to the earth, the Condors flying off for another supply run. The Avenger's 25mts height made it visible to everyone nearby and the amount of gun on the machine probably sent the artillery fetishists to a post-orgasmic nirvana.

Fire Moth had made their way before our contingent arrived and Mei herself had taken the field along with Watchpoint, from what my android forces relayed to me. As much as I wanted to rush and finally se that they're all right with my own eyes, new things got dropped on my lap as Naki guided me towards our Repair/Medical bay, where a pair of females lay while a bluenette stood next to the redhaired, smaller one. "Friend of yours?" my question was not really needed for I knew who she was.

"Yes, Frederika Milka Tesla, inventor extraordinaire and my best friend" her answer brought a question I always had.
"Is she descendant of the man himself or one of his sisters?" I knew about Nikolai's… 'eccentricities'. I couldn't see him fathering a child at all.

"Yes, the middle one, Angelina, from what she has told me. Curious, you sound like you knew her already?"

"The sister or your friend?"

"Milka."

"Not really. I can be a good judge of character but nothing too impressive. Say, can you wake her up? I need to check on my subordinate."

"Ah, yes, of course. Marvelous technology that one. Carbon nanofibers around a titanium-derived alloy skeleton? The skin emulating fibers are very close to human's skin. You might want to work on introducing a sweating analogue if you wish to make a proper infiltrator model."

"…I'll keep that in mind, now if you excuse me…" I moved towards Yua's frame, the smell of burnt circuitry was strong, her face locked in a pained expression. I hit the lockdown override button below her left ear and she fully 'relaxed' into the bed. Naki must have been worried for her 'sister' if she forgot about that detail and just left her in the diagnostic pod with her limbs still locked in place. I let myself caress the irregular bump on the right side of her head where the wireless receiver failed to melt through skin where it burned itself. We would have to break the Dermal coating to replace that module in time…

"Father." The black-haired android came into the room with several tools and a spare module in her hands, I smiled at her and let her come next to me. Liz was looking with curiosity from her place next to her friend while waving something under Tesla's nose. I turned back to my own inventor 'daughter' "I…"

"Hey, its okay, she will be fine once we connect her again to the network."

"But she looked wrong and then there was smoke and no signal coming…" She looked as if she would give me a red ring of death right there.

"Don't panic, ok? Clear your task queue, cycle your heatsinks and focus on my voice, just my voice." I grabbed her hands. "Yua will be fine, you did as well as you could, and we will repair her frame in a few minutes, ok?" Naki nodded meekly and I let her regain her composure. "Now, your warning told me about some unknown hardware Yua had at the moment of the incident, can you clarify?"

Naki nodded, this time mode decisively and pulled out a… Shotriser? Not the Silver ones I had made for Watchpoint, a blue one, the original Mk-1. "This was in her hands when I found her, along with this." She pulled out a progrisekey… Fighting Jackal? I don't remember making that key in my time here… "I tried accessing the data storage partition of this key, but I couldn't decipher the encryption and Zea and Ark are not in range and…"

I stroked her head "Ok, Exhaust heat, take in cool air… exhaust, take in…" she calmed down again and emptied her face of emotions, setting her toolset on the table next to Yua's bed. I watched as she carefully began her preparations to repair her sister. I looked at Liz who now had shoved her fingers up Tesla's nose. "Do you wake her everyday like that or just on special occasions?"

The bluenette gave a small smile. "Sometimes she wishes to test our works before giving them back to clients. To prevent the client from trying to cheat us out of our pay. She says"

I hadn't asked what they did before… "You into electronics? Where did the two of you live?"

"Multiple degrees but the last market crash had our scholarships revoked and our passports expired while our country went into civil war, we've been living in Munich with a repair shop." She said wit little inflection, but I could still hear some sadness on her voice. "I forgot to tell her about me joining you and I think she might have had a panic attack." The German(?) was patting the red headed Serbian with her fingers still up her nose. "We grew up together until we got to high school, I allowed her to take the school's only foreign scholarship while I waited for the one that would come the following year. We met up but were on different grades, then the revolution happened and…" She looked so sad, but she still had her fingers up Tesla's nose. "We managed for a while, but now with our landlord raising the monthly fee, well…"

"I can't promise to settle your economic woes, but rest assured I will find a solution if that means you get to stay in my organization." I told her bluntly, she smiled more.

"I told you I would join you, didn't I? Don't worry about Milka, she will agree once I explain…"

I let her do her thing with her friend, while I put on my Cycloneriser to find what was wrong with the Jackal key.
"HUNT!"
I slotted the Key, and instead of the standby noise, my world disappeared into light.

She was sitting on a bench, quite a lot of food next to her. We were in an amusement park that I couldn't identify. I walked towards the bench and she turned to me. "You're here."

"I admit that it was one way to get my attention, however I'm still a bit miffed that you hurt my cute little daughter in that stunt."

She smiled. "You know, I thought only the Prez could love Humagears so much, but you take the cake."

"You mean Aruto? Yeah, unlike his case they might not have raised me, but I am responsible for raising them in this world." I frowned. "For this world, YoRHa might be the only legacy I leave to this world after its end."

"That grim look doesn't suit your face, at all." She looked like a half-awake cat.

"It doesn't, huh… were you here the whole time?"

"I don't know, I just woke up here after… *sigh* another thing to try and remember…" She looked frustated.

"You were the one that gave me the Cheetah and Hornet Keys, weren't you."

"You have quite the road ahead of you, going by what I could see… I might not be able to help more, but…" she adopted a serious expression. "You still in violation of Special AI law, you know?"

"I don't think your jurisdiction applies to collapsing timelines, dear."

Her expression softened. "It doesn't, but you better make it so they aren't needed, ok?"

"I will."

"Take care of me over there, ok?"

"Wait, what?"

The world disappeared and I returned to reality.

A shrill voice greeted me. "Why the hell is Terminator getting unshackled here!"

Oh boy.