Chapter 42

I looked over the large facilities below what once was a pair of deserted islands. Our newest acquisition had allowed us to dig deeper and expand even quicker. A bigger set of hangars for the Insight Helicarriers that had been created to clear the cities of zombies while my new EVAs took up so much space.

EVAs, plural. If I was any more superstitious, I would be shitting myself as seeing those three sitting on their Carriers. A sign of the end of times.

Ha.

But I really didn't want to use them. Aside from being TOO FUCKING BIG for practical use unless another Kaiju of their size showed up, they were attention hogs. The network shared a lot of processing power to allow me to use them remotely, but my AI had a hard time properly using the Shiryu due to its different layout. And Unit-01 was used as my upgrade form, which left only the Unit-Null (Mugouki) to be used by the network.

I had cobbled together a simulator body and had various Pilot Models train on it. It was sort of funny seeing them trying to link with it as they would with a TSF or a Flight Unit, or having them experience sensations as an EVA would, which while similar to a human's, was very much alien to the combat AI.

And I'd done logistical clean up, as we'd tested all guns I'd printed when I panik-printed during the 4[sup]th[/sup] Eruption. And while I could have gone with all laser pistols and cool shit, I settled for the less obvious wonder weapons I could find aside from the Shotrisers and Attache Weapons.

For my standard issue rifle, I settled with the Lancer GL. I found out it used some elongated 5.5mm ammunition, which explained (kind of) how you could fit the 50 rounds it carried inside its mag. The rockets had proved their usefulness more than the Chainsaw bayonet had. I decided to keep the M1 version as a heavy machine gun pending for modifications to bring it to an acceptable non-game standard.

The Sniper rifles… well, we couldn't decide. The Seeker was a collapsible railgun that had a decent range and stopping power, and the Vortex was rugged and could be directly powered by an android's energy core. So, I decided to keep both, sort of. The Seeker would be my specials operators' rifle and the vortex would be more standard.

But I had an idea for my DMR needs: The AR Marksman from Wolfenstein. Large caliber ammo we could fit in our production or switch if it was too much a hassle, and it could become a fucking plasma rifle we might be able to link to an android's power core.

For shotguns… I turned back to Wolfenstein. It was overengineered and probably not that rugged, but the Automatic Shotgun worked well enough, I though about using the SchockHammer from the second game, but that one looked like a maintenance nightmare its three rotating barrels. Rechambered for 8-gauge shells, the thing was insane. I used the fact it had two mags to load one with standard pellets and one with a slug. For all situations… Just in case, I brought the M90 from Halo, as that one we could sell to people without looking too suspicious.

For rocket launchers, against everything telling me to use the SPNKR, I chose the M57 Pilum from Halo 5. Reason? Magazines. Their small size mean I could print them and lug them around like crazy or sell them easily as I could see rocket launchers still being a sore spot for the US military. For my forces? In case they ran dry on the Lancer GL's rockets, the Kampfpistole would work. It would be rechambered to use the same rockets as the Lancer GL to avoid any logistical fuckups. But in my mind, I thought about recreating the Doom 2016 Rocket Launcher with Shotrise technology later.

The iconic BR55 graced us in this world as my chosen Battle Rifle, instead of the Lancer M1 original's purpose. Large caliber, precise and trusty, that gun would be in use for us and for sale to anyone who would buy it. Rechambering for smaller, more common calibers than its original 9.5x40mm round proved to be easier than expected.

The Morita Mk1 SMGs had performed beautifully on my assault troops, range and power for its size, and very comfortable to use with Rider armor, as it was designed to be used with bulky power armor. Good but rechambering for commercial ammunition instead of its original .308 was more complicated than expected. The Talon Auto pistol proved itself too and we'd begun testing it against the M7 SMG, and it was more precise while being a bit heavier than the latter, which for my forces didn't' matter, but if we wanted to sell them it would be hard, as the M7 used caseless ammunition that even a century later no one trusted in this timeline. The Tridenta would be examined extensively to recreate it in other form factors.

However, the handgun spot remained empty. The M6C called my inner fan, while I thought about using the EMG Pistol from Doom 2016 and its Mark V variant. Pure awesomeness vs. unlimited ammo and adjustable strength…. Damn. I'd just do both. The M6 would be able to be sold and the EMG would be kept as our in-house weapon. The latter would be fitted into all our survival kits, although I had to plan for the Herrscher of Binding's Entropy Enforcement Field.

And… I decided to keep the old soviet guns around, just to keep my Strike Assault forces as bipedal, flying tanks.

The Vehicles would remain the same, while I would mothball the Silverbacks or relegate them to emergency weaponry for the carriers. Their guns needed to be changed too.

The TSFs… I regretted it but I would have to send the Takemikazuchis and the Berkuts to cold storage. It pained my heart, but the data showed that both had suffered extensively when using their integrated weaponry. The Honkai Beasts' carapace proved to be tougher than expected, but still less than what I remember Cocolia mentioning it took to take a Templar down (which was about a couple soviet tanks keeping continuous fire for about five minutes). The YF-23, now just the F-23 All Situation TSF was so damn good for us that I kept screaming at the US Government from its dimension of origin for not taking this amazing mech and making it Standard Issue. I could see the modularity obsession on every part of it and loved it. I planned to reinforce its frame and carbonic actuators using data from the Takemikazuchis and maybe add the ESPER compatibility systems from the Berkuts. The F-22 Raptors would be kept around for any special mission they could carry as a dedicated stealth TSF. None of these guys would be sold.

For sale to anyone else, the KG-6 Sleipnir and its KG-7 Areion successor would be sold. 75mm autocannons and a variety of weaponry of similar caliber would make it palatable to the modularity obsessed militaries. I'd even throw in their transport trucks for free.

And for infantry…. The G3 Project proved to be somewhat of a success… and a bust. The old G3 was easily mass producible as G3 Mild proved, but the reaction speed left a lot to be desired and it would cost more to improve it than to create one from scratch. G3-X did a lot better, but my mistake on using the Fortified Suits meant for TSFs meant the armor lagged in reaction time. G4… was good, but I really didn't see it performing that much better. I will come back to bring the G-series up to our standards…. Later.

Instead, I went for something shitty but easily upgradeable and sellable. The Jackets from Edge of Tomorrow were cheap, rugged, mass producible and damn fucking versatile. The only ones I could consider better would be the Power Armor from Starship Troopers' animated movies. And the latter looked quite compatible with our Fortified Suits. I sent the schematics and slotted a time for simulations and a limited test run on both.

Even as far as I was, I could feel Arsenal City's factories begin to churn out ammunition and weapons to arms our forces again.

Oh, right I wasn't in Arsenal right now. I had managed to acquire an instant food production plant from the California government from back when they decided to tax the hell out companies making them leave their state. I managed to use their laws to benefit myself and not give a single penny to those greedy corpsefuckers. The initial results of my endeavors in these facilities after bringing it back to life were sitting in a plate in front of me.

A lot of the 'fake' food people ate was mostly texturized, flavored soy. My product was even weirder, being made from wood shavings, carton, tree bark and some additives Zea was still figuring out how to properly ration. The first product was a slab of something that vaguely resembled boneless fish grease. It was though as chewing gum and fucking tasteless, even as I prepared it with three times as much flavoring powder as indicated. I tasted that powder beforehand and it was really close to the original beef flavor. But it looked as once it made contact with the Synth Meat, it somehow destroyed itself, as not even the water it had been boiled in tasted of anything…

Back to the drawing board on this one. But I know it was possible to shape the resin into all kinds of shapes and textures… we just need to make it less… miserable. And less likely to clog anyone's intestines instead of quietly dissolving into liquid and leaving behind no waste to poop out like I wanted them to.

We tried improving human wastewater treatment methods to better use in our fallout bunkers, which yielded good results. Went and touched up on hydroponics and discovered that it was still a water hog compared to normal farming, but it was able to fit better in an enclosed space. The plants were good at being their usual CO2 to O2 converting sleeves. A saline-based CO2 converter was made, just in case.

But we made a small food processor that practically made Spam-like (or rather sausage-like) stuff out of anything you fed it, from vegetables to fruits and the usual meat. The Omni-Ham was undergoing testing for caloric density and nutritional degradation for long-term storage. I admit that it was strange eating a hotdog and tasting orange instead of pork meat.

The Meat-Rack System had yielded better results, as we managed to keep the cells alive and prospering in their trays and grow like some demented brownies. It still required carefully concocted nutrient serums and as disconnected from the animals they came from; you couldn't identify the food as anything other than the animal the cells came from. The meat also had problems growing fat without turning into an uncooked lasagna. It tasted dry as fuck too, no matter what flavor.

As I threw the rest of the failed sample into waste disposal, I remembered the events after the eruption.

Everyone looked morose once we'd landed in one of my carriers, the one meant for EVA-01. They had piled out of the birds, and I barely had any time to tell them where their quarters were before all crashed like meteors in their bunks. I was glad that despite being an android vessel we had human amenities like bedrooms and restrooms. Would have been awkward to explain why we lacked them. They ignored the empty officers' quarters as they simply crashed in the infantry barracks.

They slept all night and the next day, while I monitored the clean up and recalled my forces. The Helicarriers picked up their Kataphrakts while the TSFs and Flight Units flew back to the ships so the Fleet could sail away to regroup in the northern Atlantic before being transported to Arsenal. The last thing to arrive had been the server banks we picked up from Dobbing containing my fallen children. The Carriers had suddenly grown lively as the androids inside came back to the physical realm. A quick update and thankfully they looked relived that we'd won instead of being mad that they got taken out. I chose to leave behind the mission killed TSFs but took back my Android's bodies. Either way, the humans wouldn't get anything that I didn't want them to, for now, that meant they wouldn't look at my children's bodies.

I'd had to print another two carriers for the massive amounts of Tanks and Artillery I'd printed during the invasion. Most of them were empty of all ammunition and quite a few sported the claw and hoof-like dents and cuts from Beasts that had managed to get close. The Centaur was put on the list to be given a machinegun for close encounters and a more reliable engine. The others had managed to keep their distance and most of them were completely empty off all ammo or their barrels about to fail from how much lead they poured into the enemy. I patted one Archer Truck with a slightly melted barrel. Good boi.

The Helicarriers hovered nearby, and I only knew because I was connected to them. The refractive panels and some other technological wizardry made them invisible to our own radars. And I hoped that they remained invisible to the human's too. Shiryu and Mugouki's Eva Carriers arrived soon after, their decks concealing the massive war machines inside their holds. My own Carrier hid Unit-01 while maintenance was performed.

Turns out that the Evatech Key literally turned the Eva into my armor, poor Unit-01 looked like it just went 10 bouts with Zeruel and Shamshel at the same time. Holes and bruises that would kill a man were scattered all over the machine. Some broken bones and a few burned out systems from me using the Spear were just garnish on to of the pain dish the thing was served. I'd patted the Eva when I saw its sorry state. Good girl, I'd told it, thank you. The Lance had been stored as soon as possible to analyze just what the hell I'd done to make it work.

As we were all together, in the middle of the night, I'd admit, our fleet made for an impressive sight. The waves were made to split before hitting any of our ships and despite the general unrest of the sea, I went to the upper deck and connected to the fleet's intranet. My voice echoed out, but I filled the living quarters with white noise to allow my guests to sleep soundly.

"MY CHILDREN! YOU HAVE BLOODIED YOUR STEEL! TEMPERED YOUR METTLE AGAINST THREATS UNKNOWN! AND YOU HAVE EMERGED VICTORIOUS! WE RETURN HOME! TRIUMPHANT!"

The roars sound pretty damn human as they raised fists and some of them fired their weapons onto the air. I hope that they aimed away from the fleet and no bullet would fall through our decks.

"REST AND REVIEW! TRAIN! THROUGH YOUR ACTIONS, THE HONOR OF THE TASKFORCE HAS BEEN RESTORED! GLORY TO MANKIND!"

The army of androids echoed my salute, and the ocean was filled with our voice.

Glory to Mankind.

I hadn't noticed at the time, but we'd had a human audience that night.

That had been three days ago. Watchpoint was still in their Fortified Suits, Mei looked odd in that uniform a bit bigger than her usual size and the lab coat that covered up to her fingers, Kevin looked both out of place and at home in the bar, Tesla and Einstein looked like college graduates cosplaying as high school students, White drew many gazes to her person, Zea and Ark looked like they'd faked their IDs to get in and I was in a tattered service uniform of unknown origins. I'd passed us as coming out of a cosplay event and no one had doubted it. I admit, I was sort of shitty for me to exploit Japanese manners but hey, I needed to keep up morale.

The place was filled with the usual rowdiness of workplaces making their employees do something together, so in that aspect, we didn't stand out. On the other hand, the air around us was morose, and I saw that a lot of this place's patrons actively avoided the wing we were at.

I broke the wallet open (the girls just set me up with one of those shitty semi-disposable cards just for this) and began ordering. Renée slowly began coaxing conversation out of Liz, Milka and Mei, teasing them on finally henshin'ing themselves, I began pouring the beer as soon as it arrived on Watchpoint and Kevin, thanking them for answering the call and trusting my tech. They grumbled and gave me half-lidded glares, and I motioned tote nervous waiter to pass me the meat to begin roasting it.

"I know that at this moment… you want to hole in your bunks until the end of times… but look around you. These people might not know what you have done and gone through, but they are safe. Many souls were lost, but many more have been saved. You showed the world that WE CAN DEFEAT THE HONKAI, something the world had never seen before! Its one thing to hold off an army of thousand alone, but monsters? zombies? Those you saw didn't survive because they were cowards or weak. It was because they weren't ready." I finished passing the cups around but gave Mei a can of soda just in case. "But we showed them. Proper gear, proper training, we can defeat them."

"How?"

"Yes?"

"How can you say all of that? I… we saw your people get crushed; don't you feel anything for them? Most of them looked like they couldn't even drive yet!" The woman had a haunted face and her teammates offered their support. I smiled widely. She didn't like that.

"Are you sure about that? Did you see them die?"

"They were cut in pieces! Crushed beneath buildings! They couldn't have survived that!"

My smile threatened to split my face, I was having too much fun with this. "Let me tell you something… none of those you saw die, were actually alive by then."

Everyone but Mei and my 'Gears was startled at that, and I saw some aborted starts of heated rants. I pulled Ark to my lap and asked her to turn around and face me. I exposed the back of her head, where her Humagear modules were. The white, black and blue headphone-like device beeped a moment before I let Ark's hair back into her original position. Her face was red and seemed reluctant to leave my presence, but a few head pats and she was next to her sister once again. "Even now Renée, Ark and Zea are safe in the Carrier, at any moment they can abandon these platforms and appear anywhere where a receptor is found…"

"Quantum Entanglement… you are using remote operated bodies?" Trust Mei to decipher science from vague descriptions. Sasuga, Mei-sama.

I think I said that out loud, because she went beet red.

"Yeap, turns out someone in the past figured that out, Renée here found them and brought them back from decommissioning."

"Decommissioning?" Another member asked. I shook my head.

"I'm sorry, Graduation, as the old handlers said in their reports."

"And that means?"

"You really don't want to know." The table tried digesting my words. I took their attention back. "We killed another Herrscher. We stopped the eruption. We learned even more of the Honkai's capabilities. And this was shown to the whole world. You might see the usual deniers, but this time… we have proof that we need to be ready." I raised my jug. "To all the Fallen, to us who will join them, so we tell them we've won."

No one moved until Kevin of all people raised his own jug. "To the fallen, and to their victory."

Himeko raised her own next. "To the fallen."

And then Tyler raised his. "To their victory."

The whole table raised their jugs. "To our victory!"

Later that night, we were atop Tokyo tower, of course, after the bar had asked us to leave once the usual drunk soldier rowdiness came out. We'd kept making toasts to the fallen and those still alive, then to the death of shitty bosses and useless bureaucrats.

Zea and Ark had cleared us a path, and in our drunken wobbling, we'd managed to climb the already closed towers. A few hatched and the inebriated procession got on top of the deck used for tourists. The wind hit us and managed to clear some of our minds. We all sat down and kept on drinking from a cooler filled with cans that Renée had produced from somewhere.

I couldn't' help it, I don't know if it was the beer or the company but from my mouth, a song I remembered from my childhood came out.

"Mugendai na yume no ato no

nanimo nai yo no naka ja.

Sou sa itoshii omoi mo makesou ni naru kedo.

Stay shigachi na imeeji darake no,

tayorinai tsubasa demo

Kitto toberu sa

OH YEAH~"

I think I heard someone join me, but I was a bit too drunk to care.

"Mugendai na yume no ato no

yarusenai yo no naka ja

Sou sa joushiki hazure mo waruku wa nai ka na

Stay shisou na imeeji wo someta

gikochinai tsubasa demo

Kitto toberu sa

ON MY LOVE~"

I can't remember more after that.

Arc 3 Beginning.

After Entropy, Only Neverland.