Himeko let the auxiliary arms take the bloodstained sword into her back but kept her Tri-shot at the ready. She looked at the two children in front of her and felt her heart clench.

For as second, she thought she saw Akira, after getting into a brawl with the other kids, afraid at what Himeko would say to her. The moment went aways and she observed the grime and blood covering the girls. They had been fighting to survive this whole time. She spoke to the radio. "CP, this is Watch-1, survivors found, request evac

Her helmet retracted and she closed the distance to the girls. For a second, she Himeko thought they had gone into shock, but their faces just filled with tears as they broke down crying.

Despite the armor covering her body, Himeko hugged the girls and tried soothing them. "Shh… It's Alright, we're here."

The girls' cries just got louder.

…

I punched another zombie, which now looked like a Stranger Things reject, its head splitting in four 'petals' lined with teeth. The force sent it to the floor with a broken head and I fired four times into its chest and two into its head with my Thunderer. The thing twitched for a second before going still. Around me, YoRHa operatives dispatched the ravenous hordes coming for us.

Up in the sky, our Helicarriers showed the strengths of their designs, as 20mm cannons sniped whatever zombie they managed to find. The three airships were mowing down their numbers, but so far, we had not found any Beasts yet, which was strange, since going by the numbers, they should have appeared for their tithe of blood.

Himeko had reported survivors, and some of my operatives had begun finding small numbers holed up in buildings or rooftops. We found many with wounds that might turn into problems later. Some already had the circuit-like scarring I knew killed more than any beast did.

Hopefully, the science girls would find something to stave it off before we could create stigmata or a cure. The data they obtain for operation Nightingale would be essential for the future.

Another abomination came closer, this one… I put three shots from the Thunderer into its head. This one didn't have an arm. Instead, it had a large, bone-like blade, and the white carapace covered its body completely. The glowing pink circuit scarring told me it wasn't what I thought it was at first but…

How the fuck are Protolegions here? Why?

Spoiler: Protolegions

Another one came closer, this one having elongated claws, but it opened its head into that familiar petal-like shape, lined with razor shard teeth. One of my operatives brought it down with a simple shot of their HAR, showering me with mutated viscera and pink blood. I aimed behind them and put two explosive rounds into another leaper.

"All units, this is Yinsen. Zombies have mutated. Switch to AP or Hi-Ex rounds and destroy their chests. Head is just a mouthpiece. Some exhibit organic weaponry. Beware ambushes. Over" I saw another Protolegion jump from one building to another and put two Hi-Ex on it and saw as its two halves fell down to the streets. I looked at my operatives while the roar of the Helicarriers' guns kept hammering the hordes. "Locate and evac the survivors to the wet carriers, we're shelling the city once they're out."

"Yes Sir!" they saluted and boost-jumped deeper into the city. I kept looking at the glowing pillars rising from the ground that almost looked like fence posts.

"What are you up to?" I asked. Of course, I didn't expect a verbal answer, but I allowed myself to imagine a demented giggle coming from nowhere.

…

Their Pelican returned and landed in a rooftop nearby. Himeko ordered Tyler to carry a girl while she grabbed the other, they looked terrified after the whole crying episode but relaxed a bit when they saw the plane. It was strange seeing one of those birds empty, but her squad quickly filled it up, with Maya and Kensuke taking the gunner positions and the others sitting in the floor to allow the kids one of harnesses closer to the cockpit.

The VTOL took off again and they were treated to the sight of the city burning, the three Helicarriers spitting lead constantly, where roars of anger answered but were too far from them to do anything. There were a few choppers pulling out too, probably carrying survivors. Himeko exhaled, that was good, she thought, at least they managed to save someone. She listened to Yinsen's warning about the armored zombies, and requesting an update, she got that the armored dead, dubbed 'protolegions' by someone, were becoming more and more abundant the more zombies they killed.

Himeko idly rested her hand in the blade she'd impulsively taken from the Pelican. It was a YoRHa standard blade, and much like everything in the taskforce, it was overpowered as hell. Really, who would guess that this thing was a monomolecular blade that worked more like a chainsaw?
She smiled, her movements showed she had never taken a blade aside from a knife in CQC, but she managed to not cut herself in the brawl. The other guys… eh, nothing of value was lost.

Himeko watched as Tyler took out one of the gigantic LICs and set up the scope. Lying down in the middle of the troop bay, he took aim. Tyler had never gone to sniper school, no of them ever had, being reservists, but he managed a few impressive shots. The gun did a work on the zombies, often making them explode into chunky salsa. Himeko approved as Maya and Kensuke opened fire with their own HARs, which provided similar results: devastation in the zombies' ranks. The troop bay was a mess of echoes as practically artillery pieces spit out depleted uranium at the monsters jumping at the flying craft.

Himeko spied a particular zombie with a hammer like arm, which rose its mutated appendage and gathered a pink glow…

"Get down!" Himeko pulled away from the bay's door, as a pink energy arrow embedded itself in the bay's roof. She pulled out her Tri-shot, switched to hyper-velocity plasma and blew the thing's torso to kingdom come. Soon there was a shower of pink arrows hitting the plane as it climbed higher to avoid them. She gave the call.

"Watch-1 to Helicarriers! Enemy has AA units! Destroy them!"

Above the sounds of metal being hit, the Helicarriers' guns changed targets and returned fire.

…

…
Hua shivered as the arrows hit the plane again. She covered her ears as the roar of GUNs overwhelmed her hearing. The roars that had plagued her sleep sounded ever closer. Carole was clutching her arm as she violently flinched every time the plane as shaken from the continuous hits.

Then something broke and then they were falling.

"Hold on to me!" One of the soldiers came back and grabbed them both. Another soldier went an opened the door and pulled the pilot, which had a big hole on him but somehow was still alive…

The air came rushing as the plane fell, its entire bottom filled with pink arrows. Around her, many others fell too, and the screams she'd forgotten people make in pure terror filled Hong Kong once again.

…

"Hey Soreo? You ok?" Tyler asked the young man, which had been piloting their Pelican before having, in an unfortunate case of murphy, gotten his arms shot off by arrows, of all things.

Sure, the arrows were strong enough to pierce the cockpit of a Pelican, but when the rest of the network reviewed this, he was going to get it for managing to get such unlucky injuries. "I'm fine, the gel is doing its job. Let me down and tell dad to send a care package for us pronto, we're going to need all guns firing…" Soreo blinked, the pain receptors must be malfunctioning because he felt the pain dissolving then coming back and then repeating this process. Was that pillar of light moving?"

…

I receive the seismic alert at the same time I confirmed Himeko's Pelican going down. We managed to evac some of the survivors, but a few birds had gone down, and we had to pull them out. Then there was… that.

The pillars of light looked normal as any searchlight pointing upwards, only if you paid attention would you notice that the things looked way too solid to be pure light. And now the things opened some sort of octopus suckers, and began spewing out even more Protolegions along with Archangels and a few Knights.

I took note of the things, but ordered my Harkens to cover the Helicarriers, while the TSFs tried to prematurely cull the flying horde coming our way. The Helicarriers could keep suppressing the Archer Protolegions for as long as they could. I looked at the combat platforms following me. "We evac Watchpoint stat! fly and transform before landing!" That was something we had figured out in our training. Transform right before landing and the energy that usually goes into the lights becomes kinetic force, a spartan slam, in a sense.

As my I took off, I put on the Zero-One Driver. The situation was deteriorating badly, and I had no hopes for the city's survival. My worries were more about the black 'Skywall' visible just were the city ended. And the eldritch glow it gained once the tentacles birthed their lethal spawn.
This was going to arrive to hell in a handbasket.

…

Himeko idly noted as Soreo stood near the 'care package' that the thing was actually slotting new arms into his destroyed stumps, while another door opened and allowed everyone a fresh helping of gun. Himeko had helped herself to an automatic shotgun and began shooting down whatever corpse tried coming too close to them. Tyler had taken the LIC with the missile launcher mod and was practically firing the thing non-stop. The girls had taken a tri-shot each and tried helping if only to cover any spot that wasn't filled by zombies or bullets.

There was a wall they had made from how many monsters were coming at them. Plenty enough that in the short time they had been here, it was almost a meter tall and who knows how many thick. Himeko took out one of the keys she'd gotten from Yinsen from one of her pouches and slotted the thing into the port on waist.

"Raid Authorize! Hedgehog: Ability!"

She felt as two familiar weights appeared in her shoulders and a duplicate of her automatic shotgun fell on her left hand. "Everybody, get down!" She marked her targes and felt the miniguns spin, while her squad plus civvies hit the deck.

"Revolver! Gatling Hurricane!"

"Fire!" At her command, the armor followed the marked targets and the flood of bullets followed. For a moment, a strange silence filled the streets, as Himeko's guns cooled down from the key-caused overdrive. Himeko looked around at the almost vaporized zombie remains, noting that she also turned a lot of nearby buildings into Swiss cheese.

The rest of Watchpoint got up, and Soreo, back to having two arms, took a pair of plasma rifles. The civies clutched the Tri-shots they had with trembling hands… ok no, the whole place was trembling.

And then they looked up at the mountain of zombies about to fall on them.

Where had those come from?

Himeko tried engaging her thrusters to get away until a blue flash crashed into the mountain, shattering it, before landing in front of her.

"The sole Hero of Ju-Ju-Ju-Justice! Rocking Hopper! Kamen Rider will fight to protect Humanity. Type-1"

"Flashy as always, eh? Yinsen." Himeko grinned behind her helmet at the blue clad Rider.

"Believe me, most of the times its not intended. Is everyone ok?" The man turned to them and soon the other Operatives landed around him. He had that golden spear from Nagazora and his ridiculous gun. A bit of scan to their surroundings and he came closer to them.
"Soreo took some hits, but he's fine. Those care packages are something else, eh?" Himeko turned to check on the civvies. Yinsen followed her gaze and then froze.

"Hua? Carole?" He asked, stunned. The two civvies had their eyes wide and barely reacted to being called out, but they focused on the man. There was an awkward stare down, but Yinsen shook his head and then made the call. "Deal with it later. Himeko, we're pulling out." He grabbed her hand, now free of auto shotgun. "The enemy was ready for us, hid something big beneath the city. Come on, another pelican is coming."

…

…
We managed to boost jump into the next pelican as it passed, clearing the area as another TSF flight strafed the streets we were just at. As expected, a lot of Archer Protolegions had been aiming at us, ready to bring more birds down. Locating them was getting harder as they began firing from masses of the other zombies in order to hide their prominent deformities.

Seeing Fu Hua and Carole… somehow, drove the point harder that yes, I was in this universe, and yes… I could still do something. I didn't remember all the details of Hua getting recruited, but I remember she already was alone when the PE Himeko found her.

My actions have already changed something, as the PE version of Carole sat next to her, clutching her like a lifeline. Knowing how violent an outbreak can be, and despite having the peak of human fitness, I knew they must be wiped from the experience. I didn't know how long they had survived for, but… damn, aren't these girls hardcore.

I smiled at them from behind my helmet. Good, we can still do something right. "Yinsen to all Battleships, Evac complete, begin shelling, prioritize areas around the light pillars, fire for effect."

As the booms of railgun shells hitting their targets began, a roar shook the city.

…

They had burrowed deep, deep below the human's stone towers, preparing themselves. The moment they felt the enemy, they allowed itself to come out. To challenge the great destroyer and its ilk.

And soon they felt its heretical, twisted imitation of divine might, they allowed themselves to grow angry. Soon, they would purge the apostate from God's Garden.

The Metal Devils were here.

…

Our Pelican landed last, and we quickly Disembarked. The carriers were retreating with what few survivors we managed to rescue, as the Honkai's latest creation revealed itself.

For a moment, my stomach dropped at the thought of having to fight Motherfucking REAPERs, but then I saw a bit clearer and noticed the drill tips and the fact they weren't' flying. My stomach remained where it had fallen. Oh, fuck. When had this world developed the Faro Plague? Ok, no, how the fuck the Honkai know about it? I put questions for later. Right now, I had to make sure Hua survived at all costs. I broadcasted. "All units, new enemy designation: Metal Devil Horus, Danger Rating: S-Class! All units concentrate fire!"

Spoiler: Metal Devil Horus

The Metal Devils were about half the size I remembered seeing their promo arts, which was saying it was still as tall as a small mountain. Their tentacles shot outwards, striking some of my fliers, to which the rest of them answered with heavy firepower.

Naki's image appeared in my screen. "Father! Massive Honkai Energy spike!"

I pulled out the Evatech Zetsumerisekey. "I know! I see them!"

"No! not the Devils! Behind them! Behind!" her panic made me notice… oh fuck.

A shadow slid below us, just beneath the water, just the same as it spread in land, and for an instant, I swear I could see stars on it, winking with malice at us.

Then we fell.