"I don't quite follow, Dr Tesla."
"How the hell am I reading an ambient 100 Honkai Watts output?"
Mei sheathed the 3rd Divine Relic behind her back and folded her arms.
"I'm no long a Herrscher, Doctor."
"That chest wound was all the proof I need. Never thought I'd see what it looks like when someone physically tears a Core straight from person's still living body."
"Ask Wendy. That was AE's doing."
Tesla looked up from her gauntlet display. The room the two stood in had a faint background hum that matched the engines of the Helios transport vessel. The craft was currently somewhere over the mid-Pacific. They would arrive at AE headquarters in the USA in the next few hours. The two had taken the time to conduct further tests. Presently the pair stood in a room several metres across, walls and floor bare unburnished steel. The space was unadorned except for the small projectors built into the ceiling corners.
Mei had first raised the idea. The Striker Fulminata battlesuit Tesla had designed for her still needed fine tuning and tweaking. To that end the two former enemies were now testing the combat capabilities of the battlesuit against simulated Honkai beasts.
"Cocolia's plans and mine aren't the same. She did that because she could. The same as me saying you're onside with Otto since you're both Schicksal."
Mei signed slowly.
"Sorry."
"Pff, I don't need apologies. Just focus on what's in front of you."
A Radical level Honkai beast, classification Cassiel, shimmered into being. The vaguely avian entity reared back as though readying to charge before rapidly dashing through the air toward Mei. The Honkai beasts split in two, equal halves falling toward the floor before collapsing into holographic fragments. In one clean stroke the Valkyrja had drawn her blade and cut the creature in two.
"Iajutsu, very impressive," Tesla muttered absently.
Sliding the blade back into its scabbard, Mei walked over to the doctor and tried to see what she was looking at. Tesla's gauntlet projected a small holographic image for review. Mei's body moved in slow motion, arms tensing before her hand circled about the hilt, drawing the katana smoothly. In the recording, Mei's eyes never left the holographic opponent. Minor readouts and graphics scrolled along either side of the movie. Tesla continued her mutterings.
"You're just casually ignoring the Critical Flicker Fusion of an average human. It's too quick for the amygdala to spike an adrenaline surge. Couple that with the increase in ambient HW."
"What's wrong, Doctor?"
"Mophead got that one wrong!" Tesla crowed with a joyous fist-pump.
Tesla embraced the Valkyrja, chuckling loudly and squeezing her tightly.
"That's one for the great Tesla!"
Carefully disentangling herself, Mei took a step back and folded her arms.
"You need to explain what's going one, Dr Tesla."
"You're no longer a Herrscher. But long after the flash of lightning the peal of thunder continues. This proves it. The absence of a core won't rob a Herrscher of all its changes. They could even survive. We'll have to review the Sirin data from the Second Eruption. I knew that bastard was hiding something with all those nukes."
"Please, Dr Tesla, I cannot keep up with whatever you are talking about."
Tesla coughed and regained some of her composure.
"The Striker Fulminata battlesuit I've been working on for the past few months is predicated a simple premise. Though you no longer possess the Domination of Thunder its changes are still evident. You 'see' more that other people do. Your retina can actively detect 99 / 100 individual photons. Your brain's ability to process information in all its sensory forms is both faster and more accurate than even a fighter-pilot. Your reaction time to any external stimulus is unnatural. This battlesuit is designed to take advantage of that inhuman sensory abilities and reaction speeds."
"So I'm just a bit faster than everyone else."
"That's not it. Not it at all. You see I initially designed this battlesuit to help conserve and store any EM energy you might generate through physical motion. You then expend that energy to briefly increase your kinetic speed for tactical mobility and offence. Or at least that was what I initially thought. Now with this testing I've begun to see that the chicken and the egg are different."
"I'm still lost, Dr Tesla."
The Anti-Entropy scientist walked over to and leant her back against the steel wall of the room. She tapped out some further commands on her gauntlet and nodded to herself.
"I designed the suit to be powered by the EM power generated by your motions in combat. Your combat performance however is much greater than I modelled."
"You doubted yourself?"
"If I'm going to point out that Mophead was wrong I need the data to back it up!"
"Oh"
[That's some inferiority complex]
Tesla cleared her throat.
"This testing shows that your heightened performance is internal in nature. Your body has changed over the time it held the Gem of Lightning. Anything related to the flow of charged particles within your body experiences a modest improvement in the all models I've created."
Tesla finished whatever she was typing into her gauntlet. With a casual flick of her hand a new hologram was summoned. It looked like a silhouette of Mei, with blobs and bands of colour similar to how someone might see the heat spectrum of a body. The imagery however did not match any thermal images Mei had seen. Instead the banding was diffuse throughout her body. There was a slightly brighter patch where her heart was. Her head was a similar shimmering glow.
"A spectral extrapolation of the Honkai energy within your body. Notice the small flows light. They near perfectly mirror your nervous system."
Mei walked toward the hologram. It confirmed a cold certainty. For the past four months of recovery Mei had been doing her best to move beyond what had happened at Schicksal HQ. She wasn't the same person. She could never be the same person. Yet the image confirmed something that didn't seem possible."
"I'm still able to generate Honkai energy," Mei whispered.
"In very small amounts. You are highly resistant to Honkai energy due to the implantation of the Gem of Lightning and the time it was inside of you. That's why it wasn't noticed sooner. Only during those moments when you activate the full suite of abilities built into the battlesuit does it become detectable. Naming that temporary power-boost mode Takemikazuchi was very appropriate."
The doctor didn't have a chance to blink. The tip of the katana slammed into the wall beside her head. A single errant strand of fiery red hair was cut. Tesla checked her glasses with one hand. The blade was perfectly sandwiched against the right frame. She quickly tapped some more observations into her gauntlet.
"You're getting faster each day," Tesla said with an unruffled shrug.
"I was hoping you might at least a little scared."
"Fear isn't my style. Besides you're far too fascinating to be afraid of. Not a Herrscher, not a pseudo-Herrscher, not a victim of a Honkai cascade. But still you've got a tangible ability to generate and wield Honkai energy. Granted it is quite small. With practice and time that might change."
Mei tugged the blade out from the wall and sheathed it. There was no point checking if the Divine Relic was blunted. Tesla could have detonated a nuclear weapon aboard the Helios and blade would have been the singular immaculate survivor. As she stepped back a thread of pain winnowed through Mei's stomach. Tesla noticed the wince.
"Enough testing for one day. Unlike Schrodinger I don't want to kill my test subject."
"If you say so, Doctor."
Mei left the AE scientist to whatever new data she was now examining. Leaving the room she carefully navigated the corridors of the transport vessel. The Helios was lightly staffed, only a handful of pilots, maintenance and general crew to man all the critical posts. They were all Anti Entropy, accents broadly American and reflecting the seat of power for the enemies of Schicksal.
'Only a few decades ago and they were all Schicksal. Now they fight against them. Just like we of the Hyperion and the Schicksal Far East Branch.'
Swiping her access card against the reader, Mei waited for the door to swish open before stepping in and locking the door behind. She wasn't in the mood for company today. Her room was simple and functional. Bed, chest of drawers, display screen mounted on one wall. A small ensuite was attached to the room for private use. Rubbing sore eyes, Mei set her blade to one side and began to slowly strip. It had been a long day of testing and she was now sore all over. The idea of a shower and then some further reading on what scant information they had managed to dig up on Kiana seemed appropriate.
'I was caught off guard once. That won't become another mistake.'