Chapter 108: Slam the Gate

Summary: Planning for a new assault.

Warning! Chapters 107 & 108 were posted together, make sure you don't miss 107!

Chapter 108: Slam the Gate

There was a rush of nervous energy in the room as Izumi and Momo took their own seats among the strategic commanders and technical experts in attendance. For once, Izumi wouldn't be the primary expert talking, thankfully. But the powers that be still wanted her on hand for this meeting, and Momo had refused to let her come alone. Given that Momo was also slated to take part in the operation this conference was prep for, it had been deemed acceptable to include her. Doubly so since the Yaoyorozu Group was also involved in manufacturing the special munitions that were one of the points that needed to be addressed in the upcoming high-level briefing.

It had been almost two months since the League of Villains had been shut down, with what should have been the end of Izumi and Momo's first year of UA University rapidly coming to an end. UA's regular classes had actually resumed at this point, though the Heroics classes were all still effectively in shutdown. Mostly, of course, that was because both the teachers and students that should have been filling that course were still involved in combat operations. Either as part of Clean Slate, in various defenses against the Gates or Rift Bubbles, or filling in as part of more normal patrols as more and more of city life began to resume out of simple need.

Crime hadn't stopped just because of a global emergency. Indeed, the desperation of many civilians pulled from their homes had caused per capita crime to increase, not decrease. A lot of semi-retired heroes that weren't suited for the front lines, or heroic students that had at least provisional licenses and hadn't reacted well to constant combat, were being pressed into service alongside newly formed militias. Together with the regular police, they were mostly managing to keep a lid on the more violent sorts of crime as more and more RADS arrays allowed big cities like Tokyo to reopen district-by-district for regular business.

Well, semi-regular business, at least.

There were still a painfully large number of stop-gap solutions and workarounds in place. Every plant manipulation Quirk that could be found had been all but press-ganged into helping build massive vertical hydroponic farms inside the cites. With the goal of helping slow down the rate emergency food stockpiles were depleting. Just as one example of things not being exactly back to normal yet. Things like luxury food items weren't exactly back on the menu, and a huge chunk of the manufacturing industry was either still unsafe to reopen or now tied up in making war material. Which meant the jPhone 23x wasn't exactly on the market, and there was a growing demand for repair rather than replacement in areas like consumer electronics.

That said, the powers that be were trying to get as much infrastructure working again as possible. Deliberately opening by all sorts of entertainment venues, encouraging many of the pop-up options that had sprung up post-invasion to become permanent, and so on. Meanwhile, military recruitment, militia development, as well as whole new sectors of jobs revolving around industries practically created by the Invasion, were all taking up a lot of slack for those rendered jobless by the current circumstances.

There were people being trained to do things like process loot from invaders, such as partial Harvest Stones or the Ritual Weapons used for Rift opening. Not to mention some rendering of various monsters. Numerous science teams Izumi wasn't involved with and didn't want to be involved with because ew, were discovering that certain parts of monsters were useful. Particularly those bits that had been infused with certain types of QE. So far, not even Izumi had cracked how exactly to repeat what the enemy did in creating Quirk-like abilities as grafted on bits of monsters. Almost like biological cybernetics that gave various monsters extra abilities. The scientists had worked out how to render many of those bits down into useful form. They were jokingly being called portioners and alchemists. Though there was a little bit too much truth to the jokes, if one were being completely honest.

Back on the point of their current meeting, however, operation Clean Slate had been a resounding success. Villains had been routed from playing warlord almost everywhere, with the lone exception for Japan being the Meta Liberation Army. With their 'internal' targets reduced from many to just one, it was time to take on that last major issue, so that they could put their focus where it properly belonged and fight against the bigger threat to mankind. Of course, in order to do that…

"Good afternoon, everyone! It seems all of our guests for the day are all either physically present, or connected with us remotely, so I'll get this meeting started."

Despite UA being the host location for this meeting, it wasn't Nedzu heading it this time. Instead, it was a representative of the now much larger Taskforce Counter. Counter, now more a full-blown independent organization than a taskforce, had grown into the primary strategic operations planning group against the Empire of Kurrick's invasion. While they didn't control any single force directly, they acted as the neutral group organizing the collective response of humanity against their invaders, with the vast majority of individual actors working with them.

Even in those places where warlords, cartels or other criminal actors were effectively running their regions now, those groups were mostly working with Counter on the larger picture. It was part of why said criminals were being tolerated. If they played ball and kept their Greater Gates under control, it was fine. If they didn't, then Counter and the World Heroes Association did their best to smash them and take over containing those Gates. The world didn't need any more major footholds for the enemy like what currently existed in Africa.

"As all of you should already be aware, if you're taking part in this meeting, Counter has been working on a next-phase plan to deal another blow against our enemy. Specifically, we have a major international operation in mind that promises to let us close as many as two dozen Greater Gates all at once. Doing so will, of course, allow us to free up the forces maintaining the containment around those Greater Gates. With our longer-term focus here being on reorganizing at least half of those freed up forces into an offensive unit that will take the fight to the enemy."

There were nods all around and mostly murmurs of approval. The idea of taking the offensive was tempting, but quite a lot of arguing was still being done on how much force should be dedicated to doing so. Even among the world's best military leaders, there were some who argued for focusing on systematically closing every Greater Gate before contemplating serious offensive operations. Meanwhile, more aggressive firebrands thought that they should concentrate everything they could on an offensive push in an attempt to force the enemy into fighting mostly on Ziltmach, instead of on Earth. They argued that, pushed hard enough, the Empire would have to abandon control of those Gates on their own.

A lot of back and forth had happened behind closed doors to settle on a response and, as with most compromise solutions, there were plenty of people on both sides of the argument that weren't happy with the final result. Personally, Izumi thought the resulting balance that had been struck was a solid start, given how little they still knew about the Empire's forces and territory. More importantly, 2B thought the same, and 2B had the combined tactical and strategic data from fourteen world-scale wars against alien invaders that had been fought on her Earth. The information was fragmentary about earlier wars, which was a shame given those were the ones with the closest parallels to their current situation, but it was still a better strategic body of data than virtually anyone else had. She'd written all of the better bits of that strategic and tactical data up into 'scenarios' for dissemination. But they couldn't exactly prove it was all real, so that was the best she could do.

"All of our plans in this matter hinge on a newly developed weapon. As such, I'm going to turn this meeting over to a member of the think tank that created it, to give us a short briefing before we get down to the nuts and bolts of the actual operations we're planning."

Izumi really felt for the weedy looking fellow who, at the Counter representative's hand signal, moved up on the stage and replaced him at the speaker's podium. The man looked like he was sweating bullets at all the eyes on him. Izumi, having been in his position several times entirely too recently, wished the poor bastard luck. He didn't even have her advantage of being able to turn off her ability to sweat as an aid to hiding nerves...

"U-m. Right. A-Afternoon, everyone…"

Izumi winced at the man stuttered. Thankfully, after closing his eyes for a moment and taking a deep breath, the man inserted a data drive into the podium's systems and keyed up a file. A still frame of a missile was splashed onto the main projector a second later. When he spoke up again, it was in a stronger voice. Not exactly confident, but better.

"Sorry, I'm a designer, not a presenter, but I'll do my best with this. I'm sure all of you already know the basics. Displayed on the main screen is the Achillies Mark I. In simplest terms, this is a missile with a modular mounting system, suitable for the widest variety of launchers we could manage, and equipped with a QE Penetrator. A variation on some of Miss Midoriya Izumi's work," he paused to nod Izumi's way, "that is intended to allow the missile to precisely match the shield frequency of the protective screen around Greater Gates. This, combined with a modification of ritual artifacts that the enemy uses to open Rifts, should allow the Achillies to pass through their shields."

Nods went around the room again at this. So much, most of those present had already known. Only a few of the aides here and there, on viewscreens or physically present, looked surprised. Thankfully, no one interrupted, either. These were not civilian politicos, they were veteran military commanders or Heroes, here for a briefing. They wisely let the man speak, rather than blowing useless hot air or slowing things down with inane questions.

"Obviously, we can't give a 100% guarantee of success until they are used. But by the best models we can come up with, we expect that 3 out of every 5 missiles should succeed in penetrating the projective screens around the Greater Gates they target. The issue, of course, is that every missile requires some material salvaged from the enemy. This means we have a limited production capability. Likewise, the amount of space that the targeting hardware and shield penetration systems take, means that the missiles don't have a particularly potent payload."

The man finally triggered a new slide, splitting the main screen between a technical description of the missile and its payload, and a listing of specific Greater Gates.

"In total, we've been able to manufacture only 237 of these missiles. As payloads are not high enough to expect anything but lucky kills on the Elite units at each gate, those payloads have been configured to use cluster munitions to clear away everything but the Elites at each of the targeted gates. Unfortunately, due to the nature of how the shields work, we fully expect this tactic to only work once. We can see numerous ways to adjust a shield to stop it from working again, and have to expect our enemy knows their own hardware even better than us."

Another slide, this one showing each of the Greater Gates with a number next to it, along with unit designations for military and Hero deployment. Twenty-one of the Gates had the number 10 next to them, with three having a 9 instead.

"In order to clear away the majority of the opposition, all in a coordinated, single strike, we've recommended designating 10 missiles to each Greater Gate. Due to the imperfect numbers we have, we can't quite manage that with a full two dozen Gates. Which means three Gates will have only 9 missiles. We've selected those gates to be ones which have the highest odds of success without the extra missile."

Japan's Yokohama Greater Gate was one of those with a nine, instead of a ten. Izumi couldn't find any grounds for protests about that. All Might himself was in charge of that Gate, and she and Momo would both be attending the assault there. With three heavy hitters of that caliber, it was hard to argue that they didn't have a better chance than many other Gates on the list. The other two Gates that had nines, instead of tens, were both in the United States. One of them would have Star and Stripe along with other heavy hitters. The other would have the sort of military presence that only the United States could muster into a single place under the current conditions. The overwhelming firepower would hopefully make up for any slack there.

"For any questions about the targets chosen or the tactics beyond the initial missile strike, you'll need to refer to others who speak after me. I am here only to answer any remaining technical questions. As such, I am opening the floor for those questions now. Please use your signal buttons for attention."

Izumi did so immediately, and the poor man look outright relieved when he spotted her name. She tossed a fairly basic question his way that she knew would be on many minds, letting him field it first, even if she already knew the answer. Then, she leaned back as others began asking him increasingly detailed questions about payloads, delivery systems, flight time limitations, and more. She settled in, knowing she'd likely be called upon for some technical expertise eventually, as she was still one of the foremost experts on QE available. For now she was more than content to let the designer field as many of the questions as he could…

... ...

-Extremely Mild Lime-

Izumi leaned back in the jacuzzi that they'd added to their safehouse-cum-workshop. Before, when they hadn't been living here full time, they'd kept the entire place rather low key and basic. After all, if they'd wanted virtually any sort of luxury, the Yaoyorozu estate already had it. Given that they'd split the majority of their nights between said mansion and the Midoriya penthouse, which had a decent level of luxury all its own, there hadn't been a lot of point in tricking out their little private hideaway. Had things gone more normally after joining UA, they might have taken the time to spruce it up, as both of them had been looking forward to being out on their own at least a bit more.

Things at UA hadn't exactly turned out to give them a lot of free time.

Then, of course, the Invasion had killed the concept of free time even deader.

Thankfully, the last few months had seen enough slack picked up by enough other groups and individuals that she and both of her girlfriends had gotten back to the point that they had at least one day a week that wasn't work-oriented. It had taken some time, and a heavy dose of forceful advice from both her mother and her therapist, but Izumi had even managed to mostly step away from work on those days. She was still very bad at doing absolutely nothing 'work' related on off days, but she was getting there. Between having two girlfriends as amazing distractions and choosing to work on a few fun projects that were still useful, she'd managed to find something vaguely approaching a healthy work-life balance.

Well, as healthy as anyone involved in Heroics had, these days.

Some of that time had been spent over the last two months in finally revamping their workshop/apartment. Too many people knew where it was, at this point, to really consider it a safehouse any longer. So they'd dispensed with that function and made some open modifications, expanding upward to add a half-floor above the previous loft. With their combined powers it was stupidly easy to manage, and the new addition had doubled their floor space. They'd expanded the bathing facilities to be far more luxurious, added dedicated extra furniture for Kyoka, who was now living with them, and generally just upgraded the whole place a couple of notches.

It was still well shy of decadent…except the bathing facilities that all three of them were currently enjoying. They hadn't held back on the luxury there, abusing the ever-living-fuck out of Creation in order to make the new jacuzzi and oversized shower both as good or better than anything at the Yaoyorozu residence. They'd specifically made it large enough to hold all three of them of course, and now it was their favorite place to just destress together.

Also, they were still working on breaking their new girlfriend of any body modesty with them, so it was just plain fun to drag her into the jacuzzi and plant her on one of their laps. Currently, the lap in question was Momo's, and she was idly massaging Kyoka's everything in a way that had the girl adorably blushing. It was surprising she still had it in her to blush after all they'd done together, but it was a cute feature, as far as they were concerned.

"Do you think it's actually going to work?"

Izumi cursed her own comment, even as it slipped past her lips. She knew how it had happened, despite their rule about 'no business' at dinner or in the baths. She'd relaxed too much. Ever since Nabu island, where 2B and she had merged more completely than ever before, both of them had a tendency to bleed into the other when they weren't paying attention. It was getting better. So long as at least one of them was paying attention, it was easy enough to separate their thoughts. 2B did so very carefully whenever more intimate moments were afoot, for example. She was much too much Izumi's older sister, to want that sort of involvement in her life and relationships.

The more they stayed separated, the easier it became to do so by reflex. But whenever 2B was fully engaged with something, as she was now with juggling dozens of operational details at a speed no one else on the planet could match, it was up to Izumi to maintain the seperation. She'd just flubbed that by relaxing too far, and 2B's stream of consciousness as she worked over the data had slipped into her own thought process. From a glance at Momo and Kyoka, they'd realized it, too. Though not without losing some of their relaxed demeanor.

"Crap. Sorry. I—"

Surprisingly, it was Kyoka who acted, pushing off her and Momo's side of the jacuzzi and floating over to hug Izumi. A hug Izumi melted into, even as she did her best to keep the thought streams separate. Kyoka smiled and pecked her on the lips, then spun to settle herself firmly in Izumi's lap as she had been in Momo's. Her voice was resigned-but-accepting as she spoke.

"Don't worry about it, Iz. I'm pretty sure it was on all of our minds despite the rules. I think this one is just one we can't dodge, no matter how nice the water is."

Momo sighed, being the one who had set the rules in the first place, but also nodded a moment later. She closed her eyes, leaning back into the jets massaging her as she spoke.

"Kyoka is right. I couldn't completely let the thoughts go either, so there's no point in avoiding it this time. As for the actual question…I think it'll work on at least some of the Gates. Moreover, I think with some of the new stuff we've come up with, I'm pretty sure we could have taken the Yokohama Gate even without the missiles. I think it's only a matter of 'how much will it cost,' instead of 'will it work.'"

There was quiet between all three of them for a moment as that thought settled on their souls. It was the real question, after all. They had worked on some new surprises for this battle, and they honestly had a stronger team than any of the other Gates probably did. Even if the missiles failed completely, they had a serious chance to put down their own Greater Gate. It would just be a lot bloodier if they had to do it that way.

"Well, look on the bright side. After this, we can finally shut down those MLA dickheads. Seriously, those assholes have been complicating the fuck out of everything."

Momo twitched at Kyoka's language, while Izumi grinned. The fact that the punk girl was far more liberal with her cursing than either Momo or Izumi made for amusing reactions from Momo. She'd been raised with refined everything to such a degree that she couldn't help instinctively reacting to 'uncouth language' any more than Kyoka could resist the innate body shyness that was still clinging to her psyche. Kyoka had figured that out, too, and proved to have enough of a mischievous streak to poke Momo's sensibilities on purpose.

Izumi's own lips twitched at the byplay, even as she sent a polite request to 2B to spend a bit of effort on keeping them separate for now. Her partner's reply felt exasperated, but she readily complied. As soon as Izumi was sure 2B had taken the steps needed, she let her hands move up from Kyoka's hips to her breasts. There, she grasped at a certain pair of piercings firmly, getting an 'eep' out of her girlfriend as her sensitive-nipples were tugged.

"Now, now. There are better things to do with that mouth than curse, pet. Things that will properly distract us all. Be a Good Girl and apologize to Mistress Momo for your language. I'll even help. You have the left, and I have the right, hmmm?"

Momo's eyes flew open as she felt the pair move. But it was much too late for her to avoid two descending pairs of lips. Not that she'd really wanted too…

-Extremely Mild Lime Ends-

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A/N: Yep, you're probably already expecting this bit. Once per release, I remind people that there is Early Access content available On My Page.  Note that NONE of my works are paywalled permanently. If you don't feel like supporting me, that's just fine, it will end up here eventually :-). If you DO feel like supporting me, currently chapters 109-113 are available over on , adding another 15,000ish words to the fic! As well as similar amount of early access content for my other fics. All for just a single dollar a month! I'm not trying to be super greedy here, just trying to support the writing time I need to maintain several ongoing fics ;-).