Chapter 115: Designs
Summary: Design frenzy...
Warning! Chapters 114-117 were all added back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!
Chapter 115: Designs
Kyoka stopped dead and blinked as she took in the scene in her girlfriends' main lab/workshop area. While both of them had smaller, individual 'workshops' for personal projects, the biggest part of the building they all lived in housed a combined workspace with a lot of their heavier equipment. A workspace that was now covered, practically wall to wall, in something that looked halfway between a mad scientist's ravings and a serial-killer-tracking corkboard.
That workspace was something like 40 meters by 20 meters. Which made the fact that virtually all of the wall space, whatever wasn't occupied by equipment at least, was covered in notes and designs very disconcerting. Heck, even some of the equipment was covered in sticky notes and actual string that was connecting ideas from different parts of the room together. A couple of those pieces of equipment with suitable flat surfaces even had calculations and schematics simply written directly on them.
She grew more and more concerned as she looked from one set of designs to another, noting that some were labeled in sane and logical terms while others were…not. 'Zero-G Nano Scale Assembler' sounded on the more sane end, even if Kyoka didn't have a clue what it was. A huge section of one wall that was labeled BIG STOMPY ROBOTS in a haphazard hand, with notations like 'Zappy Rifle' and 'Less Zappy More Boom Cannon' was considerably less encouraging for anyone concerned about what they were seeing.
Which currently included her. Also herself. Possibly also someone named Irene too, if she could find someone suitably named and showed it to them.
Kyoka had left Momo and Izumi for three days after their visit to UA. She'd wanted to spend some time with her parents before classes started up again, and with the better part of two weeks of mandatory break before said classes restarted, she'd figured a few days back home would be fine. Now, she was growing concerned that maybe she should have stayed with her girlfriends, to make sure they did important things like eat, sleep, and not go completely insane and possibly plot world domination. It would really suck if her nemesis villains as a pro-hero ended up being her lovers because they'd gone, as she'd once hear a Brit say, completely 'round the twist.' She wasn't quite clear on exactly what that idiom meant, but she had a disturbing certainty that it was meant for moments like this.
Hesitantly, she focused on her Quirk. Normally, day-to-day, she filtered out a lot of background noise. Right now, she mentally stopped filtering out 'heartbeats' and quickly found two that…sounded like they were sleeping? Moving with uncertain steps around the floor, which was just as cluttered as the rest of the space, she picked her way carefully around all the debris and half-finished things of mysterious nature. Rounding one larger piece of machinery she was quite certain hadn't been there before, she finally spotted Momo and Izumi...and snorted at what she saw.
Apparently, after whatever insane inventing frenzy they'd worked themselves up to had ended, they'd crashed. Almost literally. A malformed twin bed that had to be the result of a very sleepy Momo using Creation was squeezed in among all the papers, with both of her girlfriends fast asleep curled neatly into each other on it. Given how little both of them needed sleep for physical reasons, she could only assume that they'd hit a mental wall and just…stopped. Which, given the state of the workspace, had probably only happened after they went a little loopy.
Though she did have to admit that the giant drawing of the 'Big Stompy Robot' looked pretty badass. If she was reading the scale right, the thing was near enough to 9-meters tall, and heavily armed enough looking that the JSDF would be drooling. Though she was pretty sure the only way they could deploy them would be through the Greater Gates.
Maybe that was the idea?
Shaking her head, Kyoka started gathering up the remains of several takeout meals and lots of entirely-too-fancy teacups she was certain Momo had been making randomly. She'd let her two brilliant idiots sleep for now, but she was going to smack both of them when they woke up and demand they take better care of themselves. If they wanted her to be a maid, it better be the sexy kind, not the actually-cleans-things kind! Hmmm, actually, Momo in a maid outfit was a good memory. She'd looked both hot as fuck and somehow adorable too. Really, it was super unfair how the taller, bustier girl could somehow pull that off…
... ...
After a frankly rather embarrassing lecture from their lover, Momo and Izumi were looking over the many partial designs they'd worked on over the last three days. They hadn't wanted to admit it, but the 5-hours they'd been out just before and after Kyoka got back had been the first time they'd slept since she'd left. They'd gotten rather…involved…in figuring out which plans were the best long-term ideas. Earth currently had a whole host of problems, from security of their logistics pipeline to needing better and more mobile weapons to take the fight to the enemy.
"So, we're both agreed than that the space-based logistics framework is the most logical solution?"
Momo asked the question, and Izumi was nodding before she even finished. She verbally added a bit more a moment later.
"There will need to be some shorter-term patches. But, frankly, there are other people who can handle those. Realistically, we're the only ones that can get an orbital infrastructure up and running quickly enough to matter, mostly by abusing the fuck out of One for All's ability to fuel Creation."
A significant amount of their first day had been spent working out how to do that safely in a vacuum, going through a half dozen ideas before they'd found one they thought was workable. Momo's armor was keyed to her in such a way that it could transfer her Quirk through it…but it wasn't vacuum safe. Nor had their attempts to make it so gone anywhere. The method they'd use was considerably more finicky than mere DNA coding, and didn't play nice with important details like radiation protection. Instead, they'd needed to design a sort of shield bubble that would allow objects to pass through it one way without breaking. If Izumi hadn't gotten the chance to study the Empire's shields from the Greater Gate they'd recovered, she wasn't sure they would have found a solution even that 'easily.'
Easy wasn't at all a good description, in truth. Which didn't even cover the larger problems. Something which was reflected in Momo's next statement.
"That can be the major focus of the UA Think-Tank, then. We'll need the wide-ranging expertise to build a space-based manufacturing complex. Not to mention to make it people-safe and maintainable, since at least some actual workers are going to have to be up there."
It was 2B that interjected this time, a recently-built second copy of her adult body present. She'd been working with them through most of the brainstorming, but had shifted to finishing up work on creating the second combat platform using Izumi's private workshop by the time Kyoka had returned.
"I believe the blueprints for the Bunker will be of some help, though we remain short of the ability to fully replicate it."
Like the one she used to guard Inko, her current body had perhaps 70 percent her YoRHa combat chassis ability and had required Momo's Quirk to make the more important parts. It also represented the reason they couldn't fully reproduce the Bunker. Despite how good Momo had gotten with Creation, the level of sheer precision needed to bridge the remaining 30 percent of 2B's designed performance remained out of reach. YoRHa had worked at nanometer-level precision in order to make combat platforms for their agents, and Momo just couldn't manage that. She could get accurate to the micrometer, which was impressive as heck, but not quite enough to eek out the full potential of the late generation YoRHa frames. Worse, YoRHa's own tools for reaching such levels of precision had required a zero-gravity environment. So it was a bit of a catch-22.
The Bunker was somewhat older than latest-generation, thankfully. Meaning it wasn't a true catch-22. But even the Bunker was still a little beyond their current ability to reproduce, and honestly not entirely suited to their needs anyway. While impressive, it hadn't been scaled for mass production of anything. Nor had it been built with human habitation in mind. While the Androids were pretty darn close to human in a great many critical respects, they didn't actually need things like properly oxygenated air and bathrooms. Which meant that, while they could learn a lot from the Bunker's blueprints, it would only be usable as a jumping off point for a more suitable design.
Izumi stirred from staring at where they'd collected the various space-related ideas, once they'd woken up and sat through an embarrassing lecture on self-care from Kyoka. Shifting her focus, she suppressed a blush of embarrassment at the heading 'BIG STOMPY ROBOTS' that remained on one wall. She'd apparently felt strongly enough to write that one in permanent marker. Coughing gently, she pointed to the section of other notes they'd arranged in front of that wall, since they couldn't move the primary schematic.
"Despite our loopiness by the time we finished with the Power Armor and Mech designs, I think they hold the greatest promise for the war front. There are power issues to crack, but we've got solid ideas there based on the QE batteries and the way the Empire uses QE as their own fuel. The mech designs might not be the way to go immediately. But something like a more refined version of Sato's power armor, turned into a more military-oriented frame, would be a fantastic force-multiplier for the JSDF and other militaries. Once the Harvest Stone team cracks opening our own Gates, too, the Mech designs could be important. We're going to be horribly outnumbered on the other side, when it comes to Elites. The Mechs can fix that."
Both Izumi and 2B nodded. Even the Guilds were mostly a defensive operation, and Heroics and the Guilds were going to tie up most of the world's trained heavy combat-quirks. Combat oriented Quirks were not the norm in the world. Maybe one in every twenty people had a Quirk that could be turned toward combat in some fashion. But most of the time it would still only be a support-level power. Something useful, but not combat-style defining.
People like Midnight or Ragdoll were a good example of that sort of thing among Pro Heroes. Their Quirks did have combat applications, but could only really support a fighting style, not act as their main solution to every problem. True 'Combat Quirks' like Izumi's or Katsuki's, were far rarer. Perhaps one in a hundred people had something that could be turned into one. Perhaps one in five hundred also had the body and mind to actually do so. There were reasons not everyone became a Hero.
Those statistics were one of the reasons that militaries didn't heavily use Quirks. There were also a few international treaties that had come out of the Quirk Wars, though such mostly revolved around use of Quirks as WMDs or for assassination purposes. Far more importantly, of course, was the fact that it was virtually impossible to organize Quirk usage into proper military doctrine. Every squad you trained to use Quirks had to be trained as a dedicated squad, with tactics built just for their specific combination. All on top of needing all the traditional military training with weapons, vehicles, regulations, etc. Outside special forces, it just wasn't really viable most of the time, and most of those who had Quirks that could have been used for special forces ended up getting drawn into the Heroics sphere instead.
Which is why guns, tanks, and artillery were still the weapons of choice for organized militaries in an era of superpowers. Most Quirks didn't make you bulletproof anyway, and even fewer make you tank or cruise missile proof. Villains rarely managed to rule more than the smallest and most third world of nations, since most of the time they could just be shot with an anti-material rifle from a kilometer away before things got that far out of hand. Heck, not even All for One had avoided that fate, for all his reputation. Even if it had taken him being drastically weakened and distracted, he's still died to a sniper in the end, not a Hero.
That meant that it was the regular soldier that needed an upgrade. Guns, sadly, didn't work against entirely too many of the Empire's stronger monsters. Well, not man-portable guns, at least. So the weapons they could put in the hands of regular people, even if the new weapons required new training, were the weapons that were needed to actually win the war in the end. A few thousand Heroes, working in Guilds, could contain the invaders from getting through into new beachheads. But taking the Empire on, or for that matter…
"Actually, we might need the Mechs sooner. The situation in Africa is the next-best-thing to uncontained. If the militaries don't get on top of that and push the invasion there back to the Gates…"
Momo and 2B both grimaced. Then all three of them began trying to rearrange their invention priorities. Again. So many things to do before they could get on top of this all, and entirely too few hands to do it with!