Chapter 118: The New Team

Summary:Getting a few balls rolling down hills...

Chapter 118: The New Team

Izumi couldn't help but shift nervously from foot to foot as their new…classmates? Experimental victims? Research fellows? Classmates would do, she supposed. She watched on as their new classmates and professors looked through the various ideas she and Momo had plastered all over the walls of the large lab they'd been given. Some of them looked intrigued, others merely overwhelmed, but no one had really said much about the overall collection yet.

Had they, just possibly, gone a little overboard?

She looked around the room at the sheer number of project ideas displayed on every wall and screen, suppressing a wince. Okay, yes, they probably had gone a little overboard. But, in their defense, part of the reason they'd invited everyone to meet in the lab for the first time, instead of a classroom, was to get feedback about project priorities. Izumi, Momo, and 2B had produced plenty of concepts, all of which would be helpful in some fashion. But they were admittedly not quite sure where to start. Not on the civilian side, at least. They had some solid reasoning on the military side and had begun to sketch more complete designs of a few bits and pieces whenever Kyoka would let them.

Finally, Power Loader moved away from where he'd been staring at plans for one of their more plebian but useful ideas. A QE powerplant that was just about the most crude-but-technically-workable way to use the stockpile of QE batteries everyone was unintentionally building up from using Siphons. Noticing her fellow professor moving Dr. Ishimura Aiko, the new overall head of this 'class/department,' quickly separated herself from studying a proposed space launch vehicle. 'Professor Aiko,' as she's already insisted on, was a rather stacked redhead that gave even Momo a run for her money in the looks department. Izumi hadn't ever realized a lab coat could look that sexy, and was already determined to see Momo in one as soon as possible.

Preferably, just a lab coat.

Was this the scientifically minded soul's equivalent of a Naked Apron?

Shaking off that thought before it caused any awkwardly timed reactions, Izumi focused on the pair of teachers as they met up and made their way over to her and Momo. Power Loader looked a bit dazed. Though she wasn't sure if that was due to everything he'd been going over, or because Professor Aiko's animated expression was upping her 'sexy scientist' factor by enough to stun anyone not already used to Momo. He did shake himself out of it as the pair came to a stop before them, which made Izumi think it might be more Professor Aiko than the plans. Fair, considering that he had to deal with Mei regularly, and that girl was nearly as prolific as Izumi and Momo…combined. Though her results were significantly less stable, as a side effect of her tendency to race ahead without proper simulations and testing.

"Well, you two. I have to say I'm impressed. Though I hope you know that there's no way we can work on all of this?"

Power Loader's voice was serious as he waved back at the room, where the various students were still flitting around from project draft to project draft. Momo, bless her for not making Izumi do it, quickly fielded the question with an explanation.

"Of course. That was why we invited everyone straight here, actually. Ideas, obviously, aren't our problem. Sorting out some sort of project priority very much is. In example, our own analysis tells us that the single largest impact we can have in the long-term will be the orbital infrastructure and deep space resource mining operations we've outlined. But is that the best place to start? Or would we be better off focusing on more immediate efforts at easing resource strain? Like the QE fueled powerplant design you were just studying."

Power Loader grimaced, nodding and looking thoughtful. It was Professor Aiko that spoke up next, however.

"Have you done your own analysis? Also, is there a reason all of the designs are non-military?"

Momo and Izumi glanced at each other for a moment, before Izumi sighed and fielded the latter question first.

"We're keeping the military projects contained to Aegis Inc and the Yaoyorozu Group's designers. We figured that the various world militaries would prefer not to spread the knowledge of how to make war-focused materials farther than necessary. As for the analysis…2B?"

2B, who's newly completed adult frame had been lingering nearby, turned toward the quartet and nodded. Pointing to the display next to Izumi and Momo, which had been showing a list and map of the projects that were displayed in the room, she took control of it and shifted it to show the rough plan they'd come up with. That she had come up with, more than Izumi and Momo. Logistics at this scale was hardly either of their specialties. It was thus that 2B spoke up to summarize her own findings.

"Focusing purely on the civilian side, I believe a hybrid approach to be the most efficient solution. Studying the refinement and use of QE in power plants will aid in lowering overall ambient QE levels, as well as relieving immediate infrastructure strain by allowing the replacement of difficult-to-defend power plants. At the same time, space-based operations will be the most time intensive but important development. Starting them now is critical to deploying them in a timely manner."

Power Loader and Professor Aiko were both studying the estimated timeline 2B had come up with, nodding and shaking their heads in various places. Power Loader spoke up fairly quickly, even as his eyes continued to scan the project list.

"It's efficient but flawed, as it doesn't take into account the talents and specializations of the people we have available. For example, no one at UA, aside from the three of you, has a good enough understanding of Quirk Energy to really help with the powerplant design. A few of the students could help you with the more mundane parts of it, but you'd spend a lot of time teaching just to make it work. It honestly might be better offloaded to I-island, since they can dump the manpower on it to finish it faster. Since it's an early-game need, leaving it to them while we focus on more long-term development is probably better."

Professor Aiko nodded, humming a vague agreement.

"You're also missing a few smaller, practical projects. We need something to get the ball rolling with, and I can see applications for a lot of these designs being relevant to the new Guild System. You've allotted time to projects for providing solutions for them, but haven't aggressively offered any out of the gate. One example would be the shield technology. You have a sketch that's better than anything I've seen so far on the subject, but it's all large-scale. Creating smaller iterations could help the Guild secure base camps when they are raiding Rift Bubbles. It's not like there's a lack of QE inside the Bubbles, of all places, so the relative inefficiency at that scale isn't all that important."

Izumi blinked at that idea, wondering why the hell she hadn't considered that. A shielded base camp would be much easier for raiding parties to defend, allowing them to take better logistics and support resources with them. Grimacing, she realized she'd unconsciously set aside the idea of the Guild a bit too thoroughly. She still needed to support them, and Dr. Ishimura was right, they hadn't thought very aggressively about what sort of things would be useful to the new UA Guild.

"Oh, I know that look. Don't be too hard on yourself, kiddo. This is amazing work, overall. You just need more perspectives. Which you now have! Let's see if we can't wrangle everyone together now that they've had a sneak peak and see what we can come up with…"

... ...

It had taken more than just that first day to sort things out, despite everyone in their new experiential course being more than willing to stay late attempting to hammer out the details. It had ultimately taken a total of three days to break down what to focus on first, along with who would work on each of the three projects they decided on. The first day had been all about narrowing down the projects. With the remaining to being dedicated to deciding on a practical split of manpower.

Absent any actual data on how well everyone worked together or the ability to truly estimate time scales for some of the projects, they'd ended up with a simple answer to the first part, at least. They would choose three relatively short duration goals, one each for supporting the UA Guild, short-term Civilian Infrastructure, and long-term Strategic Infrastructure. The results of people working together on those project would, hopefully, allow them to form up some solid basis for working together. As well as create a structure of how to split the learning process, or 'class time,' and the actual R and D work, or 'lab hours.'

The Guild project was going to be under Power Loader's direction, and everyone had agreed that the idea of base-camp shields were the right idea. At least for a starting project. Absent feedback from the Guild itself, which was still getting organized, offering up something which would aid in defense of a Raid Group's support and logistics personnel was a solid first choice. It was also something they felt that they could have ready for the Guild by the time it got fully organized and deployed against its first Rift Bubble. By the time they worked out the shield, the Guild would likely have a better idea what they needed, and could make requests. In the meantime, the group handling the Base Camp Shield, or BCS project, would also be getting into contact with the Guild to develop a working relationship with them.

Due to her extreme familiarity with manipulating QE, which outstripped even Izumi and Momo's due to her previous life working with Maso, 2B would be working with that group. Hatsume and one of the older Support Course students, Katou Kazuya, were also assigned. Alongside them were one each of their mechanical engineering, chemistry and Quirk studies students. The six-person group was the smallest, but would also benefit from Power Loader's dedicated oversight and the most complete starting design point. Their biggest issue would be needing to work out how to control and deploy the shield without electronics, since such couldn't be reliably carried into Rift Bubbles.

The Civilian Infrastructure project had seen a much greater degree of argument. Quite a few had argued for the QE generator project to take precedence, as it really would be a major aid to some looming infrastructure problems. Unfortunately, it was also potentially a very time-consuming project, as Power Loader had pointed out to Momo and Izumi. Which led to the argument that it wasn't a good starting point, and possibly not even a good choice for their group, period. There were, at least for the time being, other ways to handle the looming power crisis, and I-island might truly be the better developer for that project. Ultimately, the QE fueled powerplant/generator was worthy goal, but a poor choice to cut their teeth with while still attempting to figure out how to work together.

Instead, the group that had suggested focusing on a compact, efficient, and cheap sensor suite, one that could both detect QE levels and feed a civilian version of an HSN Scouter, had won the civilian infrastructure debate. There were massive, massive holes in the world-wide sensor net that could detect QE, as it had previously been a relatively niche need. More of the existing sensor designs that could detect QE were being made as fast as possible, but there was a serious conflict between making the current niche sensors that could manage that feat and making more RADS arrays. Current designs used a lot of the same parts and materials, since Izumi had needed to start somewhere.

The goal of the Civilian Infrastructure Group would be to design a much cheaper, mass manufacturable, sensor set that could do the same thing. One that wouldn't cross over much, if at all, with materials and components needed for RADS arrays and Siphons. They also hoped to make it portable enough to also include a Monster ID feature, much like the HSN was already doing with an update to its Villain Recognition software. Using as basic a sensor suite as possible that could still collect enough data to match monsters against the slowly accumulating world-wide database would aid greatly in being able to deploy the right people to the right places to make an efficient impact.

Combined with better QE sensor coverage in the same package, existing civilian infrastructure could be protected more seamlessly than was currently the case. Rifts popping up in areas with minimal detection ability, and not being noticed until they activated as Lesser Gates as a result, were still the number one cause of needing rapid deployment teams to rush in for containment. The fact that it was now occasionally happening with the far more dangerous Rift Bubbles, which could deliver a small army all at once when they fully 'broke' through the dimensional wall, only made the expanding coverage more immediately critical.

Izumi would be, much to her own annoyance, working on that team rather than the third team. The simple truth was that she was one of the world's foremost experts on sensor systems, particularly ones that involved QE in any fashion. Add in her having designed both the RADS arrays and the HSN systems for monster identification and putting her in charge of the group was just good sense. It, along with the third group, was being overseen by Professor Aiko. Izumi would have one of their two pure electrical engineering students, along with a dual engineering-comp science major, a physics major, and a chemistry major. Lastly, the remaining three support course students would also be with her for the task.

The last group was the one Izumi had wanted to get hands on with. They were working on refining the initial design for a Space Deployment Vehicle that Momo could use her Quirk from. The rough design Izumi, Momo, and 2B had sketched out was just that, rough. It needed a lot of refinement and then to actually be built and tested. It was, technically, one of the simplest but most critical pieces of their long-term, space-based infrastructure goals. Momo virtually had to be involved, since the entire project was specifically designed to let her use her Quirk to speed up their space development. Which meant she got to steal the march on the most 'fun' project…even if Izumi's was more immediately needed by the world as a whole.

It wasn't an accident that a solid cross selection of specialties was being included in Momo's team, either. She would have their other pure mechanical engineer, a computer science major, two aerospace engineering specialists, a physicist, an astro-physicist, the remaining electrical engineer, a biologist, a Quirk studies student, a structural engineer and a marine engineer. All seasoned with one dose of Uraraka, an important addition there for her Quirk to be thoroughly abused. A Quirk which had thankfully grown in power significantly during the Invasion. She was now able to maintain over 80 tons of lift for hours at a time, giving them a decent initial lift capacity. Though in the long-term they'd need better solutions.

With a total of thirteen students, plus the majority of Professor Aiko's attention, it was still a relatively small team for a project of such size. All of them were. Adding in the other fourteen from the other two teams combined, there were only twenty-seven of them in all, plus the two Professors. But these people hadn't been chosen out of a random drawing. They were some of the best of the best UA had, shuffled for compatibility and accounting for practical experience, coming together into a group made for agile development and rapid prototyping. Provided with the best lab facilities UA could acquire, and a budget that basically just said 'Yes.' At least, so long as they could produce results.

Hopefully, it would be enough to fully turn the tide in time and save the world…