Chapter 142: New Acquaintance

Warning! Chapters 140-145 were all posted back-to-back! Returning readers, make sure you pick up the story in the right place!

Chapter 142: New Acquaintance

“G'day, nice ta meet ya! Th’ name is Red Feather, and I’m the representative of the Outback Coalition, I am.”

Izumi and Momo were doing their very best not to stare, as the three-meter-tall Sulphur-Crested Cockatoo spoke in an accent that was really only heard in old movies from the pre-Quirk era these days. The Cockatoo did have patch of red feathers in amongst the white on his chest. Each of which was radiating considerably more heat to Izumi’s enhanced senses than they should have. Likely some manner of Quirk that went beyond just his intelligence. Momo, used to being diplomatic no matter how odd the situation was, managed to respond with barely a moment of hesitation.

“It’s nice to meet you as well, Red Feather. I take it you were the one to get out the call for help? Can I ask what the ‘Outback Coalition is?”

The cockatoo’s head-bob of acknowledgement was somewhere between surreal and adorable.

“Aye, that be me. As for the Coalition, we’re a group of those critters on the Isle that have enough intelligence to actually plan, you see? Started in the Outback, but represent most of the Isle now. There’s only a few hundred of us, really, but most of us can herd our less intelligent brethren along at least, and that helps us keep the conflicts down a bit. Well, with eve’yone but the Crocs, that is. They don’t play nice with others, no they don’t!”

So…apparently there were enough human-level-intelligent Quirked Animals that they’d…formed a government? Hopefully, they hadn’t developed bureaucracy already, or the world might truly have no hope. Such would truly be the darkest timeline. Pushing that thought aside, Izumi finally managed to speak.

“Um, we don’t know a whole lot about the situation just yet, could you fill us in a bit? We know that the invaders have opened Gates here and are trying to capture…your people?’

Red Feather did his little dancing bob again, making a slight clicking noise that she didn’t know how to interpret and seemed instinctive, before replying with actual words.

“Right. Well, that be the basics of it, really. The Coalition was able to hold them back, at first. But then they started bringing bigger beasties. Beasties only our strongest and the Crocs could push back. We can’t reckon how to close those Gate things, and the Crocs are the only ones that really know how to guard things. The rest of us usually roam too much for that sort of thing, and it’s biting our tailfeathers. We wander off te get food and the rascals pop in to attack one group or another, dragging some off.”

That made sense. Even if there were a few hundred ‘intelligent’ animals, Australia was a big place. It wasn’t like the animals, Quirked or not, were probably doing things like farming. Which meant that getting any one group of their less intelligent comrades to stay in place to guard something probably wasn’t easy. So even if the fauna here could and would kill the Empire soldiers, too many hunting teams would manage to slip through and grab targets.

“How long have they been doing this? Has it been months? Weeks?”

Momo’s question caused the giant bird to cock its head in an expression that somehow radiated a mix of confusion and concentration.

“Months? That’s the thing you two-legs call moon cycles, right?”

Momo and Izumi both nodded. Not because that was fully accurate, of course. But because they should have realized that the animals of ‘The Isle’ wouldn’t measure time based on a near-arbitrary calendar system. Measuring by cycles of the moon was honestly probably closer than they had any right to expect. Red Feather seemed pleased he was right, at any rate, and bobbed again.

“Right then, thought I’d remembered that one right! Let’s see, it would have been…two and a half moon cycles ago? The Gates were around a lot longer, of course, but there wasn’t much movement through them until then. They’d bring through some sort of crystal things and do some weird chanting, but they ran off quick when anyone challenged them for the territory. Then, things changed. They started hunting some of us, dragging whoever they could catch alive through that glowing hole of theirs. At first, they took enough losses we figured it was a fair trade. But then they figured our lesser kin out and started catching a lot more of us. More than they could possibly need to eat, ya know?”

Izumi scrunched her nose up at that. It was a little disconcerting to hear it put that way, but she supposed if both prey and predator were sometimes intelligent, then a very different dynamic would develop. Pragmatism likely meant this ‘Outback Coalition’ probably couldn’t just come to agreements not to hunt each others’ ‘normal’ members. Many of them were likely natural prey of others, with instincts to hunt or avoid each other. The rarer intelligent animals might be able to make deals, but they’d have to accept a certain amount of…well, the natural order. A few ‘lesser’ members of the species getting picked off likely wasn’t anything to be alarmed about. Just the circle of life, really.

Outsiders hunting their packs/herds/whatevers in large quantities and not for food, though? That had likely caused alarm bells, or whatever the animal equivalent was, to start ringing. The time between now and then was likely them making their own attempts to deal with it. They’d never reached out to invite humans onto ‘The Isle’ after all. Doing so must have been something of a last resort. Pushing past those thoughts, Izumi managed to focus down on a technical question of sorts.

“So do you want us to try closing the Gates ourselves? They might just open new ones. We could also make one or two areas immune to them opening the things there, but not the whole Isle.”

Red Feather made a little shake that somehow got across a negative response.

“No, no. Nothing like that. No offense, but we’d rather not have the humans here too long. No, we need to be able to close them ourselves. The Nedzu said ye had the tools for this, but that we’d need ta learn how to use them. I’ll take ye to The Meeting Place, and ye can show us how they work, yes?”

Izumi nodded. Siphons were actually one thing they genuinely had enough of, at this point, unlike RADS arrays. Many different groups were producing many local versions of the siphons worldwide at this point, and Forge 1 was producing some as well. She’d packed away a few dozen of the most robust designs in her inventory. Much to her chagrin, those weren’t actually her designs. Russo-Kazakhstan was where she’d copied the design from. That particular country was one that had grown during the Quirk Wars, having absorbed the parts of southern Russia that hadn’t suffered from the crazed Quirk user setting off so many of Russia’s nukes and intentionally spreading radiation across much of now-former Russia.

They’d also, notably, absorbed a huge chunk of the surviving Russian population, going from one of the least population dense countries on earth to somewhere in the middle of the list. With that mass migration had come a lot of Russia’s remaining engineering experts. Which, while not the best at making high-end anything, were really good at making incredibly robust technology at the lower end. Some of that expertise had built Russo-Kazakhstan into a minor industrial powerhouse whose products were well known the world over for being insanely durable and hard wearing.

Unsurprisingly, they’d taken Izumi’s original elegant designs and ruggedized the hell out of it. Short of her making a new set out of the advanced armors they were using on projects like the Shieldmaidens, which they hadn’t had time for, the foreign design was their best bet for the locals being able to handle them. Being as rugged as they were would prevent them from needing maintenance for a long time, and providing enough of them meant even a few getting damaged or lost wasn’t a critical failure point. Izumi had also grabbed a pair of power generator setups from the Shieldmaiden project queue. Those generators were insanely durable, and she’d quickly adapted them to run purely off of QE. Hopefully, they’d be able to keep the Siphons charged, as only Izumi’s versions of the Siphons had the ability to charge off of drained QE just yet, and only her latest iteration.

“Well then, Red feather, shall we be off? I can fly, and can easily carry Izumi, if that’s the best way to get to this meeting place?”

Red Feather made a cackling noise which, after a moment, they realized was a laugh.

“Flying will do for getting to shore! After that, it won’t be as safe. Some of the territory even I don’t want to fly through. But we’ll get there eventually!”

Not feeling all that reassured by that statement, they nevertheless followed as Red Feather took off, with Momo picking Izumi up to carry so her love wouldn’t need to waste power on a flight unit…

… … …

“Gah!”

Izumi hadn’t had the slightest bit of arachnophobia before she came to Australia, but as she was forced to backhand yet another Spider of Unusual Size, the gore from it splattering her in the process, she was fairly sure she might leave with some. The stupid things, despite being a good meter tall, were very good as hiding, to the point that even Izumi and Momo’s sensors barely gave them any warning. They couldn’t really hurt the pair of them, Izumi’s skin was too tough and Momo’s armor was even worse, but that didn’t make it all that much less terrifying for them to jump you.

Worse, they apparently could hurt Red Feather, who had attempted to lead them around the territory of the things. Unfortunately, that territory proved to have shifted while Red Feather was stuck awaiting first a reply, and then their arrival. Nor could they go up, as the part of the forest they were moving through was directly under the territory of the Wedge-Tailed Eagles, who were now big enough to think Izumi and Momo were proper snack-sized and Red Feather would make a nice meal. Normally, that fact kept the spiders away from this area, which had made their guide muse about whether the Eagles had also shifted. He hadn’t wanted to check, though, as apparently the Eagles were among the most dangerous species to him personally.

Down here, among the spiders, he could generally use the fire beam he could shoot from his namesake Red Feathers to roast the enemy. Up above the canopy, he’d be a target for Eagles and Falcons. Understandably, despite the danger down here, he considered it the lesser threat. Which didn’t make it any less annoying that they had to protect him.

Escort missions were the worst.

… … …

“Come now, come now, we’re making good time! Why, it took me nearly three weeks to get from The Meeting Place to the Menagerie Trading Post! At this rate, it will be barely five days to do the same in reverse. I have te say, ye two are really quiet handy to have around. Ye make this trip much safer!”

Izumi glared, while Momo looked pretty thoroughly done, but at least still more game to go on than Izumi was. Neither of them had really ‘camped’ before, and hadn’t quite processed that even their extreme abilities weren’t enough to push through to the Blue Mountains, where ‘The Meeting Place’ was, in a day. Yes, they could move quite fast. But constant attacks by a wide variety of creatures, stopping to display their ability to shut down gates by handling one such Red Feather had known about, and simply the terrain, had all limited their travel speed.

Red Feather absolutely would not fly over a lot of territories, as there were too many giant birds of prey that considered him a nice meal to hunt. Which meant they’d needed to move through rainforest, then regular forest, which had then segued into plateaus, hilly upland and escarpments. The latter hadn’t been as bad, allowing them to pick up their pace…three days in. Thankfully, they had brought plenty of camping gear, but the fact that Izumi had needed to deploy turrets and have 2B man them overnight hadn’t exactly make for restful sleep while roughing it. It was a very good thing neither of them actually needed much sleep, given how little they’d managed.

“Come now, only Grey Kangaroos to worry over! Then we’re into yellow-bellied glider territory, and I’m on great terms with them!”

Grumbling, the two girls finished their breakfast, even as 2B gunned down another pack of 5-meter, slavering dingos that tried to have them for breakfast instead. Even knowing most of the fauna here had been super-sized since the pre-Quirk era, both girls were quite convinced by now that the humans that had once lived here must have been batshit crazy…

… … …

Momo had no idea why it hadn’t occurred to her that ‘The Meeting Place’ might be ruins of human civilization. Perhaps it had been just how little sign of the previous inhabitants they’d seen since first following Red Feather. Oh, there had certainly been places where ruins were visible, though Red Feather had guided them around the larger former places of human habitation. Apparently, such places were popular with the more violent of the various Quirked animals to stake claims too. Having thus seen  mostly wilderness, either original or reclaimed from humans, she hadn’t quite expected where they’d arrived at.

The sign declared it had been some sort of railway yard. Though what one was doing in the relative middle of nowhere, she didn’t know. She did get the idea that the sheer amount of gravel, concrete, and pollutants used in such a place had done the job of keeping it cleared of the encroachment of nature far better than any other ruin she’d seen thus far. Add in that it has sizable open space, but also plenty of places to perch on old arches, buildings, or machinery, and it sort of made sense as a Meeting Place. She’d have thought, given the group started in the Outback, that such was where their Meeting Place would be. Apparently, however, practicality had won out in time. The Outback wasn’t exactly hospitable for a lot of the species that lived on The Isle, now or before.

Something that was made rather obvious by the array of beings they were faced with now.

Giant magpies and several other bird types were the most common on this little ‘council.’ Various types of Kangaroo were next, followed by a more random assortment of other species. A koala, two dingos, five platypuses (wait, did that green one have a fedora on?), wombats, possums, and even a single echidna. It was a diverse group, but one Momo noted as having only a handful of predators. Snakes, birds, and the dingos appeared to be it for the predator species, in fact. Notably absent were the saltwater crocodiles or any sort of reptile. The crocs, at least, she had been aware apparently didn’t deign to deal with this group. Honestly, if half of what Red Feather had said about them was true, that was probably a good thing.

“G’day, all! As ye can see, I have returned with the aid we sought! These humans have brought with them things we can use to close the hole-dens into which the enemy has taken our people! More will open, but so long as we are vigilant, we can keep closing them so large groups of hunters can’t come through.”

There was chatter among the animals. Not all of it was in anything like human speech. In fact, the vast majority of it was not. Which, well, shouldn’t have surprised her. She’d gotten so used to Nedzu, and then Red Feather, that she hadn’t quite considered how few animals really had the right vocal apparatuses for human language. Clearly, they could understand each other, which would have to be good enough. She looked on in fascination as a Quoll took center stage…and communicated with completely unhelpful squeaks and cries as it pointed to them. Thankfully, Red Feather was quick to translate.

“Elder Jaquol wants to know how you can do this, given how little you brought with you. If it is some magic that requires the Old Machines, we have little knowledge to help build them.”

Momo nodded at that and waved Izumi forward. Izumi, fascinated but grateful not to be the speaker in this oddest of meetings, started taking things out of her digital inventory and placing them in the center of the large railway turnstile the group of nearly four dozen were all centered around. There were startled noises and more than a few of the animals backed away out of instinct as boxes and crates began to appear, but most quickly got that reflex under control and looked on in fascination.

“As you can see, my companion has a way to transport items in large quantities. We brought many of the ‘old machines’ that can close Gates, though we will have to show you how to use them, and you’ll have to figure out how you can transport them to the Gates to do so.”

There was more chatter as…well, she was pretty sure there were several different chains of translation going on. Hopefully the message didn’t get too mangled in the process. Red Feather seemed calm enough, so she’d just have to trust that this was the normal way of things. It took several minutes for all the animals to get up to speed it seemed. When they did, five of them stepped forward, including that platypus with the fedora. Because yes, that was a clearly a fedora, on a teal platypus, and it looked weirdly pristine. What the heck? Red Feather fluttered over to stand by the group of five. Had they been more than just translating? Her thoughts in that direction were proven true as Red Feather spoke again.

“These five, as well as myself of course, have volunteered to learn how to run your human machines. They all have some level of experience in making old human devices work, which we hope will help here.”

Huh. The equivalent of human engineers? Or perhaps archaeologists? Well, this was certainly going to be an interesting experience…

… … …

“Now!”

There were squeaks and cries as various animals activated their Siphons. A dozen aggressive Quirks and twice as many Kangaroos who were simply large and ferocious enough to fight pressed the enemy back, even as the Siphons came online.

“Good, good! Just keep them away from the Siphons! We can clean up the ones stuck on this side after the Gate collapses!”

Izumi and Momo were doing their best not to pitch in, despite their instincts. The first two Gates that they’d helped the local animals close, they’d taken by far the brunt of the Empire’s response, letting the Quirked animals focus on the Siphon devices. Even with some adjustments to make them easier for hands without thumbs to place, it was still a bit of a laborious process for the animals, but they’d gotten better at it after those first two Gates. This time, the first time they were both fighting and using the siphons, they were doing well. Momo did pick off a single sneaky Gnoll that almost got off a javelin throw at a distracted Siphon operator. But that was the only help they had to give before the Gate collapsed and many cheers went up from the animals.

Shaking her head and smiling at the very odd but effective bunch, Momo decided this might just work out after all. Particularly as Red Feather claimed a few of the Saltwater Clan had taken interest and negotiations were ongoing with them to handle some of the bigger monsters, like Ogres. The crocs wanted the Gates closed too at this point, even if they normally didn’t work with the ‘prey’ very often. Hopefully they would refrain from eating anyone and all get along in this endeavor at least…

… … …

Izumi watched in appalled amazement as the Giant Saltwater Crocodiles utterly mauled a group of Ogre Elites. It wasn’t even a contest, the crocs just…shrugged off any of the attacks that would have given even someone like Kirishima reason to dodge. Of course, the Crocodiles were larger than the Ogres, and seemed to have enough QE in them that their teeth ripped into even Ogre flesh with ease. No wonder the other groups treated the Saltwater Clan with such caution.

There was no question that it was effective though, with the trio of Crocs that had decided it was worth working with the ‘small ones’ in order to close the Gates acting as tanks. Not, it had to be said, because they considered the Empire a threat. No, they considered them irritating, more than a threat. Apparently, at first, the Saltwater Clan had actually enjoyed the Gates, considering them to be ‘snack dispensers.’ Something which Izumi and Momo had found more than a little disconcerting. By now, however, the Empire had started both competing with them by stealing prey animals, and had actually killed a few dozen Saltwater Clan.

Combined, that was apparently enough to consider their snack dispensers as too annoying to keep around.

Barely.

Shaking her head and wondering just how she’d ended up in this lunatic situation, Izumi did the sane thing and decided it was Nedzu’s fault. Oh well, at least it had been a somewhat interesting diversion, and hopefully something that would keep the Empire from gaining ground, or terrifying new mounts, here. Shuddering again at the idea of Cassowary Cavalry, Izumi made sure to pay close attention to the second batch of trainees on the Siphons, making sure they were doing a proper job with them…

... ... ... ... ... ...

Chapter 141 & 142 AN 1: I considered ditching this, due to the trimming I'm doing of the overall story, but I'd been teasing it in the update description this whole time so I didn't. It was intended as a way to break up all the time Izumi and Momo spent out of the action with a bit of a fun mini-adventure. All while building a bit on the running gag that is what I said happened to Australia :-p.

AN 2: I apologized to any actual Aussies for my horrible, horrible attempt as Australian English. Even writing it, I knew it was bad, but I'm too unfamilar with it to make it better T-T.