Chapter 152: Contraction
Chapter 152: Contraction
“Move, move, move!”
Kendo Itsuka grimaced, maxing out the size of her hands and clapping them together over an Ogre, even as she shouted for people to move. She wasn’t high enough up any chain of command to know what was going on, but the last week had been hell as the Terran Alliance seemed to reach down into every division of every department to strip out manpower. The most powerful of the remaining Heroes had been practically drafted, military units had been reduced by as much as half around some cities, and even the Militias had been raided to pick out some of their most powerful. Virtually the only groups untouched were the Guild teams, and even they were pulling double duty, not just working Rift Bubbles but helping police all other monster incursions as well. Incursions that had picked up pace just when so many people had been pulled away.
For the first time in six months, it felt like they were losing ground. Hell, she was evacuating people away from an industrial complex that they just flat out couldn’t hold any longer, despite how important it had been to making new militia hardware. She had no idea what the fuck was going on, but the Higher Command of the Terran Alliance had better announce something soon, or there was going to be a new level of panic from the civilians.
Hell, for that matter, there was going to be a new level of panic from the remaining troops and Heroes if they didn’t get an explanation soon! The only reason that panic hadn’t set in yet, was that the cities were still being covered against any serious assault. As they failed to fully cull roving monster teams, and outright lost some important spaces they’d spent a lot of blood to regain in the first place, that was going to change quick.
She just hoped they powers that be knew what the fuck they were doing…
… … …
Intelli growled in frustration as she attempted to juggle the various projects that High-Com insisted needed done by brutal deadlines. She’d reached the point where their demands were impossible while still expanding their orbital works, and when she’d flat out told them as much…they’d told her to stop expanding the orbital works. Now, she was robbing Peter to pay Paul as it were, stealing resources that were meant to go towards those expansion projects, just to hit the production demands for military hardware that were being foisted on her.
At least her position was considered critical enough that she’d been told why she’d been given such impossible orders.
She pitied the lower rung of military and Heroes alike, who had no idea that their assets were being raided to produce a massive assault force, intended to capture the Dark Citadel. Unlike the probing attacks that had occurred until now, this new assault was the real deal. A major commitment of force that was crippling virtually every other area in order to support it. For the first time in months, despite the ever-increasing size of various resistance movements helping them, the Alliance was losing ground on Ziltmach. It wasn’t anything critical yet, none of the captured cities were under threat or siege. But territory was being lost, which was undermining morale for both the Alliance and their Resistance allies.
She damn well hoped high command knew what they were doing. If the assault failed and they lost even half of the assault force, they likely wouldn’t be able to try again for years. If, that was, they could ever even try again at all. Only the fact that they’d gotten a bunch of mining and space-based industry working was keeping them solvent in materials as they lost territory on Earth as well, and if the assault failed they might get overwhelmed by numbers and pushed off their own planet entirely. At this point that technically wouldn’t be the death knell of humanity…but at best they might get a few million people off the planet.
As she shifted assets again, actually ordering some of the Drone Construction Fleet stripped for resources, she repeated her desperate hope that the powers that be were taking the right gamble here…
… … …
Akira wasn’t normally one to exert herself overly on other people’s behalf. That was, it had to be said, more her girlfriend Kiki’s jam. It was Kiki who, despite being Quirkless, was the unending bundle of good cheer that did her best to make everyone around her happier. Akira was more…guarded and cynical than that. Heck, part of why she was practically addicted to Kiki was that her girlfriend was one of the rare rays of adorable sunshine that pushed back that tendency toward cynicism. Even those with very little faith in humanity, when exposed to even a fraction of Kiki’s cheeriness, couldn’t help but smile at least a little.
The only exceptions were all puppy-kickers. Akira was sure of it.
Her usual tendency to stay out of other people’s business meant that Akira was a little weirded out by her own behavior as she made the rounds of the Neo Ge Market. The advantage of being a cynic was that you tended to see the problems coming early. Usually, that just meant extra time to duck, which she was both grateful for and used to protect Kiki. This time, though, she’d found her feet moving and her mouth uttering the same sort of suggestions and redirections that she’d seen the manipulators of the world use to steer thought. It had been an awkward fit, at first, but she’d ultimately been nearly creeped out at how quickly she’d found herself getting good at it.
Apparently, understanding how the masses worked and how they reacted to certain psychological buttons, made you really good at pressing them when you were motivated to do so. Who knew?
As for why she was motivated to press those buttons, it was because paying attention had let her see the contraction coming. She’d noticed the downsizing of militia patrols, the Heroes that weren’t being seen, and the suspicious lack of reporting about losses that could justify that needed that she wasn’t hearing about from the grapevine. At the same time, she’d been keeping a close eye on Aegis Inc since she’d met its owners and was aware that they were gearing up for something big. What, exactly, she didn’t know…but whatever it was, it was important enough for the Terran Alliance to be stripping every asset they could to throw into the fire.
Just this once, Akira would hope that the people up top knew what they were doing, and that whatever they were building up for would be a good thing. In the meantime, she’d do her part by dropping the right words, in the right ears, to keep people calm for as long as possible. At least in this little corner of Tokyo. It might not be much, but it was what she could do, and somehow she found herself doing it willingly, despite how little she normally believed in the system.
Despite being a cynic to the core, she didn’t think those girls she’d met would let them down. Not if they could help it, and she had a hard time imagining that they couldn’t, given what they’d already accomplished. Was she becoming, horror of horrors, a fangirl? Well, at least that would be better than becoming a politician. She carefully avoided thinking about the little details. Like the fact that her methods of manipulation were disturbingly close to those used by people in that most heinous of professions…
… … …
Himiko flopped dramatically on one bed of the hotel room she was sharing with Kiana. Her adoptive mother-figure’s lips twitched at the action, still amused by how extra Himiko tended to be when she wasn’t playing a part. She’d long gotten used to it, of course, but it was something that she honestly hoped never stopped causing her to smile. Even if she often hid those smiles from Himiko just to keep her pseudo-daughter from being even more extra to get a reaction.
“I take it, since you’re flopping in fake exhaustion instead of grumbling and playing with knives, that the meeting went well?”
Himiko had covered her eyes with one arm, but let it fall now, moving just enough for her gaze to meet Kiana’s. Her expression was annoyed, but not worried or angry, which was a good sign. With the JSDF having taken over a lot of the external security for Aegis, the pair of them had opted to hand off most internal-security work to others and focus instead on the intelligence networks they’d built.
Originally purely an extension of the need to protect the HSN systems from people trying to disrupt or hack into them, those networks had been expanded when the League of Villains had been active. Now, they’d turned the same networks to another purpose yet. Specifically, keeping an ear to the ground about trouble within the civilian populations, and attempting a limited level of information control. Just because there was an Alien Invasion on didn’t mean there weren’t still criminals doing all the crimes, and with everyone packed so tightly into cities it could be a complete disaster if that crime got out of control.
Thankfully, Japanese criminals were mostly saner than…some others. Probably. As evidenced by Himiko speaking up, after letting her head fall back on the bed again.
“The Yakuza remnants, the Black Dogs, and the Eighty-Eight, have all agreed to sit on their people for the duration. Once they were given hints about why so many heroes and militia were being pulled out, they weren’t big enough dummies to cause trouble. They might be assholes, but they’re assholes that know they have to live on the planet too. I doubt the agreement will hold past the Citadel falling, though.”
Kiana nodded. It had been the expected and hoped for result of the meeting. Humans could get very, very stupid at the oddest times, though. Like the MLA had when the Invasion first kicked off. Thankfully, the three groups Himiko had rattled off were the largest ‘organized crime’ factions in Japan, and Himiko posing as an information broker had allowed them to pull all three into a neutral-ground meeting. In truth, it wasn’t really even ‘posing,’ at this point. Setting themselves up as information brokers had been their key into the underworld. That they were one of the only brokers with reliable information on the war made them valuable, and had let them believably pass on the ‘secret’ of why so many troops were being shuffled.
Some civic disruption was inevitable. Just as some lost ground to the Empire was going to happen. But by getting the organized crime factions in on things, it would be mitigated somewhat. As Himiko said, it likely wouldn’t hold for long, but so long as it held long enough, that was fine. Assuming they won at all, the Terran Alliance could release some assets back to various militaries and Hero agencies to make up any lost ground. Hopefully, at least. There was, of course, always the chance that they won but took too many losses to reestablish proper security. It was a risk, but a needed one. After all, even if they lost some control to criminal elements, ending the war would eventually let them deal with that. Even if they couldn’t do so immediately…
“Good job, little vampire. Take a nap. I’ll keep an eye on our data taps to make sure they actually send out the orders they agreed to.”
Himiko gave her a thumbs up, then promptly stretched like a cat, rolled over, and ‘engaged napping mode.’ Chuckling, Kiana went to work doing her part. Himiko was the ‘face’ of their operation, being able to pretend to be a dozen different people with her Quirk. Kiana was the brains, though, and she still had work to do. She never thought she’d been using the ill-gotten skills drilled into her by the HPSC this way, but it was certainly better than the way the commission had put them to use…