Chapter 87: Operation Spear Tip
Summary: Turning the tables on the Invaders...
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Chapter 87: Operation Spear Tip
Preparations for the quickly named Operation Spear Tip weren't quick. Everyone agreed it needed to be done, but it was also entirely likely they'd only get a single chance to get it right before their enemy did something to make it either extremely difficult or outright impossible to repeat. On top of the need to get it right the first time, was the simple fact that the entire world was currently still stretched brutally thin. Various soultions meant to alleviate the strain were starting to come into effect, but the results were slow to free up assets. The teams training in the new doctrines worked out by UA were just one such tool, one that was slowly starting to free up both some Hero forces and military units. Those new tactical doctrines, and similar ones worked out by other groups, were having an effect, but not a quick one.
The same was true of Izumi's new RADS arrays. They were making a difference, but it would be months before even the major cities of the world had been secured properly. Years before that security could be spread to smaller cities and towns. Recruitment efforts, including a lot of ex-criminals and villains who'd committed only minor crimes being pardoned in favor of serving in the fight, were also making a glacially slow difference. As was recruitment of vigilantes into the larger network of Heroics, along with training police and PMCs to get involved.
The result was that, despite a large number of countries committing whatever they could pry loose in terms of resources and personnel to the affair, it had taken nearly two weeks to gather a force deemed strong enough. Then it had taken another two weeks to hammer that force into some sort of coherent whole. Japan, being in a better position than many at this point, had managed to forward an entire carefully-chosen team. Ectoplasm, Momo, Izumi, Jirou, and Nejire represented UA. While Ryukyu, Miruko, Pixie-Bob and Mt. Lady had been selected to beef up the team with some carefully-chosen powerhouses.
Each of them had been selected to fill multiple roles. Ectoplasm could provide numbers along with a leader for the UA group. Izumi was needed for her expertise, with Momo being both a powerhouse and the one most familiar with Izumi and 2B's research. Jirou was a mid-range powerhouse with all her gear upgrades at this point, while also having an enhanced sense useful for acting as a scout and early warning system. Nejire, meanwhile, acted as a more experienced powerhouse familiar with both most of the UA team and most of the non-UA reinforcements. Ryukyu was a calm presence, familiar with most of those going, and one of the few people Miruko would actually listen too. Pixie-Bob could help with rapid fortification building…and Mt. Lady had surprised everyone by getting serious and digging in deep once the invasion started. She'd proven to be a, pun very much intended, massive asset in dealing with both large enemies and large numbers alike.
Everyone would have preferred to send more, but despite being in a better position than many, Japan was still playing catch-up. The JSDF would be sending along some veteran support to help out as well, to beef up the Japanese contribution. In truth, despite its relatively small size, the Japanese group was one of the larger ones to show up at for the taskforce. The Americans had fielded more, but that was no shock, and they hadn't been able to spare any true heavy hitters. Lots of mid rankers, several with fantastic support Quirks for this, but only a single fighter that could match someone like Momo or Ryukyu. And that particular hero couldn't sustain that level of fighting for long. Of course, they'd also sent seven times the military commitment, including a dedicated engineering team to help create fortifications on the other side. Other countries, like the UK, France, and China, had all managed to spare forces of various levels. Though only China had been able to field both numbers similar to Japan in Heroes, and similar to the United States in military assets.
All told, they'd managed to pull together a strike team of over fifty combat heroes, two dozen more support heroes, and almost 3,500 mixed purpose military personnel. They'd then hammered hard to work out a chain of command and get the wildly mixed units working together. It had been rough and was only likely to get rougher as they were thrown in the grinder…but every single one of them was burning for the chance to do some serious damage to their enemy. Many of them would likely crash out as soon as this was over and need to be off rotation for at least a week or two. But they were determined to get it done…
... ...
As the first wave of Operation Spear Tip charged through the Lesser Gate situated near Bristol, Izumi did her dead level best to smother her annoyance that she wasn't among the first through the Gate. While it might have been logical enough for her, as one of the most physically durable Heroes present, to be among that wave…they needed her here and monitoring the Gate to make sure it didn't close. They were virtually certain that both Gates and Rifts could normally be closed at will from the enemy's side. But that is where Izumi and the team immediately around her came in. They'd all poured over the data from the captured and disable Greater Gate in Laos-Columbia, as well as all data they had on Rifts and Gates in general, and come up with a crude way to 'wedge' one open from their side.
At least in theory.
The fact that Izumi was one of the world's foremost experts on Quirk Energy Fields, and now also on Rifts and Gates, meant that she was glued to their jury-rigged 'doorstopper' until at least the third wave went through. At that point, so long as the all clear came back, she'd be the first of the research team through the Gate. The others were virtually all far squishier than her, meaning they'd be held back until the zone was outright cleared. If that happened at all. Izumi, as a powerful Heroine in her own right, was trusted to survive while trying to force open the pocket dimension that the Lizards used to hide the Harvest Stone and the Rift control/creation apparatus.
She hated that she was relegated to that. She understood it fully. So much so that she couldn't even really argue the point. But Momo had been one of the first Heroines through, and Jirou would be going with the second wave. Having both her girlfriend and her hopefully-future-additional-girlfriend walking into the potential meatgrinder on the other side of the Gate without her was agonizing and she hated everything about it. She couldn't even send 2B, as while they were confident the EM issue wouldn't bother her or Izumi, they had no idea what the gulf between dimensions would do to them if they were separated from each other.
Gritting her teeth and forcing herself to focus as the instruments before her revealed that the enemy had cut power to the Gate, Izumi's smile wasn't a nice one and she tapped keys to adjust their own inputs as their 'doorstopper' took over the Gate. They had plenty of filled QE batteries to keep it going. Now it was just a matter of fine tuning what they were feeding it so it didn't destabilize.
"No you don't, motherfuckers. This is our Gate now, and you're going to have to bleed an ocean to get it back…I personally guarantee it."
... ...
Izumi immediately took to the air with a leap, using her moments above the battlefield as a way to take in the tactical situation as she came through the tamed Gate with the lead element of Wave 3. There was unquestionably still fighting going on, and she absentmindedly deployed a missile Pod to help the various fliers in the ongoing fight over the airspace here. She put half her own focus into brutally overpowered sweeps of the telekinesis to do the same thing, slamming whole groups of airborne foes into their own allies on the ground as she took in the battle as a whole.
The weight of numbers was still definitively on the defenders side, but it was clear that was rapidly changing under the onslaught the taskforce had brought with it. Ryukyu alone was utterly savaging entire units that attempted to attack her, her dragon form having been augmented since the start of the invasion by armor made using Melissa's shrinking tech. That armor, produced by Momo's Quirk then modified by Melissa, could and obviously was turning blows that would give a light tank pause. While it was dented in places, and Ryukyu had some light wounds despite its coverage, it had also turned her into a cataclysmic nightmare for the enemy. Something that was similarly true with Mount Lady's similarly armored form on the other flank. A nightmare for the Empire that was all the more evidenced by the fact both of them were still going strong, despite having been two of the very first Heroines through the Gate.
Momo was being an equal terror on another flank, and several powerhouses from other regions and nations were doing the same. With Wave 2 having included several terrain shapers like Pixie-Bob, the soldiers that made up the bulk of Wave 3 were now pouring in to man fortified earthworks and turning the tide still farther against the local monsters. Despite the battle still raging, it was obvious that the defenders were currently losing, which meant Izumi's job was clear. Replacing the now-empty missile Pod with a gatling-equipped unit that had more endurance, she zeroed in on the spot where they knew the pocket dimension should be.
There, she spotted Jirou, the far more primitive sonic cannon she'd been forced to adopt to get through the EM-frying Gate punching out devastating blasts at regular intervals. The punk girl was in among a group of mid-tier emitters and tank types, all artfully staggered around the spot of the pocket dimension's entrance. They were doing their best not to make it obvious that they'd staked out that position on purpose…but it was time to cut the charade.
Izumi's next leap was far less vertical, taking her across the field and landing her right in the center of the group. A few of them twitched in a threat-reaction response, but they'd known to expect her as soon as the third wave started coming through, so no one actually fired in her direction as she landed. Without saying a word, Izumi deployed her ultimate cheat for this situation…her digitized inventory that gave not one single fuck about having crossed through an EM field.
Out came QE batteries, the best dimensional energy sensors they'd come up with so far, and a hideous combination item that all-but-glued together several of the enemy gate-opening 'ritual' daggers and a sort of bastardized frequency tuner that could help shift the daggers' combined output. If they'd gotten their guesses about how the invisible, somehow stable, Rift/Gate hidden here worked even half right, it should act as a skeleton key to 'pick the lock' for said dimensional entrance. Izumi threw almost all of her attention into it, even as she heard an uptick in violence nearby. Apparently, the enemy had realized what she was trying to do…but a significant chunk of the soldiers from Wave 3 had beelined for positions around her and were helping shrug off the suddenly desperate assault.
Just as Izumi got a hit, grinning viciously as she did, a pair of elite commando units with Hero support arrived to stack up behind her. She dialed in the frequencies she was getting, fine tuned them when the invisible Gate seemed to resist, then punched into the Gate with far more QE than their enemy's more precise usage. It did the job, a Rift opening with a flicker and a sound something like shattering pottery mixed with a dental drill whine. The stone corridor they knew to look for was suddenly visible through that rift, and the commando leaders kicked their teams into action with a shout.
Much as she hated it, she was still not supposed to risk herself, so she ground her teeth as the two teams went in, only following after they were all in. Each team was 10 soldiers and two heroes, and the first one divided in two as they hit the cross corridors no one knew what was down. A single hero each, with five commandos in support, split to each side and rushed onward. The second team, with Izumi trailing, continued pushing on towards the central room.
They didn't make it that far without resistance, of course…but a hallway works against both sides in some ways and the two Heroes with this commando team had been picked with malice in mind. One had a tank type Quirk that was powered up by absorbing heat, while his partner was a living heat beam, able to shoot raw beams of heat from any bit of her skin. The woman, whose costume was deliberately brief to allow her to fire off as many and as wide of beams as possible, didn't bother with aiming. She just utterly flooded the hallway forward of them with heat beams, practically melting the Lizardfolk that were trying to stop their charge and only empowering their juggernaut of a tanky hero in the process.
The combination folded the enemy before them for the first minute, only for their living tank to finally groan in pain as a sizable lighting bolt hit him. Izumi had deployed a Pod above them and tracked that bolt back to a robe-wearing Lizard in instant it shot out…a Lizard who promptly threw up some sort of shield as the laser of her Pod pinpointed him with a heavy shot. The shield might have held up to something more normal, but Izumi's Pod laser had been charging since she deployed it. The charged shot ripped through the shield and disintegrated the Wizard Lizard's head…which finally seemed to break the resistance of the other Lizardfolk present.
They attempted to scatter, which, as the team broke out into the main chamber, was probably the stupidest thing they could have done. If they'd kept up the pressure, they might have been able to bottle up the assault team in the hallway exit. As it was, it just meant most of the Lizards died tired as they were shot in the back by commandos not at all interested in risking them sabotaging shit. The last living pair of Lizards almost made it to another entrance…only to run face first into one of the teams that had split off at the crossing corridor. With those two pasted, the entire group shifted to covering every entrance, even as Izumi raced to point every sensor she had at the Harvest Stone, trying to figure out just how risky it would be the flat out yoink the thing out of the air.
…
…
Not risky at all, as far as she could tell. Not for her anyway. Anyone else would be risking QE burns if they touched the thing. Even she couldn't handle it for long, but she didn't need to. She jumped, put her palm on the stone twice the size of her head…and digitized it into her inventory. Moments later, her eyes widened as her HUD told her the pocket dimension was destabilizing.
"Time to go! This place is going to come apart in less than five minutes!"
There was much cursing from the heroes and commandos alike at that, even as everyone scrambled to exit the way they'd come in…