Chapter 89: Steps Forward
Summary: Things begin to change...
Warning! Chapters 86-89 were uploaded back-to-back! Make sure you don't miss any!
Chapter 89: Steps Forward
The morning after Jirou's help with her migraine may actually have been even better than when Momo did the same routine. Izumi had awoken to the heavenly smell of entirely unhealthy breakfast foods. The sort she and Momo only got away with eating semi-regularly because both of them had Metabolisms of DOOM. Oh, most Heroes and Heroines could get away with something like bacon, sausage, and so forth semi-regularly. Fitness had its advantages, and metabolisms that allowed you to cheat a bit more with what you ate from time to time were one of those advantages. That, however, was entirely different from the monstrous Breakfast of Doom that had been delivered for Izumi and Jirou.
Rashers of bacon, juicy sausages, and syrupy pancakes, joined by pan con chicharrón, gallo pinto, chocolate croissants, grilled fish, rice, miso soup, and more. Favorite breakfast dishes from several countries around the world, in an amount that seemed to leave Jirou in a bit of awed/disgusted shock. Oh, the punk girl had curiously tried a little bit of everything, but had filled up long before Izumi, whose metabolism was in overdrive trying to make up for her excess power usages of the last few days. Izumi might technically be able to get by on nothing but QE. But her body was still very much human enough that it didn't like doing that.
That part was normal, though. Well, normal if you knew that this was the usual morning routine for either Izumi or Momo when they'd overstressed their Quirks. No, the part that might make it even better than when Momo arranged it all for her? Jirou had yet to lecture her about her excess! It was almost too good to be true! Enough so that Izumi finally, fearfully, asked…only for Jirou to snort in response. Very cute! Must hear again!
"If you'd been working on new support gear for a classmate or something, I'd tear verbal strips off you the same as Momo likely does. Given that you were working on literally saving the world though? Well, I figure that gives you a pass for now. Just don't think I'll let it slide when things are less dire, yeah?"
Izumi untensed, sighing in relief and getting a dry chuckle from Jirou for it. That…made sense. Whew. Wait, now that she was thinking straight again and not worried about being yelled at?
"How are you here, by the way? Away from the front, I mean. I thought you were still on Kurrick?"
Jirou sighed…and brought up one of her jacks slowly. Slowly, Izumi realized, not because she was trying to be slow. But because the muscle of the jack was twitching and spasming.
"Quirk exhaustion. After you dropped off my full support gear out of your inventory, I was one of the heaviest hitting mid-range emitters we had. Even with the turrets and those zero-electronics artillery pieces they'd come up with, they kept me moving whenever I wasn't sleeping or plugging holes in the lines. The Empire is throwing everything at the beachhead. Enough so that no one thinks we can realistically hold it for more than a few days, despite all the reinforcements. One of their elites even managed to leave a mark on Momo, even if it was barely a shallow cut and she got it healed right after."
Izumi's eyes widened. That was…worrying. It meant it had gotten though both Momo's advanced armor and the extreme durability that One for All gave its users. In addition to whatever-it-was having been fast enough to hit her at all. Momo wasn't All Might, she'd trained too long at a disadvantage against Izumi's strength to ever get into a slug fest like All Might often did with sufficiently powerful foes. Momo was, like Izumi herself, a high agility fighter. When she was serious, most people short of All Might, Izumi, or a few speedsters out there, couldn't hope to actually make contact with her.
"She's fine, and that elite was easily the strongest thing they've thrown at us. Still, scouts have said they are gathering more elites into a mass concentrated enough that there's little chance we can hold against it. Not without paying too high a price, at least. Orders already came down to pull a fighting retreat once that push happens. The Gate is slowly destabilizing anyway, so best to just make what we can out of it then pull out in good order."
That was…mostly a relief. Part of Izumi still couldn't help but worry. But at least the higher ups weren't intending to force the beachhead to go down fighting to the last man and woman. They easily might have, given how much pressure it was taking off efforts elsewhere. Shaking her head slowly, she chewed on a bit of roshi mashuni before speaking again.
"So, they pulled you out when your Quirk exhaustion got too bad? Are you okay?"
Jirou thankfully nodded.
"Yeah. It's happened before, though not for years. I can't get Quirk exhaustion from anything but heavy use of the amplification aspect. It happened now because, well, I was going crazy with the sonic canon at max or near max output for hours at a time. The docs said I should be fine after three or four days rest, and really only my jacks ache a bit. Nothing like the migraine you were suffering through."
Izumi groaned just at the reminder. She hated overusing her hyper cognition. Normally, it only happened when she got so in the zone on something that she lost track of how much she was using it. But this time it had been intention and well…it had helped. It had helped a lot. To the point that they might just have some very interesting things to report to high command if the testing the others had been arranging when her backlash had forced her to tap out went well.
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Izumi was getting entirely too used to reporting to groups of important people. She didn't like it, and desperately wanted to shove it off on someone else. Unfortunately, due to her heavy-handed use of hyper cognition, she was technically the only one who fully understood the new capabilities that they'd managed to gain. She'd argued that others from their team understood enough to deal with this presentation. But those others had promptly betrayed her by pointing out that she was the more recognizable figure to the powers that be from various Heroics and military groups that would be attending the briefing.
Also, that they didn't want to do it either. Traitors.
Which is how she found herself in front of the same sort of holo-wall that Mr. Non-descript, who had pointedly never shared his name during the initial briefing before their taskforce had been put together, had used for his own presentation. Both physically present and present as holograms, were a group of high-ranking Heroes and military commanders. Most of whom had been involved with Operation Spear Tip and reaped the benefits of having gambled on the right operation. These people now had, collectively, the single largest say about the operations of a greatly expanding Task Force Counter and the general war against the Empire of Kurrick.
Bracing herself, leaning heavily on her ability to control her own body to an extent not normal for regular humans, Izumi spoke to the group. Behind her, the holowall sprung to life with the display of two images, the Harvest stone as it currently sat in the research lab on the left…and a mostly-stable Gate that wasn't made by their enemies on the right.
"As you're all aware, you're here to learn what we've learned about the Gates, at least in how they might be used to our tactical benefit. First, I will state that our understanding of how the Rifts and Gates are formed has jumped forward immensely. The bad news is that this hasn't yet led to a better way to stop them from forming. The good news is that we are now able to create Rifts of our own. Though I caution you that we are still unable to aim them very well."
She let that sink in for just a moment, before continuing.
"Since we already had a good idea how to stabilize a Rift into a Gate, we were able to do just that on a test Rift. We created a Rift, stabilized it for a short period, and used organic scout Quirks to identify what was on the other side. What we found is both helpful and…not. Specifically, we discovered that we had managed to connect to a world currently controlled by the Kurrick Empire. It is not, however, one of the worlds in current rebellion to the Empire. Worse, we were both unable to fully keep the Gate stable…and all other attempts so far have come up with what we're referring to as 'blanks.' Essentially, Rifts that failed to connect to anywhere useful. The rate of that happening, despite our best efforts, is something we suspect is the reason the Kurrick Empire has not invaded more worlds."
This time, Izumi paused longer, knowing someone would likely speak up with a question. Hoping for it, actually, since frankly that was about all she had to present. It was a major breakthrough…but using it was going to be difficult, at best. Thankfully, the individual that spoke up was a familiar and friendly(ish) face. General Utsumi of the JSDF made a very on point observation.
"So, you're saying that we potentially have a way to open our own Gates into Empire controlled territory, to at least run guerrilla operations. Possibly, given enough time, even to make contact with rebel forces on some of their previously conquered worlds."
Izumi nodded, thankfully for the friendly lead into discussion.
"That's exactly what I'm saying, General Utsumi. It might be some time before we can figure out how to aim our Rifts precisely, but it at least provides us a promising option to go on the offensive for the first time. Which…might be important given some other abilities we discovered about the system the Empire uses. We may not get a chance for another beachhead operation against an existing Gate, now that they've pushed us out of all of those that were invaded by Task Force Counter."
The Bristol Gate hadn't been the only one that Counter had arranged to raid through. It had simply been the first and largest. Several lesser invasions of other Gates had been partially responsible for how long the Empire had taken to reclaim the Bristol Beachhead Gate and shut it down. Each of the other invasions had done exactly what they were supposed to do. Distract the enemy from concentrating everything they had on dealing with Operation Spear Tip. Even as Izumi contemplated that, a slightly more querulous voice spoke up. A NATO General whose name she didn't know.
"More bad news? What do you mean we can't do that again? It worked beautifully to take the pressure off!"
It had. By the time they'd lost their beachhead fully earlier that morning, the number of Rifts opening throughout half of Europe had dropped by almost 43 percent. With the new Rifts within the United Kingdom having dropped off by over 92 percent. Figures that had yet to rise again afterward. So far, at least.
"To put it bluntly, General, tearing off the bandage as it were…we discovered that the control system they use had multiple 'modes.' I don't bring this up to be the bearer of bad news, but to alert you collectively to a nasty possibility that may occur now that they've suffered from the effects of Counter's efforts. Put simply, they are capable of building stable Pocket Realms that can then be launched along a previously mapped path."
Izumi triggered a change in graphic. 2B had done some quick and dirty animation for her, and the holo wall showed a 'bubble' being blown out from a glowing, spherical representation of the world of Ziltmach. Tiny figures loaded up into the bubble, then it released from Ziltmach's 'sphere.' Now free-floating save for a tether to a Rift Tunnel, the bubble flowed down the Rift path until it attached itself to another large bubble marked 'Earth.'
"These pockets of reality, or 'reality bubbles' as we've dubbed them, are not like the Rifts we've seen previously. They require a higher concentration of QE as a target. But they can't be closed in the fashion that the siphons work, either. Once they launch such a bubble and it comes in contact with our reality? We'll have to enter the reality bubble itself and fight our way to a shard of Harvest Stone inside, capturing or destroying it. All while fighting on terrain they choose when they formed the bubble. I imagine you can all see the difficulties?"
There was a murmur as all of them, particularly the military men, realized the implications. One strident voice cut over the others. An American who seemed unhappy with the reveal.
"Why the fucking hell haven't they already been doing this then? This doesn't make any sense!"
Izumi didn't take offense. Instead, she snapped her fingers and pointed at him, using her HUD to identify him.
"That is the right question, General Armstrong. As far as we can tell? It is far more costly to move to the reality-bubble model. Based on our best calculations, they've been running this war against us at a profit, at least in total energy expenditure. The Harvest Stones suck QE in through the Rifts themselves and the enemy had been attacking civilians to harvest for QE all along. The reality-bubble model would switch that equation up. They'll begin losing energy on the invasion, particularly from any Shards of Harvest Stone we gather or destroy. They, essentially, were going with the cheapest, most efficient invasion option first. All while keeping other options in reserve. Life seems to be very cheap to them. QE is not. Also, remember, they've done this seventeen times before. I'd personally bet that they developed the second method after someone did exactly what we just pulled off during an early invasion."
There were grimaces of revelation all around. Though one woman from the Heroes side piped up with a question.
"Does that mean that they won't keep invading us, if we make it not cost effective, for long enough?"
Izumi shrugged helplessly.
"I have no idea, Madam Buccaneer. That, I'm afraid, is going to have to be a question answered by the various scout teams or listening posts. At least until such a time as we get lucky enough to connect with a world that has an active rebellion going. They might be able to tell us the answer to that, I suppose? I'm afraid that's well outside my area of expertise."
Quite a few people nodded, and the mood shifted as slowly they began to ask more and more detailed questions. Doing their best to zero in on what Izumi could tell them from the data already gathered…
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A/N 1: So, as I hope is obvious, I've been slowly pulling back from focusing purely on the Invasion. They are now beginning to reach enough of an equilibrium that they'll soon be able to turn their attention to the issues in their own backyards as well, instead of desperately scrambling to put every body possible between innocents and an extra dimensional enemy. The Invaders will continue to be a long-term threat, with which Izumi and Momo will be involved. But we'll also see the return of more regular Heroics...albeit with some major changes upcoming for UA to answer to the new reality...
A/N 2: I only put this out there once per update...but this fic (and my others) do have Early Access chapters over on my Page. ALL fanfiction content is eventually released here and elsewhere as well, just at a delay. Currently, chapters 90-95 are available over on , adding another 15,000ish words to the fic! Right alongside those chapters are 45,000+ words of other Early Access content for my other fics!