Chapter 92: Apocalypse Vacation
Summary: Taking a little time off to recover...
Chapter 92: Apocalypse Vacation
It had to be said, Kyoka thought, that taking a vacation in the middle of a slow-burn apocalypse was an extremely surreal experience. Given the prolonged, ongoing nature of that apocalypse, it made a mind-bending degree of sense. Particularly as it was starting to seem like they might just avoid the Invasion becoming truly civilization ending. Civilization changing was inevitable at this point. Just as it had been inevitable when the advent of Quirks had caused the Quirk Wars and the second Dark Age. Not everything had been lost to those wars and that Dark Age, but development of civilization had largely ground to a halt. Worse, the overall world population had gone into something terrifyingly like freefall through the entire Era of Chaos.
Honestly, it was a bit ironic that their own near self-destruction as a species had prepared them so well for invasion by extra dimensional aliens. Without the lingering paranoia from the Quirk Wars, or the old infrastructure from the troubled times that was still maintained in case things took a turn back toward the worse, the invasion would have been far more bloody. As it was, the casualty figures still didn't bear looking at if you wanted to avoid depression, particularly on the civilian side. But the bulk of the casualties had come in the first few days. Governmental responses had been fast enough, emergency plans good enough, that the civilian death rate had been choked back hard by the end of the first week.
Civilians were still dying, as it was not yet possible to get on top of every Rift fast enough, and some places like Africa didn't have anything close to proper containment yet. But in the more developed portions of the world, with serious Hero and Military presences, the worst had been blunted more and more as counter tactics were developed and employed. A lot of infrastructure was damaged, millions were displaced, and things weren't good. But the overall situation was looking up, relatively speaking. Even a little hopeful. Like they might just be able to beat back the proverbial enemy at the gates, if they tried hard enough.
Which still left it feeling very surreal as she found herself put on enforced leave from the front lines. Everyone that had gone through the Bristol Beachhead Gate and fought on the other side had gotten that order. It had been a high-risk, brutal slugging match the entire time they were over there, and Kyoka knew she was going to have some serious trauma over some of the things she had seen. So the leave time made sense. It was logical to force those troops and heroes to rotate out and recover.
It was still very disorienting to be sandwiched between her two new girlfriends as they ate dinner at one of the numerous 'Apocalypse Speakeasys' that had popped up worldwide. People were people, and many of them had reacted to mass shutdowns of entertainment options in unique and interesting ways. Some entertainment districts were open, of course. The world needed to keep on spinning in order to keep on producing the things they needed to function as a society. But the various powers that be around the world had instituted graduated emergency plans that had moved from total lockdown in the first days, into carefully curated entertainment districts. Districts that were heavily patrolled by Heroes and Military, and which were frankly too small to service everyone.
Most of those districts were in major cities, built into megamalls or vertical shopping centers that took up major chunks of a skyscraper. Such locations were ideal, as they could both be secured relatively easily and house a few thousand people at a time. They also typically already had the facilities for various forms of shopping and entertainment, allowing a measure of commerce and entertainment to be opened. They were, however, entirely too small to provide everyone with the types of entertainment they were used to. Which is where human ingenuity had quickly entered the picture.
Pop up entertainment areas in zones announced to have low daily QE levels were increasingly common. Street vendors and shops in areas that were already open, for reasons of being critical industrial nodes, were being politely ignored by the authorities despite the normal zoning restrictions. Floating markets, a good option since there had yet to be any Rifts opened over or under water, had become a common thing in coastal regions. Amongst all of that, Apocalypse Speakeasys had become a thing.
Not officially endorsed, most of them were built into homes or businesses and intended to serve only a couple of dozen people at a time. Like some of the other options, their owners kept a close eye on the public safety maps of QE density, only opening their establishments when the QE levels were below a certain threshold. While the bigger pop-up entertainment areas had to be cautious that the very people they drew in might spike the local QE level, the Speakeasys were deliberately kept small enough not to run that risk, and could ride the 'safe' line of ambient QE levels much more closely as a result.
The one she, Momo, and Izumi were currently in was an example Kyoka could totally vibe with. It had been a decently sized instrument and record shop that the industrious owner had quick-converted into a small restaurant/bar with a bit of a cyberpunk dystopia theme. There was live music, from a pretty decent local set of jazz musicians that should have clashed with the aesthetic but somehow didn't. Surprisingly good food too, even if of only a very limited selection. And, of course, two gorgeous girls who were apparently now her girlfriends snuggled into the corner booth with her.
Honestly? That bit was almost as surreal to her as the idea of their vacation time, and it was largely responsible for the smile you couldn't have gotten off her face if you'd tried to club it off.
"What do you think, Kyo?"
Kyoka shook herself, trying to figure out what she'd just been asked, before deciding to deflect instead.
"That you still need to work on a better nickname."
Her dry, deadpan snark got a snort from Momo and a giggle from Izumi. Momo smirked a moment later, though, in a way that made Kyoka gulp.
"Oh~? Maybe I should stick with a pet name, hmmm?"
Kyoka blushed. She couldn't help it. And it didn't help at all that Momo languidly raised a hand to trace her choker suggestively. It wasn't the collar she'd had in their first encounter together, but the way Momo traced it, the soft grasp with one delicate finger to tug gently, made it seem just as suggestive.
"M-maybe Kyo isn't so bad…?"
Izumi giggled again, then came to her rescue by restating her question. There was a knowing look in her eye that told her she was aware Kyoka hadn't actually been paying attention. She blushed, but accepted the lifeline offered.
"But, really Kyoka, what do you think about the idea of setting up something more permanent in space? I mean, out there, the QE levels are normalized a lot. It wouldn't be healthy for older people that need QE in their environment. But anyone whose Quirk includes a generator, which is probably 70 percent of the Quirked population under thirty or so, would be fine. Heck, even for the ones that need ambient QE, we could probably just empty some we gathered from siphoning Rifts closed. That stuff is pretty neutral."
Kyoka blinked, a wry smirk forming on her lips. This, she thought, was the problem with having two incredibly intelligent girlfriends. Somehow, they'd gone from talking about the music the last time Kyoka contributed, to talking about building some sort of space station. Seriously, at that, she was sure, given that they'd taken people for rides to space for their bloody school cultural festival!
"I think that it probably has merit objectively. But that you'd have a hell of a time convincing anyone to spare the industrial capacity right now. Everything seems like it's being converted to war material manufacturing, unless it serves a basic need of some sort."
Momo backed off from her flirting tone and nodded with a sigh.
"Too true. I still think it might have merit to draw up a plan as either a last resort, or to use some sort of automated drones to begin mining and building a proper moon base or orbital refinery. Our infrastructure down here on the planet is going to be vulnerable for a long time. It will take years to make enough RADS arrays even just to cover civilian population centers. Let alone the massive industrial manufacturing we need to keep fighting the war. If we can secure some of that in orbit…"
Kyoka let the words flow over her, simply basking in her two new significant other's presence for the moment. Honestly? Despite the ongoing apocalypse and the occasional nightmares now haunting her? Best vacation ever…
... ...
Strictly speaking, 2B wasn't taking a vacation in the same fashion as everyone else was. Since the start of the Invasion, she'd been using and abusing several external servers, many which belonged to Aegis Inc and were far beyond anything available on the open market, to boost her processing power. Using strictly limited Virtual Intelligence copies of herself to farther enhance her multitasking, she'd effectively been juggling a dozen vital projects at a time. Cyberwarfare against villains, data collation, QE level monitoring efforts, as much of the various manufacturing questions as she could manage to take off Izumi's plate. She'd been balancing it all, while still making sure to rest her 'main consciousness' enough that the stress didn't build past the point where she could handle it.
That said and admitted to, she was letting the VI versions of her handle almost everything that wasn't a priority one alert today. Her main consciousness was, instead, residing in her adult body all the way back in Japan. The distance from Izumi would have been impossible, if she was trying to project herself. But as she was simply puppeting the body today, it was easy enough. As for the reason why she was here…
"2B, sweetie, is that you? I'm in the kitchen! I hope you're hungry! Seafood hasn't been affected much by the rationing yet, so I thought we'd try a new version of Tendon today!"
2B smiled, already looking forward to whatever Inko had come up with. Even if it wasn't a winner, time spent cooking with her adoptive mother sounded like the absolutely perfect way to destress from all that had been going on. She quickly found her way to the kitchen, finding a radiantly smiling Inko already working on pulling out ingredients for tempura and donburi. The fresh shrimp present helped confirm it was going to something relatively traditional, but a number of unusual spices from farther afield than Japan were also on the counter. 2B set a small package down, quickly opening it and lifting out her own contributions.
"I brought a few things from the safehouse that I thought you might be missing. I'm afraid it's all preserved options, but we bought the very best of that sort of thing when we stocked the place. Including tea, of course, at Momo's insistence. I liberated a bit of her stash of Golden Tips Imperial. With her permission, of course. I don't want her to break my frame, after all."
Inko chuckled. Momo's favorite tea had been rare enough even before the Invasion. If 2B had stolen some of it without approval, she might really have faced Momo trying to bash her head in. That girl was a little tea-obsessed.
"That sounds wonderful, dear. Now, why don't you pull on an apron and help with the shrimp, hmm? I read about a new way to fix them that applies some lessons from certain treatments of sushi…"
2B obeyed happily, already basking in the smiling presence of her mother…
... ...
Nedzu tapped a key, shutting down the majority of his many displays even as he accepted a cup of tea from the butler bot he'd reluctantly taken to using. Since the Invasion started, anyway. He truly preferred to prepare his tea himself, having long ago discovered a favorable sort of meditation in the near-ritualistic actions which calmed him. Once, that calmness had been hard enough to come by and so dearly won that he'd have utterly refused to give up the ritual. He'd come a long way from those days, even if he was still well aware that he didn't quite fit into human society. That was, he'd long ago decided, just fine. He wasn't human, after all.
Despite that fact remaining true, he had to admit he was feeling a bit closer to humanity in recent days. Less because he had changed, and more because the situation had. It was, he'd discovered, quite easy to unite against a genuinely outside factor like the Empire of Kurrick. What matter that he and the humans weren't the same species? They were both of Earth, and both fated to die or be enslaved if the Empire was not beaten. That uniting factor might not overly affect the more fractious and zealous human factions, but certainly worked well enough on Nedzu himself. Well, aside from making him hate those radical elements more, of course. But hardly anyone cared how much he hated those fools, these days.
As he sipped his tea, this one a delightful blend recommended to him by Miss Yaoyorozu, he found himself surprisingly content. Horrible as it was, costing those few he cared about as deeply as it was, the Invasion was a puzzle even his mind was taxed by, scratching an itch that was normally quite difficult to satisfy. Thankfully, he needn't feel any guilt about his enjoyment this time, as things were beginning to look up. Thanks in large part to the work of young Midoriya and 2B, the world had a fighting chance now. The days ahead weren't going to be easy. Not the least bit. But there was at least a path forward now.
Sighing, his calm was broken a bit at thoughts of his two favorite protegees. He supposed, technically, he hadn't spent enough time with them yet to consider them such. But he couldn't help it. Yagi truly had found two diamonds in the pair. Not even diamonds in the rough, given how fully polished they'd already been when they entered the halls of his school. Yet, the fact that they were two, three really given 2B, of his favorite students is what tainted his enjoyment of the tea.
He'd let both of them be pushed too hard.
He knew he had. He knew full well that he was ruthlessly banking on the stability they granted each other. Something that was, in turn, one reason why he'd equally ruthlessly shut down dozens of attempts to breach their current downtime. The Powers that Be wanted both of them back on the front lines or in the labs, producing more of their miracles. But Nedzu knew the signs, and Izumi's brutal rejection of virtually any communication outside himself and the Harvest Stone scientists had been a red flag he would not ignore.
They would get the down time they'd been promised. That much everyone owed them. He just hoped by the time he had to throw them back into the deep end, the down time would have fixed the damage done to them. It was always so hard to predict if that would be true with humans or not. A variable he'd always hated trying to account for. At least, he thought, their taking on an additional mate should help stabilize them still farther…
... ... ... ... ... ...
A/N: I wanted to use this chapter to cool things down a little from the hectic pace they've been under, as well as letting the inclusion of Jirou settle in a bit. It had also been too long since showing much from 2B's perspective, so the date and 2B's visit to Inko came to be.