***

It was a dark and stormy night.

The men dressed in nondescript dark clothing and balaclavas were loading unmarked white trucks, and a few guards stood around the perimeter of the weathered warehouses, old, used AK-47s in their hands.

A lieutenant in military uniform was barking orders, saying to the loaders to hurry up. None of the assembled people saw the figure on the rooftop of a nearby building scanning them, clad in shadows.

A flash of lightning, and a booming thunder rang out. The figure on the rooftop was gone.

The loading was proceeding smoothly for a while.

The warehouse was located inside a city, in a residential area, so naturally it had the sizable front gates, and a fence with barbed wire - courtesy of the previous regime - to keep it separated and secure from the outside world.

Lightning flashed.

And at that instance, with a thundering metallic ringing, an impact resonated from the front gates. The gates immediately curved inwards... and slowly, with a sound of tearing and breaking metal, fell inwards.

It would've surely been all very dramatic...

If an armoured leg wasn't stuck in those gates, as it clearly kicked through them with the aforementioned impact. And if, as the gates fell, they didn't drag a certain mysterious shadow-clad figure with them, making him swear out loud, as he fell with them.

With a short bark, the guards pointed their rifles at the intruder, a man clad in armour that looked so pitch black, one might think it was made out of shadow... because it was.

A second before the first shot was fired, the armoured knight, whose very figure oozed shadows as if they were smoke, and who was desperately trying to free himself, looked up.

***

Let me tell you, it's an indescribable feeling to stare down a dozen barrels pointed at your face. It made you feel things. As for me, I suddenly found that I was in a contemplative mood. Introspective one, really.

It was a clinical detachment that gripped my heart; a sudden moment of clarity, of understanding, acceptance, and a brief touch of amusement, that indescribable cocktail of feelings that flare up when an event you are involved in stops being just embarrassing and dangerous, and catapults straight into 'I really am that much of a fuck up, heh?' category.

So yep, that's me.

And I am, too, wondering how I got myself into this situation.

See, being suddenly transmigrated into another world was fucking wild, man. 10/10 experience, makes you shit a whole metric ton of bricks, won't recommend.

The thing is, it wasn't easy to recognize that I had gotten into another world. Not at first. When I got here? It felt like I just woke up on a bench in some asian shithole country. Looked like rural China, honestly, but that's because I am an uncultured swine, and to me, everything is either le cringe Asian Shithole (read as; China, South Korea, Vietnam, India), or la soyjack poggers wholesome chungus Japan. I am exaggerating for comedic effect, of course, but regarding Asia I was mostly an ignorant fellow, aside from Japan, which I got exposed to due to anime; every other asian country kinda blurred together for the most part.

Honestly, I wasn't too far off. Almost no one fucking spoke English, hieroglyphics all around, and I am pretty sure everyone was called ching-chong or some shit. I am exaggerating here, but that's just stress getting to me.

So, my first thought wasn't an isekai adventure, or a world-swap straight out of DC comics. I just thought 'holy shit, I've seen something about cats and Schrödinger on YouTube, physics is real, man, I need to contact someone that I just fucking teleported'.

I mean, I knew myself and where I lived. There is no way I can be kidnapped from home without waking up a single time and get transported to another country - or some set, so teleportation was the least improbable option here.

Then, I got ahold of myself a little and felt that... thing.

To cut a long story short, I got the grip on my superpower. Which makes me an isekai protagonist of sorts. Not exactly conventional by western standards, because in the West, you have someone with powers already when they get dumped into another world. The one swapped to another world is rarely a normie, and if it's a normie, he doesn't get new sweet juicy superpowers out of the deal. At least I can't recall any books, movies, or comics like that.

Aside from maybe that one French W.I.T.C.H. cartoon... okay, getting sidetracked here.

What I am getting at is that superpowered world transmigration is a Japanese invention, so I am calling this an isekai in my head.

So, what is my power?

Honestly? No fucking clue how to describe it.

I could feel myself connected to something. By like... strings or some shit. Some invisible whisps of energy. When I focused on those whisps, I could roughly tell what they connected me with. Both the giant cosmic something, and specifically what each 'string' was responsible for.

And when I pulled on those strings? I got whatever they connected me with shoved into my body... or hands, if it was an item.

More on that later, back to my handsome, but unfortunate, ass waking up on a bench in a town with people genetically predisposed to squinting.

So, I got myself to the first secluded alleyway and pulled on those cool Cosmic Strings of Fate.

That's how I call it. Cosmic String of Fate. No, it was Cosmic Chaos String of... ah, whatever.

Anyhow, I got actual superpowers.

The first power already brought me to a superhuman level. It enchanted my agility, reflexes, balance, spatial orientation... I basically became Spider-Man! Except not really. I got superhuman, sure, I could now do a split without feeling like my balls will burst, I can do backflips, and I was overall just flexible. But by itself, it made me like an E-list superhero. Like... I don't even know. Black Widow, but without actual training? No, Black Window feels far too lame. Squirel Girl, her, but without plot armour and actually funny powers.

Luckily, my second ability made up for that.

Shadow Armour! Well, I call it Shadow Armour, in practice it was, like, an ability on itself. I could control shadows, at least as long as they are not too far away from my body. I could shape them into anything at all, but the easiest was covering myself in... well, armour. The cool part was that while I was clad in my armour, I was stronger, faster, and more durable. It wasn't just 'power armour', I legitimately became superhuman when tapping into this ability!

It was also clearly magical. When using it, I was mostly guided by some instinctive understanding, but I could tell I was drawing on some internal energy!

Combined with my already super-human ability, I actually became kinda like a... Venom. Like, legitimately. A black costume that I can shape into whatever I want? Check. Superhuman stats? Check. I only lacked the webs, which... okay, webs are important, it kinda sucked without them. But at least there is no way I will ever get one-tapped by a sonic attack, so sucks to suck being a symbiote, I guess.

At the start, when I only got into this world, I had four abilities to pull into myself. The two I already mentioned, and also the ability to change the texture and colour of anything I touch, which lasts until the object is damaged enough. Works only on non-living objects, and it's some sort of magic, too. It sounds underwhelming until you realize that I can turn an entire reinforced steel wall into glass and shatter it with one hit. Sure, it will revert to concrete chunks, but those would still be shattered.

The only downside is that I couldn't use both magics at the same time. Unlike with my reflex enhancement, which got absorbed into my body, those magics were... well, they felt like someone shoved someone else's mastery and in-depth understanding of some magic into my head. A mastery that was so profound that I kinda understood what to do what I want without even thinking about that. Maybe for that reason, I couldn't absorb them. Instead, it was like I... wore them, I guess? Used them, and could swap between them. Though it took some time to exchange one for another, it's kinda hard to describe.

As for the fourth ability, a metric shit-ton of actual knowledge and in-depth understanding of animal psychology and behavior, and how to communicate and tame beasts. This one got integrated into me, unlike both of the magics.

Cool. Kinda random, but cool.

So, I spent the first day trying to understand where I was and also getting something to eat.

The issue is that no one spoke English. Luckily, some chumps tried to mug me within an hour. I am not really the kind of guy who gets into fights, but with my superpowers? I felt pretty confident. I've beaten the shit out of them and taken their wallets and phones. One of the guys pulled out a knife, but surprisingly, it was easy to deal with when I saw every attack coming and could move quickly enough to intercept.

Didn't even have to use the Shadow Armour.

I beat them up and... my Cosmic String of Fate rewarded me! By giving me a bowl of pasta that refilled itself infinitely with a new pasta dish whenever I wanted it to.

If it isn't my superpower giving me a clue that by fate I am to be a superhero by giving me a reward cookie, I don't know what is, but... well, more on that later.

So, once I got a phone and some cash (by robbing the muggers I've beaten up), I managed to use Google! Though it wasn't called Google here.

Turns out? I was in another world... kinda. Thing is? It just felt like I was back on Earth, just with one extra continent called... Mu. Boring, right? At least it could've been called something metal like Atlantis, but no, it's Mu.

As for the rest of the world? Asia was Asia, Europe was Europe, and the global geography, at least when it comes to major details, was the same... but the specifics? That's where shit got weird. There were a bunch of minor towns and cities that never existed on my earth, and some real cities were gone.

This world didn't have LA or San Francisco! Lucky bastards.

This world, specifically the USA, however, had a city called Brockton Bay.

This was when my neurons activated. My brain trembled. My body shivered. I was in Worm! I knew I was in a worm!

And from that day onwards, I knew my destiny was to beat the cosmic horror of this world and become the best superhero there ever was...

Yeah, no. Brockton Bay seemed to be a coincidence.

Thing is? The year didn't line up. It was 2031st here. Also, no people with superpowers in the world's recorded history. If you don't count zombies as people with superpowers.

Yep, zombies. Apparently, Germany in this world got fucked up badly. And I don't mean during or after WW2, I mean something big happened there like a year ago, and on the internet, no one knew what exactly. Officially, it was called an Eruption of something that the Japanese (I think, maybe it was the Chinese) called Honkai. Which translates to 'corruption' or some shit like that. It got a bunch of people turning into monsters, and basically fucked Europe up massively. Shit is still getting cleaned up, some monsters are still there, and a major part of Germany is contaminated with both this Honkai contamination and the radioactive contamination from the tactical nukes detonated there when the monster hordes first started eating through cities.

The consequences for the entire world were enormous, but that's besides the point for now. What is important is that the consequences were so huge that they even reached Asia.

How do I know? Well, because it mainly affected the country I was in. Which country?

...

...

Best Korea. Also Known As North Korea.

I mean, technically 'United Korea'. The thing is, the year here is 2031. South and North Korea, as far as I understand, have been in the process of merging for the last four years. Then Europe got nuked with alien radiation, which didn't give people superpowers (yet), and they expedited the process because the economy worldwide was crushing.

Yes, you heard that right, in this cursed world, Best Korea has fallen. With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Reset the timeline to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.

Indeed, Kimmy Boy was no more. Billions Must Die.

Seriously though, I was in the territory that used to be le horrible dystopian authoritarian North Korea, but was now a le based capitalist paradise! A place of knowledge and learning, where anyone could do anything, where American dream was alive!

Yeah, okay, actually, seriously now.

In reality, things got a lot worse here after the merger, from what I gathered. People in a socialist country? They aren't prepared to be thrown into an unregulated free market. Before those guys could live from paycheck to paycheck without much trouble, they were in a queue for a car or a flat, but all those social programs and most work just got deleted practically overnight.

And when most of the industry and services in the country that belonged and were subsidized by the government, suddenly got sold for dirt-chip to anyone with some money, including foreigners, while the police were underfunded and local officials got changed? It led to some crime. A fair bit of it.

Like, a shit ton of crime. Like Russia in the 90s level of crime.

And here I was, stuck here, with no legal identity, no real money, but with superpowers.

Truly, I was an illegal alien hobo with a great destiny.

I figured I was in a superhero world of some kind. It certainly seemed like it if you squint, and seeing that I was a good illegal immigrant and adapted to the culture that was gracious enough to host me, I was trying to be a good boy and do a lot of squinting.

Too many things about this world just... clicked when you looked at it through that prism, you know? Weird ass cities and towns that never existed on my old Earth, a calamity that looked like a catalyst for superpowers, because you know... honkai zombies do get supernatural strength and shit. The year is 2031, with literal robots in more advanced countries. On this Mu continent, they had robot maids! Not to mention hyper-sonic jets being commonplace, that fly above the lower level of the atmosphere, all that casual superhero-world, unrealistic technology bullshit.

Now, I am trying to be cheerful and nonchalant, but the last two weeks were anything but. I am not exactly an action movie hero type; I am afraid to fight. I don't like hurting people.

But I had superpowers now, I was in one of the most crime-ridden countries in the world, and if I ever wanted to get out of here, I needed money.

So I decided to go ahead of the curve and become the first superhero. Surely this honkai thingy will make a lot of X-Men in a few years anyway, might as well establish myself as the Batman, and be there when Justice League forms. Or however this superhero rip-off world will call its team.

My Shadow Armour was perfect for that, especially with how easy it was to make it look like... well, anything I imagined.

And that's how I became the Shadow-Man © (name pending), the protector of the innocent, the gang-buster, the Dark Knight ©. I decided to rip off the classics (after making sure they didn't exist in this world's media), and my armour was basically identical to that bad-ass Berserker from that one Fate anime... except I also had a Batman symbol on my breastplate. I could also make my armour fucking ooze shadow, as if it's smoke, and it looked metal.

Thing is, unlike bad-ass superheroes, I was new to this whole thing. I also didn't speak the local language. I also didn't want to accidentally kill anyone, because killing people is fucked up.

So, I only had a few encounters with the criminals. Enough to get the pocket change that allowed me to visit that one diner to charge my (stolen) phone, and to save some for a rainy day.

I could also make myself normal clothes from shadow, and make them appear as just black pants, boots, and a neat t-shirt.

The rest of the world was pretty advanced, yeah, but... well, the place that used to be North Korea? I didn't compare this place with rural China from my world for nothing.

I was in some small town, maybe like 200k people lived here. The phone I stole was a smartphone, sure, but it was an analogue of a bootleg Android phone from the 2010s. It couldn't run basically any modern app, had a cracked screen, and lost battery super quickly. It was still enough to use it as a translator when I was trying to buy something, and it had not-Google Maps, which helped a bunch.

Today was my twelfth day in this world.

In my first major raid on the crime syndicate... or I think it's a crime syndicate.

The thing is, I knew from the maps that this warehouse belonged to the military. I was also patrolling at night to look for crime to bring to justice (muggers to rob) as I do every night, and saw one of those guys in a balaclava pay off this guy in a military uniform.

So, knowing this is my first major entry as a superhero, I decided to go in and save the day.

Que to me being here. Kicking the front door so hard that my leg got stuck, and falling inwards with the gates because even if my sense of balance was supernatural and my control over my strength pretty great, I still wasn't above physics (yet), and the massive gate simply dragged me down with it.

Is this a good time to say I wasn't sure if I am bulletproof?

"Bul!" The man in the uniform screamed, and they opened fire.

The world slowed down, as I could hear my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. I swear I could see the muzzle flash before the sound of the gunshot.

Yet, even as I could feel the gates bending under my attempts to yank my leg out, I knew it was too late.

The bullets hit me like angry wasps -- if angry wasps were made of metal and traveling at the speed of "fuck you in particular". I was superhuman, but not superhuman enough to see speeding bullets in the dark.

I was mentally prepared for the pain but...

They didn't hurt. At all.

The shadow armor absorbed every impact with a sound like rain on a tin roof, bullets visibly ricocheting, some hitting the gates beneath my feet, and struck sparks from the metal. I could feel the bullets hitting me, sure, but it was more like getting pelted with really aggressive paintballs.

The realization that I was actually bulletproof hit me harder than the bullets themselves.

Holy shit, I'm actually bulletproof. Oh, thank you, sweet Lord Jesus.

This was the moment I should have done something cool. Something Batman-esque. Rise dramatically from the spot, cape billowing (if I had a cape), and deliver some badass one-liner before systematically dismantling my opponents with calculated precision.

Instead, I flailed like a turtle on its back, still trying to get my fucking leg unstuck from the twisted metal gate.

"Mweoya i geo?" one of the guards said, probably 'what the hell', as AK clicked empty. In the sudden pause as they all scrambled to reload, the only sound was me grunting and swearing under my breath as I finally managed to wrench my armored boot free.

I rolled to my feet just as they finished reloading, and this time I was ready.

The lieutenant was screaming something in Korean -- probably "kill the shadow demon" or "who ordered the discount Venom" -- but I wasn't listening. I was too busy actually acting like a superhero for once.

I moved.

Not ran. Moved . With my enchanted body, each step propelled me a few solid meters even in the initial dash; this wasn't a sprint anymore. My enhanced reflexes kicked in fully, and damn did I feel alive .

The closest guard was maybe ten meters away. I covered the distance before his brain could process that I'd moved at all.

My shadow-clad fist connected with his solar plexus, and I felt that weird moment of resistance as my supernatural strength met regular human durability. I pulled the punch at the last second -- didn't want to accidentally punch a hole through the guy -- but it was still enough to lift him clean off his feet and send him flying backward into a stack of wooden crates.

I winced, already knowing I should've held back more; hopefully, he wasn't dead. At least I didn't feel anything crack in him when I hit. Surprisingly, that knowledge about taming and animals came in clutch here; instinctively, I just knew this much shouldn't immediately kill a mammal of that size, though the whole situation is likely to be counterproductive to taming, and can traumatize the beasty.

He hit with a crash that would have made a Hollywood stuntman proud, and wasn't getting up any time soon.

The lieutenant was still barking orders, but his voice had gone up an octave. Funny how seeing a shadow-demon casually Falcon Punch your subordinates into next week can affect a man's composure.

Three guards tried to act while I was still getting my bearings -- amateur mistake, but desperation makes people stupid. The first one had his rifle up but was clearly struggling with the magazine; his hands were shaking so badly he couldn't get it seated properly.

Seeing me looking, he started to press down on his trigger despite not even having the mag loaded.

Click-click-click. Nothing.

I took a step toward him, and he panicked, swinging his empty AK like a club. I caught it mid-swing -- the wood stock splintering in my gauntlet's grip -- and yanked it out of his hands so hard he spun around and fell on his ass. I gently kicked the guy in the stomach.

The second guard actually managed to reload, but when he pulled the trigger, nothing happened. Either some of the rain got into his second mag, or the rusty piece of shit jammed. Tough luck. In the split second he spent looking down at his weapon in confusion, I was already there.

I grabbed him by the shoulders, lifted him, and, fearful that someone else would shoot me and hit him, threw him like a ragdoll into the crates he and his buddies were loading.

The third guard was the smart one. He'd managed to reload properly, had his safety off, and was actually aiming at my center mass. Professional stance, controlled breathing, or... well, it looked like it to me.

Weird how an impression like that can form in a split second when I actually looked at him.

He squeezed the trigger.

Pop-pop-pop-pop.

The bullets sparked off my armor, and I saw his face go through the five stages of grief in about two seconds. Denial -- he kept pulling the trigger. Anger -- he screamed something that was definitely profanity. Bargaining -- he dropped the rifle and put his hands up. Depression -- his shoulders slumped. And finally, acceptance -- he started to slowly back away toward the exit with his hands still raised, and shaking like a leaf.

I let him go. I mean, shit man, beating him up after that would've just been too much.

Meanwhile, one of the loaders had decided he was going to be a hero. He grabbed a crowbar from somewhere and charged at me, yelling what I assumed was either a battle cry or a very creative string of curse words.

I sidestepped his swing -- the crowbar whooshed past my head by a good six inches -- and slapped him across the head with a gauntlet.

He went down like he'd been hit by a truck, cursing and clutching his head.

Ruptured eardrums and a concussion, my taming knowledge supplied helpfully.

Okay, definitely need to work on force calibration.

Two more guards tried to coordinate some kind of pincer movement, but they were clearly making it up as they went along. One got tangled up in some cargo netting trying to circle around me, and by the time he worked himself free, his partner had already given up and was actively looking for the nearest exit.

The tangled guard finally freed himself, took one look at me standing there like some kind of shadow-wreathed grim reaper, dropped his weapon, and bolted, which triggered the rest to try and do the same.

No shame in their game, they saw a demon made of living shadow casually tanking assault rifle fire, I'd run too.

That left four guards, the lieutenant, and a couple of loaders who were too scared to move.

The lieutenant pulled out a pistol -- looked like a standard military sidearm -- and started shouting what I assumed were threats. It could have been compliments about my armor's aesthetic choices for all I knew, but the tone suggested threats.

I started walking toward him.

Slow, deliberate, unstoppable, or so I hoped. The bullets from his pistol pinged off my armor like hail on a windshield, each impact absorbed harmlessly by the shadow.

The psychological effect was immediate and devastating. You could practically see his worldview crumbling in real time as he understood what a mook is to a superhero.

The lieutenant's pistol clicked empty.

In the sudden silence, I heard him whisper something in a disbelieving voice that I couldn't make out, as a faraway thunder reached us again.

I stepped toward him, and he stumbled backward, fumbling for a spare magazine. His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped it twice.

He finally managed to reload his pistol, but when he tried to point it at me, his hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold it steady.

I tilted my head slightly -- a gesture I'd practiced to maximize the "silent, judgmental death machine" vibe -- and took another step forward.

Then, before he could react, I punched him in the face -gently-, and kept punching a few more times until he was just groaning and swearing, disoriented and not willing to resist.

And then it was just me, standing in the middle of a warehouse full of whatever they'd been loading into those trucks, surrounded by groaning criminals and feeling like maybe, just maybe, I was starting to get the hang of this whole superhero thing.

First massive real superhero fight? Nailed it.

The issue I constantly encountered in my previous heroics is that... I can't call the cops. Nor could I talk with the criminals.

This city didn't have many tourists, so giving away that I didn't know Korean or speak English was a giveaway that I avoided from day one in my Shadow-Man persona.

I still did what I always did, that is, uncomfortably ignore the shaking, hysterical goons as I searched their pockets, as I stole their wallets and money, placing those in special compartments in my armour, near my belt.

When I did that, I inspected the crates. Weapons, as expected. Lots of AKs and ammo.

After checking that out, I simply bolted, ignoring whoever was left there.

I mean, what else can I do? I don't carry handcuffs with me, and this time there was no witness to call the police themselves. No ropes either, and even if there were any, I have no idea how to tie a person up in a way that won't allow him to wiggle out. I also really didn't want to interact with the local law enforcement in any way, so sticking around, in case someone actually called the cops, wasn't advisable. I avoided the cops so far, and I'll keep avoiding them for now.

It's not so bad, I think. Even just by showing up, beating those guys up, and robbing them, I was still making a name for myself. Maybe not the most heroic image, especially with me cleaning out their pockets, but I need the money, and besides, I am a Shadow-Man. Even though I prefer Spider-Man and his whole friendly neighborhood shtick over Batman's Edge, I will never pull off the 'friendly' part with my abilities.

I look like a fucking sleep paralysis demon in my armour, so I may as well rock the look.

I traveled back to my 'home' via rooftops. With my armour on, I was more than fast and strong enough to leap ten or even twenty meters across the gaps between relatively low buildings here, and over the last weeks, I've gotten plenty of practice.

Finally, I got to my hideout.

It was an unfinished twelve-story commieblock building. I think it was supposed to have a night guard, but if so, no one paid the man, so he fucked off.

I lived on the sixth floor, in one of the 'flats' that lacked a door and windows, but had all the walls.

Did any homeless people live there? Maybe some junkies? Surprisingly, no. No idea why, though. There was literally no one loitering around, aside from school kids coming to the lower floors a few times after school.

The reason why I lived on the sixth floor was simple - the upper floors were surprisingly almost finished, they actually had both the outer and the inner walls. Each level of the building beyond the fourth floor had a door that led to a hallway connecting the flats, and each door was secured with a thick, rusty chain and a barn lock.

Basically, a perfect hideout for someone like me.

With practiced ease, I leaned from the unfinished staircase on the fifth floor, and jumped a solid ten meters, up and to the side, so I could grab the empty window that led to the hallway of the sixth floor.

As I got in, I mentally shifted my armour into a comfy sweater, sweatpants, scarf, and fluffy slippers.

Immediately, I zeroed in on 'my' flat. It lacked the door, obviously.

I walked past the empty lobby of bare concrete walls, past the small living room, which also looked like a concerned coffin with steel bars sticking out of the walls and the floor, and into the one bedroom I actually took for myself.

I walked up to the small corner full of small plastic bags, blankets, and some other useful junk, and dumped the loot from the shadow bag on my wrist in there.

I picked up the empty bowl. I concentrated, and with an effort of will I can't quite explain, I forced it into action.

Instantly, the bowl was filled with delicious-smelling, steaming, creamy pasta.

"Carbonara today, huh?" I muttered to myself as I unpacked the plastic fork from the sealed pack nearby, "Truly the best superpower so far."

I always loved pasta, and for someone as broke as me, having a bowl that made pasta on demand was fucking great. Especially considering that the pasta was pretty damn high quality.

I settled into my blanket nest with the pasta bowl balanced on my knees, scrolling through videos on my shitty stolen phone. The carbonara was perfect as always -- creamy, rich, with just the right amount of pepper. Amazing what magic pasta could do for your mood after a successful night of superhero work.

And I started doing what I did every day when I came back from my patrols, mindlessly distressing by watching a local analogue of YouTube. Mostly the cat videos.

I was about to click on another video of some local streamer drama. When the screen flickered once, twice, then went completely black. I pressed the power button. Nothing.

"Great," I muttered, setting down my bowl. "Piece of shit finally died on me."

Or maybe it didn't. Gotta check if it turns on if I charge it tomorrow...

That's when the world exploded.

Everything went white, and my ears felt like they'd been hit with a sledgehammer. I couldn't see, couldn't hear anything except this horrible ringing sound that seemed to come from inside my skull. My body wasn't responding right -- I tried to move, but everything felt wrong and distant.

Something clattered. Maybe the bowl. Maybe me hitting the floor. I couldn't tell.

My vision was nothing but white spots and afterimages. I'd like to say that I called out to my power but... I didn't. I didn't even think of that. Too scared, too in pain, too disoriented.

Then something hit me in the neck, it felt hot like lava, and my whole body seized up. Every muscle locked at once. Electric. Had to be electric.

I think I passed out for a few seconds.

I was on the ground, twitching, and through the fog in my head, I could sense movement around me. Shapes. People. But everything was still white noise and confusion.

Someone grabbed my arm. I tried to fight back, but my body wouldn't obey. Something sharp pricked my neck.

The last thing I registered before everything went dark was a voice speaking English with an American accent, professional and calm: "Package secured. Moving to the extraction point."

Then nothing.

***

I woke up with one hell of a headache.

I was cold, I felt like shit, and the memory of yesterday, surprisingly, flooded me quite quickly.

No matter how shitty I felt, the sudden spike of adrenaline made me sit up abruptly, glancing around in alarm.

I was in a... box. Full stop. A metallic box with some dim, sterile lights, a welded metallic gate, and nothing else in here.

My ass was frozen solid, too.

No wonder I felt cold, damn. My neck felt stiff and as I touched it...

Beep

What... is this a fucking dog collar? No, far too thick...

"Subject Eta 01, don't make sudden movements," A loud ass electronic voice rang out, making me jump in place and glance around wildly. I couldn't see any speakers. "Strapped to your neck is a high-yield explosive; don't try anything."

I don't think I've ever felt terror quite so strong.

Carefully, I put my hands down, trying to ignore the suddenly very weighty collar on my neck.

Mentally, I wasn't in a good place. One can say I was panicking, just a little.

Can I protect myself with my armour? Well, if the explosion was outside, it would depend on how strong the explosion was! Honestly, knowing a bit about military hardware? I had my doubts I'd survive this collar detonating even if it was strapped to my armour.

But seeing it was on my neck, I wasn't even sure I could even attempt protecting myself with my armour in time.

What else can I do... wait, I have the second ability! I can just turn things into rubber, it won't explode then!

Immediately, I reached out to my other power and started to switch from my armour to it...

"Subject Eta 01, follow my instructions." The male electronic voice said again, making me slowly glance around, trying to pinpoint where it was coming from. It felt as if it came from everywhere around me at once. "Slowly stand up."

After a brief moment of hesitation, I did as told, adrenaline flowing through my blood like coffee through a student's a night before the deadline of a project.

"Good. Now, keep following my instructions. You will hear a loud sound. Look towards it when it happens."

This was stupid, but when the loud buzz rang out from the left wall, I obediently turned towards it. Then it repeated, and so I turned to the other wall.

That happened a few times over.

Finally, I could feel the new ability slotted into place.

Despite myself, I grinned.

"Hey, microphone man, how about you turn towards deez nuts in your mouth?!" I shouted as I turned my thick metallic collar into a rubber band and immediately pulled on it, trying to free my head.

Immediately, the siren started to blare.

"Pussy!" I laughed, feeling almost high, as I threw the collar aside.

Okay, now I...

The adrenaline high and the hyper-fixation of freeing myself from the collar retreated, allowing me to actually think a step further now.

Dread. Pure dread.

Fuck. Fuck. FUCK! What do I do now?! The alarm is blaring, and it will take me another five whole minutes to get my shadow armour back!

Panicking, I run to the nearest wall and put both of my hands on it.

Come on, come on, come on...

Slowly, the metal started turning white and was acquiring a familiar, rough texture. I was turning it into styrofoam!

Once a big enough part of the wall was transformed, I took a few steps back, jumped a couple of times, hyping myself up. Okay, I am a superhero, the Dark Fucking Knight, escaping CIA black sites is my second name! I can do this! Come on!

"Let's fucking GOOOOOO!"

I screamed as I sprinted towards the styrofoam wall.

Impact, and, expectedly, I managed to punch myself right through the wall before it turned back into metal!

At least my head and upper torso punched through!

My legs decidedly didn't make it through. And the wall turned back into metal. In which I was now stuck.

I blinked back the disorientation, looking up, only to see four rifles pointed towards my head.

"Ah... nice evening we are having here today gentlemeAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

And then I got tased again. I think I passed out pretty much instantly.

***

I woke up again with a headache.

I tried moving my hands... and couldn't.

I glanced down, and there is a collar on my neck. I glance to the left, my hand was there, encased in metal and... with something that looked like a C4 charge attached to it.

I looked right, yep, same.

Did I get fucking crucified?

"Rise and shine, lab rat."

***

"What next?" I asked, feeling dead inside.

I just felt drained at this point. After a long explanation of the containment measures of this new and improved box, I knew precisely what my chances of escaping were.

To be fair, even last time, if I had stopped for a moment and actually used my head, I would've known not to try my luck.

It was a miracle I wasn't shot to death, which that woman also reminded me extensively about.

Afterwards? The handcuffs were removed, just detached by themselves, and I was directed for... tests, I guess?

"Next, stand there." An area to the far side of the room lit up.

"Why?" I asked, suspiciously.

"You are in no position to ask questions here, lab rat." The woman answered, her voice suddenly growing arctic cold.

"Alright," I said cautiously. No reason to tempt fate here.

I approached the area and stood inside.

Again, the voice of the woman spoke up.

"Now, use this power of yours."

I blinked slowly, staring towards the obviously one-sided mirror in the far side of the room. A new addition lacking in my previous cage. Worst part? I wasn't even sure if this was a real one-sided glass. Maybe it was a trap, and no one was there.

Anyhow...

"Which one?" I clarified, stretching my shoulders a bit, this place was damn cold. "There is my shadow control, and there is my ability to change matter I touch."

"Hmmm..." The voice rang out melodically. "Let's start with the shadows. It's the ability that wasn't observed up close."

I furrowed my eyebrows, but nodded. Luckily, I already slotted the ability in from the moment the handcuffs were off. Just so I could try to defend myself if something goes south.

I reached for the energy in me, then moved it just so , and shadows coiled around me slowly, shaping into the familiar armor.

The voice didn't speak for a while.

"You said you control shadows. Why did you make it into armor?"

I sighed, knowing this would take a while.

So, I answered her question. Got a new one, answered that too. That continued for a while.

I didn't bother trying to ask my own questions or say more than she strictly asked, because I had a feeling that wouldn't go well.

The woman didn't elaborate on whatever conclusions she arrived at, just kept asking about my shadow armor and what I could do with it.

"...we will conduct the testing of the durability of your shadows later." She eventually decided. "Now return to the containment area, and strap yourself back in. My assistant will arrive with some objects you will transform for us."

I paused for a moment.

I wanted to say something witty. Like, 'are you sure it's safe?', but that would be too idiotic.

If I want to escape, I should just look for an opportunity. That being said... I wasn't sure the opportunity would arrive.

See, this containment place? It didn't just look modern. It looked Sci-Fi. My armor was bulletproof, but I still felt the impacts. If they had lasers here? I was relatively sure it might burn through me.

Not to even mention that I can't punch through solid steel in my armor. And without it, I was mostly a normie, so transmuting stuff to escape enough wouldn't work.

Basically, I saw no way to escape. But the shitty part? Whatever batshit insane evil black ops scientists were running the show here, just like in any comics, they were in no hurry to assure me that I would be safe, or free, or that I would get anything good for cooperating.

I didn't resist only because I wasn't the bravest guy around. Getting tased was fucking horrifying. My whole body is still sore from all my muscles contracting. I want to avoid it at any cost again. Getting any other torture to force me to comply on top of that? Yeah, thanks, no, I'd rather be a lab rat for now.

Eventually, I proceeded to do as she asked.

Putting myself back on the 'cross' on which I woke up, and feeling the cuffs mechanically lock around my arms, was an exercise in both absurdity and a touch of humiliation.

There was a hiss. And a part of the wall just moved aside.

A robot on a tank chassis rolled in, holding a huge plate, on which a variety of materials were placed... and a few small animals.

This will take a while.

Sighing, I rested my eyes for a moment.

***

Surprisingly, being the so-called 'lab rat' wasn't nearly as invasive or painful as I had initially been afraid of.

Some machines were brought in to take my blood samples regularly. Also urine.

My abilities were tested in a variety of ways. Some bulky equipment that looked like radar grids was also brought in and positioned to... eh, observe me I guess?

The woman who gave me orders briefly mentioned that she was trying to get a feel of the energy I used for both the transformation of matter and my shadows. So far, she was unsuccessful. Which didn't surprise me. Magic, my power was magic.

It felt right to call it that.

And, well, if magic was so easy to detect with technology, they would've detected it long before I showed up.

It's been about two days now, I believe. Hard to judge without a clock, but I was given two nights' worth of sleep and five meals.

There were a bunch of restrictions about what I could and couldn't do. If I didn't follow them, I got a warning, and I didn't want to see what would happen if I didn't correct myself.

It was basic things, really. Get myself secured before food, props, or anything else is brought in. Comply with testing.

Nothing too unreasonable, aside from, you know, forceful containment.

"Attention," A familiar female voice rang on. Not the one that usually did the testing, but another. An assistant, I guess? "Please secure yourself in place."

I did so with almost routine precision. Stood up, walked up to this stupid cross, hooked my arms and legs into special niches that clicked, fixing me in place.

Soon, the door opened. Robot wheeled in, holding the familiar tray... except, instead of food or props for testing, or even heavy equipment, it brought giant cuffs.

I studied it curiously, as it left the tray on the floor and retreated back.

A second after the doors closed, the assistant once again spoke up.

"Please secure yourself with the provided device."

I couldn't help it; a weak chuckle escaped me as the restraints on the cross released with a hydraulic click. Rubbing my wrists, I slowly stood back on the ground, stretching a bit in place.

"That's unusual. Ms Assistant, what's going on?" I asked, feeling curious.

The Researcher, I found, was almost impossible to talk to. Lab Rat this, subject that, I am asking questions here, all that crap. The Assistant, however, was more chill. She was there when my food was brought in and actually listened to my complaints about the food they served.

"Someone wants to talk with you," The assistant answered. I nodded after a brief moment. I guess I... well, expected that somewhat?

In comics, there are two types of government-sponsored research labs. One is people's wet dream about Auschwitz turned up to eleven, that exists purely for torture porn, and one exists where good guys temporarily contain someone dangerous.

Judging by the fact my ass remained unprobed as of yet, I figured this was the second type.

"Please don't use your abilities. Please, don't antagonize the man who wishes to speak with you, don't make sudden movements, or anything else that may prompt a response," Ms Assistant said softly.

I just flashed a thumbs-up towards the one-sided glass.

"Gotcha."

I approached the tray, picked up the cuffs, placed them on my wrist, and... with a familiar hydraulic click, they closed.

Damn, those are heavy. Fuck, this is tight, my wrists fucking hurt.

"Hey, Ms Assistant, please configure those things properly! I feel like my wrists are going numb."

A second of silence.

"Please stand by." With another soft hiss, the cuffs relaxed just a little bit.

Once again, I brought two of my hands up with some difficulty and flashed the double thumbs up.

"Thanks again!"

As I did so, the door started to open with the familiar sound.

There was a corridor on the other side. Deceptively empty.

Just some lighting, and a few suspicious circles in the metal on top. I'll fucking eat my bowl of spaghetti (the actual item) if those aren't turrets.

Well, if they want to shoot me there... wait, they won't. They could probably just gas me in the main chamber, like what the Researcher woman suggested as one of the safety measures if I were to try escaping again.

Sighing, I walked in.

The corridor was surprisingly long, and I was pretty sure it had a bunch of sections that would close in, in the event of a breakout.

Can't believe they built me a Magneto Prison. That's how moving up in the superhero world looks like, eh?

Eventually, I approached the furthest end of the corridor, and a door opened.

On the other side?

A clean metallic table, a pair of chairs, and a dozen armed guards with rifles. They also had a military-like uniform, slick but not overly menacing.

Are those guys S.H.I.E.L.D. or some other retarded acronym?

"Greetings." The man said in perfect English, he was the only one who didn't look like a grunt, and sat at the table. "Please, sit."

Mh-mm, woof woof.

Still, holding my sass to myself, I approached and did as instructed.

"You look tense." He said, after studying me for a moment.

I studied him back. He was a middle-aged man with graying hair, a thick, rich mustache, the type you only really see in movies, and piercing green eyes. Otherwise, he looked mostly unremarkable.

Except for one thing.

This dude was absolutely fucking jacked. Like, holy shit, he looked like a final boss in a fighting game.

He also wore a nice suit that looked more expensive than anything I ever owned in my previous life. Which seemed like it was desperately trying to contain all that prime beef, and failing.

If I closed my eyes, I am sure I could hear his suit begging for its life.

"Getting kidnapped does this to you," I said, unable to hold back my sarcasm. "The researcher lady was also pretty intense."

The man chuckled awkwardly into his thick mustache.

"Yes, and I am sorry about that," He said, actually managing to sound sincere. "I am Hulk Alexanderson, Head Chief of Operations, here in M.O.T.H." ...fucking called it.

Also, is his name a fucking superhero reference, too?

This was probably a cue to introduce myself. A polite person would've surely done so.

"'Sup," I said instead, waving both of my hands energetically despite the handcuffs.

He studies me for a long second. It was hard to decipher what exactly he was thinking.

"I'll cut straight to the chase," He said slowly, putting his hands on the table in a Gendo Pose, "Your apprehension wasn't a normal procedure. But it was also an inevitability, with what you were doing."

He opened the folder on the table before sliding a couple of photos across.

It was my form clad in the bad-ass shadow armor, jumping across rooftops, and one of me holding a man by his neck. One of the muggers I stopped. Did someone actually take a photo?

"Wasn't easy to stop this from being leaked," He confessed, "What was your goal exactly?"

For a moment, I considered him. I was... well, preparing myself for something like that for a while. A recruitment pitch from the U.S. government? Basically, one of the most obvious things that could happen in the superhero world.

But, well, most of the witty responses I thought of either weren't appropriate and were a touch too brave for me right now, or I simply forgot them.

Fuckity fuck.

"To be a hero," I said simply, slumping a bit in my chair.

He lifted an eyebrow.

"Look, I am not exactly Asian, you see?" I said, pointing at my eyes with both of my hands, "You guys probably did some background checks on me already, and found jack and shit, right?"

The man nodded.

"You do not exist, as far as the world is concerned."

I snapped my fingers, nodding.

I also really wanted to grit my teeth because a tendon in my wrist got jammed into the cuff. It fucking hurt.

"See, that's what I thought too." I shrugged a bit. "That's because, as far as I know, I am not from this world."

The man slowly blinked.

"Are you claiming to be an alien?"

I paused for a second. Then chuckled weakly.

"Man, I wish," I shook my head, "No, I am from Earth. Just, not this Earth? Listen, I know this may sound pretty insane, but it was 2025 back home. We were just done with Covid, and had a few local wars going, nothing I found even mentioned in the history book. Also, the Mu continent? Didn't exist on my Earth." I was rambling, I realized.

Still, after a short pause I continued.

"So about two weeks ago, I found myself on the bench in Jaju in my pajamas." I leaned forward a bit. "As you can guess, with superpowers."

The man studied me for a moment.

Suddenly, the familiar voice rang out across the room.

"This isn't quite as fantastical as you think, lab rat." Before my disbelieving eyes, a hologram appeared.

Mommy. Sorry. Mommy. Sorry. Mommy. Sorry...

"The sea of quanta is a known quantity to us, even if we can't interact with it. The existence of parallel worlds is a solid, well-proven theory that seems to have a lot of correlating proof."

I blinked, staring up at the woman. She was voluptuous, dressed in a lab coat, and was... well, insanely beautiful. Like, I don't think I've seen a woman that pretty in my life?

Damn, the comic superhero world is amazing. Shame all the women here tended to be MJ-level of rabid bitches.

"That being said, it does not explain your abilities." She said, looking at me... I mean, her hologram did.

"You mean my magic," I said drily.

"Your abilities . Stop avoiding the question, lab rat."

I gestured towards the hologram theatrically, looking at Hulk, mouthing 'do you see this shit'.

"Dr. Mobius, please control your language," He asked, looking more tired than angry, "Don't demean this young man."

The woman looked like she really wanted to roll her eyes.

"Back to the matter at hand, please."

I considered her question for a moment.

"Well, I can't explain much about my abilities," I said after a moment, shrugging, "I just have them? You guys researched them, maybe it's the honkai radiation that changed me and gave me, like, mutant powers?" X-men, please exist already! I don't want to tell them about the Celestial Super Hyper Strings... of Chaos!

Dr Mobius shook her head.

"No. Your chamber was constantly monitored for Honkai radiation, and we took plenty of your samples. Your body contains traces of Honkai, most people do after the Eruption, but it didn't seem to change you significantly. Besides," Her eyes once again zeroed in on me with pretty scary focus. "Even when you actively transmuted matter or controlled shadows, there were no Honkai energy emissions. Whatever your abilities are, they are not related to Honkai in any crude manner."

Fuck you X-Men, you boring ass race-war analogue of a comic series. I relied on you one time in my entire life, and you flopped like all your movies aside from Wolverine!

"I wasn't here during the Eruption, though," I said, raising my arm like a good school student, "How is it that I, too, have magical cancer?"

Mobius's eyelid twitched.

"You really are annoying when you are allowed to talk. Answering your question, Honkai is not magic, and you don't have cancer. It's a trace amount of Honkai, unlike normal radiation, Honkai is not dissipating by itself, and has no physical substance that creates the radiation via its decay. Instead, the radiation itself lingers and builds up. You have some in you, I do too; all people on this planet are contaminated to some extent." Seeing something on my face, probably because I went pale as I understood that magical turbo-cancer was building up in my body and could turn me into a zombie, she smiled, "You are right, however, that the Eruption itself was the main cause for spreading the initial wave of Honkai contamination. What you are missing is that there were plenty of smaller Honkai manifestations around the globe. They aren't usually made public, so you might not know... but they happen constantly."

That did put some good old fear of god in me.

"Wait, are you saying humanity is on a timer?!" What is this dramatic rise of the stakes?! "If no one knows how to cure Honkai contamination, tiny eruptions happen everywhere all the time, and it affects people across the world... doesn't it mean it's a matter of time until everyone is a zombie?!"

What the hell kind of setting is this?!

"Smart Rat," Mobius cooed, "But no, zombies require the Honkai energy reaching a certain threshold while the subject is still alive. You, me, and all of humanity will just die before that can happen, provided no other complications arise to kill us all first or expedite the process."

This isn't any fucking better you scary sexy woman!

"This is why M.O.T.H. exists," Hulk spoke up, making me remember he existed.

It took me a moment to process that I had managed to forget the existence of this mountain of muscles somehow.

"We are the organization assembled from the brightest and best in the world to combat Honkai."

I squinted a bit suspiciously.

"By the 'best in the world' do you mean, like, the collective west, Europe, USA, the usual cool kids club without China and Russia or...?"

"Everyone," He said grimly, "Every country on Earth supports us at least on paper. Though some can provide no contributions because..."

"They are Zimbabwe, yeah, yeah, I get the idea," I waved away the boring politics talk, "But back to you, good doktor," I said, trying to imitate Raiden. I wish I could be a cool cyborg child soldier. "I have no idea how my power works or where it came from."

When I spoke, she looked somewhere down before herself. Rude.

"There is a lie detector in your cuffs," She said in a bored tone, "Mind repeating yourself Lab Rat, I think my hearing isn't what it used to be."

I swallowed. Then, I cracked instantly.

"Okay... there is... something that I am connected to," I explained slowly, as my shoulders slumped. I blinked, realizing that... there was a new string!

I licked my suddenly dry lips as I inspected the connection... wait, it summons a FUCKING WHAT?!

"I can't really explain it. There are those strings that connect me to it. I can feel them. Like with a sixth sense I can't explain. Each string, when I pull on it, turns into knowledge, or an ability... or an item."

Do I tell them? This new string still won't let me escape this facility. Even if I escape, those guys can probably hunt my ass across the world. Besides, the Honkai story is... fucking scary.

I don't actually mind working for those guys, as long as that would help me and the rest of the world not die from Turbo Cancer! Especially considering they are the bootleg S.H.I.E.L.D.

Okay, this is decided.

I AM GOING BALLS DEEP!

"Initially, I had four strings connecting me to this grand something. I got one when I got into my first fight... and I have one more now. I can... pull on it, if you want." I said, finally looking up.

About twelve muzzles were looking me in the eyes, with very nervous-looking soldiers on the background.

Eh...

"Is that so?" Why... why did Dr. Mobius sound so scary? I feel scared... but also why am I getting a bit aroused?

Scaroused?

A moment of clarity appeared in my head as I reached the next level of consciousness.

I need an adult. I am an unsalvageable idiot.

A moment later, it's gone.

"G-guys?" I said nervously, very carefully not moving, "Please don't shoot me?" I said, for some reason, phrasing it more like a question.

"Stand down," Hulk said, gesturing with his hand, "False Alarm," He added, studying me.

For a moment, it felt kinda awkward.

"Excuse us for that, we are all a little trigger happy due to... some reasons you aren't cleared to know just yet," He said, after a moment, "As for the demonstration... Mobius?" He asked, turning to the hologram.

The woman waited for a moment, studying me.

"I'll be there in ten minutes. I need to bring some equipment."

With that, the hologram winked out.

For a moment, no one said anything.

"Women, am I right?" I said with an awkward smile, trying to discharge the tension.

No one laughed.

Pretty sure one of the female guards was imagining gunning me down, I could swear I saw her trigger finger twitch, with the safety on though.

Damn, feminism ruined women even here, huh?

***

Twenty minutes later, I stood between, like, ten different machines with antennas and radar grids, all of which were pointed at me.

"What do we expect here, son?" Mr Alexanderson asked, "Give us one last briefing."

I shrugged.

"Honestly, nothing much. I have no idea why Dr. Mobius got this excited," I said, gesturing with my neck towards the woman near a bunch of control panels. "Basically, what will happen is that a shield will appear in my hands. No flashes of light, no explosions, nothing."

The man lifted an eyebrow.

"Did you summon any objects before, then?" He asked politely.

I nodded and waited with my answer for a second, seeing that Ms Assistant just brought Mobius her coffee.

Ms Assistant was also insanely cute, by the way. Shame she was a kid.

She also looked like a smaller Mobius. Is Ms Assistant's natural evolution - Mobius? What type of Pokémon are they, poison?! Is this the Chansey situation, where you'd be better off avoiding evolving it?!

"Sure did. A bowl that produced infinite spaghetti on demand." I explained, with great relish, seeing Mobius choke on her coffee. I timed this just right, after all. "I was eating from it when I was flashbanged, tased, and drugged. Thanks for that, by the way. It may have broken."

Alexanderson blinked, looking at the man next to him, and gave a sharp nod.

"We will check. Most of the items from your place are in our possession."

I simply nodded.

"You can begin," Mobius said, eyeing me suspiciously. Did she think I was low enough to make her spew coffee on purpose?

Nah, no way, a hero would never.

"Sure," I said, reaching out and grabbing the string.

Then, I pulled.

In my hand, it appeared. I couldn't help it, I exhaled in shock.

It was... so light. Not a feather, mind you, but still. I thought it would weigh more.

The shield was relatively small, blue, red, and white, with a star in the middle.

Truly, it begins now. With this? There is no way anyone can deny that I am a superhero.

"What is that? Just a shield?" Hulk asked, his voice curious.

I didn't answer immediately.

"No," I denied, grinning like a loon. "It's a sign."

In my hand, a shield made of Proto-Adamantium rested. A weapon that belonged to one of the most OG superheroes to ever OG.

Captain America's shield. Judging by what I knew of it from inspecting the string, I doubt it was from the movies, in that universe the shield was pure vibranium. Here? Pure, badass, proto-adamantium, the most durable substance in that universe.

"Hey, Dr. Mobius," I called out to the woman, who was busy with some readings, yet she still looked up, "How about this, I'll let you borrow a shield from an indestructible super metal from another universe, and you will quit calling me a Lab Rat?"

It's quite unfortunate that I can't actually unsummon items or store them in pocket space, or something.

It's also unfortunate that I decided to resist her taking it, and that she could order some of the soldiers to take it.

Dear Mom, today I got tased again.

A lot.

Author Notes: This isn't even my final form. I will write one more chapter today LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

Also, yes, the fucker rolled Captain America's shield from a Golden Ticket. This kino writes itself.

***
"Let's get down to business~!" I sang under my breath, striking the punchin back with a rhyme, "To defeat Honkai," A kick, another series of punches, "Did they… haaaa-haaa, send me bitches…When I asked for chads?" Another series of attacks, and I couldn't even talk; my lungs were burning too much.

Weakly, I moved away a bit, holding my hands on my wrist.

God fuck it, damn it, sports were hard!

Still, the song was stuck in my head; it kept playing even as I rested.

"Come on, superhero, don't tell me that's the extent of your stamina?" One of my pals, Mat, said, clapping me on the back.

"Can still… kick your ass… on the ring…" I fired back, only to hear him and some others chuckle.

Fuckers really are way too happy seeing my ass suffering through boot camp during the last month.

"Fuck you… guys…" I said, slowly making my way down to the cooler.

Honestly? M.O.T.H. was alright.

Apparently, the biggest reason why they acted so brutally with me at first, was because they expected me to be a Honkai beast of some sort. You know, being malicious and shitting out Honkai radiation.

Me being my handsome, smart self… okay, serious talk, me being around human-level smart? That only made me potentially more terrifying if I were another Honkai monster.

So the initial containment was pretty brutal. But as the testing went on, and I showed no rabid behavior or Honkai-related power, they were already planning to move me from that cute containment cell.

My agreement to work with them just simplified the matter.

Apparently, I really am the first superhero in the world. First superhuman too! The issue is, aside from my enhanced agility and reflexes, I wasn't too impressive physically.

I mean, come on, I was a normal guy back home. Worked 9 to 5 in the office. Went to the Gym, like, three times a month when I felt too guilty about having a gym membership and not using it.

So, first order of business when I agreed to become a soldier for humanity?

Training. Balanced diet, and a shit ton of training.

I was taught the basics of firearm handling, driving, giving and following orders on the field, and first aid. But those were just courses I attended.

Outside of that? Mostly physical conditioning. With three hours a day set aside for self-training myself in magic, and two hours a day I was Mobius' bit… lab rat.

Apparently, M.O.T.H. invested in me; they seriously did. I apparently had a team of nutritionists and exercise consultants who went through all of my medical data to make an optimal training plan, and a bunch of specialists were hired to perfect a fighting style involving Captain America's shield, just so I could use it optimally.

I was actually feeling as if I was acquiring the skills necessary to be a superhero now. But honestly? It was tough, like, stupid tough.

Good thing guys and gals on the base were alright.

They've been a bit wary of me at first; I, too, would be wary of a shadow-demon who can punch through solid steel, but we were guchi now.

I mean, I wasn't exactly over getting kidnapped and forced into a sterile room, but… that's just the risks of being in a superhero world, I guess.

Working for the woman who was calling me a Lab Rat was weird, but again, I wasn't too prideful, not after the humbling I received from the Black Ops squad.

It's not like I can start to hysterically scream that I would rather die than work with M.O.T.H, that won't end well. Planning an escape, or running off at the first mission? Yeah, cool, I still won't be able to do shit on my own against Honkai.

I had a fascinating lesson about what Honkai is, and what it actually does to people.

Shit is fucked up.

The first thing that happens to the infected person? Strange, supernatural-looking lines start to trace his body beneath his skin. That happens instantly, once he gets the correct dosage. Soon, he stops being able to see. Soon after? He dies from total organ failure, one after another, while the victim is alive, and can feel all the pain.

If a soldier gets injured by a Honkai beast in the field and doesn't have great resistance? He or she had better amputate the limb on the spot. Otherwise, this poison spreads, and you get the lines beneath your skin, with all that follows after being inevitable at this point.

Then, there is a contamination with the 'critical level' of Honkai Radiation. That's when you get exposed to enough Honkai energy faster than you die. Your organs don't just fail you… They start to transform into something alien. Slowly, your body mutates and breaks down, as you lose control over your body and turn into a zombie.

Luckily in the low-level outbreaks, zombies are rare. However, during the Eruption? It was recorded that every second became a zombie.

Zombies in this world also weren't completely retarded, Walking Dead style. They coordinate with other beasts, are capable of actually controlling their bodies, not much worse than a living person, to normal armed soldiers, they are dangerous, and not only in endless waves.

Honkai looked like some endgame crossover level threat in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. How the hell am I the only superhero yet?!

In any case, I alone am not an insignificant factor. I am not any weaker than Captain America, provided I have none of his experience, charisma, and plot armour, but I am also not an American, so it evens out.

And also, M A G I C.

For now, I wasn't deployed anywhere just yet. Small-scale Honkai outbreaks happened occasionally, but were mostly handled by M.O.T.H. personnel of that country or that country's military. Nothing that would require dropping me in… besides, I was valuable enough to train before being thrown into a war zone.

That fact I appreciated.

Why was I valued highly? Well, my superhuman powers in my armour were part of the reason. My potential to get more powerful was a factor, too.

But another part was something else. Something Dr. Mobius figured out about my power before even I could…

A loud, familiar buzzer rang out.

"Attention, agent Knightmare, please report to section C-34."

I sighed.

"Honestly, fuck this woman sideways…"

Damn, now that I said this out loud… I wish I could.

Standing up, I went to the changing room, and from it, directly towards the facility where Mobius wanted me this time.

The M.O.T.H. issued smartphone was neat, in the sense that I could actually make it project a small holographic map and just follow it.

The technological wonders of this world were, in general, amazing. Shame I had so little time for video games.

VR here actually had proper games, and wasn't just a gimmick.

Then again, it's not like I regret it too much. Working on myself? Pain in the ass. If not for my 'fitness trainer,' I would've eaten junk on day three and skipped half the exercises.

But being semi-forced to go through all the conditioning and seeing the gains? Worth the suffering.

For the umpteenth time, I wandered, did they add steroids in my food or something? Or maybe when Mobius was injecting me with those vaccines, they weren't just vaccines?

Eventually, I made my way to the correct block.

The door opened, revealing a few scientists, one of whom was recognizably Mobius and her assistant, Klein. I also recognized Blanca and Ato; those two were familiar faces. I knew a few others, too, but not really by name.

To be fair, I only knew Blanca because Ato can't fucking shut up about his beautiful wife.

"So what is it this time, Mobius? Do you want me to transform more shit into adamantium for testing?"

This was the discovery Mobius made. As long as I knew and understood the material? Preferably, if I touched it and knew its texture? I could force an object to transform into it with my second ability.

Sure, my ability wore off once the object was damaged…

Now, quick quiz, what is adamantium famous for?

Ding-ding, we have a winner.

Mobius found a way to print basically a genuine adamantium through my magic. Because it's indestructible, the only way to undo the transformation found so far, was for me to turn it back.

The discovery was only a week ago, so most of the adamantium toys I made for her were still undergoing testing.

But to say that Mobius and all the other M.O.T.H. scientists were having a collective orgasm from the sheer prospect of being able to design shit with adamantium in mind wouldn't be an exaggeration.

I myself was promised some gear out of this deal.

"Not this time, Lab Rat," The aforementioned woman waved away my words, "This time you aren't here for actual fun research, I am just conducting the testing on behalf ot M.O.T.H."

So, Klein will do most of the work. Gotcha.

Still, I raised an eyebrow.

"Omnious," I noted, without much care.

Someone tugged on my sleeve.

"Ah, thanks," I cooed, accepting a bribe in the form of a coffee cup from Klein. I really wanted to pat her head, but I knew from experience she didn't like it much.

I took a sip.

That's the good shit. The little assistant was really S-tier helper, she actually knew how to make coffee how I liked it… and shamelessly bribed me with it when I was starting to argue with Mobius.

I also nodded to other scientists, knowing I didn't have the time for proper greetings.

"In a sense it is," Mobius noted, raising up from her desk and gesturing for me to approach, "We are going to test your Honkai resistance."

I blinked.

"Wait, didn't you do that on the literal first day I was here?" I asked, honestly confused. I had access to my own file. "Besides, you have my tissue samples. Why the hell do you need me here?"

Still, I approached, accepting a small folder from her.

Opening it carefully, I skimmed the outline of the plan. Some schematics for a… eh, power armour? With some space for my own armour underneath?

"The pro-adamantium is indeed proving to be indestructible so far, but radiation and the honkai energy can bypass it," She said blandly, "Which means while it's certainly a miracle substance, it is not, as of yet, our golden bullet." She looked me in the eyes. I shivered reflexively, "Your own Honkai resistance is abysmal. Way below the average. If we send you into an outbreak as you are now, you'll come back with Honkai Sickness. If it's an event on the level of the Eruption, you will be a zombie in a heartbeat." She folded her arms under her sizable chest, making it really hard to look into her beautiful, yet chilling eyes. "So we have to test how good your shadow armour is at reflecting Honkai." She taped the folder. "The schematic for the battlesuit MK.0 is designed for you to use your shadow armour underneath. It amplifies your basic characteristic too much to ignore, making you more resistant to the impacts, vibrations, and other damage Adamantium won't shield you from. But depending on how well your shadows reflect Honkai, we will need to design different paddings to minimise exposure."

She sighed, looking genuinely annoyed.

"If it were up to me, you wouldn't set a foot on the battlefield unless there is no other choice. Your ability to produce pro-adamantium is too valuable to us and humanity as a whole. But if an opponent on the level of the Herrsher shows up again… we may have no choice but to send you alone."

…in the first age, in the first battle, when the shadows first lengthened, one stood…

"...you are thinking about something dumb again, aren't you, Lab Rat?" She said as she clicked her fingers right under my nose.

"Maybe," I admit nothing, snapping back into the real world, away from killing imaginary demons, and back to the possible Final Boss in front of me, "So you need me here because you need to test shadow armour for its anti-Honkai properties… honestly, I am surprised you didn't test it earlier, back when I was trapped in your cell."

She chuckled.

"Your opinion of me is far too low. Indeed, I don't care for the ethical side of things when I do my work, but you are too valuable to be used up irresponsibly. The only way to see your armour's resistance is to place it under Honkai radiation, and you have to be close… which means you will also inevitably get a dose. If the armour does not protect you well enough, you will have a dosage that will stay in your body until we learn how to clean the body of light Honkai contamination… if we will be able to learn such a thing at all." She shook her head,

I nodded, understanding the general idea.

"So basically, you were worried about me back then, and you still are now, but big bad wigs are forcing your hand. Gotcha."

Mobius didn't look impressed. Personally, that only made my smile widen. Fucking with her gave me life.

"Alright, I trust you with the procedure; you probably already came up with the optimal way. Let me check in case you missed something." I said, extending my free hand and inviting her to hand the document over.

Despite how I made this sound, this wasn't a dig at Mobius competence, and she knew it. It was just that I instinctively understood the limits of my ability, which came up plenty of times in testing. She usually never missed anything, but double-checking never hurt, and at the early stages of testing, I saved her a lot of time by instinctively knowing some of the things that would never work.

"It's on the second page," She corrected, making me look down at the folder.

I checked it, yep, it was.

"My bad," I said, checking what she had in mind.

So, the plan was for me to wear armour, while also making a small, long, wide, and flat nail extend from my gauntlet, which I will place between a Honkai energy emitter and a Honkai energy detector. What followed was school-level stuff; if my gauntlet reflected any honkai, the detector would pick up less radiation than there was emitted.

It was still kinda risky… but I am not a complete idiot.

I knew Honkai exposure was unavoidable. For me, knowing my limits with it was worth some exposure. Besides, Mobius will probably start with tiny doses, I should be fine.

"Fair enough. Lead the way."

She did so. Damn, I sure love to see her leave, and I love watching her go.

…Jesus Almighty, please, I beg you, take my superpowers away, but let me fall face-first on this ass one day.

***

"...it's zero again. Complete reflection?" Mobius wandered from the command center, as I stood there with my index finger extended in front of an Honkai emitter that… was practically shooting a laser at this point.

"It makes sense," I answered back nonchalantly, "This is magic after all. It makes sense that it counters space-magic."

"Lab Rat, I am voicing those results out loud for your sake, but if you will keep trying to needle me, I swear no one will ever find your body."

I gave her a thumbs up, but wisely decided to shut up for now.

***

I was eating at the mess hall.

Unfortunately, I was banned from using my magical bowl of spaghetti by literal demons who were running my dietary planning, and had to socialize in the evening and eat in the canteen.

Stupid sexy scientists, stupid dotting instructors…

"Are you sure you aren't going overboard?" Ato asked casually, biting into a broccoli, "Wearing this armour of yours even here?"

I got to know a bunch of scientists working under Mobius, when the main woman herself, as well as her cute hobbit-sized assistant, were busy, and she just needed someone to run more routine tests on my Lab Rat ass.

Ato specifically wasn't a lab assistant; from what I gathered, the guy had more doctorates than I had A's on my high school diploma. He was also a pretty chill dude.

Aside from that? He was a fucking handsome normie, with ashen hair, a charming smile, and a good face; he was also happily married and had a kid.

I was a bit jealous, but was also generally glad I got to know the guy. He was the kind of intelligence that seemed effortless but not self-absorbed… hm, how to phrase it? He wasn't a try-hard.

Yeah, that's about it. The thing that actually makes him fun to be around, unlike most of our egg-heads.

I shrugged.

"Hey, most of the field personnel were chosen for their Honkai Resistance. I am not. If I don't do that much, I'll die before all of them. And how will those guys live without my wicked sense of humour and sheer inhuman charm?"

Someone threw a tissue at me.

It was Dave. I flipped Dave off.

"On a serious note," I paused for a moment, glancing at my gaunlets, "...I guess I just got excited, that's all"

I was trying not to think that I was accumulating a tiny amount of magical cancer daily. But today kinda forced me to confront the issue.

Yet, now I knew that my armour could keep me completely safe.

It's this odd feeling. I knew I couldn't feel Honkai saturating me, but my mind was playing tricks. After I exited the lab, it certainly felt as if my whole body was like… ticklish.

Imagination, I know. It was the same back when I was a kid and learned about radiation. But still…

And know, just wearing this armour? I felt safe. Right. Like, I finally got one issue that was weighing down on me sorted out.

"Just don't get obsessed over it," Dasha said, a Russian woman with a short military haircut, who was a menace on the shooting range, "We'll all die one day. Getting obsessed over something like that… well, it can't be healthy."

She wasn't wrong. I knew that, thought the same thing even, but…

Fuck, Honkai was terrifying.

With a sigh, I shifted the armour into a normal M.O.T.H. uniform, except pitch black.

They were right after all, the background radiation here, in HQ, was pretty much nothing. I will die from old age ten times over before dying from accumulated Honkai in here.

"Fair enough. You guys had any luck reproducing mana?" Mobius almost had a stroke when I proposed to call my energy that, when it was finally noticed by specifically designed scanners (kinda, it's more like they noticed a faint electromagnetic resonance my mana generated when I slowly fed it into my matter transmutation spell), but relented after a rather long back and forth of us throwing shit at each other.

Mostly because I threatened not to cooperate with her for her experiments for a week, and actually meant it this time.

"Not as of yet, no," Ato replied with a small smile, shaking his head, "We are still busy constructing the right survey equipment to try and lock down this energy signal properly and to observe it. Unlike Honkai, it's shockingly elusive."

He explained it to me before. Honkai Radiation? In sufficient doses, that shit was picked up by everything, gaiger counters, magnetic wave receptors, and with equipment that observes quantum disruptions… even on radars and sonars, in sufficient Honkai doses. The energy affected the world around it brutally and constantly.

Mana, however, was much more subtle, almost unnoticeable until I used it for my powers.

"I still think you guys should dedicate at least a week to let me try and teach you how to do magic. It'd be pretty sick if we succeed." I offered again.

Ato politely shook his head.

"You said it yourself, you have no idea if anyone else aside from you possesses mana, and even if they do, you don't know exactly what and how you are doing what you are doing."

I shrugged.

"I am figuring it out," I admitted, "But I am getting better. Before, my shadows lost shape fifteen centimeters away from my skin. Now? I can briefly extend spikes for half a meter, and hold them up for a few seconds." It took a lot of training to get to that point.

It wasn't just trying again and again either; training magic wasn't like training muscles. I had to actually like… shape mana in new ways. It felt like stumbling in the dark, trying to force a part of you to do things you… have no idea how to do.

As long as my armour ability was 'slotted', I had an instinctive understanding of how to shape shadows into my armour. It wasn't knowledge per se… more like a bunch of instinctive understanding of how to do things just right to do what I want. Like, if you learned to ride a bicycle, you would still know how to do it, even if you didn't have the memory of learning, you know?

That felt kinda like that.

Right now, I am trying to use the skill of riding a bicycle by pushing it further. I mean, I knew how to affect my shadows with magic, so I was trying to learn to do other things with that shadow.

Even that was proving difficult. But I was getting somewhere, I knew.

"What I am getting at…" I said, stubbing the shit out of this boiled and tasteless chicken, before taking a savage bite, "Is that, eventually, I will make this ability truly mine. And I think I will be able to teach it then."

Ato just chuckled quietly.

"You are getting ahead of yourself. We don't even know if other people have this energy." He quieted down for a moment, "Besides, even if they did, dedicating a whole week to something like that… It's something we can't afford right now."

I just shrugged.

He wasn't wrong, but…

"It would've been fucked up if others couldn't learn or replicate what I do. So I refuse to believe that that's how it works, unless Mobius proves otherwise personally."

Ato actually laughed at that softly.

"You have a lot of faith in Mobius, huh? And you really are a nice guy at heart, aren't you?"

Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, you bishonen. No one will ever believe you anyway.

"I am not nice, I am… Knightmare!" I said, standing up, and spreading my hands up, in a suitably dramatic fashion.

A fist immediately made contact with my head softly.

"Sit down, you clown," Dasha threatened, looking done… if not for the small smile on her face.

I pretended to sulk, making some of the boys chuckle.

All according to Cake.

(Translation Note: Cake means ケーキ  ( kēki ). Shoots himself in the head .)

***

"So, my first deployment," I said, almost meditatively. "But tell me one thing, dear Doktor, WHERE IS MY SUPER SUIT?!"

…nailed it! I was waiting to use this line in a good context for my entire life!

Mobius theatrically closed her ears.

"In production." Her eyes narrowed. "We don't have time for your usual routine, Lab Rat." She said simply, folding her arms. "Even when ready, the MK.0 armour will have limited operational capacity; it's an issue of energy. Pro-adamantium does not completely negate shock and impact," Unlike the pure vibeanium. It really is a damn shame that the Cap's shield only partially inherited the property, because I was yet to be able to transmute objects into Adamantium and Vibranium separately. So far I was just replicating the shields material, which was the perfect alloy of both, the maximum durability configuration of the alloy. "As such, we can't afford to put fusion reactors inside, because they can critically detonate from sufficiently powerful blows, and our battery technology will be able to power it only for fifteen minutes. We are considering an experimental alternative, but it remains to be seen if it's suitable. In short, you can't expect to only deploy wearing MK.0, the armour is developed for very specific scenarios."

"Well said," The gigacha… I mean, Alexanderson said, approaching. "Knightmare, you trained well and hard, and proved yourself to everyone here. And today, we need you."

I simply nodded, feeling myself tensing up despite myself.

During the last two months? I've goten strong. My body was lean, I had muscles, I knew how to fight, the hellish boot camp taught me a lot about how to operate as a M.O.T.H. soldier.

I still have shit to learn, guys from cocoon were supposed to teach me more things next.

Alas, needs must. The greatest spike in Honkai radiation since the Eruption, and it's happening in Japan, in one of the most populated nations per square meter on Earth.

Needless to say M.O.T.H. was pulling all the stops, and was even prepared to deploy me.

Luckily, the outbreak was happening in Hokkaido, which is the northern part of the Japanese Mainland, and was less populated. Comparatively.

However, chances are, the guys on the ground will still drown in zombies and beasts. The fatalities alone...

Weren't something I should think about now.

"Listen, Knightmare, your VT-9 Skybolt will fly with minimal load, it will drop you as far into the oubreak zone as it could. Dr Mobius, if you please."

The woman nodded, took out a small remote, and pressed a button.

A holographic map ignited in the hangar in front of me.

"The level of Honkai radiation has spiked in the outbreak, and will continue to remain on that absurd level as long as Honkai Beasts aren't cleared out. However…" She pressed a button, zoning in on the city named Asahikawa, where a few bright dots were blinking, "Our satellites register a few hotspots. We suspect high-level Honkai beasts, or sizable groups of medium-level ones. We can't be certain; nothing of this sort was detected since the Eruption in Germany." She pressed a button again, and the map disappeared.

"You are going there mostly blind, your objective is to scout those hot spots, and detect the original sources of the anomalous Honkai emissions."

"If it's the high-level beasts as we initially suspected?" I asked briefly, my expression serious.

"Depends. Most likely, you will be ordered to retreat." Alexanderson spoke up, folding his arms on his chest, "We would prefer to avoid going nuclear, but if it's between you engaging enemies of this level unprepared, or using strategic nukes, we will use nukes."

Encouraging.

"Recon mission in that case. Am I deploying alone?" I clarified.

Alexanderson nodded, his expression regretful.

"Your ability can shield you from this level of radiation; for almost everyone else, it's a death sentence. Even our remote drones can't operate due to electromagnetic interference." Hulk offered me a hand.

I shook it.

"Go give them hell, and come back safely, son. This is only a recon mission."

I nodded seriously, feeling a quiet resolve igniting in me.

This? This is what I trained for. I always wanted to be a hero, who didn't? But over those two months, I grew to like those people, in this base. Other soldiers, Alexanderson - our direct boss, the science team, and even Mobius.

They invested a lot into me. Time, resources, effort, what I am, what I represented and what I could do... It mattered.

It's about time I showed them I was worth all of it.

"Thank you. Take care, guys." I saluted jokingly to the assembled colleagues and friends; most of the base that wasn't on active duty was here, in the hangar, seeing me off, even as the Skybolt was heating up its engines.

"You will be briefed in more detail as you fly," Alexanderson promised. "Godspeed."

I didn't turn around again, heading to this sci-fi osprey knock-off with jet engines instead of rotors. Hopefully this shit didn't kill its passengers as often as goresprays.

My armour materialized around me, enclosing me in a familiar darkness.

I had Captain's shield with me, and a mono-molecular sword that Ato cooked up, which I turned into proto-damantium.

I got into the sizable passenger compartment, that looked pretty empty with only me here. The pilots didn't distract me, as I started to receive instructions and updates from the HQ via a headpiece.

The signal in a zone that is so Honkai Irradiated was completely and utterly dogshit; however, the satellite connection could still work, and there were ways to shield the most basic electronics from Honkai. It's anything with micro-electronics that really felt the Honkai's impact.

I booted up my tactical tablet, too, and it showed the course of our flight and…

Wait, we aren't in Korea!? This base was actually on Mu continent?!

Neat.

Huh, I've really been running myself ragged if I never even asked about that before.

For a moment, I closed my eyes. My source of power, the Dragonic Ultra Sigma Chaos Strings?

No new connections. I figured, why would they appear now? It made sense, but still… kinda disappointing.

It's been two months since I got the shield, and I've gotten nothing from that point onwards. I wasn't too unhappy about that.

Even my current powers made me a superhero. There were plenty of genuinely good people back in the base, people who probably deserved that kind of power more.

M.O.T.H. didn't recruit just from the military for field operatives; Honkai Resistance was everything, that's the people they wanted. So you had firefighters, medics… just normal people, brave enough to volunteer, and in shape enough to get brought up to speed quickly. Volunteers from completely civilian backgrounds were still being trained around the world.

Me? Imagining myself in their shoes, with no superpower to speak of? I could never be here, even if I had good Honkai resistance.

I would've found an excuse to be anywhere else, but amongst people who willingly jump into hotspots of eldritch energy that did everything it could do kill you... Even if those people were the only ones who could save others.

That's why I can't bring myself to treat anyone on the base badly; those people were far more impressive than I ever was.

What I've got going for me right now, power-wise? It's far more than anyone in this world ever gotten. I just needed to make good use of it.

Because if I don't… well, no one will.

"...Knightmare, new development,"

My attention immediately went to my tablet, as Commander Alexanseron's face, in uniform, was there, a command center full of people behind him.

"The JDF is dropping the ball, not that anyone can blame them. We've got U.S contingent engaging, and China and Russia sending help, but they barely had anyone on the borders when this shit started, and rotating the navy takes time. We barely have any presence in that part of the country, too; as things are going right now… we are looking at a full containment breach."

I felt heavy at his words. That meant…

"This isn't a recon mission anymore, is it?"

He nodded after a brief moment of hesitation.

"Let me put it this way. From the Russian Far East, three TU-180 are launching as we speak. Two of them will be carrying cruise missiles. One will be carrying a nuclear payload…" Commander smirked; it was a truly demonic expression. "Thing is, normally the Russian air force will be as blind as the rest of us. They can launch their rockets, sure, but unless they have someone on the ground to guide them, preferably with a targeting laser…" He trailed off meaningfully.

…I like where this was going.

"Commander, you really give me the best gifts sometimes." I think my shit eating grin could rival his, "So, I am a God of Thunder today?"

He laughed.

"Just so, just so. There should be SALH equipment in the storage compartment. Get it on yourself, you are our eyes. Humanity depends on you. I will have someone pass along your communications to the Russians in real time, don't worry about that. Just focus on keeping yourself alive."

"Gotcha. I'll do what I can, Knightmare out," I replied briskly.

The communication died down.

I stood up, checking the aforementioned compartment. I did training exercises in VT-9 before, but it was over two weeks ago, so I was a bit rusty; it took me a while to find it.

Once I found the storage unit, I got myself a sizable laser pointer, which luckily was shoulder-mounted, and the 'backpack' that was my communication satellite module.

The backpack in question was the size of a small cat. Basically, more of a bump once fixed to my armour, rather than anything actually restricting.

I could warp my shadow armour in a way to integrate both, and even hide them mostly under my armour until I need them deployed.

That too, I trained to do.

"Knightmare, ETA 20 minutes," The pilot reminded, as I was doing my equipment check for the fourth time.

"Hear you loud and clear," I sent back, once again opening the map on the pad.

Okay, so there are a few things to keep in mind. My armour was durable. As I trained with it, and my mana grew stronger, it got a bit more durable, and made me even faster and stronger to boot.

Right now, I should be able to ignore Honkai Radiation everywhere in the area. At this level, it just doesn't penetrate my armour.

That being said, if my armour's structural integrity is compromised, I will be promptly fucked.

Which is why Mobius insisted that I layer my armour. A bodysuit and the armour itself, two separate layers at a minimum. Even if someone punches through my actual armour, I should not immediately die from being irradiated.

That said, I knew that some of the stronger Honkai Beasts could punch through my armour. Beasts on the level of the so-called 'Chariot', which were spotted in Germany in droves, would be able to strike through my armour with a direct hit. Everyone above is graded for the Captain's shield only.

Once again, I did some final preparations.

"Knightmare, Honkai Interference is too strong." The pilot said, "Sorry, sir, but we have to drop you here. We'll likely just be shot out of the sky if we go further."

"You did well today, boys," I said, standing up, "Open the hatch, no need to descend."

The men were probably a bit confused, but nonetheless obeyed.

My armour morphed behind my back, giving me a long, nice cape.

I grabbed the cape's edges.

Killing the hesitation, I forced myself to run up and… jump.

A second in the air, and I spread my cape, forcing it to solidify.

Slowly, I glided across the air towards the burning city beneath.

Author Notes; And now I am done for today.

Personally? I love this chapter. That's what happens when the muse is fired up.

***

I practiced this gliding trick before. The constructs I craft from shadow are under my control, so I could force my cape into a glider-like shape without much issue, and then force it to become solid but light.

I've had three successful sky-jumping outings in the last two months. It's been fun when I practiced. Made me feel alive, and woke me up better than caffeine.

Here, it was substantially more nerve-wrecking.

At least I was relatively sure I could survive the fall from this height even if something were to go wrong.

My Shadow Armour spell augmented my basic characteristics, all of them. Reaction speed, strength, stamina, even dexterity and balance. The testing Mobius conducted detected just how weird it was on a biological level; it was a direct infusion of my cell with energy and strength they just shouldn't have. The process only partially made sense biologically, though Mobius was working hard to discover and understand the parts that didn't make sense to science yet.

Compared to that, my enhanced agility, the one that was a constant trait, was much more straightforward. I was just built differently on a biological level now. Still human, but a human who was seemingly born with perfect traits to have incredible reaction speed and a more dexterous, agile body.

Incidentally, my training over the last two months made me into a very fit guy, which amplified me even further while wearing this armour.

Aside from that, the strength increases from wearing the armour also grew as I practiced with it, and used more and more mana to shape it.

And my reservoir of mana grew with training.

For all intents and purposes, with enough time and training, I already had an in to eventually reaching the late-shounen tier of physical absurdity. Punching a building into rubble could be possible eventually, at this rate.

My strength in Korea and my strength now were incomparable. It would be like comparing a 10-year-old to a fit adult.

Below me, there was a somber scene. Asahikawa was in flames, but only partially. I could see some monsters moving around; a lot of those bastards were actually flying over the buildings, but most didn't see my dark shape detaching from the transport and instead chose to pursue the retreating VT-9.

Luckily, it is evening now.

I saw bodies littering the streets, crashed cars, and abandoned items. The fires, I assume, were simply the result of people panicking, leaving stoves on, or maybe spillages from car crashes, and the ensuing monster attacks.

I could control my descent by maneuvering my cape, and I tried to float as far into the city as possible.

Alas, I can never get so lucky.

"Knightmare, report," My earpiece asked. It wasn't a voice of anyone I knew, probably one of the operators in the command center.

"Currently descending. I'll try to advance some distance gliding, but the enemy just detected me," I said, observing the floating Seraph-class beasts flying towards my position from the ground. A few of its bodies soon decided to follow it. "Securing the landing site, hold."

With that, I dismissed my cape, dodging the first flying monster that was as big as a human torso, and, with a swing of my sword, cleaving it in half.

Creating monomolecular blades was possible with this world's technology. The issue, however, was durability. They were insanely brittle when made out of any known material. Any known material aside from one recently discovered metal composite.

With durability not being an issue anymore, this sword was a weapon that could cut any known substance, aside from other proto-adamantium pieces.

I summoned the shadows around me as I started to fall, and, after a second of just plummeting, unfolded the cape once more,

That helped me pass just above the other two beasts. Now dismissing the cape again, I finally fell the remaining distance to the ground, bleeding off momentum with a perfectly timed combat roll, exiting it on my foot, and sliding the remaining few meters on concrete, as my armoured boots sparked from the friction with the pavement.

"All right, this is what I trained for," I reminded myself, observing how some of the zombies nearby started to move with purpose towards me.

The beasts from before also didn't seem to forget about me.

Seraph-class wasn't as impressive as it sounded. They were basically Honkai mooks. M.O.T.H. actually had a few in containment for research purposes, and I was allowed to see the recordings of them, as part of my training.

Mobius actually promised to take me to see one next week, it was in a facility in Europe. Shame that won't be necessary anymore.

They weren't anything too special. Their bodies looked weird, alien, and not in a 'that's a xenomorph' sort of way, but more in a 'who painted Riftborn from Endless Space purple, and why are they attacking geometrically' sort of way.

Unnatural smooth curves, bodies that had fragments levitating away from the main 'torso', and the ability to conjure Honkai energy into blades across their redundant wings to attack.

They didn't look like 'beasts'. They looked like invaders from another dimension.

I bet they were exactly that, too.

The zombies moved with aggressive intent. I knew it from training.

Honkai Zombies were physically stronger, faster, and had better reaction speeds than regular humans, and could use primitive tools, but they weren't bulletproof. Which meant a trained soldier could take one down in the field.

Their movements were distorted, lacking in any thought or intelligence, but with a clear hostile purpose, and some of the muscle memory from the human victims. They didn't stumble as they walked, for instance, and they could sprint.

One did just so, approaching me first, and all alone.

When my shield impacted its body, the zombie was catapulted away with enough strength to dent the car door inwards. I heard its bones cracking. It didn't get up.

I also didn't even put all my strength into that. Just a solid hit.

I didn't have time to contemplate my first kill or the strange pit that formed in my stomach as I saw its broken body. The dread of the situation ignited my adrenaline, and my body defaulted to the training drilled into me.

A shield and a longsword, an atrocious choice normally, due to the balance of the longsword, but even medium-level Honkai beasts grew so large that using anything one-handed swords was deemed a waste; it would be like picking them with toothpicks.

The normal firearms were also useless against anything above low-tier Honkai monsters, so our tactical division quickly figured out that taking firearms to the field was pointless for me.

Sure, recoilless rifles and high explosive worked, but carrying around equipment that large and the ammunition for it was simply not doable when I was deployed alone.

Zombies rushed me with makeshift weapons, some with pieces of lamp poasts, tires, bottles, and one even had a brick in hand.

They were slow. So slow, I couldn't help but feel relieved. My already superhuman reaction time was augmented additionally by the armour made me simply too quick for them.

I didn't show off, simply cutting off their heads, sometimes accepting the blows with my shield, and trying to keep an eye on the Seraphs circling above.

Not for nothing, it turned out.

One of the Seraphs suddenly lunged, purple blades of honkai engulfing its tiny wings, as it tried to ambush me from above, and impale me on its bootleg lightsaber.

Its body met the shield as I redirected it just enough to cut it in half with my blade.

Felt like cutting through butter.

One of the zombies hit me in the back, but, as expected, I barely felt it; it felt like a push in the back. I decapitated it next, with a wide swipe as I turned around, clipping two others.

In less than a minute, I dispatched the remaining enemies.

Seraphs could fly, but their only means of attack was rushing me, so it was simply a waiting game that wasn't that difficult.

For a while, I simply stood there, my hands gripping the shield and the sword far too tightly.

I couldn't believe that that was it.

But it was.

Slowly, I breathed out, speaking, even as I felt how dry my lips were.

"Command, copy," I glanced around, "Landing secured. I got displaced, I need a direction to the nearest hotspot, over."

"Roger that, Knightmare, hold." The man spoke up a second later, "North-east, about nine hundred meters, the Target Beta is the closest."

I never had a problem orienting myself, and some of the training was about that, too. I took out the compass from the compartment on my belt.

"Acknowledged, thanks. Signing off," My communicator died down, the earpiece was primitive, so the operator likely just muted themselves.

I glanced towards the north-east.

I kept my sword and shield in my hands, while I could create a sheath for the sword thanks to its guard and attach the shield to my back, having a weapon in hand was simply safer here.

First, I made a step, then another one; this slowly turned into a jog, then a sprint, and finally, as I accelerated enough, I leaped, twisting in the air to give myself more momentum.

I landed on the roof of the building and continued to sprint.

But even as I traveled, I couldn't really get it out of my head.

The sheer destruction around.

In my training, they told me what Honkai hotspots of minor and major outbreaks looked like. They even briefed me on what the consequences of an Eruption looked like.

It's hell. People will be dead and dying, old, young, men and women, I've seen the footage; it was a mandatory part of my training. In my previous life, I visited Lifeleak a couple of times, and the gore I've been shown during my training was on 'Chinese factory incident' level of gore and fucked up.

I hated that part of training, but even back at HQ I understood. Honkai outbreaks happen in populated areas. This is the type of shit I need to be able to stomach. The only way is exposure.

I thought I'd be able to focus and function normally, thought it wouldn't bother me.

But being here, now?

I felt sick. I tried not to look too carefully at the bodies littering the ground, but even so, I've seen the bodies covered in those geometrically perfect fucking lines, with people who looked like they were trying to claw at their own skin.

And the zombies. The way they move, the fact you could still recognize who they were before this outbreak started, all of it is…

Fuck.

It didn't feel real. I knew it was, I know this world is as real as my last one, but I felt light in my head just thinking about the sheer scale of the tragedy that happened here.

The worst part is that I know I am lucky. If this were a weaker outbreak, or the base had been closer and I'd been deployed sooner, I would've seen those people still alive, begging for help.

But there is no help. No cure. Just being in this hotspot… meant all of them were dead men and women walking.

Maybe one in a ten thousand could survive for a time due to heightened innate Honkai resistance, but those people… by now, they would've been killed by zombies or Honkai Beasts.

Whatever survivors remained, if there were any, were likely holed up somewhere, saving them was also impossible, after all, if Honkai Beasts couldn't find them in a few hours, I likely wouldn't either.

Even if I did, saving them might just be… No, I don't even want to think about that.

"HQ," I spoke up, as I ran across rooftops, my armour actually shielding me from the attention of zombies and low-level beasts below as I advanced, as long as I took care to crouch and not make too much sound, the darkness was my friend, I blended into it perfectly, "Give me a rundown on the situation outside."

So they did.

There weren't enough boots on the ground right now to really create any sort of quarantine, which meant the beasts were flowing out of Asahikawa and devastating the outskirts pretty much unopposed.

There were first-response units, most of which were actually supposed to be in the city, but none of them were responding anymore.

The outbreak happened around three hours ago, so by now, the chance of any civilian or a friendly being in the area was… slim.

I hated how it made me feel relieved.

At least it united not only my hands, but the hands of my Russian friends up in the sky, who should be circling the area at a safe distance.

According to the briefing, the cruise missiles had an effective lethal range of about two hundred meters. I might survive with cover and some luck, but the immediate fifty meters around the detonation was a death zone.

As for the tactical nuke, on account of wanting me to survive, they were going to use a 1kt payload. This meant a 70-meter-wide fireball, inside of which even steel vaporized, heavy damage within 400 meters, where no normal person will ever survive, and moderate damage for up to 800 meters, with people being concussed and out of commission at best.

Just thinking about it makes me feel a dark, twisted giddiness.

The Honkai fuckers will get exactly what they deserve.

I paused.

A few beasts on the ground noticed me after all.

As expected, the concentration of the enemy forces grew denser as I advanced, and I wasn't exactly that good with stealth.

"Your funeral, assholes," I snarled, jumping down into the approaching Seraphs.

That day, it felt like I truly felt hate for the first time in my life.

***

"Just rest already," I whispered tiredly, impaling my sword in the head of a zombie who, even lacking legs, was still trying to crawl towards me.

This girl looked thirteen at the oldest. Even as she did, her eyes stared at me emptily, no hostility, no flicker of recognition.

After the last five skirmishes, killing them didn't even stir anything. I just felt like shit.

"Knightmare, adjust the course," The voice in my communicator rang out, "The second hotspot moved, it's is now directly to your west. Two hundred meters, over."

"I hear you, over," I reported back, feeling a bit winded.

Okay, like I was taught, one minute break, then I advance.

I took out a small pocket watch and set the timer.

Walking up to a nearby car, I sat on its hood, for a moment letting my shoulder slump as I closed my eyes.

I reached out to my mana as I usually did when I had the time to sit and do nothing and…

Wait.

There is a new string!

I focused on it and…

Combat precognition… no, not quite. Something a bit more, an ability to foresee danger and almost instinctively avoid it. This… this is spider-senses!

Despite myself, I grinned.

"Oh fuck the hell, yes," I stood up, grinning.

"Knightmare?" The voice in the earpiece asked, and I waved it off reflexively. Then felt like a dumbass as I realized they don't exactly have a visual on me.

"Never mind HQ."

I reached out to the string and pulled.

The chaotic infinite vastness I was connected with wasn't affected in its totality, being its infinite vast and imposing self… but the string pulled a part of it out… and into me.

It felt like being struck by lightning, but instead of physical impact, heat, or pain, I could feel something in me changing.

My body, just for a moment, felt on fire, as if I had a powerful fever.

I wavered in place before snapping in place and exhaling.

Slowly, I glanced around.

It was the same ruined street, and all the corpses of the beasts were gone. Zombie corpses, however? They were still there. It was the same depressing sight.

However, it felt brighter. Not figuratively, literally. Things were the same but… different. As if the world was a little clearer.

I slowly clenched and unclenched my fist, and even just feeling the tension of my muscles… felt more vivid.

What the hell is this about?

I stiffened.

Gunfire. I can hear gunfire. Somewhere very far away. Barely audible.

"HQ, are there any units near my position? Or someone who went dark around here?" I asked, my voice quiet.

I could feel my heart beating; it was deafeningly loud.

Zombies could wield the rifles if they were soldiers before their transformation. But who were they shooting at?

Survivors? Impossible. Surely impossible. Must be something I don't understand…

"There were multiple…"

Before I realized it, I moved, jumping onto the nearest building, and giving my all into this sprint. This was the pace that would leave me ragged if I kept at it long enough.

 "...Knightamre, what's wrong? You are moving in the opposite direction to the target!"

…if there were any survivors in this hell, I would do my absolute best to save them.

I wanted to be a hero, right? Not just a hero, a Superhero. All those powers, all this training… this is what it was always for!

"There is gunfire, close. I will investigate and go back on course, over." I said, out of breath.

Ignoring the communicator, I jumped from one roof to another and finally saw it.

An office building, the main entrance of which had collapsed. Seemingly with something explosive. Someone was shooting from the window at the two Chariot-level beasts and zombies that were trying to breach in.

There wasn't even a thought in my head to consider my options.

I don't think I've ever moved into combat the way I did at that moment.

There was no hesitation, no thought at all beyond how to reach and kill the closest zombie. A thrusting attack in the back, rotating my grip and tearing the blade out, only to cut horizontally, bisecting this zombie, and the three closest ones.

They started to react, but what followed was me being far too quick for them.

I run past and across, hacking, slashing, thrusting, and bushing with my shield, approaching the first Chariot that had enough intelligence to turn towards me, and raise its stumpy, yet massive frontal appendage.

"Muaaagh!"

The first Honkai Beast to make a sound. It was akin to a roar but… muted, as if coming from underwater.

Firmly planting my legs on the ground even as I moved, I approached it, sliding across the ground, raising the shield, and bracing myself.

The impact must have been powerful. I could visibly see the shockwave spreading across the air in a cone around me, and I heard a boom.

But me? I just felt a strong push. Captain's shield was amazing like that, a mix of adamantium and vibranium, it blended the characteristics of both. Pure vibranium had an almost supernatural quality of absorbing kinetic energy and just… dissipating it into nothing. Bypassing the conservation of energy.

The vibranium in this shield wasn't quite as pure, and the effect was much weaker. Instead of almost completely killing the kinetic energy, it just bled it out, weakening it by about seventy percent, according to Mobius.

If I blocked this attack with anything else, it would've sent me flying, shield or no shield.

My blade flashed in the air in an arc, cutting off its 'arm'. Again, there was almost no resistance, like cutting butter with a knife.

I grinned, seeing it recoil.

"Fucking die." I changed my grip on the shield and struck him with its sharp side, right into its tiny, stupid head.

Danger!

I jumped back, and the place where I just stood was flattened by the second Chariot.

I laughed.

It was a broken, almost hysterical sound.

This was my greatest weakness before; according to my instructors, I had no experience in a fight, so my awareness in battle was terrible, especially against multiple opponents.

But tough shit, you peanut brain, my spider-senses are now ready to tingle any time!

I lowered my shield and the sword, cracking my neck.

Expectedly, both beasts rushed towards me.

This was so simple now. Side-step the swipe of the first, thrust into its center of mass, cut it in two, jump up and over the second, and as I descend, dissect it vertically in two little chariots.

Now for zombies…

Ending them was a matter of swiping my sword enough times.

When I was done, I swiped the blood off with a sharp swing and glanced towards the window above.

A redhead woman was there, with a sizable rifle pointed right at my head. As our eyes met, even though I was looking at her through the shadow helmet, she froze.

Wait, this rifle… isn't that our field agents' standard issue?

No, she is dressed like a civvie.

"You M.O.T.H.?" I asked anyway, seeing her recoil.

"N-no," She sounded beyond exhausted and terrified out of her mind.

"She isn't, but I am," Another female voice said, from somewhere within the building.

In a moment, I was already past one of the broken windows, earning the startled yelp of the redhead.

Inside… well, this was an office. Quite a few dead zombie bodies are neatly stacked in the corner. Dead M.O.T.H. operatives, too.

However, the knockout-pretty redhead wasn't the only one who gasped as I appeared inside. And I couldn't help but notice a pistol pointed right at me.

"Relax, I am Knightmare, Special Operative, M.O.T.H," I said to the woman lying on a small stack of paper and crumpled blankets.

She looked terrible. Her legs were missing, so was her right arm; only one shaking hand with a standard-issue pistol pointed at me.

"Never… heard of you," She said, her arm was trembling.

"You probably aren't cleared to," I said, glancing around.

There was the redhead, this… lieutenant, judging by the shoulder pads, and a little girl.

My mood, which already wasn't great, lowered further.

"I am a normal human beneath this armour, but I can't take my helmet off to prove it. My Honkai resistance is terrible." I told them both, as I pressed the sword to my belt, and carefully materialized the sheath around it. "Is it just three of you?"

"The three of us are the only ones left." The woman said, lowering her pistol.

For a brief moment, I considered her.

"Your name and rank, please," I asked simply.

She hesitated for a brief moment.

"Itsuna, Lieutenant. AH1803."

I nodded sharply at that.

"HQ, I have three survivors here. One of them is ours, Itsuna, AH1803. Two civilians," I glanced at the red-headed woman, "One doesn't show any signs of Honkai contamination. Need instructions, over."

"Knightmare, received. Stand by." He probably heard most of it and was clearing things up already.

"You have contact with command?" Itsuna asked weakly. "We weren't issued satellite phones when we were brought here."

"You were the first response," I explain, approaching her and squatting.

I was only taught first aid and… fuck, she looked bad. The blood loss effect alone from amputating all three limbs could be somewhat mitigated by the combat stims M.O.T.H. operatives used, but… she was so pale. And her stumps, even if tornequet-ed, were still bleeding.

She… probably won't make it, would she?

"Fuck," I slowly exhaled, closing my eyes for a moment to compose myself. "You… were first response," I repeated, "I am the strike force."

Slowly, I turned to the other figure.

I didn't want to look.

The girl, who was crying and whimpering quietly, she was lying nearby.

She wasn't any older than nine. She was whispering something in Japanese.

I don't think she saw me. There was no reaction as I stepped closer and squatted right next to her.

I could see lines across the girl's body.

"She…" I turned around sharply, towards the one who spoke up; it was the red-haired woman. She approached me from behind, and I never noticed.

…makes sense, she wasn't a danger, so my spider-senses were silent.

"...she went blind an hour ago. Her name is Naru. She said she was in pain at first. Started crying, then screaming and…. and it only got worse." The woman sounded heartbroken but also just… tired. Exhausted even.

I was silent for a long moment, just not finding any words.

The girl was there, writhing on a blanket specifically and carefully laid down for her, her school uniform dress all messed up, her fists were clenched so tight they were oozing blood.

But it was her face that got to me the most. Pure agony, tears and snot, and not even screams, just… silent, broken whimpers.

The only medical knowledge I had was the first aid… and also my understanding of your average, normal, non-honkai beasts. There were many things in common between humans and smarter animals, psychologically.

And this knowledge and innate understanding told me just how broken she was. I knew it instinctively, in depth, if this was an animal, it would never recover from living through something like this.

But she wasn't a fucking animal. And… there is no living through this.

"Is there anything you can do?"

The redhead asked, for a brief moment, making me freeze.

I cast my senses towards where I had the strings… nothing. Nothing at all.

Aside from that…

"There is…" I paused before clenching my teeth, "There is no saving from this." I turned my head slightly towards the woman behind me. "This is the late stage of the Honkai sickness."

"This… this can't be right." The woman denied, shaking her head stubbornly. "Me and Naru were together the whole time, since… since we escaped the school. I am fine, am I not?!"

"I told you, Himeko," The lieutenant whispered, "There is no cure. If you don't shoot her, she will just experience more pain before dying."

This Himeko, I could see her biting her lip, preparing to argue…

"Knightmare, we marked the location of the survivors. Evac will pick them up in ten minutes." I woodenly stood up. Judging by the redhead's face, in the silence of the room, she actually heard my earpiece too.

Suddenly, another familiar voice spoke up.

"Lab Rat, stop wasting time. You aren't there to baby survivors. If you complete the mission a minute earlier, you will save more people than you can realistically find in the city." Mobius said, her voice, as usual, unconcerned and blasé.

"...fuck you," I said quietly, shaking my head, turning towards the survivors. "I will try and attract as many beasts to me as I can on my way out. You three, just hold out for the next ten minutes." I begged.

Himeko nodded resolutely.

"I will protect them."

Judging by how she is dressed, and what she said… she was a school teacher, huh?

The lieutenant barked out a laugh at that.

"She really would…" The woman whispered, staring at the ceiling. "That one… is a firestorm…"

…I didn't have any medical supplies to share. No combat stims, nothing. Because in an area as saturated with Honkai as here, if something actually punctured my armour and reached flesh? I am as good as dead anyway. No point carrying around unnecessary weight , I was told.

"I am sorry I can't do more," I said quietly, as I headed towards the window. "If you see rockets falling, don't look directly at them. You will go blind."

This was my last advice before I took off, jumping on the road beneath, and starting up my mad rush across the streets.

Author's Notes: Okay, gents, this isn't a cliffhanger; I am writing what happens next right now. I just wanted to post that, seeing that this is practically a complete piece while I work.

OMAKE:
A/N Screw you, too. I promised I`ll do it. I did it. No reason to hurry me up.

***

The night in Research Complex No. 2 was dark and still. Cold lamps along the corridors cast a sterile glow onto the walls, and only the muffled steps of the guards beyond the doors disturbed the silence. In the very heart of the facility, however, one office remained alive with activity at this late hour.

Mobius sat at her desk, submerged in the endless task of organizing the M.O.T.H. science division. Her workspace was inundated with stacks of reports and documents arriving from internal departments and even sovereign governments. Most carried critical weight; otherwise, Klein would never have permitted them to reach Mobius's desk during the sorting process.

One such report had captured her attention. An anomalous entity had been sighted in the United Korea region, and agents were dispatched to either capture or neutralize it. She had been prepared to dismiss it as an irrelevant distraction until her gaze fell upon the appendices: the Honkai radiation data associated with Subject Eta-1 and the preliminary list of his purported abilities.

A frown graced her features. It was illogical. In the year since the German Eruption, every anomalous phenomenon had been inextricably linked to Honkai radiation. It was the new fundamental force of the world, a corrupting, lethal constant. That alone was anomaly enough to demand her personal involvement. She had already begun calculating the logistics of a trip to Korea when the door opened and Klein entered.

"More documents await your approval, doctor. The top file was marked urgent," Klein stated, placing the papers on the desk.

Mobius allowed herself a brief assessment of her assistant. The petite girl didn't appear to be in optimal condition; she had to concede, but that didn't reflect on her work so far. She still did her work competently, competently enough, in fact, that Mobius mentally catalogued it as a success of her "Mu's Young Geniuses" program.

Her eyes returned to the new stack of folders and loose documents. She started with the urgent file Klein had indicated, and it was no surprise when Korea was mentioned again. A live subject, successfully contained and en route to a secure facility on the Mu continent after a breach attempt. Extraordinary. The initial report was... not of the highest quality, but already perplexing.

She put aside the other paperwork for now, waving Klein to handle what she could. This demanded her direct oversight.

***

Hours later, she observed Subject Eta-1 through the one-way glass of the high-security containment cell. He was secured to the restraint frame, unconscious. Medically, he was unremarkable. A relatively healthy male in his mid-twenties. His vitals were strong, steady. And yet, the scans revealed... nothing. No Honkai corruption. No trace of the genetic tampering. His DNA was predominantly human, but with subtle, inexplicable deviations she couldn't yet categorize. It was as if he were from a closely related, yet distinctly different, branch of the evolutionary tree.

Quite fascinating.

The majority of the scans and examinations were performed long before she got here, but she already had a number of ideas on new procedures necessary to make sense out of some of this data.

Then, his eyes opened.

Mobius simply observed. Each breath, every pupil twitch, every micro-expression was meticulously remembered to try to make sense of the subject before her. The disorientation, the fear that was quickly masked by a defensive, sarcastic bravado, back during the first containment attempt. He obviously wasn't mindless, but the presence of mind could be a concerning sign.

Yet, some things she was already sure of. He was not a feral beast, nor a mindless zombie. A conscious, thinking being.

Quite a rarity when it comes to her work recently.

The faintest curve touched her lips. Deep within, a spark of curiosity ignited. He showed no signs of infection. No trace of typical Honkai contamination. And yet he allegedly performed feats no ordinary human could. Mobius would have her answers.

As such, a proper first impression was essential to set the right tone.

"Rise and shine, lab rat."

***

"Let's observe the shadows again. Manifest your armor."

She watched, her gaze analytical, as darkness coiled around him like living smoke, solidifying into a sleek, articulated carapace. It was a fascinating process. Her finest instruments detected almost nothing, unlike Honkai radiation; no loss of mass from the subject, no clear energy signatures flaring. It was something she could not yet explain, a controlled manifestation of an unknown energy type, that seemed to either be summoned from nothing or existed there undetected until utilized. He claimed it made him stronger, faster. And he claimed it was magic .

They were still halfway through the first day. With every passing hour of testing, Mobius became more convinced that the man before her had absolutely no comprehension of the true nature of his situation. She had her own hypotheses, but the first day's test results were already being dispatched to all relevant M.O.T.H. personnel. The enigma of Eta-1 only grew more complex by the hour. Furthermore, it had become abundantly clear that the man in the cell didn't even understand his own capabilities completely and seemed to use the testing as an opportunity to learn as much as she did.

She needed more data.

"Strike the designated impact plate. Use your full strength."

The plate in question, engineered to measure force output, dented inward with a shriek of protesting metal. The readout on her screen spiked to a level that would have pulverized the bones of a trained soldier or penetrated a plate of steel. But the armoured figure didn't even flinch.

"Fascinating," she murmured, not for his benefit -the microphone was off- but because she kept a recording device that Klein would sort through later. "The energy field extends to reinforce the user's biology upon manifestation. A symbiotic enhancement. Note the lack of kinetic feedback trauma." She turned the audio back on. "Lab Rat, now..."

***

Mobius was once more seated in her office, sifting through a mountain of reports, having delegated the conduct of experiments to Klein.

The tests had been ongoing for two days, but by now, it had become clear to Mobius that there was no practical sense in keeping Eta-1 confined. He could be an indispensable instrument for humanity's preservation and advancement if the abilities he had demonstrated held even a fraction more potential than the initial testing had implied.

Her thoughts seamlessly transitioned to the possible applications of her little lab rat when her personal communicator announced a visitor. Hulk Alexanderson. The Head of Operations for M.O.T.H. had been among the first to receive her report. The man was a former military officer with a one-of-a-kind name.

A faint, nearly imperceptible smile touched her lips. Perfect timing. The soldier had come to inspect the new weapon for himself. She straightened a stack of papers, her mind already formulating the arguments she would present. It was time to transition the subject from a contained specimen to an asset.

The door hissed open to admit a man who seemed to fill the entire doorway. "Doctor," he greeted, his voice a low rumble. His sharp eyes scanned the room, taking in the organized chaos of her workspace before settling on her.

"Chief Alexanderson," Mobius replied, not rising from her chair. Formalities were a waste of calories, in her opinion. "I assume you've reviewed the preliminary data on Subject Eta-1."

"I have." He stepped further into the room, his posture relaxed yet radiating an authority that made her office feel like a tactical briefing room. "Wouldn't have believed it if the information didn't come with your seal of approval. I can see the potential, but the security council is... agitated. His capabilities are one thing; the fact that you can't make sense of them is the troublesome part."

Mobius couldn't help it, frowning slightly.

"That being said, we are in no position to drag our feet, so I am here to take whatever measures I can get from our enigma myself."

With that, Mobius couldn't agree more.

***

An hour later, she was still seated in her office, but without paperwork this time. Hulk had requested she monitor his recruitment pitch for Eta-1, and she complied. The feed from the interrogation chamber filled her screen: a sterile table, chairs, and guards positioned with typical unsubtle intimidation. And Alexanderson, sitting inconspicuously in the middle, as inconspicuous as a man of his proportions could be.

Mobius watched her Lab Rat make his entrance. The subject's sarcasm arrived on cue, the predictable deflections, the same pattern she had catalogued during containment, even if he seemed to be more subdued with her. Even at his remark about her: "the researcher lady was also pretty intense," her expression didn't change, but like any other lady, she catalogued it for later.

The subject had the foresight not to badmouth her openly, smart rat.

She also noted the tension when Alexanderson spread the photographs across the table. The subject understood the corner he was being forced into, even as he tried to bury it beneath bravado. And when Alexanderson asked his purpose, the response was almost laughable in it's simplicity and naivety.

"To be a hero."

Her pen hovered for a fraction of a second before moving again. A childish term, but spoken with unguarded honesty. Naive, yes; but naivety… if her less optimistic predictions about what was to come were even halfway correct, it might be needed. Especially in his prospective line of work.

Mobius tracked his every word as he rambled about "another Earth," dates, viruses, wars, and the absence of Mu. Her instruments confirmed no deceptive responses thus far. Belief didn't equate to truth; his words weren't universally believed, just catalogued, and her leading theory about his origins wasn't too far from what he was explaining now.

For Mobius, it was of no concern that the story was strange. For the most part, it clicked, however imperfectly, with theoretical models she already entertained: Parallel worlds and the Sea of Quanta.

When he leaned forward, concluding with the casual declaration of arriving in Jaju with "superpowers," her eyebrow twitched, and the decision was made. Alexanderson could take the subject's measures all he liked, but he was allowing this Lab Rat to tattle too much.

Her hologram flickered into existence in the room, cutting his monologue short.

"This isn't quite as fantastical as you think, lab rat."

She watched his mouth twitch into that familiar shield of sarcasm. Magic. Tiresome. Alexanderson glanced toward her, muttering a request for restraint; "Don't demean this young man." but Mobius permitted only the barest flicker of annoyance to cross her features. Words like magic diminished phenomena such as this, turned them from something real into something unreachable. She would not indulge this.

The subsequent minutes were spent explaining the Honkai-related phenomenon to him, because of course, he attempted to attribute his powers to "honkai radiation that changed me and gave me, like, mutant powers," obscuring whatever truly allowed him to break physical laws as humanity currently knew them. This, in turn, cascaded into an explanation about M.O.T.H.

Mobius quieted down and observed as Hulk took the lead, her hologram still anchored in the chamber. Alexanderson had tried to steer the conversation toward the structure of M.O.T.H. and its politics, but the subject brushed it aside with juvenile impatience. Then came the denial, the shrug, the claim of ignorance about his powers. Predictable.

Mobius didn't lift her gaze from her console when she replied. "There is a lie detector in your cuffs. Mind repeating yourself, Lab Rat?" Her tone was deliberately flat, disinterested, the kind of boredom that applied more pressure than an open threat, as she theatrically scratched her nails.

His posture sagged; the facade crumbled. His next admission, however, snapped her to attention.

Strings.

Invisible tethers that granted him knowledge, abilities, items. A crude metaphor, but metaphors were often the only way humans could describe phenomena beyond their comprehension. It all sounded familiar.

Exactly what Mobius hypothesized about The Herrscher, it wasn't a complete match, but eerily similar.

Cautiously, Mobius flickered the switch that signified a 'yellow alert'.

Predictably, when the communicators of everyone in the room pinged, they all tensed up, and guards even went into ready-to-fire positions.

It was Hulk Alexanderson again who defused the tension.

Mobius considered her options. On one hand, the subjects' provided information implied an unforeseen danger.

On the other hand, a clear demonstration of a new ability…

Mobius couldn't help but be curious.

Besides, if he were about to cause an Eruption, it's not like she can realistically escape.

"I'll be there in ten minutes. I need to bring equipment."

***

They left the interrogation room with the building's hum settling back into its habitual rhythm. Her Lab Rat had been assigned a bunk, a small, secured space in the medical wing for now, and Mobius watched the confirmation ping on her console from the guards who dragged his unresponsive body there as Hulk entered her office with the hiss of the pneumatic door.

"And here you have it," Alexanderson stated without preamble. His voice carried the habitual, straightforward urgency of an operations officer. "What do you have this far?"

Mobius tapped the screen of the terminal twice, pulling the session log onto the main display. "Conjectuions, mostly. Most of the equipment turned out to be several decades too primitive to detect anything during the summoning," she answered. She didn't bother with pleasantries either. "So I have only two leading theories, for now."

Alexanderson held up a hand. "Elaborate."

"One: an atypical Herrscher variant." She drew a line in the air; holographic telemetry and behavioral markers whirred into place. "Explosive emergence of novel capabilities, adaptive hostility under certain stimuli, possible rapid escalation in Honkai output. If he is a Herrscher-like creature, containment must assume he can transition from compliant to cataclysmic in minutes, if not seconds. We must monitor for exponential feedback loops and resonance with local Honkai fields."

Alexanderson's jaw tightened. "And if he manifests as a full Herrscher?"

"Nothing certain. I expect loss of control, with a likely exponential increase in the demonstrated abilities, wild-area devastation, and utilization of Honkai energy on a level similar to Germany. Response options then default to nuclear." She didn't sound emotional, and she wasn't, but the implication was clear: they couldn't contain a Herrscher-like entity with their current technology.

"And the other model?" Alexanderson inquired.

"Two: he is not related to the Honkai, but to an external entity, something likely in the Sea of Quanta tethered to him via the 'strings' he described. An interfacing intelligence or field that supplies discrete capabilities; summoning matter, bestowing knowledge that it acquired somewhere in a form understandable to human brains, as well as possessing the necessary technology or knowledge to bestow it. If this is correct, his risk profile is different: he most certainly will not spontaneously erupt into a raw Honkai outbreak, but far more unpredictable in the form of other dangers. There is also an entity behind him to consider, and its own goals, if it possesses any." Mobius watched Alexanderson's face as she spoke. "That being said, it also makes him uncountably more valuable. The potential he represents is another angle to the crisis we face, an angle previously unseen and unsuspected to be possible."

They sat silently for several seconds.

"The second option is a more likely outcome at this point." Mobius finally concluded.

"Either way, we can't afford not to use this chance while we still can. His capabilities already provide us with an alternative to going nuclear on every outbreak beyond a threshold," Alexanderson paused, thinking.

Mobius steepled her fingers. "A layered approach. Short-term: containment, continuous multi-spectrum monitoring, and controlled psychophysiological trials to map triggers, limits, and capabilities. As far as we know, he is a civilian. If greenlit, I would personally prepare plans for his further development as an asset." She finished the first part of her brief, switching the holographic graphs to new datasets.

"Mid-term: calibrated deployments in low-collateral scenarios; recon, targeted retrievals, tech prototyping, while we develop new and improved technology. Long-term: if the Quanta hypothesis holds, integration research could yield groundbreaking technology and promise a new, evolved humanity." She imbued the last sentence with measured weight.

She looked Alexanderson in the eyes. "I want you to help me push this through before the Council."

Alexanderson exhaled, a small, almost weary sound. He folded his hands and, for a moment, looked less like an apparition of command and more like a tired man who had to make decisions that cost lives. "I am on board, but politics will complicate this," he said. "The Council is a jury of nations; they make decisions by compromising their national interests, not for the benefit of all. You know this, trying to get something out of them is like trying to pull needles out of the hedgehog. There will be ministers who want to nationalize him, generals who would want to weaponize him or would want him gone, and diplomats who want plausible deniability in case everything goes FUBAR. We will get requests for observers in the lab, for classified briefings, and for accelerated training. Leaks will follow any sign of success, and we will be so inflated with the sheer amount of spies, you and I won't be able to take a shit without four different presidents knowing about it."

Mobius giggled quietly.

"Optimistic of you to assume this isn't already the case."

Hulk paused his tirade, but after a moment, nodded briefly.

"True enough. We need a battle plan for the next council meeting." He said, starting to pace back and forth, looking more invested in the plan than she ever was.

***

The subject's transfer to what appeared, superficially, to be an ordinary room in the base's residential wing had been inevitable. It was anything but; however, officially, even on their systems and building plans, "Doe" had joined M.O.T.H. Operations as a private.

(Note: The Lab Rat still refused to provide a real name. At his next interview, he declared, with his usual insufferable bravado, that his new name was 'Henceforth, The Knightmare'. Alexanderson had him entered into the physical secret files by that name. Mobius, however, refused to use it, for reasons she refused to explain.)

The room was modified prior to his transfer. He had his privacy. There were Honkai sensors and quantum resonance locators installed around his room, but outside of that, he was allowed his liberties without observation.

The following week dissolved into routine. Aside from the constant workload caused by the M.O.T.H.'s constant and rapid expansion, she also had to personally assemble the specialists who would provide the training for the M.O.T.H.'s most essential asset.

The psychological profile was the next priority. Data was accumulating, sufficient for preliminary assessment, but not yet adequate for long-term strategizing. Here, Mobius possessed two excellent tools: structured interviews with the subject under the guise of ability testing and Klein. For reasons unclear to her, the Lab Rat was consistently more relaxed, even indulgent, around her diminutive assistant. Which Mobius, personally, found uncalled for, she was perfectly civil and sensible herself.

Klein observed and wrote reports; sometimes she even had time to sleep, and Mobius refined her modell. Psychology was one of her least favorite Doctorates, but she was still one of the most competent people in the field. She wasn't working strictly alone, but she oversaw the process and interfered subtly at first.

She took care to leave the Lab Rat enough time to socialize in his schedule, which wasn't too difficult; despite his many faults and ridiculous predisposition to clownery, he somehow had a way with people.

There was also an issue with the background of the world's first self-proclaimed 'superhero'. He was a civilian.

Yet, he was expected to engage in the outbreak hotspots and to participate in the containment of future Eruption-level events. This was a problem.

Honkai did not simply kill. It was a corruptive power. It hollowed people out, transformed them into mockeries of their former selves. The first outbreak reports were seared into her memory: men clutching their faces as blindness set in, soldiers screaming while their organs failed one by one, civilians turning against their families as mutations claimed their bodies. If the Lab Rat were to stand amidst that, having a supernatural body was not enough. The mind, no, the will, needed to be just as exceptional. He needed to be unbreakable.

This wasn't as simple to arrange as it sounded, especially in the short time frame and without sabotaging the psychological stability of the subject.

Mobius and other professionals who had long been responsible for preparing the right material for all M.O.T.H. field agents did their best, but how successful it would remain to be seen. The project simply wasn't a priority until recently, and even now, it was relatively crude.

Mobius knew he would never be truly ready; she doubted anyone healthy and mentally sound ever was. But she would ensure that when he finally stepped into an outbreak, he would not freeze, would not falter, would not look upon a dying civilian and shatter in that instant.

As for the shield, it remained in her laboratory for a time, inert, impervious even to her most aggressive probes. For anyone else, it remained a glorified indestructible frisbee, except only the Lab Rat himself, for whom it could actually serve as a weapon.

The recently discovered ability to turn any other matter into proto-adamantium, albeit with some limitations, was another matter entirely. It opened an entirely new world in weapon and technological development.

Thus, direct contact with the subject remained necessary. Mobius had mixed feelings on the subject. Her Lab Rat was a vexing, self-absorbed, and not overly clever man, but he also proved attentive and somehow not too annoying to be around - unless he actively tried to be.

It wasn't pleasant daily interactions, but they were still considerably less annoying than most of her normal duties.

Mobius fundamentally respected competence. It was one of the few qualities she demanded from her peers and colleagues, as well as her assistants.

She rarely knew or found someone who was irreplaceable, like she herself was to the M.O.T.H. initiative.

Yet, despite lacking in competence right now, her Lab Rat already was exactly that. She had mixed feelings on this subject.

But all daily concerns quieted at night. Mobius usually allotted herself exactly 7 hours for sleep, and since the Lab Rat's arrival, the amount of time she actually slept had decreased. He somewhat unsettled her. He was a living proof; crude, insufferable, but undeniable.

Proof of some form of evolution outside of the known paradigm was possible. It felt like yesterday when her wildest imagination was blown asunder by the emergence of Honkai energy; she still had countless ideas on it all, and now a completely new path was opened, a fruit of endless possibilities ripe for the taking. A civilian, ordinary to the core, and yet wielding abilities that bent the laws of reality as she knew it.

To Alexanderson and the Council, he was a potential soldier, an asset, a tool. To Mobius, he was a temptation. A living specimen of what humanity could become, if the process could be decoded, dissected, and applied. A bridge between frail Homo sapiens and the future species she dreamt of. If only this new human would cease mumbling about magic and superheroes …

***

Mobius closed the day's file, Klein's reports still scrolling in the margin, and permitted herself a rare smile. For all his juvenile bravado, his absurd codename, his reckless humor, Knightmare might be the first genuine step toward the post-humanity she had always envisioned.

And if he wasn't? Then he was still a source of data. Still her Lab Rat.

***

Mobius kept her gaze fixed on the tactical holodisplays. Asahikawa burned in miniature across the screens, a cacophony of white noise and jagged radiation spikes. Most sensors were malfunctioning due to Honkai radiation, and only the satellites, urgently repositioned over the city, provided an approximate understanding of the situation. Predictable, for an outbreak of this magnitude. She had argued to keep Knightmare in reserve for now, to refine the MK.0, await the development of reliable Honkai reactors to power the suit, and allow him further training. Alexanderson countered, rather bluntly: politics would not wait. The Council demanded results. Japan was throwing a fit as they demanded aid, and M.O.T.H. could not appear impotent, facing the largest outbreak since Germany.

So, the Lab Rat was deployed.

Officially, the primary objective of the operation was reconnaissance, but Mobius understood this was unlikely to remain the case for long. Initially, a M.O.T.H. Japan Rapid Response Team© had been dispatched to ascertain the scale of the breach. Their final report? Panicked requests for reinforcement and/or evacuation. But by then, radiation levels had risen too high for JDF pilots to reach them, and the nearest units equipped for such conditions were too distant.

These circumstances and the current operational reality created a pessimistic forecast. Consequently, when news arrived of the Japanese government's decision, Mobius was unsurprised by the mission's sharp reclassification from reconnaissance to search and destroy.

The favorable aspect was that her efforts to prepare the Lab Rat for combat had not been in vain. Nor that she was the only one who did her part. Ato, the scientist she, along with his wife, had recruited from a very influential corporation during the science division's formative stages, had proven immensely useful on multiple fronts. Not only had he become a friendly (and most importantly, casual) contact for Knightmare, but his expertise had facilitated the rapid development of a satisfactory arsenal.

A monomolecular blade was not a novelty; however, its practical application had so far been an exercise in futility for one simple reason: it remained monomolecular for precisely one strike. Proto-Adamantine bypassed this by being indestructible even on that scale. It was Ato's idea that added instruction from the finest fencing experts to the Lab Rat's already busy schedule.

For some reason, Knightmare didn't complain when Ato did it, but when Mobius herself was involved, he whined.

Mobius's fingers flew across the console, correlating satellite thermal imaging with the erratic, Honkai-distorted comms traffic from the VT-9 Skybolt. The transport was retreating, pursued by Seraph-class flyers. Good. Its purpose was served. The Knightmare, right now, wasn't on any of their sensors, but his satellite phone did maintain a connection, letting them track his signature.

"Subject Knightmare has deployed. Initiate full-spectrum tracking on his beacon. Filter out Honkai interference. I want his vitals yesterday," she commanded, her voice devoid of inflection. On a secondary monitor, his vitals streamed, elevated but stable. A normal adrenaline response.

It was convenient that his armour blocked out honkai radiation, allowing them to place monitoring equipment on his body and send it via satellite phone.

She observed the blip representing him land, engage, and eliminate the initial wave of hostiles. The data correlated with his training simulations. Satisfactory.

She returned to her other duties for a while, mostly consulting the relief efforts on how to contain the infected and the safety precautions necessary in the relief camp nearby.

A massive, inexplicable spike in his biometrics, heart rate, and neural activity, followed not by combat stress, but a sudden, bizarre stabilization at a new baseline. It was unlike any physiological response she had on record. It coincided with no external attack. It was... internal.

Another string pulled, she realized, her mind racing through possibilities. A new ability. Integrated?

Mobius was busy analyzing the poor, fragmented data from the power integration; she honestly wanted to berate the Lab Rat for wasting such an opportunity to research the source of his powers without sufficient survey equipment.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by another commotion.

His response was breathless, frantic. "There is gunfire, close. I will investigate and return to course, over."

Fool. Mobius's lip curled. Sentiment. The profound weakness of the human organism. He was jeopardizing the entire mission, potentially the containment of the entire outbreak, for what? The statistical improbability of survivors in a zone saturated to this degree?

Then, the audio feed from his helmet became the focal point for her. The whimpering of a child. The grim report from the surviving soldier. The survivor's desperate, futile hope. The girl, Naru, was a lost cause. The blindness, the agony; it was the textbook, terminal progression of Honkai sickness. There was no saving anyone at that point.

Yet, she observed his vitals fluctuate wildly, stress markers over the roof. He was freezing. He was breaking. The meticulously constructed conditioning was fracturing under direct exposure to a reality no simulation could truly replicate. If he shattered now, the consequences could be disastrous. All her investment, the proto-adamantine, the future he represented, in the worst case scenario, all of that can disappear.

The mission's success was paramount, but not more paramount than the long-term battle readiness of the Knightmare. He was thrown into a deep end far too early; this was one of the outcomes Mobius had to prepare for. His psychological state was a variable requiring active management.

The solution presented itself a second later. She quickly entered a command into the terminal, and the next instant, Alexanderson's tense visage appeared before her. "Hulk. My calculations indicate a tactical advantage in evacuating the civilians Knightmare encountered. One survivor shows elevated resistance levels. Furthermore, the Lab Rat is deeply concerned for their safety; securing them is crucial for his emotional stability."

Alexanderson frowned. Mobius suspected similar calculations were occurring to him, but as a military man, he weighed risks differently. So she pressed her point.

"The value of the data on the survivor, combined with the positive reinforcement it will provide for our primary asset's long-term psychological conditioning, outweighs the risk." Part of this statement was a lie. The data on the survivor was nearly worthless to her; the element of real value was the psychological stability of her Lab Rat. Even if the evacuation failed, he needed to believe that M.O.T.H. tried. Knightmare likely didn't think straight right now; going along with his desires will mean a world to him, even if he does not realize it. It was an investment in his loyalty, in his desire to perform as a "Hero".

"I see, I trust your judgment, doctor, you have my approval. I will have a team dispatched. You will brief me on your reasoning after this is over." The line went silent; Hulk terminated the connection abruptly, doubtless continuing to issue countless orders.

Mobius leaned back in her chair, observing and listening to the ensuing events. The moment the evacuation confirmation arrived, a slight smirk touched her lips.

Unfortunately, she will have to play a villain again. Ah, well.

"Lab Rat, stop wasting time. You aren't there to babysit survivors. If you complete the mission a minute earlier, you will save more people than you can realistically find in the city."

A humourless, quiet chuckle left her lips at his response.

Author Note: Read the OMAKE above if you missed it. It was written by a good friend with a minor assistance from me, it's good.

***

The trick with Honkai beasts is that their classification still wasn't solid or decided upon.

New variants popped up semi-frequently, and they were mostly assessed by threat levels in our training.

Low-level, medium-level, and high-level, respectively.

Low levels are the enemy that can be handled by infantry, even if the anti-tank weaponry has to be used; medium level is the one that can be substantially damaged only using tank weaponry, and high level is everything theoretically over that.

The issue was that there wasn't much knowledge about Honkai beasts floating around right now. No organization on Earth, M.O.T.H. included, had the means to contain and study any beast above low-level, and even medium-level beasts didn't pop up often, not since Berlin.

As I cut my way through the city, I only had to deal with the chaff.

Zombies and Seraphs, yes, but also some quadrupedal type of Honkai beasts I've never heard of, that reminded me of a feline, and for once, couldn't fly. A few other chariots to boot, but they too weren't overall difficult to dispatch, not with a blade that cut through them like they are butter.

I knew those were still all low-level mooks simply because I wasn't notified by the HQ about the elevated Honkai level. They didn't exactly have eyes on the ground aside from me; they could only monitor the emissions, such as Honkai radiation, with any degree of precision. However, the equipment wasn't good enough to spot low levels yet.

I blocked the attempt to tackle me with a shield before bisecting the beast that clanged to my shield in half, just in time to step away from a laser that passed where I just stood.

I turned towards a floating medusa-like beast, and, ignoring the swinging zombies, ran up towards it and cut it in half next.

"Thank god those things are too stupid to fly outside of my range," I muttered, turning towards the remaining zombies.

Tearing them all apart without the support of beasts took me barely ten seconds.

As I stood there, my armour covered in blood, I was breathing heavily.

I suddenly realized I've felt exhausted. Not how I was in training.

It took me a couple of seconds to understand why.

My body was feeling the strain, sure, but it was also the constant tension, the focus needed for each fight that chipped away at me.

I've been deployed for what, twenty minutes already? Most of the time, I was fighting and always on alert.

It was especially intense when I left the survivors and did my damn best to slaughter all the Honkai Beasts on my way to the target and in their vicinity, just battle after battle.

As I got my breathing back under control, I ran across the ground and propelled myself up and onto another roof.

"Contact with Target Beta in about 64 meters," My operator warned.

"Acknowledged," I responded tiredly as I scanned the surroundings and... there!

I think this was a parking lot next to a mall before the outbreak. I could certainly see many carcasses of cars, some still burning, but...

"I have my eyes on target," I said slowly, studying the monsters hovering over the ground. "I see honkai-beasts floating there, ten or so. They are pretty big, have huge shields and lances... I think," It was hard to make out in the dark, being as tired as I was, and besides, the bastards had the same damn white, black, and purple lines look that made it a headache trying to understand where the limbs ended and the torsos started.

"On our end, we only observe a single signature that is roughly around what we can quantify at the very bottom of a high level," Mobius spoke up again, "That said, don't be reckless."

"Wasn't planning to," I said, observing my surroundings and seeing a single communication tower some distance away that... should have a direct line of sight to the parking lot. "Operator, ETA for Russian presents?"

"Hold," the Operator asked, but...

"Around 15 seconds, Lab Rat." Mobius replied, "Rockets are supersonic, even if their exact altitude and distance aren't constantly the same while they circle, it should be from ten to twenty seconds." I knew she had to crunch the approximate numbers instead of having the precise distances to work with, judging by how haughty (for her, it meant she was irked) she sounded. Still, that was precisely what I needed.

"Good enough." I made my way to the communication tower, running and jumping across the roofs, before finally accelerating across one last roof and jumping on top of the tower, breaking my momentum with a cape I conjured a second before impact, so that thing wouldn't break or wobble too much.

I forced my armor to release the laser-guidance mechanism on my shoulder. And taking out the UV binoculars (purely mechanical) from the pouch on the waist of my armour.

"Tell them to launch the non-nuke," I said, moving my shoulder and twisting in place so the laser, invisible to the naked eye, would be shining riiiiight in the middle of the chucklefucks' little gathering.

"Payload sent," My operator answered a second later, some honest relief in his voice. "Brace for impact."

The distance from me to the target, I'd estimate, was around 150m. Shockwave will probably still be unpleasant, but the armour should be able to protect me from the worst of it.

If it didn't, I am sure Mobius would've tried to cock block me by now.

Locking my armour in place by just wielding all the tiny connecting parts, aside from the one in my hand, I put the binoculars back in the pouch and observed, after projecting a small veil of shadow just in front of my helmet. I could still see, just less light got through.

I saw a line of fire tracing through the sky, and the honkai beasts turning towards it and trying to react.

Surprisingly smart of them.

Then the explosion.

Movies don't make explosions like that justice. There is a sense of surrealism when you see the ground just evaporate and lift into the sky as a column of dirt and debris.

I even had the time to raise Cap's shield before the shockwave hit me.

Even at that distance, I felt some debris ricochet from the shield harmlessly; it sounded almost like rain hitting a metallic container. The booming sound of an explosion arrived at the same time, making me wince, and the tower under me wobbled and groaned.

"Fuck," I muttered, feeling my ears ring, "This is loud!"

"Knightmare," My operator spoke up again, "The Honkai beasts from the surroundings will likely be attracted to your position. Retreat."

I nodded at that despite myself, releasing my bootleg 'armour lock' as I looked on the scene of the explosion...

Wait.

"Some of the targets survived," I said, my voice steady. "Just one or two. HQ, do I move in to engage?"

It was a valid question. From what I understand, those are mid-level Honkai beasts, on the higher end of that spectrum, too, considering that some survived a point-blank cruise missile detonation.

I think the operator wasn't quite qualified to make the call, seeing an entire second of silence.

"Knightmare, we don't know the situation on the ground as well as you do. Ideally, mid-level threats like this should be eliminated by you before we can send in the regular forces, if you think you can manage and safely retreat, engage." The operator finally instructed.

I could see his point. I spent a second to glance around, and I could see some Seraphs flying here as well as some zombies moving in.

Most of the beasts spilled out and into the outskirts surrounding the city; those that remained were positioned as, basically, guards around the heart of the outbreak.

It's the usual business when it comes to Honkai. Honkai energy outbreak occurs, and it's enough for some low-level beasts to appear, presumably by crawling from whatever hellish dimension they lived in, or constructed on the spot (even Mobius wasn't sure which yet). Those beasts appear, try to kill everything in the surroundings, and their mere existence accumulates Honkai Radiation. Then the situation reaches a critical threshold, and middle-class beasts start appearing.

By that point, the outbreak spots were usually nuked, so our eggheads didn't know what went next.

But even Mobius thought that the logic normally didn't change. Leave a single middle-level beast, and in a few days or weeks, there will be two. That continues until there are so many of them, something higher-level will manifest.

Basically, it was the 'longer the Icon of Sin is on earth, the stronger He will become' kind of situation.

I wish we had an actual Doomguy on our side.

Glancing around to see a few Seraphs noticing me and zoning on my location, I sighed.

"Alright, HQ, I am moving in to clear out the survivors. This will be a tough one."

If the judgment call was for me to make, I'll go in. I was tired, emotionally drained, and felt just about done; the only thing keeping me together was the understanding that there is no one else besides me who could handle this.

That was a familiar sentiment for me, so as I usually did in both of my lives, I just gritted my teeth and focused on the task at hand.

I reached out to my mana to sense how much remained, and was surprised to realize that once again I had a connection. A new string. But it felt weak. I glanced over it... an item, some kind of sunglasses?

Shaking my head, I focused on the task at hand; the string could wait, this one didn't seem immediately useful.

I jumped down from the bent communication tower and from the roof with a single motion, my hand with a sword gently brushing against the wall on my way down, sparks flying.

Halfway down, I shifted in the air, hitting my legs against the wall, and catapulting myself forwards, towards the road and a shopping mall.

Landing with a roll, I started to run, the few zombies on my way easily shield-bashed aside, or cut in half.

I could see the knight-like beasts in front, slowly rising from the ground. They are also much larger now that I see them up close, varying in height. Some were just two times taller, while one was the size of a two-story building.

I blame my non-perfect eyesight for not noticing sooner.

Also, running towards them at full speed didn't seem like a good idea suddenly. Alternatively, I knew that honkai beasts from the whole surroundings would converge here, and I really didn't want to back out either.

"Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" The yell was equally terror, bestial rage, and an attempt to hype myself up as I was nearly upon them.

There were four targets, all in various states of 'damaged'.

The first one on my path was the smallest. He raised his shield up and brought his lance-bearing arm back.

My danger sense flared, and I knew exactly what he would do.

The moment I ran into his range, he thrust his lance; it was fast, the movement not inferior to my own in speed at all.

Unfortunately for him, my weapon was better.

Captain's shield met the lance with a quiet 'clang', but instead of a block, knowing where and how the attack would come from, I deflected it, sliding across the lance and towards the shield.

I thrust with my blade, intending to pierce through the obstacle.

The essence of a monomolecular blade is very simple: it has a cutting edge with a thickness of a single molecule, hence the name. Not very hard to grasp. At those levels, the impact of such a weapon against any material is not a tearing or even slashing effect - force of the cut is distributed across such a small surface that it's directly breaking molecular bonds at the point of contact. General scientific consensus of my time is kinda-sorta'ish that creation of a blade with cutting edge like this is impossible --- no material is capable of retaining a cutting edge that's just one molecule thick, since it would require material science in the realm of overcoming the stress of molecular structure of the blade during impact. Long story short: it would simply stop being monomolecular after impact, or even before, if you're swinging it fast enough, with materials known to modern human manufacturing --- at least, the one that I knew. From a practical standpoint, my world's science wasn't even close to creating a thing like that, forget about maintaining its structural integrity as a whole, and molecular integrity of the cutting edge after use. Materials that are strong at macro-levels aren't good enough for that --- atoms at the very edge are only weakly bonded to the rest of the blade due to its thinness, and none that are known to man are even capable of coming close to single-molecule thickness. Materials that can? Extremely brittle, like obsidian, lose their sharpness from stress super fast, and even so, aren't quite monomolecular even at their best.

To summarise: you just cannot realistically overcome the combined challenges of edge reactivity, atomic dislocation, and the inherent tradeoff between sharpness and fracture resistance of the blade. With conventional material science, that is.

But that's exactly the catch: I can circumvent the material science by being a quirky awesome wholesome chungus Lab Rat and giving the mad scientists at M.O.T.H. the sheer bullshit that is proto-adamantium... which led them -and me- to believe that the weapon would be perfect --- impossible to stop with materials that aren't superior to its own, not with my level of strength, anyway.

This was why, when my thrust penetrated the durable-looking shield, I wasn't surprised. Not initially, even as the feedback shock traveled through my arm.

I was, however, surprised that I felt any resistance at all.

The shield, from what I could tell, was pierced right through, and the tip of the blade must have impaled the beast partially as well.

But as I tried to pull the blade out... I couldn't. I yanked it down, trying to cut downwards with it, but couldn't do it either.

"Fuck."

I jumped back, just in time to avoid the lance of a giant version of the beast I was trying to kill, and, absent-mindedly blocking a laser with a shield, from some minor beast some distance away.

"Mobius, the sword got stuck in the honkai beast's shield, the hell do I do?!" I asked, gripping Cap's shield in both arms, and preparing myself for an onslaught of attacks.

I didn't have to wait long.

"It's friction and Van der Waals Forces, Lab Rat," Mobius' voice immediately snapped into the communicator, as I weaved between the attacks I knew were coming, deflecting what I couldn't. "In short, the material deformed and was penetrated by your weapon, but is now gripping onto it on an atomic level. You will need to exert considerable force to retrieve it; you likely won't be able to mid-combat."

As if to live by her words, the beast I initially attacked stepped back, allowing his 'bigger cousins' to shield it. The fucker STILL HAD MY BLADE IN HIS SHIELD!

How are they this smart?!

"Alright," I whispered to myself, jumping back and gaining some distance for just a brief moment.

So, I can't retreat without the blade; it amplified my combat ability too much. I also won't be able to pull it out mid-fight.

Cap style it is.

Grabbing the shield tighter in one arm, and with one hand free, I prepared myself. At this point, the fear retreated, leaving only a goal and a pathway to reaching it.

The biggest knight-like beast once again was upon me; the fucker was like a building, and swung down. I jumped over the lance. He was almost as quick as me, but I literally knew what he was about to do before he could, thanks to the spider-senses.

He was striking with his shield raised, but that didn't matter. I jumped up and over him, once again calling to my mana, and throwing a chain of shadow-metal over his neck as I flew over him, like a loop, gripping it with my free hand and pulling.

The colossal knight beast staggered just a little, and I was pulled into its back, which I collided with while hitting it with a sharp-ish edge of my shield.

It bit into its flesh. So the fuckers are softer aside from the shield?!

Great news!

A great blade made out of writhing shadow appeared in my hand as my mana plummeted. I knew that I won't be able to keep control of the construct for more than a few seconds, but that's just the thing.

I didn't need to.

The Dragonslayer-sized sword was impaled right into the back of the neck of the honkai beast.

In the next second, I had to jump away blindly, only to see another 'knight' hit the towering beast in the back where I just stood.

I had to raise my shield in the air, blocking two laser strikes from a distance without seeing them, and feeling one impact my back anyway when I couldn't turn fast enough.

It threw me aside, knocking me out of breath, but it didn't feel that.

I had my moment to stand up and deflect the lance strike from the next beast, this time skipping over the ground and around him, due to the sheer speed of my movement, yet, instead of being able to attack, I was greeted with another 'knight', the one that still had my sword in his shield, rushing towards me and trying to clip me with his spear.

Grinning, I deliberately fell on my back so that his lance passed over me, sliding across the uneven concrete, and gripped the blade again, as two of my legs struck the shield, which, instead of kicking I bent.

"Call me Artuhr!" I shouted out of breath, and with my full back behind the action, and my knees into it, I pulled. "Because I am... AAAARGH fucking king of the pull-out game!"

The blade finally came out, and I shot into the air with it. The strength I pulled into this action was enough for me to jump twenty or more meters up in the air, so that was the distance I crossed with my sword in hand as I went flying.

The collision, expectedly, drove the air out of my lungs and caused mild disorientation. I am sure I would've been lasered before I could get my bearings if not for the danger sense that clued me in on where to move my shield as I was getting up.

"Round two," I muttered to myself, and exploded into action, seeing the 'knights' standing on the defensive perimeter this time.

Zig-zagging around the lasers, I approached the tallest one, waited for him to swing, this time parrying it with a shield to angle it upwards, and running around it.

With my speed, each step propelled me a few meters, so it felt more like skipping a stone. Except I am the stone.

As I passed him, I used both of my legs to break the momentum and swung at the knight's back, bisecting it cleanly in half.

Then I glanced at the remaining two who were trying to attack me from both sides.

One attack is blocked by the shield, the other by the blade. Normally, I am sure, my strength wouldn't have been enough to stop the strikes that left visible craters on the ground, but vibranium in my weapons simply absorbed 70% of every impact into the weapon.

"AAAAAgh!" I swung upwards, breaking the clinch, and dashed under the smallest knight, the one who had originally disarmed me. He put his shield down trying to squash me, but not quickly enough.

With great satisfaction, I bisected him from his junk upwards, hoping that he had a dick, and suffered immensely the pain all men would've felt in that situation.

That left only one enemy, and the approaching zombies and seraphs.

I slowly exhaled, grinning to myself.

Alright, this will be fucking therapeutic.

***

The second closest hotspot, surprisingly, consisted of the same honkai beasts as the first. This time, I sent two cruise missiles with a three-second difference, which allowed me to clean them up without engaging personally.

The last time they regenerated some of the more major damage by the time I got there, twiddling my thumbs as I did, but with two rockets hitting a few seconds apart, there were no survivors.

No strings to pull either, but ah, well.

I still had to fight quite a lot through the streets, and I could feel that there were more and more honkai beasts. HQ confirmed it too; they seemed to be getting back into the zone of the initial outbreak instead of spreading to the outskirts. It seems we were striking something critical... and that something was controlling them broadly, giving some semblance of strategy to their actions.

The third and last hotspot wasn't too far, but I finally got enough of a breather to report to HQ an important bit of intel.

"...basically, those knight-like beasts were almost impenetrable from the front, even the mono-molecular sword felt resistance. Dunno how that is possible. But if you strike their actual body, you can cut them up without much trouble, not that much more durable than a Chariot."

"Acknowledged, we will send primarily warnings in case those things are encountered elsewhere." The operator promised, "Doctor Mobius asked me to tell you that you will be debriefed after the mission for more details."

"Obviously," I agreed, bisecting a seraph-class that was sniping me with lasers for the last few minutes while I was cutting towards his position.

The lasers from honkai beasts weren't as dangerous. Sure, the attack looked like it was light-speed, but they couldn't turn fast enough to actually track a moving target with it. With my spider-senses, evading or blocking was easy. Even my armour could clearly take a few hits, deforming just a bit, though it did take mana to restore it, so I tried not to let their attacks reach me.

"Knightmare, the target is about three hundred meters away. According to the city maps, there is a city park in the area."

Meaning no high ground, but an opportunity to scout ahead. Hopefully.

"Roger that."

I jumped onto another building and started to see the start of the small park close by. I ran across, cleaving a few persistent beasts, I finally had a good look.

"Okay, HQ, this looks pretty bad."

When dealing with this outbreak, I never encountered the 'day-z' scenario. Where there are so many bodies of zombies or beasts that you can't realistically get down on the street level.

So far, my encounters were dozens, at worst, like fifty zombies. In the first zone where the rocket fell, hundreds of zombies converged, but I escaped from the majority of them.

Here, however? Hundreds of zombies. Dozens of chariot-like beasts, and at least a few 'knights'. Also, the feline-like monsters.

"Major enemy activity, hundreds. Mostly low-levels, and if we count the knight as mid-levels, a few of those too." I reported dutifully.

"Hold," The operator asked.

In about a dozen seconds.

"Knightmare, I've been briefed," Alexanderson's concerned voice echoed from my earpiece, "Nuclear launch authorized."

"Got it," I said, squinting and trying to see beyond the small hills and a treeline. "I think I see something else in there. Something big. Alright, if we are nuking it anyway, I don't think it matters."

I glanced around, searching for a spot far away from the blast, from which I could laser-guide the nuke.

The construction site a few streets away seemed good. It had a very tall crane.

"I'll tell you when to launch. Need to get further away," I reported, before jumping down and breaking into a sprint.

Surprisingly, I didn't encounter many beasts or zombies on my way there, and climbing the crane wasn't that hard. I could propel myself up a dozen meters at a time, so the service ladder served me like branches for the macaques.

Eventually, I was high up.

The view would've been breathtaking if I didn't feel so numb.

"Mobius, am I far enough? I am on a construction crane." I asked, not even sure if she was listening.

"What is the crane's model? Do you see any serial numbers?"

I glanced around, noticing the control panel of the crane with a... body inside.

Running up to the cabin with a control panel, I checked inside, taking care not to look at the body, as I glanced around. I found a manual on the small desk beneath the control panel, next to a cup of StarDusk coffee.

Thank you, Asians, for religiously following regulations.

"Liebherr 630 EC-H 50," I read out.

Mobius didn't answer immediately. It took her a total of five seconds.

"By my calculation, it should hold at that distance. Just don't look directly towards the explosion, Lab Rat. The eye restoration procedure would impact our testing schedule."

I chuckled to myself.

"Got it," I exited the control room and climbed on top of it.

Once again, the laser pointer appeared on my shoulder, as I lined it towards the figure I think I saw somewhere in the depths of the park.

"Alright, launch."

A second later.

"Launch confirmed."

I knew I would have to wait for a few long seconds.

I was tired emotionally and physically, had a slight headache, felt like my lungs were still on fire, and in general, was about done with all of that.

I had no strength to joke or play around.

Yet, at this instance, I couldn't help but think.

Mom, today I nuked the Japs the third time.

I couldn't even feel much amusement from the joke. Probably because I just saw countless civilians being killed.

A visor of shadows appeared over my helmet as I prepared.

Then, in the land of the rising sun, a new sun arose at night.

I can't quite describe the sheer glee of seeing your enemies disappear in the nuclear fire.

"Direct hit confirmed," I said, raising my shield and trying to hide as much behind it as I could.

Then the shockwave hit.

The entire crane started to shake and wobble, but my balance was good enough. The shockwave that broke against my shield was basically nothing. The Japanese were also building their shit expecting earthquakes; it definitely played a part today.

Standing up, feeling the dust around me, I glanced towards the impact site.

That small park? No more. A pile of dust, smoke, and debris, rising as a column towards the sky, with the debris slowly falling all around? That's more like it.

However...

Something shifted there. Inside the pillar of dust.

Immediately, I crouched lower, narrowing my eyes and trying to see. The dust didn't get inside my helmet -thank you, magic-, which was one of the main reasons why I didn't need any other equipment, so my vision wasn't impacted much.

Still, I wasn't sure if I saw it right.

Danger.

I jumped aside, and a laser hit where I just stood. I glanced towards the source, seeing a 'medusa-class' floating there.

Without saying anything, I changed the grip of my shield and threw it at her.

The shield impacted and bounced back perfectly, letting me catch it on return. The hard part, as I figured out during training, was actually throwing it correctly; it bounces off just right every single time, no matter the material, I think it's some property of the alloy that some of our material engineers were testi...

" SKREEEEOOONK!!! "

I froze. This sounded like a Godzilla. Why the fuck did it sound like a Godzilla.

Slowly, almost woundingly, I turned around as I heard my earpiece activate again.

"Knightmare, warning, high-level Honkai signature spike detected! Report!"

I didn't answer, just staring blindly.

"There is a floating, five-story apartment-sized honkai beast," I said numbly. "Please tell Russians to send all the remaining rockets."

I said, popping out the targeting system on my shoulder again.

"Acknowledged!" The operator said, but I barely heard him.

What I was focused on instead was the ruined and cracked exterior of the beast, as well as the fact that it seemed to be looking... right at me?

Also, why are the energy particles physically appearing around him and... oh shit!

The danger senses triggered just in time for me to raise Cap's shield, before an unrelenting wave of force crashed into me.

I dropped my sword a second later, driven to my knees as my legs dug into the metal beams beneath me, clutching desperately to the shield, and feeling that sensation of placing an umbrella before a strong wind multiplied by a factor of a hundred.

It was like a tidal wave was pushing against me.

The assault ended in just a few seconds, but when it was done, I could see the metal of the crane around me being heated up, and the entire swath of the obstacles between us being melted through.

Wait, the missiles.

Desperately, I tried to calibrate the laser on the enemy's position, but...

Three seconds later, I saw a number of light streaks across the sky, but all of them landed around us. None anywhere close to the beast.

"None of the missiles hit!" I screamed, interrupting the operator who was mumbling to me something about making a report! "The hell happened Mobius?!"

The answer followed immediately.

"Spike in Honkai energy to the point when the complicated electronics inside the missiles' targeting systems were frying faster than they could hit the enemy. The same thing happened in Germany; it was the reason why they had to use ballistic missiles with payloads in multiple megatons instead of tactical nuclear missiles."

I breathed out, picking up my sword, before, after a second of hesitation, I jumped down the crane, unfolding my cape and starting to fly away from the monster.

"So what, what do I do?!"

Her answer was immediate.

"From your description, this is a high-level honkai beast; some were reportedly spotted in Germany. There are two options: either you extract from the city so we utilize ballistic missiles, or you attempt to defeat it in a conventional manner."

While she was speaking, I glanced back, seeing the geometric Godzilla very much floating after me across the ruined streets.

Mobius' words were clear. If I manage to retreat - which is a big if, considering it seems to follow me -, my deployment was basically for nothing. That alone wouldn't have felt so shitty. At this point, anything that will get me out of this alive would work, pride be damned.

But retreating doesn't seem viable. I can also see that the thing was injured; it was oozing energy from its body like wisps of smoke.

I considered my options for a second, even as I saw that thing starting to charge what I assume was another 'fuck you and everything in your general direction' laser.

"I'll engage. Wish me luck," I wanted to say it cheerfully, but all that came out was a whisper.

I was terrified beyond anything else so far. But at the same time, I just didn't see another way.

Not listening to a response, if any, I dropped down on the ground, as my danger sense flashed, seeing a pink and purple laser streak through the air where I had just been.

Landing, the concrete erupted around me, as I raised my sword and shield, hitting one against another and producing a powerful 'clang'.

The beast was floating towards me on the long, abandoned street, its 'wings' clipping the buildings and collapsing floors as it passed.

The beast's wings erupted with purple-pink energy, condensing into blade-like projections that extended twenty feet from each wingtip.

My danger sense exploded.

The creature moved  - not flew, not charged - it displaced itself through space so fast the air cracked. I threw myself backwards as an energy blade carved through where I'd been, the concrete liquefying in a molten trench.

The shockwave from its passage alone sent me tumbling. I caught myself with one hand, pivoting into a sprint as another blade cleaved through a parked bus behind me, the metal edges glowing white-hot.

No time to think. Only move.

I vaulted over a destroyed car, using it as a springboard to reach a fire escape. The metal groaned under my enhanced strength as I launched myself up three stories in one jump. Behind me, the building's base exploded as the beast crashed through it like tissue paper.

The entire structure tilted. I ran along the increasingly horizontal wall, glass windows shattering under my feet. At the edge, I leaped to the next building, unfurling my cape to glide the distance.

Mid-flight, danger sense screamed. I twisted, bringing the shield up just as an energy blade swept past. Even deflected, the force spun me like a top. I crashed through an office window, rolled across desks and cubicles, and kept running.

The beast burst through the wall behind me, too large for the space, its body demolishing load-bearing walls as it pursued. The ceiling collapsed. I slid under falling concrete, shield raised to deflect debris, and dove through another window.

Five-story drop. I fired a shadow chain at a streetlight, swinging in an arc that took me under an overpass. The beast's energy beam vaporized the entire bridge structure, raining molten concrete.

I hit the ground running, zigzagging between abandoned cars. The beast descended, its wings clipping buildings and shearing through their facades. Glass and concrete rained down like hail.

A gas station ahead. Perfect.

I grabbed an abandoned motorcycle with one hand, my enhanced strength letting me hurl it at the gas pumps. The explosion bloomed just as the beast passed through it. The flames did nothing to its form, but the smoke and debris obscured whatever it had for vision.

I used that second to get above it, jumping from a bus to a truck to a second-story window to a roof. The beast spun, energy blades whirling like a blender, but I was already dropping onto its back.

My sword bit deep into a crack in its crystalline shell. The beast bucked, slamming into a building to crush me. I pulled the blade free and jumped, but not fast enough. Its wing clipped me in the shield, sending me through a water tower.

I landed hard, my armour soaked, and I gasping. The beast was already charging another area attack, energy particles condensing around it. I sprinted toward the nearest building - a parking garage.

I couldn't make it, danger sense screaming, and once again blocked it with a shield. Holding back the laser was as strenuous as the first time, and it felt like forever before the beam died down.

The moment the onslaught stopped, I ran deeper into the garage, the beast crashing through the entrance behind me. Its bulk was almost too large for the space. Its five-story body simply crashed through the building.

There was an open area inside, a spiraling path upward in the garage from the first level to the roof. I started jumping across it. Second floor. Third. Fourth. The beast was crashing through the building behind me, its energy blades carving through support columns, judging by how the whole structure groaned.

Even as I reached the top floor, I didn't stop. I ran straight for the edge but jumped upwards. The beast followed, bursting through the roof-

Just as the weakened parking garage collapsed beneath it, I fell on its head and drove my sword into its small, stupid head. Then, pushing off it, I jumped up before it could bisect me with a blade.

Tons of concrete and rebar crashed down. The beast roared, that distinctive "SKREEEEOOONK!" , as it fell into the collapsing structure. I landed on an adjacent building, turning to watch.

It erupted from the rubble, very much alive. More cracks showed in its crystalline form, energy leaking like torrents of luminous blood.

It went Eva 01 on me.

Energy blades extended from every part of its body, a whirling sphere of destruction. I realized that my sword, sticking from its head, was his now, and jumped clear as the entire remains of the parking lot were reduced to slag.

Landing on the street, I had only Cap's shield. The beast rose from the molten wreckage, my sword still protruding from what I was relatively sure was its head. It was also leaking more energy now, movements becoming erratic.

But it was still coming.

I ran toward a collapsed overpass, using the tilted concrete as a ramp. The beast followed, energy building for another area blast. At the peak of the ramp, I turned and jumped backward, shield raised.

The blast hit me mid-air, but instead of resisting, in the air, it launched me as a cannonball. I felt like a surfer who was hit by a wave.

As the wave died down, I was sure that the fight was nearing its finish line.

The energy the Geometric Godzilla was leaking was becoming too much; the purple lines on its form were flickering, on and off, like a lightbulb that almost burned out.

I watched, lying on my back with the shield still raised to my chest, as the beast was jerkily trying to fly towards me, roaring and swinging its blade at the empty air and the surrounding buildings.

The beast's roar cut off. The energy that had been leaking became a torrent, and its levitation also seemed to cease working. It just collapsed with a thundering crack, raising a small cloud of dust and debris.

I lay there for a moment, breathing hard, everything hurting.

"Honkai energy dropping! Knightmare, report immediately!" I ignored my earpiece, not even knowing what to feel.

"How am I alive..." I whispered, letting my head drop, as I just stared into the sky.

"Knightmare! Knightmare report!" I was smiling like an idiot, still ignoring whoever was trying to talk to me and just... relaxing.

God, I need a cigarette.

Author Note: The knights were actually Templars (a bit changed up, because Honkai beasts in-game are kinda limited due to the game being limited), and the beast MC fought is an Emperor class. Nerfed a bit due to a nuke.

Please comment, I am curious what you guys think.

***

The extraction, surprisingly, was the easy part.

With the ambient Honkai radiation falling below a certain threshold, the majority of the beasts lost coordination and were further distracted by the advancing 'normal' troops, who could now push into the outbreak without instantly dying from magical cancer.

The Skybolt the HQ sent to pick me up did so from atop one of the roofs.

I boarded it, greeted the different pilots (the ones who brought me in got rotated, to minimize the Honkai exposure), and sat down on the seat, feeling my body simply... melt.

I muttered some nonsense under my breath, not sure what exactly, as my mind wandered.

This was the outbreak. Not even remotely as severe as the eruption when the Herrscher showed up. Nowhere near as bad either.

Nowhere near as bad...

Fuck, what a joke.

I glanced down at my arms, clad in armor as they were, and they were still drenched in blood and covered with dust.

With an effort, the outer layer of my shadows liquified and fell on the ground of the transport like a black sludge, before dissolving, leaving only the contaminants.

Not that it helped that much. I am not feeling any cleaner.

I reached down and across my breastplate, peeling it off just a little bit, and manually disabled the microphone for my communication with the HQ.

"What the hell do I do?" I muttered to myself.

A superhero, that's what I was telling myself I was training for. This? This wasn't that.

There was no big bad who you can stop so everyone can clap like you're a hallucinating Shinji. This is me coming to a warzone after the damage is already done, and stopping it from spreading, saving... what, the grand total of one person?

What the hell am I even saying? People being saved isn't the point, even if I managed to pull one hundred orphans out of the fire, that wouldn't make all this any less shitty. It's not about people being saved, it's about how many fucking died.

What was the population of that city when I was briefed on it, again? Somewhere in the hundreds of thousands?

"This is insane..."

I muttered, not even noticing.

And this wasn't anything really 'big' by M.O.T.H.'s estimations. Shit was hypothesized to get worse.

We, and I mean all M.O.T.H.? We are firefighters. We stop the consequences of the disaster from spreading, and we have a science division that is supposed to figure out how to stop it from happening, but so far... the eggheads have no idea. Not about why the outbreaks happen, not where, not about how to stop them.

So, how many more times do I get down to the burning cities to kill the zombies and beasts, watching the ruins where thousands perished? It's insane! I can't keep that up!

"Do I feel like a hero yet...?"

I realized what I had muttered and laughed to myself hysterically.

At least this Honkai mess isn't my fault.

It isn't right? The plot twist won't be that it's my power that somehow brought this shit about, too, right?

"The hell am I even thinking?" I slapped myself gently across the helmet.

This whole meta-thinking shit isn't working and won't ever work. I've lived in this world for two months. People are people. Some have weird hair and eye colors, but in the end of the day, thinking about 'characters' and 'world' like I am not right here is a good way to get even more insane.

The question remained.

What do I do? What can I do?

I am a guy who can punch a tank and see it dent. But you can't punch inter-dimensional radiation. Then again, maybe...

I reached towards my outer senses, and felt that... there were two strings actually.

One was familiar, the sunglasses.

The second... oh. Oh, hell, is this a real Pokémon?

For a moment, I marveled. It took me a moment to realize that the thing I had is a Ditto.

I couldn't help it, I snickered. Mobius, Mobius shared a theory that my powers, the ones that gifted me with more abilities and things, didn't spew out shit randomly. I was given what I needed, in some way, shape or form. Or that's what she proposed as a working theory.

Giving me a Ditto? Very suggestive, Cosmic Chaos Divine Giga Strings. Well, at least it's not a Vaporeon.

Jokes aside, Pokémon is... huge. Maybe Ditto isn't the strongest or the most impressive little guy out there, but even without the real inhumane experiments... Mobius can probably learn a lot.

She is that bullshit level of comic-book scientist after all.

Chuckling to myself, I decided to leave Ditto as a surprise for Mobius, and for now reached towards the sunglasses.

I pulled on the string, and in my hands...

"Huh?"

Those weren't sunglasses. Orange, huge, looking like two triangles mashed together without frames...

My hands shook slightly.

I couldn't help it, I chuckled quietly, but the laughter didn't let up.

Throwing my head back, I laughed like a fucking madman, feeling both cheated, ridiculed... and yet, oddly reassured.

It was like the Cap's shield. From just pulling it, I could briefly sense its history. What sort of shit it went through.

The same went for those glasses. They were... a genuine fucking article.

If Mobius was right, if my power did try to help...

My hand gently clenched around the glasses.

"Believing in myself, huh? I guess compared to that guy, what we have here isn't that miserable."

Being a 'superhero' is one thing, get a costume on, beat some muggers, fight an ambiguous evil guys for your own self-preservation and you are practically already there.

Being a genuine Hero... a symbol grander than life to inspire others to things that even you alone can hardly imagine?

Is that what my power says I should be? Maybe... this is the way?

I could feel it, my heart slowing down before exploding in my chest again... It's as if magma ignited in my soul into a tiny, flickering flame.

***

When the trap door lowered, I wasn't greeted with grim-faced technicians hurrying around.

Instead, I was greeted with an ovation. Not that loud, but as I stepped outside and glanced around, I could see most of the people I knew around HQ standing there, smiling and cheering.

The decontamination guys who went past me and into the Skybolt to clean the dust and blood I dropped on the floor tapped me on the shoulder pads for reassurance.

I felt a bit bewildered, but otherwise stepped outside, letting my armor finally morph back into normal clothing, albeit still with a functioning sheath for my sword, and a magnetic hold on my back for the shield.

The walk through the facility felt surreal.

Johan from maintenance gave me a firm nod and a thumbs-up as I passed. The guy usually looked perpetually exhausted from keeping this whole underground complex running, but right now he was grinning like an idiot. I managed a weak smile back.

"Good work out there," muttered Priya, one of the field agents I'd trained with a few weeks back. Her squeeze on my shoulder was brief but solid.

Didn't have much time to say hi; I knew I still had a debriefing ahead of me, so I just nodded, feeling lost.

More faces. Dmitri from security, built like a brick shithouse, actually saluted me. That was new. The big Russian was a stickler for formalities with his bosses, but anyone who wasn't one didn't get to see him playing a toy soldier. I almost wanted to tell him to cut it out, but my throat felt too tight.

Chen was there too, one of our communication guys, actually; it was one of the few departments where I didn't know everyone. He didn't say anything, just gave me this look that said 'you did good' better than words could. His eyes were a bit red, probably from staring at screens for hours.

The hallway to operations felt longer than usual. More people lined up along the walls. Not a parade or anything that was organized, just... there. Even old Samuel from the cafeteria was there, still wearing his apron.

I don't think anyone actually came here from active duty; the people around were probably supposed to be on a break.

They also clearly knew I wasn't quite off-duty. Little nods, brief touches on the shoulder or back as I passed. Nobody tried to stop me for a conversation. They knew where I was headed.

Almost at the operations door, I spotted Bjorn leaning against the wall. The Norwegian was one of the few field agents who'd actually been deployed to Germany during the eruption. His face looked like leather that had been left in the sun too long, all weathered lines and old scars.

"The first one's always the hardest," he said quietly as I approached. "Gets easier. Not better, but easier."

I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be comforting or terrifying. Probably both.

"That's not really comforting," I muttered in turn, just quiet enough for him to hear.

The man shook his head.

"I know."

He pushed off the wall and opened the operations door for me. "Come on now, Chief's waiting."

I stepped through, feeling all those eyes on my back. The door closed with a soft hiss, cutting off the subdued murmur of the hallway.

The operations center sprawled out before me, multiple levels of workstations and screens showing global Honkai readings, and a lot of info I didn't know where to even start reading. The usual controlled chaos, except now several of the operators turned to look at me.

"Director," I managed, taking a moment to center myself. With some difficulty, I grinned. "Mission accomplished, ready to debrief."

He studied me for a moment, those sharp eyes taking in everything. Dunno what he saw exactly, but after considering me, he briefly gestured to the side.

"Follow," Hesitating for a moment, I did, as we went past most of our command and towards a single table a bit to the side of the room.

As we approached, he didn't offer to sit, nor did he do so himself, turning to me.

"This was a hell of a job, son," He told me, looking into my eyes. "Before we start the actual debriefing, I wanted you to know that."

I didn't really know what to say immediately.

He seemingly noticed, gently clapping my shoulder.

"Alright, we are still working on cleanup. John will run you through the debriefing." He informed me, "He won't be too hard on you. Today, we just want you to run us by what happened and what you did, while the memory is fresh. After that, go visit our eggheads; we need to make sure your armor held up to Honkai as well as they thought it would. After that, you are free as a bird."

That sounded really fucking good right now.

Too good even.

For a second, I waited for a familiar voice to interrupt. Then I glanced around in confusion.

Still no snek.

Weird.

"Where is Mobius?" I asked Hulk, glancing to the sides, as if awaiting a ninja ambush. Big booby ninja mobius, god I wish.

The man chuckled.

"In Japan. She handles the containment of the remains of that high-class beast you killed."

Wait, remains? Ah... yeah, now that I think about it, the Geometric Godzilla didn't immediately decay into Honkai radiation!

"Thank you, Jesus!" I said, theatrically clapping my hands in prayer, "Thank you for letting me eat and shower today!"

If Mobius were here, I damn well knew I would be in her company for hours before I was allowed some me-time.

Hulk chuckled again before once more tapping me on the shoulder.

"Alright, son, save the clownery for the lady. Go kill that debriefing and rest, you've earned it."

You god damn fucking right! I even dropped a nuke today. And seen it detonate before my very own eyes.

That's still unbelievably wild. Also cool. Gotta love nukes when they only kill giant eldritch monstrosities.

God, I am exhausted if my thoughts drift that much.

I nodded and turned around to leave, but then remembered something, pausing and turning back around sharply.

"Hey, chief, there is another thing. Tell Mobius I can summon living things now."

I didn't look back to see his reaction. I also felt pretty damn great about myself.

My only regret was that I couldn't see Mobius' reaction to the news in person. Then again, she was getting better at holding a poker face around my bullshit.

***

"Explain."

Mobius demanded, once I was seated, as she shoved a folder into my arms.

I was confused, yet obediently, I checked what she meant.

Okay, so those seem to be my analyses. Most of it I couldn't understand, yet I tried to get through the dry scientific terminology. Mobius, impatient, tapped a specific section, way below where I was reading.

Taking a sip from the protein shake, I checked it specifically... wait, unknown microscopic organism? Alien in origins?!

"The hell!" I exclaimed, my mood immediately swinging, as I devoured line after line of text.

'Seemingly harmless', 'Cause no percivable effect', 'die immediately once removed from the bloodstream'...

"Listen Mobi, I have no idea what I am looking at..." I said, glancing up at her.

The woman who folded her arms beneath her ample chest just looked at me. With the 'trying to drill through' kind of stare.

"First of all, it's Mobius, Lab Rat," She said sharply, "Second of all, we know you applied a new power on yourself, and used another one to summon an item."

"Hey, you already confiscated Kamina's glasses," I complained, sighing. At least they promised to return them in three days... so, I'll get them back tomorrow. "As for the other ability, I mean, I already wrote down all I knew about it in my report, and I don't believe you haven't read it by now. It's a combat precognition. Spider-senses, basically. Those..."

I tapped on the zoomed-in microscopic image of the simple single-cell life forms... that apparently just lived in my blood now.

"I have no idea what those are."

Mobius stared.

"You said you usually have an instinctive sense of the powers you pull into yourself. And I need something to work with. Especially if you are at risk of, apparently, unleashing a pandemic of an alien infection."

"Hey, this isn't a bubonic plague," I complained, tapping the words 'seemingly harmless' in the folder, "You guys didn't even notice those doing anything."

"Not the point Lab Rat. The issue is that if it's something you truly didn't know of, the next thing you summon may bring about something unforeseen but harmful. If not for you, then for those around you."

...I couldn't really argue with that.

But it's not like I can explain what pulling on strings felt like. It's not like I got manuals or a fucking briefing. It was a bunch of 'images', sensations, vague ideas that appear in my head when I pull on it.

With the Shadow Armor, it was a powerful spell that I think some knights used...? With Captain America's shield, I could tell it was wielded by a hero and faced all manner of tests.

It was like that with a precognition, but more vague. I just sort of knew where and how it would activate.

It was like a spider-sense, so that's what I call it! Well, either that, or a Jedi precognition...

Wait...

I grabbed the folder with both hands, locking in and reading the characteristics again.

No way, right?

"Those... could be midichlorians?" I said quietly. I didn't really mean to say it, but neither did I mean to really keep it back.

"Midichlorians?" Mobius asked, urging me on.

I paused, unsure.

"So, remember how I told you that the Captain's Shield belonged to a comic book character, on my Earth?" I asked her quietly, "This is sort of like that."

Mobius studied me for a moment but decided to sit down opposite me, on a bench.

We were currently in my 'private' gym, which held the equipment that can actually handle me when I used my armor.

"So, it's another power used by a 'super-hero'?" I could hear her making the quotes verbally. Sugoi, Mobius-sama.

I shook my head.

"I thought so at first. But no, the Spider-sense was a psychic sense one comic book character had. This? This was from a sci-fi space opera movie," I explained plainly, locking in a little.

Unlike Marvel comics and its dogshit movie universe, I actually knew Star Wars lore. Well, before Disney ruined everything.

"The ability, as I felt it, was supposed to be a combat precognition. Being able to react faster because you subconsciously kinda perceived the danger, you know?" I explained to her slowly, "In that movie, there were... well, space-wizards. People who could use something called The Force. The Force was explained like an invisible metaphysical energy field that connected everything in the universe. Some people and animals could interact with that field, so they were called force-sensitive. Being able to predict danger before it struck? That's kinda a mark of a strong force-sensitive who lacked training."

Mobius studied me, her face completely blank.

I know what I was telling her was probably kinda physically painful to listen to for a scientist, and she wanted me to get to the point. So appreciating her restraint, I continued.

"So, The Force. When you are trained in feeling and using it, things sort of change; a character becomes a force user. A force user can do a bunch of things with the force Telekinesis, mind-control, enhancing yourself physically, being able to view the future or the past... a lot of other ridiculous things. That being said, all the abilities were limited and dependent on training, talent, and how well attuned the character was with the force."

I finally looked her in the eyes.

"The Midichlorians were kind of a sore subject in the lore. Depending on the source, they signified different things. We had characters that claimed that midichlorians were responsible for giving force-sensitives the ability to use the Force. But that seems wrong, because we had alien sentient-rocks using the Force, not to mention force ghosts... It's the whole thing," I explained, shaking my hand in a 'meh' expression, "The other theory was that midichlorians were indicators of the force, but not it's source. Like, the force-sensitivity is its own thing, and midichlorians can only live in people who are attuned to the force, because they feed off of it, and so stronger force-sensitives had a higher medicholrian count."

Mobius was quiet for a moment.

"This sounds completely asinine."

"It totally is," I agreed, "The stuff was made by a bunch of writers for over, what, thirty years? This whole thing is pretty ridiculous."

Even as I said that, I thought. Force-sensitivity? That sounds great... on paper. Then you consider what you need to train it to be a force-user, and shit isn't all sunshine and rainbows anymore.

First of all, Jedi spend their whole life training, and usually end up as mildly superhuman fellas. I am decently sure I, in my armor, could take down an average Jedi Knight. So, even if my force-sensitivity was average, that's the level I would get in a decade of training. I mean, sure, you have people like Starkiller in the lore, but he is practically non-canon even in canon before the Mouse. There were also other ridiculous exceptions, but they were just that, exceptions. Most knights weren't anything to write home about, and those guys were trained from childhood.

And then you consider the Dark Side. Dark Side, to which you can fall if you are just not careful with your emotions, while you are a force-user. Once you tap into the Dark Side, the temptation is always there, even if you snap out of it.

Despite what people claimed, Dark Side's portrayal was almost universally bad news. It gets you prone to anger, malice, and violence, and that's if it doesn't straight up give you a psychotic murder-everything episode.

There were some 'gray' Jedi and other force users, but those guys are a meme. One in a million exceptions amongst the force-users.

If using Dark Side without going psycho was that easy, Jedi wouldn't have banned the Dark Side. I mean, provided Jedi weren't idiots.

So, that meant training force safely was equivalent to trying to become a Jedi. Without masters, directions, techniques, or a safety net. Even if I somehow succeed in stumbling in the dark like that, it still means living the rest of my life like a monk, while knowing that a single emotional breakdown can lead you to becoming a psycho that eats babies while laughing maniacally... fuck that.

Fuck that in every possible way.

So, I explained the whole dilemma to Mobius from the start.

I felt like a guy who was telling his girlfriend the 40k lore during a date. That is to say, Mobius looked like some parts of the explanation visibly pained her, and yet still listened attentively because it was pretty fucking important intel.

"...I don't think I should be training that." I finally finished.

"If you are right about the nature of those life forms in your blood, I agree," Mobius agreed after a moment of consideration. "For the record, the media in your home universe is terrible, Lab Rat."

I was offended on behalf of every 5 y/o on Earth.

"Hey, you take that back! If you heard the lore when you were five, you would've loved it!"

Mobius simply looked at me, and somehow, I knew what I said didn't make her happy.

"I wouldn't have," She said instead. She didn't act colder but... I could feel that she wasn't happy at all. There was something there. Yet, I... didn't want to pry.

That being said...

"Mobius, if you were working on some blacksite project of cloning me, I suggest you drop it."

The woman actually paused, taking a double-take.

"Excuse you?"

I looked her in the eyes seriously.

"The Force does not play nice with force-user clones. They all, with zero exceptions," In actual good lore, not counting the nonsense dogshit, "Either went mad, physically started to degrade, or both. There was one almost-successful attempt, but it was only possible because... well, Sith alchemy and some unexplained things." I wiggled my index finger left to right. "Midichlorians also weren't exactly ever transplanted or otherwise implanted. You can certainly test that part, but you'll kill a lot of time on projects that may take even your genius decades, if you start looking towards cloning."

The woman huffed, folding her arms under her chest.

"You say this was never done by any geniuses and entire races of the entire galaxy, but believe I can achieve that in a decade?" She asked, seemingly more amused than anything.

"Well, duh," I chuckled, "Compared to you, those guys are probably chumps."

Mobius was a comic genius after all. Well, she might not have been from any comic I've ever heard, maybe the story about her was never even written on my earth, but she had the qualifications.

There wasn't a scientific area where she couldn't outshine most leading experts. She was a biologist first, not because she was all that much better in biology, but simply because she liked it more.

People who get a single doctorate understand just how much knowledge, understanding, studying, and all that you need to be able to just call yourself a doctor. A leading doctor in the field? That takes even more.

Now, Mobius? She was one of the leading experts in pretty much ALL THE FIELDS.

This isn't a realistic human genius. That was a ridiculous anime/comic competence that a normal person can never match by the age of eighty. Literally inhuman intelligence is a minimum requirement to pull off half the things she is famous for.

"Anyhow, call me anytime and ask me anything else about Star Wars whenever it becomes relevant; I'll give you anything I remember on the subject, but you probably have better things to do than to listen to me monologuing about cool space magics that won't ever be relevant in the lab," I offered to her, seeing that she was distracted with her thoughts too. "I'd like to know if those are midichlorians before I try doing something stupid, like meditation."

At least force visions didn't happen to untrained force users... for the most part. The shit was pretty vague, but while you weren't trained and not attuned to the force, you also couldn't fall to the Dark Side. I am pretty confident about that from what I remembered of the lore. Which is neat.

I stood up, leaving my cup with a shake on the bench, stretching a bit, as I eyed the dead-lift machine.

I'll fucking bench past my record today. Row, row.

Fight the pawah.

"Are you not afraid?" I blinked, glancing back at Mobius, who sat down on the bench, glancing through a wall in front of her, "Talking about me cloning you... saying I am better at what I do than an entire galaxy... does it not scare you?"

I paused for a moment, looking at her, trying to understand what she was even on about.

Why would I be afraid in the first place? The sentiment caught on in a moment when I tried to consider this from Mobius's perspective.

"Well, you aren't scared of me, are you?" I asked rhetorically, and she, slowly blinking, glanced at me. "In terms of sheer combat potential, I am probably the scariest human in the world. You probably know all too well what I can do to a squishy normal human. Yet, you were never afraid of me, since my first day here," I grinned cheekily at her, "Stuff like that ain't rational... though, it is a choice. I can choose to quake in my boots over what you can do, and be an idiot about it, or I can have faith that you know what you are doing, and will figure out what you can and can't do. Me meddling with that? I probably lack qualifications to talk with you about the weather, much less about how you do science." I shrugged simply, smiling at her, "If anything, I am super reassured that a person like you exists, Mobi. An idiot like me, who is only good for punching things, will never save the world. But a ridiculous genius like you has little to no limits."

Her piercing stare immediately flowed into a deadpan.

"Use my name, Lab Rat, I know you aren't quite braindead yet." She huffed, quite adorably actually, "For your information, I don't believe myself quite capable of 'saving the world'... yet."

I chuckled naturally at that.

"Give it time," I glanced down for a moment, "'Sides, a woman like you gotta believe in herself."

Mobius just sighed, but didn't reply.

As I went to continue my exercise, she observed me for a short time before leaving. I totally didn't pull my back trying to impress her.

***

It took a while for Mobius to free up her schedule enough to actually oversee my summoning and run me by some of the testing results with my midichlorians.

Mostly because she had her work cut out for her, managing our science department, overseeing the power armour construction that was now rapidly accelerated, as well as doing testing on Honkai samples from Japan.

Supposedly, Mobius went to Japan for an entire two days, where she mostly set up the storage and testing facility for the 'Emperor-class Beast' remains, after which she had to leave eggheads on the ground to oversee the testing she scheduled, as she went back to our main headquarters on Mu, to oversee the projects here...

As well as me, I guess.

"Wait, what do you mean the supersoldier serum usage is in the process of being approved?" I asked, honestly bewildered, as I stood in some devilish contraption.

It reminded me of that thing from that gore video of an anime-loli who gets peeled by lasers like a potato on a plate of a starving Irishman.

By that point, I was just used to stepping into equipment that looked as if it was designed to kill me. I wouldn't be surprised if it could with improper handling. So I preferred not to think about it too much.

"Exactly what I said, Lab Rat," Mobius practically growled, "It's not a hard concept to grasp, is it?"

I blinked owlishly.

"Wait, so..." I pointed a finger at Ato, "You guys are saying that on this Earth, you already have a super-soldier serum...?"

Mobius sighed, as she was clearly mostly busy with some project on her computer.

"It's not a serum, lab rat. It's a complex modification procedure; if anything, it has more to do with genetic and cellular enhancement." She blinked slowly, glancing at me, "Wait, didn't you have anything equivalent in your world?"

"No!" I exclaimed.

What the hell? Those guys have a fucking super-soldier creation procedure already figured out!

"No, we damn well don't! That's a comic book or sci-fi concept! How the hell are all our operatives normal people?!"

Mobius sighed and gestured towards Klein.

Klein obediently obliged, gently coughing into her tiny fist, before going into a lecture mode.

"The technology was developed during the Cold War. It's top secret, and the exact specification of the technology is outright unknown in most countries. Like Nuclear Weapons. It's also outlawed." She explained concisely.

I raised an eyebrow as one of the projectors started to beam light on me.

"The procedure was remarkably unsafe," Klein explains softly, "Even the surviving subjects started to degrade in five to ten years. The international agreements leveraged extensive bans on genetic tampering in humans shortly after the Cold War ended." The girl, who I am pretty sure was actually an adult, finished with her cute, a bit emotionless tone.

"So, there are no other super soldiers?"

Mobius looked at me.

"Are you an idiot, Lab Rat?"

It took me a moment.

"Ah. So, government spooks?"

She nodded, seemingly just a bit amused.

"Government spooks indeed. Officially, super soldiers weren't produced since the late seventies, but unofficially, anyone who is not a child can deduce that some are still in service."

I considered it for a moment.

"So the federal agents actually DO glow in the dark here, eh?" I chuckled to myself, "You'll see them while driving..."

And then you do as Saint Terry commanded.

I paused for a moment, glancing at Mobius, whose eyelid twitched, I think.

"But wait, what are the actual capabilities of those super-soldiers?" I clarified.

She once again theatrically gestured for Klein to tard wrangle, as she sighed like a tragic character in a theatre.

"Technically, unknown. But they are known for augmented physical abilities." I opened my mouth, but Klein immediately continued, "Nothing supernatural."

I closed my mouth.

So, no cool super-powers, only Captain America package... at best.

"Wait, so you are saying, we, the single organization responsible for fighting an existential threat to all of humanity... don't have the tech?"

"Please," Mobius spoke up, annoyed, "I replicated that project when I was twelve. The issue isn't that we can't do it; the issue is that we have oversight and regulations." She looked at me, "With current technology, I can likely tailor the procedure to be mostly harmless to the specific subject I design it for. The enhancement just wouldn't matter much for an average individual, and we don't have an approval." She actually sighed, massaging her temples, "No one wants to give us more special permissions than we already have, so it will take a while before we will be able to get the official permit."

The gorgeous woman looked at me heatedly. Which was pretty hot.

"That being said, your performance in Asahikawa goes a long way to help us with that."

Aaaah, Mobius, you shouldn't have. That almost sounded like a compliment.

"You have a very stupid face right now, Lab Rat."

I gave her a thumbs-up.

"It's charming," I assured her.

She kept looking at me with a dead stare.

"Klein, get him strapped into survey equipment for the summoning."

...I have a distinct impression she wants to be difficult today.

***

Informing Mobius what a Pokémon is was fun. For me. Decidedly not for her.

Oh, sure, she was all sorts of excited as a scientist, but hearing about the world-building of Pokémon seemed to make her crawl up the wall. What little I knew of it, anyway.

Mobius likes things that don't make sense, because she can make sense of them. To her, they are like a puzzle. But she dislikes outright stupidity.

The worldbuilding of most fiction is pretty stupid and full of holes, even for a normie like me. For a super-genius like Mobi-Mobi, it's completely and totally unbelievable dogshit. That she has to listen to, because it may help with the actual upcoming research.

At this point, I didn't even delight in her suffering; I was honestly just feeling sorry. The woman had enough on her shoulders as it is.

Which leads us to here. An isolated chamber, vacuum-sealed at that, with air analyzers to make sure the Pokémon won't contain some alien virus.

Which is kinda silly, because by that logic, even Kamina's glasses could've carried something like that.

That being said, I was forced to wear a rebreather and my armor.

I knew this was excessive, but I think Mobius got really spooked by Midichlorians. It was honestly kinda adorable that she cared, even if I knew it was nothing personal; teasing her about it was generally fun.

When it came to testing, she was bustling about and took all sorts of precautions, trying to idiot-proof pretty much anything. Like a single mother trying to wrangle a retarded baby.

Mmm, snek mommy.

"Lab Rat, if you are quite done, please proceed with the summoning," Mobius spoke up through the microphone.

I couldn't really see her through a one-sided glass, and the white room around was pretty damn nostalgic.

"Sure." I saluted jokingly, "Here goes..."

I didn't know that much about Pokémon, mostly because the anime somehow went right past me. But I did know the Cliff Notes.

Still, I was a bit apprehensive as I pulled the string, as I stretched both of my hands, clad in my shadow armor as they were.

Once again, there was no splash of light or anything, just... weight settling in my hands.

"Ditto?" It was a blob. A cute, pink blob. With outlined eyes and mouth.

Wow, how does it look so natural... like, when you look at an animal, and it doesen't cause an uncanny valley? Ditto was like that. Just cute, not weird.

"Hello, little buddy," I told the Pokémon, as it curiously glanced around, seemingly not even distressed or afraid. "Did I pull you out of anything important?"

"Ditto. Diiiito ditto?" The cute blob answered, looking back at me and shaking energetically.

A bit confused, but excited. Curious, but a bit anxious about my appearance, but likes my voice, even if it's distorted a bit by the air supply mask.

"Really? That's a relief." I said, smiling under my helmet. "Sorry if I look a bit spooky, safety procedures and all that."

"Ditto?"

A query, asking for assurance, as he looked more distracted with the white room around us.

"Really," I assured solemnly.

"That being said, wanna be friends?"

Ditto looked at me in consideration for a while... and then wiggled happily.

"Ditto ditto!"

Happiness, excitement, glee, acceptance, and overall, a bunch of almost childish enthusiasm.

Suddenly, the dynamics spoke up.

"Lab Rat," Mobius spoke slowly, "You'd better start explaining, if it's not some instance of an indecipherable eldritch idiot-to-idiot communication."

"Ditto!"

My little friend was offended, or pretended to be, as he squeeled indignantly.

"Yeah, Mobius, don't be mean to him." I agreed, faking an offended tone myself.

The brightest mind I've ever met groaned.

I exchanged glances with Ditto, and he quietly giggled.

He radiated powerful smug energy with his wiggly body.

Jesus Almighty, is he my people?

Author Notes:  Please do comment. The enthusiasm feeds this project.

***

"...and here you go, buddy," I said, patting the Pokémon whom I just placed on my shoulder, as I passed him a cookie. "Sorry about the needles, bells, and whistles, but it's kind of important to do sooner rather than later."

"Ditto! Ditto!" Ditto, who turned back into his slimy perky self, seemed quite happy with it. The treat, I mean. He absolutely hated the testing.

"Fascinating," Mobius, who was already doing some strange sciency magic with the small test tube, half-full of very red blood, seemed more taken aback and deeply into her own little world than anything else, "By all accounts, this is regular blood..."

I didn't really comment, just patted the little guy, leaving Mobius to her wet dreams, which were probably filled with bio-engineered monstrosities straight from Lovecraftian mythos.

Thing is, while she certainly heard me explain what I understood of Ditto and his biology, which was quite a lot thanks to Demonic Uber Skibbidi Chaos Strings...

...I myself really knew much less about Pokémon than I probably should. The things I did know were from the retarded community of the series, who couldn't shut up about it.

I also might have played one of the newest games, which no one can ever prove. If I ever did, I played just to beat the game without reading the lore, so in any case, I was pretty ignorant.

"Yeah-yeah buddy, you did great," I assured him seriously, "Honestly, I hate needles myself..."

"Ditto!" The little guy was nodding in agreement.

"Yeah, it's weird, right? It can't possibly even hurt that badly, but it's scary every time. Not even the sting, but the expectation of one..."

"Ditto, ditto..." He said pitingly, patting me on the head... while standing on my shoulder. Why do I get the 'understanding uncle' vibe from him?

"Here, please..." Suddenly, the local Pokémon named Klein interrupted, bringing me a cup of coffee.

I love Klein. If anything ever happens to Klein, I am killing everyone in the facility and then myself.

With a titanic effort of will, I fought down the urge to coo at the girl and pat her, because I knew, despite how she looked, she was practically a woman grown.

"Thank you," I nodded instead, trying to show with my expression how grateful I felt for her care, before glancing back at Ditto, and taking a sip of the liquid that flowed through my veins during my student days.

Ditto gestures at me with a 'gimme gimme' gesture, which, after a moment, prompted me to offer him a cup sneakily.

She leaned into it, somehow taking it enough to tilt some of that Black Gold into his mouth.

Luckily, the entire science team was quite distracted, gushing and debating around Ditto's samples to berate me on being too lax with an exotic alien animal again.

After the summoning, they made the guy immediately pass a series of examinations and 'basic tests'. Mobius agreed to cut it a bit short when I plainly told her that Ditto was getting stressed, which led to the first test in his 'transformed form', when he was asked to transform into a literal lab rat. Not me, I mean the mindless beast...

...still not me, damn it. The white, albino kind that Klein brought from who knows where.

As a result, while I was constantly helping with communication, I didn't really have much time to speak with my new gooey friend.

"So, do you remember anything before the summoning?" I asked him curiously.

"Ditto, ditto... ditto ditto!" He started slow, picking up speed and articulation along his tale, before shaking from side to side.

I still didn't understand the language, mind you, I don't think there was a language to it. Pokémon probably understood each other through some psychic bullshit. But reading his body language and emotions was very easy. I could tell he was describing some place and some events.

"So you do remember, you weren't just created by that power..." I commented to myself, nodding slowly. "Did you have a trainer?"

"Ditto." Denial, a touch of regret, and resentment.

"That's a shame. Folks around your home must have been blind. You seem to have lots of potential." Then again, at least he wasn't kidnapped from a loving trainer... per se, "Did you live alone?"

"Ditto!" Agreement.

"Somewhere in the wild?" I clarified.

"Di-tto!" He agreed.

"Well, that's good, I suppose," I nodded to myself, and at his questioning glance I explained, "I don't know much about your world, but wild pokémon don't have it as good, right? Here at least you'll have treats and a bunch of friends, and we probably can do some training for you, pal."

"Ditto, ditto..." Ah, he had friends back home, too. He sounded a bit wistful, but... as if accepting? Also hopeful about what I explained.

Wait, why is he accepting? Thinking about it, how is he understanding what is happening? Pokémon shouldn't be that smart. I somehow knew that while they could be intelligent, it wasn't on the level of an educated human... well, most of the time.

"Wait, you understand that you are like... in a completely different place? Another world?"

"Ditto, Diiitto." He agreed, I could tell. He also added something extra, but I wasn't sure what he was trying to say.

"Ah, it was the same power that brought you here, right? It also gave you a bunch of, like... images and impressions about what was happening?" Like it did for me, when I reached for the power, that is.

"Ditto, ditto!" He agreed, sounding a bit annoyed, but not at me, more like on the... unfairness of the situation?

"It's not the best situation for all of us here, little guy..." I said sympathetically, patting him a bit.

His body was odd. It didn't feel like a gel or pudding, though I knew it could be. Ditto dodged Mobius' needle once, by letting it just pass through his body, until I managed to explain to him that she wanted to take a tiny sample.

It seems he can solidify or be liquid on demand. When I was patting him, he felt solid, like a... well, a rubber band. A warm and dry rubber band. Who purred a bit when you scratched it just right.

"Speaking of which, just calling you Ditto seems a bit... well, rude," I muttered to myself, thinking, "Do you want an actual name?"

"Ditto?" More surprise and confusion, rather than any strong sentiment, but I could tell he understood the question.

"Well, it will be kinda hard to think of something fitting." I thought about it, more speaking for myself than for him.

Obviously, there were a few cheap jokes that I could make, like 'big D', or 'Doit', or something equally as stupid. But a joke like that will grow old in two minutes flat when you actually address someone by that name, and besides, I don't wanna be mean to the little guy.

He is like a literal cinnamon puff. Or a cinnamon roll.

"How about going for something simple? Like... hm... Dot?" I tried.

Ditto blinked.

"Ditto." He seemed enthusiastic, but I had a feeling it had less to do with the name itself and more to do with the fact that someone was actually naming him.

Then again, I doubt he had much context to even understand much about names...

"Dot it is. If we come up with something better, we'll change it if you want, deal?"

"Ditto!"

Good man.

I patted him on the back again, much to his clear enjoyment and excitement.

I think that taming ability is finally coming in handy. It's stupid how I somehow can instinctively know and understand even Pokémon, though. If I summon, I dunno, a Game of Thrones dragon, will I understand it too? What about a Warcraft elemental? Did that piece from the Greater Whole impart the knowledge about literally every animal ever into my head? If that's the case, how didn't my brain liquify?

Then again, I don't quite think I can complain. Whatever, just accept it as a given and move on.

I gently leaned back on my seat, watching Mobius give some orders to Klein as she discussed things with Blanca. I waited for her to give me the all clear to leave.

For now, I decided to shortly explain to Dot exactly where we were, and what sort of things he can look forward to…

***

In general, I don't think my first successful mission changed much. Most personnel in the base were aware of me to at least some extent.

That being said, maybe it's just me, but it did feel as if people were... well, a bit lighter on their feet ever since the incident. Even though it's been around three weeks already.

Outside of M.O.T.H, the outbreak was reported in the news. Apparently, a lot of smaller eruptions were covered up to not cause a global panic, but three hundred thousand bodies aren't easy to hide. Nor is the activity of most militaries in the region, as they were rushing to provide some sort of support.

As far as the general public was informed, a new method to combat outbreaks was successfully tested, it was 'a great success', 'people may sleep soundly', and all the usual buzzwords. Practically, however, the public was seriously on edge. And that's despite all the media being literally held by the balls by all the governments in the world, across the entire world, to not rock the boat, and being forced to comply with strict censorship.

Sure, it's authoritarian and concerning, but I can't find it in myself to care that Free Media turned out not to be free again.

Besides, if the global unrest truly picked up right now, it won't exactly help anyone. Informing the public about the scale of the threat may just inevitably lead to making it harder to work against Honkai.

I wouldn't have been able to sleep soundly at night knowing that inter-dimensional turbo cancer rays may just decide to explode in my backyard, completely unpredictably, on any day. If every person in the world knew that this risk is there, I think most industries and supply chains would grind to a halt for a while.

So while keeping people ignorant felt wrong, I also couldn't object from a practical standpoint. Nor can I do anything about it that won't get me, and the M.O.T.H. fucked up for trying.

On this base, people were more informed. They knew it was me who was deployed to Japan; they knew what Honkai was and how many outbreaks we actually had to deal with (duh), so I wasn't exactly limited by red tape about the topics I could discuss. Even a janitor here was about as informed about Honkai as your average high-tier politician.

I was obviously told not to be retarded about this, and not just tell on local WarThunder forums about the architecture of the base, our toys, or what the fuck we were doing, but aside from talking with the normies outside, no one really cared who and what I talked with or about. All people here had the clearance.

Which brought me here.

Mobius leaned back on her seat, taking one glance at the paper I brought to her, before simply signing it.

I lifted an eyebrow.

"That easy?"

Mobius, who I think was planning to return back to whatever project she had on her computer, simply looked at me, nonplussed.

"Did you expect me to refuse on principle?" She asked instead, waving me off, "If you want to go out, do so. I don't have anything planned for you for the rest of the day. It's not like you were ever confined here, Lab Rat."

Now, can you repeat that, looking me in the eyes, I wonder?

...she probably can.

"I will get absolutely wasted tonight," I told her blandly.

"Ditto!" The small guy said, poking out of the chest pocket on my t-shirt. He sounded offended.

"...we. We will get wasted." I corrected myself, seeing Dot give me a thumbs up... somehow.

"Lab Rat..." She said, lifting her eyes again, "I am neither your mother, nor your girlfriend..." Or so you say for now, mommy, "...do what you want. Alexanderson will brief you on what you can and can't do, and what oversight you will likely have to endure when going out."

I paused for a moment.

"Well... I was actually thinking about inviting you along." I said, lifting up Kamina's glasses with a finger, and wiggling my eyebrows as comically as humanly possible.

Not because I wanted to make a joke out of the offer, I was serious. But I also wanted to give her a way out without having to be mean.

Her fingers paused over the keyboard. She looked up.

For a long moment, she considered me, her expression frozen, before she scoffed.

"Lab Rat, even my toilet breaks are scheduled. Utilize your full brain capacity, think long and hard, and estimate what it may tell you about the amount of free time I have," She said simply, her voice quite cold. She also immediately continued, giving me no time to answer in a witty way, "If you are quite done, please don't forget to close the door on your way out."

... the doors in the entire facility are automatic, though.

"That wasn't a no~..."

I managed to run out before the cup she threw at me could reach my elusive, graceful figure.

Truly, the Knightmare alone stands unmatched and on the pinnacle of human capabilities.

***

"It's that way," The girl said, gesturing down the street. "There should be an entrance to the conservatory park there," She said, a bit awkwardly.

I glanced from my own smartphone as I was checking the map while she spoke, and indeed, I think that was an entrance.

"Huh, you are right," I said, my voice was fed through a microphone fixed on my shirt's collar, the words were translated, and then played back at her but utilizing the local language via the dynamics on the same device, "Thanks a lot, lady, you are a lifesaver," I said, saluting to her jokingly, a small grin on my face.

She seemed a bit taken aback, probably by my glasses or the pitch-black clothes. Or maybe the behavior and the two bodyguards behind my back.

Recently, I went just about everywhere in Kamina's shades. It wasn't even that they were cool, though they were, but more because they just felt comfortable. Actually decent shades, and somehow, despite lacking frames, they sat perfectly on my nose, without any discomfort. I barely noticed them those days.

Love'em, even outside of what they signify and remind me of.

"N-no problem," Replied the high-schooler whom I asked for directions, and nodding to her gratefully, I headed off.

Honestly, so far, I have had tons of fun. The shades attracted attention, but even outside of them, my clothes turned heads. It was my armour twisted into jeans and an expensive-looking shirt, meaning they, just like my boots, were pitch black.

I wasn't the kinda guy in my previous life who cared much about the style of all things, but in this one, I've had my fun. Being the kind of person people noticed was important.

So, I started walking to the park down the busy street.

The city? Damn it looked foreign, beautiful, and also alien. There were cleaning robots on the streets, and I've seen a train traveling above ground on a... I think, magnetic rail of some kind? It looked like it levitated.

Some of the buildings were also like nothing I've ever seen, neon adverts everywhere, and the writing was some symbols I didn't recognize at all. Mu's most common language in this region, I knew. Most places did look like tall modern office buildings, but some decidedly weird ones were just way too thick or way too tall.

It was just as wild as I expected from Mu; even by just surfing the internet, I knew that cities here looked like Night City. Still, seeing pictures on the internet and walking here myself were two different things.

I walked, simply basking in the atmosphere and looking around, and there were street food stalls, small shops, music, gaming themed and such, cafes, beauty salons, barber shops...

Huh, speaking of, I may need a new haircut.

I paused and glanced back at the pair of my 'bodyguards', who I am convinced are here to nanny me, rather than protect.

"So, I kinda do need a haircut. You two alright with that?" I asked, mostly because if they did have a problem with sharp objects around my head, that'd be awkward.

The man, David, immediately started to report quietly into the communication device in his collar, while Linda just nodded.

"Shouldn't be any problem."

I mean, duh, I have danger sense, and even if my armour did look like a normal suit, it still boosted my physical capabilities. If a normy had a sword to my throat, I'd be able to evade before I could be cut.

"We've got permission," David said, after a moment.

I just sighed, waving for them to follow as I leisurely strolled to the barber shop.

Honestly, this was a bit ridiculous. This whole security team is trailing me, that is. Those two were here, sure, but there were also a few cars with agents on standby. Which was all kinds of silly.

I mean, I get it, M.O.T.H. has some problems with the Council, who are our big sugar daddies, but I have a fucking Jedi Precognition.

Poisoning me? 'I've got a bad feeling about this,' and I am just not eating that shit. Airborne poison? Basically the same. Sniper, explosions, whatever? Same.

We tested my danger senses extensively with Mobius. In the lore, Jedi kinda had a problem sensing danger from droids or remote attacks, for instance. The reason for that is that their precognition was tied together with force-augmented empathy, so they usually relied on both without distinguishing them. Partially, they sensed the danger itself, but also the malicious intent. But Jedi could train to the point where they can precog all dangers to their lives and avoid them. It's just that most didn't really bother, focusing on other, more important skills to hone.

I was wrong about myself three weeks ago; my danger-sense wasn't on a 'beginner force sensitive' level. The ability I gained felt like a trained and well-honed talent. With Mobius testing, the results were kinda ridiculous. An example: one of the tests included a bunch of boxes, one with a shocker that can even knock me out, the other five without, and I could tell which box I can't put my hand in. Same with poisoned food, water, and such, even when people in the room wouldn't have allowed me to consume the poisoned food. Same when I was placed in a room, and randomly an odorless sleeping gas was released, to see if my danger sense would trigger. It did, felt like a growing sense of anxiety.

It was weird, too. The Force? I couldn't sense it for shit. Not that I tried too hard, but without meditations, which I avoided like the plague, I wasn't able to really tap into any of my abilities. Trying to bring a phone from the coffee table to my bed, without standing up? It didn't even flinch. Trying to augment myself with force during daily strength testing? Nada.

But precognition was... different. Even without overall competency with the Force, it's like I could interpret and intuit things on an insane level now. Like I was somehow a Jedi master... who was only somehow trained at danger sensing and nothing else. Not even being able to sense the force itself, but subconsciously having all the necessary skills to interpret its flow to not only sense dangers to my life, but also to my well-being.

Still, my newfound power didn't reassure Alexanderson too much when I was begging for his permission to go outside and touch grass.

And I mean, come on. Who wouldn't want to see Mu in my shoes, now that I snapped out of tunnel-visioning my training?

Mu is a completely new continent on the Earth's surface. It also had its own language... languages, actually.

The more I thought about it, the more interested I was. I mean, I've traveled a bit back on Earth, so seeing a completely new country, what, ten years into the future? With new food, customs, culture? It sounded really fucking interesting.

And I also really needed to unwind in some way. Sure, getting back to the base and having an opportunity to take a hot shower helped after Japan, but I still felt half-stuck in that fucking city across the world even now, almost a month later. Not physically or anything, just... I found myself thinking about it way more than I probably should.

There were also rare nightmares.

So, initially, the goal was to find a way to get absolutely fucking wasted like a filthy degenerate.

When I shared this over our usual table in the canteen, Ato's reaction can be summarized as: 'say no more'.

It was kinda creepy, actually, like seeing a degenerate student waking up from a long coma inside the body of a respected scientist.

Just like that, we planned an outing. Just me and the boys (and a few women, who were honorary Real Men (because they were cool, unlike stinky girls)), the usual crowd of acquaintances from the base.

Ato even promised to organize a private booth in a pub, and to figure out security details from his end.

My signed permission from Overworked Mommy dearest, and Bodybuilder Base Daddy Coolest wasn't about that.

It was about getting out alone to see the city before the degenerate drinking fest could start.

Even outside of drinking, I needed a day off and an opportunity to actually see some real people. Bask in the sun. To touch the grass.

All the mythical shit people say they want to do, but never really do.

"Hey," I said as I entered, glancing at the receptionist.

She was kinda pretty, but really, M.O.T.H. spoiled me. Or maybe Mobius did,

"I'd like a new haircut. Actually, scratch that, I need to change my style, if you catch my drift. You have a slot open?"

The woman glanced up at me, blinked, and smiled welcomingly.

"Hello! Why, yes, I believe we do," She said, her eyes trailing down my costume for a second, before going to my 'nannies', "Do you have something specific in mind?"

Good question. The answer 'please, anything will do, just without the retarded zoomer side-shaves' probably won't work.

Because this world was blessed without that atrocity ever being in fashion. Frfr.

***

"...alright you bastards, but I am not going to read you a speech here," I said, when I was forced to stand up with a mic, at the head of our table.

The people cheered, demanding a speech.

Thing is? Ato is a bastard.

I was expecting our usual rotating company at the table. Maybe, like, ten people from amongst the people I talk with daily.

Instead, the club was bought out. I am relatively sure we had, like, over fifty people in here easily. I can't even fully blame that on Ato. The usual crowd just invited a few other friends from M.O.T.H., that shit escalated, and escalated... at this point, I think it would've been cheaper and easier to have us party back at the base. Pretty sure we had most of the people off-duty in the HQ here.

If it wasn't a breach of all protocols to party at the HQ, that is. Well, whatever, at this point I am over it. It's not me who had to deal with all the requests to leave the base or to organize all of this. Also, our internal security guys who have to organize this and keep the perimeter, probably are on a suicide watch right now... well, those of them who are on duty.

I should probably buy those guys something nice after this. With my salary, I can fucking afford to.

I also hope Ato will be grilled by his wife for letting this escalate so much. Besides, instead of letting me chill, the handsome bastard is forcing me to perform here, doing the 'opening speech', and he should get some sort of karmic payback.

...I just wanted to get wasted, man.

"Right, right, I can hear you, not quite deaf yet," I said, theatrically cleaning my ear with a finger, "Seriously, cut it out."

When the commotion died down a bit, with people stopping chanting 'speech, speech!', I spoke up again, slowly.

All-fucking right. Speech it is.

For a moment, I considered the people who gathered, casting a long glance at the casually dressed personnel.

"What happened in Japan, to you lot, may look like the first time M.O.T.H. managed to punch back." I glanced around, seeing people quite down; whatever cheer managed to accumulate was gone for now, as the atmosphere grew almost somber. "Didn't feel like that to me. Still doesn't."

Suddenly, there was a loud electronic screech, the kind that happens when something is wrong with electronic equipment. I glanced at my hand, gripping the microphone. When had my knuckles gone white? The plastic casing had splintered under my fingers. I gently relaxed it, throwing the ruined piece of electronics to the side.

Slowly, the slow, shimmering annoyance and weariness ignited... into something in my chest. Into anger, yes. The kind that makes you want to move, to fight, to win. I could feel it building in my chest, electric and alive, like lightning looking for ground. My heart was pounding.

The smart thing would've been to shut up and step back. But. I was so tired of trying to do the smart thing.

"But so what?!"

The words burst out of me. I think I was shouting, grinning, both at once. My voice filled the whole room, and seeing people jerk up was exactly what I wanted to see.

"We are the ones who must save the world! There is no one above or below who can handle it for us! What, just because things went to shit, we are supposed to sober up, look all solemn and sorry?! Or maybe we are supposed to celebrate and pat ourselves on the back that this time we could kill some mooks without throwing around city-leveling explosives?! Who are we, retarded kids in a school sports festival, getting candies for consolation prizes?! No, damn it!"

I took a deep breath, but it wasn't to calm down. It was to fuel the fire burning brighter in my chest. My heart was racing, hammering like a war drum, and it felt right.

It was just fucking perfect.

"So, tell you what, I am not here today to drink the sorrow away, or to pretend that I won three weeks ago. I feel like shit, those of you who know me probably noticed. But it's good that I do. It's good that all of you do too. Sorrow is good, anger is good, because both of those mean we aren't cattle who are used to being beaten down like that! I am here today because I want to clear my head, and next time, beat whatever the fuck shows up back out of this timeline!"

I only just realized that I was leaning over the table, both of my hands gripping it, as a wide, wild grin stretched across my face. The wood creaked under my fingers. Someone's drink had tipped over, the liquid pooling cold around my hands, but I didn't care.

Slowly, I straightened my back. My whole body was coiled like a spring, ready to launch.

"All of us here fight our own fight. Each as desperate as the last. Our eggheads?"

My arm swept out, I think, a grand gesture towards Ato and a few other men and women from the science team who sat by his side. Their faces were sharp and clear now, every detail burning bright in my vision.

"Those guys can probably tell you all the esoteric and exotic ways in which we are fucked, and how far out of the water we are. Our operatives?"

Another gesture, wider, almost celebratory, towards the people I had trained with for a while. I could see the fire catching in some of their eyes, too. Not the good fire, not yet. Just anger for now, but that's just fine too!

"They've been there on the ground, they know what we are up against, and they know how miserable and fucking scary that shit is, how impossible it feels to be expected to keep up. Our maintenance staff...?"

I shook my head, but I was still grinning. The whole room seemed brighter somehow, charged with something electric.

"Yeah, considering I've seen around the canteen and the firing range, those guys actually are doomed, no way a human being can keep up with that workload."

There were a few chuckles, but I shook my head. The sound was good, though, life coming back into the room, but it wasn't what I needed.

"But no, it's really hilarious how outmatched we seem to be."

I threw a glance around, and I could see my words spreading like a ripple, devouring the momentary amusement. But underneath that, I could see it, the spark.

"That's fine."

I struck the table, hard.

The impact sent a jolt up my arm, pure satisfaction as the wood split and cracked under my palm, spider-webbing out in a perfect pattern of destruction. People jumped. Glasses rattled and sang. One fell, shattered, and the sound was like punctuation to my point.

"All of that is fine! Because it doesn't fucking matter how hard it's getting, and how much harder it will get, if there is one thing I can promise, if there is one thing I can do, it's that I will end this. I will beat the Honkai, and I will do it even if I have to do it alone!"

I was definitely shouting now, my voice carrying over everything, filling every corner of the room. My vision had sharpened to crystal clarity, taking in all those faces, all those eyes looking back at me. When had I grabbed the table again? Both hands this time, I think, because the cracks were spreading, racing out like battle lines on a map.

"No matter how shitty things have to be, you better believe that I will end up handling it! If the sky starts to fall and the earth crumbles from under our feet one day, I. will. be. there! I will be fighting it! I fucking swear that much!"

I raised my hand back, standing up straight again, and grinning from ear to ear.

"So when it gets hard, and it will fucking get hard, remember what I promised you today, and decide for yourself if you have the strength to keep your head up! When you fight, no matter where or how, you will never be fighting alone!"

The last words came out like a battle cry.

"Remember this; for other people, there is no shame in running! No shame in despairing, no shame in saying 'it's too much'! But you aren't other people! If you guys are the M.O.T.H. then I will be the flame! I will go first, and you, all of you, grit your fucking teeth and follow me!"

I don't know what I expected, pouring my heart out, making promises to myself as much as to the crowd, but somehow I didn't expect the deafening battle cry that followed, as people started to stand up, roaring their throats out.

***

The party that followed started off wild, and that particular train didn't seem to have any stops.

I realized that around the time when Blanca tried to climb the table, and I think, undress, before Ato dragged her down, and shut up her protests with a kiss. Some other girls and men were decisively much more successful.

As for me, I sat at the head of our long table, throwing back my booze slowly and measuredly. If I knew how to do one thing well, it was how to get drunk without getting wasted. Dot luckily fell asleep in my pocket from the snacks I fed him after the speech, bless the little guy's soul. I don't want to see what a drunk polymorph can do.

After giving a speech like that, I can't afford to be miserably drunk like I originally planned, so here I was, nursing my drinks.

It's all Ato's fault.

The party progressed, so we had music turned on and some people went dancing.

Eventually, some folks started getting up and gathering into small groups around the club, talking, dancing, drinking, smoking, spreading to smaller tables, and breaking into smaller groups.

I hung out mostly with our internal security guys, actually wondering what the fuck was going on on that front. Most of my curiosity-fueled questions they refused to answer, saying it's a need-to-know basis, but I still got to hear fun stories from wherever they worked before. Bjorn, in particular, despite his experience as an operative, and now being retired due to having way too much Honkai in him, had some fun stories to tell.

Eventually, however, I had to go take a leak.

It was when I came back that I spotted a familiar person I didn't expect to see. Waiting for me with a glass of champagne.

"...you?!" I actually gaped, seeing a woman in a rather pretty dress, with a familiar tint of red flame-like hair framing her.

It was partially her knockout beauty, especially in that dress, that took me aback, but also the sheer surprise.

She seemed a bit sheepish at my reaction, but she definitely was waiting for me here.

"Hey," She said, giving me a small, awkward wave, "Sorry to ambush you like this."

I paused for a moment, trying to compute how a Japanese outbreak survivor could've ended up here, amongst M.O.T.H. personnel...

I spoke up before I had time to think of anything, just to avoid an awkward silence.

"It's fine, I guess..." I muttered before shaking my head, "More importantly, how the hell did you end up here?"

She clearly knew who I was, too, despite the fact that she'd only seen me in my armour. I wasn't sure if it was the booze or the situation, but the whole scenario felt too surreal.

"That's... not that complicated, honestly," She said, her expression darkening just a bit, "Not really much other places where I can be, if I want to stop things like that with my own hands, are there?"

I, too, snapped my stupid mouth shut, nodding slowly at her. This... made sense in a way. Her Honkai resistance must be insane for her to last for so long in that outbreak zone; from that perspective, she surely was qualified. She also fought there for a while... though that doesn't substitute for military training as far as M.O.T.H. recruiters are concerned. If she is here, and not in the accelerated bootcamp, then...

"You were ex-military?" I asked, honestly surprised.

She chuckled, awkwardly but kindly, scratching the back of her head.

"JDF. I don't look it, do I?"

And she worked as an elementary school teacher too...

"You'd be surprised." Maybe it was the year, but a lot of M.O.T.H. combat operatives were female. Meaning they were quick to bring them up to speed, or they already did serve in the military, active units at that. Sexual equality in the army seemed to somehow work out in this world.

It's kinda cursed, if I think about it...

"Listen, Knightmare..." She trailed off, glancing up at me as if looking for confirmation, before she continued, "I wanted to say thank you. I heard what you said, that it wasn't a win but... You saved me. Itsune survived, too." Her expression darkened for a second, as she gritted her teeth, before she smiled despite that, honest gratitude on her face in spite of the underlying rage, "And it's only because of you. I just wanted to make sure you know."

I blinked, taken aback. I realized what that strange expression was; it was about that girl.

I glanced down too.

I really couldn't put into words how much it meant hearing that. The relief and a sense of gratitude.

"...thanks." I pushed out with greater difficulty than I wanted.

All the promises about doing something about Honkai, about beating it, tasted like shit in my mouth right about now.

"I am surprised you recognized me," I finally said, looking up at her, trying not to show too much on my face, "Or, now that I think about it, that you got assigned to our HQ of all places."

Himeko chuckled humourlessly.

"Well, I was told my scores were just way too promising to keep me in the small base M.O.T.H. has in Japan. As for you, well," She chuckled awkwardly, glancing aside, "I didn't really recognize you, as much as Alka told me... It's my second day at the base, you see. You probably didn't notice me, but I've seen you in the cafeteria yesterday."

...I knew Alka. It was that weirdo girl from South America who spoke way too much. And also had amazing ass.

I am so used to people speaking about me or gawking at me at the base, especially the strangers, that it seems I didn't notice Himeko's presence at all.

Kinda a shame that. Because damn, this woman was hot. Especially with this neckline, I swear her breasts must be held inside that dress by some arcane spell. Where the hell do I even look with this dress?! Am I allowed to look?!

[SPOILER="Himeko"][/SPOILER]

Okay, okay, calm down. At rest, Knightmare Junior, your time is yet to cum... come. fuck.

"Ditto!" A voice rang out from my pocket, as Dot decided to let the world know about him, poking out, rubbing his little eyes.

Himeko recoiled, pointing a hand at it.

"W-what is that?"

I glanced down at Dot, and our eyes met.

A connection formed, a silent understanding passed, and a plan was born.

"You know, a pokémon," I told her, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"A what?!" She was more confused than anything.

"Pocket monster." I nodded to her seriously, my expression downright pitying as I placed my hand on her bare shoulder, and nodding to her sadly, as if I was a doctor telling the patient they will die in three days, "You see, the government doesn't want you to know this, but actually most of the myths are real. Ever heard of youkai? This is a pocket youkai. Hence, a pocket monster. Pokémon."

She looked at me for a few long seconds. I could practically feel her head spinning. A troll living somewhere deep inside my soul was sated today.

"Pocket youkai..." She paused, looking at me, then down at the Dot. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You two are messing with me, aren't you?"

Keep your face straight, keep your face straight...

"Pfff... whatever could make you... think that?" I asked, feeling my face almost physically cracking.

"Di-di-di-di-di..." I looked down at my pocket in betrayal, as Dot broke down first, laughing his nonexistent ass off, as he was clutching his nonexistent stomach.

Himeko pouted, and that expression was a WMD on her face, as she seemed like she really wanted to smack me at least a bit, but wasn't sure if she could...

"Dooooooot~!"

A wild Blanca appeared!

The woman was on me before I could even blink, her alcohol-fueled breath washing over my face like a cloud of mustard gas, making me recoil... unfortunately, there was a wall behind me.

"I'm taking yooooouuuu~!"

"Diiittooo!" My friend begged for help, as I was disoriented, while the inhuman beast of a scientist grabbed him, took him out of my pocket, and started to carry him away, swaying and giggling.

"I am sorry, little one..." I whispered to him, wiping a non-existent tear from my face, as I saw his little hands outstretched towards me dramatically, looking for salvation, "...but such is the work of Karma."

"Diiiitoooo!!!"

I would like to see you try, you little shit.

My shit-eating grin only disappeared when Himeko came a bit closer, glancing in sheer bewilderment towards the scientist who brought Dot to the now panicking Ato.

I think Ato was trying to gesture for me to come there, probably because he was afraid Dot would get agitated, but fuck Ato, he made me do a speech. I waved to him cheerfully, completely ignoring the beginning of the chaos.

And then Dot turned into a second Blanca.

As I saw despair on his face, I now waved him a bye-bye.

"I... what was..." She gestured towards the club's main lobby, then back at me, clearly lost for words.

"Tell you what, we are both too sober for this conversation," I gestured with my thumb towards the bar, "Let's go fix that, and I'll tell what I can tell, outside of the stuff that will get me violated by our internal security." Or Mobius. Not in a fun way either.

Somehow, despite the crudeness of the joke, the refined-looking and absolutely stunning lady giggled.

"That sounds like a plan!"

Come on now, no way I have a chance here. I can't get too optimistic…

***

"...no, no, you don't understand," Himeko said, laughing so hard she had to put her drink down. "The kid literally tried to convince me that his dog ate his homework. Classic excuse, right? Except he brought the dog to school to prove it."

"He brought the dog?" I asked, already knowing this was going somewhere good.

"IN HIS BACKPACK!" She was practically wheezing now. "This massive golden retriever. Just... stuffed in there. The dog's head popped out during math class like some kind of..." She made a popping gesture with her hands, nearly knocking over her glass.

I caught it just in time, which somehow made us both laugh harder.

"Okay, okay," I said, trying to breathe. "But did the dog actually eat the homework?"

"That's the best part!" She leaned in conspiratorially, and I definitely wasn't noticing how her eyes lit up when she told stories. "The dog was chewing on the textbook for classic literature class when he opened the bag. Just nom nom nom, staring innocently right at me!"

I couldn't help it, I exploded in a small fit of laughter, just imagining it.

"So you... what... had to give him credit... for honesty?" I asked, wheezing,

"I gave him detention for bringing a dog to school!" She protested, but she was grinning. "Though I did pet the dog. How could I not? Abe was a good boy."

"That's the dog or the student?" I asked innocently.

She smacked my arm. "You're terrible."

"I've been told," I said, taking another sip. The warmth of the alcohol made everything feel loose and easy. "Though speaking of dogs, I once tried to train my uncle's husky when I was like fifteen." I wanted to make it do a funny salute, not knowing that one Scottish guy would get canceled for teaching his pug to do it. Honestly, all my best ideas always ended up being stolen.

Even drunk, I knew saying that would probably get any female in a twenty-kilometer radius drier than the Sahara desert, though.

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. Thought I'd be the dog whisperer, you know? Watched some YouTube videos, figured how hard could it be?"

She propped her chin on her hand, watching me with this amused expression. "Let me guess, the husky trained you instead?"

"The husky fucking destroyed me," I admitted. "First day, I'm all confident, right? Got treats, got a clicker, got all the gear. This dog took one look at me and decided I was his personal entertainment system." I leaned back, shuddering just remembering it, yet still grinning.

"What did he do?"

"What didn't he do? He'd sit when I said stand, stand when I said sit, and when I tried to teach him 'stay,' he somehow interpreted that as 'steal this idiot's shoes and run around the yard.'"

Himeko nearly spit out her drink. "Your shoes?"

"Every. Single. Time." I shook my head at the memory. "I'd be standing there barefoot in the grass like a moron while this dog pranced around with my sneaker, looking so proud of himself."

"Please tell me you gave up."

"After two weeks," I said, then paused. "And after he figured out how to open doors. Came home to find him in my kitchen, eating a whole loaf of bread. He was supposed to be living in the dog house!"

"He broke into your house?!"

"My mom was SO pissed," I laughed. "She saw my attempts to try and train him, and was sure his new trick had something to do with me. Figured it a prank." Can't even blame her, honestly; she was close, he was supposed to be my prank... just not like this! "Which was probably fair."

She was shaking her head, but her smile was so wide it looked like it might hurt. "Were you always this much of a disaster?"

"Says the woman who just told me she once accidentally locked herself in a supply closet for three hours."

"That was different!" She protested, her face going pink. "The handle was broken!"

"You tried to kick down the door and got your foot stuck." I teased, praying to Jesus Christ almighty that she will NEVER, EVER get her hands on my dossier.

I am confident that our intelligence guys know about that Military Base Door accident, so Mobius PROBABLY knows, but I'll kill myself, no joke, if it ever spreads.

"It was a very small closet!" ...yeah, like Himeko clearly wanted to do now. She was cute, blushing this fiercely.

"You had to be rescued by a ten-year-old with a screwdriver," I repeated what she told me, seeing her grow more indignant and embarrassed.

"Kenji was eleven, thank you very much," She said with as much dignity as she could muster, which wasn't much. "And he promised never to tell anyone."

"He didn't have to; you seem to be doing it just fine yourself."

The grown-ass woman pouted, shaking her head.

"He told the entire school by lunch," She groaned, covering her face with her hands. "They called me Closet-Sensei for a month."

"Closet-Sensei," I repeated, trying not to laugh.

"Don't you dare-"

"Look at the bright side," I said, my face almost unable to contain the shit-eating grin it sprouted, "At least you came out of the closet." And when she almost relaxed... "Closet-sensei."

"...I hate you." She groaned, resting her head on the bar table, looking at the bottle that stood on the table between us, "I am really tempted to try this bottle against your head..."

"You wouldn't waste good whiskey," I called her out, letting my grin drop a bit.

She looked at her glass, then at me, clearly weighing her options. "You're right, this stuff's too expensive." Then she grabbed my glass instead. "This one's cheaper."

"Hey!"

She held it threateningly over my head, and we had this brief standoff where we were both trying not to laugh. She was standing now, arm raised, and I was half out of my chair, and we must have looked absolutely ridiculous.

"Truce?" I offered.

"No more Closet-Sensei?"

"I make no promises."

She tilted the glass just slightly. A drop hit my nose.

"Okay, okay! Truce!"

She set the glass down triumphantly and plopped back onto her barstool, which had somehow migrated closer to mine during all this. Our knees bumped, but neither of us moved away.

"You're ridiculous," She said, but it sounded fond.

"Says the woman who just threatened me with my own drink."

"It was a justified threat." She paused, then added more quietly, "This is nice."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. It's been... a while since I.. had something like that. Like a normal person. Talking about normal, stupid things."

I knew what she meant. Everything had been so heavy lately, so serious. This, just laughing about dumb stories... it felt like breathing again.

"Well," I said, lifting my thankfully not-poured-on-my-head glass, "Here's to normal, stupid things."

She clinked her glass against mine. "And to dogs that eat homework."

"And huskies that steal shoes." I parroted back.

"And broken closets." She agreed, darkly.

"And ladies who can't be contained by no closet." I added wrily.

She glared at me with mock anger.

"I will hit you again."

"Silly you, I am bulletproof."

She did hit me, but she was laughing, and her hand lingered on my arm afterwards. It lingered there until the rest of the evening. This was nice. Really nice.

I already felt like I won a lottery, but, apparently, I was the luckiest bastard alive today.

***

There were enough drinks in me by that point that things were… hazy. Oh, I remembered the important bits, and I drank enough water that I'd be alright tomorrow, but details slipped away.

There was a car, and we were getting out of the club, maybe not in that order, and then…

The door of the hotel room closed.

A deep kiss.

She somehow tasted like strawberry and mint, but both sweeter and deeper. I couldn't feel the taste of alcohol, probably because I was just that drunk too.

I don't know who kissed who first, and I didn't really care.

My hands trailed along the literal divine figure, feeling up the curves, now without any pretenses, and she did very much the same, looking every bit as hungry for the touch and feeling as I was.

It's quite indescribable seeing a woman  that  beautiful looking at you like this  when both of you couldn't tear yourself away from each other. It was more intoxicating than all the booze today, made my head spin.

My fingers slid against her thighs as I gently moved my other hand across her back, feeling the goosebumps and her ever more erratic breathing against my chest.

"You…" She breathed out, breaking the kiss for a moment and biting her lower lip. Her eyes, so deep they were practically molten gold, never looked so alluring before.

From some intrinsic need to fight back, it seems, she placed her hand on my cock through my pants, gently squeezing.

She had no trouble finding it. I've been at full mast for a while now.

That escalation led to another frenzy I can't quite describe.

I was undressing her, at least that's what I told myself, but honestly, it was me fondling and feeling up her body. Himeko was one of the most stunning women I've seen. Her chest was huge, her legs went on for days, and her ass was enough to bury a man under.

What I didn't expect was how lean, yet soft, her body was. How smooth, literally silky, her skin felt under my fingers. How amazing she smelled, spicy, sweet, yet light, and how the small sounds she made, from whimpers to loud, broken breathing, were destroying something in me.

I felt like a man born in a desert seeing a lake for the first time.

She too unbuttoned my shirt, and for some reason was exploring my chest and stomach, trying to get her own fingers a bit lower, seemingly just as thirsty for more of all of this as I was.

This was the part that truly ignited something in me. I knew, of course, that we weren't in love. But tonight we wanted, no, needed each other, and were both burning up.

But for just a moment, a presence of mind won, much to my regret.

"I don't have… a condom on me," I whispered to her, wanting to fucking shoot myself, as I started to move back just a tad…

"I can get an emergency contraceptive in the morning," She whispered back, grabbing me by the back of my head, and bringing me back towards her lips. "Stay."

…alright then.

I started to remove my shirt, which seemed to be a sign for her to start working on the complicated ties behind the top of her dress. I got out of my shirt in a moment, throwing it aside… and seeing it melt into shadows.

…I may be retarded, I realized.

That thought went away as I glanced back, and my breathing hitched.

I've seen my fair share of breasts, practically every retard with internet access did, but I've never quite seen two milky globes so perfect, and with nipples this well-sized. It looked like a sculpture. No, scratch that, it looked like the tits I'd imagined when thinking of 'perfect tits'.

Now that I think about it, Himeko doesn't even look very Japanese… since when do Japs have figures like this?!

Then again, her face does have some Asian features, even if they are soft and only add to her amazing beauty…

"Stop thinking something stupid," She said, leaning in, and blushing, though, to be fair, she was blushing throughout the whole ordeal. A brief kiss, before she looked me in the eyes and grabbed my hands, "You can touch if you want…" She mumbled as she placed my hands on her tits.

That woke me up real good. Or to be more precise, it woke up my lower brain.

I leaned to initiate a new kiss, making us both fall on the bed, as I started gently massaging and fondling her breasts, paying some attention to her nipples, but not enough for her to get used to it. Not enough to be predictable. Mostly, my movements were those of a person massaging, rather than groping.

I don't think I needed to try that hard. All of those sex tricks you pick up with your hookups mean just about nothing when you get into it with the right girl. The girl who really wants you, just as much as you want her, and when you both are fucking not just because it generally feels good, but because you both feel like monkeys in heat who can't tear themselves from one another… that's when nuances and tricks cease to matter.

Emotions are king.

" Kuso…" She whimpered into the kiss, glaring at me, as her hand went down towards my pants and… oh fuck.

One of my hands, in response to this unprovoked assault, went down to where the lower part of her dress still covered her crotch, and I slid my fingers across her panties first, seeing her stiffen even more dramatically than I did, before I moved the fabric aside gently.

From what I can tell by touch, she was already ridiculously wet, and as I started to slowly move my fingers across and around her puffy, lower lips, trying not to play with the clit too much and ruin the fun, she was already moaning into my mouth like few women did during actual sex.

…she really needed this as much as I did.

I don't know how long we were edging each other, but we clearly didn't even need much foreplay. It just felt so great that I didn't want to lean back even for a moment, and somehow I sensed  it was mutual.

But a kiss broke one moment, and our eyes met.

"Let's do it," She whispered, breathlessly and both incredibly hopeful, aroused, needy, but also just a touch scared. Probably from how intense this was, whatever this was.

"Let's," I said, and I'd like to say that I sounded dominating and cool, but I think my voice was just as shaky from the overwhelming need and fascination as hers was.

I leaned back and allowed my pants to disintegrate into dark mist as I saw her reach down towards her dress…

I gently caught her hands.

"Can the dress stay?" I asked. I knew she'd probably feel better if she could feel all the skin contact, but I really wanted to fuck her while she wore this. At least for one round.

Slowly, she nodded, her eyes glued to my cock, sometimes trailing up along my lower body.

"Okay."

I nodded back and reached for my shades…

A soft hand gently grabbed mine this time.

"Can the glasses stay?" I blinked, dumbfounded for a moment.

A moment of pure tension. And then, it felt like this was the funniest thing that had ever happened.

I couldn't help it, I chuckled, breaking into a grin, and I could see her chuckling too, her fist too.

Still, even if this was funny, and the atmosphere a bit ruined, I'll just have to ramp it back up.

"For you, sure," I whispered, as I leaned again towards her.

I was practically hanging over her, between her spread legs, as she looked up at me.

Slowly, passionately, I kissed her. My tongue explored her mouth, and she responded very eagerly.

At the same time, I pulled myself closer, taking my cock in one hand and lining it up a bit.

Her breathing hitched.

"Yasashiku shite~..." She moaned into my mouth, and I had no idea what the fuck she said. I also didn't care to find out, because I don't think I need a translator for this one.

Instead of sliding it into her, I started to slide my cock across her snatch, again and again, teasing her and myself in equal measures. It's a good thing she shaved, or maybe just did one of the magical procedures women do so hair doesn't grow there, because it felt much better this way.

Made the teasing easier.

"Yoooou~!" Himeko obviously realised that much as I smirked against her mouth.

My triumph was short-lived. Alas, I was outwitted, destroyed, and annihilated by a superior player.

At the moment when I was lining up for another wet thrust, she thrusted her hips instead, and at just the right angle.

All pussies are hot, wet, and tight; that's not exactly a fucking discovery of America. No, the physical feeling of being inside her felt amazing, don't get me wrong, but by itself it wouldn't have been all that great. A pussy is a pussy, feeling a difference between them by sensation is a meme.

No, what made it feel so good wasn't just the physical sensation. It was her smell. The hitch of her breath as she had me enter her. The look in her eyes that was hungry, a bit fearful, and so wanting. It was how her body shuddered slightly. It was in remembering how she smiled and laughed just before this, how utterly out of my league she looked an hour ago, how bravely she fought, and having her, all to myself, all vulnerable and just so perfect in my arms, taking me in, as she looked at me with the same hunger I looked at her with… that was the part that made something primal in me howl.

I kissed her even more, now taking a good fistful of her ass with one hand, and having the other grab and play with her left tit properly, as I started thrusting.

It was fucking difficult, because Himeko was moving too. If I didn't know better, I'd think she was trying to slip out of the position entirely, or just try to make it difficult. As it is, I figured she just felt so good she wanted to move somewhere; it was her back that was arching a bit that was messing up my angle and aim.

This made it almost impossible to have a consistent tempo.

I growled into her mouth, but stopped myself mentally.

I felt that this might be for the better. I think I might've cum way too quickly, pent up as I am, if she didn't accidentally make fucking her harder.

Instead of trying to fix her in place and get my own pleasure, I called out to my remaining willpower.

Gently massaging her breast and ass, I slowed down and started to thrust in and out slowly, but thoughtfully, making each movement lengthy and agonizing for her, and aiming each a bit differently, trying to find how she liked it best. When I did, and I could tell by her body tensing up and a truly impressive moan being let out into my mouth, I kept going like this, slowly, trying to add some twist to my movement, while keeping it around her sweet spot. One of my exes liked it like this.

A moment later, I was vindicated by Himeko feeling like a more wound-up guitar string with each thrust. I could feel the muscles in her body tensing, and her body shuddering more and more each time I slowly went into her.

"Motto~" She asked, breaking a kiss for just a moment, and I knew enough moon speak from hentai to know what it meant, "Faster!" She clarified pleadingly, as if I didn't understand.

No, I was already shifting after the first request. I needed both of my hands to really get going here.

"You are amazing," I tell her, as my second hand grabs her butt. "Goodness, you are perfect…"

Then, I start to fuck her in earnest. And she, clearly no blushing virgin herself, very much does her best to respond.

Heated whimpers and whispers are exchanged as I start and pick up the pace, but I barely pay attention to the words. It's how she smells, so sweet, so delicious, so right, at the little sounds she makes with every breath, as she softly bites her own finger, at her eyes that are practically laser-focused on my own behind the oversized shades.

"Cuming!" I warn, gritting my teeth, as I force myself to keep up the pace, and I feel her shuddering under me. Coming undone.

I wasn't too surprised. I could feel her body tensing up throughout all of this. Yet, it felt surreal, a woman like her melting so easily, when the usual amount of foreplay needed was so much more.

Instead, I leaned in, kissing her deeply, as we both, for a brief moment, moaned and groaned in each other's mouths. Her legs wrapped around me, without limiting my movement just yet.

I don't think I've ever cum this hard. For a moment, it felt like I was flashbanged all over again; the sensation of sheer pleasure was so overwhelming, it felt like physical light and sound, and I sensed  Himeko was just as out of it as I was.

Still, somehow, by some miracle, I didn't stop fucking her even as I flood her depths. It wasn't that pleasant after the first five to six thrusts; the cock is always oversensitized after an orgasm, but women orgasm differently. What was kinda unpleasant to me was only adding to the cascading pleasure in her that I sensed as her body, coiled around, was tensing and relaxing.

Afterwards, however, I couldn't force myself to continue ruining this amazing feeling, and simply embraced her tighter, continuing the kiss, but ceasing movement. Though her hands wrapped around me, and her leg-lock pressed me tight.

The kiss that followed was slow, leisurely, tender from both sides.

I felt like I was deep enough inside of her to get stranded and lost forever.

The kiss got broken after a moment, and I felt more drunk than when we started.

"God…," I licked my lips despite myself, "I don't deserve to have you here,"

Something, in whatever I said, seemed to have returned more clarity to her eyes.

Before I really understood it, she started to tilt her center of mass. I allowed it, more confused than anything, we turned, and now, she was on top.

"Wrong," She said, sounding like the throatiest, sexiest teacher I've met just yet.

She also licked her lips.

"Let me show you just how wrong…" Slowly, she started to move. "...you are."

Luckily for her, I was already hard. Partially because I was that backed up, and partially because, as far as I remembered, I never really understood the refractory period thing. I always got ready for action real quick again. Sure, waiting ten seconds is preferable, but it didn't really get soft for a few rounds, and that was with my exes. With this woman?

I wasn't sure I would go soft at all.

That being said, her switching position was for the best. I was really out of breath fucking her like that without my armour on, and while kissing.

Also, god, she looks amazing from this angle. Toned stomach, tits, and her wild, a bit sweaty hair falling down her figure like a red waterfall.

When I saw the happy, cute smile on her face, as she saw something (probably worship) on my face, and started to slowly move her hips, trying to look and move sexy (which only made her cuter, which in turn was sexy), I promised myself I would pay her back a hundredfold tonight.

***

The next morning, shortly after waking up, I had to enjoy the sound of my phone mimicking the actual air raid siren.

Good thing I wasn't hungover enough to turn it off, or disable it somehow. I am sure the security guys would've broken down the door if I did.

The Second Herrscher has appeared.

Author Notes: I want substantial, interesting comments; feed me. I tried really hard with thick chapter, alright, and my sleeping schedule is ruined again!

***

I didn't have much time to say goodbye to Himeko. Dealing with the alarm and a call immediately after, I got myself dressed, picked up the shades from the bedside table, and only had time to promise the beautiful and very perplexed woman to talk about this later.

...wish I could've handled this better. That woman deserves more than seeing me run away in the morning.

In my defense, yesterday fucked me up. I barely got any sleep and was still a bit hungover, add all that to not having the time to get a bite, a morning coffee, or even a shower after a night full of sex, and you can picture how out of it I've been waiting on the rooftop for the Skybolt to pick me up.

Luckily, the flight to HQ gave me enough time to sort myself out a bit.

"Knightmare," One of the familiar guys from our internal security waited for me outside the bathroom, immediately gesturing for me to follow along, "Come, I'll show you to the briefing room."

...at least they did give me the time to take a leak.

"Lead the way Jahm," I nodded to him simply.

I think his name was Jahm. Judging by the fact he didn't object, I was either right about this (I usually was) or he was too professional to correct me.

Now, as we walked at a quick pace across the familiar corridor, which was full of rushing people, I focused again on the two new strings connecting me to the greater thing.

I've pulled on both already, figuring the situation calls for it. Shame I couldn't contact Mobius. I tried calling the woman, unsurprisingly, she either didn't pick up or straight up didn't have her phone on her.

Considering that, unlike me, she was probably playing a part in coordinating the response to the new Eruption in Belarus from the moment it started, it wasn't too surprising.

As we went, I saw some of our combat guys rushing in squads towards the hangar; they were probably being ordered to deploy, or at least relocate closer to the disaster site so M.O.T.H. had more forces to play around with.

"Jahm," I spoke up to the man, once I knew we were close, "I know my way around the base, but I don't have a way to contact Alexanderson or Mobius," Or anyone important from the science team, really. "Pass to one of them, directly, that I have something new that may change their plans. ASAP."

The man glanced at me, pausing his stride, and after a moment of hesitation, nodded.

"Got it. Just go straight and to the right, room E-D 205."

With that, he headed off, and I headed to the briefing room.

Inside, I spotted a couple of familiar faces, but no one I spoke to often. Most were officers, seemingly pretty high-ranked ones at that, and the briefing was already in progress.

The news was far from being reassuring.

My own personal fears were confirmed; there is now a Second Herrscher. Its emergence happened in the middle of nowhere, in Belarus, which, I know, tautology, and absolutely no one was ready. The Honkai emission that the satellite grid detected went from zero to 'holy fucking shit' within a minute; this wasn't a slow escalation like with the Japanese outbreak.

This was just like Germany.

Once it was clear what had happened and that the reading of the powerful Honkai signature on the ground matched the data from Germany just over a year ago, authorization and use of strategic ballistic nuclear missiles went through within ten minutes. The protocol was already in place, apparently, because the main reason why most of Europe currently was so fucked, was precisely because the politicians and generals wasted precious hours fumbling their thumbs and escalating their response too fucking slowly as the situation went to shit. Lessons were learned since then.

The Belarusian village in the middle of nowhere had three different nukes impacting it with a ten-second interval, because someone in Russia REALLY wanted to make sure the Herrscher is gone. Not surprising considering how close their capital is geographically.

Each rocket carried a payload measured in megatons. That's the kind of firepower you use to kill everything in a 100+ kilometers range.

The birthplace of Herrscher was leveled, the honkai energy there dropped, and the guys at HQ were just about ready to celebrate.

Except for a spike of energy that registered in the nearby city of Pinsk after thirty seconds, which matched the output of the presumed new Herrscher. Also, the city went dark in an instant, at the same moment when the Honkai spiked.

A second set of ballistic missiles was launched, but this time, instead of impacting the target, they were redirected.

Into the three closest most populated towns.

Ballistic missiles, redirected, when they already re-entered the atmosphere.

The current hypothesis by our analytical department is that this Herrscher can somehow influence space.

And that's the latest news we were getting. Currently, the higher-ups were discussing what to do next in light of the new Herrscher having the perfect power to counter ballistic nukes, which killed the first.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder.

I blinked, turning around, and seeing a pair of security guys gesturing for me to follow.

***

I was led to our command center.

The place I was familiar with from the last time, except today, it was even busier. I could see the operators constantly talking to whoever was on the line with them, giant holo-screen projecting the map of Belarus and the movements of... whatever the fuck.

Just from the overall chaos, I managed to pick up some things. Hordes of Honkai beasts were pouring out of Pinsk and a single other town where Herrscher, apparently, teleported to.

M.O.T.H. had some agents on the ground, but it seems the majority of the efforts were centered around trying to coordinate local armed forces.

There were quite a few officers and people I didn't recognize being around here. Alexanderson specifically was talking with someone from his post rather loudly; if I managed to glimpse the hologram right, that might have been one of the local presidents I've seen on the news.

Mobius was standing in her small corner, with a few other people from the science team on standby.

She also seemed busy arguing over something on her tablet, but seeing me approach, she snapped to attention.

"Lab Rat, I've been told you have something important for me," She said, and despite her best efforts, through the usual brisk and cold front, I could hear that she was, to put it mildly, a bit on edge.

"It seems it's as you suspected about my powers. Got two more strings," I explained to her, short and to the point. Clearly, there wasn't much time to beat around the bush. "One gives me knowledge of how to move correctly, even with my augmented physical abilities. As if I had practiced doing just about everything for years. Dodging, running, fighting, you name it, I can do it well," And make it look good. Just like with animal handling, it wasn't literal knowledge, more like habits and skills engraved so deeply that it turned instinctual. Except it wasn't about just combat effectiveness; it also made me look good. Like, not just trained in fighting now, but trained in fighting with style . "The other ability is more important. My body is now capable of producing antibodies that counteract any disease or illness. Anything a human body can respond to and counter, mine can too."

The feeling I got from that string was weird when I was trying to feel it up on my flight here. I could tell it would make me resistant or immune to anything that can plague normal people. Sort of 'your body would change as if it were always amongst those few who had immunity', and augmented even further. My body would produce antibodies to any threat instantly, as if I were already immune to the infection, and my body was familiar with it.

I saw Mobius' eyes widen.

"You are implying it includes Honkai?"

I nodded sharply.

"I am sure it does," I told her simply, feeling myself tensing up.

I could see Mobius tensing up, her eyes growing distant as she was clearly thinking. She glanced back, towards Ato, who was clearly listening in to the discussion.

Behind him, I could see Blanca with Dot in her pocket. The woman was busy on her computer, but I elected to ignore them for now.

"Ato, go and prepare the prototype. I need to talk with Alexanderson. Instruct Knightmare, afterwards, on the usage of the prototype weaponry. I'll send you a list of samples I will need from him, and you will take them."

The man seemed taken aback for a moment, his brows furrowing.

"Doctor, I think the testing can wait until..."

"His armour isn't good enough to completely reflect Honkai Radiation anywhere near a Herrscher. A large percentage will leak through," Mobius said coldly, not even letting him finish, "If we are to deploy him, and that's likely what we will end up doing, we need to know precisely how long he will last."

So, they are going to be testing my resistance while I was en-route to the deployment site? Yeah, that's... probably the only choice we have here.

Ato too quieted down; he didn't seem happy, but he nodded sharply, glancing at me.

"Let's go," I agreed.

***

The proto-adamantium/vibranium external armour, dubbed simply as MK.0, wasn't, strictly speaking, a mech.

It was, however, a set of power armour. Very bulky power armour that would roughly double my profile.

As Ato strapped me in and walked me through its functions, it felt nothing like what I'd imagined from Iron Man suits or anything remotely sleek. The closest association I could come up with was those clunky Jobber Mechs™ from Avatar, which is really all that needed to be said about the design.

The thing repeated my movements with a slight but noticeable delay. No additional controls, just mimicry of my limbs. I did a few combat-dodges, and it felt slow. Painfully slow.

I knew it was an illusion; in my shadow-armour, I was still supernaturally quick even with this extra weight. But I knew just how much quicker and more agile I could be on my own two feet.

It felt fucking terrible to use, which I immediately made clear to Ato.

"...most of the electronics on board are custom-made, and even the backups have backups," he explained awkwardly. "We couldn't use any semiconductors, so the chipsets are extremely limited. Most of the design relies on mechanical engineering rather than electronics, that is why it must feel so sluggish to you." He said apologetically.

Right. I'd been the one who transformed all the pieces of the outer armour layer and some internal components into adamantium just a week ago. This thing was never meant to be field-ready. I've been told I will be involved in testing starting next week.

Fuck, we were really desperate to pull this out from the labs, weren't we?

"But Mobius wants me deployed in this?" I asked just to clarify, awkwardly gesturing with my now-giant metallic arm. "You do realize I'll be a sitting duck."

Ato nodded slowly.

"I understand your concern, but the impenetrable armour should more than compensate for the loss in mobility. The adamantium-augmented servos should also boost your physical strength." He gestured at the suit. "By our calculations, this armour, combined with shock-absorbing gel filling and your augmented physiology, with your shadow armour active, will allow you to withstand a direct hit from any weapon mankind has ever produced."

...which explained why they wanted me to pilot this walking coffin into a death zone. As long as it didn't catastrophically fail, it would make me exponentially more useful. I mean, they could nuke me directly with the Herrscher, and I'd still be alive.

Not that they'd ever do that, of course.

"Battery life is still fifteen minutes?" I asked, locking the power armour in place with a specific gesture of my fingers, before starting to unstrap myself.

"We've extended it to seventeen minutes of active combat," Ato confirmed. "The batteries are duplicated and shock-resistant, as are all the electronics. Nothing should malfunction on site, but..." He shook his head. "To be frank, this is exactly the kind of experimental prototype that should never see live deployment without extensive testing."

"Beggars can't be choosers," I corrected him with a sigh, "It's fine, even with my shadow armour, I doubt I'd be able to take on a Herrscher by my lonesome, if they will decide to deploy me, this is the best bet."

Even as I said that, I couldn't exactly stop my hands from shaking slightly.

This didn't feel right. The information we had on the first Herrscher was extremely limited, no visual records survived, only eye-witness descriptions, and those, for understandable reasons, were sparse to say the least. Mostly because pretty much all eye-witnesses didn't live long, Honkai sickness and all.

The first Herrscher was able to create things out of nothing. Mostly weapons. He was throwing around nukes like there is no tomorrow. Or the artillery that kept firing without anyone to pilot the machines.

The second Herrscher seemed to have another ability, but on the same level of bullshit. In just my shadow armour, with sword and shield, I don't think I'll be able to do anything. Even with my new and improved combat style.

In this power armour, there was a chance.

Ato already took the samples, and let me just say, the list of tissues Mobius needed was extensive. Because my new 'superpower' provided my body with the ability to produce antibodies, Ato had me irradiated with a small but noticeable dosage of Honkai and took the blood, urine, saliva, and even bone marrow samples.

He also had to do it fast; luckily, there were plenty of assistants and science personnel in the lab who helped to carry out the procedures.

Let's just say it fucking hurt, and that my dignity suffered tremendously. At least I could have a sweet combat stim after the fact, and didn't feel like a dead man walking anymore.

Contrary to that, I've never felt more awake and clear-minded.

"There is another thing," Ato said, taking a small briefcase, opening it up, and presenting it to me. "Here, take a look."

It was a revolver. Not like any revolver I've ever seen, but still. It seems to have a few spare cylinders of ammo. I took one and spun it in place. I recognized the noses of the bullets; it was adamantium coating that I transformed for them months ago, which was also sharpened. The design looked like no bullets I've ever seen.

"I thought the project was canceled?" I commented, placing the cylinder back, and instead of taking the revolver, I gently checked it over in the case at first. It too was assembled from mostly adamantium parts. The barrel was for sure. "And here I was wondering why my recent schedule involved going to firing ranges."

"Your previous complaint about lacking a ranged option was noted," Ato replied seriously, "Each of the bullets is rocket-propelled to give it substantially more kinetic force. It was a real challenge to produce, but with the technology available and keeping the size constraints in mind, this was the best armour-penetrating option we came up with on a schedule," He explained.

I glanced at the weapon in disbelief. This was a fucking Bolter, wasn't it? Is every future timeline with an existential threat of interdimensional energy one step away from being 40k?

I shook my head and, following the new engraved instincts, spun the revolver around and between my fingers before promptly stopping and taking aim at the nearest wall. I just knew that I could reload it while spinning too, and that I would hit a bullseye while hip-firing. Or aiming.

This new skill that was engraved in me now truly was something else.

...call me Revolver Knightmare now.

"I like it," I said honestly, grinning, as I conjured a holster around my hip and a small bag for the spare cylinders, but weighing the three of them, I glanced at Ato, unimpressed, "But what's with the ammo count? I have eighteen shots in total?"

Ato smiled apologetically.

"Each bullet takes a ridiculous amount of time to produce, and costs around as much as a sports car."

I fought down the urge to whistle at that.

"...and again, this is a prototype you were meant to test in the following week, to see if you can integrate it properly into your combat style. We just didn't make more yet. Our budget isn't quite unlimited," He sounded fucking livid about that, "So think about it as a backup option rather than the main weapon. Besides, you are most likely not going to use it today." Fair enough, shooting this out of the power armour is a bit unrealistic, considering I was supposed to be entombed in it, and the thing's fingers were just too big.

...wait, isn't MK.0 a bootleg Dreadnaught armour?

What the fuck is wrong with this world, again?

Becoming a walking coffin before I am even thirty wasn't in my isekai bingo card.

Having to fight a Herrscher-level opponent, however, is. Depending on how today goes, and if I survive, I'll cross that out.

"Hey, Knightmare, I just wanted to ask..." I glanced back at Ato, who had just finished directing technies around the now immobile armor. He gestured for me to follow him aside. I did, when we were far away, he spoke up again. "...I wanted to ask, and I know it might be a stupid question, but... are you feeling alright?"

For a moment, I was taken aback.

Am I alright? I mean, it seems I'll have to deploy to fight a civilization-murdering monstrosity with an untested gear, not even knowing if I can survive the Honkai irradiation I will receive, and that's without mentioning if I will survive the possible Nuclear explosion, and...

I took a deep breath, as I allowed myself to crack my shoulders a bit.

"Not exactly," I said honestly, before glancing at him, "But that's mostly because I am still catching up for what is happening, I think." I flashed the man a thumbs up, unwilling to admit to the pit in my stomach, "Don't worry, I'll get fired up properly before the fight. Right now, while we wait, it's... the worst part."

Ato, who was looking at me attentively, and I think with some honest concern, nodded hesitantly.

Honestly, I just didn't know what to say. I am full of shit after all. This whole situation made me sick and quite a bit terrified. I didn't know who I would be fighting, how I would be fighting, or even when I will be doing the fighting. All I know is that M.O.T.H. can't afford not to use me now.

It was the uncertainty that was pressing down on me, the inability to even mentally prepare myself for anything.

But also, on top of all of that, there was the Herrscher. There weren't many enemies who could swat me away like a fly. Thinking that an enemy that wipes out cities might be my opponent... this was only adding to all that.

Because how the fuck does a man fight a hurricane, or a tsunami?

"There are two things," I finally said, pressing my lips tight for a moment, "Two things it all ultimately boils down to. The first is that no matter what, running away or refusing to fight when people count on me will always be scarier," I admitted quietly, before looking at Ato and smiling at him. "The other is that I trust you, I trust Mobius, I trust Alexanderson, and I trust the rest of you guys. It's up to all of you to find where, when, and how I fight. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you'll hash out the details much better than I can." At that thought, a grin appeared on my face almost on its own, "My job is simple when I think about it, just fight and win. That much you can trust me to do."

"'That so?"

I stiffened before glancing around to see Hulk Alexanderson in all his bench-pressing glory, standing there with a few assistants, with Mobius too.

The man looked exhausted, and his gaze was pretty grim.

"I've been told you acquired impressive Honkai resistance..."

"Allegedly," Mobius interrupted, glaring at the man.

"Allegedly acquired an impressive Honkai resistance," Hulk didn't argue, "That means we can deploy you against a Herrscher, and with that..." He pointed towards the armour, "You might just tie it down."

I thought I'd be surprised. Maybe horrified. But somehow, just knowing who I would be fighting was such a relief.

"Tie it down? Please, chief," I grinned, striking a fist into my palm. "Just get me there and I'll kill the bastard."

No one seemed too reassured, but I could tell some tension had disappeared from them at least. Aside from Mobius, that is.

"I will test your tissues for this new resistance, Lab Rat," She told me plainly, "You will only be authorized to engage the Herrscher if I can confirm the effectiveness of your augmented immune system. Otherwise, you will be on clean-up and containment duties, like most agents."

I glanced at her, then at Alexanderson, who didn't seem to argue what she was saying.

I didn't want to say it out loud, but... suicide missions weren't exactly rare in our line of duty, were they? During the German eruption, countless soldiers were sent pretty much to their deaths just to delay the enemy or to get some intel, and while M.O.T.H. wasn't exactly involved with that clusterfuck, considering the situation, well...

I sort of was expecting them to volunteer me no matter what.

"Mobius, can you really afford to do that?" Ato asked, sounding more bewildered than protesting. But it seems he decided to ask what I pussied out of voicing, "We need you to monitor the situation as it develops in mission control, you can't hole up in the labs!"

...ah, he was talking about something else altogether.

"I am not the only person with a triple-digit IQ in this building," She said coldly, "But I am the only one qualified to confirm and test the limits of Knightmares' so-called antibodies without having him in the lab. We need to know if the resistance he spoke off is real, and if it's real, how long will it allow him to last near a Herrscher. Without those estimates, deploying him is the same as killing him ourselves, and he is too valuable for humanity to throw away. Especially because my theories about the possible emergence of new Herrschers are confirmed." She looked me in the eyes, "We can't afford to burn all we have just to win quicker. Not as things are now."

Hulk simply nodded to her assessment, and Ato, after a brief moment when it looked like he wanted to argue, answered quietly.

"I see."

Mobius measured him with a long look before glancing at me, just for a brief moment, our eyes met. Then, turning around, she left, heading towards the labs, I assume.

...why did she even bother coming here to begin with? Aren't we, including her, short on time?

"Knightmare, normally, I wouldn't have time to personally speak with an operative before deployment, especially in a crisis," The man spoke plainly, "But frankly, the thing I am about to ask is outrageous enough that just giving the order wouldn't be right."

He gestured, and a holographic screen appeared behind his back. It was the map of Belarus, with a number of small towns and cities outlined in red.

"Those are the places where the Herrscher struck so far. The pattern is different from Germany; this one teleports into a city or a town with a sizable enough population, and stays there long enough for the Honkai beasts it summons to entrench and spread. Afterwards, it moves on to the next settlement that fits its criteria." The man looked me in the eyes, "Five different nuclear strikes were conducted on the Second Herrscher, each using multiple ballistic missiles. As long as the Herrscher was still present in a location, the strike was always unsuccessful; the payloads were simply... displaced away to the other nearby civilian target or the contingents of ground troops that the Belarusian armed forces tried to muster. Multiple different methods were attempted, striking from different angles, utilizing decoys, if you thought of it, we tried it."

...fuck me, they didn't just stop at two tries?

Then again, I suppose this is the ultimate weapon technology mankind has produced so far. Any other response will likely have even less of a chance of working.

"Whatever limitations it has on the number of objects it can displace, if there are any at all, we didn't manage to approach them with brute force."

The man looked me in the eyes as he folded his arms on his chest.

"We can't engage the Herrscher on the ground; by the time the local military contingent starts to respond to its presence and assemble on location, it's already gone, and they have to deal with infected and dying civilizans and hordes of Honkai beasts. Moreover, normal people without outstanding Honkai resistance are dead within half an hour if Herrscher appears anywhere near them. We also need time to rotate our own agents, that is M.O.T.H., to the combat zone in sufficient numbers. We don't have that many combat-ready personnel in Europe, and the number of planes we have is limited." He paused for a moment. "That's why we need you."

The man paused for a moment.

"Our analysts hatched a plan. Herrscher must have limits on its capabilities. Even the previous one had them. Which leads us to believe that if it's sufficiently distracted, it may not be able to deflect the nuclear strike. We need you to confront the Herrscher and engage on the ground, distract it long enough for the alpha strike to hit, or if that fails, the armed forces to arrive and assist you in combat."

"What are the Herrscher's abilities exactly?" I asked directly, massaging my neck as I considered the situation, "If it can just teleport me to space to suffocate, I am not sure how much I can do."

"The Second Herrscher demonstrated the ability to distort and control space to an extent," One of the officers by Hulk's side spoke up, I don't think I know this man. "From the short battles it engaged in, we know it is capable of creating spatial distortions and portals to attack and defend itself. If the remains of the first Herrscher taught us anything, it's that its body is also durable and can't be damaged by any hand-held weaponry. Its reaction speed and ability to multitask also seem to be inhuman, as is its sensory range, as it can detect ballistic missiles on descent and redirect them." Which was telling, considering that the re-entry of a ballistic missile is usually what, Mach 15?

That begs the question, however...

"If it can control space on demand, and either can multitask to this extent or have such a sensory range... in what universe am I expected to slow it down?" I ask simply, glancing across the three.

The second unfamiliar man spoke up at that.

"According to our data, any serious distortion of space requires time and effort from the Herrscher. Fractions of seconds, we aren't certain about a precise number," He said, adjusting his glasses. "What we do know is that the sheer area it can influence is also limited. What we know of the Herrscher's ability so far is mostly from a single brigade of Belarusian armed forces that managed to reach and engage it." He paused for a moment, his expression darkening, "They were wiped out, but not instantly. From what we can tell, the Herrscher's ability to shape space has limits that leave it vulnerable."

Hulk nodded at that.

"And from what we know about your own reaction speed and your danger sense, you are the only one who can match that monster." The man said.

...I see. In other words, it's the good old 'you don't have to be faster than a bullet, just be faster than whoever is shooting' thing.

"While I have a feeling it's not as easy as any of you describe," I said simply, before grinning, "As long as you are halfway right about this, I can win. Let's do it."

Hulk's expression darkened for a moment, but he nodded.

"You are a good man. Hopefully the suit will hold up," He glanced at Ato, who chuckled awkwardly.

"From what we can tell, the proto-adamantium will probably be useless against the ability to tear apart space," He explained awkwardly. "That being said, the armour should let you shrug off the nuclear explosion. The normal radiation and thermal energy aren't an issue, and the kinetic one should mostly be suppressed by vibranium and the shock-absorbing gel, combined with your own inhuman constitution." Ato blinked, scratching his head as he realized what he said. "No offense."

"None taken," I wave it off.

The scientist walked to the side and tapped the sizable sword to the side,

"As for the weaponry, unfortunately, we don't have any firearms prepared that could realistically help against the expected durability of the Herrscher. Energy weapons are better, but they will deplete your batteries in an instant. You will have to face it in melee."

...so, I am going with a sword, against a teleporting, space-controlling opponent, in a clunky suit of power armour that explicitly impedes my mobility, and with that armour being mostly useful against the friendly fire of my allies who are going to try and drown both me and my enemy, in the nuclear fire?

"Yeah, well, can I get at least some gun to try and harass it?" I asked, deadpanning at the man, "Because don't get me wrong, but shortening the distance is kind of the main issue here."

Ato shook his head regretfully.

"We have an auto-canon that you can probably carry around, but it will weigh you down, and the kinetic energy of the shots simply won't be enough to damage a Herrscher. Even if it won't defend itself."

I opened my mouth.

"Turning bullets into proto-adamantium won't give them more kinetic energy, Knightmare."

I grumbled, but closed my mouth, nodding.

"Alright, lad," Alexanderson spoke up again, "The VT-49 is yours. Get your equipment and prepare for departure. You'll get briefings and tactical updates on your way there, hopefully, by then, Doctor Mobius will be able to tell us if you can handle the mission."

I pause just for a moment, as morbid curiosity takes the better of me.

"Big Boss, if you don't mind me asking," I pause for a moment, "What is plan B in case I can't handle that Honkai emission level?" Or if I fail and die.

He pauses for a moment.

"Full-scale army assault whenever it reaches Minsk or, failing that, Kiev or Moscow."

In other words, millions will die if that happens.

No pressure.

Nodding slowly, I look towards the VT-49.

"Please get me something to eat and drink on my way there." I said, glancing back at them, "I barely had time to go to the toilet this morning, I need something or I'll crash once the stimms wear off."

That took them aback. However, at least I was able to get some breakfast for the flight.

Author's Note: Here is the chapter. I'd like to hear what you think. Some of you people did have your questions answered.

I also have news. From now on, one advanced chapter for this fic, too, will be posted on   Patreon .

If I ever decide to stop writing this fic or take a pause, I will inform readers in advance. Expect a chapter per week/two weeks. Consider Patreon a guarantee of that.