Taylor
I idly flexed a hand, and the spider in my palm shifted, hair falling off as its chitin turned a brilliant white, underlain by purple and green and blue, all fading to a soft blue as the creature lost its eyes. My power was strengthening the little guy, making her stronger, faster, tougher, and making her silk act far, far less like silk, and more like sticky wire netting. It was tightly bundled and wound when spun, but I knew that if someone touched it, it would spread across a much larger area and restrain them.
This was the second attempt I'd made with the spiders, and the remnants of the first lay a good distance away, Himeko had… not been pleased with, as she put it, a Honkai beast spider. Especially after it had spat what I strongly suspected to be literal lava from its fangs. She'd killed it, of course, but it had melted a sizable hole through the side of the
Ocean Queen. The small trawler that was… rather far from being a queen of anything, in my opinion. My mind felt oddly scattered, trying to focus my power wasn't going well. In my first attempt the spider had decayed, before a much larger, angrier counterpart to it burrowed out of a pink lined dark portal. Himeko explained that it would decay away into the air once killed, radiating outwards, but not very quickly, and especially not with me radiating Honkai radiation in the nearby area.
So far, this second spider was my second attempt with Honkai creature manipulation. We tried with half measures, but they'd not worked really… At all, the radiation consuming the little bugs uncorrupted parts as soon as they were clear of my influence. The all or nothing presented a problem, one that Himeko evidenced as her hand clenched firmly around a dagger she'd already stabbed the larger spider through the skull with. This was my second attempt at a full conversion, but Honkai beasts were… uniquely, poorly suited for applying to small creatures like bugs. It seemed like I got two variants of bugs, the normal ones that I could control with a semblance of an ideal, using their natural instincts for protection, and fully lethal defenders that wanted to roam, slaughter, and bring down buildings, the latter also all came out of portals.
Seriously… the big spider had resisted my control as soon as it could, and Himeko said something about it being considered roughly on par with an A Rank Valkyrie in strength had it gotten loose.
Controlling them was much, much harder too!
With my normal bugs, it was as simple as breathing, but I had to maintain attention on the Honkai beasts, especially when they were snapping at the leash I held.
It was mid afternoon when Himeko made me stop, around 5 hours since we'd landed here. She passed me a bottle of water, and as I drank, she began to speak.
"I think we can safely rule out that you're a frontline Herrscher. You're certainly tougher and stronger than most humans, but not so much that you're immune to… say, even anti tank weapons, which is… unusual."
"What do you mean?"
My voice wavered a bit, I'd only realized after sitting down how utterly mentally exhausted I was from the attempt to create that Honkai creature, and that water had vanished as quickly as it felt that Himeko had given it to me.
"I mean, it's rather unusual for Herrschers to genuinely struggle to deflect anything beyond roughly high caliber artillery deployed en masse. Especially for such complexity of marks. You mentioned your senses expanded, right? Have you experimented with that at all?"
I shook my head, before something she'd said earlier clicked.
"You mentioned that you thought I had already awoken, what if… I haven't awoken yet?"
Himeko frowned.
"Then… we would need to be very, very cautious. Awakening as a Herrscher is… a process like a trigger event, influenced from without and within, by the will of the Honkai in my world, as well as extenuating circumstances. Though I must admit, it would explain your lack of resilience to larger scale destruction. Perhaps we should train you as a Valkyrie, then…"
She trailed off, and the creature in my hands finished infusing with Honkai radiation. I'd tried something a little different this time. With more of the radiation poured into the creature as I'd gone for thinking purely of a defender.
The spider was not much larger than a tarantula, and it had 6 legs, instead of the normal 8, I could feel it's intelligence, but only vaguely, and I could feel the commands it wanted to emulate, the natural desires to hunt and breed mixing with the desires I'd had when I created it, to defend, to protect. Me specifically first, but then others that were important. Chief among them was Himeko and my Father.
The spider's front legs and its pedipalps had been fused into a pair of large, clublike appendages, each one capable of projecting? Something? I wasn't sure, and spoke to Himeko, still lost in thought.
"I… think this one worked out well?"
Himeko looked up at me from a thick journal she kept on hand at all times. She snapped it shut and came over to inspect, carefully looking at the small creature, she held out a hand, and with a thought, the spider leapt onto it.
It lacked eyes, but it's other senses… more than made up for it. It had, at least when I was looking through it, a sort of… echolocating soundwave that constantly pulsed from a small organ in the abdomen of the creature. The pulses were fast, and the creature's enlarged brain was the only real way that it could see through this sudden onset of noise. Although depriving it of its sight had bizarrely helped in that task.
"No eyes… no ears or visible sensations… is this pulsing thing letting it see?"
Himeko had flipped it over, exposing the pulsing organ and tapping her finger against it. Each tap felt… strange, with looking through the senses of the creature, the foreign yet familiar sound blaring into the creature's senses and, as far as I could tell, knocking it somewhat silly. But that wasn't important, and I could multitask. I nodded to Himeko, and she flipped it back over, before continuing to ask questions.
"Other unique additions? Or just strong and fast like all Honkai are?"
I nodded, pointing to the frontal, heavy plated pieces of the creature itself. Then I spoke to head Himeko off.
"Can pulse, concussive force, useful to knock an enemy out. I messed with its webbing, I think, it can spin it faster and… draw it from somewhere else, not sure where. But… yes."
Himeko nodded, pointing to another piece of the
Ocean Queen, a chunk of the hull.
"Lets try the pulse on that, ok? No issues with control?"
I shook my head.
"I've overpowered it, if I don't feed it my radiation it will just wither and die, it doesn't generate any radiation I can feel, seems to just draw it from me in thin waves. Those crystals on its back, they're… a charge, effectively."
Himeko raised an eyebrow.
"Impressive, would never have thought of making mechanical analogues more than living beings, maybe that's the difference?"
She nodded for me to begin the test, and I mentally snapped the spiders leash.
It scuttled forwards on Himeko's shoulder, raised its feelers, and clapped the heavy plate-like limbs it used together, harshly.
It made no sound… which was the oddest part, but the wave of destructive force carved a neat line into the ground and dented the
Ocean Queen's hull, cracking it slightly along fault points in the fiberglass.
"Is it too strong?"
I'd winced after looking at the damage, and Himeko seemed to concur, nodding slightly, before she turned back to me.
"We'd better destroy it then, right?"
I couldn't keep my voice clear of the dejection, I knew I could change and mess with this creature more, I knew I could keep it working, I just needed some mechanical parts, and some other pieces from some flies or something. But I
knew I was close. I just needed to study it a bit more.
"You have full control, right?"
I nodded once more. Himeko smiled at me and then patted my shoulder.
"Is your home in range of you right now?"
I nodded, it was just barely on the outside of my range… but it was there.
"Send this little beastie home, and keep him on orders to run and hide from people and die if he can't run or hide, then keep him and keep messing with him."
I nodded, unable to help the slight smile that grew on my face as Himeko let her own smile shine. She really smiled a lot, and it made me feel warm, feel seen.
"Oh, and… I'm proud of you for wanting to keep experimenting, and for knowing your own abilities. A Lot of Valkyries and, I suspect, your parahumans didn't and don't know their strengths, let alone weaknesses, so the fact you're so committed to learning them is a big step."
She allowed a brief, dark cloud to cross her face.
"It will also help keep you alive."
Himeko smiled, and the darkness broke, and I felt my face light up in a pleased flush as I sent the beastie home, telling it to stick to the sewers and hide and run from people. It… obeyed completely, and was home before I really could process just how fast it had moved. But… fairly fast. Fast enough to be comparable to humans, which was a startlingly large surprise.
Spiders couldn't… usually run that fast, and it made me worry slightly… a worry I expressed to Himeko herself.
"Um… it's faster than most spiders, and… people too."
Himeko nodded, nothing I did seemed to really catch her off guard in the wake of the last announcement, literally nothing, in some cases.
"Mhm, Honkai creatures are fast, really fast, some can be slow, but slow for them is still rather rapid, so… what does that mean if you have to put some of your summons and creations down?"
I flinched slightly as she reached out and ruffled a bit of my hair. I wasn't… very ok with physical touch yet, and Himeko took her hand away fast, before choosing to ignore that it had happened for the moment, but… knowing her? She'd be talking about it later with me.
"So, what else, we've established you can modify and mess with bugs, your senses are grossly expanded. Did you have a list of just what you can see yet?"
I flinched slightly, not quite used to casualness from my… mentor? Surrogate mother figure? Aunt? I had no idea what to call Himeko.
"I have better, everything… than humans at least. I can see farther and clearer, smoke doesn't seem to remotely incapacitate me. I can detect people at distances that go far beyond any normal sense… and I can see parahumans… or at least Valkyries."
Himeko noted that down, before asking a question.
"Are you sure about parahumans?"
I shrugged.
"No. I can detect the difference between you and a human, because you're running
hot, Himeko. Much hotter than normal humans and I'm actually surprised you haven't noticed it yet."
She smiled at me and answered evenly, but… was that slight hesitance in her voice?
"My stigmata, actually, they're making my body run hotter because part of the way the artificial ones work is by strengthening how fast just about all of my body's processes go. Including the rate at which my neurons and nerves can understand and uptake signals. My hormones are boosted, and my natural regeneration is pretty much through the roof. But… that's where the issues begin."
I nodded, Himeko had mentioned that even if she had artificial stigmata on hand, she'd not give them out to anyone, for any reason, no matter what. She'd said there was too much at risk and at stake at the time, but that it also wasn't the time. Now… Himeko sat down on a chunk of buried fiberglass and tugged her cloak around herself, suddenly shivering.
"The implantation of Artificial Stigmata shortens one's lifespan dramatically. To such an extent that my body, if not being sent into combat zones, had an expected life of around 25 years, counting the time I'd lived. I was 29 when I arrived here, and I honestly had expected to die from the Stigmata burning out… but now I feel… fine, to be frank."
She paused and smiled at me again.
"I can only assume that you played some role in that, although I apologize for making you a Herrscher candidate."
She seemed unwilling to say more, and I didn't want to push her, instead turning back to the boat, she spoke once more.
"So, Taylor, let's see about getting those eyes to vanish, yeah?"
I smiled, and Himeko threw a battery of actual physical exercise at me. I'd not been running since the locker, and because of that, and the decay and healing I'd had to go through as a result of the locker, well, and the fact Panacea's healing had cannibalized a good chunk of who I was to heal me. I had work to do.
I was wrong. So very wrong.
Himeko wasn't a mother figure, she was a demon, a superbly, unfairly pretty devil from the pits of hell sent to torment me.
I tilted forwards and my face headed for the sand, only for Himeko to step in, snag me with her arms and catch me.
It was unfair how good she was at reading my exhaustion.
"Well done. We've got a solid baseline on how strong you started, and… you are, superior vastly to most humans. Especially with stamina and endurance."
I looked up at her, the praise making me blush again, and she nodded.
"Congratulations on running a double marathon in 3 hours, you'll only be going up from here~!"
I stopped moving, trying to be sure of what she said, before giving up and flopping into the sand at her feet. I wasn't angry, just… everything felt like it was on fire.
Really the most unfair part was that Himeko refused to have the grace to look even remotely tired or tuckered out, and no traces of makeup that she had to be wearing, because I refused to believe she looked *that* good naturally. Seemed to have been disturbed during the exercise.
The double marathon hadn't even been the only thing she'd made me do, pushups and situps, ab workouts until I'd felt like my body was going to die, lifting chunks of metal that threatened to break every part of me down.
Now? I was exhausted and felt like I was overheating, and I was dreading when my body cooled enough that the January air would wreak its actual havoc across my body in the form of arctic winds from the bay.
That… would honestly be the worst.
"Ok! So, with that done, you're faster and far more enduring than humans, you're a low level superhuman by my standards, but to a fairly high degree~! Ready to play with sharp objects?"
I looked at her in horror, and Himeko dumped a kitchen knife blocks contents out on the ground.
"Are you going to be trying to cut me with those?"
Himeko shrugged, before replying.
"When you say it like that, it makes it sound like I'm trying to kill you."
I laughed, and she chuckled alongside me, before returning to a slightly serious gaze.
"Still, better this than out in the field, huh?"
"What do you mean?"
Himeko frowned, poked me on the nose, and then began.
"You need to know how strong you are, so you know when you need to play the dodging game. Normally, we'd have a high tech testing range for this sort of thing, but we don't… so knives are going to be a fairly good bet!"
I glared at her, looking towards the bay.
"Doesn't the PRT have power testing rooms for this exact purpose?"
Himeko looked like a cat caught with the canary, before she started to speak.
"Hm. Well, yes, but I'm rather wary of the PRT at this moment. I'll need a few more bits and pieces of testimony and evidence from a friend before I make any judgements. But for now, we'll avoid them, ok?"
I nodded and held my arm out.
As we found out, it took most of Himeko's strength to even slightly damage my skin, at least, her strength without her armor on, because, in her words. She didn't feel like "boiling half of the ship enough that any idiot with a bright idea will figure out there's a new hero in town who has fire powers."
I… couldn't really blame her at all, given that as the reason. Nobody liked flashy or big capes doing… well, anything. Although with her earlier display I was startled no one had found her yet.
But it was what Himeko was now looking at that was… something weird.
"Say, Taylor, how do you feel about wandering around in the ship graveyard looking for something?"
I couldn't help myself.
"You've made me run all over it, what could we have possibly missed!?"
Himeko grinned, before she pulled her sword from behind her back, the blade was fragmented, ending only ⅓ of the way up from the hilt, but as she pulled it free, she muttered, in the most stereotypical, over the top pirate voice I could imagine, accented
heavily by her native Japanese accent.
"TREASURE, ME MATEY, TREASURE!"
Her bellow was loud enough that I clapped my hands over my ears as a momentary flash of anxiety flooded over Himeko herself. But she smiled when I started laughing, and sheathed her sword across her back a moment later. What I was stunned to see was that same sword vanish completely in front of me, disappearing into what looked like thin air.
"Himeko… where'd your sword go?"
The woman smiled at me, flipped her cape up, and I could see a number of recently patched holes in the armor she always seemed to wear, the outfit she called a "battlesuit". She seemed to be choosing her words carefully as she thought about it.
"My battlesuit has a weapon coded to it, this is the primary piece of that weapon, through use of technology that I can't
really understand, let alone tell you much about, it shunts the blade into a pocket dimension that while I can't locally control it, it's always there, and by extension, always ready if I need it."
"Isn't it broken?"
Himeko leaned in and whispered.
"Armsmaster may think he's secured the pieces and pulled one over on me, but the blade can recall its pieces back to itself if it becomes relevant. I just haven't been involved in something that's big enough to justify such a thing, so I've let him keep the metals. Maybe he'll be able to learn something about the blade the people in my time weren't able to, no~?"
I nodded, at some level it made sense, but I couldn't… parse Himeko's bizarre attitude towards the PRT. On the surface level she seemed the perfect hero for them, personable, charismatic, beautiful, and very clearly skilled in combat. But then the underlying layer painted a picture of someone who would
tolerate the local PRT elements at best.
It flew against the image of the calm, collected badass she'd initially appeared to have. Especially because of the way the woman would sometimes get when she thought no one was looking.
Earlier, Himeko had been staring at the boat graveyard, just… looking at the mire and muck and ruin, and a hard bitten, angry look had curved her features into a snarl. But I wasn't even sure why she was so angry, if it was just the waste of material… but it felt like it ran deeper.
Now though? She was positively… jolly, happy to dart and even skip through the muck, and seriously, she had to be a parahuman, because no normal person I knew would ever have that kind of ease in walking through a mud pit on
heeled boots. I don't care how elegant and powerful she was, that was just utterly breaking of reality.
I was not jealous that she wore the extra 6 inches of height better than my frame.
The mere suggestion was absurd.
But as she danced around through the muck, occasionally looking back to make sure I was keeping up with her, I noted that she was moving towards a section of the boat graveyard. A section that seemed… wrong, to my gaze.
As I approached her position, she asked me pointedly.
"Do you see it yet?"
I shrugged, not entirely sure.
"Do you mean the… wrongness, over there?"
I pointed vaguely, and Himeko clapped once and nodded.
"Excellent, the Hyperion had a few pieces land near here, and I'd like to lay claim to the bits that the PRT really shouldn't get their hands on, as well as let you try and take some of the radiation on."
I shivered, the thought was… scary, Himeko had told us about the radiation, about the dangers and the worries she had when it was concerned.
"Should, should we be worried?"
Himeko looked at me and giggled, before doubling over laughing.
"Oh darling Taylor please. You and I are resistant to the radiation, and you, being a Herrscher candidate? You're straight up immune, you could consume the radiation that I produced in my previous life in a single day and it likely wouldn't do anything worse than mildly interest your tastebuds!"
Then she was moving forwards, and I had no choice but to follow her further, and deeper, until we stood just in front of that area of "wrongness".
Himeko reached out and rapped on something, and after a moment, recited something in a language that she claimed was Japanese, but it seemed to bear no actual similarities between what she'd spoken and what Miss Alice had sworn in.
Then again, I was hardly an expert on the language.
But clearly, that had done something, as hexagonal plates of the area began to disappear, revealing a large, darkly plated section of something that my powers tingled at. But I found out… equally quickly as to why Himeko didn't want anyone coming near here. The moment I landed bugs on the structure to survey it, they began to die from the Honkai radiation. It was thick around the stuff, built up and violently concentrated.
Himeko reached around the corner. Where she was now she faced a sort of bulky elevator, with thin glass partitions, the thin screen at the top read something I couldn't make out, but was clearly important. Himeko idly messed with a control panel, then sighed, and ripped the entire door off with her bare hands.
I'd not seen her do something like this, I'd heard she'd done it to the lockers after she'd torn me free, to make the stretcher she carried me to the hospital on, but seeing the metal and plastic bend around her fingers as she made a large enough handhold to tear the assembly open was… quite different. I'd been lifting heavy chunks of stuff all day, but the way these pieces were shaped and treated, everything I could tell about them suggested that they were less heavy and less strong than the materials that made up the elevator car in front of me.
Himeko shrugged, before she stepped forwards, into the ruined car, and began to tear more chunks of metal out. But, after a moment, the sounds stopped, and her head poked back around the corner.
"You want to help or try your hands at this?"
I shook my head, holding up my hands.
"I d-don't think I can, right?"
She laughed again, that soft smile coming over her face as she extended a hand to me.
"Come on, do you think I had you doing all that exercise for nothing?"
I stepped into the darkness and saw Himeko shifting to one side to let me at the armored bulkhead just ahead. I was reminded, immediately, of the exhibits I'd taken with dad and mom to navy ship museums. The door to the bulkhead was secured, with a number of handles on the front of it, or… no, those weren't handles, Himeko had torn them into the metal.
"Here, latch on and pull when I say so. Ready?"
I slotted my fingers into the space left behind by hers, and braced my feet. Himeko stepped forwards and began to adjust my posture, forcing a step out here slightly, then adjusting my waist just so.
"I'm tweaking your form here, don't want you straining anything, now do we?"
I shook my head, as Himeko stepped back and said.
"Now, pull as hard as you can."
I pulled, and my arms screamed at me, but as I watched, the door began to crunch and scream and shift, and eventually, was pulled clean off its hinges. Himeko smiled at me as I staggered, her hands catching the heavy piece of metal, which she set outside the elevator behind us, before looking inwards.
"Mmm, the engineers hated me for doing this to the armories, but I was always a fan of theatrics."
She clapped her hands twice, and a flickering series of pale lights sprang to life around the small room.
It was octagonal in shape, and missing many of the weapons that might have once denoted its presence as an "armory". With nothing but empty racks where they once stood, but a few remained.
The construction of the room was gunmetal gray and white highlights, with varying pieces cut out and into the walls for illumination.
"How are the lights still working?"
Himeko took a moment to answer, she'd pulled a pair of glasses from somewhere on her suit and was studying a small piece of paper that had hung near the door.
"Backup generators linked to the armories, limited power, and they'll run out soon, which is why we ripped off the doors over just using my access codes to get into the system."
"Is this also about the PRT?"
"Someone's been paying attention, yes, in part because I don't trust them, and in part because they pissed me off by taking my sword away from me under the guise of it being "involved in a crime.""
Himeko shook her head in disgust as she finished the statement, and I watched her set the piece of paper down, before she snapped a finger and a brilliant flame, pure white, appeared on the edge of her palm.
I could feel the temperature rise as she held it to the paper, burning it to nothing in seconds, then, she put the light out by blowing on her fingers.
"Okay~!"
She stood and surveyed the armory.
"Pick one thing, except the big rifle, I'm keeping that one."
I looked about, finally looking at the weapons, the big rifle was… self explanatory, the thing looked like a long rifle, with a massive structure on the front and a large scope, plated in white, it glowed faintly with light until Himeko picked it up.
As soon as she touched it, she staggered, and as I put a hand on her shoulders to steady her, she sucked in a breath.
"Whoo… that is, something. Who would have thought the old man put something like… this down here."
She barely whispered, the lines on the rifle lighting up red with energy, as it began to siphon… something from Himeko herself, faint lines of red energy into the weapon. She slung it over one shoulder, and a "click" announced it becoming locked in that position.
I surveyed the area again, before asking.
"Why not take everything?"
There were perhaps… two to three dozen weapons here, and I felt that there was something important about them. Something important that was here. I stepped forwards, moving past the carbines, past the racks of effective, if not useful projectile ammunition. Looking to my left and right, surveying for something that wasn't right.
Certainly the weapons that Himeko had been studying, the Honkai pistols and carbines and the large rifle, those were important, derived from… something relevant to what I was now. The feeling played out against my instincts again, and I couldn't quite grasp what I was looking for.
Until my fingers found it floating in the air and pulled it free with a hiss and a
snap as reality bent and flexed correctly for once.
I was left holding… something that looked vaguely like a lance, twirled white and black with a single band of orange around the midsection. It had carved a deep furrow into the floor of the room, piercing there and staying there. But I felt something… something was incredibly important about this thing, I just couldn't figure out what it was.
Himeko sucked in a breath as she caught sight of it, and stepped closer.
"Hmm, one of Void's calling cards."
"Wait, you said you fought her, right?"
Himeko nodded.
"Yup~"
She popped the p, seeming to enjoy just the sound it made in english, before continuing.
"Right before I fell here, actually. Don't really know how that particular thing got all the way over here, but… I don't know why Void left it cloaked, she never seemed the type to enjoy the subterfuge or sabotage routes."
She reached out and tapped the spear lightly.
"Hmm. Seems to be absent any remnants of her powers, is it something you particularly want?"
I shrugged again, it wasn't so much that I wanted… well, any of these, just that there was something that had pushed me towards that thing in particular. I didn't, well, really know why.
I poked it, and was surprised when the lance itself floated up from the ground and took its place slightly behind me, floating with the tip, unnaturally sharp, poised just over my shoulder, ever so carefully present.
I knew, instantly, that with a thought I could have it accelerate to beyond terminal velocities, and with its hardened tip and reinforced construction? It would punch through the walls and floor of this armory with no real damage incurred. Not really much of… well, anything, could stop the lance as it pierced the fabric of space to deliver a vicious, painful death to its targets.
I shuddered, knowing that the lance wasn't… solid, it looked and felt solid, absolutely, but the entire thing was really just a construct of collapsed and folded space itself, colored in a way I could see. It was unaffected by inertia, gravity, or much of anything, and I had a suspicion that if anyone tried to stop it from hurting them? It would punch through them.
There was an almost… smugness that radiated from that weapon in the aftermath of that realization, and I was only shaken out of it when Himeko placed a hand on my shoulder.
"I'm ready to go, did you only want the lance? Or something else?"
I cast a hesitant look around, and studied the remaining pile of weaponry. Himeko held in her hands a small cylinder, with a couple dozen more scattered about the pile, and I knew, instantly, that they were thermite grenades.
I frowned, a spike of pain jamming into my forehead as I tried to figure out
how I'd known that the device in her hand was a total match to a Mark 8 Radiation Purification and Equipment Safeguard. Otherwise known as a thermite grenade, and the pain didn't seem to go away when I tried to figure it out.
Himeko poked me in the cheek, trying to get my attention and I looked up at her, a slight smile remaining on her face even if her golden eyes shone with worry and a touch of sympathy.
"Are you alright?"
I shrugged.
"I don't know… but what's with the pillbug?"
The word had spilled out of my mouth before I could react, but Himeko was now staring at me, curiously. My hackles felt like they were rising slowly, I wondered if this was where the illusion would break, if this was where the trust I'd put in Himeko would be rewarded with backstabbing.
Himeko
The girl had frozen when Himeko had begun to study her, and her body language had begun to subtly alter towards threat, but Himeko hadn't cared, she'd needed to assess the girl for any possibility of void returning.
She didn't want to chance it, but there was simply too much at stake to allow her to pass by on nothing.
But… she found nothing like the cold, hard, monstrous brutality in Void's eyes like that of Taylor Hebert's. While Void would have known the name of the grenade simply on principle, this girl shouldn't have, and her sudden blurting out of the common name, shared among the troops for its odd shape when stacked with others of its kind, didn't bode well.
As she released Taylor, she took a moment to review that the contents of this subarmory of the Hyperion was truly stripped to the core.
Sure she'd taken what she could only guess was an honest to the Goddess particle rifle from the central tube in the room, but the other Honkai derived weapons there were exotic and equally useful.
Certainly, nationwide conflict was simply not a thing in her world, but smaller scale engagements between just Schicksal and World Serpent had been common enough for the way that the Honkai use projectiles and particles to begin to be researched in full.
However,
That was secondary to her purpose here. Which was recovering what she could scavenge, giving Taylor a few "souvenirs" to temper her urge to experiment with her Honkai powers when not around Himeko, because while she trusted in Taylor's desire to do good, the Honkai had made Kiana its puppet before her, and Taylor was far less morally aligned than Kiana had been.
With that said, the discovery of one of Void's/Sirin's subspace lances had sent a chill down her spine, if that… thing had followed her here, it might truly be over. Even if Kiana was in control, she was so monstrously powerful awakened that the unprotected, and unsecured residents of this world would stand no chance.
"Here, this, for you~!"
Himeko pressed the grip of a heavy barrelled Honkai pistol into Taylor's hands, the weapon was ungainly and massive, too massive for humans to fire comfortably, but it wasn't meant to be fired by human hands. In any case, the weapon didn't feed magazines either, but instead fed on the radiation present within all Valkyries, and to a lesser extent, Herrschers. Although the weapons power cell was small, mostly meant for C class valkyries, where it could charge to full and provide a measure of cover if a sudden outbreak happened.
Of course, what actually came out of the barrel depended on the Valkyrie using it. Himeko had fired such weapons before, and they generally resembled superheated slugs of energy, or they had before she'd come here. Then again, she'd discovered her affinity for a greatsword before needing to actually get used to the projectile weapons.
She'd not fired one in quite some time, actually, and wondered faintly if they would even be able to charge.
That wonder was answered when Taylor's weapon pinged once, and showed a bright green signature on the rear of the weapon, near its power cell.
"Hmm, well, it appears it's taking to your radiation just fine, no need for further calibration?"
The girl shrugged, she liked to do that, it seemed, or she wasn't sure, both were good options in Himeko's opinion.
"I don't know, it feels… maybe a bit too light? But there's nothing I can tell that's wrong with it."
She held out the weapon for Himeko, and the older woman merely shook her head.
"Hang onto it, it'll charge to maximum but then seal off so it doesn't overcharge and blow the battery cell out. But, while we're here, you might as well take your pick of either a carbine or a rifle as well. Just not mine, ok?"
Taylor nodded and let her eyes roam about the cabin, before settling on a long barrelled rifle, the kind one might find in a valkyrie squad specialized around scouting or skirmishing. She moved to it, and scooped it up in her arms, studying the length and fit of the barrel.
Himeko spoke, the words easy for her tongue to come to.
"Mm, Good choice, recoil kicks like a bastard, so be aware. It'll be a long road before you're shooting that thing at anything, especially when we don't know what your particular radiation will do to the projectiles in that rifle."
"Does it change based on the radiation?"
Himeko shrugged, it was her turn to voice uncertainty, an easy task.
"Well, maybe not the radiation, mine pretty much always came out as some form of temperature violations, lots of super hot stuff, with very occasional cold, but that's because my area of expertise as a Valkyrie was always thermal manipulation and prowess with such things. Others specialized in different areas."
Now, however, with a long rifle and pistol for Taylor, and several choice pieces of the better gear for her own arsenal, whenever she finally found a place to store these things safely, Himeko flipped the pillbug in one hand, tugged the pin out and held the spoon in place.
"Taylor, if you please, cover your eyes and head out the way we came in."
Then without a second thought, she tossed the grenade and backed away from the soon to be a flaming wreck of varying pieces of
very expensive technology.
A part of her wanted to wince at the cost to replace this, but that part of her was drowned out by the equal opportunity cost of denying the PRT and, really, the villains, any chance to get at these. The PRT had had days to quarantine this zone and discover the armory, if at this point they still hadn't? There was, and could really be, no further delay.
She'd finished backing out of the armory when the rest of the thermite grenades caught, and the pillbugs triggered with a rushing hiss within the hull section. Within easy seconds, they would scourge and burn a clean hole directly through the compartment and then into the walls around it. Melting the futuristic equipment left behind and destroying anything that Himeko couldn't take with her directly.
A shame to lose that equipment, but better than the alternative. If even one or more of those weapons filtered into the gangs… she'd seen enough of what people called "Tinkers" to know that they might be able to figure out how to jury rig at least the batteries for detonation, and those batteries were unconscionable risks.
Although speaking of, she stopped near the edge of the graveyard and trained her ear.
A series of popping, fizzling bangs announced it as each of the well maintained Honkai weapons went off with loud popping noises, the battery and power cells cooked and breached by the thermite grenades, turned to useless slurry, over a Honkai dirty bomb.
"Well, that's done, I've finished with your training for the day… are you going to be ok if I leave you for the day?"
Taylor shifted uneasily at Himeko's words, and the older woman frowned, not that the girl saw it.
"Taylor… what's wrong?"
The girl stiffened sharply, but Himeko had not been born yesterday, had not been put in charge of St. Freya's valkyries for nothing. She knew what it looked like when a teenager tried to hide things from her, and it never went well for either of them.
For a moment, she closed her eyes, remembering the stupid, the dedicated, and the suicidally overconfident. Slain on their opening missions because she'd been learning to read them at the time.
She wouldn't lose another. Not this time.
"Taylor… please, what happened? Is this relevant to yesterday?"
Taylor seemed to almost shrivel up. Himeko made her way closer to the girl, slowly and always in her field of view. She sat down next to the girl on the edge of the road, years ago, before the container ship had been sunk, this was a barricade that separated the road from the waters of the inner bay. Now it was simply dry and slightly rusted barricades propped up by a large pile of rocks. No cars thundered past the two women, and wouldn't until late that night, Himeko tugged Taylor to the barricade, made certain she sat down on the edge, and then sat down herself.
"Until you're ready, I'll be here. Whenever you feel like you can speak, just let me know."
A/N: Welcome to Arc 2! Gust Front! I hope the wait hasn't been too long, and I apologize for it anyways!
As always, if you like what I'm doing here, leave a comment/kudo/like/critique, I'm always looking for more to do to improve at this writing thing!
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A special thank you to my patrons, who give me the ability to do this!
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