71 – Tiger Uppercut
I slapped a few hundred thousand pesos down next to Yuriko, and stood up.
"Whrgh mfff…," she swallowed, thankfully. "Where are you going?"
Fun fact: the Shiro Institute favored teaching her how to rip planes out of the sky over things like table manners.
"Just going to go pick up some more grass for Dude. Stay here and eat some tacos."
She hadn't noticed that her former comrades were busy assaulting one of the biggest and most famous cities on the planet. To be fair these were some delicious tacos and I'd changed the channel again the moment I'd seen the first tsunami tank slamming onto the shore. At this point I had utterly no idea as to what kind of reaction she would have to seeing the Imperials actually hitting the American shore and right now I had no desire to find out. As long as she was kept distracted then it really wouldn't matter in the end. Besides which…
Nobody in Mexico really seemed to care that much. They all had glanced up but then immediately went back to their own conversations and meals when I flipped the channel again. Well…some were staring at the cash pile I'd left Yuriko but that was something that she could easily deal with. Her powers hadn't atrophied at all since she'd stopped actually fighting. I know this because she'd torn apart some trees down in Chile when a dog barked and scared her. Or at least caused the instinctual response that her military training demanded when an Allies attack dog might show up.
"Use the money to keep buying food or whatever. See you in a bit."
============================================
The Empire State building shuddered as a round of rockets spewed by the eponymous Rocket Angel teams that were scouring the city's airspace but it was less about damaging the entire building and more about killing the Allied soldiers that had been shooting at them with bullets and rockets of their own. The salvo was more than enough to have killed the fifteen men that had somehow made it up there and tried to garrison the entire building and with that the flying Japanese women flew off on some other objective. They hadn't noticed me standing at the very top and I…didn't stop them.
I could have. It would have been easy. Just…jump in through their own communications systems, overload their flight systems, and send them plummeting to the earth. Or into a wall or generator or what have you. I could even have accessed their automatic targeting systems and made them kill each other. But I didn't.
The armada I have waiting in space is still there. I could control them at any time I wanted. Bring them here.
But…
I don't…I haven't really
fought anyone since I got here. Not even a little. Whenever I got into trouble I can just use my satellite net to block off whole sections of the planet in frozen time. Sure people were kind of getting a little temporally confused but nothing truly damaging. I'd made sure of
that at least. Even now as I stand on top of one of the tallest buildings in the world, looking out across the battlefield that had consumed not just Manhattan but the
whole of New York city, I hadn't really come to a conclusion about what I should do next. I know that I've already decided to not let the Empire win, but I haven't decided between the Allies and the Soviets yet either.
On the
other hand, the longer I spend puttering around doing nothing is the higher number of people who die.
You know what's
really scary though?
That thought didn't bother me like I think it should.
Like, I knew intellectually that a lot more people were dying than they otherwise might have. That I could have stopped it. But something in me just didn't have that old spark of outrage that was supposed to be there. I could get mad if they destroyed a restaurant, blew up a hospital, things like that, but both sides were actually doing a good job of trying to avoid
actually killing civilians. All three of the superpowers, really. I suppose if Yuri was in action that'd be different but I would also have directly committed forces to stopping that crazy bastard.
I think.
No…no I would have, wouldn't I?
Of the four Floating Fortresses that the Empire has, the Allies have already seen this one. It's the one that kicked their asses at Gibraltar, the White Tiger. The Black Tortoise remained guarding Japan while the Blue Dragon and Vermillion Bird were still over in Europe. Gibraltar's post itself had been given over to the lattermost one while the Blue Dragon hadn't moved since it was first deployed to the North Sea. Each of them was capable of spewing out a whole lot of Imperial troops while providing a near impenetrable bastion against return assaults.
But the Empire, in New York at least, wasn't just relying on the White Tiger. They'd landed and were beginning to construct two different bases. One was breaking down Brooklyn, ripping buildings to pieces under the Shogun Kenji and his heavily mechanical forces. The other was on Manhattan itself, led by not the personally selected Shogun from the game but by Shinzo. Which was interesting in of itself when you considered the greater implications. Each of the three factions was meant to have some kind of extremely powerful commander, general, or shogun that showed up at the 'start'.
I had seen no evidence of a new Imperial Shogun in their files. So does that mean there never was or that evidence of their activity was simply hidden from even
my capabilities. Either way it was troubling considering how the Empire was kicking the collective asses of everyone else.
Either way, that doesn't matter right now.
There are entire battalions of tsunami tanks, King Oni, mecha tengu, and those flippy VX things that could go from anti-air on the ground to copters up top pouring through Brooklyn and directly smashing against one of the Allied Commanders. The one with the muscles and hat…Warren Fuller! That's his name. He's putting up a good fight but his troops are getting swarmed on sheer numbers alone without even counting just how powerful the Empire's machine forces could really be when commanded by one like Kenji. In about one minute I watched as a wave of incoming tsunami tanks came up against a force of guardian tanks under Warren, only for King Oni to appear from around the sides of the buildings and begin bullrushing the flanks. Literally and with their eye lasers.
Guh.
Yeah, ok, I flinched from watching that.
…so why do civilian casualties not bother me like they should? Fuck I seriously need a therapist if what I'm really twitching at is military issues.
But Manhattan…damn. I just realized why the Allies are being pushed like this and I'll bet why their attempts at allying with the Soviets had collapsed so badly. Filtering out different levels of Imperial signals bouncing back and forth lets me see whose orders are going where but there's a specific and unique signal hidden beneath baffling and security of almost excessive levels. And if I follow it…yeah.
Ackermanbot.
Tatsu's personal android which had somehow made it into the Presidential chair. But if he is an android then that means that it's the Empire's campaign or…does…but they don't have the new Shogun who…
Ah fuck it.
It's nobody's 'Campaign' anymore. It never was. That was a video game, this is a real world. A single soldier doesn't pop up from a barracks, whole squads of them do. The factories are pumping out way more tanks, but not at ludicrous speeds. Soldiers that kill a lot of the enemy and gain field promotions don't
suddenly start healing and getting extra powerful munitions. Not a video game. It's a real, living, breathing, and functional world. Which is why there aren't open resource fields just happening to sit around in Manhattan itself, or on the Fortresses.
I can't keep bouncing around the world and treating it like a real one and then viewing the conflict through an entirely different lens.
Ugh. Worse, despite that revelation I still wince and freak a little when a Vindicator bomber flies too close to the top of the building as it flees a group of mecha tengu. It uh…it fails. It goes down in flames. The pilots scream on the radio as they begin burning before the bombs in the plane's bay goes off and ends their suffering before they hit the ground. The tengu laugh and congratulate themselves on an open channel that I don't even have to really
try to access before flying off to some other part of the city.
Not a campaign. Not a
game. A real world. Real life consequences…
"Mmmm…fffffuuuuuuccck it."
I fabricated a quarter on the ship and teleported it down onto my waiting palm. The flagging Allied navy forces present lost another battleship when a trio of Shoguns came barreling out from the east at full blast. Warren's base was actually under assault by now with a trail of broken and burning neighborhoods marking where the Empire forces had come through led be Kenji. Manhattan's southern tip was broken down too while Giles tried to fend them off with his air force. Which…was failing under Shinzo's relentless assault which was chock full of the VX forces in anti-air mode and plenty of mobile wave-form artillery. I can see it even if I'm not fighting. I'm not
that rusted over yet to not see the implications and paths defined by the forces present.
The Allies are going to lose New York.
"If the
coin decides, then it's not like, me. It's fate, right? Heads…squash match. Tails…covert."
So I flip it. Close my eyes. Close my ears. Close all my sensors. Shut down and go completely dark for just an instant. Then after a few more seconds I open them again.
"That…is bullshit."
It landed on its side.
Even when I crouched down to look at it, it stayed like that. It was a perfect quarter, and it hadn't landed in a crack on the roof or anything like that. The winds were
blowing and it still wasn't moving. Maybe something was wrong with it anyhow? The fabricators had gotten something wrong even though the chances of that were miniscule, second to none. Impossible actually. Supposed to be at least. Nothing is on there, not even an extra engraving or something from the…being that I spoke to only twice so long ago in the distant past. Or anything else. Perfect quarter.
I could probably flip again...and who would know?
…Warren's base is a third of the way gone. Hundreds of men are fighting in the rubble now. Thousands more are moving forward. Garrisoning buildings, digging in even though there is little to no chance of them losing. Even…oh damn, the man himself is there. American born and raised, he can't let New York fall without firing a weapon in his own hands at least once in the direction of the enemy. Giles is raining hell but Shinzo's forces are flinching as they move forward. I can hear them…
"Warren you have to pull back, now! I can't get any of my squadrons over to help you while Shinzo is cutting his way through Manhattan!"
"No way in hell! This is America, damn it! We aren't retreating a
step!"
"Warren, Lisette is on her way, if you pull back we can reinforce you!"
"If we pull back, they'll
never lose this beachhead!"
"Tanya, convince him!"
"Giles, I'm staying too!"
"
Tanya!"
They're staying. I hadn't even noticed Tanya before now but she's killing every single one of the charging Imperial Warriors she can see. Tankbusters and shinobi too. But there just aren't that many of those compared to how many tanks and Oni that that Kenji is sending forward. Tengu too in both versions. Also…a Yuriko. This one is not at
all like Yuriko-13. A bubble of broken masonry protects her and she's sending out waves of the stuff to pulp the soldiers before her. With one hand she's picking up one of the remaining tanks and cracking it in half and with a sweep of her other hand others are sent flying into onto their sides and backs fully.
"Tanya look out!"
The Yuriko has her, raising her up in into the air in front of everyone else so they can watch.
I…
She gets pulped.
Tanya gets pulped, torn apart at the middle and with both halves sent flying. But – no wait. Time reverses for an instant and all of a sudden Tanya's there again completely whole. But Yuriko is covered by a screen of Imperials too thick for anyone to get past and she's got the blonde commando
again. Why am I trembling. I don't tremble. I
shouldn't tremble. This is a robot body with every inch under my own command. Why…this time the Yuriko doesn't waste time on theatrics and rips Tanya apart again. No
way does the belt have the power to reverse Tanya's personal time again that soon.
Fucking….fucking…
"FUCK!"
The Yuriko loses concentration as I scream from right behind her. The teleportation fades a millisecond before I smash my fist into her face to send her right to the ground unconscious. Possibly dead considering the velocity I used and the metal in my everything. All around me the Imperial troops freak out at the sudden appearance of a screaming bathrobe clad man but they don't get more than an instant to do that before I'm teleporting forward again to where – fucking
Christ Tanya is trying to hold her guts in her legless torso without somehow dying of bloodloss yet. Behind me I have one of my satellite banks activate and teleport them all into space.
The Yuriko-clone. The infantry around her. The tanks supporting her. The King Oni marching right behind. All of them appear in space. They all get about two seconds to realize what has happened before the satellites turn their own laser cannons on them and rip them apart. All in all the removal of a crucial military element from the battlefield takes me five seconds total. But I barely focus on that in favor of approaching Tanya who is wholly focused on not dying out of sheer willpower. Or maybe some kind of Allied genetics or something which makes her not pass out from the physiological reaction of being torn in half. Shock maybe.
"Hey."
"C'mon, c'mon no,
no," she's hissing to herself. I don't think she even heard me.
"
Tanya."
She looks up, blanches for a second.
"I need to ask your permission to heal you."
"W-what the fucking…ngggh oh god, no no no no."
Shit. Distracting her from being distracted from the pain.
"Whatever. I'm going to heal you, but don't talk about it with anyone if you would."
Then we're teleporting back to my ship – both her top
and her bottom half where it's halfway inside some wrecked car's windshield. I don't have a sarcophagus ready for her but I can make one easily. Not one of those crap Goa'uld one's either that were badly reverse engineered but a good one improved and refurbished with the original Ancient healing tech. She's gasping now, and passing out and…her heart is stopping from the bloodloss and pain catching up to her. I don't think she even caught the sight of the featureless metal and sweeping sphere of the ship's inhabited areas before her eyes flickered shut.
The door of the sarcophagus closes…but in the minutes it's going to take to put her back together I'm back in New York City and on top of some building or another overlocking the dying remains of Warren's base and Kenji's still oncoming forces. They lost their Yuriko but they aren't stopping. That's fine. I bounce my signal into Kenji's base, every part of his heavily technology based forces, every structure.
For the sake of…I don't know, drama I suppose, I reach out with one hand and then clench it.
It feels…like nothing.
Over a hundred mecha tengu fall from the sky followed by the Imperial copters. Ejection protocols send the King Oni pilots flying forward before the robot suits themselves begin tearing apart everyone around them with limb and laser. Every single one of the wave form towers and defender-class turrets around Kenji's base turn on his structures and manufacturing facilities. Rocket Angels scream in horror and dismay as I override their suits in one fell swoop and turn the hundreds of them throughout the city on terror, scout, and flanking missions back towards their own fellows and make use of their vaunted 'unlimited ammo'. The tsunami tanks tear each other apart despite the screams and attempted override protocols of their crews.
Too much automation for efficiency. Too much trust in nanomachine technology with the assumption that no one could override them.
Speaking off…the nanoshield generators produce their clouds without any input from the panicking Shogun as almost every part of his army turns on itself. Instead of a comforting and invulnerable blue shield they are red and furious. The clouds billow upwards and then outwards to strike, tear apart, and consume every part of the troops before me that were not controllable, that I could not command myself. Organics, mostly. Shinobi screaming as their hiding places in the shadows are found by thermic scans. Imperial soldiers flailing with their katanas as their flesh is burrowed beneath in a 'search for mineral resources for replication'.
…thirty seconds from arrival against whatever number that Yuriko clone was to now. To shutting down Kenji entirely and exterminating approximately…93% of his entire force. The rest of them are being killed by his own nanomachines. A thousand safety protocols to keep them as part of a defensive structure and
away from doing exactly what I'm having them do fail beneath my electronic warfare suites built with enough power and self-learning sophistication that I need only make them
start to see them win. Kenji knew exactly what nanomachines could do. But now they are not a shield.
They are a plague.
My plague.
Five seconds after I've reduced Kenji's attacking force to Kenji and his last soldiers within his personal command bunker I teleport inside.
"WHAT IN THE NAME OF THE EMPEROR IS HAPPENING!"
"I don't know my Shogun, they've…the base…our troop are moving against Shinzo now!"
"Kenji, what are you-,"
"Shinzo! Someone has taken control of my mechanized forces! They have obliterated my base on the cusp of victory! Prepare yourself, they may try to do the same to you!"
"What about you?"
"I don't even
know what I am going to-,"
I shut the screens off. Shinzo doesn't need to see this. By now one of the soldiers has noticed me over Kenji's panicked screaming. I don't need them. Any of them, really. So they go up…and up…and up. None of them have flight packs or suits or anything like that. They'll hit the ground again in a little while.
"Shogun."
He whirls on me.
"Who-where are me-
you. You did this. How did you do this!??"
I let him shake me.
I've obliterate his troops. Massacred…no. Exterminated his army. He deserves to be able to vent a little.
In the meantime, behind him, I fabricate a very large coffin with the door open. Metal, of course. You can't fabricate wood out of metal reserves but I can certainly have it painted oaken brown.
"Like this," I grab him by the wrists of the hands he was shaking me with…and shove him backwards stronger than he can possibly resist. The coffin shakes as he flies into it but before he can react further I close it before both of us teleport back to the ship.
It shakes once, his scream of rage echoing out of it, before I hit the entire thing with a singular time dilation field. It slows him down. A
lot. Worse than even the replicators were hit by when the Asgard tried to trap them. Time is, for now within that coffin, effectively frozen compared to the outside world. It'll hold him for more than long enough. He'll keep.
======================================
Tanya blinked rapidly as she realized she had regained consciousness.
Sitrep. I'm…I'm dead. No. Wait.
The man.
The one with the bathrobe and the…sandals with socks and mug of coffee in one hand? Was that a hallucination after dying twice in quick succession?
Fucking time belt. What's the point of saving my life if I just die again immediately!
It was completely dark too, wherever she was now.
"Hello?"
She had been…stuffing her own guts back in. Stupid. Meaningless. The belt was on her waist that had been flung dozens of yards away. Even if she could have somehow reached it before the bloodloss or the shock killed her the belt wouldn't have recharged. But she had refused to just
die like that. Was that why her mind created the image of some stranger offering to heal her somehow? A dying hallucination that apparently concluded in a coffin. Wonderful.
Was this hell?
A dark coffin to be trapped in for all of etern-
"Wakey wakey sunshine," a voice called out before the entire coffin dissolved around her.
Her pistols were tossed onto her chest and…
"I'm…alive!"
"Yeah, now get up," the stranger from before said, his voice flat and dead.
She obliged but before she could even ask another question there was a strange humming noise and she was suddenly surrounded by the stench and sights of the battlefield that she'd just been dying on. Furthermore she stumbled slightly as she realized she had legs again. It was…her pistols fell to the ground out of her loose grip as she frantically felt herself. Thighs, shins, ankles, feet, ass….all of it was there!
"How the
fuck-,"
"Not important," the stranger said again. "I saved you. Yes your legs are back, and frankly you're probably a year or three younger than before. I have some more business to take care of."
Tanya was one of the most decorated members of any military on the planet that care for actual accomplishment and not meaningless ornamentation. She had
never heard someone speak with a voice so dead and tired at the same time, not in the most burnt out generals or soldiers. Before she could turn back to speak to him, however, he had disappeared. As if in thin air. Speaking of that…
Where had she been before? What the hell-
"Tanya!"
She turned as a group of battered soldiers led by an even more battered commander appeared out of the burnt out remains of the base she'd been stationed at.
"Fuller?"
It was indeed him. He'd lost his beret and was clearly bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder but he ignored it as he ran over to her.
"I thought you were dead, Tanya. Reports said you got torn right in half!"
"I…," she considered for a moment what the man had said right before he'd saved her. "I got better. Time belt, remember?"
"Huh, Futuretech does good work I guess," Fuller grunted. "Now c'mon. We've got to regroup."
"What happened while I was uh, gone?"
Fuller looked back at her and shrugged.
"That entire army that was attacking us? Gone crazy. Turned on itself and then headed right after the guy hitting Giles. His whole base ended up ruining itself too."
Tanya thought back to the man with the tired and dead voice and the utterly emotionless eyes.
"Oh."
"Yeah. Crazy right? Never thought I'd see the Empire hitting itself in the face but I'm not going to question it. Our orders are to defend New York and that's what I intend to do."
"With your base destroyed and your troops decimated?"
Fuller looked her over and then racked the slide on his appropriated shotgun.
"We follow orders."
======================================
The Floating Fortress was an interesting design. A heavily defended supercarrier-esque base. With the instant nano-generation capabilities of the Imperial Arsenal they could construct entire armies faster than anyone on the planet except for me. Hell that was how they made their military buildings too. It was basically a much tinier and technologically inferior to ship and mobile battle station designs that I myself had created before. It was also quite heavily populated and was in the middle of panicking about the utter destruction of Kenji's forces and the disappearance of one of the honored Shoguns of the Empire as well.
"Don't worry," I couldn't stop myself from murmuring as I sat in the middle of the entire structure. "You won't be wondering very long."
I didn't want to destroy it. Why do that when the Allies could just capture it and hold it right outside of Manhattan? Instead I shut it down from end to end. Teleported almost all of the explicit military forces on the fortress into the firestorm that had become the currently highly contested Central Park. Giles was giving it his all and after I rammed Kenji's mech forces into Shinzo's flank he was actually beginning to win in the tug of war against the Empire forces present. The little smattering of forces that Fuller had left were charging their way in that direction as well.
Unlike Kenji the illustrious samurai had elected to not personally land with his troops and fight against Giles from his command bunker.
Instead, as one of the most trusted Shogun and ally of the Emperor's family personally, he was given command of the wonderfully powerful White Tiger. So two armies to Kenji's one.
Now…he was alone in his V.I.P. Bunker in the center of the fortress. He was
also reacting far less badly than Kenji had. The cameras show him as falling into an immediate seiza position and shifting over a small tea set which actually had some in it. Huh. Even when I teleport in he doesn't react strongly other than raising his gaze to meet me and then lowering it so he can focus on finishing his cup. When I walk over, he silently gestured for the position opposite him.
…I took it. If he tries to commit seppuku I can shove him in another sarcophagus and then he can join his erstwhile Shogun comrade.
"You are the one who slew Kenji?"
Gruff. Yet calm.
"He isn't dead," I shake my head slowly, reaching forward to a proffered cup of tea. "Captured."
"Ah, I see."
"You're taking this better than I thought you would, honestly."
He shakes his head this time, not me.
"I am concerned. Furious at our failure here. Ashamed for it as well. But I do not fear you, despite the capabilities of what you have displayed."
"And why is that? I tore his army away from him. Turned his base against him. I struck him with a single blow and yet cut him in a thousand different ways. Shouldn't you be scared?"
He sips again, and then places the cup down.
"A samurai does not fear the enemy. I serve the Emperor, and so long as I follow him and His divine will then I
cannot know fear."
…hmmph. He sounds like the early Mulani.
"I will not surrender."
"I didn't expect you to."
He stands, then, and steps back twice before placing a hand on the hilt of the katana at his side. I…step back and for the hell of it fabricate a katana of my own. He's been respectful. I can do the same in return. Though I
do make my sword out of my most favorite alloy, albeit with a sharpened edge. His questioning glance…it makes me speak for some reason.
"A quantum-crystalline alloy. It can taste the innards of the Sun itself and not melt, and suffer the most powerful pressures of the world without breaking."
"It is…made for defense, then," he says while slowly drawing his own blade. "It speaks of your character that it is what you have chosen to use for a weapon.
"Yes. But…can be used in other ways as well."
Why am I doing this?
…because he's lost and he knows it, I guess. Because he can't win against me I know it. His forces are lost. He has failed the Emperor.
"You will not be harmed as my captive."
"I shall endeavor not to be taken alive regardless."
I can't help but shrug at his declaration.
His move forward is fast. Very much so. But…it is human. So very human. I can slide aside the tea set and its tray with my foot without breaking any of it and retake a stance without him managing to blink. His strike forward carries considerable strength behind it to the point that I think it might even have managed to mortally cut a human man if they had worn no armor. It is a simple slash. In return I rise up my own slab of metal and strike upwards against it. An attack, a counter, and a block in one movement.
His eyes widen as his katana – likely an ancient family heirloom – shattered from my strength and the invulnerability of my weapon.
His eyes close as my fist strikes his chest and sends him flying backwards.
They do not have time to open again before he lands bodily onto the coffin I fabricated and teleported behind him. Nor before I close it, send it back up to my ship, and trap it in another time dilation field. Without him his remaining forces are leaderless and are already being pushed into the water itself. The fortress, the White Tiger, is done. The technicians are locked in the island's own prison cells, the defenses are powered down, the hidden traps in the programing for if capture ever occur deleted and cleaned. Traps scrubbed.
I check my internal chronometers and teleport back to Mexico.
Time Of Arrival: 12:37 PM EST.
Time Of Departure: 12:48 PM EST.
It took me 11 minutes to break three armies and decapitate the Imperial military leadership by two Shoguns. To save all of New York and reduce the available Floating Island Fortresses to the Japanese by one of four.
I don't even know what I'm supposed to be feeling.
============================================
"Hey! You're back,
finally. I had two hundred tacos while you were gone and…are you ok?"
I blink at her words and look in the mirror. No marks. No blood or soot. No bags under my eyes which is obvious because I can just decide not to have them and then they won't ever appear.
"Uh, yeah? Why?"
"You looked…sad."
I looked sad?
"Nah, no way. Anyway, what do you think of the tacos?"
"Oh they're
amazing, and while you were gone one of them offered me some kind of pepper? Ghost chile something? They laughed because they thought I couldn't eat them, and…"
I try to sit back and relax in my chair as I listen to her talk. I really…really…really try.
And after a while and a few dozen amazing tacos? I do.
Thank god for tacos.
