On a Backwater Planet, a Metal Extractor is Built [PA/Multicross SI]

[Glitchrr36]

So my first attempt at serious, non graded writing is a PA SI. I can't say I'm surprised. Any Grammar/spelling errors can be attributed to the fact it is midnight, my mind wouldn't let me sleep until this was posted, general laziness, and GoogleDocs not having an autocorrect like word, which I don't have on this laptop.
============================
Core Kernel Loading...complete
Kernel Optimization...complete
Initiating OS Boot....complete
Initiating Combat Protocol Indexing….complete
Testing Quantum Computational Matrices...complete
Sensor Suite Integration...complete
Resource Locator Optimization...complete
Design Program Installation...complete
Resource Manager Load...complete
Core Personality Matrix Load...complete
Activating commander in 3...2...1...Initiate.
Commander GLCR-6-36 online.

Have you ever had one of those dreams where you're falling, and then you almost hit the ground and wake up, realizing that you fell asleep on a couch while watching television, and are currently on the floor? Because that is what I am feeling right now. Only, instead of falling in a dream, I actually am falling. From orbit, I might add.

[planet designation: Dascides]

Now normally, this would have me either dying or shitting myself in terror, but not this time. Well, the terror part still applied, but I couldn't release waste, as I was now a 15 meter tall, 15-20 meter long spider robot thing. In particular, a commander from PA, which opened all sorts of worm cans that I would have to deal with at some point.

At the moment though, I had to deal with what promised to be an extremely painful experience of hitting a planet that I couldn't get a good look at because my aerodynamics aren't meant for falling out of orbit, dammit.

[altimeter reading: 2000 meters]
[Velocity: 50 M/S]

huh. I apparently have a handy-dandy computer voice reading out sensor data I can't be arsed to pay attention to. Good to know. But not all that helpful. Has it been there this whole time?
Hmm…. Maybe I can fabricate a balloon? Slow myself down? No, that isn't working, the nanobots are getting blown away, and I can't maintain position long enough to even try, and since I'm meant to have a drop pod, I don't have any reaction control systems capable of dealing with this.

Let's see about bracing for impact? I'm sure it will help a little but I'm not sure how mu
[WARNING: CRITICAL DAMAGE SUSTAINED. Automated repair protocols activating]
Fuck. That did hurt.
=======================================
Now that was an experience that I never wanted to repeat unless I truly had to. Now, to see where the hell I was, what was going to kill me, and try to figure out what the hell I was going to do.

"Let's see… there is some ice...and some more ice...and a mountain that might be made of ice...wait, why the hell am I talking out loud? There isn't anyone here, and I don't actually have to do this to keep my thoughts straight."

Well, it's an ice planet. Nothing else in my sensor range, which was admittedly not the greatest, so I would have to build a sensor network to figure out if this was just a barren hub or a planet in which I would have to fight stuff. As I decided a course of actions, I began walking around, looking for a metal deposit with which to start my economy of exponentially increasing levels of raep. As I found one, I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.

"Somewhere, on some backwater planet, in a backwater system, in a backwater sector of a backwater galaxy, a commander builds a metal extractor."

That statement had ended so many Vs. debates it was no longer just funny, it was hilarious.

Especially since now I was the commander.

This laughter wasn't evil cackling, I swear.

Now that I had an extractor, I could build a generator, then an air factory, since I needed to find out more about the planet. As I finished up with the fabricator, I decided to look at my new body, a GambitDFA commander. A bunch of missiles, some tiny guns, four legs, and a weirdly balanced rotating top piece. I was not exactly thrilled to find that the particular design was pretty eh compared to some of the things in my database.

My top section seemed ungainly, the design wasn't balanced when firing at things and moving, and as that crash had shown, it was fairly fragile in some areas to sudden applications of extreme G-Forces. Also, to add insult to injury, I didn't have nearly enough weapons, and I wasn't exactly the most stable firing platform for those I had, which seemed to be missiles for the most part to minimize that being a factor.If I wanted to be something to be feared, I'd need to fix that. Just another thing to add to the to do list, along with fixing all of the weird design choices the progenitors had settled on when designing the arsenal.

But, unfortunately, I had to put that one the list of things that could wait till I have nothing all that important to do, unlike now, which had me slowly building a hexagonal pattern of buildings across the surface of the area, with lanes in between them. Should add making them hexagons to the list too. I need a list of stuff to do eventually, because I'm utter crap at organizing things otherwise.

[Hexagonal buildings added to future design session options]

Anyway, as I was probably saying earlier until I got a bit sidetracked, I am under no illusions that I won't be travelling to new and exciting worlds, because ROB is a dick and he is the only being I know of that would do this.

"Note to self: Upon reverse engineering Q/Tzeentch/the Xeelee or something, find ROB and shoot them in the gonads. Repeatedly, and with Color Change weaponry, if possible."

[Note Logged]

Elaborate plotting of revenge can wait though, because for now, I had a planet to conquer.

================

There is pretty much nothing here. All I have been able to find is ice, ice, and more ice. there is a tiny lake, in which I could probably build a sunfish or two and race them around, but that was the only thing that wasn't ice or mountains. The lake wasn't even water, it was brine so concentrated I was able to drive tanks across it, and I did. So, in three words: boring and cold.

So I spent my time covering it in buildings, and started making a small army of fabricators so I could start getting an economy that was capable of getting me into orbit, and cementing this place as more or less unassailable to anything short of Exterminatus. And even then, I had enough umbrellas on the ground to defend my shipyards up in space to keep them defended until I got a truly sufficient orbital shell. As I sat and queued up build orders for the dozens of fabricators, I noticed one of my fireflies had found something.

It was a large structure, big enough to fit an Ares through if you lined it up just right, made of a bunch of rib cage like struts that looked like they had some kind of pronged doodad inside of them. In appearance overall, the structure looked similar to the teleporter, but with, as I mentioned, more rings, open on top, and bigger. Intrigued by what this random structure was doing on a planet I had been dropped on, I sent a fabricator over to capture it.

What I found was that it was some kind of gate, though to where, I couldn't discern, though I did have guesses. Probably a way to access a new universe, full of people to bother, threats to crush like bugs, and tech to steal borrow.

I can't figure out how to turn it on, once I have the power-it ate roughly ten million units of power per second, which would take about twenty thousand total T2 Energy Plants, of which I had about a third. More were coming online every few seconds, but it would still take time to open the gate, if power was even all I needed, and not some arbitrary course of action. In the meantime, I have designing to do.

 

[Glitchrr36]

So. My unit base had some dumb issues, from weird unit designs, to undergunned titans, to the fact that there were so many other roles that could be filled that just weren't: APCs was a glaring one, as was the lack of submarine units.Well, if I was going to fix this, I needed to start somewhere. a journey of a thousand miles and all that jazz. To start with, let's try something easy. Most fabricators had a limited range because of how the nanobots powered themselves, as it chained power since the actual "power across entire star systems" mechanism was too small to work on things that size.

========

To answer past me's rhetorical question, apparently very. I started with the Locust, which did have the ability to access the power network. However, this came at the expense of it being comparatively massive: a single bot could be measured in micrometers, as opposed to a fabber bot's single digit nanometers. I couldn't get the Locust small enough to be able to fuse into materials with high degrees of accuracy like normal fabrication nanites, and I couldn't get the normal nanites large enough to house a power transmission system without sacrificing an unacceptable amount of precision.

So, in the end, I went the other way around: the Locust nanites was modified to be larger, with a small fabricator which could build the normal nanites. This allowed "fire and forget" fabbers, shells which could construct entire minefields,a vastly reduced "killer three," where a commander would be unable to fight off an attack due to not having the full production in place, reclamation mines, and all sorts of other things which would probably suck for the other guy. After about three minutes of tests, simulations, and designs proving unstable and grey goo-ing small areas before I shut them down, I had it finalized.The design of the original fabricator was kept in factories as it was already efficient enough, as was the one in most normal fabricator bots, though they all had the option to release a blob of the new bots should the need arise.

On the commander, support commander, and combat fabricators, however, I used the new variant, as it allowed commander type units to establish the basis of an economy much faster, lowering the "killer three," to a "killer one," lowering the chances of me getting caught with my pants down by something which could kill me before I was surrounded in tanks, doxi, and static defenses to a minimum.

Next off, I made my various factories and structures hexagonal, for a more efficient use of space. It took me all of fifteen seconds to do this, as the actual fabricators and arms and other pieces were pretty flexible in how they could be placed. I don't need to really say anything else on the design, other than it could now release units from three edges instead of two.

I made a couple of other minor changes, like restoring the original Gil-E design, since it was goddamn adorable, changing the paint from the default blue and orange scheme programmed into a much more pleasing dark indigo/yellow-green with gray highlights, removing the teleporter limitations on number of channels sustained, making all of my naval units submersible because the fact I only had two that actually had that capability was a crime, giving the anchor another two anti-orbital guns for a total of four, and some general bug fixing which was pretty boring.

I did a better insight into my tech, so I probably won't accidentally part of a planet when testing out a change and something goes wrong. again. Redesigning nuke launchers to have three nukes instead of one, and altering the warhead so I could set it to the unstable part of a resource core to achieve a bigger boom only blew about a sixteenth of the planetary mass off, which was fairly easy to put back, once I had finished reclaiming and replacing it.

After all that, I finally looked at the stuff I was really excited about: Titans. What I found was a bit of a disappointment. The only one that had more than one gun was the Ares, which had three. They were powerful guns, to be fair, but it was still a much lower number than I would like. So, I pulled open the design tab, And got to work.

The first thing I did was extend the chassis back three times its current length, thus giving me room for moar gun. Then I added another one of the big guns, three or four of the smaller ones, and a grossly overpowered fabber, because a self replicating BOLO-lite was a fun thought. On top of that, I had some storm flak batteries, some SAMs, and to top it off, a modified version of the Zeus' Lightning gun, which was a sphere of crackling energy in between six arms, so it could fire at anything in range, almost constantly. It also was unstable enough that a bad hit to the containment arms would cause it to violently detonate, which lead to the rest of the newly dubbed Mars class Hover-Fortress exploding as well.

Seeing as I had added a half dozen resource cores because dammit, I want to be able to use the hover-tank as a makeshift commander chassis, the whole thing tended to turn an area roughly a kilometer in diameter of pretty glass with all sorts of new and exciting shapes protruding from the ground. I made the sphere able to dissipate harmlessly and the arms stow able, so I didn't give them Deathstar weaknesses all of the time. Oh, and it had a frontal assault bay with a t1 bot factory equivalent now so I could have it puke Doxes (Doxi?) and other bots onto my enemy's doorstep.

Next off was the Zeus. Again, I made the chassis much longer, added a bunch of anti-air, anti-ground, and a tiny bit of anti-orbit, but after that, I decided to do something special. This lead to it being able to shift forms from a relatively slow flying fortress of FUCK-OFF into a static, hovering turret of FUCK-OFF and lightning. Also mines. Lots and lots of mines. It could now lay mines anywhere. They weren't terribly strong, but they were cool looking and I don't care about your opinions on plasma imaginary person I'm talking to. I decided to call it the Jupiter-class Aerial clearer Titan.

Then the Atlas, which I wasn't looking forward to naming, and had the most wrong with it. To start with, I made it a more monkeylord like design, because a spine like it currently had is a weak point. It had an additional set of seismic batteries, which actually worked on gravity pulses instead of sheer weight, which would be neat to see used somewhere once I figure out how to make them coherent. Then I added a bunch of smaller guns, because with four seismic arm thingies it could clear quite a bit of space per stomp. Then a smaller fabber than the one on the Mars, which let it repair other units, like the other combat bot fabbers. Finished, I named it the Gaia-class Earthquake titan, because apparently the damn Romans were too lazy to rename some of the titans, the bastards they are.

And finally, the Helios. It was a fairly interesting and solid design on its own, but of course, I modified it. it was now a mobile fleet station, with a set of orbital factories mounted onto a lengthened axis, with eight sets of spinny doodads. Five of those were factories, with the third from the bottom being a teleporter so I could send units directly to the surface from being built. Also more guns, and then I was done. The Apollo-Class Planetary assault titan was done.

After this, I took some time to test the various designs, bug fix them, then just wait for resources to stockpile for when I got my new commander chassis done.

 

[Glitchrr36]

So I mentioned before that my commander had weird stability problems. Turns out it doesn't. However it is still derpy as hell so I'm redesigning it. The GambitDFA design was a quad type, so it already was not as prone to tipping as I originally thought, because progenitor super-science STRONK.

The fabricator, main weapon, and main Sensor nodes were all on this wide turret thing, which wasn't all that great, so I changed it. The Fabber was now twinned, and mounted on number of small launcher tentacle things exiting the undercarriage. The gun stayed roughly where it was, but was rebalanced, changed to the more conventional Ubercannon, and placed upright, with all the other smaller rocket launchers placed on the sides and top.

I added a set of wing turrets with the Ant class tank (which were again, renamed, because BOLO was reserved for the real deal, or something close to it.) guns, because one never has enough dakka. After this, I added another pair of legs, giving me a nice, bug-like commander for my aesthetic desires.

After that, I compressed some stuff down, and made the whole thing a bit larger, so I could fit three resource cores. I finally moved the sensors to the front of the body, and replaced the "head" with a variant of the Invictus classe's, with more eyes because I like things with lots of eyes.

After that was complete, I set to building the new model, after transfering my AI cores, Resource Cores, and other important bits over to a little shed, where they would be slotted into the new body when it was time. I had to redesign a bot factory to be able to support a vacuum, since contamination would be bad for the various finicky systems my other units do not have, and contamination could lead to explosions, which in a unit with a resource core is Very Bad.

The Resource cores are extremely slow to build, as almost every single molecule needs to be aligned perfectly to prevent it from being either non functional or extremely unstable, neither of which I wanted to deal with. The main Chassis was finished first, so I had a fabber pick up the various cores, bring them into an airlock, have everything scrubbed down, then had the cores placed in, after which they were sealed off from the world with what would be a hiss if there was any air. After twenty minutes, the first ZwischenzugSRMW class commander was launched.

As I strolled off the ramp, I got a ping from one of the Radar emplacements I had set up because I'm somewhat paranoid of being caught with my pants down so to speak. The weird gate I had found earlier and not been able to do anything with had activated. A quickly constructed Astraeus from my fledgling orbital shipyards picked up my new commander, and brought me over to the Gate. Arbitrary opening requirements AND a massive drain to my energy reserves. Swell.

I was fairly sure it lead to a supposedly "fictional" universe, in which I would have to fight something or other to an arbitrary point, after which I would come back here, finish assimilating tech, and then go somewhere else.

With that in mind, I stepped into the drop pod, and shot through to a whole new universe, probably full of things that really want me dead. Well, no time like the present, whenever that is. I sent a final order for everything to shut down until I returned so I don't accidentally mine up the entire planet. I'll save the ideas for Ex Nihilo resource buildings for later. For now, let's get this show on the motherfucking road.

=======
The first thing I noticed about the planet, while targetting my LZ was that I recognized it. The shape of the continents, the gleam of the cities on the darkside, and the metal nodes located near familiar tectonic plates told me all I needed to know.

Earth, or at least some version of it. Checking the city lights against what I could remember suggested roughly "modern" earth, probably around the early 2010s if what I could tell from the scrambled signals as I plummeted to earth through a shell of plasma and ECM to prevent my detection as I aimed for the Atlantic. I always liked the ocean, and what better way to kick off the subjugation liberation of the multiverse than slamming into some underwater mountains that I thought were cool? There wasn't any, for the record.

As I braced for impact, I noted how much less awful this landing was than the one that brought me to Icehole, as I had taken to calling my little hubworld. Smoother, less Plasma, and a much less jarring stop made this luxurious in comparison.

And...three...two...one...Splashdown! Now I'm slowly sinking towards depths I am confident won't crush me. Wait. Shit. I don't have sub fabricators or factories. Well, that is a problem for me to deal with once I stop sinking. Sonar is reading a bottom, so, with that, I will settle in and start designing some stuff which will be crude but effective.

I settled for a modification of the Barracuda with fabricators instead of torpedo tubes for my T1, and a larger version, somewhere in between the Barracuda and Kraken, for T2. I named it the Guppy and Sturgeon, respectively.

Twenty three minutes later, I had a modest base set up, with my fabricator subs building more of the submarine factories, metal extractors, and energy generators. The metal extractors were set up on glowing lava fields that were not boiling the surrounding ocean only because of the extreme pressure which made it a pretty cool sight to watch as ghostly light spread across the sea floor through the extreme power of divergent plate boundaries.

As I was engrossed with childish wonder, I split of a piece of consciousness to monitor the fabrication subs looking for submarine internet cables which I planned on splicing into to see exactly where I am if possible. Ah! there one is. Now if I just build this here I can-

[WARNING! MAJOR QUANTUM EVENT DETECTED!]

Wait what?

 

[Glitchrr36]

I forgot to say this earlier but thank you @Argus Yomoflach for beta-ing stuff some! and now here is a new chapter. I'll probably have an omake/interlude thing next because I need to figure out character interaction on the fly, and will be doing something easy to figure out the basics. Luckily, most characters in the setting are pretty flat compared to other things. Anyway, here is the chapter.

===================================================================================

What the fuck? What could possibly cause an event large enough to count as "major," which I had just found to mean "15.34 thousand times larger than a standard teleporter activating," and why the hell was it on Earth? Since the sonar platforms I set up didn't detect anything in the ocean within 800 kilometers of me, I was safe from it, but I would have to look into it later on the internet to see if 4chan or somebody knew.

Since splicing into cables was something I wanted to be careful about, so I don't bring attention to myself by dropping everyone on the east coast's connection to stuff on European servers, I decided to put that on a separate consciousness stream, which was a fairly odd thing to think about now that I think about it, and dedicate the rest to figuring out what the fuck my sensors were that allowed me to tell how many tuna were swimming in a school twelve kilometers away and why I could estimate their individual positions.

It turns out a progenitor "sonar" is not just a really advanced sonar, but also an underwater radar, which I'm not sure would work without bullshit, a visual sensor with similar clarity to Hubble post refit, that also worked underwater, a sensor that measured minute differences in waterflow from hundreds of kilometers away, and what I'm fairly sure is a gravity sensor. The only reasons you couldn't tell what your opponent was doing from across the planet in a PA match were the weird scaling on planets, and the utterly absurd stealth systems on everything. I'm fairly sure the only reason you could detect enemy units in visual range was because there was an almost imperceptible shimmer around their stealthed forms.

It would make them invisible to the naked eye, but the Hubble-resolution GoPros that everything had was capable of detecting it and piecing together what the unit was. I'm not sure how the Kraken prevents gravity sensors from noticing it, but researching that tidbit will have to wait though, since I had finally got into the internet, and needed to sort through a large amount of material to figure out what was going on, and wow that is a lot of porn.

First off, the date was important. the seventeenth of october, 2017. I then checked the news sites, since if anything had actual information about what the quantum event was, they would, and I refused to look at conspiracy sites for this, because if they had anything remotely useful it would be buried under dozens of reasons why the united states caused it to give children autism or something.

================================================================

"OCTOBER 17th- CATEGORY III KAIJU "YAMARASHI" ATTACKS LOS ANGELES, DEFEATED BY GIPSY DANGER AND PARAGON ACTUAL.

It had been about five hours after the event, and thanks to CNN I finally knew where I was. Good old Pacific Rim, where bullshit metals existed, space aliens threw godzilla wannabes at people to try to exterminate them, and I would have to destroy what was at the very least a galactic power entity. Fun. Well, if commanders weren't built to conquer galaxies, nothing was.

First of all, I would need to get into the Pacific, which would take a while, as I was in the middle of the atlantic and I doubt any port authority would react well to me trying to sneak a fabricator boat through the Panama Canal. My vessels were fast, but it would still take a twelve hours to reach the Mariana Islands, time which I spent hacking, pirating, and downloading everything that might be remotely useful to me later, including the entire contents of YouTube and several other video sites, everything I may want to listen to from any music library, and just about every juicy detail from the super secret government databases that weren't fully isolated, out of which I got nothing I didn't already have a better version of, though the stuff on psychics was interesting, and I'd be using it to figure stuff out when it came to be pressing.

What else did I find...apparently Pacific Rim had never even been proposed, which somehow I was expecting, a democratic candidate I hadn't heard of, and probably didn't actually run had been elected to presidency in 2016, ISIS is still trying to be scary but everyone is too busy with fucking giant monsters being punched by giant robots, and the fact that the construction methods, materials, and technologies of said giant robots were very top secret.

The data was stored somewhere in a secure server in alaska, which was annoying, because I wanted whatever the hell those mechs were made of because they could withstand eight tons per square inch, with an arm removed. If feats like that didn't suggest that these metals were durable and strong as hell nothing did. Hence, I wanted them. Badly.

Well, I'm planning to talk with some people, so maybe I can get the shinies out of a diplomatic agreement as a requirement for my cooperation. Well, whatever I do, as shinies can wait until I actually have a plan. In the meantime, I should probably have more dedicated submarines, since the four units and two factories along with the ability for any surface units to submerge and be effectively helpless unless they had torpedoes, and then I'm not sure how much damage they would be able to do. Thus, I will start designing soon.

From what random trivia about the movie I memorized, I should have another few months before the next attack. I think it was April of 2018, which would give me time, should I decide that it is a sane, reasonable course of action, to convert most of the planet's mass into killbots, which would probably piss of the natives. So, before I do something spectacularly stupid like the other, really dumb, probably will end in fire thing I'm planning, I'm going to need to get my zombies in a row for the easiest massacre, as long as they were cool zombies like the tar guy, not stupid, boring zombies like the ones in walking dead or whatever. Tar guy was cool. You have to be a pretty cool zombie to overshadow a topless female zombie who also appears in your movie. Wait, I'm getting sidetracked again. Bad computer brain. Bad!

In other news, this was really boring. I wanted to get some stuff set up before I talked with the PPDC, so that even if I don't get the tech I can just I have a backup which will hopefully mean that the Wall is never needed, and then steal the tech anyways. Either way, I get the tech, and the kaiju get progenitor grade mines to their face. Everybody wins! Except the kaiju. They can sod off.

Wow waiting is boring. Better get started on my poor life choices.

 

[Glitchrr36]

If he thought about it, the job wasn't really all that bad. Do homework, eat pizza, keep the brats from breaking something or maiming themselves. Piece of cake. Except the little bastards wouldn't stop fucking screaming. Jacob Damocles grit his teeth, and continued working on the engineering checkpoint that he had procrastinated for a few days and was due by the end of the week.

Eventually, he got the people who were paying for this's "pwecious angews," to bed. Finally. It was goddamn nine. They were supposed to be in bed at seven. Two whole hours of additional screaming because some parents couldn't tell their kids "No you can't have soda, it will keep you up and make the babysitter's life a living hell." He couldn't fault them entirely, the kids had eaten a whole can of frosting while he wasn't looking. But thank god it was over. He settled in after finishing the checkpoint to four or five hours of YouTube, forum bullshit, and relaxation. Until he heard a knock on the door.

"Who the hell is knocking on a door this late?" It wasn't that late for him, but it was still well past the point where normal people knocked on random doors.

"Whatever, I'll just ignore it."

It continued.

"God. FUCKING. Damnit."

He got up, went to the door, and had the unpleasant surprise of his visitor being some asshate prankster who thought ringing a doorbell then running was the pinnacle of practical jokes. Goddamn delinquents. All the more proof to his philosophy of "people are idiots until proven otherwise." He was going to turn around, and be thankful they didn't try a bag full of flaming dogshit.

"Uh, hi," a voice that was loud, synthesized, and yet strangely familiar called out from the darkness of the Texas night. Jacob slowly turned around, wondering which one of the various people he knew was hiding in the bushes with a voice changer.

"All right, very funny, whoever it is can come out of the bushes now. I'm trying to keep these kids asleep, so if you could turn it down the volume that would be appreciated. If you don't, I'm going back inside to eat some more pizza."

"Oh, fuck, I forgot to turn of the stealth didn't I?" The voice called out again, though thankfully at a volume that wasn't somewhere between "shouting," and "Jackhammer." And then Jacob's jaw hit the floor.

Where once there was nothing, now there was a forty five foot tall, six legged, goddamn fucking giant robot, complete with weird spider leg/tentacle things on the bottom, and a huge fucking cannon that was significantly larger than the car he had driven up in. It looked down at him with six glowing green eyes.

"What," was all he could manage after what felt like an eternity.

"I've been wondering that myself, actually. So, you should come out here so we can talk."

"This is the beginning of seven or eight horror movies, you do realize. Why the hell should I listen to the invisible fucking space robot? You could just be a new kaiju or something that popped out of the Atlantic or some shit."

"Wrong on the second, right on the first. As near as I can figure, I'm an alternate version of you who woke up as a Commander from the video game Planetary Annihilation."

"What. How does that even make any sense?"

"How the fuck am I supposed to know? I've been a giant robot for two or three weeks, after falling from orbit on a planet covered in ice, then I shot through this gate thingy after fulfilling arbitrary goals. My best guess so far is that ROB is a dick."

Jacob froze. He knew that line. One of the people he knew from a game had introduced him to a site where he had heard that line. He was seriously reconsidering his choice that "alcohol is bad to drink while in front of nine year olds, and also illegal for an eighteen year old to possess."

"We're both in a fucking fanfiction, aren't we."

"Most likely, yes."

"Do you have a squishy organic body in there, or is it just metal?"

"Metal. Though I do have some goddamn kickass computational bits in here."

"Of course. So, why the hell are you here?"

"I was going to see if I/you existed in this world, and if so, proceed to do something which could probably be referred to as "trolling." So far, it is working. Also I have nothing to do since it's going to be another few hours before my fabricator subs reach the Breach so I can kill almost all the kaiju, hybridize and shrink two and keep them as a pet, kick the piss out of the fuckers who created them, then leave and probably get my teeth kicked in by some planet sized deathbeast or something. Also, I pimped out your computer while you weren't looking. You are welcome for that."

"Well, thanks, I guess. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go make sure the little monsters I'm babysitting are still asleep."

"You do that. I'm going to get back to the Atlantic, and continue to build up and fuck I could have just used an air transport the whole time."

With that, the robot became invisible once more, and Jacob finally felt his knees collapse as the light but unmistakable footfalls receded into the distance.

"Well. I'm going to try to pretend that never happened. Preferably without doing anything stupid."

And with that, he got up walked back to the couch, and sat quivering for a while.

"Wait...How the hell did he knock on the door?"

The computer popped up a new window. It was a youtube video, and as it played he suppressed a groan. Of course the robot version of himself would have anticipated the question, and used the response that was now playing.

Spoiler

 

[Glitchrr36]

Fucking finally. I got a guppy to the marianas, and I'm going to do something they should have done in canon. Line the entire Breach area in mines. Not piddly "Will probably sink a battleship" mines like they actually have, but progenitor "Will blow a hole through forty five centimeters of progenitor alloys given half a chance," mines. If they get out of the breach, they ain't doing so without a face full of some chemical which mixing with TNT would make less explosive.

If I'm correct in assuming kaiju skin is tough enough to tank nuclear weapons at lower yields, which I probably am, since I remember the movie with almost perfect clarity, given the fact I had watched it twelve or thirteen times, and could quote parts of the movie even without my bullshit progenitor memory banks.

If this was, in fact the correct assumption, the mines I had placed would injure them, but not kill so the Jaegers could claim victory, which would ensure that the glorious propaganda machine remains strong, and in turn people have hope or some bullshit. Mostly I just want to watch them beat the shit out of each other.

In the meantime, I get to design some subs right quick and then talk to the PPDC, UN, and probably Pentecost, who has one of the coolest names I have ever heard. I think he would be the easiest to deal with, because he is, as far as I'm aware, genuinely willing to work with questionable allies to save everybody. Look at his dealing with Chau, who was glorious, charismatic scum.

So, Submarines. Let's list what I need: Ballistic Missile, something for dedicated minelaying, and redesigning my fabricators and factory so they aren't just barracudas and slightly larger barracudas.

I'll start with the factory and fabricators, those will be the easiest. The redesign for the factory was similar to the naval factory, but with a base on it that could let a submarine sink out if it was located in the water column, or swim out if it was on the bottom. Looked a bit similar to a vehicle factory to be honest.

The fabricators, on the other hand, would be different. The basic one took most of its design from the Dolphin Scout Sub, but was twice as wide and had a set of retractable arms underneath to spray nanobots onto things. The advanced version was based around the Barracuda-class Attack Sub, and was again wider, but this time, I added a lot of arms, making it much more powerful, and also making it look a bit like a robot spider sub. I kept the names, Guppy and Sturgeon.

The minelayer was going to be more difficult, as I had nothing of comparable function outside of the Barnacle, which I think could build Jellyfish. Since a quick double check showed that they did, so I just took the fabricator off of the design, copied it and built a larger hull that resembled two krakens partially fused together with all of the launch bays replaced with mine dispersal units and fabricators. These same fabbers could also repair other infrastructure and units, which was helpful. After this, I added additional armor, and some legs that could unfurl along the sides allowing it to not create jet noise. I named it the Lobster. I started building fifty to go continue reinforcing the Breach.

The ballistic missile sub was going to be a pain. For one thing, nuke launchers were large. And considering I wanted to make this the best damn ballistic sub this side of ever, I was going to need something that was just shy of being considered a titan. First, I took a pair of standard, non-enhanced nuke launchers. Then, I added six anti-nuke tubes, with the missiles themselves having significantly upgraded range. After that, I added an orbital launcher, because the thing was already huge, why not make it bigger?

I change my mind, this was, in fact, a titan type unit. I'm calling it the Leviathan-class Ballistic Titan, and renaming the Leviathan battleship to the Cetus. Anyway, the whole internal structure was finished, I just had to edit the parts that were the nuke and orbital launchers for stowability, since those big towers were asking to get ripped off by a Kaiju if I didn't. The normal nuke launchers beefed up in the fabrication department, allowing my prodigious economy to be used to full effect and produce missiles in seconds. The tower piece folded into the hull, just leaving the launch pad to the ocean. The Orbital, on the other hand, was very different.

The actual orbital launcher took a fair bit of time to build things, and it was thus a requirement for a Leviathan to stay at the surface when using it, which was unfortunate, because I would love to be able to pop it up, fire off a fabricator, and get orbit. I of course had to settle for more overpowered fabricators, and then the arm telescoped down and folded over the launch pad, and was then covered by a blast door.

The hull looked a little like the Mars, only much larger, and with a rounded nose and less fins. And fewer guns, though I added some lasers ripped off the dual laser turret for point defense, as well as lots more missiles of both the light anti-air type found on smaller units and the heavier anti-everything type found on Stingrays. And with that, I was done.

==========================

I was finally ready to make contact with people who are very important, and, in doing so, kick canon in the kidneys, steal their wallet, and piss on their mother's corpse. So more or less a normal Tuesday for me now because I'm a giant fucking robot, holy shit, that just sunk in. Wow. Took it long enough.

So yeah, Pentecost. I've already hacked four-fifths of the communications systems, internet stuff, stock market controlling servers, and anything else that wasn't completely isolated. The other fifth was really, really weird porn I didn't particularly want on my databanks. I can initiate the call at any time, and was really just trying to decide what my avatar and voice would be. Reapers were cliched, claptrap was obnoxious, and I couldn't think of any other good AI voices to impersona-

Wait.

I've got it.

I'm an idiot for not thinking of this sooner.

The avatar was going to be a red sphere with some other gubbins, kind of like QAI. It looked cool, and I could always say that I was protecting my identity, with the slightly synthesized voice I would use lending weight to this statement.

With all of my preparations in place, I connected to the PPDC, and opened up a computer terminal. Making sure it wasn't some random person on their phone, and was in fact, someone who was important was the first thing I did. It was, wouldn't you know it, Pentecost. Not sure why he was in there instead of martialing, but I assume it was debriefs. After all, there had been a kaiju attack a twelve hours ago. Popping up a new window that showed my Avatar, I spoke.

"Greetings Mr Pentecost. I am an interested third party, and I would like to negotiate the removal of the Kaiju from your world."

 

[Glitchrr36]

Pentecost sure looked calm for a man who just had a weird red ball thing and an unfamiliar voice speak up from his work computer that was had some of the best security the UN could afford. I think he does this because someone above you being extremely calm is more terrifying than them screaming. Sure it may hurt your ears more, but you can easily tell where you stand with someone furious. The quiet ones where the ones who snapped and killed people.

Obviously, the marshal watching the scream trying to come up with a response more professional than what I would have said in his position, which, for the record, is, "Who the fuck are you, how the shit are you on this terminal, what the piss do you want, and why should I not call the PPDC?" It took him another few minutes, which I spent trying to figure out how to play Pong with a pair of barracudas and a jellyfish. After those were up, I sadly moved my mine back to where it was and put the subs back on patrol before turning my full attention back to him.

"Who are you, how did you access this terminal, what do you want, and you have two minutes to answer those questions starting after this sentence before I call the PPDC."

Huh. Almost exactly what I would have said, with a bit less swearing. I spent a few subjective minutes pondering how best to answer this question, while less than a millisecond passed in real time.

"In order, you may call me Commander Glitch, I gained access through brute forcing the passwords and uplinking to the terminal, and I would like to help end the threat of the Kaiju, and some other things which are better left to the actual negotiations, as this is probably unofficial and thus nothing other than words and information will be exchanged."

He considered my words, and after about fifteen seconds, which was spent simulating submarine Pong, had his reply.

"You have my attention. More detail, please"

Hell Yes! I'm talking to a guy who would end up opening the path for another guy to save the world. But not anymore. Now he would die of cancer because Commanders made war, not love or peace or anything that included medicine.

"I am, as I mentioned, an interested third party in the war you currently have going on. Namely, I want humanity to win, because if humanity wins, it gives me a chance to wipe the sons of bitches that make the kaiju off the face of the universe."

He looked stunned for a second. "I'm sorry, but did you say make? If you are correct, how could you possibly know this? None of the probes we've tried sending through the breach have returned anything except a fraction of a second of garbled noise, then static. No other government or private venture has the technology to send things through."

Heh. I was rolling with laughter at his statement, on the inside. My commander body was on autopilot, building storage, extractors, and generators, and starting to add some torpedo launchers to the Breach's defense network, and my Avatar merely let out a light chuckle.

"To address your first question, yes, the kaiju are made. The species that created them uses the Category I through IV kaiju as fodder, to locate and cripple any possible points of resistance. Category V kaiju are designed to destroy anything that hasn't already been reduced to a graveyard.

"Their masters are...unusual. I've never been able to piece together their exact goals, which mostly seems to be somewhere between strip mining solar systems and colonizing them, with what may be some crusade aspects thrown in, given that the castes/ forms possess names that are religious in nature. I'm not sure who came up with them, so I don't know if the names have any bearing on their actual purpose."

"So, if they are made, what lies on the other side of the Breach? A factory?"

"For a given meaning of factory, yes. But at the same time something not unlike a breeding mill. From what I can recall, it orbits a dying star, is filled with colors just outside normal perception, and has cages everywhere for kaiju. It looks like something out of a really cheesy video game, to be honest."

"And you know this, how? A stranger telling me he can end the kaiju appearing out of nowhere, hacking into one of the most secure data networks on the planet, and knowing why this whole war started is a little suspicious, correct?

"Perfectly reasonable. If you want to know something other than veiled half truths, lies, and statements that are technically correct if you squint hard enough, I will tell you. I'm not human, for the most part, which is something I'm still trying and failing to figure out. A mind upload is probably a fairly correct term for what I am. I ended up on this Earth, and thus I want to fix the issues with it, and obtain things that would be helpful to boot."

"And what might someone who claims to be powerful enough to destroy the kaiju and their supposed masters want?"

"Namely? Jaeger technology. I have some advanced materials, but I'm hard pressed to design something that works that smoothly at those sizes. Also, your reactors, especially on the as-of-yet unbuilt MK4s and MK5 designs are intriguing, since all I know is some vague names which don't tell me much. And, to top it all off, I want the ability to make some of your weapons. Dark matter, the plasma technologies, and even the missiles and cannons could prove useful, or get me started on an interesting tangent.

"In return, in addition to at the very least disorienting kaiju for a period of time, if not outright killing them, I would be willing to update your Jaegers to the point where they could defend your planet from most threats that could arise."

He was pensive for a few seconds, before replying. "A fair deal. However, before any of your requests can be met, we need proof. I assume this isn't a problem?"

"Of course not! I'd be worried if you didn't. I think the next Breach incidence is in May, so have cameras or a jaeger near the edge of the trench and I will be more than happy to demonstrate for you. If you have any other questions, I'll be happy to answer them. I have just shy of eight months to prepare, spending another twenty minutes discussing things with you would be fine."

"None at the moment, we can talk again, potentially with the rest of the PPDC after the next event."

"Well, I'll be looking forward to that. Until then, goodbye."

And with that I closed the window.

That went well. Still, he probably was too professional to just tell me I'm full of crap. Though, once I turned the darkest part of the ocean into the brightest for a few seconds from all the explosions, his doubts would be assauged, and I could get access to all sorts of sweet, juicy technology.
I'm kind of surprised how well that went even with my malus of having next to no experience talking to people I don't know. For now, all I had to do was wait. And, to break the boredom of waiting, I would be playing sub Pong and browsing the internet and reading all of those fanfictions I never got around to.

This is going to suck so much.

=====================================================================

Past me was right. After two weeks, I had enough metal extractors and generators to power the construction of a metal planet. After a month, at about twelve times mental acceleration, I'd gone through all of the non garbage fanfiction I cared to read. After another month, I was banned from any multiplayer video game because I had a perfect 100+/0/0 win/lose/draw ratio, and everyone thought I was cheating somehow. In another month, I had watched tens of billions of YouTube videos. Another two weeks, and I had played submarine Pong to the point where I was bored. And guess what, there was still another four months before the goddamn kaiju showed up, and I wanted to be trustworthy and not take all of the data on everything before I proved I could walk the walk.

With this in mind, I did the closest thing a commander could do to sleeping, and put myself in hibernation mode.

With a final farewell to the world, I shutdown my higher logic functions, and turned everything except stealth off.

=============================================================

And four months, right on the money. Glad that worked. I had a few days to get ready for the kaiju, and to prove "Hey, this asshole means what he says."

This was going to be so fun~

Wait, how the fuck did I just pronounce a tilde?

 

[Glitchrr36]

Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday, I had lots of homework. So here is the new chapter, fresh off the presses!


The swarm of jellyfish was beautiful, though they weren't quite the same as they had been earlier. When I reactivated, I thought to myself, "Glitch, why just use mines? Why not use mines that move towards other explosions?"

Well past me, that is a wonderful idea. So, after twenty seconds of subjective time adding a tiny set of motive thrusters, I updated all of my jellyfish so that once the kaiju exits and hits one, they all start drifting towards it. I think it will be amusing. Like the Three Stooges, but with hi-ex and giant monsters.

The Jellyfish swarm wasn't all I had down there though. Hovering just above the trench was a cordon of torpedo launchers and submarines, all of which were aimed to the gash in the fabric of reality, five thousand meters below. I had less than three hours at maximum, and I was ready to destroy this fucker.

I'd also added some torpedo tubes to the leviathan, but that wasn't all that important.

The PPDC had decided to oblige my request, and had actually sent a jaeger. Nova Hyperion, if I was receiving the correct broadcast signal. I was kind of surprised, given how Most of what I had said sounded like utter malarkey.

Since the Jaeger didn't appear in canon, I've decided it would be prudent to note what it looks like.

It was very lithe, which was probably a good thing given that both of its Rangers were olympic fencers. Kind of angular, with sort-of-pauldrons, that looked like they housed a missile launcher or something. I approve.

The melee side of things was a long, thin blade that was probably super heated, judging by the patterns of heat stress, which seemed consistent with testing out the heating coils I had found referenced in some maintenance manuals I had, uh, "borrowed" from a PPDC server. The other hand was a plasma caster, a little more advanced than pre-refit Gypsy's, for ranged combat.

It also seemed pretty damned fast, as it had just dropped about twenty kilometers out fifteen minutes ago, and was now five away from the edge. It made sense. Fencing relied on a lot of quick movement, so a faster Jaeger probably suited them well. And they were now crouching for some reason. Hmmm.

Just to be on the safe side, I'll be sending a little heads up warning, as the crouch they were assuming looked like they were going to try to jump in. Which would set off the Jellyfish, killing them and ruining the surprise for the kaiju.

"<I would recommend not jumping into the trench at this time. I have filled it with mines, so it could cause irreparable damage to both the Jaeger and my plans.>"

They looked startled, as an unfamiliar voice had just announced that should they not do something that made sense, if they were going to witness a Kaiju being destroyed. I'd helpfully translated it into Korean, because I'm a nice guy like that.

A few seconds later, a voice coming from who I assume the local Marshal confirmed my request as an order.

"<If the crazy person says stay out of the trench, stay out of the trench. If something happens with his explosives or whatever, you are safe and get to walk to shallow water to be picked up. If none of the things he said would happen do, you are in an immediate position to stop or slow a kaiju from making it to the shallows, which will give plenty of time to airlift reinforcements from Tokyo or Sydney.>"

He obviously had less faith than Pentecost did. I wasn't going to complain. Now we wait.

[WARNING! MAJOR QUANTUM EVENT DETECTED!]

Showtime. That was convenient.
==================================================================

The first thing I noticed were the erratic readings my sensors were receiving. Distances to the bottom fluctuated from a few hundred to a few million meters almost constantly, temperature readings spiked at random, and gravitational sensor reported something both astronomically dense and as having almost no gravitational pull. It was pretty weird.

Next, I noticed the shape of something pulling out. And boy, was it ugly. A towering cranium rose from a small head, looking like someone knocked a tree over and glued a section of the trunk to a dopey turtle/sloth love child with a superman jaw. The singular claws on its forelimbs were a bit threatening, but whatever the hell the tail was made me more nervous.

I waited a few minutes for it to finish scrabbling its way out of the breach. It had all of the grace of an elephant seal on land. I almost pitied the damned thing, but the fact it started roaring loud enough I was fairly sure my commander heard it from the Atlantic put all of those thoughts to rest.

And then it entered the minefield.

It was instantaneous, it brushed up against a nearly invisible mine, which exploded along its flank. It seemed to howl in pain, which was swiftly cut short as the mines started tracking towards it, engulfing it in a conflagration that my subs could detect from above. As they started to die down, all mines in range having expended themselves, I got a look at the bastard.

He wasn't in fighting shape anymore, to stay the least. One of his arms was sitting on the seabed a few hundred meters away, a blue trail from where it had been flung through the water marking its path. The other arm was dangling uselessly, hanging on to mere sinews and skin. Most of its tree trunk had been shorn off, and its mysterious tail was shattered.

But it was still alive, and we couldn't have that. So I ordered the subs to open fire. Streaks of cavitation bubbles followed their paths, before the torpedoes detonated on the beast, sending great chunks of giblets in every direction, ending it for good. I bet the precursors will enjoy watching this shitstorm.

Now, for a test. I send in a guppy, who begins to cut out a chunk of meat big enough to insert itself into. Then I snickered because my idiot brain had thought up something stupid.

"Oh submarine-kun, please be gentle, I've never had someone do this to me before~"

Man I should become a comedian after this whole conquering the multiverse thing is over.

So, guppy encased, I had a few Sturgeons lift the chunk, and drop it on the breach.

As it falls, I prepare for my first look at the anteverse. Thirty seconds later, I hit the layer of energy-

-and the signal dies as a puff of disintegrated metal and flesh rises from where it had been.

Well that didn't work.

 

[Glitchrr36]

As an apology for not updating in the past few days, you get a longer than average chapter, and another one probably later today, since I realized if I had continued writing and gotten everything in this chapter I would be pushing 3-4k words.

Huh. Well at least I know now that there is some list of bullshit requirements I probably have to fulfill to actually get through. I'd better get to it.

Oh, but I also need to talk to the PPDC.

I would have problems with this because I really want to spend time figuring this out, and the PPDC has started pinging the contact I left for them, but you know. Split consciousnesses and all that.

I'll talk to the PPDC first. Testing the breach is going to be "take chunk of kaiju flesh, stick probe that consists of a sensor package, a small generator, and a transmitter into the Breach, drop it in, modify each test slightly until I have a good enough understanding of the mechanism it filters through, figure out how to bypass it, then bring hell down upon them.

====================================================================

"How may I help you, gentlebeings of the PPDC? Care for a plate of kaiju steak?" And they are thrown off guard by a weird statement, just like I intended. Not going to exploit it, because exploiting your own dickishness was rude in some social circles, and I wasn't sure how these guys rolled yet.

"Um, no. No, we would prefer not to. But thank you…Commander, correct?" No idea who that bastard was.

[Ambassador Cole, from polity "United States of America"]
Thank you, helpful head voice.

"I am a Commander, but for the purposes of this meeting, you may call me Glitch."

"Well then, uh, Glitch, the PPDC would like to formally thank you in the quick elimination of the Category III kaiju "Gorgon." Without your intervention, it probably would have caused severe damage to a city or the environment had it made landfall."

"No problem, Ambassador. I had done that so I could show I would deliver on my promise to help wipe the blight of the kaiju from this world. Even now I'm attempting to get through the Breach."

"Well, how is that working for you?" A different ambassador this time. The helpful head voice identifies him as from Peru.

"Not well as of yet, I'm afraid. I'm still collecting data, but I haven't gotten farther than ten meters beyond before I lose signal, and the returns from those are incoherent at best." And they are staring now. Not sure why. It's like they thought that ten meters was a huge distance or something.

"Well, in any case, we had heard you had some requests for your help. What are they? We heard Jaeger technology information was one of these requests, and we would like to know for sure." Cole again this time. Seemed like he was heading this meeting.

"Yes, the various materials, weapons, and other technologies used in the various Jaegers are something I'm curious about. If you accept, I will be sending a fabricator to scan all of the Jaegers with particularly interesting weapons systems, repair any damage for you, and then leave. I will then have what I want, you will have all of your Jaegers operational, and I can begin helping you, as our goals intersect."

"How would your possession of classified information aid us at all?" It's the japanese guy this time. I decided to just ignore names, since they all were thinking the same question, even if he was the one to voice it first.

"Let me answer you question with another question. How long does it take the PPDC to fix a burst capacitor in a plasmacaster? A few days, minimum? You have to remove the armor, pull out the mangled remains of the previous one, clean the whole section of burnt plastic and metal, make a new capacitor, put the new one in, reconnect it, do some testing, and then replace the armor. Speaking of armor, how long does that take to replace? Especially the larger pieces. If a kaiju takes a chunk out of the Jaeger's chest armor, you have to either repair the old one or build another, which given the size of the plates is not an easy process.

"I on the other hand, could fix a plasmacaster in seconds. Point a fabricator at the damaged part, turn it on, wait, turn it off. An armor piece would take minutes, and would be able to use the damaged section as material. A new Jaeger would take, at most, six hours to build, depending on resources. What possible reason would I have to not help? It doesn't benefit me much either way, and my admittedly lax in certain areas morals push me towards this option."

"Well, if that is the case, why not just fill the trench with mines, which you have shown fully capable of doing so? It saves the world trillions of dollars in Jaeger building, and is apparently fairly simple and easy for you to do."

Valid point, Mr. Japanese ambassador dude.

"A number of reasons, really. Firstly, I'm not going to fight your battle for you. The experiences you gain here with dealing with outside-context problems are precious. Many civilizations, to quote a much better speaker than me, encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. If you can, and will, beat the kaiju back, you can probably deal with much of what the universe will send your way.

"Second, I have other things to deal with. Integrating technology, which I will be acquiring by force if needed, isn't the fastest process, and I'd like to apply some things across a pretty wide variety of my arsenal, as well as get some groundwork laid for projects I have on the "hey wouldn't it be cool if I did this" phase.

"Third, the kaiju adapt. If I just keep blowing them to pieces, eventually one that isn't as easy to blow to pieces is going to slip past, get a bit closer to land, then die. The next will be even harder, and go farther. Eventually, one will make it past me and destroy Shanghai or Singapore or Seattle or something. I will not allow that to happen.

"Fourth, I have no idea what repeated large scale explosions at fairly short intervals will do to the trench, and by extension, the Breach. If I have a choice between letting a few people who signed up for it die, and accidentally destroying the planet, the Rangers can kiss their asses goodbye.

"Fifth, I'm still supporting you. The minefield will stay, just not as excessive as it was. I'm also going to be providing infinitely cheaper repair on the Jaegers, as well as the capability to have the parts fabricated for a fraction of the cost.

"Finally, and the dumbest reason, is there are a few really cool species of polychaete worm in the trench, and I would prefer not to drive them to extinction. These are my reasons, and I'm sticking to them. Do we have a deal?" I metaphorically leaned back, because I was fairly nervous, and waiting for their delegation to finish.

It was taking a few minutes, so continuing to slog through the titanic amount of stuff recovered from the internet was going to resume. Shit there was a lot of fanfiction left to go through.

=====================================================================
A few hours, one hundred twenty six thousand, nine hundred eighty two and 6/29ths fanfictions, and a very heated debate on my offer later, the had reached a decision.

"We have decided to accept your offer, after you prove good on it. You will be given the operational specifications, designs, and samples of certain technologies after you fix a Jaeger. Diablo Intercept is still fairly damaged, it took a direct hit to the power plant, and has significant damage to its weapons systems. You may start by repairing it."

Well, a little more order-ey than I liked, but it was their toys I wanted to play with, so I'd do what they asked. I queued a few submarine fabricators to start making their way towards Lima, where they would build vehicle fabricators actually repair the Jaeger.

Now, I finally had some data on the Breach, and could start figuring out how to get through.

=====================================================================

First and foremost, it was hot. A probe sent in during an earlier test recorded temperatures in the hundreds of thousands of degrees, at the minimum. Further testing showed the energy was kept out of full heat transfer with the water so that the surrounding hundred meters of water didn't boil, while allowing the tremendous energies poured into keeping it open to disperse their 'static' easily and not overload. I'm honestly kind of surprised the kaiju didn't just evaporate upon going through, but I have some evidence as to why that isn't the case which I'll detail later.

Next, the reason it had been placed in an ocean trench instead of, say, the middle of Mongolia, where it could attack everything like many other alien conquerors did had a myriad of reasons. Protection from just being bombed to the point that it collapsed was a relatively minor one, actually. The main reason is that the subduction zone produced by the Philippine, Marianas, and Pacific plates made a sizable amount of energy by slowly grinding up against each other like amateur porn actors. Or tectonic plates. That analogy works better. Anyway, this energy keeps the rift in spacetime stable enough that it doesn't collapse, and then force the Precursors to create another one, since I'm assuming sudden collapse isn't good on the weird generator thing they have creating it. Another is the heat sink action of the water, which keeps it from doing something unexpected.

I got a bit from what seemed to be the other side, but it was garbled, and even if it made it past the barrier separating worlds, it was destroyed by either the DNA lock, which seemingly has a time limit on when a specific genome works, or the 'closed' nature of the Breach at this point. I managed to get past that part once, which is where I found out about the DNA lock. Simply more things to check when the damn thing started to stabilize, since I couldn't invade until then.

What I actually was able to make out was strange, but roughly what I expected- an almost bacterial looking selection of distorted irises and webby looking things, whose purpose I was unable to determine.
But I did find one, particularly infuriating thing out about this whole destroy the anteverse thing. I was going to be here for quite a while.

 

[Glitchrr36]

As promised, another chapter!

===============================================================================================================

My fabricators had arrived at the Lima Shatterdome. A few seconds later, the vehicle version was rolling up the beach, pinging the doors. I opened up communication with the on-site marshal

"I am Glitch. You were told I would be arriving soon. Please allow my fabricators in."

"I'm getting pings, but there isn't anything out there. I won't open until I'm sure you aren't just being a nuisance."

Whoops, forgot to turn off stealth. There it is.

"Better?"

"Yes, the door is opening just enough for them to get in."

"Understood."

As the fabbers rolled in through the titanic doors into the shatterdome bay, I panned my camera around, looking for the target of my visit. And that was actually a fair bit of damage. From what I could tell past the horribly scarred armor and detached arms was Diablo followed the Cherno Alpha Jaeger design philosophy, of Being big, tough, and able to hit twice as hard as your opponent, even if you have to be slow to do so. Massive fucking fists, a pair of bigass gatling cannons with a bore similar to an Iowa's main guns, and what looked like extendable spikes so the knuckles were spiky like some Chaos Space Marine armor piece. I liked it.

"So I may be able to fix the armor, but I can't do anything else without the specifications of everything, preferably in an electronic format.

"Oh, of course. Sending that to you now."

"Thank you."

And there was the data. An easy fix. My fabricators went to work, firing globs of nanobots at the points that needed more effort, but were less complex, like armor, and servo damage. The fabbers started spraying out streams of smaller nanobots from their arms onto the fiddly weapons bits, which I found included some shot-to hell tesla coils, so the punches were tasers. I guess they did borrow from Cherno fairly heavily.

It took me about twenty minutes to finish fixing everything, during which I learned some interesting things. Things that I would be able to apply to my stuff.

First, the armor. It was bullshit. It was made out of a composite of alloyed metals, mainly titanium, iron, aluminum, and a few other metals, which was heat resistant, tough, and could take a lot of stress before breaking, as well as graphene layers that supported the whole thing. It didn't appear to be that great against acids and energy based weaponry, but it could take a hell of a beating from cutting and percussive forces before it started to take significant damage.

The fluid synapse system was also pretty unusual. What it seemed to do was conduct impulses to and from the jaeger and the Ranger's nervous system, through a liquid of some kind. I honestly have no idea how to describe it. Somewhat viscous, greenish, and from the chemical structure not the most pleasant smelling thing in the world. That could be useful when trying to find a leak though, since they do the same with natural gas.

The weapons were nothing to special, since I already had tesla coils, battleship-grade cannons, and punching things. I did want to see some other Jaeger weapons, specifically the plasmacasters, incinerator turbines, and Striker's missiles, since one can never have enough missiles.

Then, what may be the motherload: the Drift system. It worked off of a much more refined version of using electrodes to track brain activity, and could somehow sync brain function by...something. I'm not quite sure how to describe it, as the best vocabulary I have is in Progenitor-ese, which sounds a fair bit like someone trying to pronounce the sounds birds make, with some elephant seal thrown into the mix. High bit-rate for a spoken language though, which is probably why they used it.

After the Jaeger was fixed, I told the Marshal as much. He seemed flustered. I'm not sure why that is happening so much recently. It's almost like people weren't used to things being built before their eyes. Oh wait. They weren't used to it. Huh.

Now, to get the rest of it.

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The PPDC decided to be jerks and send it along a few hours later. For me, that meant lots of waiting, and waiting is, as I've said, boring. Well, actually, the meatsacks were getting stuff done as fast as they could.

Being an AI has its drawbacks, unfortunately.

In anycase, they sent along the files, I created copies of what the files said was, and got to figuring them out. I think I'll start with the simple stuff. Like plasmacasters. Those could be fun.
So the plasmacaster was pretty different from normal plasma tech, which created a magnetic "bottle" for the plasma to go down. Plasmacasters, on the other hand, create a "channel" of magnetism, through which multiple strike are sent down in rapid succession, further cauterizing the area as superheated materials, like flesh, are expelled from the wound and then slammed back into it by the force of the plasma heating the air, creating the distinctive "ptfwing" sound.

The term "emptying the clip" from the movie was less like firing a pistol until it was dry, and more like firing a laser until the casing and lasing medium started to melt. In this case, the plasma was argon based, and compressed from the atmosphere, and sent into the generator, which was located in the palm. The fingers served to create the channel. After a number of successive shots, the capacitors used to excite the plasma started to burst, if they weren't allowed to cool down first. Soon after, if a high RoF was maintained, the actual casings and components would melt, often rendering the cannon inoperable until fairly extensive repairs could be made, as well as occasionally turning a piece of the mechanism that allowed the arm to switch between hand and cannon configurations.

It was, in many ways, inferior to the plasma tech in my Uber cannon, except in speed and accuracy. The Uber cannon required transit time, where a quick enough target could move out of the way, allowing the shot to damage a land feature or something instead of its intended target. A plasmacaster, even with its vastly reduced range and damage, was far more accurate, with being able to hit the same square meter of target, while moving and jostling occurred between both target and cannon, and had a speed in transit that was a sizable fraction of C, with the only limit on range being channel cohesion. I could fix both range and accuracy with Progenitor STRONKNESS.

I combined the power induction systems of the Uber cannon, allowing a direct induction from my network of quantum magic, with the systems that created the channel, so that the channel fire mode could expel plasma up to seven times farther, giving me a range of eight kilometers, which was functionally a sniper weapon for a commander. Next I upgraded the plasma generator with Progenitor technology, which could simply fabricate hydrogen plasma, which held cohesion better and was generally a bit hotter. The power wouldn't be quite as high, since it didn't explode violently upon magnetic containment breach, but it would penetrate a little better, which helped get through kaiju flesh.

Finally, I altered the Ubercannon schematics so that the actual uber cannon was a more, well, cannon shape, which I had found allows the bottle to be made faster and move further. Next, I made the barrel retractable, so that a plasmacaster shot was also able to be used. Then I made the barrel a hexagon, because hexagons were awesome. I set a few fabbers to update my chassis' gun as I added the updates across the board.

Next was the melee weapons. The nanotube reinforcement was interesting, but nothing I needed. Since I try to keep units out of melee, it didn't help me any. Moving on.

I'm going to list for a bit, since there was a lot of tech that I gained.
-Incinerator turbines were just giant flamethrowers. Next
-Anti-kaiju missiles were decent armor penetrators, so I added the drilling mechanism and expanded warhead as an option in my various missile units.
-Mortar cannons were vastly inferior to my own ballistics. Next
-The reactors in use right now were nuclear based. Since Progenitor fusion plants could output hundreds of times the amount that a Jaeger plant could, I gave them a pass. The files on Mk.4 and Mk.5 plants were unusual: the "midnight orb" that Crimson Typhoon would use was a highly efficient fusion device with high mass-energy conversion, and the "Supercell" unit from Striker Eureka generated power through what was essentially a miniature thunderstorm. Not powerful enough to be helpful though.

Then I reached the dark matter weapons. Those were cool.

The basic principle behind a dark matter weapon was that it generated and fired pulses of superheated dark matter. "What the hell do you mean by that science fiction buzzword?" you may be asking, staring at me from beyond the fourth wall. Well, dark matter in this case, was mixture of WIMPs contained in a magnetic field, which these humans seemed fond of, that were brought into cohesion with the rest of the universe upon impact.
These WIMPs projected mass, but didn't interact with normal matter until they hit something, where they released all that stored heat as gamma rays, after which they fell out of alignment and dispersed. The gamma rays effectively flash fried the flesh of a kaiju, as well as damaging what they pass through, causing blindness, damage to nerves, and potentially instant death if they could get a good hit in the brain cavity.

Obviously, I plan on munchkining this quite severely. I added it to my commander's ubercannon, as a pair of coaxial mounts, put a pair or seven on all of the titans, and added it to the list of things I will be using on Project:Shitlist.

There wasn't all that much else, since fluid synapse wasn't useful due to hax transmissions technology, and the drift wasn't helpful to an AI at this point.

Back to waiting.