Amelia, Ch 372- Lily
Japan is a really strange place. I knew this going in, but I never quite knew just how strange things around here were compared to pretty much anywhere in Europe. The meeting with the royal family was incredibly brief and barely warranted a mention. The child that was Emperor of Japan didn't even actually speak to me in person, simply proclaiming to the reporters involved that I was his 'adoptive sister' and that was the end of the subject.
The fact that I wasted my brain upload on something as simple as weapons I'll never use was not lost on me. A native's understanding of this culture would come in really handy right about now.
After that, Clotho and I got to enjoy a ride with Japan's Prime Minister, the legal and official ruler of the nation. While the Emperor was a useful political status symbol, he had no real power in the way the country was managed, and he could give me a symbolic princesshood that meant nothing, either.
So now we waved to the crowds while being paraded to the next destination while the Prime Minister pointed out various modern attractions and ancient landmarks that covered Tokyo. There wasn't a lot of time to talk about anything important, so I spent most of my time waving to those who'd come out to see the spectacle and maybe show off my new armor a little.
The Prime Minister noticed something off with Clotho. <Is something wrong?>
The response made me more than a little embarrassed. <Oh, umm, not really. I'm just surprised at how many people live so close together around here. I've never seen anything like it.>
The man chuckled, though it seemed somewhat forced. I fought the urge to cringe. Really? You're not supposed to ask questions like that. <One of the hazards to an island nation. I am led to understand that America is just as strange to our immigrants.>
My coronation slash welcome party slash recognition as a national hero was all blended into a single event alongside the creation of Japan's dimensional portals. Both of them.. The first was scheduled to actually go to a world found for Japan to colonize. The other, not too far away all considered, would directly access Avalon.
It was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of, and for good reason. But they wanted it to happen anyway. Who was I to argue?
The Japanese portal was created first, and was entirely boring. It's amazing how something like cutting a hole through reality starts to become mundane after you've done it over a hundred times. And much like the more progressive parts of Europe, Japan didn't need my particular brand of pressure for social equality. Elle did her thing, building a massive doorway, thirty feet tall and twice as wide. The limit of what we could successfully manage and designed to allow train traffic through the portals.
To add to the theatrics, I hovered above the crowd and showed off Azrael in action. The Azrael V7 was designed in part to appeal to the Japanese audience. More mechanical, and more streamline to display and accentuate what technically counted as my figure. Which was, fortunately, better than most women around here.
Yet the armor was still tastefully designed. It wouldn't be considered sexualized by any of the more traditionalist people around here. Unless they were crazy enough to believe women shouldn't be allowed to wear pants. Or, I suppose, if you had a fetish for high tech living battle armor made from the bodies of dead super monsters, in which case... Wait a second... Oh god, Azrael is pretty much the living embodiment of Japan's wet dreams. Also, it's being worn by a lesbian. No wonder I was so popular in Japan even before killing Leviathan and revealing my identity.
Putting that out of my mind, I positioned myself high enough to be seen by all the spectators and fired a shot into Labyrinth's construct, cutting the hole through reality that Elle had outlined for me. The re-
I was blinded by a stream of energy that streaked past and struck the bay, sending a pillar of steam and fire into the air.
"Holy fuck!" I exclaimed in a moment of panic. That was way closer than I expected. No, I realized. Direct hit, I was just emergency shunted before it actually got to me.
I immediately dropped to the ground to make contact with Yggdrasil and recharge the batteries. Some of the other suits had the ability to support multiple shunt drives, but mine wasn't one of them.
"They didn't waste any time," Khepri muttered angrily. "Fuck, you'd think they'd have waited until after the Endslayer was gone, like we were expecting. Clotho, are you okay over there?"
"Yeah, I'm fine as long as Lily is."
Dragon spoke up. "They must be relying on a Thinker, someone who realized Atropos couldn't maintain her invulnerability effect while firing her weapons. They wanted to kill her while she was vulnerable. And now they're attempting to capture the portal. I'm already preparing the new set of questions for Dinah, but we now know their Thinkers are strong enough to at least partially negate her abilities. Or perhaps the Yangban power sharing mechanics is equivalent to a power interaction."
Victoria's voice came over the com. "I want it to be my turn!"
"Not until we know where the biggest threat is coming from," Taylor commanded. "Stay in position. Everyone else, you have your orders. Let's see if we can win this without using the big weapons. Contrary to popular opinion, I want to avoid starting a war over this."
A group of what I assumed were Yangban appeared near Faultline and their crew. Some kind of teleportation power, or some kind of stranger power that can beat both Victoria and Dragon. They fired a bunch of shots at the our team with some kind of presumably Tinker guns.
Light warped around the group as distance shifted, causing many of the Yangban to wind up shooting themselves. The first of our decoys. It didn't take a lot to make Missy look like Elle, despite her being a couple years older. A fact that she was really not happy with.
The dimensional viewer went dark, cutting off my sight in the area. Same kind of tech the Elite were using.
"They're trying to cut off our backup and surround us!" Lachesis exclaimed. "We're fighting back, but they have us beat on numbers and there's some kind of weird time effect that lets them heal themselves if hurt. Like Alabaster."
Khepri reacted first. "Fuck! We're doing what we can to get your reinforcements. Keep fighting, fall back if you have to. They're not here to attack civilians, they want to claim this a portal of their own. Probably one of those dimensional blockers, but they'll need to take it from the other side if they want to hold on to it. Don't let them get through with it. Victoria, do your thing."
Vicky laughed. "Operation: About Damn Time has begun."
Gaea's voice was up next. "Remember, defending the portal is our highest priority. If they start to retreat, let them go."
"Yeah, yeah. You know I've got this, sis."
With the shunt drives blocked, I couldn't go back through to join the fight. I simply watched and waited. Fucking frustrating as hell. I wanted to be out there cracking some skulls instead of letting other people handle it.
Osiris hovered over to me. "Here, spare charge." He put a hand on my armor's shoulder and I watched the battery power spike. "When I named myself after a god of death, I was sorta expecting to be used for badass shit on the front lines, not buffing."
I looked at him. "Hey, some of us have powers that let us kill everything. You have the one that lets you infinitely reuse one shot items. I'd trade you powers, except mine are badass as hell. Maybe next time we can switch it up and you can use that acid thing again."
He shrugged. "Eh, it's cool. In other news, do you think those dumbasses have any idea what's about to happen to them?"
"Well, Dragon did say something about them having at least one Thinker powerful enough to put Dinah off her game. So that means they have someone ranks at least a seven, probably an eight or higher."
"Really? That's pretty high up there."
I shrugged. "Well, they do have a billion people. It stands to reason they'd have at least one or two really good powers on their list."
He laughed. "Oh man, they are so completely fucked."
I laughed as well. "Harder than you when Theo's girlfriends go off on a date without him." Relying on Thinkers never did work for anyone. Sure, they were nice to have, but in Thinker on Thinker battles especially, things tended to go wrong. And if you couldn't adapt to changing circumstances, you'd lose. Thinkers had a really hard time adapting when faced with opponents smart enough to counter them.
"Nah, he usually lets me top."
"Actually, I was referring to how you couldn't win a video game against him if you bribed him to throw the match."
"Ooooh, shots fucking fired."
"And unlike you, I can actually hit something."
We stood there waiting for a bit longer before Zach spoke up again. "Y'know, as much fun as it is to razz on each other, I kinda miss having Minerva around. It was always so much fun when we could come up with something that worked on her."
"Challenges are always more fun. It's the nature of the game. A battle of the wits against an unarmed opponent is just boring."
"Yeah, probably," Zach agreed.
At that point, the block on our viewer vanished, and we got treated to watching the Yangban group rushed through the portal, through the high intensity energy bubble that Sabah had waiting for them. Their clothing disintegrated moments after they came across, and then the ground popped with a violent burst of light and sound.
By the time things cleared enough for us to see, there were thirty naked Yangban members all piled atop one another, stunned by the tazing effect. The Yggdrasil and a bunch of bugs started crawling over them, doing... whatever it was that our glorious leaders had cooked up to contain them. It was no doubt cooked up by some combination of Dragon and Bonesaw, so I was confident it'd work.
I would have felt worse for them if the fuckers hadn't tried to kill me a few minutes ago. "Know what, I lied. Sometimes humiliating stupid people is hilarious. Well, it's been nice chatting, but I have to go back now."
"Take care, and pick me up some souvenirs. I hear you can get panties fr-"
I shunted over before he could finish. Whatever he was about to say, my faith in humanity would probably be better off not hearing it. Now to run through the process of telling a bunch of lies about how the portal wasn't set to the right planet when they rushed through, so the invaders could easily be anywhere, or even nowhere. Technically true, they could. Instead they were in custody on Avalon.
Forty members of the Yangban captured, forty powers they'd no longer have access to. And in order to do anything about it, they'd have to admit these people were theirs and prove we even had them. Not likely to happen on either count. The important part, however, was trying to figure out how they built a device that could completely cut a dimension off from Bet. And maybe how to get around it.
I was also going to make Theo change out of Sabah's costume as soon as possible. It was fucking weird and humiliating.
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A/N- Crossdressing Theo. That is all.
