My Hero Automata

Summary: Planning to strike back...

Chapter 78: Enemy Analysis

A slideshow of pictures, snapshots from the memories of the four successful Recon operations, played out in a loop as people took their places around the table. This, of course, was only one of dozens of meetings going on the world over as their intel windfall made its way around the globe as fast as they could spread it. Present physically were all of those who had planned the original operation. Present as digital holograms were All Might and Endeavor, along with a representative of the World Heroes Association. The top two heroes of Japan were both being projected from their field commands at the Yokohama and Osaka Greater Gates, while the WHA rep was one of the few left in Japan and running half of the remaining WHA response even as she sat in on the meeting. Sadly, Japan was doing good compared to many parts of the world, and thus the WHA had almost entirely pulled their people out, in order to try and shore up situations elsewhere. The holograms of their three additions flickering to life had filled the last seats, and Dean Nedzu didn't waste any time with pleasantries.

"Everyone knows why we're here. Four of our six Recon teams managed at least partial successes, giving us a first look into our enemy's operations. While detailed analysis will likely take days or weeks, we have a brief overview of some critical discoveries."

The slideshow of images stopped at a pressed key by the chimera, splitting to show just three images in particular. One was a scorched and trampled plain that seemed to extend for dozens of kilometers…all of it absolutely teeming with dozens of different monster encampments. Some were pens, others proper tents, and a fair few more solid buildings were littered in organized clumps. Nedzu pointed at this image first and kept speaking.

"This is the first indication we have about their level of internal organization. While we knew they had to be capable of detailed, long-term plans, given the decapitation strikes on leadership, we didn't know what their logistics was like. This series of camps, unfortunately, shows that their organization level is high. Instead of it this just a random rush of monsters, this camp shows that they have themselves separated by unit type and are choosing what to feed into the Gates. Worse, we identified at least seventeen types of Monster that haven't been otherwise recorded yet."

There were grimaces all around, even as the Dean moved his claw to point at the second image. This one was a distant shot, one grabbed by Shoji as he'd been able to take in, focus on, and process far more angles than any of the others. The fact that Izumi had thought to equip one of his tentacle-eyes with a purely mechanical scope had farther allowed him to zero in on something none of the others had gotten an image of. Specifically, a city in the distance.

"We only have this one shot of this bit, once again thanks to a bit of foresight by Resolution and a bit of luck. That is a multi-level ringed city built into a hill. While the wildly different sizes of the enemy make population hard to estimate, we are virtually certain this city represents a population of at least 2 million. And in this frame we can also see just a snippet of a logistics train following a proper road to that city."

Which meant that this horde had a genuine logistics pipeline. It wasn't going to simply lose steam and peter out by virtue of running through its food or other supplies. None of those present missed the implications, even as the Dean moved on to the final shot. This one was different, in that it showed a vast underground cavern.

"Perhaps the worst news, of course, is that our northernmost Recon success got a shot of this cavern. As all three of the others got views of the Plains from before, this means that even inside our own region, we're dealing with multiple locations. Possibly supported by multiple armies and multiple cities. All without any of our scouts seeing signs of the Greater Gates. Meaning that these are all most likely secondary armies and locations, whose sole role is to attempt the opening of additional Greater Gates via the Rift, Lesser Gate, Greater Gate expansion process."

After that brief summary, Nedzu let silence linger for a few moments as everyone chewed on the basic details. Most of them had already gotten this information, though only in isolation. Finally, he spoke up again.

"This information has given us basic, critical data. We know our enemy prepared extensively, that they aren't running out of bodies or logistic needs anytime soon, and that they don't appear to be fighting among themselves. This isn't just a random horde of locusts. It's a civilization that is at war with us. Now, we need to figure out what our options are in dealing them a blow that they will actually feel."

There was silence for long moments, before the General spoke up.

"It's going to have to be that city. Or the logistics pipeline between it and the camps. The only other strategic target would be the entire camp population, and we have no idea if that would even hurt them. The only thing I can think to do, based off the little we know, is try to at least force them to commit some of their forces purely to defense. But we can only do that if we can hit that city or one like it. Doing that might at least take the pressure off."

The comment caused a stir, both positive and negative. All Might was the first one to speak against the idea.

"We don't know enough for that. For all we know, that's a city of slaves. Innocents being forced at knife point. In that case, we'd only be costing ourself potential allies by hitting it hard. We still don't have enough information to even consider it!"

There were both nods and angry headshakes at that, even as the arguments began…

... ...

Izumi was glad to be in the field again, even if the grim reality of fighting to close Rifts was a bloody, sweaty affair. She fully understood that what she'd been doing for the last few days was important. Despite that, however, she'd felt horribly guilty for not lending her strength to the active 'front lines.' The fact that Momo had been out doing just that, leading a reaction team and slugging it out with all sorts of nastiness the entire time, only made her feel worse. Like she'd been shirking her duty, even if she knew that her work with both the siphons and the recon teams had been genuinely critical. More critical than even having a fighter of her caliber helping swat Rifts or close Lesser Gates that got a foothold.

Even as she lept from a roof, tracking the four-meter-tall orange brute, complete with devilish horns, she sort of hated to admit that she was a bit glad for the confluence of events that had pulled her back out into the field. The brute roared at her, holding up a bronze-colored shield that most certainly wasn't actually bronze, given the way it shrugged off the missile she hit it with. The blow had still staggered it, and more importantly got it focused on her fully. Seconds later as he lumbered toward her, Sonic Pulse, aka Jirou, unloaded her fully-charged sonic cannon into the side of its head from the rooftop Izumi had jumped from.

Unbelievably, the thing didn't actually die.

It certainly roared in agony, and staggered drunkenly, the left side of its face a complete mess. But it didn't go down despite how much destructive power Jirou could crank out with the newest version of the cannon. Still, the Ogre, as these had been designated, was clearly fucked up, and Izumi switched out to her spear. With the Ogre wide open, she briefly went to full power and charged Virtuous Dignity right in the monster's heart. A pulse of telekinetic power to blow that heart apart inside its body and the Ogre finally fell, though it flailed around with its final death throws, wrecking the shit out of both the nearby buildings and its own allies.

Those allies, until now just barely suppressed with ranged fire from the rest of her mixed team of Heroes and JSDF, quickly became the target of a push as melee Heroes waiting in the wings dashed in to mix it up with them. Izumi downshifted to her assault mode, switching to a gatling gun to help hose down the numbers, even as she crunched the numbers on the Ogre. It had, after all, been what brought her back to the field.

For the moment, higher command was paralyzed arguing over the best way to strike back at their enemy, even as other groups and nations managed to repeat a few variants of their Recon efforts to add more data to the arguments. Several plans were being considered, but Izumi wasn't really needed for them. She might be a leading expert in Quirk Energy Fields…but the predictive algorithms were actually starting to get pretty accurate by Day 5 of the invasion. In Japan, at least, most Rifts were being contained by Reaction Teams before they could form into Lesser Gates. Which was mostly good news. Except, of course, that as one General had said, 'The enemy gets a vote, too.'

The 'vote,' in this case, was that any Lesser Gate that did get opened, was now instantly disgorging at least one or two of these Ogres. As well as a new lesser unit they were calling Bugbears, which showed increased unit cohesion over most other humanoid monsters. Previously seen only at the Greater Gates as foot soldiers for the Elite Units, no one had really realized just how tough both the Orges and Bugbears were until Heroes that weren't on the level of All Might or Endeavor had to deal with them. Suffice it to say, they'd lost a few good Heroes, and very nearly had another Greater Gate open yesterday. That had led, in turn, to a reshuffling of 'heavy combat assets' into Reaction Teams that hadn't needed them before. Since Izumi was one of those 'heavy combat assets,' and had already proven her ability to command an assault team, she'd been given a team today and put in the field. Thankfully, the reshuffling had proven effective so far, and there hadn't been any more major scares. But it did show that the enemy had their own ability to escalate.

The General had been right. The enemy got a vote, too. He'd also been right that first day, that they needed to find a way to take the battle to the enemy rather than only reacting. Izumi just hoped that the powers that be were busy figuring something out while she and others kept the containment efforts going…

... ...

The morning of Invasion Day Seven, Izumi grumbled as she slowly and carefully worked her way out of the snuggle pile of herself, Momo, Himiko and Jirou. She would have very much liked to keep enjoying the fact that Jirou had simply said 'fuck it' and thrown herself into their cuddles in nothing but a pair of panties and a very loose t-shirt. The fact that said t-shirt had very interesting imprints that screamed 'pierced nipples,' was something she very much wanted to investigate. Particularly as they had to have been a fairly recent addition if no one had noticed them in the changing rooms at UA.

Unfortunately, she was getting a call she couldn't ignore. A little bit of mental effort diverted enough processing power to fake an image of her already at her work desk while she wiggled free, and that portion of her mind faked her voice perfectly for the call as the mental duplicate of herself answered the joint call from Nedzu and General Utsumi, the JSDF-Hero liaison. She was proud of how calmly her avatar answered, given that she'd just managed to cop a feel of Jirou's ass 'accidently' while untangling herself. The cute little wiggle Jirou had given in her sleep made her want to squee. She was proud of not showing it.

"General, Dean, to what do I owe the honor?"

The General answered first, something Izumi knew Nedzu allowed mostly as a way to keep soothing the military by letting them have priority whenever it wouldn't get in the way. The man was gruff and blunt as always, which Izumi honestly appreciated. They'd picked the man to minimize political friction during a crisis, and it was working well so far.

"No offense, Midoriya, but I'll skip the pleasantries. After a lot more analysis, we've come to a possible operational plan, but we need to know if it can be done at all. We need to know if you can make a purely organic or mechanical version of the QE detonation you accidently triggered the first day. It doesn't need to be stable. In fact, the more unstable, the better it would be."

Izumi's body and brain both blinked at that, even as she finally made it free of the cuddle pile. She sent a mental query to 2B, even as she accelerated her thoughts enough to juggle the feasibility of the idea with the question of 'why would they want that?' The latter came to an answer first, even as she began adding data from 2B's response to her own feasibility models.

"You want to try destabilizing the portals from the other side? You're thinking about my theory that they are harvesting our QE out of need, I take it. And that the idea of not being able to take tech across is accurate."

It was, predictably, Nedzu who answered.

"Exactly. Farther study and analysis of what international Recon Teams have gotten, sometimes at much higher cost than we paid, showed that active Gates have a two-way logistics train. Combined with the way that the Greater Gates seem to pull natural QE too and through them, despite already being fully stabilized, we believe your initial theory was likely correct. They are harvesting QE. Which means that disruption of the QE fields on their side may be more damaging to them than simply disrupting the Gates. It would be even better if we could siphon QE from their world to ours, denying them the resource they want. But seeing how they react to a major QE disruption would be of considerable value on its own."

Okay, yeah, Izumi could see that. Particularly considering the way a lot of their monsters were mutated. It might well fuck up some of their army entirely if you caused a major flux in their QE fields. She mentioned that to the pair absently, even as she went over ways and means. The General was the one to acknowledge her, even as 2B's answered the tech question while they spoke. Apparently, the Americans had thrown stupid amounts of resources at confirming that theory. They didn't yet know why technology couldn't transfer over. Just that anything that used electricity would fry.

"That was one thought. As was the fact that your initial attempt at closing a Gate was extremely violent in its own right. At minimum, if we can replicate something like that, it will disorder their forces. All while offering chances that it might damage their army, or disrupt their ability to form Gates in the location of those armies. At worst, we strike a blow. At best, we seriously damage their logistics train and force them to compensate by outright moving their bases and all the logistics tied to them."

Izumi nodded, even as the rest of her mind came to a tentative conclusion.

"I…think it's possible. Strictly speaking, our QE energy storage format is a grown crystal. Normally, we use complex computing to manage the drain, or even the siphon effect. But if we don't care about stability? We'll need to run some tests, but I think a shaped charge of the right type, triggered by a purely mechanical fuse, could create something like a QE bomb. I have no idea what that will do to the local area, though. We'll need somewhere remote to test this. Doubly so since the local QE field will spike and we might accidently be opening an unguided Rift of our own. If the situation was less dire, I'd be utterly against this. As it is…"

The General nodded curtly.

"You'll do it. Assuming we can take precautions?"

Izumi nodded.

"I'm going to need Momo for this one. She's the only one that can charge a QE battery fast enough in an otherwise largely dead zone. Can we afford to have both of us off the reaction teams?"

Nedzu scratched his chin, frowning and clearly running numbers.

"It's not ideal, but we can shuffle enough other heavy hitters to the reaction squads to cover for a day or two. Three at the most. It'll run some of the others a bit ragged if we try for longer, or if there's a major push. But we can do it. If that will be enough time."

Still thinking and calculating furiously, Izumi nodded.

"It will be enough to at least tell you if it's possible, for sure. As well as hopefully find out just how bad an idea it is. You want us to start immediately?"

The General and Nedzu both nodded, though it was the General that spoke.

"Yes. There are a number of remote islands we can use for this. I'll arrange air transport that will take you to one for within the hour. Can you get the gear you'll need together that fast?"

Izumi considered that, frowned, and shook her head.

"Most of it? Yes. But not some of the explosives…add Bakugo Katsuki to the group. I know that will take another front line fighter out. But the pseudo-nitroglycerin he creates will let us skip several steps on the explosives side. Otherwise, I'll need days just to synthesize a replacement."

Nedzu spoke up immediately.

"Done. But that will cut the timeline to three days at absolute maximum. He's been extremely effective against the Orges. Pulling him will hurt the Reaction Squads farther."

Izumi's mouth thinned, but she nodded curtly.

"If three days is what I have, then it's what I have. And I should be able to release Bakugo before actual testing, anyway. I'll get it done. Or at least get answers on feasibility and QE field reaction. At the very least."

Nedzu nodded equally curtly back.

"Good. Make it two hours for the transport then, General. Bakugo is out in the field right now, so it will take a bit of effort to get him back."

The General quickly agreed, a few more details about space needed on the transports were exchanged, and then Izumi was left to wake up her lover, and possibly steal a Jirou head pat for good luck…