Summary: *Nods* Big Stompy Robots are a woman's romance. Just like giant canons.

  Warning! Chapters 124 and 125 were posted back-to-back, make sure you catch both!

  Chapter 125: Stompy Robots

  Izumi tried not to pout as the Mech Armor Mk 1 was put through its paces. She was not, of course, pouting about the results. She knew, as she watched Melissa maneuver it adroitly through the obstacle testing course they'd built for it, that they'd made utterly amazing progress for only three months. Admittedly, the reason for that was because they were building on top of existing industrial and combat robot design frameworks. UA's robots, along with some of the construction bots used by I-isnd, and provided an excellent starting point for the Mech Armor design.

  It still had a long way to go for any of them to believe they'd truly pushed the concept to the extent that they could, of course. But expediency in getting something into production quickly was currently the rule of the day. The situation around the world was, despite everyone's best efforts, deteriorating again.

  The backslide in control over the situation was slow, and far from complete. Deployment of things like the RADS arrays, for example, had continued apace. Most cites with poputions in excess of a million inhabitants had 90 percent coverage. While cities over 500,000 typically had at least 40 to 50 percent coverage. Which might not seem like a lot, until you considered that there were over 500 cities worldwide with a popution over a million, and several times that number with a popution over 500,000. Since you needed dozens of RADS arrays to cover even one densely packed city, having achieved that much coverage in less than six months was amazing progress.

  Sadly, the progress in that area was a standout. Rift Bubble containment was riding the edge of a knife. Despite more and more institutions seeing the early results of UA's program and trying to duplicate it, the Guild System was in its infancy and couldn't yet take much of the burden of handling the Rift Bubbles. Worse, the enemy had shown irritatingly professional tactics by adjusting their strategic profile away from cities. They kept pushing against cities often enough to force the continued deployment of RADS arrays and the use of rapid response teams…while actually shifting the majority of their targeting toward things like industrial nodes and power grids.

  Having failed to blitz Earth, the Empire had settled in for a pnet-wide siege.

  By doing their dead level best to cripple manufacturing, foods production, and so forth, the Empire was slowly tilting the fight their direction. Initial momentum that they'd gained from pushing back the first set of tactics the Empire had used was now being ground down by the fact stockpiles of things like munitions were being used up faster than they could be repced. Bullets weren't exactly a problem. The world had such a staggering overabundance of small arms that, combined with retive ease of production, there was no fear of running out of ammo for infantry any time soon. Unfortunately, the sorts of missiles, rockets, bombs, and heavy artillery that were required by heavier forms of military hardware were another story entirely.

  Just as one example, a single rocket for a MLRS unit cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 million yen (100,000 USD), and required specific production facilities to fabricate. Stockpiles from the Quirk Wars had been considerable, but not limitless, and modern production of such ordinance hadn't been at a massive level even before the Empire started targeting manufacturing centers. Nor was it only the manufacturing nodes being hit. Mining operations, often remote and isoted, were hard to defend against Rift Bubble invasion. Food production centers required a civilian popution and therefore had to be guarded quite heavily.

  So on, and so on.

  Add in the fact that what little gains they'd made thus far had been offset by the need to send a lot of firepower to Africa, as the Empire had started pushing hard to expand their foothold there, and things were…tense. There was a reason there was so much interest in their space-based ideas, after all. Just as there was a reason that they were rushing to get a Mech Armor in the field. The design could make a hell of a difference on the African front, since they'd designed it to need a minimal amount of logistics support once deployed. Which meant it was needed in the field now, not after they went through a dozen iterations to make it better.

  None of which expined Izumi's urge to pout, of course. The Mech Armor was doing amazing for the amount of time they'd had to work with it. No, she was pouting simply because she wasn't allowed to be the test pilot. For, it had to be said, the same very legitimate reasons that 2B and Momo were also banned from being their test pilot. All three of them had super-human reflexes and calcution ability that meant they were a very poor sample of the 'average soldier.' Mel, on the other hand, was both Quirkless and not really combat trained. Aside from understanding the systems a bit too well, she made an exceptional test for how easy the system was to use. They had other pilots at this point, of course, including several JSDF officers from various branches. But Mel was still the primary test pilot.

  The lucky bitch.

  It wasn't fair! Izumi and Momo had designed the Big Stompy Robots! They should get to py with them too!

  Lamenting the unfairness with a sigh, Izumi queued up the next test.

  "Alright, Mel. That looked good, aside from some remaining issues with the right hip. Time to run the anti-air iteration. Hopefully, the gatling railgun we came up with will work to correct the utter clusterfuck we had on the st anti-air run…"

  … … …

  "So, how's it looking, Elizabeth, Hera?"

  Momo, having left her pouting girlfriend to stare enviously as Melissa ran the course in their MK 1 Mech Armor, was spending her time more productively. While their current armor model was running through the course with a purely ballistics loadout, that wasn't a loadout they were entirely happy with. Oh, it wasn't terrible. The Gauss and Railgun systems they were using only needed a spike of cast metal, a retively small one at that, to do devastating damage. They were dirt cheap to make, could be made with extremely basic facilities, and even the rgest 'rounds' they used could be loaded into the Mech's main ammo storage in the thousands.

  They were, truth be told, a near ideal weapon for their Mark 1. Something they already understood the mechanics of to a high degree, and which could minimize logistics strain while maximizing damage output. That said, they had some limitations that meant they weren't the end-all be-all solution. They did require logistics pipeline, for one thing. While the spikes were easy to cast, they had to be cast from extremely pure metal, which meant you still weren't going to be forming them at the front lines. Facilities that could separate metals, purifying and mixing them as needed, were still required. Which meant you were still going to be shipping the ammo in. Spare parts could be deployed all at once. Ammo would need to be added as a continuous supply stream.

  Then, of course, there was the other major problem. Some enemy elites were basically immune to bullets and pure kinetic energy, no matter how fast it moved or what sort of total energy it delivered. Current policy on things like the entirely-too-common jelly/ooze type creatures, or the far less common but even nastier incorporeal types, was to hit them with either Quirks or options like napalm and incendiary rounds. Quirks would always remain an option, of course. But trying to limit logistics pipelines meant looking for other solutions to repce specialty ammo when and where possible. Particurly at the rger scale where that specialty ammo could cost hundreds of thousands or millions of yen per round.

  "No dice on the ser-based ideas at all. The closest we got to something being viable was the electroser concept, but it was just too bloody unreliable once a few of them had been fired across any one battlefield. Thankfully, 'Liz has had better luck with her idea."

  Hera and her sister's British accents had originally startled Momo a little, the duo having very pan-Asian features. Once she'd mentally adjusted and scolded herself for her original assumptions, she'd found both sisters just as brilliant in their fields as Melissa had promised. Though Elizabeth was even more of a standout, albeit one that was even more of an introvert than Izumi was. Case in point as she shied away from the attention turned to her and fiddled with a tablet as a distraction.

  "U-um…the PPC project is working? S-some of the principles used by Miss Midoriya's weapons adapted well. I'm just trying to simplify it now?"

  Hera sighed and rested a hand on Hera's shoulder, taking over before the blue goo-girl could break down at the attention from one of the 'bosses.'

  "That's why I'm working with her today. We're trying to find a way to dumb down the power systems so they'll be field-repairable and serviceable. Power throughput isn't too big of a problem. Though I'll warn you outright we aren't going to get more than one of these monsters on a Mech Armor frame without running into issues powering them. That Fusion Reactor you and Izumi supplied for the Mech is crazy, but not crazy enough to power the Mech itself and more than one PPC."

  Momo nodded. The reactor in question was, of course, based on the same fist-sized fusion reactor that had originally powered 2B and other YoRHa androids. The one in the Mech Armor was both rger and less powerful, due to a fundamental bit of physics differing between realities. Specifically, QE versus Maso densities. YoRHa hadn't ever built big because their reactors were based on using Maso in several different completely bullshit ways, ways that were more bullshit even than Quirks. After all, Quirks were formed from by and made use of a diluted version of the same energy.

  It was only Izumi's creation of a QE concentrator for the Inari Project that had let them shift form using a top-of-the-line solid state battery, like UA's robots used, to a fusion pnt. Doing so had solved several of their more critical problems, without having to hope that I-isnd cracked miniaturizing power pnts based on QE batteries quickly. The converter they could squeeze into the Mech didn't allow a lot of Maso to be concentrated, but it was enough for a modest fusion pnt that could provide plenty of power for the Mech Armor.

  Mostly, at least. Obviously, not for something as insanely energy intensive as multiple PPCs.

  "What about the electronics on the Mech side? Is what currently exists robust enough?"

  Hera and Elizabeth both instantly shook their heads, though Hera was the one that answered.

  "Not a chance in hell, boss. Thankfully, the changes needed aren't anything too complex. But we might need to hold off until either the MK 2 or a second variant of the MK 1. Otherwise, making the changes and testing them will push back deployment…"

  Momo grimaced.

  "Which we don't want. What about mounting some of the PPC's on something like an APC? Just as a test vehicle to see how they work against the enemy?"

  Hera blinked, then nodded slowly, but poked Elizabeth, obviously wanting an answer from the expert on the system.

  "I-it should be doable? I think I can build it into a turret, maybe…"

  Momo nodded and gently id a hand on the girl's arm to keep her from fully drifting off.

  "Focus on that idea, please. We can't realistically push back the MK 1 going into production. So put the PPC in a rolling ptform. The military can still get some mileage out of that, and we'll be able to test if it's worth making a variant MK 1 with the system."

  When both girls nodded, Momo gave them a smile.

  "Good work you two! This might be the solution we've been looking for! Keep at it!"

  Breaking away as both beamed at her, she headed off to check on the next part of the project. Which meant the upcoming production lines. Ugh. She hated this part. At least she was learning a lot from the automation professionals that would be useful to their space production capacity in the future…

  ... ... ... ... ...

  A/N: Yep, you're probably already expecting this bit. Once per release, I remind people that there is Early Access content avaible On My Patreon Page. Note that NONE of my fanfiction works are paywalled permanently. If you don't feel like supporting me, that's just fine, it will end up here eventually :-). If you DO feel like supporting me, currently chapters 126-131 are avaible over on Patreon, adding another 15,000ish words to the fic! As well as simir amount of early access content for my other fics. All for just a single dolr a month! I'm not trying to be super greedy here, just trying to support the writing time I need to maintain several ongoing fics ;-).