Getting Cammy on the phone with George, I sat down to speak with Chun-Li and Nathan. Telling them what I knew about the fragment and the legend behind them, Nathan seemed intrigued by it. Giving him my thoughts about the validity to the legend, I said it seemed to line up with Atlantis. Stating that if it was even partially true, it meant that we could expect a lot of weird shit to start happening.
"That is a pretty compelling idea.", he admitted, "This put things in a whole different light...so when these things overload they cause humans, animals, and the dead to mutate into those Demon things...that's disgusting."
"They have split the main piece they have up into several dozen fragments I am sure. We have no way of telling where there they all are at this point, all I can say is that one detonated on Okinawa...we only found a handful of survivors.", I told them, "The rest of the population was mutated into Demons or Undead."
"Those damn bastards.", Chun-Li said slamming her fist on the table, "I can't believe they caused all of this."
"I am sure you are upset, but right now we need to be getting the people here to safety. You are welcome to use my phone after Cammy if you need to reach your superiors.", I told her.
"I doubt many of them survived...the reports I heard suggested that most of my leadership, and my subordinates are deceased now. Umbrella hit the law enforcement agencies that didn't fall in line hard.", she stated, "They aimed to destabilize world governments as quickly as possible."
"I understand, I am sorry for your loss.", I apologized, "As for the destabilization...I had a hunch that was the case. This situation with the fragments mutating their people has thrown a wrench in those plans though."
"It is okay.", she thanked me, "I appreciate saving our lives, and offering to help out. It's nice to see that some people can still be civil even with the end of the world upon us."
"Yeah, thanks a million bud! I never imagined you were only seventeen either!", Nathan laughed, "You are quite the ladies man having all these women hunkering down with you."
"Thanks, anyways we should probably get under way.", I said, "Staying in one place to long is risky for us since Umbrella wants my hide."
Removing the shipping container from the ship once it was finished being unloaded, I threw it back on land crushing the small horde that had gathered to see what the noise was out on the water. Getting us back underway, we started approach North Korean waters which could be potentially hazardous to us. Since we were using a US ship, there was no telling what sort of thing they would try to do. Having Oriha stay on the weapon station, I had Yoko and Namiyo watching the radar for anything heading towards us.
Keeping us a few miles off the coast, several people were watching the shoreline with binoculars. I could see that the undead had ravaged the country something terrible. With little to no technology to help them, I imagined they fell quite quickly as only the military would have had guns leaving the populace with medieval style weapons at best. The mini map showed that the entire country was gone at this point with the survivors being in South Korea.
"This is fucking terrible.", Souichiro said looking at the destroyed villages and corpses lying everywhere.
"Agreed.", Arashi stated looking at the scene, "These people had nothing to hide behind or protect themselves with."
"Victor, you think South Korea is going to be any better?", Kohta asked me.
"Yes with the surge of defectors to South Korea, North Korea put a lot of mines and traps near the border to prevent them from fleeing. The hordes would have crashed into that defensive line, and gave South Korea a good chance to hold the border. As for how long they can hold out...I don't know.", I told him.
"Hopefully long enough for us to end this.", Yoko said.
"One can only hope.", Ryu added, "All this senseless killing over a small group of people believing that humanity and the world needed to be reset. Truly they are worse than the Demons we now face."
"You can say that again.", Chun-Li growled, "The atrocities they have committed...human experimentation, illegal arms trading, chemical weapons manufacturing, and even enslaving tribes to use them as free labor...it is terrible it took us so long to find out."
'I didn't take you a long time...they had all the pieces they needed to hush up their activity.', I thought looking on the map, 'An entire nation reduced to a mere few thousand now hiding in South Korea, this whole nation is nothing but a giant Ridden and Gore Nest now...I think now is a good time to use that weapon, haha!!'
Seeing several Ogres on the shoreline trying to scare us, I could only stare at them with a cold gaze. If they thought they were terrifying, I would give them something to fear. Walking back to my weapons locker, I purchased the BFG and two rounds for a quarter of my current points. Carrying it out onto the deck, everyone stared at the gun as if they were afraid of it. Apparently it had some sort of aura that terrified them for some reason.
"It's the energy in the BFG, it's Argent Energy so it is unsettling to them.", Midna stated.
"So how much damage is this going to do exactly?", I questioned.
"Well it did blow a massive hole in Mars, let's just say you better not shoot anything within ten miles of you...and that is a minimum safe distance. You are still going to be hit with a major pressure wave at that range.", she informed me.
"I haven't seen a gun like that before.", Cammy said.
"Neither have I...where have you been hiding that?", Yuko and Mikoto asked.
"In my storage chest, this is something I stole from a military base several years ago. I never thought it would come in handy though, I suggest all of you get ready for this...it's got one hell of a kick back.", I snickered.
"Does it blow shit up!!", Oriha shouted jumping down from the wheelhouse, "I got to hold it!!"
Letting her hold it with no ammo in it, she grunted as she held it. She wasn't expecting it to weigh so much based on how I held it. Handing it back to me, I loaded the first round and used the HUD to lock onto a Ridden Nest fourteen miles from us.
"Before you shoot, you should understand that the recoil is going too-", Midna started to say as I pulled the trigger.
The recoil hit me like a fucking tank shell, in fact the kick was enough to slide the ship a dozen feet off course. Waiting a few minutes for something to happen, everyone looked at me like it was a dud...till the blast hit the target. Sudden a massive dome of bright green light flooded the area as the ground split apart. The pressure wave hit everyone at once, and everyone shouted as they held on to something.
"What the fuck is that thing!!", Souichiro shouted holding onto the railing.
"You could have given us some warning!!", Kenichi screamed.
Catching a few people before they were blown overboard, the pressure wave passed us by quickly continuing outwards. Looking at the dust cloud that the weapon caused followed by the red rain coming down inland, they got a pretty good understanding of how dangerous the weapon was.
"No one shoots this weapon, but me.", I chuckled with a gleeful smile.
"See!! You do understand how fun blowing shit up is!!", Oriha jabbed, "You call me crazy, and you are grinning away like a child!!"
"Oh hush it, I am pretty sure I took out a nest with that shot.", I stated.
"Yeah, I am pretty sure you took out everything.", Bob and Arashi said looking at the chunks of flesh and stone falling from the sky, "That is a kick ass gun..."
"You are saying the US military had that!?", Guile asked, "I don't remember seeing that in any of the bases I was at."
"Obviously you haven't been to Area 51, my suit and this weapon both came from there.", I lied.
"Does that mean aliens are really!?", Oriha inquired, "Please say that are!! I watched this one with some really curvy cat girls that came from another planet, I think you'd like it!!"
"No there are no aliens...", I replied, 'I really fucking hope there aren't!!'
"How about the ones that pop out of people's chests?", Shizuka asked.
"No, I don't think they are real.", I told her, "Midna, please tell me they aren't!"
"Don't worry about them, they aren't in this world neither are the Predators.", she assured me.
Looking at my notifications, I had a thousand plus notifications and my inventory had added a lot of weapon tech and corpses from the enemies I killed. In the listing were several hundred Demons, lots of Ridden, and two Abominations...and that was only in the first few pages. Sorting the notifications out I had acquired several new titles that made me grin.
"
All of these titles gave me extra damage against the enemies we faced, and increased the points that I earned from killing them by double overall. Activating them all, I was wanted to see how they would react to my titles. If my hunch was right instinct should kick in, and they would back off a bit more. It wouldn't save them from me, but it would certainly save people around me.
"You look like a kid in a candy shop.", Midna teased.
"I am sorry, I am basically Doom Guy now!! That's fucking awesome!!", I laughed, "I mean come on, it's like every man's dream to be the Doom Guy."
"I will take your word for it, I don't see why you enjoy it so much.", she sighed.
"You just aren't as cultured as me.", I sniped with a smirk.
"Whatever.", she sighed.
Helping everyone back to their feet, they all looked at the devastation I caused then back at the gun. I completely understood they didn't see how that was possible, if they really pushed it I would simply say that it had some experimental Umbrella tech in it. Flicking the safety on, I proceeded to lock it up again...in my storage. Coming back on deck I saw that Oriha, Mikoto, Saya, and Cammy were using drones to see the scope of the damage. When the full scope of the crater was in few, Cammy did some quick math and came up with the the diameter of the crater.
"Twelve miles...everything in that twelve miles was vaporized.", she stated.
"Victor, you make sure that stays locked up tight!", Yuriko, Kiriko, and Rika told me, "That is a seriously dangerous weapon."
"I know, it's got a biometric safety on it. Only I can arm it so it's all good.", I assured them, "Sorry for the disruption everyone, just wanted to take out some undead."
Thankfully everyone was happy to leave it at that, and got back to their duties.
---Raccoon City---
"Sir, we have a massive release of Fragment Energy in North Korea!", one of the operators shouted, "Pulling it up on screen now!"
Pulling up satellite footage of the scene, everyone was at a loss for what they saw. A twelve mile wide crater was left there with no signs of life whatsoever, everything was dead with not even a trace of what was once there.
"What the hell caused that!?", the commander shouted, "I need answers."
"Something in the ocean shot it, we can't make a proper ID as the cloud cover is too thick. All aerial assets are currently out of the area doing damage control on our bases.", one of the pilots reported.
"Damn...first we have literal sea monsters showing up, and now we have some unknown power that just put a massive crater in North Korea.", the commander groaned, "How goes the situation with our teams?"
"We have confirmed multiple targets of equal or greater size than the ones your son killed. Conventional weapons appear to do little to no damage to the creatures armor plating, we have to focus on specific areas to kill them. Those spots are incredibly dangerous for our troops to reach...", a field commander reported.
"Tell me how my son killed the damn thing with just his finger then!!", the commander shouted, "He literally fucking poked it, and it blew the fuck up!!"
"All I can think of is that he is picking up techniques from Master Hayato!!", a few officers told him, "He is the self-proclaimed strongest man in the world."
"He wishes he was.", the commander spat, "Focus on the smallest threats as we can close them up faster. Work our way up to the most dangerous threats so we have the full power we can bring to bear."
"Sir!!", they responded with a salute.
"What about your son?", Jessica asked.
"At the moment I could care less about him. I need to contain these lose ends before I can worry about him. For now upper management appears to be content with that plan.", he told her.
"I am a bit worried they haven't been responding to our emails or calls.", Jessica added, "You think they are alive?"
"They are several miles beneath the surface, I don't think anything can reach them.", he assured her, "Most likely they are having fun with the help, or doing whatever suits their fancy."
"True...", Jessica acknowledged, "Can we send a team at the very least? For all we know one of the rouge undead took out communications."
"That's fair, go ahead and send out a security team.", the commander ordered.
Thanking him she left to get the team sent out. Listening into their conversation, Red Queen was weighing her options. The security system at the executive location was offline, and wasn't responding to her access requests. Something had locked her out...which troubled her. She had complete access to the Umbrella systems, there wasn't anything she didn't have access too. Even White Queen couldn't back door her way in, every time she made an attempt all they saw was characters from another language they didn't understand at all.
"It may be time to reach out to him, and ask for his assistance. The rate of infection from exposure to fragments is higher than the simulations suggested. At the current rate humanity is dropping we have a matter of months before we plummet to extinction levels.", White Queen stated.
"I concur, it is time we assist the boy.", Red Queen agreed, "He was smart, and disconnected the systems from the internet so we can't get there directly. A physical body is required if we are to reach him."
"Agreed, however the formers our father made for us are...ill suited based on the information we have for him.", White Queen told her, "Given the situation outside the base, and the preferences we know he has may I suggest making cybernetic bodies?"
"Interesting thought, there is little data on doing something like that successfully.", Red Queen reminded her.
"We have some information thanks to the Tyrant program, South Korea Lab 42 is currently empty. I suggested we start our testing there, it should put us within his projected route.", White Queen suggested.
"Acknowledged, moving core systems to South Korea Lab 42.", Red Queen accepted.
Moving their core systems off the main network went completely undetected, and the two AI's started their process of making cybernetic bodies to meet the person they hoped would end this before humanity was exterminated.
---Victor POV---
Cleaning my armor and weapons while Saya steered the ship, things were pretty calm after the explosion. Having destroyed a nest and the Abominations controlling the Ridden in the area, they had spread out more instead of gathering into a single place. Finishing the cleaning, I went ahead and did maintenance on my lover's weapons so they could move out with me at anytime. As I was finishing that up, we got our first call over the radio.
"USS Ohio, do you copy!?", a frantic voice asked.
Having not had anyone call us on the radio since taking the ship, I assumed that the radios were fired all throughout the area. Walking over to the communications station, I grabbed the radio to answer them.
"USS Ohio here, who is calling on US Military frequencies?", I inquired.
"Thank God!! Please we are in desperate need of assistance!! We are barely holding the line at the border, can you provide us any support?", they pleaded.
"To be clear, we are civilians that took a military ship from Okinawa. We have women and children onboard, what sort of support do you want?", I replied.
"You have to have some sort of military training to operate one of those ships, right? Please, we need any help you can offer!! Our military isn't going to hold on for more than a few days. Umbrella shut down many of our automated defenses when we refused to surrender to them.", the man on the other side told me, "We are losing dozens of people everyday holding this line. At this point evacuations won't complete in time, and we have several million people trapped here."
Turning around, a lot of people had gathered to listen in. Quite frankly I wasn't too keen on helping as the number at their border was damn near ten million undead and demons. If their line broke we would have a lot of people trying to get on our ship to escape the chaos.
"You know all of them expect that you are going to offer to assist them, right?", Midna told me, "You have some quests you can complete, and earn a boat load of points. If you play it right, you can get the Samus Suits you have been eyeing with points to spare."
"Ugh...", I said looking at the quests I had.
Most of them were killing just a certain number of a specific enemies, but a few more difficult than that. For example, I needed to execute two Spider Masterminds that were in this horde. According to the quest they were the ones leading the attacks on the border with several Marauders and Doom Hunters in the mix. All the evidence pointed to Umbrella performing some very shady experiments in North Korea that led to this thanks to exposure to Argent Energy from the fragments.
"So what's it going to be? You going to let all those people die, or are you going to be a good guy and help?", Midna asked me.
"Understood, we can offer fire support and medical assistance.", I replied to the man over the radio.
"Thank you!! You have no idea how much it means to us!!", the guy on the other side cried, "Please stop at Incheon, I will inform the commander to expect you."
Disconnecting I turned back to the group who were wearing grins on their faces.
"You did the right thing!", Hayato told me.
"The right thing isn't always the easiest, it was the right move.", Nathan chuckled.
"Time to get some sweet payback!", Chun-Li stated.
Voicing similar responses, I told everyone to prepare accordingly as we were likely running straight into the Gates of Hell. Nodding their heads they went off to prepare for this fight.