I know where I am! It's that Genshin Impact thingy, right? Chapter: 9

Author's Notes: I remember that most of you guys didn't want me to just post chapters here, but this is an advanced chapter.

I tried to figure out the tiers, but there is a big problem here. I reader can only be in one tier, so patrons who subbed for both will be only able to see one of the works. Which is stupid.

So I am sorry for the inconvenience to anyone not wishing to have notifications ping them about this work, but I'd rather provide more value to those few who want to read this.

You can find this story on Questionable Questing in NSFW. You have to register on the website to see it.

HUMAN BEAN CHAPTER IS NEXT!
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The VT-49 was one of those futuristic, ridiculous high-altitude jets that could punch through the stratosphere and cruise at speeds that made commercial aircraft look like they were standing still. On my Earth, planes like that were promised to us by 2015, but we had none for commercial use to that day. Well, by 2025, there was nothing at least. This world actually had most jets using the technology.

Thinking about that made me wish I could've lived in this world normally without Honkai being a factor. Being a citizen in the first-world country here seemed fucking great. Sure wish we had medical corps who weren't fucking us without a lube.

I'd been strapped into the MK.0 for most of the flight, which meant I spent roughly two hours as a glorified sardine in a very expensive, very uncomfortable can. A designer can, if you will. It was only missing a giant fucking Supreme logo.

Mobius had called in during the flight. My antibodies were, quote, "exceeding all reasonable expectations," which I think was scientist-speak for "holy shit, this actually works". I could almost hear her excitement. And I suspect I will be sucked dry of fluids for the foreseeable future, and not in a fun way.

She'd cleared me for deployment with the caveat that I had maybe an hour of exposure time near the Herrscher before the radiation would start overwhelming even my augmented immune system, and that's despite the shadow armour providing a layer of protection. I will basically mutate faster than my immune system will be able to destroy the infected tissues, and after allocated time, the process will be too far gone. Now, an hour didn't sound like much, but considering most people got a lethal dose within five minutes when within a hundred meters of a Herrscher, I'd take it.

The drop itself was... an experience.

One moment, I was locked in the cargo bay, trying to see if I could reach behind my back with my power-armoured clad hand; the next, the pilot warned me, and the floor opened up beneath me, and I was falling through thirty thousand meters of empty air in a walking tank. The parachute deployed automatically at five thousand meters, which was good because the MK.0's control interface sure as hell didn't have a manual release I could've reached.

I had time to think during that descent. Too much time, really. The kind of time that lets all the worst-case scenarios play out in your head on repeat. But mostly, I just watched the ground get closer and tried not to think about how fucking insane this whole situation was.

The parachute cut away at about fifty meters, and I hit the ground in the middle of the city's main square.

The impact sent cracks spiderwebbing across the concrete beneath my feet. The MK.0's shock absorption worked, at least. I barely even felt the jolt, despite plummeting from the sky in two tons of experimental armor.

I straightened up, servos whining, and took in my surroundings.

Minsk.

The city was beautiful in that distinctly Soviet way. Broad avenues lined with neoclassical buildings painted in pastels, mixed with tall and imposing architecture that seemed relatively recent. The square around me was massive, easily two hundred meters across, dominated by a towering red granite obelisk commemorating a victory, probably over nazis.

Maybe someone else if this world didn't have nazis. Honestly, now that I think about it, how the hell did I not check if they had Hitler around here?

Under different circumstances, I might've appreciated the view more.

Right now, the square was in chaos.

Evacuation was still ongoing. Thousands of people flooded through the streets, cars abandoned at odd angles, belongings scattered across the pavement where people had dropped them to run faster. I could hear sirens wailing in every direction, the distant thrum of helicopter rotors, and someone screaming in Russian or Belarusian over a megaphone that I couldn't quite make out.

The MK.0 drew stares. A lot of them. Hard not to when you're a three-meter-tall walking weapons platform that just fell out of the sky. There was the big fuck-off sword on my back, and the Cap's shield as well as my actual (human-sized) lonsword were also attached to the hip, so if, for some reason, I needed to catapult from the machine, I would be able to pick'em up. Most people gave me a wide berth, though, too focused on getting the hell out of dodge to stop and gawk for long.

Smart of them. On my Earth I'd have at least one vaguely female-shaped creature trying to twerk for TikTok with me in the background by now.

My earpiece crackled to life.

"Knightmare, this is HQ. Confirm the successful deployment."

The satellite phone was rigged to always transmit from my mic, since trying to manipulate anything delicate with the MK.0's hands was an exercise in frustration.

Honestly, I still feel sorry for the operator. I am like that one Discord friend who refused to use push to talk, with a two dollar mic, who lives somewhere around a warzone, judging by the sounds he forces you to experience.

"Deployment confirmed," I said, my voice coming out tinny through the external speakers. "I'm on site. City center, a big square with a monument. Can't miss me, provided street cams still work."

"Copy that. You're approximately half a kilometer from the projected arrival zone. Herrscher ETA is twelve minutes based on the current pattern. Local military has been ordered to maintain perimeter at five klicks."

Twelve minutes.

I started walking, each step a deliberate effort to sync my movements with the armor's delayed response. The MK.0 wasn't designed for finesse. Every motion felt like I was puppeteering myself through molasses, my enhanced reflexes screaming at the lag between intent and action. However, it still supported relatively fast movements.

I think a normal person would've had their limbs twisted out by the power of those servo-assisted limbs if they tried to pilot this.

The streets were wider here than I was used to, which was good because I needed the space. The armor's profile was broad enough that I'd probably clip doorframes if I wasn't careful. I moved down one of the main thoroughfares, past apartment blocks and government buildings, following the flow of fleeing civilians in reverse.

They were heading southwest, away from the projected arrival point. I was heading northeast, toward it.

Except for a few retards who decided to stop and take photos, but after shouting at them, like, twice to keep moving through the external speakers, I didn't have time to waste, and started to fall into a sluggish sprint, which could still rival some slower cars.

The city felt wrong. Empty in some places, packed in others, like someone had taken a normal day in here and shaken it until everything came loose. I passed a cafe with the door still open, cups of coffee cooling on tables. A bus stopped dead in the middle of an intersection, driver's seat empty. A child's shoe lying in the gutter.

My earpiece crackled again.

"Knightmare, be advised. Latest satellite data shows Honkai energy readings of the Herrscher spiking. ETA revised to three minutes, approximately."

Three minutes.

I picked up the pace, or at least tried to. The MK.0 didn't do a full sprint very well.

The sword strapped to my back was a comfort, at least. Nearly two meters of proto-adamantium and vibranium alloy with a nano-molecular edge. The sword was comically huge, really, but only because it was designed to be used as a shield as well.

I reached a large intersection and stopped, scanning the area. This was close enough to the projected arrival zone. Far enough that I'd have time to react, close enough that I wouldn't lose it if it decided to relocate immediately.

The streets here were nearly empty now. Just me, some abandoned cars, and the distant sound of the evacuation efforts. The buildings rose up around me, five, six stories tall mostly, windows dark. It felt like the city was holding its breath.

My hands weren't shaking anymore. That was good.

I flexed my fingers inside the armor, feeling the servos respond with that same frustrating delay. I'd have to account for that in combat. Every dodge, every swing, every movement would need to be planned a half-second in advance. One mistake and the Herrscher would turn me into modern art.

However, there was an upside as well. My danger sense, as far as we can tell, accounted for my impediment in movement. The real question, really, was if the Herrscher could keep up and pull more tricks out of its ass.

The answer was obviously yes, but I felt detached, almost scientific curiosity, wanting to see exactly how.

"Knightmare, HQ. The Herrscher may appear within thirty seconds."

I drew the sword, the motion awkward and slow in the power armor. The blade came free with a metallic rasp that echoed across the empty street. I held it in a middle guard, point angled toward the ground, and waited.

The city was quiet now except for the wind and the distant sirens. Above me, the sky was a deep, dark blue. Beautiful day for the end of the world.

I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, but my breathing was steady. The new combat instincts were there, just under the surface, telling me how to stand, how to move, how to strike. I'd never fought anything like a Herrscher before, but that's fine.

First times can be fun.

Trust the training. Trust the armor. Trust that when the moment came, I'd be fast enough.

Fuck all of that.

In truth, I found myself not even thinking about how or why. I just wanted to fight, no, I wanted to win.

Because my best day in this world so far was ruined by this cocksucker, and I spent hours shaking in anxiety and fear because of him... not to mention the countless people who fucking died today just because it decided to descend.

So, I am on a suicide mission with the whole deck of cards stacked against me, so what? Most people had it even worse today. At least I had a chance to live through this.

Also, I got the fun part of the job, with an opportunity to deliver same-day nuclear shipping to the bastard. Ted Kozinsky is probably smiling at me from Heaven.

Then, about a hundred meters down the highway, a window of pure darkness appeared.

*I felt it before I saw it.

My danger sense, as we established, was a Jedi ability in nature. Sure, the way I received the power was a bit unorthodox, and somehow uber-specialized me in a very narrow use or precognition and force-intuition, with everything else being on the level of an untrained force-sensitive.

But I had a bad feeling about this for the last hour, back in the plane. Even I had a bad feeling about this, though I attributed it to anxiety.

And now that bad feeling got a whole lot worse.*

From the portal stepped out a figure.

It looked like a little girl. A little girl with absurdly long purple hair, dressed in some simple summer dress. Her feet were bare; if the situation was different, she would've been a picture of innocence.

Her golden eyes focused on me in an instant.

D A N G E R

I dodged out of the way, and I could sense, more than see, the fucking space where I just stood being twisted apart.

This was a kid. A fucking kid. Why did no one tell me it was a kid?

"Hey, you!" I shouted at the Herrscher, pausing, as I saw it also pause, studying me. Eerily silent, saying nothing, not even breathing, I think. "Can you hear me? Can you understand me?!"

*I thought for a moment that maybe something was getting through.

I should've known better.*

Five distortions of space ignited around the Herrscher, and my danger sense wailed a moment before.

I started to dodge out of the way, at the same instant, spinning my sword from behind me and towards one of the attacks I knew would hit me. This one I couldn't dodge.

The speed of the projectile was faster than a bullet. I still saw it. It impacted the adamantium sword, sparks flying, deflecting it away... and the sword shattered.

My eyes widened.

*My ability transformed matter into other matter, and lasted for as long as the transformed matter wasn't structurally damaged.

This was foreseen in the design of the armour. Each armour plate was a separate segment that I transformed. If one was magically breached, I won't lose the whole armour.

That said, even if those spear-like distortions were somehow deflected by the adamantium-vibranium alloy, they clearly still managed to damage it. Some-fucking-how.*

All of that passed through my head in a second, as I let go of the sword, which was now some natural plastic-like material, and grabbed the Cap's shield from my belt.

I didn't have too much faith in the shield holding, and with this power armour on, it looked more like a buckler in my oversized hands, but it will have to do.

I rushed forward, careful not to pick up too much speed.

The herrscher gestured with her hands, and I drove my legs into the ground, suddenly stopping, before jumping straight up, with all my augmented strength.

"Knightmare, batteries will last for 7 more minutes."

I barely acknowledge the voice in the headpiece.

*The ground below me explodes in chunks of twisted concrete and metal, as space is distorted, but I barely look there. Instead, I can't keep my eyes from the girl. Whose golden eyes never lost track of me, even when I jumped with a speed that would make most normal people lose me for a moment.

This was bad.*

This time, eight distortions ignited around the girl, the ones that last time bombarded me with spears.

"LAUNCH THE NUKES!" I screamed for my earpiece to pick up, as I threw Cap's shield as hard as I could, knowing it was my only chance to survive this.

It was that last skill that I acquired today that helped me. To move like this, to dodge even in power armour, it didn't just give me knowledge of how to move and act as if I trained for decades, it also made it as if I did it for decades while trying to learn how to look good doing it.

So when I threw the shield, guided by my newfound instincts, I twisted it just right and used the momentum from the throw to twist in the air, moving my hands, legs, and torso just so.

The spears stuck simultaneously, the shield bounced between three of them, ricocheting perfectly, before impacting the eldritch loli whose eyes, I could swear, widened a second before the impact.

The rest of the space-tearing spears passed right by me, literally centimeters away, one between the armour's legs, two between the awkwardly angled arms, a few missed all altogether, and two missed my torso due to me bending in the air.

Falling on the ground, I landed on my legs, and with a single outstretched hand catching the shield, saluting to the Herrscher with the other, who looked mostly unharmed but... definitely was pushed a bit back by the hit.

"Now, that was the perfect opportunity to catch it with your teeth, you know?" I said casually, doing a finger-gun towards the non-responsive Herrscher who was silently studying me, "And you just wasted it. Then again, you wasted a lot of people today." I said grimly, letting out a single, slow chuckle.

The trick shouldn't have been perfect, visually impressive, and flowed perfectly into the taunt. Because my every movement from the jump, to the dodge, to the landing, looked effortless, and flowed from one to another, as if I practiced doing this as a scene.

*Yet, there was no change in expression on the thing's face. Its eyes were just as empty, looking as if through me.

Nothing at all.*

"Knightmare, ETA for impact one minute. Trying to taunt the Herrscher is pointless. We suspect that a human was used as a host... but there is nothing left from the original by now."

The Herrscher, who I assume was studying me, gestured with her hands. The sky fractured.

Countless Honkai beasts started to descend.

My headpiece screamed something about Honkai energy emission, through terrible fucking artifacts, but I barely listened.

This is bad. Really fucking bad.

I need to distract the Herrscher for the next minute, distract it enough for the alpha-strike to hit the bullseye. I need to do it while dealing with Honkai beasts now. I also need to do it without letting the Herrscher chip at my armour at all, or I won't fucking survive the nuke.

It wasn't even scary; I just felt something in me click, as I flowed into motion, grabbing a gigantic piece of concrete, and with a single augmented motion, throwing it into the nearest Chariot-class beast.

"STRIKE!" I breathed out, feeling like I was fucking high.

Danger senses started to wail from all sides. Normal Honkai beasts can't hope to as much as scratch my armour, but if one of them holds me up for a moment while the Herrscher tears apart the space where I exist, it's game over.

The ground where I'd just been exploded into a crater deep enough to bury a car. I was already moving, servos whining as I pushed the MK.0 into a sprint that somehow looked graceful despite the armor's bulk. My body leaned into the run at the perfect angle, each step flowing into the next with mechanical precision that resembled a dancer more than a desperate escape. Behind me, reality kept tearing itself apart in a line following my path, each spatial distortion vaporizing chunks of asphalt and sending fragments of road flying like shrapnel.

A Chariot-class beast chose that moment to charge at me from a side alley. I didn't even slow down. At the last second, I shifted my shoulder forward, dropped my center of gravity just right, and twisted my torso in a movement that looked choreographed. Three tons of power armor met the creature at the perfect angle, and physics did the rest. The beast was catapulted away like a chihuahua that met truck-kun to be isekaid into a Pedigree ad.

The Herrscher's attacks were getting faster. Each one more precise than the last. She was learning my movement patterns, adapting. Not good. The whole point was to keep her attention, make myself such an obvious threat that she couldn't ignore me even when the missiles came. But if she figured out she could just trap me in a box of spatial tears...

My danger sense flared again. This time from above. I threw myself forward into a roll that should have been impossible in the bulky armor. The shield was held at just the right angle to maintain balance, my free hand pushing off the ground in a way that turned the desperate dodge into something from an action movie. The air above me twisted, compressed, then exploded outward in a sphere of annihilation that took out the third floor of the apartment building to my left. Glass, concrete, and furniture rained down as the building's facade collapsed into the street.

I used the debris cloud as cover, my sprint through it somehow weaving between the larger chunks without me consciously planning it, operating on a mix of engraved skill and precognition flares. Each step landed precisely where it needed to, my body tilting and spinning through the gaps like I'd rehearsed this exact sequence a hundred times. My armored shoulder hit the city bus at the perfect angle, using my momentum to send the vehicle skidding sideways across the intersection in an almost graceful arc. The Herrscher's next attack carved through where I would've been if not for a sudden stop, bisecting the bus cleanly. Both halves fell apart, edges glowing with that same otherworldly energy that had destroyed my sword.

"Forty-five seconds to impact," HQ crackled in my ear.

Forty-five seconds. Just had to keep this possessed loli's attention for forty-five more seconds.

Five minutes of battery left at most.

I grabbed half of the bisected bus with both hands, servos straining, and my body automatically shifted into the perfect stance for maximum leverage. The spin that followed looked like something from an Olympic hammer throw, my feet pivoting in a precise circle that maintained perfect balance despite the massive weight. The throw itself was poetry in motion, if I do say so myself, my entire body extending and releasing it just right. She didn't even gesture. The bus fragment just... stopped existing halfway to her, space folding in on itself and crushing the metal into a point smaller than my fist before it vanished entirely.

But I was already moving, using the momentum from the throw to flow seamlessly into a sprint in parallel to her. Each step ate up meters of ground, my body leaning forward at an angle that shouldn't work in power armor but somehow did. It took me a long few moments to realize I was fucking naruto-running.

Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.

The golden-eyed girl finally moved, raising one small hand toward me.

Danger sense flared again.

I planted my feet and jumped straight up with everything the armour and augmented physique had, my knees bent at the perfect angle, my arms spread for balance as the jump itself traced a perfect arc through the air. The power armor's legs left spider web cracks in the asphalt as I rocketed upward. Below me, a sphere of twisted space expanded where I'd been standing, swallowing a chunk of road twenty meters wide.

At the apex of my jump, maybe thirty meters up, I had a perfect view of the devastation. The street looked fucked up. Buildings on both sides were missing chunks, some tilting dangerously, others already collapsed into rubble. Fires burned where gas lines had ruptured.

And we'd only been fighting for maybe twenty seconds.

Gravity reclaimed me. I angled my descent toward a roof, but the Herrscher was already tracking me. Multiple distortions appeared in the air, those same spear-like projectiles that had shattered my sword.

I brought the Cap's shield up, fingers barely managing to grip it properly with the armor's oversized hands, positioning the shield at exactly the right angle. The first spear hit dead center with a sound like a thunderclap. The vibranium absorbed most of the impact, but instead of being thrown randomly, my body twisted with the force, turning what should have been an uncontrolled spin into something that looked intentional, almost like a capoeira dodge. The second spear almost grazed my shoulder as I continued the spin in the air, the near miss looking calculated, and to a degree it was, even if I had no idea how the fuck I did that, my body operating almost on its own.

I've glanced at the shield for just a moment, and I've seen it scratched; super-heated metal gleamed orange beneath the paint job.

I hit the roof hard, went straight through it, crashed through three floors of someone's apartment, and finally stopped when I hit a support beam on the second floor. Dust and debris showered down around me.

"Thirty seconds to impact."

I exploded out of the building's side wall in a shower of bricks. My landing was textbook - knees bent to absorb impact, one hand touching the ground for balance, shield raised at the perfect defensive angle. Three Seraph-class beasts immediately opened fire with their lasers. I ignored them completely, the beams splashing harmlessly off my armor as I transitioned from the landing into a charge.

The Herrscher tilted her head slightly, the first real reaction I'd gotten from her.

Then she lifted both hands.

The danger sense didn't scream. It fucking shrieked.

I dove to the side and kept moving, ignoring or briefly back-handing the honkai-beasts that got in my way, weaving between the stream of attacks with the finesse I never had. My body flowed from one dodge to the next, a duck that transitioned into a shoulder roll, a sidestep that became a pivot, a backward lean that turned into a backflip. Even in the clunky power armor, each motion connected seamlessly to the next.

The assault ended as suddenly as it started, leaving me alone amidst the collapsed and ruined road.

"Twenty seconds to impact. Knightmare, you need to keep her attention focused on you!"

Like I had a choice. The Herrscher was following me now, floating forward with that same eerie silence. Every few seconds, another wave of attacks would force me to dodge. The street behind us looked like someone had put it through a blender.

Need to keep her focused on me. Make myself the biggest, most obnoxious target possible.

I spun around, running backward now, and raised both middle fingers at the Herrscher. "Hey! How does it feel not being able to match a single human, eh? Or are you only good at kidnapping children, you boring-ass uninspired Evangeion knock-off?"

Still no reaction, but the air around her started to shimmer with building energy. Then, it shattered like glass as hundreds of Honkai beasts started to appear.

"Five seconds."

The shimmer near the Herrscher itself exploded into dozens of those spears. I couldn't dodge this one. Too wide, too fast, this time without any room for me to dodge. No escape angles, I knew, instinctively.

Fuck.

I planted my feet, raised Cap's shield, and braced.

"Three seconds."

There was no room for mistakes. The shield in my hand had to be used to deflect the attacks aside; it's too small for me to hide behind.

Let's see if I can pull a Jedi.

I breathed in and breathed out.

Something clicked.

The attacks hit. Even through the vibranium's absorption, even through the proto-adamantium armor, I felt it. I heard the shield in my hands shrieking. But guided by the danger-sense, some unexplainable intuition, and my own skill, I kept moving the shield just so, angling it just right under each attack in the barrage.

One spear, two, three, seven...

"Two seconds."

I couldn't see the Herrscher anymore through the distortions.

"Hey girl, if you are still inside," I spoke up over mission control, not to the Herrscher, but to the one it possessed. If it even did. "I am sorry."

The attack suddenly cut off. Through the suddenly clear air, I saw the Herrscher turning, looking up. Her golden eyes widened, the first real emotion I'd seen.

"Impact."

I closed the latch on the helmet of the power armour a moment before the announcement was made, hearing it seal hermetically.

The last thing imprinted on my mind was the floating little girl looking up.

The world ended.

The shockwave turned me into a bullet. Three tons of armor, irrelevant. I was airborne, tumbling, hitting things that stopped existing milliseconds later. The roar wasn't sound anymore - it was vibration conducted through the armor itself, rattling everything inside me.

Second sun. New force vectors. The armor got yanked in three directions at once.

Third detonation. Below this time. Or above. Direction had stopped meaning inside overlapping nuclear fireballs.

Time stretched. Or compressed. Hard to tell when you're being juggled between forces that can flatten cities. The MK.0 held, somehow. Proto-adamantium was doing its impossible thing while everything else in Minsk's center was vaporized in plasma fireballs.

Then gravity remembered it existed. The fireballs rose. I fell.

Hit the ground. Real ground, not debris. Sank into what used to be concrete, now closer to molten glass, judging by how I felt my armour sinking.

Everything hurt. Felt like I pulled fucking everything. Even my internal organs. Everything rang; it was a miracle if my hearing wasn't damaged. But I was alive.

I cracked the helmet seal.

Mistake. The power armour was still vacuum sealed, and my breathing was connected to an isolated system with a rebreather; my shadow-helmet was good enough to keep the heat and the worst of the gamma-rays away, but the reinforced glass of the power armour started visibly heating up. Visibility: three meters through smoke that glowed with its own heat. The ground beneath me was still molten. The MK.0's surface glowed cherry-red, ticking as it cooled.

...I had no fucking idea proto-adamantium could even get red from heat. Then again, it just passed through a couple of fireballs hotter than the surface of the sun.

"...ive?" was all I caught. Probably asking if I was alive.

Good question.

I glanced around, seeing nothing; the dust-cloud was very much still here.

"I am alive," I spoke up, even if I heard jack and shit. I wasn't even sure if they could recieve from me, or beam anything down to me reliably, even if Honkai was dealt with, I had metric tons of radioactive dust above me in a mushroom cloud. Good luck radiowaving, or microwaving a message to the satellite through that.

"Fuck me..." I eased trying to move, did the finger gesture, and the power armour locked in place, letting me relax in a position.

I could visibly see the outer layer of my armour cooling down, as well as the glass, or whatever plastic composite was used to cover the visor in the helmet, cooling down too.

Good, because I was considering closing the hatch.

Then it hit me.

I won. I fucking won. I actually fucking did it, and I am the first human to survive in the fucking epicenter of the nuclear explosion!

Despite myself, I chuckled. Then, slowly, started to laugh.

"Suck it, Indiana Jones!" I screamed to the heavens, though I was relatively sure the outer dynamics in my armour were fried to a crisp. Microphones, probably too, now that I thought of that. "My fridge is cooler!"

It took my adrenaline-fueled mind another second to realize the accidental, if stupid, wordplay, and it broke me into another fit of unhinged laughter.

Slowly, I got on my feet and decided to head to the edge of the crater, as I started to feel small debris raining down.

A step through the still cooling ground, another step, and slowly I broke into a sprint, before feeling the edges of the crater, and starting to climb up.

Step after step, and I started using my hands to climb, catapulting myself up and across.

Finally, I was out, seeing the devastated city, as the mushroom clouds cleared enough to give me some visibility.

I glanced back towards the valley of devastation and grinned to myself.

Fuck yes, I've got the best bragging rights out of this.

"...Knightmare, Knightmare report! Report immediately!" Oh, and the satellite phone stopped creating only static. What is this dramatic panicking voice?

Did they think I'd die after all, or something?

Chuckling to myself, I spoke up.

"Mission complete HQ, direct hi..." I froze as my eyes caught a small figure, floating in the middle of the crater.

Untouched.

I had no external microphones anymore.

Yet, when the Herrscher clicked her fingers, I heard it. That one sound, in the absolute silence of MK.0.

Click.

Something bright ignited on the horizon. Blinding, so bright I reflexively adjusted the thickness of the shadows in my shadow helm.

Than another. And another. And another.

I stared, unable to tear my eyes away from the figure, whose gaze was aimed at a distance a moment ago... and then she looked at me.

"Warning: energy level critical, thirty seconds until shut-down." My armour informed with an electronic, pre-recorded voice.

"Fuck."