Even with that, there's still a lot of factories.
"Well, anyway. I guess I'd better explain WHY it's so crucial we find these belts.
You see, five years ago, there was a great scientist- and a good man, besides. Doctor Hiroshi Toshiba; my mentor and someone very important to Penny."
Penelope seems a little....sadder at the mention of the name. As does Tatsuya. He takes a moment, before shaking his head.
"He wanted to make the world a little safer from supervillains and the giant monsters- kaiju, we call them- who attack the cities of our world. To do that, he created the Rider System; what you would call power armour. They were intended to create a generation of soldiers, capable of supporting or even supplanting superheroes in their protection of the world. He themed them after the tarot Arcana; a lot easier to keep track of them, and a lot easier to make a wearer recognisable. To give them a sort of beacon to signal civilians to call them.
The prototype belts were Sol and Luna. Those were the belts you saw being wielded today by the Sloane brothers. They were proof of concept, proof that these belts could actually work. They're stronger than your average human, yes, but against a wielder of a Second-Generation Belt, such as mine or Penny's, they're deeply disadvantage. They lack quite a few features, they're not as defensive, and they're rather crude.
Then there are the belts that Doctor Toshiba refined. There were five.
Aeon, the belt of wind, based around the Wheel of Fortune, and Penny's belt. Flamma, the belt of flames, based on the Magician, and mine. Mares, the belt of water, based on the High Priestess, and Gaia, the belt of earth, based on the Chariot. The fifth and most powerful was Aether, the belt of quintessence, based on the Hierophant, and Toshiba's own personal belt.
Of those five, Sol and Luna, we possess only Aeon and Flamma, and know who holds Mares; she's a friend of ours. I'll introduce you to her later.
Anyway, after that, he realised that slowly making these belts and refining their power and strength was too inefficient, so he worked on streamlining them and making them easier to produce. He got to twenty belts before......his untimely death; he was killed, while presenting his technology at the Largo Tech Expo, a convention of technology, five years ago."
"That......t-that's where I got this belt. He...." Penelope chokes slightly. "H-he gave it to me, b-before he....."
"......and ever since, Penny and I have been trying to track down the remaining belts; most of them were stolen after his death. For the doctor." Tatsuya clenches his fist, closing his eyes. ".....that attack you saw wasn't the first, but it is the biggest thus far. The reports have always been the same; black-armoured Riders attacking civilians seemingly indiscriminately.
Every other time Penny and I have tried, the Rider fled before I could get the belt. Now.....now that we have a belt, I can figure out where these things are coming from. Maybe whoever's making these belts...."
"Whoever's making those belts may have stolen the other belts we're missing." Penelope's regained her composure as she stands up. "If we can find the manufacturer, we'll most likely find whoever's making the belts. And if they're using innocent people to fight for them, then it's all the more reason to take them down.
That's where this might help the effort against the Trespassers. These suits were designed to take on Kaiju assaults directly. They're rated to withstand several hundred tons of force, can shield a wearer from temperature extremes, gunfire, bladed weapons and radiation. They're designed to boost the wearer's strength, speed, agility and durability beyond human levels, and carry weapons rated for versatility and power to take down giant monsters capable of levelling cities. Of course, that's just the second-generation models; the mass-produced ones are nowhere near that level of power. The doctor sacrificed power for efficiency.
If we can acquire even one of these second-generation belts, perhaps one of you could use them against the Trespassers."
Author
Topic: Trespassers of the Multiverse: Gaiden [IC] Four is Death... (Read 788259 times)