Hunters Take The Stage!

"Boss, we have news. Marley just used artillery to try and damage our walls. We've already destroyed their units. Any other additional orders?"

Myr looked at Ace and yawned. "Take command of 300 Yamatos, 1,000 Rumblers, 1st through 50th heavy artillery units, and bring 500 of my personal Liberty Prime mechs. Load them up with ARC bombs. I don't give a fuck what you do from there, just report back when you're done. Have fun Ace."

Before Ace could have a chance to ask any questions, Myr snapped her fingers and teleported him to where the other Hunters were waiting.

With Ace gone, Myr abruptly stood up and stripped down to her underwear and sprawled out on her and Chloe's bed to soak up some "sunlight" which was being emitted using her magic.

It was as if Myr was in a trance, and she didn't even notice when Chloe walked through the door.

Once she spotted Myr, Chloe could only shake her head while grinning. Sitting down next to Myr, she began to rub Myr's ears and abdomen, causing Myr to start purring while shifting so she was facing Chloe.

========

Ace met up with the other 8 Hunters with a complicated expression. Noticing this, Smiles cackled and asked "How'd it go Ace? Did she scold you?"

Ace shook his head and said "No, she basically gave us a variety of troops and ships to use to mount an offensive against Marley. 300 Yamato battleships, 1,000 Rumblers, the 1st through 50th heavy artillery units, and 500 Clockwork Liberty Prime mechs loaded with ARC bombs. She didn't give us any orders other than "have fun", though that could mean any number of things."

Sighing, Midas spoke up. "I suppose that means we have free reign on how we want to attack. I say we split our forces up and attack them from 5 fronts and chew through their defenses. No need to completely take over quickly, but rather make them feel the heat. That's just my opinion though."

Midas' suggestion earned a unanimous agreement from all of the Hunters. Hush took a long drag of her custom vape and blew out a cloud and said "So we have 60 Yamato battleships, 200 Rumblers, 10 heavy artillery units, and 100 Clockwork Liberty Prime mechs per front. How about we soften them up with a sustained bombardment after we announce a warning? You know Boss would want to keep civilian casualties to a minimum."

Divide nodded while cleaning her HK MP5 and grumbled "Boss has to have some motive for sending us off to decimate Marley, but despite being the analytical brain out of the 9 of us, nothing adds up."

Hush snorted and retorted "Divide, there isn't any other motive besides spending time with her wife. They're probably fucking as we speak, and my money is that Boss is the bottom."

Ghost, who was taking a sip of coffee, did a spit-take and glared at Hush. "Hush, that's something I would've expected out of Smiles, and besides, Boss' sex life is far beyond our paygrade and matters to worry about."

Chuckling, Hex mused "Come now Ghost, no need to be so uptight about it. I'm genuinely curious if Boss is the bottom as well. We all know how hardcore she can be, but I've had the.. "pleasure", of seeing her being all lovey dovey with Miss Chloe when I tried giving her my report about those idiotic Military Police."

Crimson finally retorted "Let me guess, you just stood there waiting for them to finish so you could give her your report."

Mumbling grumbling into his bowl of noodles, Hex simply flipped off Crimson, which caused Smiles to burst out laughing.

"AHAHAHA! Hex got 3rd wheeled!"

This caused Hex to cough out his ramen as he whipped his bowl at Smiles and beaned her in the middle her forehead.

Fully incensed, Smiles leapt over the table and tried stomping down on Hex's groin, only to miss as Hex instantly vaulted off the ground and rebounded off the wall, whipping a knife at Smiles with hypersonic speeds.

Leaning her head to the side, Smiles was about to throw her own knife when they heard "What in the ever living FUCK ARE YOU DIPSHITS DOING?! YOU JUST PUT A HOLE IN A MECHANIC'S HEAD!"

The Hunters turned around in unison and saw Myr dragging a mechanic's body with a gaping hole in it's temple, with artificial blood pouring out of the wound.

Looking at Smiles and Hex, Myr huffed and growled out "You two bumblefucks better not put any holes in any of my mechanics' heads without a damn good reason. Even worse, you interrupted my personal time with my wife. I expect you two dumbasses to haul this poor sap's body up to the medical ward to get patched up. The longer you take, the more I take out of your next paycheck, now MOVE!"

Tossing the mechanic's body to the two troublemakers, Myr teleported away back to her bedroom where she promptly curled into a ball and fell asleep next to Chloe.

Looking at eachother, Smiles and Hex both nodded as Hex heaved the mechanic's body over his shoulder and walked to the medical bay to have the mechanic healed.

========

6 hours later...

"Alright, Hush, Divide, Ghost, Midas, Hex, are you and your portion of the army ready?"

""""Affirmative""""

Ace sighed and tapped his earpiece. "Alright, green light! Hit those bastards!"

Overlooking the entire fight was Ace and the other Hunters who weren't participating. Needless to say, it was a slaughter.

They were attacking the bordering land of the Clockwork Technocracy that was controlled by Marley. They had announced their intention to attack 4 hours prior, barely enough time to organize a retreat, though as they expected, Marley stood it's ground.

The Yamato battleships' main guns were singing a song of pure death, firing off 10 megaton shells at and past the fortified border.

*BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM*

Clouds of smoke and ash rose up all along the entire area, which would later be known to the people of Marley as "Hell's Gate", an area that spelled certain death for any and all who remained.

After 4 hours of constant shelling, the Yamatos ceased fire and began to move up and towards the now devastated border.

Suddenly, a Yamato took a cannonball to the port side, though it merely bounced off without even scratching the paint.

It's hangar doors opened and tens of Rumblers poured out and raced out to where the shot came from.

Soon, many other shots rang out from the rubble as more and more soldiers of Marley opened fire with whatever they could find.

Every Yamato battleship's hangar doors opened and deployed either Rumblers, Liberty Prime mechs, or artillery units.

The artillery units, once grounded, instantly locked onto some of the mid-range targets and rapid fired salvos of high explosive missiles and high yield bunker busters, all of which were autonomously guided.

The Rumblers performed strafing runs and bombing runs on the long-range targets, while the Liberty Prime mechs charged the border and started to lob their ARC bombs towards the closer targets.

The Liberty Prime mechs were special in the sense that not only were they practically indestructible, but their bomb racks were linked to a spatial storage that could generate an infinite amount of various types of bombs, such as nuclear, ARC, cluster/airburst, pulse, incendiary, and chemical bombs.

They were fully capable of flight and could fight in the vacuum of space, had custom AI and programming, and drew energy from the same power source that ran the entirety of Nekopara: Myr herself.

Unlike the normal Liberty Prime, Myr's Clockwork Liberty Prime mechs were also armed with an assortment of heavy Gatling lasers, large caliber auto cannons, and an enhanced "eye beam" that detonated with roughly 1.3 megatons of force, essentially disintegrating anything caught in the blast radius.

Out of nowhere, a Yamato battleship veered off course and turned so it's port side was facing the border and began raining down mine charges far over the border.

Pretty soon, every Yamato started doing the same, blanketing the entire area 80km out in a 2km spacing with mines.

Ace frowned and enhanced his vision and raised his eyebrows at what caused the Yamatos to fire off their mine charges.

"You guys seeing this? That's got to be at least several million titans. How the hell do they even have that many?"

Smiles' cackle could be heard over the Hunters' comms, followed by "Who the fuck cares? I'm ready for some bloody fireworks!"

Ghost's voice sounded out next. "We should probably cut the chatter, shows about to start. Ace, think we should ask Boss for some more ships and mechs? My scanner is picking up well over 40 million unique heat signatures, and it keeps rising, fast. Those mines aren't going to buy the mechs much time to charge forward, and we only have 500."

Sighing, Ace grumbled "Fine, fine. I'll ask Boss if she can spare some mechs. Just remember though that you all owe me a drink after this, because I'm guessing Boss isn't going to be happy with me after this."

A chorus of "Thanks Ace" could be heard as Ace silently sulked at what was to come.

========

Teleporting outside of Myr's bedroom, Ace took a deep breath and knocked. "Boss, there's a slight problem with the campaign."

The sound of rustling blankets on the other end caused Ace's face to pale, as he had a very good idea of what he might have just interrupted.

Bracing himself to be quite literally kicked out of the castle, he was more than surprised when it was Chloe that opened the door.

Noticing that Chloe was only wearing lingerie, and very revealing lingerie at that, Ace took a deep breath and knelt on one knee with his head lowered and said "I deeply apologize for what I interrupted. I'll accept any punishment that you may deem fit."

Chloe sighed and lazily said "It's quite alright. We had just finished anyways. Myr is a bit.. "tired" after our session, and she's currently sound asleep, though I believe I may have accidentally left the ropes-"

Ace quickly interrupted her. "WITH all due respect Mistress Chloe, please don't describe it any more, I want to keep what images of a ruthless leader I still have of Boss intact."

Chuckling, Chloe conjured up a chair and sat down with one leg crossed over the other and lazily said "I'll allow the deployment of additional forces in my lovely wife's stead. Would 99,500 additional mechs work? A solid 100,000 mechs against an astronomically larger amount of measly titans. Should fine, yes?"

Swallowing back the lump in his throat, Ace merely nodded, to which Chloe simply snapped her fingers and headed back into the bedroom.

Before she closed the door however, she looked back at ace and gave him one of the scariest smiles he'd ever seen that made everything in his body scream at him to evade and escape.

"Next time you interrupt Myr and I like this, I'll make sure to nail your balls to your forehead and drag you around strung up on a cross", before mockingly blowing him a kiss, winking, and then silently shutting the door.

Once the door was completely shut, Ace staggered for a moment before teleporting out and back to watching the battle, which had turned to hell in a handbasket for the Titans of Marley.

Ace immediately took off his armor, mask, and his uniform top and sat down on a chair he brought out from his watch and then lit a cigarette.

The other Hunters gathered around Ace once they noticed he was back, and even Smiles was worried at the state their leader was in.

Midas walked up and hesitantly asked "Hey man, you doing alright? You look like you just saw your worst fear."

Ace remained silent as he took a draw from his cigarette that burned it down to it's filter and exhaled, finally looking at the battlefield and saying "I got us more than enough mechs to win the fight, my job is done for now."

This caused the other Hunters to finally piece together what had happened.

Crimson walked up to Ace and pulled out her own chair and took off her mask and helmet and asked "You didn't speak to Boss, but to Mistress Chloe, and you interrupted their personal time, didn't you?"

Ace silently nodded as he was about to reach for another cigarette when Hush suddenly offered Ace her vape as she somberly said "Here Ace, have a hit of this instead. Packs a hell of a lot more punch than your cigarettes."

Noddingly mutely, Ace silently took Hush's vape and took a very long draw, even longer than Hush usually did, and blew out a large cloud as he nodded at Hush and gave her back her vape.

"You're right, that packs a punch all right" Ace said with a straight face.

Smiles took off her mask, which prompted the others to do the same.

"Sorry about that Ace, we'll buy you as many drinks as you want after this. Didn't mean for you to accidentally piss off Mistress Chloe" Smiles said in a rarely heard guilty tone.

Sighing, Ace just watched the battlefield as he simply said "We're Boss' Hunters. We follow orders and get our jobs done. This was my job, and I got it done. I have to say though, I never knew I could feel fear like this. It shouldn't be possible, but I'm pretty sure that was what terror felt like. It felt like I had the reaper's gun to my head, and at any moment I could die, without even knowing how so."

Nodding her head, Divide mused "I wonder how strong we are compared to Mistress Chloe."

Ghost snorted and replied in a crisp tone "Don't even think about asking for Mistress Chloe to spar against you. Both her and Boss let me scan them and compare their power against all 9 of us combined. The moment I tried to scan Mistress Chloe, my scanner broke, and Mistress Chloe willingly told me that in terms of overall combat ability, Boss was astronomically stronger than Mistress Chloe."

Sighing, Ace waved his had dismissively and said "Of course your scanner broke. Despite the 9 of us being machines, we all have a soul and free will. Our soul tiers are 4, meaning we're technically low ranking gods and goddesses. Mistress Chloe has a soul tier of 8, and Boss has a soul tier of 10.5, a halfstep away from a soul tier of 11. It goes without saying that we'd be crushed."

Smiles clicked her tongue and grumbled "I understand fuck-all when it comes to soul tier and stuff like that."

Ace sighed and wearily replied "A soul tier of 5 means they have some ability to manipulate creation and/or effect causality. A being's power scales up as their soul tier rises. In Boss' old universe, the highest soul tier was 6, while the average being on her planet had a soul tier of 1, 2 at the highest. If a soul tier of 6 is considered a top ranking being, then right now, Boss could slap around anyone and anything she wants to. With her being a halfstep away from a soul tier of 11, well, it would go without saying that she's most likely the strongest being in this omniverse."

A blindingly blue, fiery dome suddenly appeared in the horizon and grew bigger by the second. A giant wave of wind, dust, and smoke expanded rapidly outwards of the blast.

All of the Hunters looked up, as Crimson whistled and remarked "Damn, Boss sure knows how to make some neat toys. Looks like Project Icarus is a success."

The other Hunters nodded in silent agreement, as they got the all clear sign from the Yamatos in the form of neon green colored flares.

Ace put his gear back on, stood up, and grunted "Looks like our job is done for now. I'll go report back the complete success. If I'm not back within 4 hours, I appoint Midas as the leader of the Hunters."

Ignoring Midas' protests, Ace teleported to the outside of Myr and Chloe's bedroom, where he was met with the sight of a slightly ticked off Myr.

Silently cursing his bad luck, Ace was about to apologize when Myr interrupted him.

"I don't care about the earlier interruption, but do you mind telling me why one of my special superweapons was used without authorization?"

Confused, Ace hesitantly asked "What? I thought you authorized it's use, hence why it was deployed? I'll check the status of Yamato 21, the ship which deployed it."

Tapping into the comms channel, Ace and Myr could hear arguing on the other end.

"Yamato 20, this is Hunter Ace, who deployed Project Icarus?"

"Hunter Ace, some dipshit named Leeroy Jenkins deployed it sir. We don't even know how he snuck onboard, nor how he managed to deploy the superweapon sir. Supreme Myr, if you're listening, I'm deeply sorry for any trouble that might hav- LEEEEROYYYY JEEENKINNNNS!" *BOOM* "SOMEONE TRANQ THAT MORON BEFORE HE SCUTTLES THE SHIP!"

The comms channel for Yamato 20 suddenly cuts out with the sound of static, as both Ace and Myr look at eachother with completely straight faces and silently nod while going back to their own business, dreading the report they would each have to fill out once this mess was over.