"I think I've got the gist of everything now," said Aldrich. "We can move on to drafting plans for attack."
"That does sound agreeable," said Valera, ever hungry for the fight.
"First off, I have a decent grasp of Mel's capabilities, but I want to ascertain yours, Beta," said Aldrich. "You're also a fragment of the Omega Mind.
Theoretically, you should be one of the strongest entities in Cyberspace."
"In pure theory, yes," said Beta. "But I am under several restrictions. As Mel has mentioned, I perform constant calculations to ensure this timeline does not erase us."
"Even as Absolute existences, you still face that kind of debuff?" said Aldrich.
"Correct," said Beta. "Being Absolute existences does not allow us free reign to severely tamper with the flow of space-time. Said flow is flexible and capable of adjusting to change, but if possible, rejects it.
The more we interfere with a point in the space-timestream, the greater we face universal rejection. If we do nothing and merely observe, we face little to no rejection.
Obviously, that is not an option. We must act. That is why we are here.
To that end, Mel's power redirects the vectors of universal rejection such that, when aided by my constant calculations, we are rendered near invisible to this timestream's natural defenses.
However, should Mel expend her energy considerably, her vector control will falter to the point where such incognito movement becomes unsustainable.
These constant calculations consume 90% of my processing power at any given time."
"You're still an Omega Mind fragment," said V. "Even 10% if enough for you to be easily S-rank if you were a techno."
"That is certainly true," said Beta. "However, I can only function through proximity with Mel. I have no corporeal form here. My original 'body' still exists in my future."
"I see. Mel is like your anchor. You can only work in an area around her," said Aldrich, taking note of this.
This severely limited Beta's range in terms of controlling tech, which, combined with the 90% processing power it spent just being here, explained why it could not try to combat Alpha directly.
Alpha, too, was not close to full power, but it was still a hell of a lot further ahead than Beta.
"Correct," said Beta. "I am functionally quite useless. I provide calculative support for Mel's abilities, but that is about all I can do. You must rely on Mel for any form of combat capability."
"I have a lot more up my sleeve than you think," said Mel. "If I get a one on one fight with Solomon Solar, I'm confident I can beat him too."
"You were sandbagging that much back in Blackwater?" said V. "Looked like you struggled with Seth sometimes, and he's ultra bargain bin Solomon Solar."
"I was limited only to using my personal barrier," said Mel. "His AC count was high enough to resist vector control over his brain, but if I got a hold of him, I could have instantly killed him in more ways than one.
Reversing his blood flow, leeching all the solar energy out of him, crushing his lungs, you name it.
Now, Solomon Solar's a lot tougher and a lot faster, but I wager I can do the same."
"From how much we're focusing on Solomon Solar, we've basically agreed that he's the biggest threat there," said Aldrich. "I'll say right now that my units and I aren't the best suited to dealing with him. Burning damage isn't great for us, and he's too strong, fast, and mobile to easily deal with."
The only way Aldrich knew of a way to beat Solomon Solar was to use the [Hand in My Heart] curse, but that required physical touch to initiate. Solomon Solar was too fast for that.
Not even the Pursuer could do anything. It was almost immune to physical attacks, but Solomon Solar had incredibly powerful energy generation as well.
"If you want to leave Solomon to me, you can," said Mel.
"I object to this," said Beta. "I would prefer that we fight together. Solomon is simply one piece of this equation. The end goal is to solve the Scrapheart's destruction. By staying together, we can guarantee this."
Aldrich raised a brow under his helm. Beta was basically insinuating here that it did not fully trust Aldrich to destroy the Scrapheart on his own.
And Beta was right. The moment Mel had said she could take Solomon on, he had thought about using Solomon as a diversion to keep both Mel and Beta occupied.
It seemed that though Beta was friendly, it still had some of the cold calculative thought processing that A.I. usually cultivated.
"You have Dracul as your ally, don't you?" said Mel.
"Dracul might be overall stronger then Solomon, but Solomon beats him in a fight due to compatibility," said Aldrich. "Dracul's darkness is susceptible to fire. And Solomon can rain fire down with the power of the sun.
A brief silence settled through the room.
Solomon was a big, big issue.
He was weaker than he was in his prime, that was for sure, but he was still undeniably one of the strongest heroes on the planet.
He was probably the best example of the quintessential 'flying brick' archetype. Super fast, super strong, super tough. On top of that, his solar energy gave him a noticeable healing factor and, more importantly, insane firepower.
Like Seth Solar, Solomon was just the worst type of enemy to deal with. But he was several tiers above even Seth.
Aldrich thought about getting Kryptic. The Italian prong, Solomon's handler, definitely had Kryptic to keep him in line. But Aldrich had already asked Feather, the biggest insider he had for the Italian prong, what the chances of getting Kryptic were.
In Feather's words: fat fucking chance.
The Kryptic was accessible only to the boss and his consigliere, the two highest positions in the Italian prong. Feather, as a capo, was high up, but not that high up.
The other way to get Kryptic was to harvest it from the Abyss, the variant infested, deep sea trench where it originated from, but this was an absurdly risky mission.
