Godzilla 2000: New Era, PART 18 · 2:00pm Feb 11th, 2022
PART 17
Proofed by Lance-Omikron
Gabriel Hopkins by Dr1ft3r0I a.k.a C0yot3721
Dr. Joanne Johnson by Corona Blaze
Hina and illustrations by FallenAngel5414
Ami by EvoWizard
Additional illustrations by LordShrekzilla and Zeroviks
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Yuji Shinoda frankly felt like he’d been shoved into a war movie. Running with his guardians pushing him along towards the main headquarters of G-Force was an experience coated with the grit and grime of conflict. The roads and pavement had been blasted apart in most places, sometimes requiring them to step or jump over potholes, other times to climb down and then out of still hot, smoking craters surrounded on either side with fire. He’d felt like he’d burned a few fingerprints off on the hot asphalt with that last one, but it was either that or trying to navigate around the burning wreckage of a tank.
They scampered across the base, Shinoda reflexively ducking down as something went whizzing past his head. It took him a few moments to realize they were bullets, and it was mentally jarring to conceive.
The trooper to his left pushed him forward to get out of the line of fire, turning around and firing upon the attacker. Through the vertigo and the omnipresent command in his mind screaming at him to keep running, he glimpsed their attacker.
A little girl, no older than Io, staggered back as fluids burst from her face and chest like fireworks. It was an uncanny thing to behold, and for a brief instant he thought it perhaps a horrific tragedy before reality came tearing back into frame. The girl’s blood recombined, rapidly morphing into an arm more fit for a man. Her body remained half snapped-back, torn apart by the high caliber rounds ripping through her frame with the head lazily flopping against the shoulder. The eyes still blinked, before a raspy shriek was unleashed.
It couldn’t have been from pain, the drones had no such sense, it was instead not for itself but for them. The shrill, throaty scream of a child ripped the nerves of any adult in earshot.
Yuji’s rescuer instinctively flinched, as they all had, and that was the only split second the drone needed before hefting the gun it had dropped with the new arm and quickly popping off a shot.
Blood, actual immobile blood, spattered out from the trooper’s collar and they collapsed back. Yuji, acting purely on instinct, moved to grab the flailing arm of their good side.
“Come on!” he screamed, only for the soldier to bite through the pain and hose down the drone with another barrage to knock it down.
His bloodied face was burned into the scientist's mind for as long as he might live, which none of them were sure would be long. Red streaming from a split scalp and burst lip, with tears leaking from both eyes.
“RUN!” they screamed hard enough it tore their throat.
Yuji’s hand went slack and he was pulled away by the remaining soldier, leaving the wounded behind. Shinoda couldn’t take his eyes away, as everything moved in slow motion. Several birds swooped in from above, ignoring the stubborn, frantic gunfire that was loosed towards them. Casing bouncing off the pavement like jingling bells, until there were no more to be shed.
Even as he turned to look away upon a shadow he didn’t recognize casting over the downed soldier, he still saw everything moving so slow and he was glacial.
Smoke, gunfire, the resonating crashes of artillery or missile fire with the light of masers, all put to view or perception as he tried to keep up with his sole remaining guard. And through it all, he began to hear something else.
Gasping, grimacing, and forcing every footfall, he heard it. It seemed to bounce around so much he couldn’t tell if it was all in his fraying mind, or if every drone nearby was emitting the utterance to unnerve and horrify everyone in earshot.
The sound of a child screaming and a single word in a hellish chorus.
“Run!”
“RAH’N!”
“RAUHN!”
Something flying dive-bombed them. It looked like a large eagle, but rapidly morphed into something else. It struck his sole remaining guard who all but threw Shinoda forward as she was forced back. More and more screaming drones piled in more, many covered in cancerous growths that did little to impede their movement. As he was clear, Shinoda glimpsed the falling, torn-into trooper pull the pin on something. As soon as he was clear, running forward for what felt like hours in his slowed perception, he could probably see the hand release one of the very types of explosives he was holding. The resulting shockwave, even dozens of meters away, deafened one eardrum and nearly caused him to stumble over and fall.
Even through the ringing and panic, as he picked himself up to keep moving to the main offices, he could still hear the voices; spoken or imagined.
“R̷̥͐Ṵ̶̔͝N̴̦̹͗̎!”
“R̵͕͈̞̝̳̈́̎Ủ̷̧N̵͖̑͊̑͛!”
He obeyed, sprinting around the corner of a building to get into a courtyard that led to the facility. The only problem was, he was far from alone. The troops on the ground were scattered, and he was alone in the large courtyard; amongst humans anyway. That meant no company for him against the enormity that had its back to him.
It was, for the most part, the same sort of creature he witnessed the drone transform into during the final stage of the roadway confrontation. The jyarumu before him was magnitudes larger by comparison, however. Easily six to eight meters tall and just as, if not several meters wider, the whale-sized drone was pulling down entire walls of the facility with its enormous arms. The reason became evident when a large, metallic mass bounced off the ground and skittered by Shinoda as he flinched and dove aside to avoid it entirely. The offices evidently had security measures put in place that had been activated. Bolted, reinforced metal doors and wall plating would have cut off access to the interior of the building if traveled to from within. An obstacle for a human attacker, barely a hindrance for the current one.
The jyarumu also differed from the roadway individual in another respect. Its limbs were asymmetrical, a shorter and bulging left leg giving it a slouched posture. Ugly, pulsating blobs of flesh erupted from the skin in places so violently they split it. And every movement seemed to cause pieces of tissue to slough off, showering the ground with eyeballs, bone, skin, and muscle fiber. It was a process Yuji had seen many times, but played out over different parts of the body instead of the entirety such as this. Unchecked growth, out of control cellular activity to the loss of the whole. The drone seemed like it had cancers growing out of every part of its body, and was shedding the tumors, be they from bone, skin, or blood; to remain active.
A splash of tissue sloughed off near him and he had to hold back vomiting at the oversized human eyeball that was still moving within the mass of tissue. It swirled, twitched, and blinked with uneven lids twice; the pupil transfixed upon him. It collapsed in upon itself, before the blackness of the ocular cavity snapped back open into a human mouth that screamed just as a chunk of the building was torn down and hit the ground.
Dust and debris went rolling past Yuji’s feet, especially when pushed by a gust of wind engendered by a massive paw planting itself onto the ground. Realizing he’d been spotted, Yuji looked up and staggered back as his gaze was forced to keep going further and further up. The dorsum behind the head split open and a form scrambled out. It ran across the spine on two legs, the still morphing humanoid shape jumping off the back to get inside the now opened corridors of the interior.
-It’s going for the computer!-
Yuji heaved and grit his teeth whilst sucking down air for breath, attention redirected to the large mass lowering towards him. The jyarumu’s frog-like maw was forced to contort and shift, ejecting an eye that had become overgrown with a tumor and generate a new one just as the old fell from its face. Even with all the molting, it was still easily a few dozen tons in mass. Mass that, given the various shades of human hairs and eyes forming across it, was chiefly comprised of humans. Potentially, hundreds.. If not thousands of people.
It wasn’t just a monster using human voices, skin, gazes, and bodies. This being, this entity, consumed their mind and memories. Their creations and their consciousness. That was how it knew how to horrify them, using a child’s voice to disturb and unsteady as simply as flipping a switch. It could control them the same way they might manipulate an ant-colony to their undoing with pheromone and scented bait. An embodiment of humanity whilst seeing to undertake their destruction. As close as scientific terms would permit, the horrific abomination before him was a demon.
And he felt the cold of the vomited mists slither like gaseous drool from the hellmouth before him.
The stench, indescribable, clogged his lungs and he felt a horror of tiny forms crawling across him. Was this just all in his mind? Had the Millennian copied microbial life and could utilize them? Were they inside his throat? His eyes? His mind? Were they tearing him apart or was his fraying consciousness doing the job for them?!
He couldn’t breathe, he sucked in air but it solidified in the lungs. He was back in the train car. Back in Tokyo over fifteen years ago.
A horror gripped his bones, freezing them over just as the cold mists from the malformed jyarumu blighted his skin with frostbite.
The train car, the night that was the catalyst for all of this to be set into motion… An old music box chime echoed through his mind, eyes staring off into space in shock whilst the orbs themselves threatened to freeze without him blinking. The beautiful dream was over… he was about to lose his family again to a monster…
The cold air conducted off his old wedding ring more than his skin, biting painfully into his flesh before the sheer frigidity of the air could numb it. It startled his mind from his panic attack and oncoming breakdown, pushing him to awareness after being out of it for a single second.
Asuka’s features and face, cast well into memory, were transposed over the visage of her last gift to him laid out in a stretcher. And likewise, he remembered the warmth of Ichinose’s hand on his, as he prayed earnestly with enough strength it broke his heart free of the cold that had solidified it.
A Beautiful Dreamer continued on, just as the dream of life hadn’t died with the woman who ensured it would carry on after she had. If Io could hold out hope in her friend for years, and if Yuki could have faith he could keep from crumbling to pieces; he’d have to do the same.
Monster or no monster, he couldn’t afford to give up. What irony it was really. Imagining a world counting on you was hardly motivating with how incomprehensible it was. Imagining just a few people having faith in you though; that could give strength to move mountains.
Yuji Shinoda faced the damnation before him, eyes narrowed and resolution. He’d never used a grenade in his life, but they were made to work on the simple exactly for idiots out of their depth like him. He took one out from the bag he’d been holding onto, pulled the pin, and hefted it.
The jyarumu was unresponsive as he threw it as hard as he could, the explosive landing inside its misshapen maw.
There was a flash of magnificent light and an even stronger crash. The Millennian drone reared back and staggered, half its face blown off with an uneven cut-away slicing through the skull and jaw. In the chaotic mess that was its face, one could see human skulls, skeletons, and animal limb bones erupting from the regenerating tooth sockets. The twisting mass of bone condensed into fangs, with tissue stretching over it. That’s when another crash and flash erupted from its body, far larger than a grenade alone could do.
The cause came with a rolling engine and a salvo of maser fire followed by another missile, the combined weapons ripped across the backpedaling drone’s body. Shinoda whipped around to see a blessing of a sight. Scattered craft and troops were still fighting Millennian drones across the base, but a contingent had been streaming out of the hangars. Both made up of those who’d come from within, but many more being scattered forces who’d rallied to their position. With a route to the armory within secured, a large number had taken the reprieve to arm themselves and get into the vehicles.
Private Si-Woo Pak, now more firmly in her element and not fighting hand-to-hand anymore, let out a battle cry as she manned a small maser turret and shot down a dive bombing shigan who’d been aimed at a truck.
Sergeant Gabriel Hopkins, having run out of grenades, was all too happy to heft the rocket passed to him and fire it across the courtyard to impact a humanoid drone manning a gunner jeep trying to fire at them.
Colonel Shin Hayata rallied the crew of a damaged cryomaser tank to a new armament, helping a shell shocked Captain Akane Yashiro into a new tank that wasted no time in firing upon a second razin that had come bursting from a warehouse.
And leading the pack, the source of the first maser fire and missiles, a semi-humanoid tank rolled into the courtyard. GUNHED adjusted its stance, clamper arms swiveling forward on the shoulder joints to free up more movement as the treads arched up like legs. Now equal in height to the enormous jyarumu drone, Admiral Tachibana flipped a few switches to recheck his systems and get himself ready. The drone had gotten back up and was standing opposite the comparably sized machine with Yuji caught in the middle.
“Dr. Shinoda I presume?” Tachibana’s voice called out of GUNHED’s loudspeakers, “I’m going to have to ask we get acquainted later, I believe Pentecost kindly asked you to blow up some of the base not currently on fire. And, duck.”
He was lucky he remembered to, as the jyarumu drone surged forward and lunged for the machine. Skillfully piloting the mech, Tachibana caught the enormous arms of the abomination and held them at bay in a brawler’s lock. GUNHED’s namesake revved to life and bullets that could constitute cannon shot burrowed into the jyarumu’s face. A shower of gore and tumorous mass rained down, spurring Shinoda to scramble forward.
The jyarumu and GUNHED grappled, concrete snapping under clawed feet and whirling tank treads as they fought for stability. A second head burst free from the drone’s back, more resembling a shigan’s, and vomited a geyser of tarry fluid onto the Gatling cannon. The metal sizzled and melted in several spots, multiple rounds going off prematurely and making the mechanisms spark and smoke. Yuji scampered up a ramp made of fallen rubble to get to the destination. He saw the offshoot drone go to the computer rooms.
He stole only a brief glance back at the battle beyond. G-Force men and women were falling by the moment, but they were scoring their own wins or going down swinging. GUNHED’s arm snatched up and grabbed the second shigan face sticking out of the drone’s back, the mechanical claws crushing and tearing it off even as the enormous drone tackled the mech into the side of a wall.
Maser light and the sound of missile fire crossed Shinoda’s face.
He had issues with G-Force for years, especially in the last five where they were more and more in bed with the shadier elements of CCI. But this sight… he could only respect it. If this was G-Force’s last stand, they’d die doing what they’d established themselves to be. Not the armament of mankind, but the defenders of humanity.
He adjusted the satchel containing the remaining explosives across his shoulder, sprinting off to do the same for at least a few he could strive to protect.
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CCI Tower, Kyoto
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Within, Dr. Joanne Johnson was still very unnerved by odd blackouts and computer errors that the facility seemed to be suddenly experiencing, but did her best to focus on the good news and not prospects of the millennium bug being a thing on such a level.
She led the company behind her to a door and pointedly removed the ‘Warning: Radiation - Biohazard’ sign from the locks. Yuki Ichinose did her best now to shove past the kindly doctor as she quickly entered the room and stopped before the clear containment unit Io was still asleep in. Only not to her elation, it hopefully wasn’t the glass coffin it so resembled.
“It’s true then? No radiation contamination on her She-”
The pale-haired doctor honestly smiled, beamed in fact, “There were readings on her clothes showing she was definitely exposed to radioactive elements, of a type we admittedly had a very hard time analyzing due to some odd properties. But, not a single hint of it penetrated her skin in a detectable form. Blood tests further confirmed, she’s entirely clean.”
Yuki Ichinose’s eyes beamed so wide they almost sparkled, getting beside the containment unit and putting one of her hands to the glass whilst the other was on her panting chest, relief coursing through every one of her nerves.
Yuki exhaled harshly, almost laughing with a smile, “She’s going to be alright then?”
Joanne flipped through a few papers, filled out by hand on forms instead of print-outs given the computers seemed to be on the fritz earlier with some kind of overload, “Seems so. Her unconsciousness is concerning, but all of her vitals are fine. Brain activity is a bit high, but that’s normal for psychics… Tell me though, as I don’t have access to some of her records since Young Miss Shinoda here was taking out of the CCI sponsored hybrid program at the Biotechnics Institute here in Kyoto, what abilities does she have?”
“Uuum,” Yuki bit her lip, hardly feeling qualified for this despite being on the emergency contacts. She could only answer from experience, “Um… she has mild telepathy. Memory sharing and she has this habit of projecting what is behind her into the mind of someone in front of her.”
“Huh, a jury-rigged camouflage. An unusual application, but doable for psychic-based hybrids,” Joanne tapped at her chin with a pen, “Has she displayed any other odd traits? Says here her telekinesis is extremely mild. And no long range telepathy, correct?”
“To the best of my knowledge, the whole alien superpowers thing is kinda new to me,” Ichinose cringed a bit sheepishly, “Freaked me out the first couple of times she camouflaged. But no, nothing that fancy. She even mentioned once she had to get close to Godzilla to try and reach out to him.”
“Well brazenness like that might be why she got splashed with that creature’s blood,” Joanne hummed sympathetically, “Psychic hybrids, usually born of a Mysterian father and human mother, are sometimes known to have aberrations in ability development. If they don’t or can’t develop the typical telekinesis and telepathy, or those abilities remain rudimentary, sometimes they’ll develop in unusual ways. Like the other senses in a blind person sharpening to compensate. A close associate of mine named Gabriel developed a sort of pyrokinesis in place of advanced telekinesis.”
She cast a wary glance to the door, ensuring it was locked, and had a passing relief that the camera in here was offline and they’d done all the medical reports by hand. It was easy to let things slip through the cracks then.
“On record, young Io here just got extremely lucky the radiation didn't bite into her body and was cleansed easily... Off the record, but it might be that Miss Shinoda here developed some sort of immunity to radiation. Don’t tell anyone else though,” Joanne frowned as she stiffened her gaze, hardening it considerably upon the photographer, whose brow perked up in concern, “Nothing between us leaves this room, I only want to know a few things and I don’t want you discussing this… Did anything unusual happen in Io’s life involving radiation?”
The icy stab through her chest snapped her out of the confusion she had at the sudden change of mood. Her mind pondered involuntarily, but one detail certainly did track into place. It had been a feature in her mind for a long time since she learned it. Knowledge of it had, perhaps subconsciously, steeled her resolve to stay with the GPN and help were she could. Folks like the Shinodas needed it.
Ichinose’s lips pursed and she cast her gaze and tilt of her head downward, shadowing her eyes. Conflict brewed and a strong urge to remain silent was there, not feeling it was her place to bring something like this up. But anything else, even the intensity in Joanne’s voice, was feeble compared to concern as to the condition of Io, someone she’d swore to help. That, more than anything else as she gazed at the little girl behind the glass, convinced her of how she needed help.
If anything happened, she’d taken responsibility. It just took having a little faith in the kind doctor’s character to hope that this wouldn’t somehow come back to bite them.
“... Her mother died of radiation complications. She was caught up in the ‘84 attack,” Ichinose whispered, eyes cast to the floor before directing back up to meet Joanne’s and read her expression. The other woman’s visage had shifted slightly, but not in a manner Yuki disapproved of.
Mild shock or surprise perhaps, eyes dilating slightly, but the perk of her brow meant either sympathy or a very good lie. Yuki just had to hold onto hope it was the former, not knowing this woman particularly well and Shinoda had gone on and on about his distrust of CCI plenty of times prior.
“It… it’s possible she was exposed to something while in the womb,” Joanne started as she felt through the puzzle, not even sure which pieces really did fit together, “It’s never been documented before, this kind of resistance amongst hybrids. A lot being near a Godzilla, who’s radiation signature is unique… But…”
She shrugged, “Only hypothesis I can make right now. Just… once again, keep it to yourself.”
“Why is that?” Yuki stood up, putting herself between Io and anything else with a pout on her face.
Joanne similarly frowned, casting a wary glance to the door to ensure no eavesdropping, “In my hand written report, I am going to note Miss Shinoda just got very lucky and avoided any complications with radiation. Chance luck, but it happens… But make no mistake. If I had been splashed by what she had been? My gums would be gushing blood and my hair would have fallen out hours ago. It’s like her body absorbed and neutralized anything near her. What happened was a miracle, nothing short of one, no matter what exactly caused it. But-”
She motioned to the building around her, “Crisis Control Intelligence is a fantastic think-tank and developer, using any materials necessary to get to the latest and greatest breakthroughs. Cutting edge is why I’m here after I got recruited. But when I say ‘any materials necessary’, I mean any.”
The words between her words are frankly what caused Yuki’s pulse to quicken the most.
“You mean,” Ichinose gulped before tensing her body, eyes warily looking past the windows of the room, “Someone might see worth in keeping her here longer than she’d need to be.”
“Maybe not her, but her cells. So far there are two creatures known to have survived and thrived off radiation with virtually no ill effects. Godzilla,” her head nodded towards the glass container and the steady pinging of the attached heartbeat monitor, “And Io Shinoda. Some in CCI would love to gift humanity that ability, and it would be a lot less hassle trying to figure out how a fellow human developed it as opposed to Godzilla.”
Yuki Ichinose’s eyes widened and a tingle went down her spine, cautionary observation of the walls to the very facility housing and hosting them were cast. This was rapidly no longer sounding like an optimal place to be.
Ichinose’s brow furrowed as she tensed up further, getting between Io and Dr. Johnson, whom thankfully didn’t take the posturing poorly, “But you said it yourself, you don’t even know how she survived that radiation…”
Joanne winced and held a hand up in a classic symbol of being unarmed and not a threat, as if she’d previously been swinging a spear at Yuki to make her so tense, “And that… might make others even more desperate to find out. Figure out if it can be replicated. I promise you, even if you can’t trust me, just trust I’m trying to warn you.”
Yuki leaned back slightly, that oh so subtle body cue to show she wasn’t about to pounce, “I’m just… Her father always said to be wary of here, and I didn’t fully grasp why.”
“If in later years Io here wants to help research there, she’s welcome to consent to it. Her father pioneered development and study of Godzilla’s immunity after all… But not now, not while she’s young and like this,” Dr. Joanne frowned as she backed up towards the door, bowing slightly as she paused at her exit, “As her attending chief physician, I’m barring all access to her… to help her recovery, as the excuse will go in my report. You have authorization to turn anyone else away who tries to enter here too. If word leaks and someone comes in saying they intend to draw blood for ‘check-ups’, stop them and send for me immediately.”
Joanne motioned for the red button on the side of Io’s covered bed, “Panic alarm, don’t hesitate to hit it. And if all else fails, this door can lock from the inside.”
She stepped back and away, frowning at the slowly dawning horror crisscrossing Ichinose’s face. Joanne hated to put the poor woman in this kind of headspace, but it was better to be safe than sorry. CCI always meant well for those it aimed to help, but that didn’t leave her ignorant of the shadier elements. If they weren’t allowed to talk about what was going on in the sublabs, there was little doubt in her mind that some unethical cell harvesting could crop up with someone already in their care and unable to defend themselves.
The excuses flew before her eyes.
‘She’s still unconscious and we need to perform checks to see why.’
‘It’s her contribution after we expended so much helping her.’
‘It’s for her and others’ own good.’
Dr. Johnson frowned, but only sympathetically when she heard the door audibly lock behind her exit; glimpsing Ichinose’s eyes trained on the hallway like a hawk.
Not content with sating her fears with a mere door lock, Ichinose braced a chair against the handle on one side. Yuki had previously been more than a little tired after everything that happened, the early wake-up, to the adrenaline surge of the highway incidents, and now being here at the end of the day. She didn’t feel tired anymore, even if only by forcing herself too.
Crisis Control Intelligence was previously something of a passing curiosity and admiration of hers, the armament of humanity against the plagues of monsters. Even with their dodgy history with the Mysterians, that all seemed to be in the past and she frankly thought Yuji’s distrust of them paranoia.
It didn’t seem so extreme now as she backed away from the door, heart thumping as the photographer tried to stand guard over the sleeping Io. Even if some like Dr. Johnston seemed on the up and up, even Yuki had her limits to her typically calm and trusting outlook on life. The thick walls and scores of scientists, medical staff, and developers once seemed like ambivalent sheep in white coats. Now she felt like a ewe guarding a lamb surrounded by flocks of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Her resolve and fears seemed confirmed when, amongst the sea of people passing by outside the door and window, she glimpsed a pair of eyes that seemed trained on her. Ichinose saw no more than what seemed to be a short woman looking right at herself and Io from the other end of the hall, before a passerby stepped in front of them whilst on their path. When they and the trolley they were carting moved past, she was gone.
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G-Force Headquarters, Tokyo
==================
Yuji Shinoda scrambled through the half collapsed building, some hallways having much more debris than others due to the damage the giant drone had caused. Drywall, broken glass, and metal were sometimes absent entirely and other times they almost completely blocked off an entire path from floor to ceiling, forcing him to find another way.
What disturbed him and put his nerves on edge was the obvious drag marks and impressions indicating something had moved through the halls in the exact path he had. Over time, the dragmarks condensed and became smaller and smaller. His eyes caught movement after carefully stepping over a pile of broken rebar and masonry. His eyes tracked to see it and took focus off the windows, a choice that cost him whe the hall darkened from the see-through portals being blacked out by a mass shadowing the room from one end to the other.
There was an explosion of noise and Yuji was violently thrown off his feet. It took every bit of focus he had not to go into total vertigo as he doubled end over end and bashed his back against the busted sidewall. Endorphins quickly blunted the pain of broken glass and split metal not-so-lightly digging into his shoulder blade; and he could hear a wet ‘SNHAP!’ from within.
His arm went slack and Yuji thought he screamed out even with the dulling of the pain, but he couldn’t hear himself over the horrifically loud scraping of crumbling concrete and metal. His eyes caught a glimpse at the cause, seeing the entire outside facing wall caving in further. Meter by meter within a few seconds, the building fell away more as the visage of grossly cancerous tissue and plated metal ground into the structure. There were thin gasps of light rays erupting between the two, enough for him to briefly see the arm of the GUNHED mecha, which had been shoved into the building by its opponent, whirl back around and uppercut the abomination’s out-of-view head. Sparks rained down and he could see one of the missile launchers mounted on the shoulders limply hang down before snapping off.
His eyes stung with thrown dust he was also choking coughs out from, and that blurred his vision with tears. Through the deafening haze and watery veil, he felt about on the floor to try and recover the satchel. He had to work between breaths to even manage to move, the tightening and pain within his chest was so strong from its origin point in his back. Tugging on his clothing told him he probably had something lodged in his dorsum.
On a stupid impulse he nearly reached back with his good arm to try and pull it out, whatever it was, before he stopped himself, needing to bite a wad of his shirt to avoid crying out and losing it. The pain ripped every breath from his lungs before it could sate him, and his vision was starting to darken.
It took a sheer force of will, a power of the heart to break free. The sight of Io in the glass box pushed the agony from his mind.
Against all the pain, Dr. Yuji Shinoda regathered strength he’d never known before. He forcefully held back the scream and sucked in as hard as he could to fill his dust coated lungs. It was far from ideal, but the much-needed oxygen kept his vision from clouding over. Forcing himself through it several more times, hyperfocusing on just his diaphragm to avoid passing out from the pain, he squinted to look about for what he’d dropped.
With one arm limp, but twitching, he gathered up the satchel with most of the grenades and slung it over his good arm, before noticing two of the explosives had rolled free.
He needed to focus on each and every breath, ignorant of the shattered glassy pane sticking into his back but feeling it scrape bone every time he moved his reddening shirt, and he did so whilst staggering over to the dropped weapons.
He plucked one from the dusty, debris coated floor; and noticed something else. He didn’t know which room he was in, it had been a maze with half the hallways sealed off, caved in, and the rest various degrees of damaged; but it seemed to be an office. Something or someone had been in here. Darkening, dried bloodstains indicated drag marks and footprints. Figuring out any real detail was impossible, the tracks were smeared and scattered; some covered up by fallen debris or the shattered remains of what used to be a table or cabinet. But as his eyes tracked to the other grenade, he nearly recoiled back after picking it up.
An eye gazed back at him. It was almost impossible to tell it was one, monstrously deformed and almost entirely consumed by a cancerous growth of erratic tissue that looked like everything from a rat’s tail to fish guts. And yet, in spite of all that organic chaos and the shape degrading away to dust much like how he’d seen the drone on the roadway crumble after Io splashed it with Godzilla blood; it still swiveled around and blinked at him once even whilst falling apart.
Yuji Shinoda staggered away, tensed as if the mass was about to pounce at him like many other broken parts of these abominations that refused to die. But the eye, staring intently upon him with a mishmash of a human eye and animal parts; watched on for a few seconds before it crumbled away entirely.
Yuji Shinoda sweated bullets as he staggered away and towards the exit of the room; not at all liking whatever that interaction implied.
He couldn’t help but notice, upon reaching the typical entrance to the room and not the fallen wall he’d been thrown through, that the footprints and drag smears had gone the same direction as he did before turning off down another hall. Taking only a brief moment to stare in that way before departing, he limped to the computer room and soon found it.
It was to his dread however, to find he was too late. Someone was already inside, the door had wrenched open and ajar on the floor. It was a bolted, metal plate of an entrance; and doing so was clearly out of the limits for a human. Which made the glimpse of a pair of humanoid figures standing past the rows of consoles and aisles of thinking machines all the more uncanny. They stood together in a row, encircling a large pillar of a structure that had to be the central terminal. Surrounded by a wall of glass and a security lock, they’d gotten through.
The visage of Commander Takaaki Aso, mounted on a frame much leaner than the old leader actually had, was put up to the ocular scanner. A green light flickered across the perfectly replicated iris, studying features to the tiniest details in the tens of thousands. The barriers before the drone flickered green and a powerful lock audibly clicked open, the terminal booting up and glowing a bright blue. Sound bounced around inside the chamber as the hum of coolant fans and the light of azure electronics almost gave the computer room a mythic quality. An altar to the gods of technology, and the worship of achievements.
The drone stepped forward to commune with the terminal, and take of its blessing.
Grimacing as he pulled out a grenade and ripped at the pin, Shinoda cursed his luck as the blood made his fingers slippery and they flicked off the metal tab without completely wrenching it free. He tried again, only for a hand to cross his cheek.
The eye from earlier saw him coming, and it took only a quarter second to prepare countermeasures after dividing the ejected drone.
Shinoda looked up and gasped, almost sobbing instantly.
He’d been run through, not physically but mentally. A complete jarring of the senses. He saw her face cast in blue light for the second time since that nightmare of an incident in this very city, almost a decade and a half ago. Back then it had been Godzilla’s might and not the accomplishment of man which emitted the azure, but the facsimile was all the same.
Asuka Shinoda blinked plainly, smiling softly as she pulled his face; his bruised, bloodied, dusty face; closer to her pure beauty. She was without clothing to complicate her form, adding to the ethereal image she projected as if a vision from a hereafter or a visualization of how uncanny and unreachable he’d seen her since her passing. Another hand gently caressed his, and gripped the grenade. The image of the departed crushed her fingers inwards to hold the pin and latch shut, nearly crushing the bones in Yuji’s hand whilst doing so but he couldn’t feel any of that.
“Sshhh… I am infinity,” Asuka Shinoda whispered, speaking for the sole of the many souls.
Yuji Shinoda’s tears ran freely, his heart feeling like it was fracturing.
Her hand crushed down, and a finger bone snapped as part of the grenade pin dug into his skin. Another broke, and then another, and then another. Four of his fingers fractured under the impossibly powerful grip he couldn’t break and hadn’t the will too.
The echo of his dearest stroked the side of his face, smiling peacefully like she was about to soothe him to sleep.
One finger didn’t snap. A metal scraping sounded off from their hands. His wedding ring, dented in as it was, had caught on the cusp of the pin and protected the base of his finger from damage like a shield. It jarred the mind with memories and sensations, some that continued long after a final night on Odo Island over a decade ago.
Asuka Shinoda was not a sight, a figure of beauty, an impossibility as high of a pedestal as he’d put her on. She was human, she was his wife, his friend, his beloved, and the mother of their legacy. This was just a demon, a succubus, bastardizing her face. It was emotion and logic rolled into one that freed him from the mental grip, and it was a rare realization to him that those two forces weren’t opposites.
Yuji Shinoda let out a loud outcry and bashed his forehead into the drone’s face, throwing his full weight into its lanky frame to push it back.
Despite their apparent great strength, the drone had split its mass in two and wasn’t very heavy. It was enough for even a pathetic form like Yuji, amped up on adrenaline as he was, to shove her backwards into the see-through barrier surrounding the super computer terminal. Electricity sparked and jolted as the console for the security system broke on impact, spurring the abomination looking like his wife to convulse with shocks.
But after his moment of indignation fueled might, Yuji Shinoda staggered and fell, crumbling to his good shoulder and trying to rise futilely. One shoulder was busted, the hand below without the range of motion afforded by a moving arm. The other had almost all of its fingers dislocated and fractured, blood was pooling from multiple lacerations across his back and legs, and he was seeing tremors from the constant adrenaline.
The Asuka drone regained their footing and slouched forward. Long hair veiling the now eerie face, she slouched in her stance and skittered forward in a manner impossible for a human. Uncannily long limbs stretched out mid stride, mass around the midsection and softer tissue being redirected to the joints and long bones. Lips tightly curled back into a permanent parody of a smile, and the tooth row seemed to jut out on its own.
The soft voice of an angel, now replaced with the death wails of a possessed woman to unnerve the victim.
At first Yuji thought she was shrieking at him. But he got his answer when a shadow passed over his fallen form just as the Asuka emulation pounced.
Sharpened bone bit through skin. The Asuka copy’s jaw was dislocated from the mass shoved through the distorted maw, rammed clear into the throat and collar. In an instant, the drone started to convulse and writhe. Staggering back, it constantly shrieked whilst clawing and smacking at the obstruction impaling it through the neck and mouth; but was unable to free itself as the tissue around it swelled up with tumors. Skin started to slough off, taking the hair with it. The drone, now mostly covered by raw muscle that steamed with intense heat, was now a flailing demon falling over and kicking about erratically in a manner almost like a malfunctioning machine.
The screams it let out seemed to carry on even after it’s body was morphed into a mass of cancerous growth of man, beast, and beyond. Soon after, the still form started to crumble away to dust. Its cellular make up having broken down and burned away under their own out of control energy.
Yuji Shinoda felt an arm pick him up by the good shoulder and pull him up to brace him against a table.
Within the remains of the deceased drone was an unusual item, the cause of its destruction. What looked like a semi-mummified bony claw core was revealed by the crumbling dust; still lodged within the jaws of the fracturing skull. It looked ancient, but worked on; like the tip had been resharpened by hand to fashion it into a stake. In the back of his mind, Yuji swore he'd seen it before. Both in Tokyo years ago, and as a young boy on Odo Island decades prior.
The remaining drone, still bearing the face of Takaaki Aso, looked back and blankly stared into the face of the man braced against the wall next to Yuji. Missing a foot, with the stump where the ankle should have been covered in tight bindings and cauterized shut, Commander Takaaki Aso nevertheless managed to scowl back.
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Okay, so, things I enjoyed. The mystery behind Io's survival is cool and the ground level action continues to be solid.
Things I didn't enjoy. The continuing trend of having god awful shit happen to the protagonists.
While I've mostly come around on this, it's getting a little distracting how long it's taking to get to the end.
Ngl. This was basically a better version of the last chapter now that the main cast is involved to keep us more emotionally invested. You did great conveying the chaos of Yuji's headspace throughout all this. And the Millennians, man... I thought me & Lazer were going ham on the war scenes writing the current chapter of PL then you step in & be like "Hold my drink."
And Aso comes in at the end with the clutch like a true MVP.
So a Millenium Drone tried to fool Yuji by transforming into a copy of his wife? You gave me vibes of the Kaiju War Chronicles Match 130 Kiryu and Zilla vs Orga
I admit to preferring the deep seeded dread of earlier chapters to the grotesque displays of the Millennians, that said their action is still very solid. The mid chapter respite gives a neat look into CCI and Io, but that ending save was the highlight.
Commander also certainly is a tougher soldier than the drones think, refusing to let a lost foot keep him down. Also, when the drone pretending to be Asuka had it's jaw line change, it made me think of the japanese urban legend of the slit mouthed woman.
Well, that was reunion that Yuji will never forget and I kinda figure they would use a dick move like that. Fricken drone bastard using his wife’s image is just wroooong.And Aso being a hero at the end!
I kinda was struggling where Yuji was at first part in this chapter. Is in the building or outside the building where the jyarumu?
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Emotional knife twist, the Millennian see mentally harming someone same way we would encouraging a rat to go in a direction with baited. Manipulate and control. Good thing Aso is a case of "Local man too angry to die".
Ah, I'll see to tweaking the wording to make it more apparent. The Jyarumu was outside the building, blocking the entrance, and ripping part of it open (as Aso had activated a lockdown and they needed to get at the interior). Once Taizo showed up to fight off the Jyarumu with the GUNHED right outside of the building, Yuji got around them and got inside. But a few times if the fighting giants fell against the building, he could see them.
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Ah, okay. Got it 👍
We get back to Shinoda and company making their way through this chaos.
And Millennian drone child...oh boy. Yeah, Millennian knows how to use psychological warfare to their advantage. As the soldier who saved Shinoda and Shinoda himself now know very well.
And I get the reference with the run thing. Every bit as terrifying here.
Shinoada is frantically running away, trying to get to his destination...and we once more see Millennian's weakness as the drone coming at him begins to breakdown in front of him.
Which means that Millennian, as dangerous as it is, still has a timer. If they can't keep absorbing biomass, they will run out of time.
I also like his description of what this creature is, how he sees it it. Almost a demon. In some ways, Millennian is just as dangerous, only lacking the malice a demon would possess.
I do like that Io is what broke Yuji out of his stuper and helpped him counter attack, buying time for Tachibana and his group to make their way in.
Also, glad Si-Woo survived the gunshot before. And of course Gabe gets his big guns and takes to it.
I also like the little humor from Tachibana.
Back at CCI, Joanne is caring for Io and giving Yuki the rundown...
And Io somehow avoided a fatal dose of radiation despite having been exposed, something Yuki is relieved but iobviously has something unusual about it. Also do like the brain activity being higher in psychics than humans. Also do like the explanation of how this will work and why some psychics develop unusual powers.
And Joanne is both interested in her seeming immune to radiation, and decides to keep it secret. I think she knows the shadier stuff going on. I like the implication that Io might have been altered in the womb...of course there might be another thing at play, given what Belvera had said.
Of course yeah, Joanne has no intent of letting Io be used like she knows CCI likely would. Not while she's young. I like this moral compass, especially because I know where Joane ends up. She knows they had good intentions, but she isn't blind to CCI's shadier elements. Yuki taking her seriously is definitely a good thing.
...And we get a worrying little suggestion of something worse might be coming. Oh boy.
Meanwhile, Yuji is trying to stop the end of the world. Despite the chaos around him and being wounded, he focuses on Io and keeps going. Again, this is humanity showing their strength Millennian doesn't possess.
And he finds the drone trying to access the computer...
And finds his wife seemingly confronting with him. However, it is of course a Millennian drone in her form, which tries to crush his hand...but his wedding ring saves him. By miracle or by dumb luck, it saves him and let's him break out.
Do like that the drone had to split itself, weaking the distraction drone and letting him throw it off...
Of course that doesn't mean he's safe, he's still definitely beaten up. And transforms into a horrified form, but something saves him...
With the Gojira fang. Aso is still alive.
Overall, good chapter. Shows the threat, but also shows humanity fighting back and that there might be a light if they can just make Millennian burn through its biomass. Given it expending so much biomass to make these larger constructs, you get the idea it knows that.
Asuka's knock off is also terrifying and shows how manipulative they can be. Good work and continues to show humanity's strength against Millennian.
Yuji's struggles and perseverance this chapter was really great to see. He's doing everything in his power to save his daughter, aliens be damned. Still very sick of the drone to use her image. Of course I expected it to do that with it taking her hair earlier. Fantastic chapter. Really makes Yuji that much more a hero and good father.