Godzilla 2000: New Era, PART 21 · 2:00am Mar 12th, 2022
PART 20
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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A maser aircraft pilot threw his hands up reflexively and hollered out over the communication lines that were still up, primal instinct to shield their face from the oncoming blindness that turned a pitch black night into the brilliance of day when the UFO fired its energy cannon at his craft.
A darkness shot in front of him, blocking out the oncoming torrent of golden energy that smashed into the Super-X3’s hull. The giant airplane had pivoted up so its dorsum faced the UFO and it shielded the smaller aircraft with its mass. Intercepting the hit, Takaaki Aso cringed and forced back the waves of nausea and vertigo at getting rattled in his seat on top of being sideways.The Super-X3 rolled and nearly clipped a building as it was forced to fly down a mainstreet sideways before pitching up and out of the skyline. The gambit was risky, but it meant someone else was still alive.
He eyed the sensors displaying a readout of the ship’s hull, with red flashes across the top plating. The reactive armor, similar to what was used on the Mechagodzilla plating, was meant to protect against Godzilla’s plasma heat ray and radiation. Even against the burning form of the old king, the greatest aircraft mankind had ever built held up to at least a few blasts before risking being compromised. Calling the craft proofed against energy attacks would be incorrect, just highly resistant to a degree. They had armored this thing as much as possible without risking its ability to get off the ground.
And the craft no doubt wasn’t able to put absolutely everything into its blast like it must have at Amami island, a hypothesis he had given how long it took to recharge.
This didn’t bring Aso much relief, as the display indicated that the hit had still reduced the hull’s integrity to 37%. Humanity’s greatest work, and yet that was the best they could do compared to Godzilla taking an overclocked hit after being softened up.
Aso yanked back on the control stick and steered the massive fighter jet around to fly directly at the UFO. The Millennian attack unit had stubbornly refused to focus on him and instead was taking aim at a missile launcher from the Osaka division that had come to help. The Super-X3’s front hatch split apart like a bird opening its beak, revealing the multi-paneled hyper cryomaser within that soon sparked to life. Twisting streams of energy spiraled out and raked across the side of the UFO, flash-freezing the water molecules in the air to try and create masses of ice.
The plan was somewhat dampened when the surface of the UFO shimmered and the ice beginning to form across it had a large amount of kinetic force arced into it, instantly shattering the constructs before they could firmly anchor in. As the Super-X3 strafed past it, multiple side panel mounted missile launchers opened up to broadside the craft like a ship battle of old mariner days. Cadmium-tipped freezing shells smashed into the unknown alloys that made up the craft’s hull, audibly banging against it. The impacts sounded like striking a bell or gong to some extent, with the tips of the rockets perhaps biting in slightly before exploding.
The end result was the same, the UFO conducted energy across its surface to force the ice buildup off; but one could just barely perceive the blemishes in the craft’s smoosh exterior now. Especially when it turned, illuminated by the spotlights, and started chasing the Super-X3.
“Pentecost, you see that?” Aso noted as he turned the Super-X3 around in a wide arc to try and draw the UFO away from the others. Better it aimed at him, who could take a hit or two, than them.
Stacker Pentecost’s voice chimed in through the shortwave radio, “Affirmative, the shield from earlier is gone. Whatever it is covering that thing is resistant to energy attacks but not as much to kinetics.”
“What was inside that thing is out now, the inside sounds mostly hollow when the missiles hit it. Had to be a lot given I could hear it over the engines.”
“We need something to sufficiently crack the shell, like a big hammer or-”
“A spear?!” Aso noted quietly before having to spuriously react, yanking on the control stick to force the Super-X3 to pivot upwards in a wide arc to avoid a torrent of yellow energy.
The force cannon flew by, golden light illuminating the city streets amidst the skyline as it took out the top of multiple buildings in explosive uproars of debris. The blast continued en-route to collide with the crystalline formation still erecting on the edges of the city. One could almost compare the constructs, inching their way up higher and higher, to flower petals blooming in reverse. The growths continued to ascend upwards and gradually arching inwards to begin forming a dome. The cannon shot left a patch of it glowing, but otherwise had no effect; a testament to how strong the construct was given the same shot had flown right through several buildings without slowing.
The Super-X3 spun around to loop back, firing another salvo of freezing missiles that would have seemed poised to strike the UFO if the craft obeyed the norms of aviation. Instead it stopped on a dime and instantly changed its momentum, flying backwards and letting the barrage of rockets careen past it and into the street. Overshooting the frozen geysers of frost, Aso cringed as the Super-X3 shot past the failed strike with the UFO again, instantaneously changing direction to be right on his 6 o’clock again.
It clicked in Pentecost’s mind, “Does anyone have any more Full Metal Missiles?!”
Static buzzed through the comms line for a moment before a slightly distorted, gruff voice came through, “1st Missile Battalion, Osaka Division reporting in! We’re armed with four Full Metals!”
“Identify yourself Colonel! Solid head or are you packing Anti-nuclear bacteria delivery?” Pentecost snapped back.
“Solid head, we weren’t in the Amami operation. Divisional General Douglas Gordon of the Osaka G-Force division reporting in, Colonel Kazama was given the more difficult task of evacuating civilian crowds,” General Gordon chuckled, despite their life or death situation. It was something of a tell at how between getting up close with a genocidal alien and getting a crowd moving, he’d opted for the former instead of dealing with the public.
It was also telling that someone just barely out of the inner circle of the five people in charge of G-Force, outranking most field officers by several orders of magnitude typically, was miraculously only the fourth highest ranked person in this battle.
“I have lock on the UFO,” the bushy-mustached American gruffed, “Prepared to fire-”
“Belay that!” Pentecost yelled out, “That thing just shrugged off the X3’s best. We’ll need a direct hit on the flat. The target point will be the concave mass across the bottom of the craft at close range.”
“So firing directly straight up while it’s right on top of me? Meaning I’ll be right next to it for the kaboom and have zero cover? Sounds great!” Gordon replied with a laugh and a grin.
“Is that bloody sarcasm, or are we going to have a problem?” Pentecost snorted.
“...Not at all on my part!” Gordon smiled, still keeping chipper even as he sat on an angle with sparks still gushing out from the flank of the missile launcher he sat in the cab seat of. Rubble from a damaged building had strewn across the street and fallen atop the launcher, and in the case of several spans of rebar, speared through its tires.
“Only hang up is I’m immobilized by rubble. I'm downtown about six blocks due west of the CCI headquarters.”
The Super-X3 banked in a wide arc to the left, trying to keep ahead of the craft chasing after it. The superplane had to be high enough and weave between the buildings; but its pursuer had no such hang ups even as masers from aircraft and a few ground tanks managed to sparked off its hull. With unfailing speed, the smooth expanse of the UFO smashed right through several radio towers and collided head first with a skyscraper. Like a bullet through a glass window pane, it kept going and shot out the otherside amidst a shower of debris. Its arc shorter and tighter in the turn, it caught up to the Super-X3 and bore down on it. The tip of its mass edged towards the burning jet engines keeping the X3 aloft.
A last-minute dive and weave by Aso spared the X3’s propulsion getting rammed; but the top mounted missile launcher didn’t survive the lunge. Metal screamed and scraped, paneling and the missile turret ripped free by the ramming mass. Takaaki was jerked around in his seat, growling whilst hitting the airbrake and pulling back on the controls. The X3 pivoted up and bashed against the UFO’s underside as the alien craft started to pass overhead, giving as he got.
The majority of the Millennian aerial unit’s mass had to have been gone, as the X3 did manage to shove the UFO upwards along with itself despite being about half the size. Forcing the craft upwards, he exposed its back to being fired upon by a maser and rocket salvo by the other airborne units. It didn’t do much to meaningfully damage the craft, but the icy formations and impacts did slow it down enough for Aso to get free. Even still, the multiple hundred kilograms worth of missile launcher on the back and more than a few panels snapping off was enough to rattle the entire aircraft as Aso tried to even back out.
“Commander, are you okay?!”
Multiple red lights flashed and sparks shot out of the roofing in a few places as Aso frowned, “I’m alright, just lost something. I can’t keep it busy much longer.”
Pentecost’s mind raced a mile a minute. “Just hang in there, I’m thinking up a plan!”
==========
Yuki Ichinose screamed and purple light suddenly flooded the hallway in the CCI headquarters. Viscera and charred body parts started to launch upwards from the back of the hall going forward, barreling right at the medical room. The Asuka Shinoda emulation turned and caught a glimpse of the oncoming attack and leapt out of the way, dodging a glowing mass of steely metal and purple sparks.
A sword tip came within a few inches of Yuki Ichinose’s cringing face, the armored woman before her growling in frustration at missing a drone. The Presence, which the Millennian had been doing well to avoid so work could be done, Belvera, had made her move now that she was very assured what their motive was.
Putting herself between Io, and by proxy Yuki, and the remaining drone; Belvera made to strike again. The Asuka copy however, with some sense of self preservation, dropped onto all fours and maintained a posture halfway between a crouching panther and ungainly human. White hair framed its head before it launched itself backwards down an open hall to dodge Belvera’s sword swing.
The eldest shobijin was forced to divert her focus to the hallway she’d just rocketed through. The several hundreds of kilograms worth of drones were starting to pull themselves back together. Some sections of their bodies were breaking down and disintegrating on contact with the radiating energies of her magic, but far less than in her first battle with a drone. Ejecting the useless mass; the drones’ bones, muscle, and sinew was rapidly stitching its back together into a combined mass.
“Things just don’t know when to die!” Belvera snarled as she stabbed her weapon into the ground.
The Elias Triangle sword, studded with three glowing gemstones linked to Belvera, Moll, and Lora, stabbed into the tile floor. A line of spinning circles, rapidly growing down the hallway the majority of the drones were in, swirled with the emblem of Battra. The charge built up before bursting out in tandem with a sound akin to a scream. A geyser of fire-like energy erupted from each of the circles and simultaneously blew up and flash-fried everything in the hallway. Yuki Ichinose covered her face whilst hiding behind the armored woman who was full head and a half shorter than she was, as Belvera held her ground.
Keeping the energy charge going, Belvera turned her head to the other hallway and passively swore at the sight of a crumbling span of ceiling. The Asuka drone had taken a leave, evidently having jumped up and tearing its way into the roofing to escape. Belvera grimaced under her helmet and glanced down the hallway, seeing the remnants of multiple drones still twitching as the entire building started to shudder and shake. The explosive geysers the spell had loosed upon casting had shattered multiple windows and ruptured the ceiling and floor, with long cracks formed across the walls.
Rumbling and shaking with the building, the floor gave way in multiple spots whilst the walls cracked. While it felt like an earthquake, the truth of it was soon revealed when one of the outermost walls Belvera’s spell had cracked with its explosion split open and a mass of flopping flesh slapped against the floor. Growing rapidly like a tree root in fast-motion, it slid about, absorbing parts and pieces of the destroyed drones.
“Damn it,” Belvera swore under her breath as she whipped around, seeing Yuki helping a shaking Io out of the coffin-like medical unit, “Can she run or can you carry her?!”
Io looked to Yuki as her feet wobbled, both from not knowing the full situation and from residual effects of being out for so long. Ichinose needed just one look at the near-helpless young teenager and acted, turning around and hoisting Io onto herself piggyback style. Not having the poise or nerve to remark on it, Io Shinoda showed her age and confusion-induced fear in how she clung to Yuki’s shoulders and neck with her shivering arms.
“Which way out?!” Ichinose yelled over the groans of the rupturing building, electric lighting flashing chaotically off and on as parts of the ceiling started to collapse.
Belvera kept her sword up and in front of the human, eying the shaking and rupturing walls and dark corridors. Eyeballs started to form across the tendril breaching through the wall and she was left with a choice. She could try the volcanic emission spell again, as it was the only one that readily burst these things enough to fry most of the body so they couldn’t heal back easily. But that came at the cost of causing more damage to the building, which was the only thing protecting them from the enormous mass pushing up against it and beginning to grow outside.
Or she could try and run to find an exit, at the cost of being seen and having to no doubt fight her way through the building while protecting the girl. It hadn’t taken her long to figure out these things had some means of passing along information, a hive-mind of sorts. After killing the first few drones and discovering they got immaculately good at evading her. The building rattled and parts of the walls increasingly gave, cracks and fissures slithering along the length of mass.
Decision made for her, Belvera kept her guard with the sword whilst grabbing onto Yuki’s elbow whilst the photographer held Io. If she used the eruption spell here it would be liable to bring half the above floor down on top of them and burst the wall.
“Try and keep up! Stay away from the walls and windows!” the eldest shobijin yelled out as she sprinted down the still-intact hall the Asuka drone had gone down, eyes wary of every split on the walls and hole in the ceiling.
At this point it wasn’t a matter of being stalked and hunted or not, it was by how many and where they might strike from. Not helping their fraying nerves, a piercing siren started to shriek out of every hallway above and below them; loud enough to reach outside the building despite the Millennian cocoon and most certainly jar Belvera, Yuki, and a still groggy Io’s ears. The wailing racket, almost like an air raid siren mixed with a dozen air horns all at once carried out for ten seconds before pausing.
“Stay close, we have to find a way out or a safe place!” Belvera yelled out as loud as she possibly could, the Elias slashing her sword through part of a wall and collapsing it behind them.
A chorus of explosions called out from beyond the walls and caught Ichinose’s attention briefly. As Yuki ran along behind Belvera however, a pressure on her thigh from something kept in her pocket got her attention.
The siren wailed again, a clear indicator of a countdown.
More tendrils of flesh burrowed through the walls of CCI’s headquarters in the lower levels, breaching into the sublevels and laboratories. The biological wing was breached, as were the containers holding the contraband Godzilla cells harvested fresh from the Amami islands. It would take very little time to try and fully incorporate the secrets they held, but the Millennian had amassed the lump-sum of scientific knowledge on the subject and combined it with its own understanding of biology cultivated across dozens of strip-mined worlds. It would vivisect this genome, piece by piece, and enslave it to its own means.
===========
The loud sirens were audible even across Kyoto as the battle raged on.
The landing craft resembling a smaller Super-X1 hovered to just a few feet off the ground outside of Kyoto Biotechnics Institute. Dr. Yuji Shinoda grunted and bent his legs into the short fall to avoid rolling his ankles, covering his eyes to avoid getting blinded by the gusts of wind the hovering craft engendered. Pentecost was still coordinating the troops for the most jury-rigged plan in history, so it took a few moments for him to switch off the radio and address the doctor through the small earpiece he’d given Shinoda.
“Be sure to- HIT THE DECK!” Pentecost screamed as Yuji obeyed and dropped, covering the back of his neck with his hands.
The hovercraft turned about to block as much of the incoming gusts as possible that were kicked up when the Super-X3 zoomed overhead with the UFO in hot pursuit, itself chased by several rockets a whirling flight of attack helicopters launched as they chased the craft in-turn. Loose debris, rubble, and a few cars shifted in the streets around the institute, or were outright thrown airborne to ping off the reinforced chassis of the transport craft.
As the winds died down, Pentecost’s voice returned to Yuji’s earpiece.
“Too much action out here and if I land, I’m a target or liable to take a hit. I have to stay airborne so you try to stay in one piece.”
Shinoda scrambled up to his feet, gasping for breath whilst holding a hand to the piece to make sure it transferred well, “Coordinate the troops and win the fight, Commander. I’ll find Katagiri!”
“Are you sure you can? He dropped off the coms when that alien fried half the networks in the city. Our own channels are being held up by a combination of shortwave and a lot of luck.”
Shinoda looked up to the place that was once, effectively, his home. Where in many ways, this all started. He ran towards it, trying not to sound ridiculous as he sprinted for the door, “I have good faith I know where this kill switch is, I find that and I find him! If that siren coming out of the tower means he’s armed the self-destruct, we might be in the clear already!”
“Best of luck and best to insure it, doctor. The sooner CCI’s Tower of Babel comes crumbling down the sooner we won’t have to find out how many gamma rays we’ll see before the blasts level this city thrice over,” Pentecost frowned as he switched lines back to the war effort, quickly surveying his displays to get an idea of where everyone was.
“Aso, Gordon’s launcher is at your 7 o’clock; you gotta divert your path towards him while we slow down the craft to land the shot!-”
He paused as a loud ringing incessantly diverted his attention.
“-3rd Division aerial masers, flank from the left and aim at one side with your freezers; see if you can imbalance the craft!”
The ringing continued at a fevered pitch.
“Choppers, sync your ordinance together for a stronger impact; we have to stall it off the X3’s tail!”
The ringing, coming from a bulky brick of a satellite phone that Shinoda had left behind, clicked and started transmitting on its own.
“HELLO?!” a woman’s voice yelled out, with a loud siren wailing in the background as well.
The surface of the UFO was lit up by a mass salvo of rockets from six helicopters just as it was banking to stay on the Super-X3’s 6’clock through a wide turn. The impacts, near simultaneous, were enough to cause the ship to wobble and lose speed. It careened in its flight path, smashing through two buildings and decapitating them from their tops. It gave the X3 time to arm itself and turn around, lancing the side with its cryomaser in tandem with several smaller maser units. Even with the shimmering effect of conductive energy, it took the craft time to free itself from all of the ice that came exploding off of it.
“HELLO?! YUJI!?” the woman was shouting as loud as she could and yet the alarm was deafening when it blared every ten or so seconds.
“Hit confirmed! Ground units brace for falling rubble, it’s not giving a damn about obstacles and is caving in the buildings! Anyone with a clear shot is to fire with imputy, keep it slowed down till you can reach General Gordon’s launcher!”
“YUJI?! SOMETHING’S WRONG!”
Pentecost, stealing his moment, grabbed the satellite phone after clicking off his radio microphone, “WHO THE HELL IS THIS?!”
The voice on the other end of the line paused for a moment, “... Well don’t YOU SOUND PEACHY?! WHERE’S SHINODA?!”
Pentecost snarled audibly, “Identify yourself!”
“Are you the ones doing all the shooting outside the CCI building?!”
“This is acting Commander of G-Force Stacker Pentecost, this is a crisis operation! If you are in need of evacuation I can route you to-”
The siren blared again and it was now that Pentecost realized the audio he heard coming out of the satellite phone was synchronized with the distant alarm he could detect coming from the CCI tower.
“... About that evac?” Yuki Ichinose winced as Pentecost looked at the tower, which had a growth and shroud around it that looked like a parasite. Something inside it was moving.
Inside Kyoto Institute, Dr. Shinoda sprinted faster than he’d ever thought possible. He passed by sights that brought them recollections of a yesteryear in life, sensations, smells, and sounds that contrasted so heavily with the darkness and raucous chorus of G-Force fighting tooth and nail in their last stand against the UFO. The psychic school he’d drop Io off every morning at, the still-standing zoological enclosure he’d pick her up at every evening. Places he’d eaten with colleagues, labs he’d toiled for hours in, even the meeting hall Commander Aso himself congratulated them on their work and assured them that they, CCI included, had guaranteed a better tomorrow for mankind.
He ran past it all, up the express elevator as there was no way he’d make it up the stairs in time to the 25th floor, right up to his old office where he found a charred mass on the floor outside the door. It was so heavily burned figuring out exactly what it had been was near impossible. Bone blacked and cracked, flesh turned to ash. A discarded G-Force flamethrower nearby and broken glass jars that housed more than a few flammable chemicals were the obvious cause for what had to have been a big fire.
His eye caught a glimpse of a twisted mass of bone in the lowlight, one with the form of a human hand erupting from a rib.
The corpse of a Millennian drone. They were already here!
Very carefully stepping around the carcass, Shinoda tapped at the key code that held the office door shut; having nothing but his old code to try. 31.12.1984.
It seemed poignant that Katagiri hadn’t changed the codes even after his once bestman drove Yuji from Kyoto. Maybe Mitsuo had always wanted him back on the same team to some degree? There was no time to discuss or dwell on it as Yuji stepped inside to his old office.
“Only two people in the world know that code,” Mitsuo Katagiri spoke as he stood with his back to the door, standing over a computer desk and facing an opened window that looked out onto Kyoto and his tower, “Which means it is you, or one of them got you like the one who ambushed me attempted.”
He didn’t turn around, reaching over and pulling something up to his chest. A weapon, no doubt.
“And how do I know that one outside didn’t succeed and is trying to dupe me? The one who tried inside the G-Force Terminal used Asuka’s face,” Shinoda narrowed his eyes as he frowned, his still broken fingers aching terribly even with the limited advance medical treatment he got from 023.
“....”
Echoes of the battle reverberated through the window, along with the sound of the blaring alarm. In the distant horizon, flickers of light indicated the incoming warheads.
“I’m already responsible for the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands… If those hit, it’ll be billions. Mitsuo Katagiri… the greatest mass murderer the world has ever known,” his fingers tightened against the handle of the gun, “Statistically, one more is negligible to ensure the safety.”
The alarm siren in the CCI tower sounded again and Shinoda stood where he was.
“Mitsuo, I know it must be you… you started the countdown sequence. If-.. you were one of those things, you’d be trying to stop it right now,” Yuji said quietly whilst holding his hands up in a non-threatening manner, “You went radio silent because of your attack, didn’t you?”
He cautiously took a step forward, glancing down and noticing a pool of red staining the ground from underneath Katagiri’s desk where Mitsuo currently stood behind. Mitsuo’s posture, while firm, held a slight slouch like he was favoring one side. The left side of his coat was torn just below the ribcage.
Mitsuo lurched forward, putting his forehead against the glass window and staring out into the city, across Kyoto to the CCI Tower. At this point in the battle, it was just about the only structure of comparable height to the Biotechnics institute still standing intact. He collected his fear, cusping on the edge of breaking, but kept his back turned.
“It’s my life’s work… I thought my life’s work would be the betterment of mankind,” Katagiri whispered as the Super-X3 flew by, still dogfighting the UFO and trying to dodge salvo after salvo of the Millennian energy cannon. The twinkling of the incoming warheads was an omnipresent reminder of incoming devastation. Mankind’s pride turned to its folly, its damnation. He began to lift the high caliber pistol upwards, to turn on himself or Shinoda was unknown. Blood was leaking out of his sleeve.
“Kyoto, the birthplace of humanity’s greatest defense and efforts. That was my life’s dream after 1984.”
“... Our lives are what we make of them. I had to make mine again when I left Kyoto. Whatever or whoever has to atone for all of this in the end, it's their lives to make due for that," Shinoda spoke quietly, taking very careful steps forward and eyeing a lever that was housed in a case Mitsuo had opened up. Following Katagiri's focus towards it, and the bloodstains on the casing from his fingers, Yuji Shinoda could put two and two together as to what the lever was for. The CCI tower's alarm blared again across the city.
Shinoda took another step towards it, glancing up only to find a gun barrel leveled at his head even as the arm holding it up shook and trembled.
"I already know I'm human, but I can't be sure of you…"
The cold in his tone was frigid to the point of agony. Had not been for the obvious tells it was a Millennian drone outside and the improbability somebody else would be out here, Yuji might have seriously feared Katagiri had murdered someone with the flamethrower earlier. Katagiri’s other trembling hand was put to the self-destruct switch, his face from lip to eyes twitching with inner turmoil and pains.
Yuji frowned, but took a step forward, “If you shoot me, Mitsuo, you’ll have to live with yourself in that next millennia knowing it.”
“I… can’t trust… you…” his hand was shaking despite his verbal conviction.
“... Don’t let Asuka’s daughter lose both of her parents to monsters,” Shinoda got within arm’s reach of the controls, knowing with how Mitsuo was he wasn’t in the best of convictions to do what had to be done. Optimally Yuji might have hoped Katagiri held off on pushing the kill switch for fear of any stragglers of his people not getting clear yet; but the man was clearly too mentally and physically taxed to continue much of anything now.
He reached for the switch and Katagiri’s bloody hand slid back to make space. In a weird way, it gave conviction. They’d do this together. They’d been wanting to work together for fifteen years.
Fate had other ideas however…
“SHINODA!” Pentecost’s roar blasted through his earpiece loud enough for even the light-headed and half delirious Katagiri to hear him.
“Have you found Katagiri?!”
“Y-Yes, we’re about to detonate the building,” Yuji’s hand gripped the lever as his fingers curled around it in tandem with Katagiri’s hand.
“DON’T BLOW UP THE BUILDING YET! THERE’S STILL SOMEONE INSIDE!”
Micromanaging a military operation while trying to play carrier pigeon to someone in danger had pushed Pentecost’s abilities and patience to their limit, but he was not one to give up on his convictions. With his last shout to not detonate CCI HQ just yet said, he had to refocus for just a breath’s span on the other matter at hand.
Several choppers fell from the sky as burning wrecks and the crew of a maser tank just barely had time to bail out before the destroyed helicopter fell on top of it. The UFO was wreathed in smoke and debris from the half-destroyed office building it loomed over, obscuring it from vision. Gordon’s Full Metal missile launcher was the next street over, and after G-Force had fought tooth and claw to push the craft back all this way no matter the losses; that last 30 meters to line up the shot felt like a thousand miles.
“Aso, If you plan to use that gambit, then do it now!”
The Super-X3 came exploding out of a parting cloud of smoke it pushed back with its airstream, barreling right at the UFO which turned to face it. Golden light collected within the ship’s cannon as it began to suddenly charge straight at the enemy flagship. It was only by synching up a mass rocket salvo from the surviving choppers and ground launchers did the ship wobble off-course in what could have been the most expensive game of Chicken ever. Instead, even at the distance Pentecost could feel how Aso had to be mashing at the controls to maneuver the belly of the X3 upwards. The quick-fired energy cannon blast from the UFO was blocked, but not without cost as more and more paneling fell off the banged-up and burned aircraft. Undeterred, Aso swooped back down and all but rammed the nose of the X3 into the UFO’s cannon port.
Lodged inside the opening, the X3’s jets roared to a greater intensity. The overclocked thrusters blazed with plumes of fiery exhaust. Within the UFO golden, destructive lights flickered within the Millennian vessel and shown across Takaaki Aso’s scowling face. Even blinded as he was, he still flipped a switch and had a deathgrip on a trigger set within the control stick. The front paneling of the X3 snapped open despite one half of it breaking off. The exposed hypercromaser had already been primed before he even tried this potential suicide charge.
Frigid energy flew into whatever manner of machinery or organics made up the UFO’s energy cannon. Ice formed instantly, clogging up the port for the cannon just as quickly as the golden energy could melt or burst through it. It was a constant contest, one the Super-X3 was rapidly losing. In about two or three seconds more, Aso would be put headfirst into the ensuing blast.
“NOW!” Pentecost roared and everyone held their breath.
In a second and a half, just as the bottom of the UFO was shoved overhead, General Gordon launched everything he had pointed straight up on his cue.
The strongest metal alloy known to man smashed into the bottom of the already scratched and half-frozen UFO’s flat belly. A barrage of lances to impale a monster, the rocket propelled darts flew right into the UFO point-first into the hull. Had the craft bore its shield from earlier, or had it not been microscopically warped or damaged from the constant freezing and reheating, nor endured as many hits as it did to embed layer upon layer of invisible scratches and cracks; success would not have been assured.
Instead, it was a bounty when the Full Metals smashed through the hull and kept going like through a stuck goose. The bottom of the craft burst inward and the dorsum’s smooth surface was blemished by the sharp points of several missiles stabbing through it. The golden energy meant for the cannon went flying out of the ruptured dorsum, bursting its exterior outwards even more in a brilliant geyser that lasted several long seconds before it ran out of power. Ice sprouted up between the cracks in the hull.
A metallic grinding was audible before the back-half of the UFO snapped off along a crack that had formed between the ruptured belly and split top. The latter half remained airborne for a time, held up by the Super-X3 it was stuck to, before it too sloughed off and fell to the ground; lifeless. The Super-X3 was missing its frontal maser and looked like the entire front end had been torn off, missing plating and its windshield. And yet, it was still hovering on the bottom mounted jets.
“Super-X3 here,” Commander Aso’s voice carried through the radio, slightly distorted and noisy as he sat in a cockpit full of sparks and emergency lights.
He had to put on a pair of goggles to avoid wind shear hitting him in the eyes now that the cockpit was exposed, blood seeping from his nose as he looked weary and out of breath from how much his life had just flashed before his very eyes. He wiped his face and adjusted the radio, “Any signs of life from the craft?”
“Negative sir, you still with us commander?” Gordon reported in as he poked his head out from his launcher’s top hatch.
“I am,” Aso huffed before turning the Super-X3 around to face the CCI building and the mass growing against it, “Let’s make sure it isn’t. Is the barrier shield around it still up?”
“That is an affirmative, it stretches around it and the tower,” Pentecost noted as he eyed the skyline, the distant missiles still plainly visible with only about twenty minutes left on the countdown, “The systems are still being jammed, whatever it is growing in that mass is still hijacking the internet.”
“Then we’ll have to hit it with everything we’ve got,” Gordon replied.
Aso frowned as he began to close in on the CCI tower, hovering across the city to approach it with other aircraft falling in line with him, “I thought Dr. Katagiri was going to destroy the tower? If the shield is surrounding it, having something go off inside the tower could disrupt it.”
“We have confirmation that someone is still inside and trying to get out,” Pentecost spoke up, now able to focus on this topic with the UFO off their backs.
“Who the hell would still be there?!”
Pentecost held the satellite phone to the radio, “Miss? Now would be a very good time to speak up.”
A little girl screamed and instantly everyone, from the G-Force crew to two men listening in from Kyoto Biotechnics perked up.
=======
Belvera extended two fingers and ran them across the flat of her blade, creating a line of glowing energy before she swung it outwards. A crescent of magic flew out and slashed through the disgusting biomass that was growing through the wall and bursting through the ceiling. Several more follow-up swings slashed through the tendrils of tissue enough to clear a path.
“COME ON!” the Elias of Battra roared as she rushed forward, all but dragging Yuki by the arm to encourage the taller woman to run as fast as she could.
Ichinose yelped and panted, running and trying to manage both Belvera towing her, holding onto Io as the girl clung to her, and keeping the satellite phone in hand all at once. Sweat messied her hair and caused her clothes to stick to her frame.
Belvera’s feet skid to a halt as she reached the end of the hall, where her magical slash induced waves had flown into. The wall was carved up, as expected, but the glowing masses had struck and dissipated against a veil just beyond the wall. Belvera poked her head out and observed the inside of what the Millennian’s force field supported cocoon looked like.
“The whole building is surrounded with some kind of barrier and it's inside it! We’ll have to- GET BACK!” Belvera snapped as she frantically kicked her legs against the wall and launched herself back, “GO GO GO!”
Yuki thankfully was still on her toes and scrambled back just as more biomass started to push through the hole in the wall Belvera had carved. She turned and bolted down another long hallway as the fairy beat back the mass with spell and swordwork.
“MY NAME!-” she had to heave with every breath, “Is- Yuki- Ichinose! I’m with the GPN! I’m here with two others! We’re trying to get free but this- Monstrosity is growing into the building!”
“YUKI!? Yuki please tell me you’re not still in the tower!” a familiar voice cried out, familiar even with the distortion of being fed through another radio to transmit into the phone.
“YUJI!?” “D-dad!” the two GPN members respectively yelped and sobbed.
Shinoda’s horror was palpable with every syllable, “NO! NO NO NO NO! WHAT ARE YOU STILL DOING IN THERE?!”
Yuki Ichinose had to stagger away from the walls, which were increasingly cracking and splitting as more biomass forced its way in. Scampering down a hallway, she skidded to a stop as her eyes shot open in abject horror.
A woman was standing on the end of the hall, dropping down from the ceiling. She was standing amongst the growing mass and atop it, turning around to look at them. There was something missing in the mysterian’s eyes. Some spark of consciousness or life in the way a human would recognize it. It was, looking into those dark voids, like she had no soul.
Ichinose felt Io’s grip on her tighten as the drone suddenly charged down the hallway. Yuki kicked an office door open and looked back praying their best defense was right with them. Thankfully it really was Belvera who came flying around the corner behind them, mounted atop Garugaru and privy to the incoming enemy. She swung out her sword and launched several slashing waves as Garugaru loosed a ray of crackling energy, catching a glimpse of the Asuka Shinoda drone leaping into another hallway to dodge their attack as the biomass behind it was eviscerated.
Belvera swore, hating how slippery this particular one was being, and grew back to roughly human size with Garugaru hovering alongside.
“Garugaru! Guard the girl!” Belvera ordered, the tiny machine dragon obeying and landing on Io Shinoda’s shoulder whilst chirping assuringly.
Now trapped inside an enclosed room with only one entrance and exit on either side, Yuki Ichinose spoke into the phone whilst trying to plan some escape, “We couldn’t get out, these things looked just like CCI staff and boxed us in! Yuji, they want Io!”
“What do they want the girl for?” Pentecost grunted with a furrowed brow.
“Doesn’t matter,” Aso remarked as the Super-X3 closed in on the tower and he primed any weapon he could whilst being very careful to take aim at the massive cocoon and not the structure, “They attacked her before. So whatever reasons they have, it can’t be good for us. We’ll see if we can hit the cocoon from the outside and disrupt the shield. You’ll have to escape out of the other side of the building if we can crack the shield.”
“And if you can’t?” Katagiri broke his silence.
“Give us two minutes to try, nobody’s dying unnecessarily tonight if I can do anything about it,” Aso barked before pulling the trigger.
The wing-mounted masers, weaker than the lost frontal one, buzzed to life and worked in tandem with any remaining missile launchers still in operation that hadn’t run out of ammo. By the second, more and more of G-Force piled in, smoking, damaged aircraft and a few stray vehicles that could still inch along contribute. All that firepower, a last gasp of humanity’s strongest arsenal short of the very nuclear weapons poised to be their extinction, poured into the unsightly cancer that had grown out of the CCI tower. The shimmering mass of the barrier shield was near blinding with how visible it was.
It was their lack of obvious success after twenty seconds and the bright glow of the incoming nuclear missiles that had the attention of one man.
“We can’t wait.”
Those three words that echoed across everyone from Kyoto Biotechnics to G-Force to the three inside the office.
Milliseconds ticked by and Yuji Shinoda’s eye moved to the side just as he felt a pressure start to pull down on the self destruct lever. Katagiri was staring out into the city, a tear reflecting light from G-Force’s assault as it rolled onto his cheek.
“Billions or a few… Looks like I’m going to have to send more flowers…. I’m sorry.”
“Mitsuo, don’t!”
Mitsuo Katagiri felt a hand jerk his own up to keep him from throwing the switch, and he closed his eyes in painful shame. Fear, it had compelled him to do a lot of things. Some things, a lot of things actually; he regretted. Losing his connections to Asuka and Yuji after Shiro’s death. Torturing an innocent creature cursed to be of blood to Mitsuo’s most dreaded. Losing touch with his daughter and perhaps reality itself.
But, possibly the most of which, was this. It had to be done.
Pentecost, Aso, Gordon, Ichinose, Belvera, Io, and everyone else heard a struggle. And a gunshot. A lever was pulled.
The Millennian, if they were truly capable of such, tasted victory. There was one simple truth behind this all. They were too late. The meddlers, human, fairy, and otherwise. The crystalline dome that had grown over much of Kyoto had been nearly finalized, now hundreds of meters tall in a circumference. Progress could increase as soon as the genetic recombination was finished. The Godzilla cells stored here had been fully assimilated, broken down, and distributed across their mass; which coupled with power drained from the city was more than enough to begin rapid generation of biomass on a grand scale.
The original plan several centuries ago had been to mass assimilate thousands and thousands of humans to get this much mass to work with if they ever were freed from the ocean. But the sapient tumors, limited as they were; had given them a much better selection. Prior strategy, inefficient.
Observation, their science created such a creature; and they never were able to control it and its gifts to ensure their dominion of this planet.
Conclusion, this shortcoming was a likely side effect of being disconnected from each other and their being far too many minds at work. Multiple billions were simply too chaotic to ever get organized.
The necessary action was to reduce that number. And with their crystalline fortress and new acquisition to grant them immunity to radiation, it would be assurance for success. Using G-Force’s data had offered up some means of resistance to the peculiar energy given off by the apex species, even mummified remains of a prior individual.
And so, cell by cell, gene by gene, they’d dissected every piece of ‘Godzilla’ the collective could take upon themselves. It was destructive to their body at first, but there was enough raw biomass to withstand the effects as the dissection began.
Observation, this planet’s apex species, Godzilla, thrived off radiation whereas every other organism withered or barely withstood it. Mass nuclear bombardment would create upwells of highly radioactive biospheres.
Conclusion, if they were to assimilate this biosphere once the humans were dealt with, they had to unlock the secrets of this greatest threat to them. It would yield as all others had. They were not subject to evolution within a planetary biosphere, as the Millennian were the apex of evolution.
They had no true form, as that would be too limited. They bore no cognitive obstacle as they were a sea of minds and memories from a million stars, all working in tandem. There was no roadblock to their progress, as progress itself was the ultimate and only goal. In some bygone time they too were separated, simple, unchanging, and mortal. But empires in that form rise and fall with tides and dying stars, rarely lasting a mere millennium at most, often from the very elements that allowed such ephemeral collectives to form in the first place.
They were the undying constant, outlasting worlds beyond the count of an unchanging simpleton to comprehend. Always progressing, always growing, from one millennia into the next.
Finalizing distribution across their biomass, the collective subjugated every fiber of cellwork from the G-cells. The ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been assimilated.
A pulse of light shot across the cocoon, not from the G-Force onslaught, but from within. Another soon came, accompanied by a loud raucous noise of unintelligibleness. Alien as it was, it sounded like pain.
Within the mind of the collective, across the billions of genomes, something wasn’t right. The endless void of a mind stirred and contorted. The genes of the overtaken were bursting, like something was ripping into it. A sequence, manifesting within the mental realm incomprehensible as an abnormality. The genetic data was being shredded, ripped into like something was rampaging through the very chromosome and tissues.
The ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been assimilated! Every aspect of cellular biology that could be known was known, they were the highest authority on it and had overpowered it. Recombining it with human and other Terran genomes, despite lacking subject Io Shinoda’s full genome and mind necessitated a substitute using Asuka Shinoda’s DNA fragments and those of other humans.
The ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been assimilated!
A light coursed across their form and a shock ripped through their system.
Observation, the biomass was glitching-
Conclusion-
The ult-ult-ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been assimilated!
Conclusion- Abnormality! Aberration! Genetic sequence unraveling! Recombination with Terran genomes inducing errors! Collective cohesion falling apart! Memories past and present fused together, the oldest and newest coalescing together!
The ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been assimilated!
The ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been assimilated!
The ultimate Terran lifeform’s data, had been ̸a̵s̵s̵i̵m̴i̷l̶a̶t̶e̶d̵!̷
The ultimate Terran lifeform’̵s̵ ̴d̷a̷t̸a̵,̵ ̴h̶a̸d̶ ̸b̸e̵e̶n̶ ̷a̴s̶s̸i̸m̷i̵l̷a̵t̷e̸d̴!̶
Errors- Genome missing- Tissue rejection- Reorganize! Reorganize! Organize! O̸̯͊̽ŕ̷̫̈́g̸̡̦̎̈ą̷͠-!
Its collective was crumbling, as if Godzilla’s power was rampaging inside of it; tearing apart every other genome from the inside in how they reacted to it. The Terran human genomes they had tried to substitute for the incomplete Io Shinoda genome due to its unique connection to Godzilla, especially Asuka Shinoda’s, were reacting the most. The uncanny Millennian, the unworldly; was being infected by Terra’s sentient life. Mortality as a pestilence. Its only thoughts, no longer a mind millennia wise, were focused on the one thing that could seem to stabilize this infection.
Assimilate Io Shinoda!
Assimilate Io Shinoda!
ASSIMILATE IO SHINODA!
ASSIMILATE IO SHINODA!
TA̴K̵E̴ ̷I̵O̷ ̶ SHINODA!
T̸͈̂A̴̘̋K̷̲̑Ẽ̷̞ ̴̌ ̴̞̈́THE S̵̖̋H̷̪̓I̵̪͒Ṅ̷̹O̶̞͆D̴̬̽Â̵͜!
"T̴̟͍̚Á̴̢̗̯̀Ķ̴͍̇̾ͅḘ̴̖̾ ̷͙̫͌T̸̲̏͐͛Ḫ̴̄͠ͅE̶̘͐̾͝ ̶̣̭̃͂͋G̴̟̳̘͑͘͝Ḯ̸̩͇R̵̡̩͔̓̓̂L̴̨̿!̸̳̙̊̍͠
Inside the room Yuki held Io as the ear splitting sound of a woman screaming ripped out from the ceiling. It was soon joined by many others screaming out something incomprehensible.
Outside, for all of those within the city to behold in horror; there was screaming. Constant, ear splitting, agonized screaming coming from the cocoon.
They were met with the equally loud noise of the CCI tower beginning to explode. Detonations started from the top floor downward. Level by level, story by story, CCI’s grand tower was ripped apart from the inside by a surprisingly high-yield explosion. Belvera’s eyes widened under her helmet and she reacted fast. She pointed her sword at the four corners of the room and slashed a runic marking into the air into the first corner.
Three stories up, the floors detonated into an explosion of shrapnel and debris.
Belvera marked a rune in the second corner. The floor two stories up met its fiery end.
A third corner was marked, just as the floor directly above them started to erupt into flames.
The rest of CCI tower exploded outwards, combusting from the inside out level by level in a rapid sequence. The shrieking mass from the cocoon was blown outwards as the barrier shield shattered like glass. Flashes of golden energy, the same color as the UFO’s energy cannon, arced and jolted from between the buildings. The brightness intensified by the second, swelling to a blinding apex before rapidly condensing into a single point.
A breath was held. And a million voices screamed out as the explosive wave of energy came bursting out. The lights and mechanisms of humanity all spasmed in death throes before shorting out, the expanding wave crossing multiple G-Force units and instantly killing their machinery in a mass electromagnetic pulse.
Kyoto instantly went from a city of lights to a cloak of pure darkness, with only the flickers of stars and the incoming missiles initially visible to offer illumination beyond the tiny sliver crescent moon in the sky.
Aircraft fell from the sky, the pilots either forced to make an emergency landing in the roadways or using thankfully analog ejector seats to bail out. Either way, dozens of tons of hardware smashed into several complexes and crumbled a set of buildings in their impact. The sole exception initially was the Super-X3. Meant to withstand the pulses emitted by the last Godzilla’s meltdown, its EMP shielding blunted the damage even if it did not entirely negate it.
Alarms buzzed and whirred inside Aso’s cockpit, nearly deafening the man while he fought against controls that only worked half the time. The X3 sputtered and flickered, wobbling in midair as its engines and thrusts continually cut on and off. The radio was fried, sparking against his face and forcing the old pilot to rip it off his ear lest he get burned. Throwing it out the now opened portal he had for a windshield, Aso grit his teeth and pulled back to coax the X3 to level out.
Communications were fried, half the systems were offline including radar and location waypoints for navigation, and it was near pitch-black outside. It was amidst this pandemonium getting things in something vaguely resembling working order did he notice the distinct lack of noises from outside. After a few moments of turning off several alarms and hovering there in the dark, one could almost call the night quiet.
The Super-X3 was turned about to point back at where CCI tower had once been. A dark outline with smoke billowing out of it showing the tower had immaculately remained standing due to the support beams weathering the internal explosions. With some hesitation in his movements, the old Commander swallowed a rock in his throat and turned the flood lights mounted on the top of the X3 on.
With what he suspected was a lot of luck, the lights were still operational; thick beams of illumination shooting forward to face the tower’s corpse. Through the smoke, a faint shimmering was visible, spurring Takaaki to furrow his brow. The smoke started to clear away more, billowing back to reveal a rectangular block of construct was still intact amongst the burnt rubble and twisted metal beams. Dimly visible through a window, though not with any particular clarity, Belvera puffed and panted as she kept her sword in the ground.
The three runes to invoke a shield akin to one of the moth guardian’s scales, jury-rigged to protect the room in a bubble of magical force despite lacking all four seals; had held up. The eldest shobijin heaved and panted, lurching forward to lean on the pommel of her sword as her helmet slipped off and bounced on the floor.
Belvera’s eyes were bloodshot, her left one having burst a vessel, and her nose was bleeding from a nostril as cold sweat caked her form and hair. Had she time to set up properly, weathering the blast would have been easier. But she’d been running ragged fighting, had to slap together a spell like this last second; and then not even be able to finish it. Preserving the ceiling, floor, and walls around them in a 5 by 5 meter cube was the best she could do.
The spotlight on her face hurt her eyes, and yet the spiteful fairy still had the ability to glare at the dropped satellite phone as Yuki ran over to help support her. Saved from falling over from exhaustion, Belvera panted and glared daggers at the satellite phone and who had been on the other end. The barrier spell had saved that electronic device from getting fried, as the buzz showing it was receiving still worked.
The fairy weakly growled “Nice try, Asshole..”
In light of his downed troops being in danger, Aso could at least take some small solace in their attempted rescue not being completely in vain. Still, that ruin wasn’t going to hold and they were almost one hundred meters in the air. He noticed his opened cockpit and decided to chance a risky idea, hovering closer slowly. He pulled up the receiver for the loudspeakers and the telltale buzz that gave off revealed they thankfully still worked.
“Break a window or open a door if one’s intact, I’ll come and pick you up.”
Through the roar of the X3’s engines and the loudspeakers, he couldn’t hear the response. But the frantic waving and pointing off to the right behind him by someone he dimly recognized at a distance to be Miss Ichinose was universal. The uproar of noise in the black void off to the right overpowered even the noise of the engines.
“̷̠̎“̴̟̀T̴̘̈́a̷̱̐a̵̩͗A̶̼̎C̴͓͂c̷̭̎C̷̗͘È̴̮T̸̨̔Ḧ̵͓H̵̲́e̵̳̚É̵̤g̸͛͜g̵͉̚Ģ̶́R̶̠̋I̴̮͆Ṙ̶̲!̶̣̈́”̷͎̾
The Super-X3 whirled around and the spotlights were filled with a nauseating form. Not the image of a monster, but a horrifying countenance of humanity. Aso swore as the unworldly hot breath billowed into his cockpit like a rotten galeforce, smoke billowing from the irradiated flesh on the still incomprehensible body. The wing mounted masers fired as he pulled into a full retreat to get clear, the frigid blasts lancing ice across the monstrosity’s body that very rapidly sublimated from frost directly into vapor. Steam billowed from exposed muscle tissue where the spotlight made it visible.
“̸T̶a̵a̴A̸k̶K̵E̴T̴H̸H̵e̶E̷g̴g̴G̸I̵R̴R̷L̸!̵”̴ it screamed, what had once been a thinking, inhumanly rational being completely berserk and out of any measure of poise.
The Super-X3 wobbled and Aso gasped, fighting the controls as the back of the craft clipped a building and was knocked off-kilter. The Super-X3 spun about as it stabilized in the middle of a mainstreet, buildings on either side.
The quiet had returned, the only noise being the thrusters’ steady roar as dust and smoke moved past the cone of illumination the floodlights on board created. The streets were empty, but the quiet didn’t last. The building to the left groaned before suddenly exploding open, a gigantic, animate form bursting through it. For a split second, hovering barely ten meters off the ground, Aso felt himself flung back more than forty five years ago. The giant was incomprehensible, a being too large to be alive by normal laws of nature bearing down on him. It was just like when the first Godzilla, a being veiled in smoke and darkness as if to hide its full nature from eyes unable to process it all; towered over heavens and earth before him when he was a young man.
The shadows and darkness meant everything not immediately in his floodlight was pitch black. He truthfully couldn’t even get an idea of what the whole body looked like. The light and his vision glimpsed malformed human lips forming and writing across bare irregular teeth. The tissue was all wrong, even if it looked somewhat workable, like the skin and muscle was partially composed of bone.
“̷̦̲͆́T̸̬͇̀̃͌̐̕A̵̪̥͋̕̚Ä̸͓͍͎̱̥̃̀͝A̶̡̢͚͚͒͛̊K̴͕̀̅Ḱ̶̛̯͔Ȇ̵̺̜̯̩̟̆ ̷̖̫̝̥̖̄͒͑̚͝T̵̻̤͆̎̎̓H̵̤̳̔͗̐H̷̢̜̃́È̵͕̳̩͠Ę̷̼͆͂͘ ̶̤̮̿̈̈́ G̴̯̖͕̝̈́̕Ġ̶̆̔̈́͘ΙΙ͓Ĩ̵̺̃̋̆̔R̷̻̱̊̃̓̿R̸̖͌̒̑͒͠Ι͕̺̻L̴̛͙͔̓̈́̑͠!̵̩̈́̒́͝͝”̴̪̙̮͖́
It screamed through the grotesque parody of a human face growing from one half of its torso.
Aso’s finger clutched the trigger as he put the X3 in full reverse down the street, firing salvo after salvo of masers into the abomination that was giving chase. It kept shouting the same thing over and over again, sometimes its voice more distorted and otherwise eerily clear. The X3, unable to fly to full capacity, was forced to weave and hover as best as it could, reversing down the mainstreet or occasionally levitating behind a building for a moment of cover when the monstrosity got too close. A three, maybe four, digited hand that was disproportionately huge swung out and lashed its long, clawed digits around the edge of the structure. Glass shattered and dust erupted out as the entire building was yanked down.
Golden glows flickered underneath irregular skin, illuminating two asymmetrical sectors on its body in a manner that didn’t imply eyeshine. The brightness of blue cryomasers briefly revealed bits and pieces of the unnatural form, cancerous tissue near the skin freezing and snapping off in droves. And yet it still never stopped coming.
“̷̦̲͆́T̸̬͇̀̃͌̐̕A̵̪̥͋̕̚Ä̸͓͍͎̱̥̃̀͝A̶̡̢͚͚͒͛̊K̴͕̀̅Ḱ̶̛̯͔Ȇ̵̺̜̯̩̟̆ ̷̖̫̝̥̖̄͒͑̚͝T̵̻̤͆̎̎̓H̵̔͗̐Ę̷̼͆͂͘ ̶̤̮̿̈̈́ G̴̯̖͕̝̈́̕Ġ̶̆̔̈́͘ΙΙ͓Ĩ̵̺̃̋̆̔R̷̻̱̊̃̓̿R̸̖͌̒̑͒͠Ι͕̺̻L̴̛͙͔̓̈́̑͠!̵̩̈́̒́͝͝”̴̪̙̮͖́
The entity screamed, the yellow lights shifting in tandem with the syllables to reveal themselves to be maws. The edges of the floodlights showed a reptilian, fanged maw pushing out of the other half of the torso.
The edge of Aso’s vision blurred and he could see someone in the co-pilot seat, clear as day. He kept his eyes firmly trained on the colossal titan that stomped and thrashed after him, knocking down anything in its way; but even he was cursed to bear witness from the corner of his eyes. In his peripheral vision, the faces of dead men flickered; eyes upon him. Cold, painful doubt stabbed his gut and worked its way through his innards to encircle his heart.
Aso knew he wasn’t really doing any damage to this thing, he was dragging out a lost confrontation. The X3 was outclassed even if it was at full capacity, and he was far from that. He was outclassed at his prime, and he was even further from that too. Better men had flown into hopeless battle against monsters, and sooner or later they always wound up with their craft as their coffin.
The floodlights briefly revealed two maws opening up to an extreme degree, like the entire throat and much of the chest peeled open as a flower might split. The golden energy came flying out, lancing into the sky and blowing off one of the X3’s wings. Alarms roared and it was only by the fact he had been hovering rather than truly flying did Aso not crash then and there.
And yet his chest felt cold as the Commander frowned in shame.
A Super-X flying into a hopeless battle against an impossible enemy, as nuclear devastation loomed in the very skies. He could suppose his karma for sending Captain Akiyama to his death in 1984 had at last caught up to him, as he was now in Akiyama’s exact position. Even the supposed solace that he was to die alone and not drag any crew down with him was bittered by the fact he was not Akiyama’s first successor. The deceased pilots of times before, Kuroki and Akiyama, haunted him as he saw them. Perhaps it was a hallucination born of his extreme guilt, perhaps their displeased ghosts really were judging him.
-Either way, it makes no difference… You failed, Takaaki.-
The masers fired again and again, and the entity lept from the ground to close the distance. Takaaki Aso closed his eyes and bowed his head just before the impact; the last thing he saw was an outstretched, gigantic hand smacking his best effort aside like chaff. The Super-X3, or what was left of it after having another wing and much of the back half torn off, spiraled and swerved in the air to go across Kyoto. He hit the ground hard, and yet there was little mercy in his mind that he yet lived to feel it.
The Super-X3 finally powered down, leaving Kyoto and Aso in the dark to await their end.
The Millennian, or what had been them, turned away from the final nuisance being dealt with. They had been pulled away from the one thing their frayed mind could focus upon, but it was soon in sight now. The still intact CCI office with the greatest prize was before it, several hundred meters down a wide street. It trudged forward, insane rambling vomiting from the horrendously deformed human head it bore based on Asuka Shinoda and every other human it had assimilated’s genome.
“̷̦̲͆́T̸̬͇̀̃͌̐̕A̵̪̥͋̕̚Ä̸͓͍͎̱̥̃̀͝A̶̡̢͚͚͒͛̊K̴͕̀̅Ḱ̶̛̯͔Ȇ̵̺̜̯̩̟̆ ̷̖̫̝̥̖̄͒͑̚͝T̵̻̤͆̎̎̓H̵̤̳̔͗̐H̷̢̜̃́È̵͕̳̩͠Ę̷̼͆͂͘ ̶̤̮̿̈̈́ G̴̯̖͕̝̈́̕Ġ̶̆̔̈́͘ΙΙ͓Ĩ̵̺̃̋̆̔R̷̻̱̊̃̓̿R̸̖͌̒̑͒͠Ι͕̺̻L̴̛͙͔̓̈́̑͠!̵̩̈́̒́͝͝”̴̪̙̮͖́
It stepped with one leg, half dragging the other.
“̷̦̲͆́T̸̬͇̀̃͌̐̕A̵̪̥͋̕̚KȆ̵̺̜̯̩̟̆ ̷̖̫̝̥̖̄͒͑̚͝ T̵̻̤͆̎̎̓H̷̢̜̃́È̵͕̳̩͠ ̶̤̮̿̈̈́ G̴̯̖͕̝̈́̕ΙΙ͓Ĩ̵̺̃̋̆̔R̷̻̱̊̃̓̿R̸̖͌̒̑͒͠Ι͕̺̻!̵̩̈́̒́͝͝”̴̪̙̮͖́
Yuji Shinoda staggered to his feet with a set of hands helping hold him up, a bullet wound having grazed his leg and forcing a limp. Mitsuo Katagiri, sporting a busted and bloodied nose, inarticulately slurred and cried apologies after violently throwing his gun away upon realizing what he’d almost done. Even if he’d missed that shot on purpose, the fact it even happened had impaled his heart with cold. Yuji Shinoda couldn’t take his eyes from the window. In the limited sight that night vision offered, he could make out the image of the magically illuminated room in the destroyed tower; and the outline of the horrific abomination marching towards it. Even at this distance, the truth of what it was saying was articulate; and his chest felt cold. He saw the end for what he cared about most, and he was powerless to stop it.
"T̷A̷K̸E̶!...T̶H̵E̶!.... ̸G̸I̵R̶L̵!"
The flute’s melody carried across the grounds of Kiyomizu-dera, the old temple to the Azure dragon, Seiryū, that stood at Kyoto’s easternmost edge. A tamagushi wand was tightly held in hand as the one playing the melody from Odo Island slowly came to a close. She could not summon up the strength to cast breath any longer. The old miko couldn’t bear to open her eyes for some time, not since G-Force had arrived in the city with others. She was totally alone, not another soul in sight. Hina frowned deeply, sorrowfully. She was not some mystic shaman with awesome powers, she was what she’d long known herself to be. A lonely old woman, clinging to faith to avoid having her footing knocked out from under her.
After all she’d seen, all that she’d lost; many saw it as a crutch or an excuse. She’d been the first to think it might be so. Did she ever have any impact on the tragedies that befell her and others in 1954, and then thirty years later; or was it all projecting? Was someone else truly chosen this time as the tether to the kami of destruction, or was something else; or nothing else at all going on? Was there ever or would ever be a Seiryū? Or was all of this, all of her life, just her being a foolish, sad woman waving tamagushi leaves at kami or spirits that never existed? And was it so, that she was just seeing some divine fate and meaning in what was always a freak accident of mankind’s making?
The rumbling shriek of the abomination of existence echoed across the ancient temple.
"T̷A̷K̸E̶!...T̶H̵E̶!.... ̸G̸I̵R̶L̵!..."
The ground was shaking, as it had been for a while. But even that, even if what was hoped for arrived; nothing was promised. Nothing ever was, not with kami, fate, or chance.
She kept herself bowed, placing the tamagushi and hand carved flute before the visage of Seiryū reflected in the shuddering puddle. Hina clasped her hands together, tears rolling down her face as she cast a prayer like those unanswered forty five years ago, and then thirty years hence from that fateful night.
“Please…”
Far away, the abomination reached forward, an asymmetrically huge right arm reaching out for the barrier Belvera struggled to maintain. Through the surviving window, Io Shinoda huddled between Belvera and Yuki Ichinose, still too horrified to shake off her paralysis. She could see the distorted human face it bore. The maw, extending far too wide, was lined with exposed teeth whilst the lips curled back and curved upwards in a smile.
The warheads continued to stream down, minutes left.
Yuji Shinoda beat on the window as he screamed his daughter’s name.
Hina Shinoda’s tear rolled off her face and dropped into the pool, the ripples joining the tremor-born shuddering waters, “Not my granddaughter, not my son…”
Io Shinoda thought of a single name cast that plea within her mind, knowing of only one.
Mount Otowa, immediately above and to the east of Kiyomizu-dera, exploded. A condensed torrent of azure energy, swirling with crackling spirals of white energy, lanced out of the ancient rock and trees to shoot out across Kyoto. The ray flew directly into the chimeric monstrosity’s humanoid face, burning it off to the base of the neck, before it kept going. The still malformed Millennian attempt at achieving the apex of evolution shrieked and stumbled back, the aftermath of the energy and radiation playing havoc with its cells.
The azure ray meanwhile, swept upwards and made a small circle before cutting off entirely.
Commander Takaaki Aso, sitting in the ruins of the Super-X3, felt a familiar tremor rattle his bones. The boom of walking thunder, one after another; the sound of the land, sea, and sky quaking from the approach of the entity whose head touched the heavens.
Even in the mostly pitch blackness outside, for his vision was aged and rattled, he could glimpse it. Not the fullness of it all, but the silhouette that cut through the starlight. By pure happenstance or fate, he’d crashed on the foothills of Mount Otowa, within a few hundred meters of Kiyomizu-dera. Strapped into his seat, the old man watched on as the living enormity walked past the symbol of an ancient protector of the East, approaching Kyoto from that very direction. The greatest of dragons, striding past in a way that put the living mountain in frame to the torii gate at the front of the temple.
“Seiryū…” Aso said the name of that legendary protector of the East, as the walking-thundering approached the ancient city from just that direction, gawking with such awe unknown to him prior.
He did not know what to believe. He could only hope, as the awe of such a grandeur helped ignite that hope to fight off the temptation to give in and cease resisting. The very thing the Millennian embodied in what it wished for humanity to do, give up, roll over, and die. If such a being of magnificent power clearly hadn’t given up yet, the inspiration to not do so himself was palpable; even if all he could do was pray.
Striding through the hole blasted in the defensive perimeter the Millennian had constructed, the one with many titles had finally returned to Kyoto with only one thing on his mind.
With the glimmering of the incoming missiles increasing with dying distance, that one thing stood back up. Supporting itself on a pair of gigantic arms, smashing two meaty knuckles into the ground to stabilize the stance, the aftermath of the radiation dosage had changed its form again. Burn char and scar tissue cauterized where the other head had been, leaving a gaping hope in the shoulder that dimly flickered with sickly golden hues of light. The other head, a deformed parody of its enemy’s own, split its jaws and bellowed at the one who’d made it their mission to be the multi-millennium old empire’s personal grim reaper. It sought to organize its out of control mutations with one of the two beings that could do it, and if Orga had to kill one to get to the other or take them both; it had no complaints. Every shredded synapse within its not truly insane mind was focused on that single goal.
Godzilla, back fins and eyes blazing with blue light, shook the world with his enraged roar.
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Oh Fuck Yeah the King is Back Bitches and soon the Final Battle will finally begin!
Okay. That was a good battle scene between G-Force & the UFO. And I saw the Crap Goose ref you made back there again.
Great scene in Orga flipping his shit over at the mutation. I also saw the other movie refs you snuck in, you wily bastard you. The prayer scene was poignant, loved it. And Junior's entrance at the end reminds me of the Showa's in Terror of MechaGodzilla.
Alright so, thoughts on this part. I liked the planning scene where G-Force takes out the UFO and I enjoyed the cat and mouse game with Io, Yuki, and Belvera. Junior's introduction was good and Orga is a decent antagonist for him to throw down against. That said, I'm confused at what's going on with Katagiri. One moment, he's upset that he's responsible for potentially thousands of human lives lost and planning to kill himself. The next, he's blowing the CCI building while knowing that Yuki and the others are trapped inside. I get that he was supposedly trying to "make the hard choice," but then he immediately flips out when he realizes he did it. I get that it's a high stress situation, but it's getting a little ridiculous how often the guy flip-flops between doing the right thing, then doing something horrible. And I guess that kind of leads to the other elephant in the room: unless Tarb is pulling some serious retconning, Katagiri is supposed to die at the end of this thing. And it's getting a little awkward, because it feels like Tarb is trying to do a redemption for the guy. Which means that Junior can't kill him either accidentally or on purpose because it'll just make him look bad when it's all said and done.
Overall, a fun part, but I'm stuck wondering what's going to happen next, and not in a good way.
Godzilla junior certainly knows how to make an entrance in style and make a last minute save. Nice to see beverages get in on the action too. Was there a scene where a millennium drone would take the form of vagnosaurus cut for pacing reasons or had it always been planned that 5 of the six trading battle kaiju would be referenced?
I love the fact that the Millennian's could not handle Godzilla's cell at all! they believe themselves greater then anything else on earth. but even they can't tame Godzilla, not even his blood. and they turn into Orga because of it, kinda gives the Godzilla family more power in a way, considering that even their blood can overwhelm a race like the Millennian's.
I love Jr's entrance as well! really selling the idea that there is at least something divine about him. also like how it says.
I wonder what that could mean for a certain trio that are themselves connected to the land, sea, and sky, and the God their each an aspect of ... questions for later!
Great work Tarb!
Jeez Orga. Why you cray cray? Oh because you Can’t Handle the Godzilla Cells! HA! Loser! Anyway. Was wondering when the big lug Orga would show up and definitely a terrifying way of an entrance. Also hearing Katagiri’s “send more flowers” sounds more somber and disturbing in this, considering he did the one thing he wasnt supposed to do and now it’s biting him in the ass, big time. Welp I’m ready for the show down! Bring it!!
Finally caught up. Fantastic appearance of Godzilla at the end. Also if it isn't the consequences of your own actions, aliens. Fitting their is something they tried to take. Also love seeing Belvera again. Love that fairy. Always great to see her kick ass. Can't wait for the next chapter.
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Many thanks! You and Evo helped motive me to get myself in gear and continue polishing the finale.
Always did love when something is a rewrite but manages to keep some infamous lines from the original. Good fun to change up the context
Good to see my plotting on making the Millennian humanity exaggerated worked. Twice the pride, double the fall. What was cerebral is now berserk instincts.
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Belvera was a blessing in disguise and if others hadn't taken to her so much I might not have thought to use her. Glad that chance happened! It's kind of ironic on how she's been a source of levity, but I think it really helps to have someone on the hero side who is able to cause some damage to the villain so they aren't entirely invincible. If I had it where the aliens were pretty much unstoppable outside of extreme circumstances until Godzilla entered the scene, thought the tone would get pretty dour.
Gotta always have a big entrance, and this was probably in my top 5 favorite scenes to pen for this tale. Thanks a ton for catching up!
The battle with Millennian begins, with Aso saving a pilot from destruction using the Super-X3 as a shield. It took a lot of damage but is still airworthy.
While the UFO is still able to defend itself, its not invulnerable as the missiles manage to deal damage. Millennian had to leave and is diverting its attention elsewhere.
This inspires what might actually be able to destroy it and the Full Metal Missiles are brought back around, now to be used against humanity's true enemy...
And Gordon is there. Well, that'll help. Shame there aren't any drones left for him to fight. Gordon is always a blast to have around.
Meanwhile, Aso is busy having a dogfight with the Millennian UFO. Do like the fact Millennian leaving its craft removed most of its mass and makes it easier to fight.
Meanwhile, Yuki is trying desperately to protect Io...but fortunately Belvera has arrived to help. While they're now more resistant to mana, they're not immune, especially when a massive spell is shot their way. While effective, it also reveals Millennian's rapidly growing physical form.
Having Belvera as a body guard IS a good thing...but Millennian has managed to get its tentacles on Godzilla's DNA.
Meanwhile, Yuji has made his arrival and has to do his part. I do always love human scenes in the middle of kaiju sized action.
Meanwhile, Pentecost is setting up the plan to use the Full Metal Missiles against the UFO. Unfortunately, Yuki is still inside CCI building fighting through it with Belvera.
Meanwhile, Yuji is making his way through the Kyoto Institute, and finding out there'd been fighting here...
I like the brief paranoia between Shinoda and Katagiri, but eventually Katagiri admits to his mistake. Gives Thing vibes.
I also like Katagiri right here, showing his pride has been broken as the battle outside is still happening...but his sanity is clearly being taxed.
Pentecost interupts, however...which I like, because it shows Pentecost still cares enough to save a single person.
Aso pulls a risky gambit and manages to exploit the cannon to fire point blank into the machine, essentually having a point blank beam'o war with the cannon.
Fortunately, the plan works and the Full Metal Missiles do their job, piercing the ship and causing its own cannon to backfire and allow the Super X3's hypermaser to finish the job.
While it doesn't END the threat, I do like the fact humanity gets the win here and manages to destroy the UFO.
Meanwhile, Yuki and company are still trying to escape. Yuji is very understandably upset and distrute by this. The Asuka drone is the main drone being sent at them, possibly the very last drone remaining. And we get Garugaru involving itself as well to protect her.
But Katagiri once more let's his fear rule him and makes the choice. I like the reworking of his 'more flowers' line into a tragic one.
I do like Katagiri's reaction and guilt.
Meanwhile, we see Millennian's perspective on this. The way it sees beings not like its own hive mind. As sapient tumors. It's trying to create a nulcear biosphere so it can find out a way to avoid its biggest weakness.
It has no goal outside evolution and growth itself. It vdesires to become the ultimate lifeform.
However, Godzilla's DNA proves too much, and we witness the birth of Orga from Millennian's perspective. Its body and genetics breakdown, and as its a hive mind , its mind begins to break as well.
I'm not sure, but I'm getting MHA flash backs to a certain manga scene.
This is only made worse for Millennian when the bombs go off...but Belvera still managed to save Io and Yuri, which shows just how powerful of magic users the Shobijin are.
Unfortunately, Millennian isn't dead...it might wish that it was. It is now becoming Orga, its body a horrifying mismash of Godzilla and human. Its body still extremely unstable.
Aso knows he isn't going to win this fight, and he sees the ghosts of people with him, but he still keeps fighting even if he sees it as potential karma for the man he sent to their deaths as the abomination that was once Millennian knocks the Super X3 out of the air and the warmachine is finally out of the fight.
Meanwhile, Katagiri is having a meltdown over what he believed he's done. He realizes Io is still alive...but now nothing stands between the monster and its prize.
Meanwhile, Hina is praying for something to intervene, even as she questions her beliefs.
Fortunately, her prayers are answered, either directly or indirectly, as Mount Otowa explodes and the Millennian is driven back and badly injured.
The King of the Monsters has arrived to save the city of his birth and the world. Even Aso finds himself calling Junior Seiryu in amazement.
There's only one thing on Godzilla's mind right now, and by this point the same is true of the thing that once was Millennian. Orga has finally completed itself.
The final battle is about to begin, and the epic climax is on its way.
Is the "Take the girl" bit a RWBY refrence?
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Yep
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#GreenlightVolume10