"AHHHHHHHH, RUN!"
The screams were everywhere, layered and endless, from the raw, wordless shouts of terror to the panicked calls for heroes. All of it drowned beneath the shriek of the city-wide alarm, a sound meant to save lives, now screaming over the pleas for help.
And the reason was painfully clear. A kaiju.
Not from the sea, no, that would have been mercy. Musutafu was mostly inland, about as far from shore as one could be in Japan, at least the hospital shinji was staying in was. This thing had fallen, dropping from the sky like a meteor. Its body slammed into the middle of the city, an office tower crumpling beneath it in an instant, likely killing everyone inside before they could even realize what had happened.
The panic was absolute. Families sprinted for bunkers, but there were too many people, too little time. The streets were choked with chaos.
And Shinji hadn't moved.
He hadn't even left his hospital room.
He was in the corner, pressed into the wall as if he could vanish into it. Hands clamped over his ears so hard it hurt, eyes shut tighter than the gates of hell.
Just hoping it would stop.
But it wouldn't.
Not now. Not after earlier.
His memories had come back that morning, crashing into him all at once. The USJ. The Nomu. The way two pros nearly died. The agony tearing through his body. All of it slamming into place like a door torn open and a flood rushing through.
Everything was jumbled. Too loud. Too heavy.
His heart wouldn't stop pounding.
His head screamed for release.
But it didn't. The storm outside his skull never ended; it only grew sharper, louder, heavier. Then, without warning, his door burst open. The sound cracked through his closed-off world, and he jolted so hard it nearly sent him sprawling. A figure rushed in, all motion and urgency, and before he could flinch away, a soft, steady hand was on him.
"Takeyama," a nurse's voice, firm but gentle, cutting through the chaos, "it's not safe here. A kaiju has landed in the city, and we're evacuating everyone to the hospital's bunker. Please, you have to come with me."
Her words felt like they were spoken from underwater, muffled, distorted by the pounding in his ears. Safe? Evacuating? His mind lagged behind, clinging only to fragments as her hand tried to lift him from the corner.
The words hardly made it through at first. His ears still rang with the alarms, the pounding in his chest drowning out her voice. He flinched when her hand touched his arm, not pulling away but stiff, as though the simple contact might shatter him into pieces. His breath came sharp and shallow, his knees locked in place against his chest as if letting go meant he'd lose the last bit of safety he had.
But the nurse didn't let go. She crouched low, her other hand bracing his shoulder, her voice steady even if the world wasn't. "Shinji, you have to move. Please. It's not safe here. The bunker's reinforced, you'll be safe there."
Safe. The word echoed, empty at first, then clung to him in fragments. He wanted to believe it, safe, away from the screams, away from the sky breaking open, but his body refused. His legs didn't want to listen; his hands dug tighter into his ears. He wasn't safe, not anywhere. Not when things could just fall out of the sky. Not when his mind kept dragging him back to Nomu, to the blood, to the helplessness.
"I, " His throat closed up. He tried again, voice cracking. "I can't, "
The nurse squeezed his arm, firmer this time, grounding him. "You can. You don't have to do it alone. Lean on me, alright? Just lean."
Her voice cut through the fog like a faint light, far-off but there. His chest still hurt, his head still screamed, but something in the steadiness of her tone gave him enough of a crack to breathe. Slowly, shakily, his hands slid away from his ears. The sounds of the chaos came rushing back in, alarms, cries, pounding footsteps, and he almost collapsed back into himself, but the nurse was already there, her shoulder against his, holding him upright.
"We have to go, Takeyama," she said again, gentler this time, like she was talking to someone on the edge of sleep. "Please. Walk with me."
His legs felt like stone, but somehow, with her arm braced under his, he found himself rising off the floor. He was trembling so badly it felt like the ground itself was shaking, but step by step, the nurse guided him toward the door. The world beyond wailed, terrifying and loud, but her hand stayed steady on his arm, and that was the only reason he moved at all.
But even as his body was lifted, urged forward, his eyes refused to open. He didn't need them. His mind painted it all in merciless detail, the crackling neon blue flash of Kaiju blood, spraying in jagged arcs across broken concrete, staining everything it touched. Just the thought of it made him shudder so violently he thought his bones might splinter apart, each one shaking loose, threatening to scatter him. If he opened his eyes now, he knew, he knew, he'd see it, and that would be the end of him.
The hallway no longer sheltered him. The walls that muted the chaos were behind him now, and the screams crashed into him unhindered, raw and jagged, filling every corner of his skull. He clung tighter to the nurse's arm, steps stumbling and uneven, trying not to collapse under the weight of terror alone.
Then it came.
A roar, not distant, not muffled, not outside where it belonged, but close. Too close. So close his ribs rattled against his chest like a drum. He didn't have to see it to know: the Kaiju wasn't where it should have been.
A screech of tearing metal followed, a sound so violent it cut through the cacophony like a blade. Then the world shifted. The hospital shuddered around him, and with a sound that split the air like the heavens ripping, half the building crumpled. Concrete and steel gave way in an instant as the Kaiju slammed into it, crushing it open like a child kicking apart a toy block fortress. Dust filled the air, the screams peaked to a fever pitch, and Shinji was thrown forward into a nightmare he had already lived too many times before.
His eyes opened, and all he saw was ruin. The cityscape below was shattered, pavement split wide, cars flattened into scrap, buildings half-gutted and leaning, smoke rising from too many places to count. And worse, scattered everywhere, little blotches of red. Dozens, maybe hundreds. Blood where people had been crushed under the Kaiju's size. He could almost trace where it had stepped just by following the stains.
Someone was fighting it. Holding it back, somehow. Shinji squinted through the haze, and recognition clawed at him. Kamui Woods. Yu had mentioned him before, even laughed once about their "rivalry," though it was said with that edge of respect she couldn't hide. He was fast, clever, branches lashing out again and again, not to kill but to corral, keeping the beast in the middle of the street where it did the least damage. Every time the Kaiju's claws rose, he shifted, weaving wood around its arms, forcing it back just enough.
It was working. Not perfectly, but enough. Enough to buy time.
Until it wasn't.
The Kaiju froze for a moment, neon-blue veins beneath its hide flaring like lightning trapped in flesh. A sound followed, a guttural rumble, deeper than anything Shinji had ever heard, vibrating through the ground itself. And then it moved, not carefully, not calculating, just enraged. It barreled forward through Kamui's wooden barricades as if they were paper, slamming its massive body into the open street.
Shinji's gut twisted. It hadn't been a strategy. It hadn't even been instinct. It was anger. Pure and simple. It got frustrated, and when it did, it lashed out at whatever was in front of it. And the hospital… the hospital had been in the way.
It hadn't chosen the building. It hadn't been planned. It had just been there. That realization didn't make it any better.
He was snapped out of his thoughts by the same nurse, blood streaking one side of her uniform, dust clinging to her hair, but her hands were steady as she gripped his arm, her eyes wide with terror yet burning with determination. "Takeyama, hurry, please, before the hospital gets hit again," she urged, dragging him away from the gaping wound in the wall where the city roared and burned.
Her next words came fast, low, like a prayer meant for herself as much as for him. "The north of the building was already evacuated… There shouldn't have been anyone on that side… no one else got hurt… no one else got hurt." Over and over, a mantra against the chaos screaming all around them.
They pushed past a stairwell, rubble scattered like bones, and Shinji's gaze flicked toward it, just for a second, when he heard it.
"Coward."
The voice was quiet. Distant. But it cut deeper than the Kaiju's roar.
He recognized it, or thought he did, but the source didn't matter. That one word slammed through his skull like a hammer, knocking loose the haze of panic, burning away the trembling in his chest. Because it was right.
He could have fought.
The moment the Kaiju landed, the instant it crushed its first victim underfoot, he could have been there. He could have shifted, could have stood between it and the people fleeing in terror. Maybe the buildings would still stand. Maybe those little blotches of blood wouldn't be there. Maybe Musutafu wouldn't already look like a graveyard.
He didn't process the oddity of it, how his mind had flipped like a switch, how the pounding in his chest had gone from frantic to steady in the span of a breath. No gradual easing, no slow clawing back of control. Just a word, coward, and suddenly his fear was gone, replaced by something sharp, something deliberate.
He didn't question how unnatural it felt, how wrong it should have been, for panic to evaporate so completely. His heart shouldn't have calmed that fast. His thoughts shouldn't have aligned with such precision after being shattered by terror only seconds ago.
But they had.
And that word, aimed at him like an arrow, had steered him, pushed him, shaped him, as if his body had moved on instinct rather than will. It was almost involuntary.
Almost like it hadn't been his choice at all.
"I-I can help, miss, I can beat it. Please, let me go, I can."
The words came out cracked and dry, like they'd been dragged through sandpaper. His throat burned, but he kept speaking anyway, forcing each syllable past lips that wanted to stay clamped shut. The nurse's grip faltered as he pulled away from her, her bloodied fingers scraping against his sleeve.
"Takeyama, no, wait, !" she called after him, but the sound was already fading behind the pulse hammering in his ears.
His feet were moving before he'd even thought it through, legs carrying him toward the stairwell with a sudden, singular focus. He didn't care about the rubble underfoot, the glass biting into his skin, or the smell of smoke that clawed its way down his lungs.
All he could think of was whether he could reach the roof; he could help. If he could just get high enough, just see clearly enough, he could call one, become one, be the wall between the monster and everyone else.
The thought became a mantra, rising and falling with every step as he pushed toward the stairs:
I can help. I can beat it. I can help. I can beat it.
And for the first time since the screaming started, his heart didn't feel like it was trying to tear its way out of his chest. It felt steady. Solid. Heavy.
Step after step, he climbed the stairs. One flight. Two. Three.
With every rise of his foot, that brief, alien steadiness he'd felt below began to drain away, as if leaking through the cracks in his ribs. By the fourth step, the weight in his chest wasn't resolve anymore; it was panic, coiling up from his stomach and squeezing his lungs until every breath felt like dragging glass through his throat.
Why am I doing this? The thought hit like a hammer. Another step. Another gasp. Why am I doing this?
His grip on the railing tightened so hard his knuckles burned, slick with sweat. The echo of his footsteps in the stairwell sounded too loud, too fast, like they weren't his own. He could almost hear the screams again, the roar, the splintering wood from Kamui Woods' barrier breaking apart.
I'm just going to make it worse. He stumbled on the landing, caught himself, pressed a hand to the wall. His heart was hammering so violently he thought it might split.
I'm not ready. I can't fight that thing. I'll fail again. I'll make it worse. I'll make it worse.
His breathing grew sharp, uneven, chest heaving as if the stairwell was shrinking in on him. Each new step felt heavier, slower, like his legs belonged to someone else. The mantra had twisted now, the words slashing through his skull with every heartbeat:
What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I can't. I'll make it worse. I can't. I'll make it worse.
The higher he climbed, the less sense it made. He wasn't the wall. He wasn't the weapon. He was just a boy running up stairs toward a monster that had fallen from the sky. And with every step, the panic clawed deeper, threatening to pull him apart before he ever reached the roof.
Finally, he reached the rooftop door. His chest burned, his throat raw from breath he couldn't catch, but his hand still slammed against the push-bar. It gave way, the metal creaking, and sunlight hit him like a slap across the face. Bright, hot, unrelenting, accompanied by the chorus of screams that flooded in from below.
The north side of the hospital was torn wide open, rubble and smoke still coughing into the air where the kaiju had hit. The only small mercy was the shredded perimeter fence; it was gone, erased by the monster's bulk when it struck. One less obstacle between him and it. One less excuse.
His heart battered against his ribs as though trying to claw free, but he forced himself forward anyway, each step deliberate, dragging him closer to the edge. His palms were slick, legs shaking, but he didn't stop until he could see it, clear, unobstructed.
The kaiju.
It towered over the cityscape, blotting out the horizon. Massive didn't even begin to describe it; this wasn't just big, it was one of the largest he'd ever seen. And that was saying something. From sheer size alone, it was Category 5 minimum. No, deeper in the scale, mid-range at least. The kind that earned headlines. The kind that made governments panic.
He had stopped following the news after his return, had tuned it all out, and now it came back to bite him, six months, nearly half a year since he last tracked attacks, and he didn't even know if this was the first Category 5 in that time or if worse had already come. But it didn't matter. One was enough.
Its height dwarfed nearly everything around it, which put it at 300 feet, smaller lengthwise for most category 5's. But what unsettled him more wasn't just the height. It was the build. Broader than most. Stockier. Every motion carried a crushing weight behind it, four massive arms swinging in a relentless rhythm, tearing into Kamui Woods' forest barricades. The pro's efforts were incredible, but already Shinji could see the strain, splinters flying, barriers cracking. The kaiju wasn't breaking through because of cleverness; it was sheer, unyielding force.
And then there was the back. What he assumed were the things wings had been tucked into a shell, resembling that of a beetle, he could tell by the wood that bounced off it; it was tough. The oddest detail, though, the thing had no tail. Flyers usually had them, to balance, to steer.
Shinji's knuckles whitened at the edge of the roof. His whole body was vibrating, fear, adrenaline, memory, all twisted into one, but his eyes stayed locked on the monster, refusing to blink.
Because whether he was ready or not… it was here.
He didn't hesitate. He stepped off the roof.
The air screamed past him, his body plummeting toward the ruined city below, hospital windows flashing by in streaks of shattered glass and sunlight. The wind roared in his ears, cold, biting, alive, and for a moment, for one fractured heartbeat, it almost drowned everything else out. The screams. The alarms. The gnawing panic in his chest.
Almost.
He forced his breathing steady as the city grew larger beneath him. The craters. The shattered streets. The enormous silhouette of the kaiju throwing its shadow across blocks of burning debris. He needed to decide, fast, but his thoughts were racing too quickly, colliding in the hollow spaces between heartbeats.
Saber Athena? No. She was built for agility, speed, finesse. In open terrain, she was unmatched, fluid, unstoppable, but here, in the middle of a collapsing city, her advantage would vanish. She wasn't built for holding ground or tanking hits. And worse, her light frame couldn't generate the sheer mass needed to stop something that size.
Crimson Typhoon? Maybe. But no, same issue. He'd be fast, sure, and his triple-arm system could tear into smaller foes, but against a Category 5 this size, the weapons would barely scratch the surface. And if that shell on its back was as durable as it looked, Typhoon would be shredded the moment he tried to push in.
He was halfway to the ground now, the sound of Kamui Woods' quirk stretching through the air like living ropes echoing faintly below. Branches lashed across buildings, tangling around the kaiju's limbs. It slowed, just barely, but it slowed.
That, he realized, meant something.
He wasn't alone.
The thought hit harder than he expected. His throat tightened, air catching for a second. Every battle before this had been the same: alone, desperate, improvising, dying one inch at a time until someone pulled him back or he clawed his way out. No backup. No coordination. Just him.
But not this time.
He had Kamui Woods. A pro hero who could restrain, redirect, hold the line even for a few seconds. Those few seconds meant everything. For the first time since he could remember, he didn't have to fight every second of the war by himself. He didn't have to think of everything. He could trust someone else to cover part of the fight.
That single realization shifted something in him. The frantic static in his head dimmed just enough to let reason push through.
He didn't need Athena's speed or Typhoon's coordination. He needed power, mass, leverage. Something that could meet the kaiju's raw strength head-on and break it.
Titan Redeemer.
He could feel the familiar pull beginning to stir in his chest, that gravitational lurch of energy winding through muscle and bone as his quirk began to flare. Titan Redeemer wasn't elegant. It wasn't graceful. It was brutal, heavy, deliberate, built for smashing through monsters that thought they were indestructible. And with Kamui Woods holding the kaiju even briefly in place, the serrated edges of Redeemer's wrecking arm could turn that window into a killing blow.
He breathed in. Deep. Grounded. For the first time since the screaming began, his heart wasn't thrashing, just beating, steady, powerful.
Yeah.
He wasn't alone. Not this time.
And with a single, deliberate thought, he began to shift.
It started as a low hum deep in his chest, a vibration that crawled through every nerve like a living pulse. The air around him warped, colors bending, the sound of the city blurring into a droning echo as his form expanded. The world fell away beneath him. Metal screamed into existence, armor plating folding over bone, servos locking into place, reactors flaring to life with the resonance of thunder.
It had been a long time since he'd used a Jaeger at full size. Too long, yet not long enough. He'd forgotten what it felt like, the weight, the power, the sheer pressure that came with being something meant to stand between humanity and annihilation. And before he could even register the scale of it, the transformation was complete.
Titan Redeemer stood where he had once been.
The impact of his landing cracked the street in a hundred places, a shockwave rolling out in every direction. Windows shattered for blocks. The ground trembled like the city itself recognized what had appeared.
All eyes turned toward him.
The civilians still scrambling for safety froze. Their faces lifted, tiny, scattered specks among the wreckage, and even from here, he could see it: awe, disbelief, and something else… recognition. They knew him. Or at least, they knew what he was. Titan Redeemer wasn't just a Jaeger anymore; it was a symbol, a name tied to the boy who had walked out of the Breach alive.
And the thought hit him, sharp and sudden. He hadn't dealt with the press since coming back. Probably thanks to Nezu, Yū, and Aizawa keeping things quiet, keeping him out of the spotlight. He'd never even checked the news himself, not since returning. He couldn't bring himself to. The risk of seeing a Kaiju attack, hearing those sirens again, watching cities burn on screen, it wasn't worth it.
Ironic, now that he thought about it.
He exhaled slowly. Metal hissed around him as Redeemer's systems responded in kind, the great machine mirroring his every movement. He could see the thermal haze of the Kaiju turning now, its many eyes fixing on him, and behind it, Kamui Woods, his wooden tendrils shattered and splintered from the assault, but still moving, still fighting.
Shinji clenched his fist, and the Jaeger followed.
He could only hope Kamui Woods wouldn't waste time trying to save what was already beyond saving. Every second mattered now.
His heart pounded, fast, hard, like it was trying to punch its way out of his ribcage. He could feel the tremors running through his body even as he tried to control the rhythm of his breathing. The world felt both too large and too small all at once, his mind flickering between the now and the then.
The forest. The cold grey wasteland of kaiju.
It clawed at the edges of his thoughts, the memory of that place, the feeling of isolation so deep it felt like gravity, but he refused to let it take him. He couldn't.
If he slipped now, if he let himself fall into that pit again, more people would die.
He focused on the Kaiju instead. Locked onto the pattern of its movements, the subtle twitch before it lunged, the shift of muscle under its carapace. Everything slowed. His vision blurred at the edges, the city twisting in ways his brain struggled to process. The buildings around him moved, became shapes half-familiar, trees, towering, swaying. The ground beneath Redeemer's feet softened, felt like mud, like forest floor.
But he ignored it. Forced himself to.
He drove Titan Redeemer forward, step after thunderous step, the rhythm of the machine syncing with his heartbeat until the two were one. One thought. One will. One purpose.
The Kaiju roared, a sound that split the air and rattled glass miles away, but Shinji didn't flinch. He leaned into the sprint, Redeemer's massive frame surging ahead, every piston and gear straining under the momentum. The earth split behind him as he moved.
And with every step, the fear, the panic, the doubt, all of it bled out, replaced by a singular, burning clarity.
This was what he was made for. Not peace. Not rest.
War.