Akira didn't see his life flash before his eyes. He saw data. A final, screaming stream from Ravan, calculating the infinitesimal gap between the implosion's formation and its point of critical mass.
[Ravan: FATALITY IMMINENT. DISPERSAL MANEUVER: ENGAGING.]
It wasn't a conscious decision. It was a system override. His body moved without his command. The Tiger Beetle's acceleration didn't fire in a straight line. It stuttered, a hyper-fast series of micro-bursts that vibrated through his muscles like a seizure. At the same instant, the Carapace reinforcement ability didn't harden his skin—it rippled, a wave of kinetic redirection flowing from his core to his limbs.
He didn't dodge the vortex. He skipped across its surface like a stone on a lake of nothingness.
The world tore itself apart behind him. The sound was a physical thing, a deep, groaning shudder that ripped through the base. A massive section of Sector 4-West—walls, fencing, asphalt—was simply erased, leaving a smooth, glassy crater. The shockwave hit Kafka and Reno like a truck, throwing them backward into a pile of shattered concrete.
Akira landed twenty feet away, rolling to a stop on his hands and knees. He vomited onto the ground, his body wracked with violent tremors. His vision swam. Every muscle fiber screamed in protest, feeling like it had been individually stretched and frayed. His new combat suit was torn to shreds, revealing skin crisscrossed with hairline fractures that glowed with a faint, angry red light.
[Ravan: Host neural pathways overloaded. Systemic shock detected. Muscle tissue micro-tearing at 42%. Continued synthesis will result in catastrophic systemic collapse. Recommendation: Cease all combat activity immediately.]
The dust began to settle. Kaiju No. 9 stood unharmed at the edge of the new crater, its form untouched by the destruction it had wrought. It watched Akira's suffering with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a lab animal.
"A fascinating survival instinct," its voice scraped in their minds. "The synthesis extends to your autonomic nervous system. You are more kaiju than you appear, creator."
The testing phase was over. Now, the dismantling began.
Reno pushed himself up, his rifle somehow still in his hands. He fired. A desperate, furious burst.
No. 9 didn't even move. The rounds disintegrated a foot from its body, fizzling into harmless sparks.
"The observer," it said, its head tilting toward Reno. "You see the flaws but lack the strength to exploit them. You are a lens with no focal point. Your data is redundant."
It didn't attack him. It simply flicked a claw. The space in front of Reno warped, a subtle distortion that sent him flying off his feet to crash into a pile of rebar.
Kafka roared, a raw, guttural sound, and lunged. He didn't try to be precise. He just threw a wild punch fueled by fear and rage, a shield of blue energy forming around his fist.
No. 9 didn't block. It took a single, miniscule step backward. The space Kafka moved through seemed to stretch, his punch slowing, his momentum dying. He stumbled past the kaiju, his own force throwing him off-balance, and he crashed face-first into the rubble.
Akira forced himself to stand, his katana feeling like it weighed a thousand pounds. He had to fight without Ravan. Without the powers. He had to be just a man with a sword. He feinted high, then went for a low sweep at its legs—a basic, human maneuver.
No. 9's claw was already there, waiting. The alloy edge didn't cut him; it simply brushed against his cheek with the gentle, mocking precision of a razor. A thin line of blood welled up on his face.
It was learning. Evolving in real-time. Every move Akira made was downloaded, processed, and countered before he even finished making it.
Reno pushed himself up, blood trickling from his hairline. His eyes weren't on the kaiju's face; they were on its body, scanning, analyzing. He saw it again—the tiny, almost invisible seams where the alien alloy grafted to its flesh. But every time Akira even thought of aiming for one, No. 9's posture would shift infinitesimally, ready to redirect the blow.
"It's predicting you!" Reno yelled, his voice hoarse. "It knows the pattern! The algorithm! Stop giving it the data! Fight stupid!"
Akira understood. He stopped trying to be efficient. He stopped using Ravan's calculations. He attacked with wild, reckless swings, leaving himself open, putting no power behind them. It was clumsy. It was dangerous. It was utterly illogical.
For a glorious, fleeting second, it worked. No. 9's predictive model faltered. Its head twitched in what might have been confusion. Akira's blade, in the middle of a useless, wide swing, managed to score a shallow cut across one of the alloy seams on its thigh.
The victory lasted less than a heartbeat. No. 9's claw backhanded him away with casual force. Akira hit the ground, the air driven from his lungs.
A warped spatial distortion shot toward Reno. Kafka saw it. He threw himself in the way, his blue energy flaring to life.
CRACK.
The shield held, but it shattered like glass a second later. The feedback threw Kafka to the ground. The skin on his arms was burned and blistering, glowing with angry blue light beneath the surface. He coughed, and a splatter of blood hit the concrete, sizzling with faint energy.
[Ravan: Warning: Subject Kafka Hibino's kaiju core resonance is reaching critical instability. Uncontrolled transformation is imminent if stress continues.]
Akira locked eyes with him from across the rubble. "Don't," he gasped, the word a ragged plea. "Not yet. He wants it."
Kafka met his gaze, his whole body trembling with the effort of holding the storm inside. He gritted his teeth, his veins bulging and glowing under his skin, and through sheer, agonizing force of will, he forced the energy down. The light in his veins faded, leaving him pale and shaking.
No. 9 watched it all, its expression one of profound, intellectual boredom.
"You are insects clawing at a star," it mused, its voice a dry rustle in their skulls. "This is not a battle. It is an observation. You are a failed prototype," it said to Akira. "And you are a coward, pretending at a humanity you have already forsaken," it said to Kafka. Its gaze then settled on Reno. "And you, the observer, will be the first to be deleted. I am curious to see how the variable reacts to loss."
It raised its claw. But this time, the energy didn't form a vortex. It shimmered, and the air around the three of them—Akira, Kafka, Reno—began to fold. Walls of distorted, translucent space erected themselves, boxing them in, closing from all sides into a shrinking, suffocating prism.
[Ravan: CATASTROPHIC FAILURE IMMINENT. Multi-vector spatial compression detected! This is not a weapon! It is a containment and dissection field! Probability of escape: 2.7%.]
Kafka braced, throwing the last dregs of his power into a dome around them. Reno gritted his teeth, standing back-to-back with Akira, his rifle useless, his body their last, frail shield.
Akira understood. This wasn't to kill them. It was to trap them. To pin them down like specimens for its final, horrific examination.
The walls of warped space closed in, inches away now, humming with annihilating power. The air grew thin. The light distorted.
Then, No. 9's final, cold whisper filled their skulls, freezing the blood in their veins.
"Now… let me open you up."
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T/N :
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