Kikoru's roar was pure, undiluted fury. "LOOK AT ME!"
Her axe came down in a blazing arc meant to cleave Kaiju No. 9 in two. It never landed.
The air warped. A shimmering, half-formed derivative—the one she had shattered moments before—reconstituted itself directly in her path, its body a grotesque sculpture of hastily assembled carapace and sparking spatial energy. It took the blow on its torso, the axe biting deep but not fatal. The impact was like hitting a mountain. The force threw Kikoru backward, her arms screaming in protest. She barely got her guard up as the creature's backhand swipe sent her skidding across the rubble.
Hoshina was there in a flash of supersonic movement, his kodachi deflecting a follow-up strike from the still-regenerating Clone B. His usual smirk was gone, replaced by a grim, cold focus. "He doesn't care about the fight anymore, Shinomiya," he said, his voice a low, urgent growl. "We're background noise. Static. Don't waste your breath."
In Akira's mind, the confirmation was a death knell.
[Ravan: Vault integrity nullified. Entry confirmed. Internal energy readings… unstable. Fluctuating. Multiple dormant bio-signatures now active. Unknown entities stirring.]
Then, the floodgates opened.
From the shimmering, distorted maw of the vault, they came. Not kaiju. Not in any pure sense. They were horrors spat from a lab nightmare—twisted hybrids of mismatched limbs, pulsating sacs of unstable energy, skeletal constructs of bone and rusted metal. Failed experiments. Proto-kaiju. The Defense Force's darkest, most dangerous secrets, suddenly unleashed upon their creators.
They spilled into Sector 4-West with a chorus of shrieks, gurgles, and the wet slap of malformed flesh on concrete.
Fresh Defense Force squads, finally breaching the sector, ran headlong into the tide. Their disciplined formation shattered instantly against the chaotic, unpredictable swarm. A recruit screamed as a blob-like creature latched onto his faceplate, acidic slime eating through the helmet. Another was dragged down by three skeletal horrors.
"What are these things?!" someone yelled over the comms, their voice cracking with panic.
The scene was no longer a battle. It was a containment breach of apocalyptic proportions.
Headquarters: Command Center
Mina Ashiro watched the feeds. One screen showed a proto-kaiju made of crystalline shards shredding a power suit. Another showed a creature that was all mouths and tendrils overwhelming a fire team.
Her expression was carved from ice. Internally, a cold dread crystallized. This was beyond a siege. This was their own hubris turned against them.
"Initiate full lockdown protocol Sierra-Seven," she commanded, her voice betraying nothing. "Sever primary and secondary power to the vault's internal containment. Electromagnetic seals. Do it now."
A technician's hands flew across his console, then stopped. He looked up, his face pale. "Captain… we're locked out. The system isn't responding. It's… it's not that it's broken. It's that something else is giving the commands now." He swallowed. "That thing owns the archive."
Sector 4-West: The Tide
Kikoru and Hoshina fought back-to-back, a island of order in a sea of chaos. She was a whirlwind of destructive power, clearing swathes of the smaller proto-kaiju with each swing. He was a precision scalpel, his blades finding the weak points in the larger, more dangerous abominations, disabling them with terrifying efficiency.
But for every one they put down, two more shambled out of the vault. And the two derivatives were still there, harrying them, never engaging fully, just ensuring they couldn't advance.
"FIGHT ME!" Kikoru screamed again, her voice raw, toward the vault's entrance.
Hoshina parried a lunging tendril and kicked a scuttling horror away. "Save your energy, prodigy," he said, a grim parody of his usual teasing. "That thing's treating us like guard dogs tied to posts. We bark, but it doesn't care. It's already inside the house."
Near the triage point, the medics were overrun. A four-armed monstrosity with exposed muscle and bone clawed at their defensive position. Akira shoved a medic aside with his good arm, his katana held in a trembling, reverse grip. He couldn't synthesize. He could barely stand. But he could still point.
"Its spine is exposed between the second and third set of ribs!" he yelled, his voice a ragged whisper.
A nearby squad leader heard him, aimed his rifle, and fired. The creature shrieked and collapsed.
The Observer and the Variable were still in the fight.
The Vault: The Core
Deep within the vault, past rows of shattered containment units and dissected horrors, Kaiju No. 9 found what it sought. A central pillar, humming with immense power. Within it, suspended in a gel of pure energy, was a single, pulsating organ. A heart. A Daikaiju's heart.
"At last," its voice resonated through the chamber, a sound of profound, cosmic satisfaction. "The seed of godhood."
It plunged its alloy claws into the pillar. The protective gel didn't shatter; it was absorbed into its claws, the energy screaming as it was siphoned away. The heart withered, turning to dust, its essence drawn into No. 9's core.
Inside Akira's skull, Ravan screamed.
[Ravan: ALERT! CATASTROPHIC ENERGY SPIKE! Assimilation of high-yield Daikaiju core detected! Kaiju No. 9's energy profile is expanding beyond Fortitude 9.0 parameters! Scaling impossible! Threat escalation: UNDEFINED! HOST SURVIVAL PROBABILITY APPROACHING ZERO!]
The entire vault shook. Conduits along the walls exploded in showers of sparks. The proto-kaiju outside redoubled their frenzy, as if energized by their master's ascension.
On the comms, Mina Ashiro's voice was the only calm thing left in the universe, and it was terrifying.
"All units, hear me. If that assimilation completes, we lose more than Tachikawa."
A beat of silence, filled only by the sounds of dying men and monsters.
"We lose Japan."
Kaiju No. 9 turned. Not fully. Just its head, looking back over its shoulder toward the battlefield it had created. The emerald canisters on its chest blazed with a light that was no longer contained, swirling with stolen power. A grotesque, serene smile stretched across its features.
"Perfection begins."
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T/N :
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