The crude electronic device felt heavier in John's hands as he navigated to the second video file, his thumb pressing against the worn plastic surface of the primitive control button. The screen flickered for a moment before stabilizing, and immediately he could see that this footage was of dramatically better quality—shot from military equipment rather than a deteriorating security camera. But what the crystal-clear image revealed made his stomach twist with a familiar, cold dread that settled in his bones like winter frost.
The camera was positioned at a commanding height, looking down with the clinical detachment of a surveillance drone on what could only be described as systematic brutality disguised as tactical necessity. Below, the urban sprawl of a slum stretched out in all directions—a maze of cramped buildings, narrow alleyways, and improvised structures that spoke of poverty and desperation. The kind of neighborhood that existed in the shadows of every major city, invisible to those who preferred not to see.
American soldiers moved through the dirty streets with the mechanical efficiency of an occupying force, their desert camouflage and tactical gear a stark contrast to the civilian environment they were systematically dismantling. Interspersed among them were agents in the distinctive black combat uniforms of S.H.I.E.L.D., their movements equally cold and professional as they went about their grim work.
John watched in growing horror as families were forcibly dragged from their homes—mothers clutching screaming children, elderly men stumbling as they were shoved along cracked sidewalks, teenagers looking back at their abandoned possessions with the hollow eyes of those who understood they had just lost everything. The soldiers showed no emotion, no recognition that they were destroying lives with each door they kicked in, each family they displaced. They were turning an inhabited neighborhood into a live-fire combat zone, and the human cost was simply written off as acceptable collateral damage.
The tactical logic was cold but undeniably effective, and John found himself understanding it with the bitter clarity of someone who had been forced to make similar calculations in desperate circumstances. The monster was too fast, its jumping ability too phenomenal to effectively contain in an open area. To have any realistic chance of capturing something with those capabilities, they needed to pin it down in a confined space before it could reach the forest of skyscrapers that made up the city center, where its mobility would make it effectively untouchable.
From a purely military perspective, with no superhuman assets of their own to level the playing field, this was indeed the most efficient way to eliminate the threat with what they would cynically call the "least" amount of casualties. The problem was that, to them, a slum didn't count as a place with many people worth protecting. The residents were expendable, their lives worth less than the strategic advantage gained by using their neighborhood as a killing ground.
The camera's focus shifted, zooming in with mechanical precision on the creature as it darted through the narrow streets like a panicked animal fleeing a forest fire. It was surrounded on all sides by scattered groups of soldiers who had positioned themselves with tactical precision, creating overlapping fields of fire that turned the entire district into a death trap. No matter which direction the monster tried to flee, it was met with a withering hail of gunfire that echoed off the close-packed buildings like thunder in a canyon.
The bullets striking its hide were clearly of a much higher caliber than the standard police issue weapons from the previous footage—John could see the way the creature's movements had changed, how it now actively sought cover behind abandoned cars and the crumbling walls of evacuated houses. Where before it had ignored conventional firearms entirely, now it understood that continued exposure would eventually bleed it to death, one wound at a time.
The monster's intelligence was on full display as it analyzed its situation with the calculating mind of a predator backed into a corner. After a few more desperate leaps that left cracks in the asphalt where it landed, it ducked behind a larger building, using the structure's bulk to shield itself from a concentrated barrage of suppressive fire. John could see the tactical wheels turning in its alien mind as it processed the pattern of the attack, searching for weakness in what seemed like an impenetrable net.
Then, with the sudden decisiveness of a wolf choosing its moment to strike, the creature charged directly into one of the pursuing groups of soldiers. The tactical brilliance of the move was immediately apparent—at close range, the other units were forced to cease fire to avoid hitting their own men, their carefully coordinated kill box suddenly transformed into a chaotic melee where their superior firepower became a liability rather than an advantage.
The monster moved through the soldiers like a force of nature given physical form, its massive fists and clawed hands sending grown men flying like children's toys. Bodies in desert camouflage arced through the air, armor and equipment scattering as the creature carved through their ranks with devastating efficiency. Casualties soared in the span of heartbeats, screams of pain and terror echoing off the surrounding buildings as the creature demonstrated exactly why it had taken so many lives to reach this point.
But even as it wreaked havoc among the first group, John could see the larger tactical picture unfolding. This wasn't panic or desperation on the creature's part—it had found the key to breaking their encirclement, exploiting the one weakness in their strategy that they couldn't easily compensate for.
As the next wave of soldiers arrived, moving with the grim determination of men who had watched their comrades die, the monster charged again with the same devastating effectiveness. But this time, as it lunged forward with predatory grace, something changed. The creature seemed to step on something that shouldn't have been there, and suddenly a brilliant blue light erupted from the ground beneath its feet like a miniature sun being born.
John's enhanced intellect immediately grasped what he was witnessing, and the realization sent a chill down his spine that had nothing to do with the cool air of the oak grove. The military wasn't just using the slum as a battlefield—they were using their own soldiers as bait, luring the monster into carefully prepared kill zones with the cold calculation of chess players sacrificing pawns for a strategic advantage.
Dazzling arcs of electricity wrapped around the monster's massive form like the fingers of some cosmic deity, crackling and sparking as they sought to penetrate its tough hide. The creature's body convulsed violently, its arms thrown wide in an involuntary spasm as it released a roar of pain and rage that seemed to shake the very foundations of the surrounding buildings. The sound was barely audible through the device's speakers, but John could imagine how it must have echoed through the narrow streets—a primal scream of defiance that spoke to something fundamental about the struggle between civilization and the wild forces it sought to contain.
An armored vehicle rolled into view with the grinding mechanical sound of heavy machinery, its bulk crushing debris beneath its treads as it maneuvered into position. Mounted on its roof was a strange, ring-shaped device that looked like nothing John had seen in any conventional military arsenal—clearly some piece of experimental technology that S.H.I.E.L.D. or one of their associated programs had contributed to this operation.
The ring began to glow with an intense white light that hurt to look at even through the filtered medium of the video screen. The effect on the monster was immediate and devastating—where the electrical trap had caused it physical pain, this new weapon seemed to attack something deeper, more fundamental. The creature, which had been beginning to recover from the initial shock, suddenly fell to its knees, its massive hands clutching at its head in obvious agony.
In the next instant, another brilliant blue beam of energy tore through the air from a distant rooftop, moving with the speed and precision of a lightning bolt given direction and purpose. The beam struck the immobilized creature dead center, engulfing it in a violent explosion that sent shockwaves rippling outward through the surrounding debris. The monster was lifted bodily from the ground, its massive form ragdolling through the air before it smashed through a low concrete wall and rolled across the cracked road like a broken marionette with its strings cut.
Up to this point, John had to admit, the plan had been a brutal but undeniably effective success. The combination of conventional tactics and exotic technology had succeeded where pure firepower had failed, bringing down a creature that had previously seemed unstoppable. The military's willingness to sacrifice their own people as bait was morally reprehensible, but from a tactical standpoint, it had achieved its objective.
Soldiers began to advance on the motionless form with cautious professionalism, their movements careful and coordinated as they carried large net launchers that looked more suited to capturing dangerous animals than engaging in conventional combat. These weren't standard military weapons—more exotic technology, designed specifically for this kind of operation.
Just as they closed in on their prize, preparing to complete the capture that had cost so many lives to achieve, the monster's fingers twitched with the subtle movement of something that was far from finished. A sharp arrow, crackling with the same blue energy that had trapped it moments before, shot out from a concealed position with sniper-like precision, striking the creature in the back and immediately flooding its system with another massive dose of electrical current.
But then, something went catastrophically wrong.
The blue arcs of electricity that should have been completing the monster's incapacitation began to behave in a way that defied every principle of physics and electronics that John understood. Instead of dispersing through its body or earthing themselves in the ground, the electrical energy seemed to be drawn inward by some invisible force, pulled into the creature's core as if it were a living lightning rod designed to absorb and store electrical power.
The transformation that followed was both beautiful and terrifying to witness. The monster's brown, leather-like hide began to change, golden stripes appearing across its surface like veins of precious metal being drawn through stone. The pattern spread with organic inevitability, each line of gold seeming to pulse with its own inner light as the creature's entire physiology adapted to incorporate the energy that should have been destroying it.
Three more arrows flew through the air, these glowing with a different frequency of energy—yellow rather than blue, clearly a desperate attempt to compensate for the creature's unexpected adaptation. But they were a critical step too slow, arriving just as the monster's transformation reached completion.
The explosion that followed dwarfed anything that had come before. A massive burst of golden, lightning-shaped energy erupted from the creature's body with the force of a controlled detonation, shattering the incoming arrows in a cascade of sparks and flame while sending shockwaves rippling outward that cracked windows and set off car alarms blocks away.
The soldiers immediately opened fire into the resulting cloud of smoke and debris, their weapons chattering with desperate intensity as they poured rounds into the space where the monster had been. But when the smoke began to clear, revealing the crater where it had stood, the creature was nowhere to be seen.
Instead, it was airborne, having launched itself skyward with a leap that carried it far higher than its previous jumps had managed. Its movements were now impossibly fast, each bound covering distances that should have been beyond the capabilities of any terrestrial creature as it headed inexorably toward the dense urban core where their heavy weapons would become useless and their tactical advantages would evaporate like morning mist.
The video ended as the soldiers began their desperate pursuit, their efforts already futile as the creature disappeared over the rooftops with the fluid grace of something that had evolved beyond their ability to contain or control.
So that's the situation, John thought, his mind already beginning to catalog and analyze everything he had witnessed. The creature was undeniably powerful, possessing physical capabilities that exceeded normal parameters by several orders of magnitude. But it wasn't invincible—the military's weapons had proven capable of damaging it, and the exotic technology had nearly succeeded in capturing it entirely.
What concerned him most was the creature's apparent ability to adapt and evolve in response to the threats it encountered. The way it had absorbed and transformed the electrical energy suggested intelligence far beyond simple animal cunning, a biological flexibility that made it exponentially more dangerous with each encounter.
But despite the creature's formidable abilities, John felt a growing confidence that he could handle this threat. His own capabilities, enhanced by technology and training that went far beyond anything the military possessed, should be sufficient to face this monster on relatively equal terms. The feeling of familiarity that had been nagging at him since the first video was even stronger now, though he still couldn't quite place where he had encountered something like this before.
He scrolled down through the device's crude interface to examine the supplementary files that accompanied the video footage. The reports were written in the dry, clinical language of military intelligence, but the facts they contained were disturbing enough to penetrate even that bureaucratic veneer.
Monster has a strong learning ability... The first note confirmed his own observations about the creature's adaptive intelligence. This wasn't just a mindless beast following instinct—it was capable of analyzing threats, developing countermeasures, and implementing new tactics based on previous encounters.
Suspected to have an independent language... This revelation was even more unsettling. Language implied not just intelligence, but culture, possibly even civilization. Whatever this creature was, it might not be the mindless monster that the military was treating it as.
Locator damaged, cannot be tracked. The final note explained why they needed outside help. Their technological solutions had failed, leaving them blind in their pursuit of a target that could be anywhere in a city of millions.
After absorbing all the available information, John looked up to meet Captain Stacy's anxious gaze. The older man had been watching him intently throughout the viewing, reading his reactions with the practiced eye of someone accustomed to evaluating others under stress.
"I can handle this monster," John said, his voice carrying the quiet confidence of someone who had faced impossible odds before and emerged victorious. "It won't be a problem. What are your thoughts, Captain?"
Captain Stacy was silent for a long moment, his weathered face creased in thought as he weighed the risks and benefits of the decision before them. When he finally spoke, his words carried the weight of command authority tempered by paternal concern. "If you're sure, then I want you to go. This thing is a menace, and without your help, I'm afraid there will be a lot more casualties. But I don't trust the military or S.H.I.E.L.D. I don't know what they're really after."
The question that followed was tactical, practical, the kind of inquiry that could make the difference between success and disaster in complex operations involving multiple agencies with conflicting agendas. "Which general from the military is in charge of this operation?"
"Um, it's a General Ross. Why do you ask?" Captain Stacy began to respond, but before he could finish the sentence, his eyes widened with sudden understanding. The pieces of some larger puzzle seemed to click into place in his mind, and when he continued, there was a new note of respect in his voice that hadn't been there before. "I understand. No need to explain."
He had momentarily forgotten about John's claimed ability to see fragments of the future, the strange gift that might provide insights into the military's internal politics and hidden agendas that went far beyond what conventional intelligence gathering could reveal.
"It's Ross again," John said, and his tone was filled with the weary understanding of someone who had encountered this particular complication before in other contexts, other timelines. He knew exactly who General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross was—a man whose military brilliance was matched only by his absolute ruthlessness, whose pursuit of power and control had a tendency to turn manageable situations into catastrophic disasters.
The name alone explained so much about what they had witnessed in the videos, the willingness to sacrifice soldiers and civilians alike in pursuit of a prize that Ross undoubtedly saw as the key to some larger strategic advantage. This wasn't just about stopping a monster—it was about capturing and controlling something that could potentially shift the balance of power in ways that most people couldn't even imagine.
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