Godzilla 2000: New Era, PART 19 · 1:58pm Feb 17th, 2022
PART 18
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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Just before the main ship would launch its attack, one of the drones had seemingly achieved its objective of securing access to the other main terminal. Manually taking over remote computer systems and speeding up the undoing of the local prolific fauna was doable, but that alternative was a tedious affair. With humanity having already invented a crude form of interconnected networks of systems and wireless communications, enslaving the stronger machines already anchored into such a network and using them to enslave all the others was much more efficient. One terminal had already been promised to be breached, but the one more locally available had proven tedious.
After the size-shifting interloper departed, the attempt on Admiral Tachibana faltered due to not being capable of assimilating his spawn’s form as to dissuade his and others’ focus. Brute force was attempted and failed, for now.
But if the animate tumors had any flaw, it was their mental isolation. What one extension of the Millennian themselves saw, learned, and assimilated; the collective could emulate with perfect retention. Which made it all the more efficient given what they were doing now.
The intimidation display of unraveling their head, splitting it open like a flower with petals lined with teeth, worked to briefly shock and awe Commander Aso. By the time he managed to cry out and try and throw up his arms in defense, the drone was already upon him. It went low to avoid the man’s guard, wrenching him off his feet and sending Aso tumbling backwards into his table so hard it snapped under the force. The drone’s flower-like maw wrapped around his left foot, clasping shut on all sides across it.
The old soldier-turned-commander saw stars and felt a horrific burning in his left leg; before the pain was blunted just enough by the jar to his head he’d taken from the crash so that he might get some semblance of his wits back.
One of his legs felt much lighter, but his attempt to rise was met with failure when the hurt limb wetly slid across the floor. Through the strobing stars in his sight, the old commander glimpsed the drone holding something in its maw. It took a full, disturbing moment to realize the bloody shoe and part of a pant leg sticking out of its enveloping gullet was his own. Blood drooled down the Millennian drone’s chest and neck, emanating from the ripped-off foot and ankle it was chewing into itself. It consumed all it could, even the very blood draining from the maw was absorbed through the skin by tiny siphons.
It had just torn a piece off and ate it, if one could even call the action that, right in front of him. Already the drone started to morph and shift, skin and hair textures changing and manually reconfiguring to perfectly emulate a new shape.
There was a snap of gunfire and the front of the drone exploded outwards in a shower of small droplets. Several spattered across Aso’s face as he, still hefting his large revolver pistol he’d drawn, emptied two more shots into it. A gestalt of a cephalopod tendril and hand snapped out and grabbed the gun, pushing it and Aso’s arm aside with such calm in motion, and yet magnitudes of force of strength.
The drone’s body had barely reacted to being sheared into, maintaining its position despite half its side being blown out by several shots that buried themselves into the right side of the center mass. Already it was beginning to crouch down further, the distorted, shredded flesh of where the face would be remolding to create a new one.
Takaaki Aso gagged and cringed, the drone planting a foot onto his gut and pinning him down whilst the gun bearing arm remained pried to the side. It’s free hand contorted and split along a seam, dividing into a pair of great jaws complete with a gullet extending up the limb and into the shoulder. Rows of recurved teeth like multiple dozens of fishing hooks extended upwards, poised to snag and tear. The drone was stoic the entire time. It’s face was a perfect emulation of a youthful trooper Aso recognized as being from the Amami operation helping man the Full Metal Missiles, yet there was no imbalance in the form or subtle twitches one would notice when a person imperfectly tried to remain still. The face changed, from a young woman to quickly sport weathered skin, graying hairs, wrinkles around the creases of the face; and eyes that had stared into more tragedies than most could ever comprehend.
Aso was looking at his own face, cast through an uncanny mirror. The drone extended its arm-maw towards his gaze and Aso felt the pricking hooks of recurved barbs start to snag on his skin.
His free hand touched something. It was an odd texture, rough and almost like very aged wood in some regard but clearly not the remains of his desk. He felt the tip, sensing a weight to imply it was teardrop-shaped and a few kilograms.
The godzilla claw Hina had left him. A priceless relic to her people he’d largely written off as a scientific curiosity. Extremely rare, but no more sacred than the skull of a beloved dog. And yet he had put it on his mantle, staring intently at it on the night full of uncertainty prior to the Amami islands operation. He’d practically begged for the self assurance the old woman had, practically begged the relic for some insight as to what he should do. When times were straining and frightful, he could admit to longing for the sense of calm the old miko had. He never got that after being forced to see what he did as a young man, when an enraged monster rose from the ocean to turn Tokyo into a new sea cast in flame. Nor when he was cursed to see the same sight again thirty years later, and feared greatly fifteen years after that it would all happen again.
Hina had been through the exact same things, and yet fearful as she was, thinking some greater purpose behind an enigma of nature had given her strength Aso both envied and admired.
The hooks of fangs dug into his skin and scraped the bones of his skull, and Commander Takaaki Aso closed his eyes to cut his gaze from the stoic visage of the abomination with his face. His fingers clutched the bone and on some level, he prayed.
The tip of the bone stabbed into the drone’s arm, pushed into the seam of the jaw and pried into it. In an instant, the drone’s eyes started to dilate from surprise. Skin began to swell uncontrollably and become a chaotic mash of erratic tissue. Pustules and bony spurs erupted from the skin and traveled from the impact point, carrying up the drone’s bloodstream to travel up the arm. Aso felt his head jerk to the side and a weight drop, eyes opening to glimpse through the seam of the jaw to see the drone recoil back.
It thrashed and tore at its own shoulder, ejecting the cancerous mass before its cells could carry the malign energy up and spread to the rest of the body. It staggered and thrashed to get clear of the blight, seemingly showing some semblance that passed for fear or pained distress for the first time. The mass of the drone’s arm that had been clamped onto Aso’s face contracted and relaxed, random masses of tissue morphing into new body parts. Much of it was beginning to crumble away as the out of control cellular energy literally burned off the steaming cellular fluid.
Much of his body wanted to pass out from the pain, his age being well past his prime. And yet, something ignited and burned that weakness out. Aso felt forty years younger, faced with a monster once again. And the same conviction that propelled him to run inside a crumbling building with Godzilla bearing down on it burst through his system. He grabbed the crumbling maw gripping his face and wrenched it off, yelling out to heavens and earth as he pulled it free and ignored the cuts and small gashes it opened up across his head ripping it off. Throwing it aside and grabbing onto the table with one hand and the Godzilla claw with the other, he kicked off the ground with his good leg to lunge.
The drone’s eyes widened upon seeing the blow coming but was unable to get out of the way.
Takaaki Aso hit the ground after loosing his strike, grunting and heaving as he looked back. The drone was thrashing and staggering back, the claw embedded in its still regenerating arm that it had previously severed. Pushed in deep, it bashed itself against the wall to try and pry the obstruction out; cancers rocketing up its shoulder and face to distort what was there. Part of the head had been consumed by the tumors growing up from the shoulder by the time it managed to get the claw out. The bony relic clattered on the floor as the drone barely managed to stand, now a grotesque parody of a man with uneven limbs and chaotic growth across half the form. Skin was sloughing off and the mandible flowed uselessly before falling out, the distorted tissue warping the tooth row.
Taking his chance, Commander Aso crawled across the room and uncovered an emergency panic button hidden behind where the bookcase had been standing. Hauling himself upwards, his bloodied fist smashed through the security cover and hit the command. All across the offices, metallic doors snapped into frame and bolted themselves into the walls. They could be disengaged, but only manually and one by one. For all intents and purposes, anyone inside the building, which should have been only himself and his heinous company, was trapped inside with him.
Aso tried to rise fully to his feet, only to fall back due to missing the end of his left leg. Even so, he didn’t crumble entirely to the floor, clutching the edge of the bookcase and glaring at the drone. Even with blood oozing from his torn leg, his face riddled with cuts where it looked like fishing hooks had been wrenched out of his skin, and his entire form covered in sweat; Aso did not fall thanks to the surge of mental fortitude from before. His eyes met the copy of themselves, asymmetrical now as they were.
The potent glare he cast, even without the one thing that could hurt it in hand and in the condition he was in, made it very clear he was going to do everything he could to kill it.
“Is that it?” the aged commander huffed, “Is that all you got?”
The drone started to press backwards, tensing as if ready to pounce. Aso’s fingers clutched his supports and readied himself.
It was then that, compelled by a signal the old Commander could not hear or perceive, the drone lashed out and threw the shattered desk upwards. Now behind cover for a moment just in case the claw was kicked or thrown its way, the drone turned and faced the one exit Aso couldn’t block off by bursting out of the window.
Takaaki Aso watched on somberly, hearing other windows bursting too close to the same time, and glimpsed a shimmering crossing the UFO’s surface. He could figure out when there was an attack when he saw it.
The echo of Godzilla’s roar on Amami Ōshima renewed his understanding and his shame. Shinoda said he wasn’t sure why Godzilla would go to that out of the way place, but it was now painfully obvious why. It had known, somehow it had known what they were either too ignorant or too foolish to know.
He was beginning to feel light-headed and the trail of blood coming from his leg left it obvious as to why.
A belt was tightly secured around his lower leg and affixed into place to staunch the blood flow. Aso hobbled out of his office and picked up the Odo Island relic on his way out. Through one of the bolted doors, unlocking it to get to an emergency medical ward he was the sole occupant of, he got to work.
Shinoda had known something about this, Aso remembering well that the scientist was the very first to tell him he saw the UFO as hostile and a huge threat. And he’d done that right in tandem with finding out Tachibana’s daughter was attacked and he himself was menaced on the highway. Aso tried to heed him as much as he could then, but he felt like there was more to heed now.
Pentecost would have to handle this battle until he could rejoin the fray, and he certainly planned to. Battered, bloodied, and bruised as he was; this old dog still had plenty of sharp teeth.
Transfusions were set up to make up for lost blood, wounds were cauterized, and he started sharpening the one weapon he had on hand.
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Pentecost had rejoined the fray as soon as he could, departing with even more haste when Tachibana's rally cry came over the communications lines still working. Biologist 023, Katagiri, and plenty of other troopers had occupied the CCI building, both as a rallying point for cover and as an impromptu medical facility. Thankfully if one had a working knowledge of living things, the skills involved were not totally incompatible with trying to keep something alive.
023 and Katagiri, sleeves rolled up and gloves on, were working tirelessly on a barely cognizant woman who had been mutilated by an enemy. Her uniform, lacking body armor due to being caught unawares, was stained with a thick and tarry red from the multiple bullet wounds.
“Multiple bullet wounds, most passed through her but three remain,” 023 noted dryly as he held the edges of the entry wounds shut to use a surgical glue and bind them in place to stop the bleeding.
The patient, fading in and out of consciousness, had to be held down when she started screaming.
Katagiri strained to help restrain her, lest she reopen the wounds or hurt herself more in a myriad of other ways, “Damn it! Do we have any more pain killers?”
“The medical bay in the offices is currently being sieged,” 023 responded, “We will have to operate more intensely once the attack subsides.”
“Can’t you get the bullets out of her?” a younger cadent wined whilst trying to hold their superior officer’s kicking leg still.
“If you want to tear her open more in unsanitary conditions to retrieve mostly harmless bullets that were sterilized by the heat of firing, with multiple attackers outside,” 023 noted whilst pausing to let the sounds of the battle echo through the room unopposed, “I, as the acting head physician, will have to strongly advise against you being a complete imbecile.”
“But-” they whimpered and tried to protest, the casting of their face in the light as they looked upon the volunteering doctors pleadingly revealing just how young the maybe-18 year old was.
“Pipe. Down,” the old mysterian shot them a withering stare through his glasses as he pulled off his red scarf, a remnant of an ancient uniform he’d worn when he first came to this world. Now, however, he was wondering what was going to take him out of it.
023 angrily, emoting on a rare instance, shoved it into their hands and pointed across the room, “There is a jury-rigged arrangement of boiling water pots. Make yourself remotely useful and sterilize this so we can use it.”
They cried, not at the anger but sheer concern for the screaming form between Katagiri and 023, before going to follow through with the demand. Katagiri frowned and looked down at the bullet wounds he was trying to close, seeing fragments of burnt powder on the entry wounds.
“Close range, couldn’t have been more than three meters away,” Katagiri frowned, “They were already here en masse by the time we showed up.”
“And no one noticed,” 023 replied whilst trying to close another wound, “Their abilities, technologically and biologically far surpass our own.”
A stray thought pinged through Mitsuo Katagiri’s mind, remembering the motive behind attacking Yuji Shinoda and his company.
“And yet… they wanted something we had,” Katagiri paused before looking up and away, “Doctor to Doctor, can you-”
“For a time,” 023 cut him short, “Please do be prompt, I am trying to save lives of my new homeland and you have endangered them with your recklessness.”
The aged alien and yet also very discernibly a man, unlike the Millennian, looked up at and glared at Katagiri with an intensity that made it very clear 023 might have considered throttling him had an emergency not cropped up. The director of CCI didn’t rise to the spite and instead moved across the building, power-walking past the wounded and rearming whilst trying not to pay too much focus at the sounds of battle literally just outside a glass door in a few cases. He re-entered the computer room to where Yuji Shinoda had found him catatonic. There were still many people present, the room being refitted as an emergency waypoint to rearm and coordinate. Pentecost had left only recently, some trusted subordinates helping to keep the communications lines running whilst others like ammo counters worked to reload the weapons to pass off to others.
Yuji had a bag with him at the time, a pack he’d been carrying around ever since arriving at the G-Force base. The bag had been left behind when Pentecost all but drafted him into a demolition mission. The bag was still there, Pentecost having put it in the back of the room under heavy guard which only let Katagiri pass upon seeing who it was. This was, by all accounts, the safest place on base and certainly safer than where Yuji had been going, everyone who’d had extensive access to the room had been there since the start.
The Millennian wanted what was in the bag. Which made it all the more disconcerting when Katagiri opened an algebra textbook to find nothing but hollowed out pages and a harddrive case; split open. The identical sight of disassembled computer parts from the Eiko-Ryu flashed before Mitsuo Katagiri’s eyes and he frantically looked to the sea of bodies moving in and out of the impromptu-base.
One of the personal guards Pentecost had stormed in with initially, who’d looked and acted perfectly human for hours, was gone.
The sea of people coming and going didn’t look so comforting anymore.
Far and away, behind the cover of an overturned jeep, a mass of flesh that once had a human face wrapped and coiled around a stripped harddrive. Tethering itself to the battery, a stolen laptop, and the harddrives with a mishmash of tissue and cables, the sphere of tissue devoured every byte of information and uploaded it to the source router.
Across the base, the Aso emulation tethered into the supercomputer acquired the data. It faced Yuji Shinoda and Commander Aso whilst still in a roughly humanoid form up front, but the back half had been pulled and stretched out to interface with the computer console to G-Force’s terminal tower. Nerves and extended brain tissue to wind the synapses directly into the wiring and inputs. Decades of information about so many subjects were flying by in milliseconds. Images and collections of information flashed across the computer screens surrounding the terminal. Cell structures, radiation signatures, regenerative studies, taxonomic information, Kyoto Institute, radiation burn injuries, fatality reports, source radiation, Shindo Industries submarine, Tokyo 1984, Bikini Atoll, Dr. Daisuke Serizawa, fatality records, Odo Island 1954.
Dr. Shinoda’s data that he’d kept secret for years, combined with CCI’s repository of information seeded by when they took his project over in 1993, and G-Force’s records and studies. The most extensive summation of a single subject’s existence and biology ever created. The Millennian now knew more about Godzilla than any informational source on the planet, and they were rapidly making adjustments remotely.
The godzilla claw was stabbed into the drone Aso’s face, Yuji Shinoda panting as he tried to force it through as deep as possible.
The drone, beyond getting impaled by the weapon, barely reacted. Shinoda’s eyes widened as he slowly craned his head aside to look at the entity, blank eyes from the Aso copy staring back at him without suffering the rapid onset cancer or degradation they had so often suffered on contact with the mutation.
The data of the apex lifeform of this planet had been copied, and put into practice.
“Shinoda! Get back!” the real Aso roared as he pulled up the bag of grenades and set to pull a pin.
Yuji complied and ran to help the Commander with the explosives. Just as Aso had handed Yuji two of the grenades, a powerful voice ripped across the room.
“Commander.”
The figure at the terminal rose, stepping away from the supercomputer by literally walking through the relic of a claw that had been stabbed into the computer screen behind it. The visage of Aso remained relatively normal, without gross deformity beyond missing half its face from the stabbing earlier. A large piece of it however, a meshwork of neurons and tendrils, remained affixed to the computer. The emulation of Takaaki Aso was perfect, pristine. They even looked healthier beyond the facial damage, and that was without missing part of their leg. This Aso stood tall, calm, looking ten of fifteen years younger than the old man before it.
Looking in the part of a JSDF uniform he once wore right before the 1984 attack.
Nonchalant about missing half its face, thought turning aside somewhat whilst regrowing that tissue, it spoke. Not with an uncanniness, not with a distortion one would expect, but plainly and perfectly.
“Your memories are and would be invaluable. No one has warred with Godzilla as much as you.”
Yuji put the pieces together in his head and whispered to the commander, the real commander, “It has your genome but not your mind. It didn’t take any of your brain.”
The visage of the drone morphed, now using a recombination of genomes to create a near perfect replica of someone from the archives. With half the face missing adding the effect, the drone looked like the talking corpse of the late Captain Akiyama, the original Super-X pilot and Aso’s original intended successor. And someone Aso had led to his death.
“Your species’ dominion will be over soon. Survival projections are not amenable,” the Millennian Akyiyama noted calmly, the perfect pitch of their voice being an eerie quality all to themselves as they turned to face the pair, still missing half their face above the jaw line, “There are 1,238 human genomes and minds within our collective. They will live on. Your species is not the apex of your world, but it can be in record and endure after.”
“By…” Yuji Shinoda huffed, “By doing what?!”
Another step and the drone shifted again, this time to another face from the records. A taller man, but with the visage of a revenant with his paled skin and obvious wounds. Colonel Goro Gondo, deceased 1989 in the very first G-Force operation against Godzilla to deploy the Anti-Nuclear Bacteria.
“By rendering the apex lifeform deceased prior to your own extinction outside of the collective of course. Elevation through extinction,” the drone noted plainly.
Aso was still silent and still as Yuji was vocal and spiteful, “Extinction?! Collection?! What even are you?! Who are you to decide that sort of thing?!”
Gondo’s ghost twitched and morphed, recomposing itself into a woman. Aso recognized her well, as she had more than enough experience to be twice the rank she was. Captain Mei Shindo, infamously called ‘Mom’ by the new recruits she drilled, tilted her head slightly whilst holding her arms out, “The right of the superior species intellectually and technologically, the only parameters human civilization judges its own worth against every other species on your planet.”
“You can’t seriously be so arrogant!”
From the emulation of Mei, to one of the most recently slain. This one even Yuji recognized when they stood tall and straightened up. CCI and G-Force’s golden boy, Colonel Sho Kuroki and ace pilot of the Super-X3, faced them whilst threads of flesh helped keep his mouth and jaw attached despite the hole in his head.
“Arrogance implies lack of ability. Such as yours to secure your own dominion from the apex. Who are you to decide your own demise and that of your world? Estimated species extinction count due to Homo sapiens exceeds six digits and rising. Occasions of mass thermonuclear detonation nearly occurred twenty eight times in the last twenty years. Your species will wipe itself out through biological warfare, nuclear bombardment, or temporal anomalies before you see another second millennia in almost every scenario with current arms buildup and culture.”
It stepped forward, the uniform across its body changing into one many would instantly recognize from the history books. A visage of Commander Aso returned and stood in tanned colors, a distinctive flag on his chest and insignia on his rank. That of a head Minister of War for the Imperial era military, a perfect replica of Admiral Hideki Tojo’s as per discovery of Aso’s essay on the follies of the man linking the two. Even without access to his memories, the Millennian knew a sore spot to hit here as much as they did tormenting Yuji with the image of his dead wife.
“There are many scenarios wherein G-Force and CCI directly lead to a second Imperial era for Japan. History would remember you as its founder, and the projected bloodshed would make the Pacific War seem feeble by comparison. You will enable all of this, for your New Era of Humanity. You can see to it, with all of them, that your mission to kill the apex was not fruitless,” the Imperial leader said as they opened one side of their jacket. The flesh composing the replicated clothing morphed in tandem with the tissue of the body. Multiple faces and hands seemed to press against the outer tissue, embossing it with the cornucopia of visages almost like captured souls.It was likely every single person of the over one thousand assimilated were all reaching out at once. Dozens of thin, gaunt arms begin to extend to embrace them. A great many of them were recognizable, the true Aso could imagine.
“Your extinction is inevitable, the continued existence of your mind and legacy is offered, just as they have taken.”
He’d led them to their graves himself.
The real Aso’s eyes closed briefly in contemplation, and shame. Logic told him this was just the entity trying to mentally wear him down, distress and unsteady him. That same judgment that said all of this should be pushed away however was toothless. He had enabled many things he now regretted. He enabled his decades-long war with giants to consume his life. He enabled the pointless attack at the Amami islands because of his fears. He enabled the reckless arms build-up and lack of oversight at CCI. He enabled too much power to be amassed and now this entity was using it against them.
He had been controlled by those fears, because of dread they could become reality.
And then there was the count of his sins, which were reality.
Aso opened his eyes to look upon the visage of his sins manifest. Logic told him some like Gondo and Akiyama couldn’t possibly be part of this ‘collective’, they had died years ago. But that hadn’t changed the fact of how they died and for who. This was a rare scenario, in which logic would not set him free.
Only atonement could.
“Whether you want to offer me some bastardized farce of eternal existence earnestly or not, you want me to join this ‘collective’ because my memories might be useful in fighting Godzilla,” Aso whispered as he stared back at damnation, passingly conscious of the claw embedded in the machinery beyond it, “You know… he will come for you, and you are afraid.”
“I have no such synapse response.”
A jolt of memory coursed through the two men. One from fifteen years ago for Shinoda, and one from thirty years prior for Aso. One of terror and titans, when a giant walked the earth once again. It was for the first time ever such recollections could be granted as a source of comfort, if only in the knowledge that for all this being’s claims to grandeur and eternity; they were woefully ignorant about something of this world. Something they all knew was coming for it.
“You’ll learn,” Aso noted calmly, leaning on Shinoda to keep himself upright, “Now shall we, Dr. Shinoda?”
“Yes, Sir.”
The grenades pins were pulled free, the pair of metal tabs pinging off the floor. Shinoda threw his weight around and forward to hurl the satchel containing the other explosives forward. The detonators were put forth as an offering to the altar of the terminal. The demon profaning the chamber did not move or try to save itself from the coming destruction. Yuji and Takaaki limped and ran out of the room and into the hall just as the charges hit their zenith.
The relic from Odo Island was wreathed in flames one last time before the entire room was consumed by them.
It took the two at least twenty minutes to stagger out of the G-Force offices. And as they did, careful for any ambushes even after finding means to arm themselves, the gradual decline of the deafening calls of war outside began to become self evident. Without a window or viewing hole in the half-ruins of the offices, there wasn’t a direct indicator of what had happened outside. Who had been the victor in the battle between Terrans and the beyond.
An immaculately intact door was the one barrier left, and Aso initially reached for it before Yuji Shinoda gently put his hand aside. The doctor’s eyes were silently cast to the Commander, who might have had some kind of miracle drugs and transfusions pumped into him, but he was still a man about twice his age walking around with a crutch due to missing a foot. And that was whilst hefting a small flamethrower. Shinoda nodded, pursing his lips and tensing.
Aso, silently in conversation to him, held his breath as the blindingly bright light of the outside pierced through the crack opened up by the creaking door.
Shinoda silently griped at how loud the opening door was, dreading how noisy the screeching of its opening was for the attention it no doubt grabbed. Before them was a sparking mass strewn across the ground, and it took Yuji a few moments to recognize it as the torn off and mangled limb of the GUNHED. Something stained the side of it, splattered against the hull that was ripped by claws and crushed by force. The arm partially blocked the door, stopping it from opening fully, before it started to move under force not his own.
The torn off mecha arm was moved back, with the grinding of metal briefly deafening from it being pulled across the concrete and broken ground. The GUNHED looked like it had been put through a meat grinder, sparking and leaking fluids from every port with all of its weapons melted, torn off, and knocked aside to the point of breaking. And yet, it still sluggishly managed to use its remaining arm to pull the debris away from the door. The hatch on the top wasn’t opened, as a cursory glance confirmed it had been half-slagged with corrosive liquid that melted it into the chassis. Instead, a battered and weary Admiral Tachibana powered down the machine and squeezed his way out of a gaping hole torn in the side of the cockpit from his foe. Standing on the ruined shoulder of his mech, GUNHED in turn stood over the ruined mass of tumors and still flesh that had been the largest drone.
All around the base, most of the fighting had stopped beyond distant pings and patters of gunfire or maser shot at stragglers. Takaaki Aso looked at his old friend, who was bruised from head to toe with one eye swollen shut from no doubt getting thrown around inside his cockpit like a pinball. Taizo Tachibana similarly observed his own oldest friend was managing to stand despite missing a very crucial part of anatomy to keep doing so.
The salute cast was one of both rank, relation, and relief.
But even amongst the swells of cheers starting to form once the troops, many quite young and yet still alive thanks to leadership like Pentecost and Tachibana, saw that their beloved Commander was still alive and had been fighting in his own way; Taizo didn’t smile and Takaaki soon noticed why.
A similarly battle-worn Stacker Pentecost, arm in a sling and yet still stubbornly holding a grenade launcher with his free hand, walked up between them as Taizo climbed off the ruined mech and Takaaki stepped away from the ruined headquarters. They’d seemingly won the battle, the drones either overwhelmed by numbers or degrading away with how much energy they’d expended. And there was one other, not so minor detail that was evident as the sun began to set and the sky rapidly began to darken in tandem.
“Where is the UFO?” Commander Aso grunted, eyed perched upon where the craft had been.
“It departed almost a half hour ago, heading almost exactly due west,” Pentecost growled as he glared off in the identical direction, “It followed the sun.”
“Nothing we had could shoot it down, there was a barrier shield,” Tachibana frowned, some degree of regret self-evident on that front, "We've managed to destroy most of the hostiles when they started burning themselves out."
That the Millennian ship had already left by the time he and Shinoda had their confrontation with the mouthpiece of the collective at the computer room was not lost on either man involved. Even if they blew it up right on the onset, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Its ploy was as much a stalling tactic as it was an attempt at acquisition and information.
Pentecost grumbled in frustration, “Comms are still a mess and we’re still cleaning up straggler hostiles, we can’t figure out where the UFO went.”
And yet, ironically however in trying to consume him and mentally break them both down, the Millennian had done something unintended. The man of science and man of might, both glimpsing forces beyond in some way. The two men who had so felt their ambitions and drives misplaced and crusades folly were given something instead.
Aso looked to his council and then turned around to face Shinoda, whom he found to already be looking due in the exact path the UFO must have taken. Chasing the setting sun, as the last beams of its light grazed Tokyo and rolled down the two men’s faces.
“We both know where it’s going,” Aso noted grimly.
Shinoda finished his sentence, looking into the dying horizon as darkness fell, “Kyoto.”
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NGL, I'm kinda glad the ground level action has mostly wrapped up. It wasn't bad by any stretch, but I do think it went on for too long. And, while the body horror angle is kinda cool, the Millennians lose a lot of their menace when they're operating in the open. This was a solid chapter however. It wraps things up and sets the stage for the finale nicely. We're headed back to where it all began.
Aso being a badass managing to fight back in spite of losing a foot. Ominous moment with the Millennians managing to obtain the hard drive. And now I'm seeing what you meant on them being a thematic extreme of Humanism with the Drone's monologue. Great chapter.
While I like the Millennian's big speech, I do think it's a bit strange that Aso and Shinoda were just willing to listen to it as its hooked up to the data streams. But it is nice to see Aso's back, woot. He's got them nanomachine drugs.
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Yeah it's kind of just one of those things I guess suspension of disbelief had to be in play. In an earlier draft it was talking while attacking them, but I felt that that just messed with the tone so I trimmed down the dialogue as much as I could and just accepted it would kind of always come off a little odd. I guess you could suppose this was their one chance to actually hear what it had to say and any information on the enemy is good.
Aso, removing blood from his system by removing a foot just means he has proportionally more raw anger and nanomachines pumping through his veins.
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Yeah, from a storytelling point of view, it's fine and necessary. It's like the transforming is a free action type thing
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It's just in, old man literally too angry to die!
That thematic element I want something I wanted very much to do as sort of a horror show in the mirror moment, classic dark reflection idea. Sometimes seemingly enlightened morality can be dictated entirely by might makes right, even if we don't think it is.
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Yeah, I would say this is something of equivalency to a lot of the military versus Godzilla sequences from the films he is the antagonist in. You kind of already know how it's going to end with very few exceptions, but it is usually best used as a set piece to something else happening.
The human characters will certainly be involved in the climax, but mass battles like this are pretty much out of the system now outside of maybe brief instances.
What a wild ride these recent chapters have been. A little surprised one of the drones didn't take the form of vagnosaurus, but that may end up changing soon.
Ooooh Boy! Tem wanted his answer on Aso and now he gets it! XD
But a good continuation on how Aso got where he was from the end of the last chapter. Not to mention, blow have him and Yuji have a badass moment while throwing a grenade at the drone.
Aso is a badass. Same for Taizo. Honestly Japan is in good hands with them. So fearing the past should fade with time. They are not those people. They are better. It was really good to see them fight against these creatures using that fear and win against them. Fantastic chapter.
We begin with Millennian recounting its attempt to hack the system.
We also learn more of how one attacked Aso and how he lost his leg. Despite losing his leg, he still managed to defend himself...and realize that at least one of his soldiers has been devoured and sees it become him. His salvation comes from the Gojira claw, which like the G-Cells on the drone earlier causes it to become a mass of tumors. Aso realizes this and uses the claw to mortally wound it and is the one that jumped out the window.
Do like the determination we see from Aso here. I also like his realization that the operation against Junior was a huge mistake.
I also love he still intends to fight despite his injuries. Also like 023's scene and showing even a stoic Mysterian can have rage and frustration. Also like Katagiri's role and that realization these things were here the entire time.
As well as Katagiri realizing they might be after something else, and I also like that 023 is angry with him, he has a right to be.
Millennian finally gets its tentacles on the hard drive, information the Aso clone Yuji and Aso are facing is taking advantage of. In particular, Godzilla. And it's able to alter itself to avoid dying from the claw.
We also learn that the drones need pieces of a brain to copy memories...but can still copy others a Shapeshifter Guilt Trip.
While Millennian is manipulative enough we can question how much of this means, but the amount of arrogance it has likely is correct. It's already written humanity off as extinct and its genocide is merely speeding up the inevitable.
It essentually making an offer: humanity dies, but it can destroy Godzilla before hand and preserve their 'memories'.
This scene is terrifying and creepy, especially the showing of faces and arms.
Aso sees through it through a combination of guilt and logic...and realizes that they still need him for help defeating Godzilla.
I love Aso's line. "You'll learn."
Fortunately, explosives are still very effective on these things.
I also like the image of Aso, with one leg, still managing to be awesome and now having a flamethrower.
Fortunately, GUNHEAD did its job and Tachibana survived despite the heavy damage. G-Force managed to survive at least, as Millennian still has the weakness of burning out and that was how they won, but the Millennian UFO moved away.
I like the observation they may have made a huge mistake by giving Aso and Shinoda resolve.
Good chapter, love the confrontation with the fake Aso. Very well done.