Amidst the chaos and monumental events unfolding across the city, beyond its borders in an unremarkable yet heavily secured secret military facility, a group of scientists stood outside a sterile room, their faces etched with somber determination. Inside, a dark-skinned young man lay restrained on an operating table, his veins pierced by numerous tubes that drained his blood while infusing it with a mysterious substance.
"Another failure... we're going to lose funding if we don't see results soon, and we're running out of material for the experiment!" one of the scientists muttered, his voice tinged with frustration as he turned to his colleagues.
"Dispose of it like the others, you all know the procedure!" With a resigned sigh, he walked past the group, leaving them with grim expressions that grew even darker.
The door slammed shut behind him, and the remaining scientists began their task, methodically donning protective gear before entering the room. The young man lay motionless, his bloodshot eyes frozen open in an expression of agony, while the veins coursing through his body throbbed and pulsed with the final heartbeats driving the strange liquid through his system.
CLANG!
The metal straps holding his wrists and feet in place retracted, and the young man fell to the ground in a way that would be rough for anyone alive, but the young man had already shuffled off his mortal coil.
Two scientists grabbed him from either side by each arm and began dragging him to a wall where there appeared to be some kind of garbage chute.
The third scientist opened the metal chute, and the two holding the young man grunted as they forced the dead young man through, and he disappeared into the darkness below.
"So, beer anyone?"
The three seemed to cheer up at the thought of beer and immediately left the lab.
In the garbage chute, the young man continued to fall until the moment they left the lab and landed with the wet crunch of broken bones and obliterated organs amid a mound of other long-dead corpses.
Hours passed, and suddenly the young man's left index finger twitched, and the blood and organs that leaked from his cracked and torn flesh suddenly began to surge back towards his body, all the while changing in coloration and form, becoming something akin to water but darker.
A few minutes passed, and his altered organs and blood filed back into his body like loyal soldiers, the flesh sealing closed as the last droplets entered, and the dark-skinned young man's chest and abdomen shot up as he took a single long and drawn-out inhale.
SQELCH!
The rotten and somewhat purple corpse under him erupted like a watermelon at a Gallagher show, but immeasurably more disgusting.
"AAAHHHH!" The young man screamed as he saw the mound of corpses sprawled along the ground and pressed himself as close to the wall as possible, looking to gain as much distance as possible.
"W... What the fuck!" He nearly threw up in his mouth, but managed to hold it in with sheer will when suddenly, flashes of memory began to sweep through his mind like a hurricane over a coastal city.
"Rain... I am Rain!"
Rain fell forward onto his hands and knees, but as he did so, the impact caused his body to suddenly erupt into a wave of water that began to fill the entire chamber.
Rain began feeling immeasurably uncomfortable as he could feel everything his water touched and, in his revulsion, shot upward towards the hole in which he was originally tossed.
His water body hugged the walls of the hole in a spiral to grip against all sides of the wall at once and prevent falling, and after climbing for thirty feet, he could hear the faint sound of music being played and the sharp clinking of cold brews.
Hearing this, Rain began to increase the pace of his ascent and could eventually make out individual voices that he knew all too well.
These people made sure to inflict as much pain as possible on him as he was strapped to that table, and remembering this pain, Rain's water body took on an angry, dark shade before shooting the rest of the way up the hole and slamming against the door at the top.
BANG!
"What the..." The three scientists jumped as they heard the sudden metallic banging, but were unable to locate the source of the noise.
"You heard that too, right?" One scientist said as the hairs on his neck seemed to be standing up.
BANG!
They stood up with a start and turned towards the garbage chute to see the metal door shaking on its hinges and what they could only assume to be water seeping from the cracks.
Confused, the braver of the three scientists approached with caution and slowly reached for the handle of the door, just when he was about to touch it.
BANG... CRASH!
The door shot off its hinges and smashed into the young scientist's body with such force that it carried him halfway across the room before smashing him into the ground.
Hearing this caused the others to shoot up from their seated positions and run to their associate, but when they arrived, they noticed the steadily increasing pool of blood forming under the metal and began to panic.
It was then that the water hugging the walls of the garbage chute began to pour out from the now-open door and fell onto the floor of the once sterile lab.
Drip!
Drip!
The sound of water splashing onto the floor drew the attention of the two remaining scientists, who turned to see an eerie, fluid mass shaping itself into the form of a familiar young man.
Without warning, Rain extended a liquid hand that stretched unnaturally, and before the closer of the two scientists could react or defend himself, the watery appendage gripped his throat tightly and yanked him toward the garbage chute. The man's scream emerged just as he began falling, his voice fading into the abyss.
"AAHHHHhhhhh.....!" His cries diminished until they vanished completely.
The last scientist, trembling with terror, lunged for the door handle, his fingers fumbling in desperation. But as he grasped it, a liquid tendril coiled around his arm and tightened mercilessly, twisting with crushing force.
"AAHHH... NOOOO!" he howled, fighting against the relentless pull. His struggle was short-lived, however, as the water's grip intensified, and a sickening pop confirmed that his arm was wrenched from its socket.
CRACK!
CRUNCH!
The man was lifted off his feet, and suddenly his arm was ripped off at the shoulder, sending a shower of the man's blood shooting outward and painting the once white walls with crimson.
PTSSSS!
Rain's liquid tendrils writhed and coiled, lifting his victim into the air and manipulating him like a puppet. The man's body twisted and contorted unnaturally, every motion calculated to prolong his suffering and keep him teetering on the edge of life. Rain's merciless game continued until the man's pleas for mercy finally fell silent, and with a chilling finality, the tendrils coiled tightly around his neck, squeezing the life from him.
CRACK!
The scientist's eyes lost what life they had, and his body twitched violently as his neck was snapped violently.
SMASH!
Rain hurled the man's body into a computer monitor, sending sparks and shards of glass flying as he stepped out of the lab, taking his first strides toward freedom. Silent alarms activated as he exited, and cameras tracked his every move, capturing him slaughtering guards and slipping through the narrow gaps between blast doors.
As Rain pushed open the final door, he was suddenly blinded by intense sunlight, stepping into a wooded area where towering trees formed a dense canopy, completely concealing the facility from aerial observation. Wasting no time, he sprinted across the base and into the forest, grateful that all the guards were confined indoors. He shuddered at the thought of navigating such an exposed area under hostile eyes.
In the heart of the recovering city, the relentless hum of machinery echoed as construction crews worked around the clock to rebuild what had been torn apart by the lion-like alien's rampage. Tower cranes loomed like sentinels over cracked pavement and shattered glass, while sparks flew from welders patching up what remained of the skyline.
Inside the GDA medical wing, the atmosphere was lighter, but only just. Bandaged and bruised heroes lounged across hospital beds and wheelchairs, trading half-hearted jokes between winces and groans.
Atom Eve reclined in her bed, her pink hair matted with sweat, a sling cradling her broken arm. She grinned at a joke Rex mumbled, but her smile faltered when she shifted too fast, fractured ribs flaring with pain. A dull headache throbbed behind her eyes, the concussion still lingering like a storm cloud.
Rex himself was almost mummified in bandages and plaster, his entire body cocooned in a full-body cast. Every chuckle forced a grimace."Don't make me laugh," he groaned, voice hoarse. "Hurts more than that time Kate kicked me in the balls!"
Across from him, Kate sat quietly on a bench by the window. Her body was unharmed, but her eyes told a different story, vacant, distant. She had lost hundreds of her duplicates during the battle, and with each clone's death came a flash of pain, fear, or rage. Now, she stared out at the horizon, silently working through the mental fallout of dying again and again.
Near the center of the room, nurses moved carefully around War Woman. Her torso was wrapped tightly in bloodstained gauze, and her face remained unreadable as they cleaned the gashes across her shoulders. She didn't flinch, didn't blink, except when the nurse unwrapped the stump where her arm had been. Then, for just a second, her jaw tightened.
Beside her, Glory lay unconscious, hooked to monitors that beeped softly. She'd been sedated after several of her bones threatened to pierce vital organs. Her usually radiant face was bruised and swollen, her armor in a heap on the floor, shattered and bloodied.
In his office, Cecil carefully examined the surveillance footage of the containment area where the Kaiju, code-named Hail Mary, had been secured. His eyes narrowed as he watched a man in a green three-piece suit seemingly materialize out of thin air into the previously impenetrable room.
"If this individual can teleport," Cecil muttered, his voice low and tight, "then no location can ever truly be secure."
He leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking beneath him as the ambient hum of the GDA surveillance center buzzed quietly in the background. His tired eyes scanned the wall of monitors, each displaying various data feeds, threat assessments, and security cam loops. Red flags blinked like sirens across several panels, mocking him with their urgency.
"We must devise a countermeasure against this spatial manipulation," he continued, rubbing his temple with two fingers, "or we risk losing control of our assets entirely. Again."
His words were dry, but the venom behind them was unmistakable. The sting of humiliation wasn't lost on him. They had poured millions, no, billions, of taxpayer dollars into developing, augmenting, and securing that creature. Cutting-edge biotechnology. Reinforced containment. Psychometric failsafes. All of it gone. Vanished in a flash. As if their efforts meant nothing.
Cecil's jaw clenched. He could already hear the congressional committees breathing down his neck. They'd want answers. Results. A scapegoat.
Then, a sudden chill swept through the room like an invisible gust, sharp and unnatural. The hairs on Cecil's arms rose beneath his sleeves, and with it came that familiar, sickly-sweet stench.
Sulfur.
Cecil didn't even look up.
"Damien," he said tightly, "how many times have I told you not to appear behind me like that?"
A flicker of shadow passed over the lights. Then, in a low swirl of dark red mist, Damien Darkblood manifested behind the desk, stoic, trench coat fluttering as if caught in some wind only he could feel. His red, leathered skin glistened faintly in the artificial light, and the subtle glow of his inhuman eyes burned with restrained amusement.
He said nothing.
Instead, he casually dropped a manila folder onto Cecil's desk with a deliberate thud. Black ink stained the edges. The smell of scorched paper clung to it.
"Always with the dramatics," Cecil muttered.
Damien arched one brow, a jagged smirk curling across his face like a blade.
Then, whoosh, he vanished again, leaving behind only a lingering puff of sulfur and a faint, hellish echo of laughter. The vents overhead immediately kicked into high gear, whirring as they filtered the tainted air and pumped in a fresh, sterile breeze. The GDA's environmental systems, at least, hadn't failed him today.
Cecil nearly gagged anyway.
"Goddamned demon," he growled, waving a hand through the smoke as if it would make a difference.
He turned to the folder. The paper still radiated faint heat, as if plucked straight from the bowels of Hell itself. Grimacing, he cracked it open, his eyes scanning the pages with military precision.
The more he read, the deeper his scowl etched into his face.