Inside…
"Haaah… haaah…" Joy barely managed to stay on her feet…
She rolled to the side just in time, before the ground exploded in shards of concrete where she had been moments before. She crouched, claws tearing the air above her head, and finding an opening, countered with a right hook to the beast's face.
The impact thundered… but this time it didn't make her recoil. The Chimera didn't even flinch; it only let out a deep growl, expressing the pain it truly felt. Its jagged, shattered-glass-like eyes locked furiously on her.
Instead of withdrawing her fist embedded in its scales, she suggested, with civil sarcasm:
"I think we got off on the wrong foot… how about we calm down, think things over, and you come back next week, huh? How does that sound?"
At least the Chimera responded by opening its "mouth."
Joy jumped aside again to dodge the unbearable stench emanating from its throat and the countless teeth that made her skin crawl.
Yet she was surprised when that was enough to avoid danger. When she turned, she found the Chimera completely still. The lumps and deformities crawling beneath its skin had also stopped dead, as if they had reached a breaking point.
She almost regretted being the one—pale, one-armed—asking in a tone as tired as it was sarcastic: "You okay?"
The answer came with a massive crunch of bones. The creature arched, howling in agony as its gigantic body began compressing.
Knowing what was happening, Joy stopped joking and launched herself straight at its head; her fist pierced the iridescent membrane of its left eye, driving her arm up to the elbow, tearing out a stream of bright violet blood… a delayed vengeance for her lost arm.
The Chimera howled in pain and swatted her away, smashing her into the ground, but even that didn't interrupt its... evolution. Its wounded eye was ignored while its body continued shrinking, breaking and reassembling.
Its scales fell away, replaced by new, smaller, modular ones. The limbs retracted and reinforced, the joints rearranging into new positions. The formless mass folded in on itself, concentrating into a solid core of muscle and armor.
What had been a quadrupedal salamander the size of a basketball court rose onto its arched hind legs, back hunched, arms monstrously muscular and elongated.
The appendages that had covered it pressed beneath a denser mantle of black scales, making it appear even more armored. Its skull sat almost directly on its shoulders, with barely any neck separating it from the torso, while his enormous curved horns shone subtly, like those of a crowned predator.
The attack came so fast that Joy barely had time to force her mutations without Bellerophon's support, paying the price immediately; Her blue pupils flared with an unnatural glow, while the pressure in her "human" eyes burst microvessels, making her cry crimson tears.
That "suspended" instant allowed her to dodge the jaws… but not save half her ponytail, which was shredded.
Joy rose, ready for the next strike, but the beast didn't lunge immediately. Its jaw worked slowly, savoring the ripped strands, while letting out a wet, low sound of pleasure that made her skin crawl.
Then she looked up. The damaged eye had regenerated incompletely, now gray and opaque, seemingly withered forever. In contrast to the other—still vibrant and cruel—making it even more unsettling.
Especially when, as it swallowed, the eye flashed blue for another instant. It opened its jaws—not to roar, but to articulate, in a guttural, impossible voice:
"MoOorE…"
The sound came with a long, dark purple tongue, swinging like a pendulum over each exposed fang in an unnatural grin: a macabre parody of mockery that froze her blood.
Being the first time a Chimera had articulated words, it struck her like an omen.
Before her was no mere Alpha: it was reaching a new threshold of something different, something conscious.
Pressure squeezed her chest, a pang stabbed her heart.
Not from the thought of dying—she had long made peace with that inevitable fate for any hunter. She had even made preparations, especially after Renn's birth.
The fear came from the intrusive thought imagining the creature that could be born if it consumed her completely. It chained her for a moment, just long enough for her to react late, as the chimeric Goliath vanished, copying a fraction of her Bellerophon's speed.
"Shit!" Joy barely raised her arm instinctively as the creature reappeared behind her, whipping its shorter, yet faster and more crushing tail than ever.
Moments before her armor creaked and fractured with a sharp snap.
-
At the same time…
In a secluded corner where the civilians had taken cover, and the echoes of the battle slowly receded from them,
People, chained together while moving debris, looked up at a sudden, brutal roar.
A cloud of dust rose, and from it shot a white comet, scattering brilliant silver fragments, followed by the Chimera's new form: semi-bipedal, having propelled itself after her with a leap capable of shaking the remnants of the zoo.
The trance was broken by a shout:
"That's it!" one of them exclaimed as the last piece gave way, revealing a narrow passage before them.
Wide enough to escape that desolate sector, stained with blood and littered with corpses.
Although the civilians rushed through one by one, they first let the children pass, with explicit orders to run straight to the refuge.
On the other side, Renn stopped as the rest of the kids ran ahead.
Eyes red, he stared toward the ruined sector, where impacts resounded like explosions, desperately searching for his mother's silhouette amid the dust.
Not seeing her, he prepared to move forward… but before he could take the first step, a smaller hand gripped his arm like a shackle.
"Stop, Renn!"
The boy didn't relent; he tugged like a desperate dog. Alex had to grab him with her other hand and lean the opposite way to hold him back.
"If you go, you'll only put her in more danger! You're not a Hunter… and neither am I! Not yet!"
"I have to go… I can't leave her alone!"
Renn struggled with all the rage and fear that his few years allowed him, until Alex suddenly let go. The boy fell, dazed, and before he could get up, he received a sharp slap.
The echo of the strike hung in the air.
With glassy eyes, Renn looked up at his friend.
"What would you do if you find her?" Alex asked with the same eyes, almost pleading. "We have no way to help her!"
The question cut deeper than the blow. Renn's body trembled, his resistance broke… and the tears he had held back for so long finally spilled over, unstoppable.
Then a warm hand intertwined with his, wordless. Alex lifted him gently and pulled him along.
The gesture dragged him back to the present, to the only choice they had: run.
Together, they joined the rest of the survivors heading for the refuge.
But not even the tender warmth of that hand could hold him back when something crashed onto the pavement just a few meters away.
The group stopped dead, turning their heads in unison toward the freshly formed crater.
Inside lay Joy.
Her armor was already a broken metal skeleton; the few plates still standing were open, cracked, like prey about to burst. Gashes revealed the tangle of muscles and tendons beneath the bio-dermis.
Blood coated her face, even the whites of her eyes stained red. Her blue iris was dull; her elongated pupil frozen, as if unable to capture a trace of light.
Renn screamed her name desperately, and Alex held him with all her strength to keep him from launching himself at her.
Even in that state, Joy lifted her head. Her lips curved into a weary smile as she recognized her son's trembling voice, and with impossible effort… she rose to her feet.
Joy did not hesitate. She did not step back. And, like a sore loser, she only accepted the stakes.
She would not allow her death to become the catalyst that would let the monster charging at her, jaws wide, devouring the ground with each step, rise.
"Don't stop playing… okay?" she murmured, barely a breath, in the direction where she longed to see her son's face once more.
Without waiting for a response, she turned to the Chimera… and hurled herself into the gaping abyss of its mouth. Ready to drag it with her into mutual destruction.
When the creature clamped down on her, closing its jaws around her body…
Joy dug her feet into the creature's teeth, driving through flesh without care, while channeling her right fist with the intent to shatter the "sky."
In those armored knuckles, she concentrated everything left inside her: the spent strength of her muscles, the fury of a survivor who had lost everything to the Chimeras… and the infinite love for the son she left behind.
With a roar no longer human, Joy ignited in the blaze of her final effort. The Chimera's fangs tore through her back, crushing bone and flesh, while her silhouette disintegrated amid cracks and blood.
Yet… when her fist struck the jagged palate of the Chimera, aimed straight for its skull… the explosion on both opposite sides was instantaneous.
A torrent of crimson and bone fragments burst between the beast's jaws, and at the same time, from inside it own head—a grenade detonated.
Ripping through bone, appendages, and scales, propelling violet brains and blood across the fractured "sky."
The silence after the blast was unreal.
Only the sound of the Chimera's grotesque rain of blood hitting the fractured, broken ground could be heard.
Renn… froze in place, his throat tight as if swallowing glass, his eyes and head burning. Each heartbeat hammered in his ribs—not like a heart, but like a hammer trying to crush him from the inside.
He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think… He could only hear, again and again, the same snap—the one his mother's body had made before "disappearing" from his sight.
His legs suddenly gave out, and he fell to his knees. Alex wrapped him in her arms, burying his face in her shoulder as tears streamed unchecked.
The civilians, shattered, looked at each other, unsure what to do; run to the refuge, or mourn the hunter who had given her life for them?
The Chimera's body lay before them, inert—a colossal corpse with a dead eye, in a gesture of defeat. From its jaws, the blood of Joy and the monster itself dripped, staining the ground in a dark tide.
Some let out sobs, others clung together, seeking a moment of warmth and solace, even among strangers. The silence stretched, heavy and solemn.
At least, it seemed, it was all over.
Yet…
When a bit of that same crimson blood trickled down the Chimera's lifeless throat, driven purely by gravity… A shudder ran through its dead mass.
The monster's stomach throbbed like a twisted heart. And from the place where Joy's blood had flowed… it demanded… MoOorE.
A surge followed, forcing the corpse to swallow.
"No… it can't be…" Alex whispered, incredulous, clutching Renn desperately.
Before their eyes, bulges began to swell beneath the colossus's skin, like sickly bubbles. Seconds later, shards of flesh sprouted like tumors, closing impossible wounds.
The ground trembled.
And then Renn saw it: the dead eye of the Chimera glowed once more, a vivid blue, identical to his mother's, while its scales vibrated until they shone like the silver back of her Bellerophon.
"Run!" Alex squeezed his hand and pulled him along, forcing him to move, as the Chimera rose again.
The resulting roar emerged hollow, ragged, like the breath of a broken bellows. It lacked force, but made it all the more terrifying: with brains still scattered across the ground, it refused to die.
And now, without a hunter to interfere, it could finally give itself over to the biomass feast its mutations—and its mockery of death—demanded.
Chaos erupted once more. Animals and humans were devoured in seconds, turning the place into a hell again.
Amid that carnage, the creature had already made its choice: the two children of hunters, rich with genetic inheritance, were its true prey.
Feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, Renn reacted without thinking. He let go of Alex's hand and pushed her out of the trajectory of the open jaws propelling toward them, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.
Whether it was adrenaline or the fire in his eyes, he saw everything in slow motion, chaining his movements with precision. Renn pulled the console from its case in a blink as he leapt. He raised it before him, and when it struck the first protruding fangs…
'From the same place where Mom-'
He propelled himself with his arms at the exact moment the device shattered, barely escaping the bite.
But not from the rest of its body. The Chimera treated him like the child he was; it swept him aside with one of its colossal claws, like swatting an insect.
The impact slammed him into the ground with such violence that he felt his bones crack and the air ripped from his chest in a strangled scream.
Instead of the pain already flooding his mind and soul, all he perceived was the blood soaking his abdomen, face, and legs, where shards of bone jutted through torn flesh.
Approaching slowly, the Chimera savored the moment. Renn, vision clouded with red, barely caught the repugnant stench wafting from its open jaws, able to move only a finger in a futile attempt to escape.
The rest of the people fled in a stampede, but one young man—the first inspired by the deeds of the two children in moving the injured, the same one who had held Renn alongside Alex—paused.
He remembered the sacrifice made by his favorite hunter, a deed that left him unable to ignore her child.
With an almost unconscious gesture, he yanked a board from his backpack, painted with the Bellerophon of the Captain of the 01, and smashed it against the beast's thigh. The blow was useless—but enough to divert its attention.
"E-ehi! L-Lizard, does your face smell worse than your ass? Come on, LETS FIND OUT!" he shouted, trembling, regretting every word.
The Chimera spun around, furious as if it understood, and chased him through the bushes and shacks.
It succeeded in pulling him away from the children… until, like everyone else, his luck finally began to run out—but not completely.
Meanwhile, Alex dragged Renn with all her strength, each push leaving a trail of blood. The boy, barely conscious, gasped in broken breaths; every spasm of pain tore a thread of voice from him.
"Let me… re-fuge…" he pleaded in a whisper he could barely finish.
Through her sobs, she shook her long, tangled purple hair and shook her head.
"Remember what our parents always said?" she muttered to herself, her voice breaking.
"You never leave a fellow hunter behind: Never!"
Renn found no strength to answer. He could barely lift his trembling gaze to the face of his friend, who forced a "radiant" smile—trying to imitate Joy's—with tears sliding down swollen eyes and dried blood marking her childish face.
It was in that same instant, when Renn tried to return the smile to Alex, forcing it onto her torn face, that… she disappeared.
Replaced by a blur of silver scales rushing past his eyes.
Only the pressure of small hands still gripping his wrists remained, even after the rest of her body was swallowed by the beast.
The resulting inhuman sound—wet and dry at the same time—shattered what little remained of Renn's world.
Even though he screamed, only a strangled gasp escaped his throat, while his eyes and head burned as if melting from within.
The pain in his wounds multiplied. Where the Chimera had left spores embedded in his flesh, the burning spread, forcing its way through his broken body to reach the very core of his mutations.
His pupils tore in an unnatural spasm, pulling his horrifying surroundings closer to him.
Allowing him, in a grotesque way, to see with monstrous clarity the drops of Alex's blood—turned into an obscene feast—sliding down the creature's fangs, the beast savoring them, licking its lips.
Hatred and guilt boiled like venom in his already fevered mind.
'Why her? Why not me?' The question haunted him relentlessly, a litany driving him mad.
Especially because of those small, ownerless hands, still gripping his wrists, as if refusing to let go even from death.
Every amplified detail was a dagger plunging into what remained of his soul.
Then, all the burning, the grief for the absence of his mother—his anchor in the storm; Alex, both of them devoured before his eyes, and the hatred for the Chimera growing… which not only killed but desecrated… All converged to a single point in his brain.
Turning his iris a fiery violet… reminiscent of her beautiful hair… or their repulsive blood.
Slowing his perception of time, allowing him to see in traumatic slow motion as the Chimera swallowed once more… before tilting its head toward him, extending his agony in a final, cruel stretch.
Yet… when it was already too late, with nothing left to lose, and all Renn wanted was for the pain to end… a hum slammed into the Chimera's open jaws… prolonging its suffering.
Then another. And another. Until the swarm of metal struck and exploded like an endless tide, forcing the Chimera to recoil into the smoke.
Amid the roar of continuous explosions, a cold, precise voice cut through, organizing the drones that flooded into the interior of the Zoo through the broken domes of its roof.
["Vargas! Take personal control of the military units. I want the rest of your engineers on the limbs. Immobilize those claws."]
["Dr. Kwon, have the Biologists block its vision. Don't let it focus on us for even a second."]
["Dr. Sha, take control of the medical drones. You'll assist me in emergency surgery."]
The final order resonated like a sentence: ["The rest… buy me as much time as possible."]
Hundreds of voices, hundreds of different tones—nervous, furious, calm, excited—responded in a chorus of confirmation from the hundreds of people controlling thousands of drones:
["Affirmative."] — ["O-Okay."] — ["Yes, boss!"]
As they turned and descended, the lead medical drone announced: ["Athena, support them."]
Immediately, the drones under attack veered just in time, evading the creature.
Renn, barely conscious, recognized that voice: "Uncle… Oracle…"
From the other side, the second seat's voice replied, with a trace of impossible warmth:
["Hold on, chico… your birth cost me too many schemes to lose you now."]
Those words slipped through to Renn, who responded with a ragged whisper: "The Chimera… m-mom…"
Though they were close to the worst-case scenario—Joy's death had already been calculated as a possibility in his cold projections—the confirmation hurt, but it didn't delay their preparations to operate, nor the firm voice that answered:
["Lose. (I know.) Focus on not going too."]
What really gnawed at him now was the hemorrhage he saw through the lab monitors—flowing toofast, from wounds toodeep, in a body toosmall.
Without losing track of the "natural" mutation in her eyes, Oracle noticed her slitted pupils drift weakly toward tiny hands… still holding on. Before hearing Renn finish through weak tears:
"Alex…"
The bizarre realization struck instantly…
Although the hunter's daughter, who had been allowed into the sanctuary of his lab during Renn's medical visits, did not represent nearly the strategic loss as devastating as Joy… in a human, illogical way, it cut even deeper.
Causing Oracle's hands—and with them, the drone's mechanical arms—to falter for the briefest instant.
Breaking away from the absolute priority of preserving his life, only to slowly uncurl each finger of its clamps… releasing the boy from a grip so unyielding it had left red marks on his skin.
And all the comfort it could offer was a fractured whisper—["I'm sorry, chico… I'm so very sorry."]
When it was done, it released a gentle anesthetic, easing the pain that flooded his mind and soul, and drawing him into a light, merciful sleep.
Through the haze of dust and air, quivering with detonations and the roars of the Chimera, two medical drones—piloted by Dr. Shah—swooped down beside Renn.
They fired stakes that struck the ground with a dry crack, unfolding translucent panels from within. Panels that spread like frost across an invisible window until they fused seamlessly with the others, forming a sealed hexagon of reinforced bioplastic that walled the child away from the chaos outside.
Inside, the surgical drone drew its arms closer to the torn flesh with a metallic hum, while the two auxiliaries released jets of disinfectant that purged the air and filled the enclosure with an antiseptic mist.
Beyond, every strike of the Chimera shattered hundreds of drones, thinning little by little the swarms that orbited it like deranged planets.
A cluster of them harassed the blue iridescent film that veiled its zigzagging right eye, emptying whatever their reservoirs held—oil, disinfectant, corrosives. All the while, a black drone darted in at intervals, unleashing bursts of fire before slipping away again, stoking the beast's fury.
Other swarms tangled its claws, while the rest coalesced into a shifting cloud that opened and sealed deliberate gaps, crafted by Athena to steer the creature's movements without its notice.
Despite the chaos outside… ["Clamp… now."] Oracle's voice did not waver.
The mechanical arm cauterized the wound, releasing a sharp smell of seared flesh that mingled with the antiseptic haze… yet the bleeding didn't stop.
Renn barely breathed. The laboratory monitors, displaying his vital signs, spiked irregularly—screaming what words could not.
Before it was too late, the Oracle decided to risk it all on one desperate move. ["Dr. Sha, administer a Hydra stim."]
She turned the camera like a face frozen in disbelief. ["I'm sorry, did I hear that right? You want me to inject a kid with a compound authorized only for augmented subjects who've at least completed Level Three Hunter operations?
I'd heard you were reckless, but this isn't madness—it's murder! His body won't survive it!"]
["Do it! He'll die anyway!"] Oracle's voice carried no heat, no passion—only the frozen clarity of despair forged into steel.
["Either you do it…"] The pause stretched, heavy and merciless, the silence itself more dreadful than what was to come—["…or I will. And in that moment, I swear your scientific career ends: no lab will ever open its doors to you again, no journal will publish a single line of your work… and I will personally ensure your colleagues see you as a pariah."]
The threat twisted Dr. Shah's stomach; even so, the thought of being the one to kill a child—even at the edge—froze her in place, the syringe held rigid in her robotic hand
The second seat remained in frozen silence for a instant. And, before forcibly taking control of the drone, he chose a sudden change of strategy.
With a tone almost intimate, in stark contrast to before: "Trust me. This boy isn't normal. He is the genetic culmination of two hunters with the highest recorded malleability. If anyone can survive a Hydra Stim—without the operations—it's him."
Sha hesitated at the shift in strategy. But it was Renn's blood, his half-dead face slack against the stretcher, and the looming figure of the beast—emerging sharper through the thinning haze of drones—that drove her hand to inject the compound lethal to seventy percent of hunters.
As she did, the Oracle murmured, with cold sincerity: ["Or at least… I hope so."]
The words offered no comfort. But they no longer mattered to the doctor as she witnessed the beast's lightning-bright eye fixate on that tiny plastic refuge.
A shiver ran down her spine.
"Booosss…!!!" She stammered, stretching the syllables nervously as the Chimera leapt, tearing through and smashing the swarm of drones.
As the creature's shadow blocked the light and made the ground tremble, his "boss," eyes fixed on Renn's vital signs and glancing at the air traffic on the zone's screens, responded with a calm voice:
["It's fine. We've bought enough time… for the idiot."]
Said the only one capable of calling "idiot" to the furious roar crashing in front of them, standing between the feared Chimera and that fragile field operating capsule.
From the dust, the silhouette of the reddish metallic colossus asked:
"So… it was you?" His voice flat, yet unable to hide the fury eating at him.
Without waiting for a response, he extended his armored arms toward the six capsules that had landed behind him.
As they opened with an elegant metallic whistle, they revealed distinct weapons, waiting for their owner.
A massive black kanabō, heavy with sharpened fragments.
Two chakrams, one jagged, the other smooth.
A trident with prongs gleaming like obsidian blades.
A kukri curved like a fang.
And finally… a gigantic pulley bow, tense as if holding its breath.
One by one, the six arms lifted them, and his thirty-five fingers closed around his personal arsenal.
Giving mythological name to the Bellerophon of the First Seat and commander of all Hunters… Model: Asura.
"SO IT WAS YOU WHO ATE MY WIFE!" Chris roared again—this time holding back nothing. He unleashed a gale that swallowed the dust cloud around him, drawing it tight around his swinging kanabō like the eye of a storm.
It exploded in a deafening shockwave as it collided with the beast's colossal fist, splitting the pavement beneath their feet.
In that titanic pulse, where neither metal nor flesh gave way.
Chris recognized the power he face it… and how hard it must have been for her to fight alone and unarmed.
Seeing the violet brains scattered across the floor.
He felt the certainty that she had left it half-dead.
Fixing his gaze on that familiar blue gleam, buried beneath silver plates and deformities that grew like cancer.
He understood that the creature was about to surpass its own limits… using her genes.
And behind him, barely breathing.
Their child clung to life.
Without having finished... When…he and the others heard the impossible:
"sHeWaS-DeLiCiOuS…" The Chimera spoke as it licked its jaws.
Shock surged through the area like electricity. Even the Oracle froze, momentarily paralyzed.
Except Chris…That mockery was the final drop that broke the dam.
The First Seat no longer resisted the dangerous whisper of his Bellerophon, which promised only violence… exactly what he so desperately needed—and demanded.
Awakening the Asura.
The plates of his helmet split open like living tendons, deforming until they resembled a demonic face rather than a bio-metallic armor.
While the creature before him grew more conscious, Chris descended into the opposite: the primitive, the furious.
He unleashed all the accumulated sorrow, guilt, and pain in a roar so shattering it deafened the world. A bellow that no longer belonged to a man… and whose shockwave made the surrounding drones struggle to stay aloft, swaying in the air like leaves in a storm.
The field operating room trembled dangerously under the force of the discharge.
The inhuman noise unnerved and terrified everyone present… except the Oracle, who murmured with icy certainty while working, without even looking:
"That idiot… is becoming an Oni."
At the sound of that word, the drone operators—most of them atheists—couldn't help but pray to the universe. Hoping that this cursed day wouldn't claim the life of the First Seat of the Council as well.
As his roar subsided, the Asura's muscles bulged with the snap of living steel, multiplying its volume. The pulse shattered instantly, and the Kanabō not only deflected the Chimera's claw… it pulverized it into a rain of violet blood and silver scales.
They shot out like projectiles, crashing into and piercing the concrete walls of the zoo hundreds of meters away, possibly—given their speed—even leaving the city… or reaching the stratosphere.
Then Chris became a primal cyclone.
Every strike, every slash was an eruption of an unstoppable storm.
When the creature recoiled, trying to escape the whirlwind unleashed by his trident and kukri, the two chakrams launched.
The serrated and smooth blades twisted through the air before embedding themselves in its scaly ribs. As their motors spun, the edges whirled like circular saws, tearing through flesh and bone.
With his hands free, he loaded his bow.
As the string tightened, the weapon groaned—and upon release… it roared.
Turning the drill-tipped arrows into furious comets that pierced the scales with ease, and a second later activated—burrowing deep into the flesh before imploding from within.
Drawing pitiful screams of agony from the Chimera, as it realized the cruel twist:
It was no longer the predator, but the prey desperately fleeing the hunter stalking it.
With a leap, the Berserker Bellerophon raised the Kanabō with all four arms. His lenses glowed with crimson madness as he unleashed a single blow to crush its head.
But the beast, terrified, vanished.
Creating a brutal crater without its skull to stain it.
The echo of his wife's abilities only fueled the Asura's rage further.
Without thinking, guided only by his hatred, he spun his trident with monstrous skill in his multiple hands before hurling it toward an apparently empty spot. And there, a moment later, the Chimera reappeared… too late to react.
The spikes sank into its flesh as the head of the weapon began to spin with a metallic roar. The opposite end ignited like a thruster.
Strengthening the thrust and stabilizing the charge. Allowing the tips to keep spinning relentlessly, tearing true screams of terror from the creature.
At the same time, in the field operating room…
After the Stim-Hidra coursed through his leaky system for nearly a minute…
Renn's pulse monitor emitted an alarmingly erratic beep.
His heart, exhausted from blood loss, began to pound so fast it seemed ready to leap from his own chest. The little blood he had left splattered anew from his wounds, staining the translucent walls.
Sarcastically panicked… ["This is what I was talking about!"] muttered Sha, her jaw tight, as she injected a dose of lidocaine to try to stabilize his runaway heart.
For a moment, it seemed to correct… and then, suddenly, the line and the sound flattened as he stopped.
["Defibrillator, now!"] ordered the Oracle; the voice flat, yet tinged with near-panic.
Two drones swiveled toward the boy's body, deploying the electrodes.
But before the paddles could fire, Renn's body convulsed on its own.
One heartbeat.
Another.
Clinging to life, refusing to die.
Erratic at first; then following a firmer pattern.
Vital signs began to stabilize, one by one. The bleeding stopped. Tissue began closing at an unnatural speed, leaving a layer of skin lighter than the rest.
Dr. Sha blinked, ["No fucking way..."] incredulous. ["Is actually working!"]
["I told you, doctor…"] the Oracle replied, barely hiding the surprise in his voice that the experimental cocktail was truly effective.
It looked as if the boy had been struck by a meteor. The "crater" under his ribs branched across his torso, back, shoulders, and neck.
Then, without warning, the Oracle said: ["Take care of the rest."]
She raised the drone's lens, visibly nervous. ["W-wait… where are you going? What do I do if something happens?"]
The drone hesitated for barely a fraction of a second. Then, the Oracle's voice, lower and tenser than usual, responded:
["If something happens, do your job, doctor. I'll deal with that…"] There was a trace of genuine concern he couldn't quite conceal beneath his usual indifferent tone, as the Second Seat finished: ["…that grieving fool, before he loses himself inside his armor."]
Worrying her more than reassuring her, he ended with: ["Don't be afraid when he comes back."]
The drone's green lens flickered one last time before going dark, the machine dropping lifelessly to the floor.
["Perfect."] That left only Dr. Sha, who turned her attention—and her remaining drone—back toward the small boy… alive.
—
Not wanting to kill it yet—only prolong its suffering.
Chris gripped the thruster end of his trident with both hands and, driving his full weight into it, pushed deeper.
From the Chimera's innards, purple blood gushed in torrents. It roared between spasms, spewing the same ichor from its gaping jaws.
But Chris didn't stop. He braced the Bellerophon's legs and broke into a sprint. Like an Olympic pole vaulter, he used the trident itself as leverage and hoisted the creature's tonnage in an impossible arc.
With a savage roar, he slammed it into the pavement and began to drag it, gouging violet trenches as the iron sank deeper into its guts.
At last, both crashed into a concrete block solid enough to stop them.
Chris, panting with rage, roared into the fangs of the monster that had taken his wife, Alex… and perhaps...
His scream—amplified by the Asura—blurred the line of who the true beast was. The lenses flared like burning embers as he raised his kanabō.
Like a six-armed batter, he hammered at the trident.
Once.
Twice.
Three times… as many as it took until the black iron burst through the monster's back in a geyser of violet blood, pinning it against the concrete block like an insect mounted in a display case.
The Chimera fought back, claws and tail shredding Chris's armor, fracturing his bio-dermis. Yet he didn't even flinch as he kept swinging.
Desperate, the beast lunged again—only to be pinned mid-strike as a rain of black stakes pierced its limbs and tail, fired by the Hunters descending from the helicopters circling above the zoo.
In formation, they raised their rifle-mounted launchers and opened fire. More harpoons slammed into its limbs and tail, locking them down. Each projectile trailed a steel cable that tore free from the weapon with sparks, anchoring itself into the ground.
The hunters kept firing stakes until she was completely pinned down.
"What if we launch a couple at the boss?" one of them joked, shaking his still-smoking launcher.
The lieutenant didn't even smirk. "Negative. We wait until he finishes with the Chimera."
"It was a joke…" Muttered the first.
"Mine wasn't." His superior replied.
The creature, pierced through and ensnared by the cables, understood its fate. Immobilized, outnumbered, overpowered… it longed to vanish. Yet its mutations, still warping its body, responded.
Chris exhaled, vomiting dozens of liters of condensed CO₂ through the metallic graft fused to his mouth—white clouds erupting, wrapping him in the breath of a rabid beast.
He let every weapon fall except the kanabō. That he gripped with his thirty-five fingers, tightening every fiber of the Bellerophon.
He wasn't preparing to kill the Chimera. He meant to erase it from existence.
The very air seemed to hold its breath.
Then, something changed. From the creature's skull and spine sprouted strange appendages, like twisted droplets of water. At their tips crackled a… familiar… violet energy, vibrating as if searching for a frequency.
Chris raised the kanabō. The silhouette of the Asura, shrouded in vapor, seemed to wield the hammer of a vengeful god ready to purge the impure.
And when the purifying blow crashed into its snout, caving it in, the Chimera… ceased to be—exploding.
The air and the ground turned into a canvas of torn flesh. Tendons ripped free, entrails and dark purple blood sprayed in every direction, mingling with fragments of bone and silver scales that rained down like shrapnel.
At the same time, something else happened.
An invisible pulse burst from the epicenter, spreading outward like a silent wave.
Nothing was seen, but the hunters felt it: the reticles in their visors sparked, drones in the air jittered for a second out of control, and even nearby helicopters crackled with static through their speakers.
The next instant, the remains of the Chimera, scattered across the ground, began to change.
The flesh lost its color, fading to ash-gray. The blood thickened, blackening until it resembled crude oil. The silver scales softened, melting like wax. Bones, muscles, organs—everything collapsed, crumbling into a dark, shapeless sludge.
Silence pressed down, broken only by the static hum of systems struggling to reboot.
Then, a drone with a glowing green lens crackled to life over the shared channel:
["WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?!"]
["No idea, sir,"] came the reply of a second drone, its pilot a physicist still running diagnostics.
["Did anyone pick up an energy spike?"]
["Negative, sir,"] answered another, voice clipped—the biologist monitoring sensors never meant for anomalies like this. ["No known spectrum. Just… a disturbance across the electromagnetic range. Almost like a localized EMP, but incomplete."]
A heavy silence followed, thickened by the hiss of comms static and the erratic buzz of failing systems.
["At least... tell me you recorded it."] The Oracle's voice cut sharp with urgency.
["Yes, sir… but the data looks corrupted. Incomplete."]
The Oracle narrowed his eyes, mind racing on several tracks at once....
-
'Was that explosion the result of Chris's strike… or some kind of built-in self-destruction?'
—
'Those appendages, That violet glow… the same as his pupils. I can't shake the feeling it's all connected to that invisible pulse. Something we can only perceive by the traces it leaves in the other known forces… Like some kind of dark matter. Or maybe a new field of physics, beyond what science can currently explain.'
—
'And that sludge? That black mass on the ground is the same residue my failed experiments used to end in, when genetics suddenly lost all coherence.'
—
Questions tumbled over one another, each one opening more doubts than it resolved.
The Oracle was torn from this storm of thought by a shout, far too familiar for his liking, calling to him from the ground:
"Oi, Oracle! What do we do with the boss?"
The lieutenant turned toward the Asura, who had not stopped pounding the epicenter where the Chimera was dissolving, sinking deeper into the ground with each furious blow.
"Do we just let him keep going?" one of the hunters asked, stepping closer.
"Maybe he'll strike gold!" another exclaimed with genuine excitement, like a child enchanted by the idea.
The lieutenant tilted his head, considering the notion as if it weren't entirely absurd.
On the other end of the channel, the Oracle's scientists stayed silent. Yet the hunters still felt their disapproval bleed through the drones' lenses, as though those cold eyes pierced across the distance.
To the world, they were heroes—thanks especially to the propaganda crafted by the Microphone. But among those who truly knew what they were, their jokes amidst slaughter and tragedy… their inhumanity was unsettling.
The hunters were aware of it. And yet, they didn't care.
They were the best of Unit zero-1, and in a trade where death stalked every misstep, laughing at the absurd was the only way to keep "living" while they still breathed.
The Oracle, for his part, reduced them simply to: Hunters = idiots.
Descending toward the group with his machine, he added to himself: ["I only hope this isn't because of my operations."]
Several more hunters had gathered around Chris, forming a loose semicircle.
It was strange: though their leader seemed consumed by madness, none of them showed fear of a direct attack.
The Onis—the term for those who had surrendered completely to their armor, fusing with it in a failed process and losing their reason— Even once the process was complete, when no hunter could be salvaged, they rarely turned on their own. The fusion with the Bellerophon made them wild beasts… but beasts still capable of remembering their pack, their offspring, their loved ones.
["Stand ready. I'll make him follow me,"] the Oracle announced.
"And how exactly do you plan to pull that off?" asked the lieutenant, encased in his black Bellerophon, flanked by a fraction of Unit 01. Convinced that even if they all charged Chris at once, they might barely contain him… but never move him.
["Like this."] The green-lensed drone turned toward the Asura, and with a tone dripping with venom... congratulated him:
["Hey, Bastion! Happy now? The lesser chimeras are retreating. Congratulations—you saved millions of lives… at the cost of your wife, and a son scarred as deeply in his soul as in his flesh."]
The hammering stopped. Six arms hung suspended in the air, and the Asura's red lenses swiveled like blades, locking onto the green eye of the drone.
The hunter lieutenant beside it, caught between sarcasm and genuine awe, muttered as he took a step back: "Wow… you really are a genius."
The green drone rotated, ready to bask in its own vanity. ["Tha—"]
It never finished. The air split with a thunderclap as the Asura's armored fist shattered it in a red flash, reducing it to smoking fragments.
The lieutenant, unmoving in the violent tremor, lifted his gaze toward another drone hovering above, its lens shifting from yellow to green.
The Oracle's voice returned, calm as though nothing had happened:
["Head to these coordinates and prepare yourselves. I'll—"]
Another explosion. The second drone burst into scrap, obliterated by another furious strike.
A third drone, further out, slowly rotated and lit up its lens green. The Oracle's voice surfaced again, in the same almost bored tone:
["…be right along."] Then, turning back to his team: ["The rest of you—make yourselves useful. Treat the wounded, and take samples of everything."]
The machine pivoted and began to move away, continuing to hurl insults at Chris as it went.
The Asura roared and lunged after him.
When the drones were gone… and only the hunters remained, silence grew thick and heavy, as though the earth itself was holding its breath.
At last, freed from their jester's act, they revealed what they truly felt—something far more unsettling to those present than any of their crude jokes.
"Is it true that… aside from the Captain… we also lost Alexander's little girl?" one of them asked.
The lieutenant lowered his head just a fraction. "Yes."
No one laughed. No one joked. Each of them gripped their weapons until they creaked under the pressure. Their armor responded to their emotions, clinging tighter to their bodies, tensing until it no longer looked like armor but extensions of their own flesh.
The sensation they gave off together was more than uncomfortable. It was suffocating.
"Then I understand the Captain's state."
Not wanting to speak, yet forced to, the lieutenant answered again with a monosyllable. "Yes."
After a brief silence, he added: "I only hope Renn survives. Otherwise… we'll lose him too."
The air seemed to condense. No one contradicted him. Their reply came, unwilling yet unanimous.
"Yes…"
And with the next exhale, they vanished from the area, shaking the air as they went—specters fueled by contained fury, rushing toward the coordinates.
—
When they reached the coordinates, the atmosphere inside the field operating room was suffocating.
Although the Hydra Stim had sealed Renn's worst wounds, Doctor Sha was still extracting bone fragments, cauterizing torn tissue while dwelling on the long, agonizing road of recovery ahead. She even doubted the boy would ever walk again.
And yet, the Oracle's warning echoed in her mind: Don't be afraid…
But it was impossible.
Behind the green-lensed drone piloted by the Oracle advanced a deranged Bellerophon. Its reddish armor seemed to move on pure instinct, primal and impulsive, as if the machine itself were a beast unchained.
And it wasn't merely approaching—it was charging straight toward the operating room.
Sha stepped in front of Renn, a futile attempt at protection, raising the tiny robotic pincers of her drone like open arms as she screamed at the translucent barrier:
["St-stop, stop, stop, STOOOOOP!"]
The colossus did not stop. The Oracle's drone, however, did—halting just a few meters from the operating room before issuing a single, sharp command, right before being destroyed:
["Now!"]
Doctor Sha, unaware of their presence until that moment, flinched as a dozen hunters burst out from the ruins.
Harpoons whistled through the air. Most bounced off, but some fractured the plating—enough for a few to pierce the bio-dermis.
The Asura staggered for an instant.
That moment was all the hunters needed for their so-called "master plan": they swarmed him, managing to bring the giant down.
The lieutenant, pinned at the head, forced the monster's face just enough that the Asura's lenses turned toward the fragile operating room—stained with his son's blood.
The result was the exact opposite of what they wanted: the fusion between Chris and his armor intensified. A roar shook the entire zone.
"The OR is going to collapse!" Sha shouted.
Another drone, controlled by the Oracle, descended fast, its cauterizing laser carving between the armor plates and the bio-dermis. Chris writhed, resisting in agony.
Even with hunters clinging to him, he didn't strike back directly—he only hurled them off with brute violence.
"Oracle!" the lieutenant roared, losing control of the situation.
The strategist's voice came back, disturbingly calm:
["Enough. Stop acting like a child."]
["You hate me, don't you?"] Oracle added, watching the hunters wrestling desperately to pin the monster's arms before they tore the drone apart.
["If I were another sort of man, your unfiltered emotions would offend me… But I know how much you adore me, in truth."]
Chris thrashed harder, his "affection" expressed in every lethal attempt to break free.
"Is this getting us anywhere? Are you even helping?" the lieutenant spat.
["Don't you just long to kill me?"] Oracle replied. "Shame I'm only a drone."]
Finally, the cut was complete. Mechanical pincers tried to pry the section apart—but failed. The green lens turned toward the lieutenant.
["A hand?"]
The lieutenant seized the section and tore it free with brute force. Chris let out a guttural scream as strips of fused flesh were ripped away, exposing the right eye trapped beneath layers of muscle and chimeric tissue.
The drone's lens drew close to Chris's blackened eye.
["Your son will survive… now the question is: do you want us to turn him into a Little Girl?"]
Once again, Oracle's way of "helping" left the hunters simply marveling.
["Tell me, Chris… do you want me to build an AI with his childlike face, to sing you lullabies every time we throw you into the middle of a crisis? So we can sedate you and repeat the process until you finally die?
Do you want me to raise him? Just imagine what kind of dysfunctional adult he'd grow into."]
The image was so grotesque it cut through his madness. Chris had no choice but to finally answer with a human voice:
"Take it off. I won't move."
The serenity of that reply brought a smile to Oracle's lips… and a twisted relief to the hunters.
"You heard him," the lieutenant said with a sadistic edge, drawing his chainsaw-knife. "If it hurts too much to do this to your Commander-in-Chief, just remember training… and all those times he left us plastered into the wall."
Without hesitation—and with a measure of grim pleasure—the other hunters set to work, stabbing into the armor.
Their knives and buzzing saws ripped through the bio-dermis, tearing away plates and strips of flesh like butchers.
Chris endured every strike, every shred of skin wrenched from where it had fused to his armor. He never once looked away from the small operating room—as if chaining himself to the pain, forcing endurance through sheer will.
When it was finally over, sixty percent of his flesh was gone. He collapsed, broken—bringing the Battle of the Zoo to its end
-
At the same time…
Somewhere in the solar system.
A wandering fragment drifted silently through the gloom. Inside, its galleries were not entirely stone but a nauseating blend of rock and living flesh: walls that throbbed, soft floors that oozed moisture, ceilings lined with appendages like inverted droplets.
One by one, those appendages began to glow with a violet radiance, vibrating in a single guttural "chant."
The fleshy mass of the floor responded, swelling beneath them until it bulged into a nodule.
From that amalgam, a body emerged: first bone, tendon, and muscle twisting together in spasms, then torn skin, and finally silver scales sealing the monstrosity.
The Chimera's blue eye opened once more. Exactly as it had been in its final moments: jaws crushed, a gaping wound in its belly, scars still raw.
Upon regaining consciousness, the first thing it did was weep. A guttural cry—not of fury, but of pain. The organism that harbored it, the one that had "printed" it, responded by piercing the creature with veins and arteries, flooding it with more biomass to repair damage and feed its mutations.
The creature growled at the stabs, but exhausted, in a place dark and seemingly safe, it curled into a coil. The asteroid's flesh reacted, folding over it into a protective cocoon, where the metamorphosis preparing within its body could continue without interruption.
And then, on the surface of that refuge, a translucent layer tightened like a gigantic pupil, opening wide to the darkness beyond.
Through that membranous eye, other asteroid-bodies could be seen orbiting together. And among them, some were not mere rocks: they were more living asteroids, drifting alongside the same bio-capsules—the "wicked seeds" that had fallen upon Earth twenty-five years earlier.
-