"So... we both time-traveled?" At the Shibuya Scramble Crossing, Naruto Taichi stared at the live news broadcast on the giant screen and asked the person on his phone with disbelief.
"I can't guarantee anything about you, but I definitely traveled through time," Yuichi Nakamura's voice came through the phone's speaker. "Forget that, hurry and merge with me! If we don't fight soon, that monster is going to go on a rampage!"
On the TV screen, the live news was showing a giant monster that had just crawled ashore from the ocean and was currently ravaging Chiba Prefecture.
As a fan who's only ever watched from afar, Naruto Taichi couldn't remember the monster's name, but he at least remembered that this thing made its debut in Ultraman Tiga. The stuff it spit out was radioactive...
Holy crap, Chiba is done for!
Judging by the reactions of the crowd around him, monsters must be a relatively new phenomenon on Earth, so their expressions were more bewildered than panicked. Some people even suspected it was another prank by a TV station—Japanese TV stations are always doing stuff like that.
"I really am a time traveler, too," Naruto Taichi explained, feeling a little dejected. "My world is almost in 2024, and Ultraman and monsters are just characters in TV shows. I believe in the light, but I don't really believe in the light of this country's rulers... Oh, right, I was a Zhonghua person before I came here."
"This is not the time to be talking about that!" Ultraman X urged impatiently.
"Why me?" Naruto Taichi asked, still uncertain. "I'm just a guy who can't even... oh, okay, the person I've transmigrated into is pretty strong, but I have no combat experience myself."
"Don't worry! I'll teach you during the fight!" Ultraman X replied. "And I'll bear all the damage from the monster, so you don't have to worry about getting hurt."
"Alright, if an Ultraman warrior like you says so." Taichi quickened his pace. "I'll find a place with no people or cameras to transform."
"By the way, I don't remember the monster's name, but I do remember its attacks are radioactive. Can you neutralize the radiation in the affected areas?"
"...I don't have that ability. I can only guarantee that you, after we merge, won't be harmed by the radiation." Ultraman X's voice sounded a little disheartened.
"Well, that's enough. It's not like Japan lacks radioactivity anyway. The only difference between this monster and the local situation is active versus passive absorption. I'm sure the locals have already come to terms with it."
Arriving at a corner, Taichi looked left and right, making sure no one was around and there were no security cameras. Only then did he follow Ultraman X's instructions to transform.
He pressed 1-2-3 on his phone, then hit the call button.
"ULTRAMAN X—!"
As the trendy data-stream Ultraman, X could instantly teleport from Shibuya, Tokyo, to the monster's location in Chiba Prefecture via data cables. Thankfully, there was a signal there, or he would have had to make his way to the monster's location himself.
"Oh—oh—! I'm flying! I'm flying!" It was his first time actually experiencing flying high above the ground as Ultraman, and Taichi was more than a little overexcited.
"X, pull up the skill list!" Taichi urged. "I'm not going to fight it up close; I'll just use skills from here to kite it! It smells so fishy!"
"...Fine. You're untrained, and your reflexes aren't good enough, so close-range combat could be fatal. But you have to pay attention to our energy; don't use it all up at once!" X was at a loss for words with his human host. "Now, follow my instructions!"
"Xanadium Slicer!"
A blue, arrow-shaped light shot from Ultraman X's right hand.
As for the target... it was, of course, the monster's tentacles!
What kind of Ultraman warrior would you be if you didn't attack the horns or tentacles?
A wretched cry rang out from the monster's mouth. Then, its tentacles began to glow. Without being told, Taichi instinctively piloted Ultraman X to fly in an erratic pattern in the sky. At the same time, he kept firing light arrows from his right hand.
His goal was to annoy the monster to death, even if the attacks weren't instantly fatal. The poor monster's power-up had barely begun before it was interrupted. The light arrows didn't do much damage, but they hurt!
Seeing this so-called warrior of light hovering a safe distance away, the monster lost its temper. After all, it was a water monster that couldn't fly, and its only ranged attacks were constantly being interrupted. Fed up, it turned around with a cry, ready to retreat to the sea it came from. It looked like a pitiful child who had been beaten up and was running home to its mother. Who knows if this child even had a mother at the bottom of the sea.
X almost wanted to frown. His human host was a little too unconventional. But, unconventional or not, at least he was fighting the monster.
Then, something that shocked him happened.
Seeing the monster running toward the sea with its back turned, Taichi deliberately spaced out his next few light arrows, then quickly descended to the ground to hit the monster with a finishing move from behind. The monster sensed something was wrong and turned around in confusion to see why the attacks had suddenly stopped, only to be hit in the face by Taichi's Xanadium Beam.
Hit in the face by a beam?
MMP—! (a common Chinese online curse, similar to "WTF")
Did you hear that! MMP—!
The deep-sea monster, Leiluce, had tears of betrayal in its eyes. Then, with an explosion, Leiluce was turned into a Spark Doll by Ultraman X's Xanadium Beam.
Taichi, piloting Ultraman X, grabbed the monster's Spark Doll and used the data line to return to Shibuya, leaving behind a Chiba that had been utterly ravaged by the monster.
"What was that?!"
"Ultraman! It must be Ultraman!"
"But... why does this Ultraman look so garish?"
Due to some reason, the Ultraman series in this world had been completely halted after Ultraman Leo. So, the desperate people who had just witnessed the monster's attack finally saw a ray of light. Although this light didn't seem to be all that heroic and righteous.
At a high-end shelter in Chiba, Yukino Yukinoshita was staring blankly at a screen showing footage from a drone, lost in thought. She didn't snap out of it until she was wrapped in a familiar embrace.
"I've talked to Mom. She's agreed to let you move to Tokyo, but you'll have to transfer to the new school Miss Hiratsuka is going to," her sister said. In reality, they had no choice but to go to Tokyo now. Due to the widespread radioactivity, Chiba City was temporarily uninhabitable. And the Disaster Countermeasures Department had not yet provided a solution. For at least the next few years, Chiba City would be a ghost town.
Tucked into her sister's arms, Yukino, whose rebellious spirit had been all but consumed on the day the monster appeared, simply nodded in response.