The possessed Rui Kisaragi, under the control of a Monera alien, made no attempt to dodge.
At the moment Yu Zhou's kick came crashing down, a blue energy wave burst out from her body, surging outward in all directions.
However, a flash of red light erupted across Yu Zhou's body. His powerful flying kick tore straight through the Monera alien's blue wave as if it didn't exist, striking its host directly.
Power Form!
If the purple light represented agility, then the red light corresponded to brute strength — a power type.
Not only did it drastically enhance his strength, but it also allowed him to ignore external control or impact during attacks — preventing him from being knocked away mid-strike.
The Monera alien's eyes widened in disbelief.
It couldn't comprehend what just happened.
Then, with a heavy impact, a blue orb of light was forcibly kicked out of Dr. Rui Kisaragi's body by Yu Zhou and sent flying into the air.
"What is that?!"
Seeing the change, everyone quickly raised their weapons, aiming at the ghostly blue orb floating in the air.
"Those who stand in the way of our extermination of humanity… must die!"
Mist poured out from the blue light, and soon its true form was revealed.
Its entire body resembled an oversized blue brain, roughly the size of a watermelon. Two scarlet eyes glowed on the front, and the outer layer was covered by a mesh-like shell — seemingly meant to protect the fragile brain within.
"Disgusting creature," muttered Mai, a member of the Super Victory Team, wrinkling her nose in disgust.
As expected, girls like Mai were especially repulsed by grotesque, slimy things like this.
Whoosh!
The Monera alien's true form now exposed, Yu Zhou looked up at it and fired a blade of light from his hand.
However, the Monera alien, now free of its host, seemed to have grown stronger. A short black tentacle emerged from nowhere and blocked Yu Zhou's light attack.
The eerie blue mist split into two portions — one large and one small.
The larger one blasted upward, tearing through two layers of ceiling before shooting toward the sky.
The smaller one darted into the enormous Prometheus-class battleship stationed inside the underground hangar.
"That thing's got a hard head," Yu Zhou muttered, glancing up at the two smashed ceilings above him.
They were underground — the basement level! To get out, it would have to smash through to the surface and then burst into the open air.
And yet, it did exactly that — head first.
Before anyone could process what just happened, the Prometheus battleship roared to life, shaking the entire base.
"What's happening?!"
Counsellor Gondou ran up to the control platform, frantically operating the console.
But the holographic display filled with red warning symbols — the ship's control authority had been completely overridden.
Gondou was so furious he wanted to smash the keyboard — only to realize the controls were holographic. His hand swiped through empty air.
"Looks like Prometheus has been completely taken over,"
Captain Hibiki said grimly, his tone reflecting the gravity of the situation.
If the Prometheus had truly been hijacked by the Monera alien, things were going to get very bad.
The ship was armed with the New Max Cannon — a weapon powerful enough to vaporize a kaiju in a single blast.
If the alien used it against humanity, entire cities could be reduced to rubble in minutes.
"Wait—!" Gondou suddenly slapped his forehead. "We can trigger the Prometheus's self-destruct system!"
"Self-destruct system?"
Yu Zhou raised an eyebrow. He hadn't expected such a mighty battleship to have something like that — or for a man like Gondou, who doted on the Prometheus like his own child, to even consider using it.
Gondou reached for the control lever — then froze.
"Where's… my control handle?!"
He stared in disbelief at the console, where smoke and sparks sputtered from a hole in the panel.
Then his eyes fell on the steel pipe that the man called Gai had tossed aside earlier.
Gondou clenched his teeth so hard his jaw trembled. He wanted nothing more than to strangle that man on the spot —
but reason held him back.
Because he knew… he wouldn't win.
Rumble…
The Prometheus battleship roared as it activated, breaking through the ceiling above. Concrete and debris crashed down as smoke filled the air.
When the team looked up through the crumbling remains of the underground factory, they could already see the blue sky above.
"Counsellor Gondou! Do we have any Victory Swallows (Victory Phoenix units) here?!"
Captain Hibiki remained calm despite the chaos, calling out to Gondou.
"We do," Gondou answered through gritted teeth.
Even though he was boiling with rage inside, his training as a strategist kicked in.
He knew that at this point, the only ones who could act were the Super Victory Team.
If they failed, the entire TPC arsenal would be annihilated by the Prometheus under alien control.
"Super Victory Team — move out!"
"Yes, sir!"
Following Captain Hibiki's order, the team members immediately set out to engage.
Yu Zhou brushed the dust off his shoulders, then leapt gracefully over the scattered debris, landing on the surface with catlike agility.
"Damn it," Gondou muttered, powerless to stop the man known as Gai from disappearing before his eyes.
He clenched his fists tightly.
If only humanity could wield such power…
That thought echoed in his mind.
All of Gondou's projects — from the R'lyeh Plan to the Prometheus Program — had been about one thing:
strengthening humanity.
To grant the TPC a power of its own — a power humanity could fully control — to resist alien invasions and expand into new frontiers.
"If only humans could possess the same power as Ultraman…"
As a senior member of the TPC, Gondou was well aware of classified information.
And ever since he had obtained the research data from Keigo Masaki, he understood one thing clearly:
Humans could become giants of light.
The only known requirements were two things —
a statue of an Ultraman, and
a device capable of converting a human into light.
As for the statue, Gondou had already transferred the fragments of two that were destroyed by monsters inside the pyramid to Mars for study and reconstruction.
Those fragments had originally been stolen from TPC by Dr. Danko and handed to Keigo Masaki.
But after Masaki's defeat and capture, they ended up in Gondou's hands.
There were two prototype models of the Photon Converter.
One required a person with light-based genetic traits to operate.
The other stripped the light-gene from another being, allowing an AI system to control and resurrect an Ultraman-like entity as a weapon.