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Outside the Ariake Coastal Base, First Unit.
Natsuki walked out of the building and looked up at the sky. The moon was bright. Stars were sparse. He was about to leave this planet.
Then he heard shouting behind him.
"Master Natsuki!"
"Wait!"
He turned around. His two idiot disciples , and behind them, Commander Isao Shinomiya and several of the captains he'd trained.
"That — "
"I..." Reno Ichikawa stepped forward, white hair catching the moonlight. He looked at his master , this man who seemed like a total flake right up until the moment it counted , and his throat moved. He wanted to say something.
But now that the moment was actually here, the words jammed somewhere between his chest and his mouth.
He was used to goodbyes. He'd lived through enough of them. But standing here, facing this one, he still couldn't hold it back.
"Whatever's in your heart , say it out loud."
"That's the only way it actually reaches someone."
Natsuki looked at the mess of emotions on his face, chuckled softly, and patted him on the shoulder.
Something sharp rushed up into Reno's sinuses.
He clenched his fist. Stopped hesitating. And shouted:
"Master Natsuki , thank you for everything you taught me!"
"The time was short, but I will never forget it. Not for the rest of my life."
"I always thought I was just going to be ordinary. Walk onto the battlefield ordinary, die ordinary. That was it. But you , you kept believing I could become someone I didn't even dare imagine. Every time I hit the floor in training, every time I thought I'd reached my limit , it was your words that got me back up. Over and over. You never stopped believing I could become a warrior who could stand on his own."
"Like a star. Shining with my own light."
"I've already done it."
Tears had been streaming down his face for a while now. His voice was full , too full , but he didn't try to hide it.
This whole stretch of time had felt like a dream. Every morning he'd open his eyes and pinch himself just to make sure it was real. He was genuinely, deeply grateful , that he'd gotten to meet someone like this. Someone who pushed him forward and meant it.
"Your growth came from you," Natsuki said, still smiling. "I just sped things up a little."
"You'll get even stronger from here."
Then he looked over at Kafka.
The man was already a mess. Tears running openly down his face, no attempt to stop them. Compared to Reno, this thirty-two-year-old had zero defenses left.
All of it was cycling through his head , the encouragement, the push forward, Natsuki putting his own name on the line to vouch for him so he could join the Defense Force he'd dreamed about his whole life.
"You're not exactly a kid anymore, in human years," Natsuki said, looking at him with a helpless sort of smile. "Work on that composure."
"Yes sir!"
"I , I'll do it!"
Kafka snapped to attention, spine straight as a rod, and threw a sharp salute. "Master Natsuki , thank you. For everything, this whole time. I will protect the peace of this planet. With my own strength. I swear it."
Natsuki nodded, satisfied.
"Then I'm leaving this planet in your hands."
"Both of you , don't slack off."
"If I come back and find out you've been coasting, I will run you through hell training all over again."
The moment he said it, Kafka and Reno's eyes both lit up at the same time.
They snapped out of it instantly, straightened up, and shouted: "Yes!"
After that.
Under the eyes of both of them, and the Defense Force members standing behind them, Natsuki turned and walked away.
He raised his right arm as he went. Blazing light erupted outward. The hem of his floral shirt snapped and whipped in the sudden wind.
A giant emerged from the light , red and silver, clean lines, impossible scale. It leaped once, effortlessly, and shot into the night sky.
A shooting star, burning across the dark.
"He's gone," someone said.
"Unbelievable." Captain Ogata stroked his thick beard, eyes still on the sky.
Beside him, Captain Igarashi nodded without thinking about it. "Truly... something so powerful it breaks every frame of reference we have."
Captain Narumi , who, for once, had not pulled out his game console , kept his gaze fixed upward. "Powerful," he said quietly. "And completely full of justice."
Commander Shinomiya raised his hand in a salute toward the place in the night sky where the Ultraman had vanished.
"Humanity... thanks you for coming."
"This encounter — this miracle — will be passed down through human history. Forever."
...
Another world.
America. San Francisco.
"Ha. Ten whole bucks."
"Today is absolutely my lucky day."
A man in ragged clothes , a worn, heavy coat that had seen better decades , shuffled down an empty, desolate street with a liquor bottle dangling from one hand. His brown hair was long and matted. His face was buried in stubble. He was grinning.
Green bottle in the left hand. The ten dollars he'd just won gambling went into his pants pocket with the right.
The sky was thick with overcast and industrial haze, cutting off most of the sunlight. The street looked cold and dead in what was left. A billboard someone had abandoned on the roadside still had a dinosaur-like shape painted across it.
When he made it to the slums, he passed a wall layered with old advertisements and newer graffiti. The kind teenagers leave.
On one side of the wall: a monster, half-lizard, half-dinosaur, mouth open like it was spewing something. On the other side: a creature with long, spindly limbs and a flat body, caught mid-frame, about to take whatever the big one was throwing at it.
"Not bad."
"But this thing..." The drunk man stopped. Stared at the wall. A cold smile crossed his face. It wasn't the graffiti he found disgusting. It was what the graffiti meant.
"This world was never humanity's to begin with."
"In the end, the Titans will wipe it clean. They're the real owners of this planet."
He watched for another moment, then looked away and kept walking toward his shack.
A little further on.
At the edge of the slums, tucked into a corner, stood a wooden shack that let the wind in from every direction. The planks were rotting. This was his home.
"God, I love this piece of shit house."
"Bed. Roof. Basically perfect."
"If it didn't have all these drafts, I'd sell it for a million bucks easy!"
He rambled on, riding the liquor, not caring who heard.
Then.
BOOM.
Something dropped out of the sky and hit his beloved little shack dead-on. The wooden frame gave instantly. The whole structure came down in a crash and a cloud of dust.
When it cleared, the man was still standing in front of the rubble. Staring.
"F, !!"
"Which son of a bitch just knocked down my house!!"
➤ Next: The Dropped-from-the-Sky Male Lead
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