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"You actually pointed your guns at an innocent old man."
"I'm so heartbroken."
Natsuki glanced at the bullet marks on the ground, his expression pure disappointment.
The first shot hadn't worked as a warning. The guard pulled the trigger again, this time aiming for center mass.
At seven steps, a gun is fast. No question.
But when the bullets hit the man in the floral shirt, the expected spray of blood never came. Instead, that comfortable-looking, breezy floral shirt just gained two new holes.
Two bullets clattered to the floor.
The old Ultraman stared at his ruined shirt. His pupils trembled.
"Shit..." The guard who'd fired stood there, mouth agape.
This guy wasn't a lunatic. So what the hell was he?
How do you not die from bullets?
"This is—" The guard yanked out his walkie-talkie, ready to report up the chain. The other guards raised their weapons and fanned out, shifting positions to cover Natsuki's head from every angle.
Half a second before he could key the radio, it flew out of his hand.
Everything happened too fast to follow. One moment the guard was standing. The next, a massive fist filled his entire field of vision. Then: nothing.
All six guards went airborne. They came down in clean parabolic arcs.
They hit the ground and stayed there, mouths slack, eyes shut, groaning faintly before their heads lolled sideways and they went still.
"You call this infiltration?" Jared jogged over and stared at the unconscious bodies, genuinely stunned.
These were fully armed soldiers. Standard rounds couldn't even punch through their body armor. And this guy was dropping them one punch at a time?
"How is it not?"
"Nobody's discovered us," Natsuki said, perfectly reasonable.
Jared: "...Fine."
The alien's logic was airtight.
And this guy had a lot of abilities. A lot.
Water gun. Purification. Bulletproof body. X-ray vision. Were all aliens this absurd?
"Let's go. Back to our infiltration." Natsuki turned and headed for the subway entrance without waiting.
Jared stood frozen for two seconds.
Then shook his head. "This is genuinely unhinged..."
But getting inside was what mattered. They were in.
He was also quietly curious: how would a bulletproof alien handle what was waiting for them down there?
...
Underground.
Whatever this place had once been, it bore no resemblance to a subway station anymore. Steel pipes ran in every direction. Rows of nuclear reactors lined the walls, connected by a web of cables that all fed into one massive object at the center. Precision instruments crowded the periphery. Figures in heavy hazmat suits moved between stations, busy at their work.
At the center of it all sat a Kaiju egg.
It was enormous. Its surface was black as volcanic rock, curved into a crescent shape. The overhead lights flickered, their rhythm syncing with the pulse of light emanating from the egg itself, like a heartbeat. Eerie. Oppressive.
This was their target.
"God... it really is a MUTO."
Jared pressed himself into a concealed corner, gas mask pulled from one of the guards now strapped over his face. He stared at the egg, easily a hundred meters across, and his eyes were full of apprehension.
"They're feeding it with nuclear energy. Look at the size of it... they've been generous."
"Once this thing hatches, the city is finished."
He knew what a Titan could do. Whatever experiments these people were running here, people were going to get hurt.
"Can you see what's inside?"
"Use your X-ray vision." He turned to Natsuki beside him.
Their goal wasn't to fight. It was intelligence. And right now, his alien companion's ability to see through solid matter was exactly what they needed.
"It matches the MUTO you described."
"But something's off. Its thoughts are chaotic. I can't communicate with it."
Natsuki studied the egg, eyes slowly narrowing.
There was a living creature in there, and its life level wasn't low. By all rights, he should be able to reach it, a simple exchange through telepathy. But its mind felt scrambled, like something was interfering. And beneath the chaos, it was actively refusing contact. The thing's drive for destruction ran deep.
"We can't let them keep going." Jared looked toward a row of containers in the corner. The organization's name was stenciled across them in bold letters: APEX.
With this intelligence, if he could reach Dr. Serizawa directly, there was still a chance to stop this.
The murky politics inside Monarch, he'd been hoping to stay out of it. Wasn't going to happen now.
"Let's move. We'll figure out next steps once we're clear." Jared had what he came for. Time to go.
Staying longer was too risky. This needed careful handling.
"Wait — you're not thinking about starting something in here, are you?"
He was already turning to leave when he noticed Natsuki hadn't moved. The man was staring at one fixed point, completely still. Jared thought about how he'd handled those guards upstairs, and his stomach dropped.
Was he actually going to go loud? Here?
There were too many people. A whole bank of nuclear reactors. One firefight and they'd have a leak on their hands. And if the Titan woke up, nobody in this room was walking out.
"No. I was going to hold off and watch a little longer."
"But it looks like someone else is more impatient than we are."
Natsuki was fixed on a passage leading back to the surface. Through the steel and concrete, he could already see the team moving down toward them.
Jared heard it before he understood it — a RAT-A-TAT-TAT burst from the passage.
Gunfire.
A squad of soldiers entered, combat uniforms marked with Monarch insignia, weapons up. Leading them was a tall American man, short blond hair, black tactical gear that made him look every inch the soldier. No helmet. Just a respirator across his mouth and nose.
He looked up at the observation room and smiled.
"Did you really think we wouldn't notice?"
Above the MUTO egg, behind the observation room glass, stood a man in a suit, long hair pulled back, black leather gloves on his hands. He watched the blond soldier walk in, and his brow creased.
He picked up his walkie-talkie.
"Eliminate them."
Every guard in the facility had already been aiming. They fired.
The intruders dove for cover.
"Oh... shit." Jared looked at the two sides opening up on each other, then cut his eyes to the MUTO egg at the center of the room.
Its light was pulsing faster now.
We are so done.
➤ Next: Titan Awakens
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