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"UOOOO—!!"
With every step Shimo took, the deadly cold spread further. Frost had already crept across every step beneath its feet. It let out a roar and leaped down toward Kong, and the steps it had just crossed cracked apart from the freeze, crumbling in its wake.
The Titan Apes scattered the moment Shimo entered the fight, falling back to clear the floor for Shimo and Kong.
"Move! Fall back!"
"If we don't run now, it's too late!"
Jared and Old De sprinted toward the APEX aircraft, throwing a warning at Kong over their shoulders as they ran.
This red-furred ape clearly had it out for Kong. Meeting the enemy head-on right now would be suicide. They had to get Kong out of here.
If Kong got pinned down, things would go very wrong, very fast.
"ROOOARR!" Kong got the message. He wasn't planning to stick around either. One wrong move and this place was going to be his grave.
Even if he wanted to tear this red-furred monkey apart, he couldn't. Not now.
But Skar King had no intention of giving him the chance to leave.
"UOOOO, !!" Ice-and-snow energy churned and gathered inside Shimo's mouth, forming a white vortex. It locked onto Kong, opened wide, and a roar exploded out alongside a torrent of frost breath. The temperature in the entire hall plummeted.
Kong felt the lethal danger and snapped his battle axe up to block.
The axe absorbed part of it. But the deadly cold was already eating away at his arm, consuming it from the outside in. In an instant, the feeling was gone. Just numbness.
"Damn it!"
"Those guys bolted fast." Jared and Old De had been counting on catching another ride with the APEX aircraft, but the moment Skar King turned his attention to Kong, those people had been out the door. By the time Jared and Old De reached the landing area, the aircraft was already airborne.
They'd used the distraction to run. Smart.
"ROOOARR!!" Kong couldn't hold the frost breath back. He kept getting pushed, one step at a time, the extreme cold burning through him in a way that wasn't cold at all anymore , it was pure pain. If he kept taking this, he was going to end up a solid block of ice.
"No!"
Jared spun around. The energy from the frost breath was bleeding outward, rolling toward them. The frost was no longer vapor , it was solid, thick, a white mist that swallowed everything it touched. His pupils shrank.
Then another light filled his vision. Brighter. Blinding.
The ice mist sweeping through the hall parted around it, flowing away from the pillar of light that had appeared out of nowhere. Jared and Old De stood in the eye of it, untouched.
"Huh?"
Skar King's attention snapped to the anomaly. He stared at the pillar of light, expression unreadable.
Shimo stopped mid-breath. It had caught the scent of something. Something wrong. It turned its head toward the light and went still.
"Roooarr..." Kong slumped. His axe hit the floor. He pressed his frostbitten hand against his chest, breathing hard. Then he felt it , a familiar energy signature , and lifted his eyes toward the figure stepping out of the light.
That guy.
It really was that guy.
A giant emerged from the brilliance, red-and-silver, moving with the ease of someone who had burned energy to teleport directly. Which he had.
"That was too close." Jared looked up at the giant and grinned.
"Big guy found his people, but the red-furred monkey wanted to make him a slave or something — that's how it looked, anyway — and then they started fighting." He relayed the situation fast. He couldn't understand what the Titan Apes were actually saying to each other; he was working off context clues.
Either way, their side was clear. Kong was with them. Skar King was the enemy.
"Leave it to me." The giant turned his head and gave them a single nod.
The moment Natsuki laid eyes on that red fur, he knew. The Iwi murals. The Skar King. The massive creature beside him was Shimo. A Titan that powerful, used as a weapon and a chain.
For a Titan like Kong , proud, and decent underneath it all , running into Skar King was only ever going to end one way.
He just hadn't expected it to happen this fast.
"ROOOARR, ROAR ROAR!" Skar King snarled twice at the uninvited giant.
This outsider had walked straight into the middle of his business. Right while he was disciplining one of his own. It was an insult, plain and simple.
He looked at Shimo standing there frozen, then at Kong crouched behind cover. He raised the needle-shaped crystal and snapped at Shimo , why had it stopped? Why was Kong still breathing?
"UOOOO, !!" The crystal's pressure bent Shimo back toward Kong. It turned, fixed its gaze, and began advancing to finish the job.
And the giant. It wasn't going to leave him alone either.
He'd brought these underlings all this way to establish dominance in this world. So let them earn it.
"ROOOARR!" Skar King's command rang out. His Titan Apes moved. Some launched themselves straight at the giant without hesitation. Others glanced at Shimo, at what Shimo could do, and then ran forward anyway.
They had no choice. Every ape that had ever defied Skar King was still standing somewhere in this place, frozen solid, a permanent reminder.
The apes closed in. The giant stood his ground, fist clenched, eyes steady and clear.
"I don't have much time," a low, resonant voice said, settling directly into the minds of the charging apes. "So I'll have to put you all to sleep for a while."
For the ones in the front , the ones who had thrown themselves forward for Skar King first, without hesitation ,
The Full Moon Light Wave would have been the least efficient use of his time.
As for holding back: he was done caring about that. Apes were tough. As long as nothing was fatal, they'd recover.
By regulation, Natsuki shouldn't have been touching this. A race that had already formed the beginnings of a civilization , the Space Garrison had rules about interfering in their conflicts with other Titans, with humans, with anyone. Ignoring those rules, wading into an attack against a civilized species, carried real consequences.
But he'd already made the call. He had enough seniority that any punishment board would have to weigh it against twenty years of commendations. And more importantly, these apes were actively hostile to Earth's natural guardian.
By his own reading of it, this wasn't interfering in a dispute between Earth's civilizations. This was helping Earth's natural guardian preserve natural order. He had both the moral argument and the legal one covered.
The apes didn't know what was coming.
The one at the front only saw the giant raise one arm. Saw those bright eyes shift , the pressure behind them suddenly immense. Felt it settle over him like a physical weight.
More dangerous than Shimo.
➤ Next: The Light of Hope
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