"And your saying that this is somehow in good taste?" I ask the boy with blue horns. I'd passed by the train station to grab some food for the team. On the wall of the building I saw graffiti of a snake kaiju that attacked a few months ago. A Kaiju child was looking t it with a smile. Our eyes met and now we are both trapped in this conversation. As a member of the ranger force I feel responsible to make sure a trainee is on the right track.
"Y-yeah. It's just some art." Is this a manipulation tactic? He's so short and has no confidence in how he speaks. Is this a way to make people underestimate him or am I overthinking? I probably am, what would he
have to hide?
"…Just that these things kill people." The burgers are getting cold.
"Well not this one specifically. And aren't kaiju just wild animals? Will we ban bears next?" I just stare at him. He has a unique perspective I'll give him that much. In 5 seconds he immediately backpedals. "Sorry!" He waves his arms around and then runs away.
"Sorry!" I call out to him as he leaves. Now I feel bad. I take another look at the art. It's alright I guess. I walk back to the bench the team is siting at. Blue is taking pictures of yellow and green fighting. Wonder what it's about this time.
"I swear I saw it! He still has that dragon! He'd kick the shadow rangers ass again!" Yellow yells while wrestling green, trying to get leverage on her.
"And I swear that it doesn't matter! Shadow was just caught off guard is all." I place the food next to pink, sleeping soundly.
"Enough!" I order and they immediately separate from each other. "Your disturbing the peace! Now give me 100 as penance!" I order and they look around remorsefully at the civilians trying to look away. They get on
the ground and start doing pushups. To be talking about a terrorist like Kaiju boy so flippantly was something I wouldn't expect of my team. Especially after what he did in zone W. The blue golden ranger is still in recovery. And half the beach is glass now.
"You took longer than expected sir." Blue says in a casual manner and pushes his glasses up. They do that shiny thing that happens in anime. He thinks it looks way cooler than it really does but I won't tell him
that.
"Well I stopped when I saw a kaiju child." I take out my phone and look through the database. "Haruo Onizuka. Strange name. Oh, he's the lowest in the rankings, that sucks." Where do I know that last name from?
"That would make him the shadow rangers brother. How appropriate." Blue says while looking at the exercising members of the team.
"Well that's awkward." Green says embarrassed.
"Not really." Yellow responds like its another day in the office for him. I shake my head at the pointless bickering. When I was younger
I dreamed of being a gold ranger but that still seems out of reach as we are now. We still haven't caught Kaiju boy, our repeated failures have been given more leeway than I feel comfortable with.
"We are in dire need of more training." I sigh.
"I think we're fine." Pink says while waking up. She's mastered the art of lucid awakening. She can instantly become aware of what's
happening and look as endearing as she wants. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't jealous but I can't let people know that when I'm leader.
"We aren't gold yet. So we aren't fine." The others were about to respond when we all get a buzz on our phones. That means we are being called back to base. We all nod at each other with serious looks and move out. With
our near unlimited access we make it to the spiral in 5 minutes, a personal record. We enter the the tower and many workers let us pass. A drone with a static screen floats in front of us.
"We have observed 2 B class avian Kaiju moving towards the city from the west. I have decided to send your team in. The Kaiju have an ability that's calling in snowstorms over the western part of the city so use your mech to end them quickly." A female voice says through the drone.
"Yes ma'am." I respond to the leader of the ranger force. I'm always grateful to have many opportunities we receive as the alpha team.
"Good. Die for the cause!" The drone flies up the tower while we enter an elevator.
"She's weird." Pink says through a yawn.
"Don't say it out loud." I tell her. We all think it but it's not exactly a great idea to say it. She spends most of her time at the anti sky cannon so her drones keep an eye on the tower.
"When you take her spot can we say it?" Why can't pink just have a filter?
"That's a little much pink." Blue does the glasses thing again and we all step out. We enter a vault and change into our suits.
"Tango." We sat in unison to authorise the use of the gear. The suits enter combat mode, meshing with our movements for maximum speed and power. It's truly a marvel of robotics. The next door opens and we enter the holding bay for the jets. The fuelling tubes are pulled out by the support staff and we do the final safety tests.
"Ready?" I ask on the comms.
"Ready!" We fly out of the 150th floor and circle the tower. It's amazing how little the G forces affect us. But that's to be expected. As we all flip the switch our jets converge to each other. They link to form our full mecha. The clouds continue to roll in and the blue light of
the beasts poke through.
"Activate sword of hope!" I press the button and the drones whizz around us. Like our own jets they converge on each other, only they
create a chainsaw sword instead of a giant robot. The thrusters on our robots back punch us higher into the sky.
"Woohoo! This is brilliant!" Yellow yells like he always does when we form the mech.
"Your too loud…" pink chides him through another yawn. Speaking of pink, a pink light has appeared in the clouds.
"It's him." Gritted teeth are the only thing keeping me somewhat calm right now. This is our chance. Several roars come from the sky
followed by 2 huge objects falling. They push the clouds before breaking through and flying outside the wall. It's not that they themselves could fly, it was that something launched them. Those were the kaiju we were supposed to be dealing with. That means that he took care of them first. I heard a theory
that the reason he kills kaiju is for some sort of territorial dominance. It makes sense to some degree, he has command of a large number of them. But I'm not convinced myself. There's something else going on that we aren't seeing.
"I'm requesting additional orders." Blue says hastily typing something. That is the correct thing to do according to the rules. But the
rules are wrong in this case.
"We continue with our original objective. There's still an enemy up there. Prepare to engage. Set manoeuvre 6." I order.
"But sir we aren't authorised to engage Kaiju boy." Blue pleads.
"Nah blue let's do it!" Green and yellow shout in unison.
"This is a bad idea." Pink whispers.
"It's 3 to 1. Engage!" I order with more force then I typically would. The sword of hope revs up and we fly into the clouds. It would have been easy to miss him with his size but with our scanners we find him. At the centre of a shrinking pink inferno is the terrorist Kaiju boy. He's standing on the back of some black bird thing. There's something we all noticed about
him at 1 point or another. When you look at him like this it's like he isn't even there. Or that he is, but he's behind a monster you can't understand. It's a less potent feeling but still similar to insect queen. Theres something intense staring at you from inside them all the time.
"Finishing strike!" Yellow announces as we initiate our strongest attack immediately. We bring the blade down, despite the sheer size
difference we aim perfectly for his neck. We are a few inches from victory when I see it. His eyes gaze at us for an instant, glowing pink. What happens next couldn't be described as a battle. None of us can even see what happens as we're assaulted by Kaiju in multiple directions. In 13 seconds we're sent flying out of the clouds like the Kaiju before us. We go past the wall and
continue from there. The damage done to the machines and us ourselves is immense. With all my strength I reach for a lever and pull. The thrusters switch directions and send us spinning. We at least slow down enough to reduce the force of us crashing into the solid stone ground. We must have flown at least 2
miles. Airbags save us from any major injuries but it still knocks a few teeth out. I quickly check on the others and the system shows that they are alive but unconscious.
"Damn it." This is bad. I've killed us. A diagnostic report shows the mech is in surprisingly good shape. There's a lot of damage to be sure but we can make this work. But with how long it will take to move with just me we might as well be dead. He descends with those pure white wings of
his, looking down at us while bathed in pink light. Is that on purpose? Stop aura farming and just finish this you cosplaying weirdo. I already know I'm outmatched as we both are now. "Let's go then!" I scream at him with everything I have. The mechs arm reaches at him despite the damage and malfunctions.
"Are you ok?!" He asks in an exaggerated manner and flies past the metal hand slowly moving towards him. He gently lands on the metal chest and looks around aimlessly. After half a minute he looks into the eyes of the mech and by extension me. "Um, where's the door?" He says with an unconfident smile. I take a minute to process that.
"Get the hell off me!" I swing the arm at him but he flies upwards and avoids it.
"Careful! I'm trying to help you! I can't heal you all if I'm out here!" I feel anger well up in my stomach.
"Help us?! You nearly killed us!" Who does this guy think he is? "You knocked us out of the sky!".
"Technically that was my kaiju but I get it." He says in a flat tone of voice.
"Are you serious?!".
"It was self defence! It's always self defence. I help you and then you try to kill me!" He explains in a panic.
"You carpet bombed a superior officer!".
"Also self defence! Also is she doing ok?" He pushes his fingers together.
"She's in the hospital you jackass!".
"Oh. Well she broke my jaw." Is this guy serious? Where'd that pressure go? He's like a completely different person.
"A terrorist typically doesn't get handled by kid gloves." Is that really so hard to understand?
"If you say so… so can I heal you now?" He tilts his head.
"I will shoot you!" I grab my sidearm before realising how pointless that is. To use it would expose myself outside and defeat the point.
And if he can beat a giant robot in seconds a pistol can't be any better. But I still can't let him in so this is my bluff.
"I'd really rather you didn't!" He lands back on the chest to search again. "I kinda need to do this quickly. Every time I stay somewhere for too long someone comes to try and kill me." I couldn't possibly imagine why! A huge amount of dust kicks up some distance away from the mechs feet. "It's like clockwork!" I frantically check the censors to see who the hell that is. "W-why are you here?" He asks and tilts his head.
"Your coming with us." The centaur says in a grave tone when he exits the dust. Wait a second. That's a kaiju child. Isn't that the number 8? If so then that would be 7 next to him, a giant of a man made mostly of muscle by the looks of it. I fumble with the communicator nearby until I get a signal.
"Yep?" The director asks with a casual tone that frankly pisses me off.
"You sent trainees?! What the hell is wrong with you?!" That's the most irresponsible thing I've ever heard! The static is all I hear for a minute.
"What are you talking about?" Huh?
"Two high ranking kaiju children are engaged with the enemy outside the city! What are they here if you didn't send them?!" The big one is currently trying to pulverise Kaiju boy with his fists. That cosplaying weirdo keeps narrowly dodging each swing thanks to his wings. When they make it to the ground even that gets smashed from the force. Kaiju boy keeps yelling out a bunch of stuff that I honestly don't understand because it's so fast. It feels like some sort of manipulation tactic, making himself seem less threatening. The other buries his arms into the ground and from that summons massive vines that also give chase.
"Yeah I have no idea what that's about. I'm getting a little tired of trainees not following orders. Don't let them take the target. We don't know what they want." Her voice turns deadly serious.
"Oh yeah because that's totally something I can do!" I yell without thinking. Sure hope that doesn't land me in prison.
"It's fine you've got this." I guess she's fine with it. Also NO I DONT!
"Seriously why are you doing this?" Kaiju boy blocks a punch with a massive turtle thing. "Not that I know you personally or at all but you seemed like nice people. Or at least not the type to punch someone to death!" He makes it back onto the metal chest and looks at the head. "Did you call them or is this something else?" A rainbow snake rips the attacking vines apart.
"No. This isn't us." I feel like we shouldn't be talking so casually but I guess I can relate to him since neither of us know what's going on.
"Oh ok." He believes me? Just like that? "…could you help please?" It takes me a minute to process that.
"Why would I do that?" I feel like I've gotten so angry that it loops back around to being calm.
"Because I'm worried that someone could die here if I have to go all out so I'd rather you bear the load a little bit! Please?" That feels so patronising. But when a few more tiger Kaiju start throwing lightning around I realise that he might be serious. So I grit my teeth and play at the controls. Moving this thing by myself is tough but not exactly impossible. I use the sword of hope to support my weight and survey the battle. They've got him in a pincer manoeuvre. I swing the sword through the ground between him and the centaur. With that the vines come for me instead. I thought I'd be able to hold them off but there's so many that I nearly get overwhelmed. The ones that I can't cut in time I have the automatic missles keep at bay. It now occurs to me how difficult it is to fight someone in this thing when you don't want them dead. "See this? This is what it could be like if you guys stop hunting me." He says from my shoulder with a knowing grin.
"Was that what this was about? Are you even worried about them dying?" I block a charge from seven and get pushed back.
"No, people dying is pretty bad I think. But two birds one stone right?" As if to make some stupid point he sends that same black bird from before to grab seven in the air and slam him to the ground, knocking him out it seems. "See that? Wouldn't it be better if we weren't enemies?" He smugly says while floating in front of me. Seems he and insect queen have something else in common. He's not paying attention though. Like an idiot. I have to block more vibes from hitting him in the back. The swing of the sword of hope sends a massive gust of wind towards the enemy. They get blown back into a huge rock and smash it to pieces, knocking them out as well.
"Don't let your guard down like that!" I tell him while the mech falls to one knee.
"Sorry! My bad!" He puts his hand up in surrender.
"Alright, time to detain them." I mumble but it seems he heard.
"Oh, about that." That's all I get before the entire area is covered in multi coloured gas. When it clears I scan around and see that all three of them are gone.
"Damnit!" Because of course he would do that!
"Report." The directors voice comes through again. I take a breath.
"He took them. We had to cooperate to keep everyone from dying but he used that to escape. I'm sorry." I hang my head low because I know my career is over.
"You know what? I think you might be just what I need." I look up as if the communicator can look back.
"For what?".
"An experiment.".