Lunaris Tentacuttle and Its sudden, invisible rampage demanded an immediate, desperate response.
The military, having failed with both the aerial assault and the helicopter search, unleashed their technological Hail Mary: the Sonic Pulse and Thermal Sweep. The Pulse of Desperation The LRAD vehicles and Orgone-frequency emitters positioned along the containment perimeter roared to life.
A devastating, non-lethal, high-frequency sonic pulse—tuned to what military researchers believed to be the resonant frequency of Lunar Beasts slammed into Lower Manhattan.
The sound was inaudible to most humans but was a physical wave of force, shaking glass and rattling teeth for miles. The goal: break the Lunaris Tentacuttle's intricate camouflage pigmentation cells.
For a terrifying, agonizing moment, it seemed to have no effect. The air remained clear, and the buildings continued to ripple with the creature's silent, invisible movement. Then, the wave hit the colossal beast's central mass. The result was a momentary flicker!
"Bingo people! we got camouflage failure!" Said a field sergeant.
The sheer force of the specialized sonic pulse was enough to momentarily disrupt the Lunaris Tentacuttle's hyper-complex biological camouflage. Across the length of a massive city block, the monster's camouflage flickered. It wasn't a total failure, just a flicker. But for a single, terrifying second, the illusion of the "crawling city" shattered, and the true, sickening sight of the beast was revealed: A gargantuan stretch of indigo-green, slime-slick hide, covered in pulsating air sacs. The unsettling, alien architecture of its beak and bioluminescent eyes, momentarily visible before the camouflage snapped back into place.
It was absolutely terrifying.
Blurred outlines of a few tentacles, thick as tunnels, carried the creatures bulk flat and low through the city. The massive form immediately vanished, but the visual data was enough. The thermal sweeps, executed simultaneously, corroborated the momentary optical flash, pinpointing a massive, concentrated heat source rapidly moving under the cover of the camouflage.
"Target location confirmed. Brief window of visual confirmation achieved at the intersection of Wall Street and Broadway. The target is moving north-west at 25 mph toward the Financial District. Fire Solution Required. Repeat: 25 mph toward the Financial District."
The military had its target, but the window was already closing. Lunaris Tentacuttle had adapted, its camouflage restoring itself within the space of a single breath. The beast knew it had been detected, and its pace accelerated. The military commander, knowing they had mere seconds before the monster disappeared again, didn't hesitate. They had one heavy weapon on the perimeter capable of a precision, high-impact strike.
A highly classified Mobile Railgun Battery, deployed far outside the quarantine zone for its immense range and power, was given immediate fire authorization. This weapon, designed to pierce deep lunar armor, was the only thing capable of hitting the target before it vanished again. It was loaded with The precise GPS coordinates of the targets last known position and vector. The Kinetic Rail Slug a high-velocity armor-piercing round was used.
ZZZZZZZCRA-KOOM!
The sound of the railgun was an artificial clap of thunder, and the kinetic slug, traveling at Mach 7, arrived at the target zone scant seconds later.
The military's desperate gamble—the long-range Railgun Strike—had moments to succeed before the Lunaris Tentacuttle's camouflage fully stabilized. The commander had fired on the last known trajectory, trusting the data provided to him by the flickering thermal sweep.
The kinetic rail slug, traveling at phenomenal speed, tore through the urban landscape and found its mark.
THWACK!
Instead of hitting the creature's central mass, the slug slammed into one of the Lunaris Tentacuttle's massive, unseen tentacles, the one that had just dragged a helicopter to its ruin. The impact was purely kinetic; there was no explosion, just the concussive force of an impossibly fast projectile meeting alien flesh.
The segment of the tentacle—thick as a subway car and bristling with suckers—was instantly severed from the main body. The Lunaris Tentacuttle, still cloaked, let out a psychic shriek of pain that briefly registered on nearby sensors before the beast, wounded and retreating, lurched violently north toward the financial district.
But the horror did not end with the wound. The military had witnessed one impossible act being the optical camouflage and now they were about to witness another.
The severed tentacle didn't just lie twitching among the rubble. It began to move with purpose. The massive stump where it was cut from the original monster began to pucker and bubble with an intense, localized discharge of Orgone. Like a mythological beast or a terrestrial starfish, the severed limb began a rapid, sickening process of asexual reproduction.
Within moments, the thick, fleshy stump of the severed tentacle rapidly grew a new central mass, eyes, and beak. The newly formed creature, while smaller than the original Lunaris Tentacuttle, was still the size of a ferry.
The military, still reeling from the sudden reappearance of one monster, now had to face two. The original, wounded, colossal Lunaris Tentacuttle continued its invisible rampage toward the Financial District, and behind it, a smaller, fully mobile, equally camouflaged secondary Tentacuttle was rising from the wreckage of the railgun strike.
New York City was now under siege by a Tentacuttle Duo.
The military's attempts at containment had failed, resulting in not one, but two camouflaged Kaiju. The primary, larger Lunaris Tentacuttle, having just lost a tentacle to the railgun strike, refused to continue its surface engagement. It executed its third impossible feat: ultra-elasticity.
With horrifying speed and unnatural fluidity, the massive, building-sized monster began to compress and squeeze its colossal body. It focused its immense, invisible mass onto a single point of entry: a wide, abandoned section of the New York City Subway system near the Financial District.
The sheer pressure and unnatural flexibility allowed the monster to essentially pour itself down into the subterranean network. Concrete shattered and buckled, and tracks warped as the giant creature forced its passage into the narrow tunnels. The entire street above the entry point groaned and slumped as the massive bulk passed below.
The original, colossal Lunaris Tentacuttle was now underground and fully mobile. The subway system—the literal foundation and circulatory system of Manhattan—had become the monster's invisible highway and command center.
The smaller, newly spawned secondary Tentacuttle remained on the surface, still camouflaged but now acting as a lethal, mobile decoy, patrolling the area around the subway entry point, awaiting its next command from its injured parent.
While the U.S. Military was busy searching the ruins of Sky Harbor, sealing the state border, and fighting on the east coast, a handful of daring, curiosity-driven journalists and independent researchers managed to slip past the initial, disorganized quarantine.
They were drawn not by the military activity, but by the sight captured on Channel 36: the impossible, rapidly expanding growth of alien, yet organic, life.
The journalists finally reached Downtown Phoenix, now a silent, alien jungle. Where asphalt and cement once ruled was now a thriving forest. Colossal stalks of bio-steel fauna, shimmering with internal Orgone light, towered over the abandoned skyscrapers. The ground was cushioned with moss and strange, pulsating fungi, and the air hummed with neutral, regenerative energy.
The research team, led by a veteran investigative journalist named Elias Vance, cautiously ventured deep inside the heart of the ancient, towering bio-steel fauna. The massive, trunk-like structures provided cover and filtered the harsh desert light, creating a bizarre, cathedral-like atmosphere. It was Elias's young intern, a sharp-eyed biology student, who made the alarming discovery. " Mr. Vance... look up." Hanging from the thick, glowing branches of the bio-steel trees, like grotesque fruit, were dozens upon dozens of transparent, pulsating sacs.
These were the Beast Pods. Each pod was a self-contained, nutrient-filled incubator. Within the shimmering walls of the pods, floating in a thick, amber-colored fluid, were Earth's ancient lifeforms—the Genome Beasts. Recreated and given birth by the primal energies of the Will of Beast Vein that fueled the zone. They saw recognizable, but enhanced, outlines of extinct creatures: immense saber-toothed cats with chitinous armor, massive cave bears with glowing claws, and sleek, raptorial birds with bio-steel feathers. They were not alive yet, but in a final stage of Orgone gestation. The Crystal's that glowed Within the pods was even more profound.
Embedded within the nascent creatures, visibly pulsing with internal light, were tiny, concentrated nodules of pure, crystallized Orgone.
''Beast Crystals.''
These crystals were the condensed essence of the evolutionary process—the very energy source that could make a human tremendously powerful, capable of achieving the inhuman abilities demonstrated by the Tiger-Striped Girl. The Beast Pods were effectively natural, self-replicating power sources.
Elias Vance, recognizing the global significance, bypassing the military's censored comms he uploaded his unedited, shaky footage and breathless report to the internet, bypassing the corporate news networks. The headline screamed: "THE BEAST CRYSTAL: A NEW POWER SOURCE IS BORN IN PHOENIX! "The impact was instantaneous and overwhelming. The viral fame of the Tiger-Striped Girl had shown the world what was possible.
And Elias Vance would show the world how to get it for themselves.
Across the globe, the survival equation had fundamentally changed. The Lunar Conflict was no longer just about survival against monsters; it was about cultivating personal power.
Humans everywhere, desperate to survive the escalating global threats—and fueled by the legend of the tiger-striped girls strength began to converge on Arizona, determined to risk the military quarantine and the danger of the Beast Zone to cultivate their own Beast Crystals and claim their power in this new, brutal era of survival. The Arizona Beast Zone had become the world's new, deadly gold rush.