Iharu shouted from the ridge while he racked his scatter-gun. "That is not him!"
Kikaru staggered back for one hard beat, then raised her plasma rifle. Elara stepped away from the dead Kaiju with her phase-blade still lit.
The Jaxson shape broke down in front of them. Burned skin split open. The face peeled away from the skull in dry strips, and something thin pulled itself out of the ruined outline, leaving borrowed flesh in the dirt.
The creature shifted back into the form from the first encounter: narrow limbs, smooth black shell, and a head with no honest face. The Mimic faced them as if it had been waiting for their recognition to catch up.
"The wires slowed me down," it said.
Kikaru fired. The plasma shot passed through the space where its ribs should have been. The creature folded sideways at the waist, too loose and too thin, then straightened with a sound like wet cables being pulled through stone.
