Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was never easy to pinpoint exactly where the small coastal town ended and the skyscraper-laden business district began, but Masako’s home was Desolation, and Desolation was an island, hidden away in the heart of the city.

You didn’t get to it by boat or plane or bridge, you just knew where to look. Here, the marker was a chalk drawing of a turtle skeleton, scrawled on the brick-wall corner of the second-floor apartment above a small family kitchen, a few storefronts deep on the right side of a narrow alley leading away from the main road.

Passing by the corner, Masako stepped into the dark zone of several forgotten city blocks, eyes all around watching her progress with the quiet stoicism of fear and respect. And sometimes other emotions, too unique to faithfully put into words. There was sadness, too, but that, Desolation was never without. On the good days, it was the bleak kind of sadness, turned bright by the lights one managed to cling to when hope had foreseen none at all.

The scent on the wind was fresh cooking from the kitchen and several others, a shared kindness on the threshold between worlds, but the air carried the sounds too, and between the bustle of nighttime traffic, was the whisper of a loud and bold, revving engine.

All at once, expressions became stone, shutters were pulled from ceilings, candles were blown to heated smoke, and the few bodies daring to brave the darkened grounds fell to hurried movement without daring even to whisper. Masako’s bandaged hands found the worn pockets of her leather jacket, layered metal cylinders encircled in the warm embrace of a familiar, steady grasp.

Engines roared louder on the approach, handlebar-mounted headlamps filtering through windows and along walls like the searchlights they doubled as in the makeshift blackout. Aside from the moon above and the ambient glow from the rest of the city outside the unofficial borders, only the motorbikes and whatever handheld lamps they’d brought with them lit the path ahead of the Red Bamboo’s advance.

Masako was still as ice behind the crumbled remnant of a once-decorative wall, a rear-drawn elbow signaling back several others who’d been caught outside in the chaos. With the moonlight glinting off her face enough to show direction of movement, she fixed her gaze on the nearest set of reinforced doors – only a short, but likely attention-drawing run away – and followed up with a firm nod to the most senior of the group.

The girl returned the nod. It was Akane – more specifically, Akane W.

Almost twenty years had done nothing to dethrone the name of Kiryu’s first pilot from the top spot when it came to popularity, and all Akanes in Desolation had to be distinguished by an initial, given that at the highest count, the small, unofficial, mid-city settlement with a population of under a hundred had housed nine of them. To be wholly fair, two of those had been named by their parents, so they, at least, couldn’t be counted as intentionally perpetuating it.

If one were a stickler for technical chronology, Akane W. was only twenty-five, still four years Masako’s senior, and though rightly terrified, she’d also never looked more grateful to be able to defer to the community’s de facto leader.

Masako’s stern grimace was to her, a smile and a promise, bare and bruised knuckles counting off from three as footsteps neared.

As the third finger re-sealed its grip around the metal handle, the group of stragglers bolted through the remains of the courtyard and up the small stairway to the building’s entrance. There was a startle, a shout, and a charge from around the bend of the wall, and Masako leapt one-footed into her rounding swing.

The baton in her left hand extended through the distance, cracking the first man’s skull with one hit. He folded to the ground like an accordion, a crimson red quarterstaff bouncing off his knees.

From the glance, she was pretty sure the man she’d just killed was a Lieutenant.

The weapons were wood, not actual bamboo, but the bumbling joke of a modern-day organization took the name a bit more literally than their at least halfway-competent predecessors. These days, a Red Bamboo Lieutenant was anyone who could get enough blood splattered on their weapon to turn it entirely red.

The four men who’d been in formation behind the first all had visible shades of tan on their combat-grade rank insignias, one of them carrying an out-of-the-box pristine baseball bat with several long metal spikes driven through it. At their leader’s fall, they collectively suffered a moment’s hesitation. Today, it would be their last.

Masako ducked low, taking out one man’s knee with her newly-extended right baton and reversing it for a lunging upward strike into another’s chin, audibly shattering teeth. The last two had enough time to bring their weapons into the fray, but Masako handily blocked a swing from the bat and struck away a barbwire-wrapped quarterstaff hard enough to make it rattle. Swinging her weapons back inward, she clocked both Red Bamboo in the foreheads, either killing them or knocking them out cold. It wouldn’t matter until cleanup anyway.

Stepping and leaping off another partial wall, Masako twisted the handles of her batons together midair and dropped into an overhead swing of her combined metal staff, putting her full weight on the next lieutenant’s own staff and splintering it in half in his hands.

They hated that.

He didn’t have enough time to fully process his outrage, as the reversing swing of the metal weapon’s other end cracked his skull into itself. If he’d stayed standing, the next, horizontal swing in the flurry would have crushed in his throat, but since he failed to, it knocked a different guy’s jaw out of alignment instead. A furious twirl downed two more Red Bamboo in one hit, and a reversing thrust hammered one baton end into the last man’s sternum, his breath hitching with a series of simultaneous, sharply-pitched cracking sounds.

The next two who rounded into the fray were wearing backpacks with large, translucent canisters filled with a yellow liquid, and Masako bolted for cover with a yell of alarm that turned quickly to a yelp of intense pain. Behind the flimsy cover of a disused bus station, she grunted and seethed as the several drops that had grazed her hissed smoke, burning new holes through her jacket and into her left shoulder.

Masako didn’t pray to heaven, but if the others hadn’t made it to the door yet, she’d find a way to make the Red Bamboo pray for hell.

The acid cannons had melted halfway through the bus stop, because that was apparently a more fun way to get to her than walking around it. At least the sounds of the motors on arrival meant they only had the backpacks this time.

In another moment, all that was left of Masako’s cover was a quickly-shrinking wall of compressed metal, the bulk of which was barely recognizable as the newspaper dispenser it once was. Stepping away from the melting slag, she untwisted her staff.

She turned on her heel just as the wall of cover descended to near eye level, and the two batons flew from her hands, crossing the distance in a flash and embedding down the muzzles of the two acid cannons. Masako had no idea how that had worked, but she wasn’t going to question it as she used the shrinking newsstand as a stepping stone and leapt through the air.

A spinning kick to the head took out the attacker on the left, and Masako was able to pull her half-melted baton out of the dropped cannon in time to spray the rest of the canister’s contents into the other man’s face and chest. He died screaming, and as the body fell, Masako knew she would regret that in a few hours, but right now it felt deserved.

Her skin was stinging from the corrosive steam in the air above the bus stop she’d leapfrogged, but the sound of retreating engines – far fewer than there had been on arrival – was enough to allow herself one breath. The rest of her strength was put to use when she stood quickly from the scene, and stumbled her way back to the courtyard entrance. There were no bodies aside from the squad she’d taken out by the outer wall, but she didn’t let herself breathe again until she’d made it to the threshold, opening the door to horrified gasps but smiling with relief at the concerned faces around her as she collapsed on the floor.

Five hours later, with a fresh pair of batons and a one-hundred-seventy percent increase in total bandage cover, Masako drove an unmarked, covered pickup to the edge of the river. The acid guy was, as predicted, a disgusting hassle to throw over, but it was still always a good day when there were only Red Bamboo in the truck.

“Impressive, very impressive!”

The words were accompanied by an obnoxious clapping sound, and Masako turned around with a scowl more than a warning, though she was as on-guard as ever.

A man lingered in the shadows, wearing a leather jacket that was easily newer and much more intact than Masako’s own. His hair was heavily styled with product, and his thick-frame glasses reflected an intense glow despite the fact there weren’t any lights around nearly bright enough for them to do that.

“This some black-ops government bull-crap?” Masako sneered, despite knowing by the stranger’s tone that his interest was the farthest thing from official. “Whatever you’re gonna try, let me remind you I just made a bit more room in this truck, and it’s a hell of a short drive to right where we’re already standing.”

The man stepped forward from the shadows with a grin, the light on his lenses shifting but not to the point they actually became see-through. “I’m only here to make an offer, and one I’m sure you’ll be… quite interested in.”

Masako stared him down, not budging. “Okay, what is it?” she deadpanned.

“To the point, I like it,” the man’s voice crawled as he pulled a silver briefcase up into view. Where the size might have suggested a weapon larger than a pistol or an arrangement of conveniently-fitting paper bills, the opened case revealed an interior that was almost entirely black spacing foam.

With the sole exception of the small, ornate medallion at the center.

Masako’s eyes were drawn to it not entirely of her own will, a strange whisper lingering in the back of her mind but yet to take shape.

Cast in silver, the metallic frame formed a loose, tight crescent with the opening facing downward. The small loop where it would apparently attach to a chain was stylized at the end of a segmented oval, like an insect’s abdomen, with the thorax and head continuing down the midpoint width of the crescent. The narrowing, sickle like points on either side were, in fact, stylized depictions of a butterfly or moth’s wings, jagged-edged and patterned with a strange, lightning-like detail. Ultimately, the whole of the crescent frame was shaped as if the insect’s wings were wrapping forward, past the spiky-looking head, and around the purple gemstone set into the lower part of the frame’s larger circle.

A purple gemstone that seemed to glow the more Masako looked at it.

Several thoughts were passing through her head, not all of them her own. “What’s the catch?”

“Oh, no catch!” the man insisted, with a smirk that said there definitely was a catch. “We’ve just been looking to bequeath this item to… a suitable owner, who will use it well.”

“You mean use it the way you want me to?”

“No,” the stranger shook his head, feigning innocence and still smiling. “Use it the way you want to.”

Masako considered, and as she looked into the stranger’s stupidly punchable face, she could already tell he was so, so fucking far out of his depth that he couldn’t even begin to guess why.

I know you, Masako thought with a grin, to herself and one other. They called you a monster… but I know you were a God.

She reached out and took the coin, and the man made no move to stop her. She held it before her, and the man watched her with a smile. She held out her hand, and red lightning slammed the man against the wall behind him, his body convulsing as it burned away to ash.

As the half-charred corpse dropped to the ground, it split suddenly apart from the top of the head to the center of the chest. Between the hollow halves of the dead man’s head, was another head entirely, colored silver and shaped vaguely like an oyster set on end. Tubes ran up the throat to the corners of a dead mouth, and dark surface veins like tree roots spread out along either shell-like side of its skull.

“Huh,” Masako recalled vaguely. “Isn’t that one of those ‘Xilien’ things the Rangers are beating up on all the time?”

She shrugged, and dragged the body to the edge of the river, rolling it off with a kick like the others. It disappeared especially quickly beneath the surface, accompanied with a squeaky, garbled, chittering-like sound, and Masako was left to wonder whether the aliens were denser than humans or had a physiology that reacted strangely with water.

Masako had enough preservation instinct not to linger long at the river’s edge, nor return to Desolation right away. That left one of the many rooftops she had easy and stealthy routes to, one high enough to grant eyes on the multiple sections of the city divided by the intruding inlets from the bay. Lights from the many buildings reflected a faint shimmer off the black glass of the water, as the seemingly-endless night drew ever on.

“So… Battra,” she began, half-musing and half-speaking, as she held the amulet between her scarred fingers and watched the silver and deep amethyst catch the light.

The lingering whispers rose to a steady rumble.

…DO NOT ADDRESS ME, MORTAL.

Masako paused, puckering her lips and loosening her grip on the coin enough for it to tilt toward falling. That could have gone better.

I DOUBT IT COULD.

Right. Telepathy. Masako blinked away her wide eyes and rolled them instead. Is this what all the Rangers have to deal with?

I KNOW NOT OF THESE ‘RANGERS,’ BUT YOUR PRESENCE HERE IS UNWELCOME. HUMANITY HAS NO RIGHT TO MY POWER.

Raising a brow, Masako channeled red sparks over her other hand, illustrating a point. “Seems like you don’t have much of a say in that…” she challenged aloud.

I SENSE YOU KNOW, THIS IS ONLY A FRACTION OF WHAT I CAN ACCOMPLISH. YOUR KIND’S MEDDLING HAS DONE MUCH, BUT YOU WILL FIND THAT BATTRA CANNOT BE CHAINED SO EASILY.

“Makes sense.” Masako leant her head fully back against the heating unit, the few visible stars above filling her vision.

Whatever having the coin meant – which felt like a big deal, even omitting her vague knowledge of the Rangers and their apparent ties to particular kaiju from the age of monsters – it was more than a little exhausting to try to figure out all at once. Breathing quietly while counting the sparse, distant bright spots the city’s light pollution hadn’t managed to drown out, Masako was content to let the moment linger unspoken, a least for a while longer.

Battra wasn’t.

YOUR KIND IS PROUD AND ARROGANT, AND YOU BRING ONLY DESTRUCTON TO THIS EARTH. YOU ARE A PLAGUE UPON THE PLANET BENEATH YOUR FEET, FOOLS WHO SEE NOT ITS WORTH AND DRIVE IT EVER CLOSER TO RUIN. YOU THINK ONLY OF GREED AND POWER WITHOUT CARE FOR THAT WHICH PROVIDES YOU WITH LIFE. YOU HAVE SHOWN YOURSELVES TO BE UNDESERVING OF ALL THE EARTH HAS GRANTED YOU. ONLY THE CLEANSING OF YOUR INFECTION UPON THIS WORLD CAN SAVE WHAT LITTLE REMAINS OF IT, AND WHAT FRACTION OF EVEN THAT WILL ENDURE IF YOU CONTINUE ON THIS PRESENT COURSE OF IGNORANCE.

Masako’s long breath became a heavy whistle in the air on exhale, the amulet again passing unconsciously between twisting fingers. “Yep.”

…WHAT.

If Masako had happened to have formed a cartoonish, chibi-style picture of an angry, ranting, bug-eyed, dark green and spike-covered moth in her head, that picture of a moth would have just blinked, despite the physiological impossibility.

“I said yeah… same,” Masako pushed on, “except nobody listens when you say it like that. Must’ve given that speech thirty damn times before I figured it out.”

Her mental image of Battra was still blinking. YOU…

“You’re right, and I agree with every word,” Masako clarified with a knowing smirk. “Does that surprise you?” She looked intently down at the moth-shaped design on the amulet. I thought you could read my mind or something.

Battra sputtered, which was a weird thing to happen inside Masako’s head. ONLY THOSE THOUGHTS YOU ACTIVELY BRING TO THE SURFACE, WHICH I ASSURE YOU, GRANTS YOU FAR LESS CONTROL THAN YOU MAY THINK… IN THE FUTURE, PLEASE REFRAIN FROM BECOMING DISTRACTED.

Masako smirked, actually sort of impressed at Battra’s composure, but she supposed there was a pretty big cultural gap between humans and guardian moths anyway. Who’s distracted? Weren’t we discussing your utter shock at my shred of basic concern for the planet I live on?

YOUR AWARENESS IS NOTABLE…

And he’d definitely said – thought – ‘notable’ like it was the highest honor he would ever, ever consider giving to a human.

…BUT YOU MUST, AFTER ALL, SUFFER THE SAME FAILINGS AS THE REST. NO HUMAN CAN TRULY COMPREHEND, LET ALONE ACCEPT, THE PRICE THAT MUST NOW BE PAID FOR ANY HOPE OF THE EARTH’S SALVATION.

You mean ‘kill all humans?’ she thought with a smirk, though it faltered.

She couldn’t lie, but maybe…

“You’re right, you got me,” Masako spoke with a smile, looking the coin in where its eyes would be if the design had clearer detail. “I want to live, and maybe there’s a few other people around I might actually still care about, but that’s the exception, not the rule. People are monsters, and you can mind-check me on that all fucking day. The best case you’ll find is bone-headed ignorance, because the rest of ‘em have moved on to getting their kicks out of being cruel. On the flipside, yeah, there’s people like me, who know what the fuck needs to get done, but there aren’t nearly enough of us or any real shot at power in order to make it happen…”

Masako stared into the abyss of the coin, and twisted an evil smirk.

“…Until now, that is, so… so maybe we don’t agree on everything, and maybe we never will, but the way I see it? You want to destroy one hundred percent of humans, and so what if I’m only cool with ninety? You want to spend all night and day arguing about that last ten percent – and that’s a generous ten percent – or do you want to start saving the goddamn Earth?”

Only silence graced her thoughts.

It’s a better deal than you thought you’d get.

…BATTRA FINDS THIS AN ACCEPTABLE ARRANGEMENT… HUMAN.

“Good.”

Masako’s eyes narrowed as gears turned. She stood, and scanned through the buildings visible from her location. She smiled a bit at the fact the local comic shop had put up some kind of large, ant-shaped decoration on the outside of their building since the last time she’d been, but her target was… sure enough, the barest of bright spots like a fading candle, out at the right-angle corner point where the city district poked at the bay.

If it’s reckless ecological destruction you want to put a stop to… I know exactly where we can start.

Dim light, overpowered by the moon alone, shone from the rectangular watchtower, positioned like a lighthouse at the dock’s outer corner. The rest of the multi-level, square concrete platform was crawling with at least a dozen workers, all hurriedly offloading metal drums from trucks and rolling them to the two water-facing edges.

Masako almost laughed. Only the fact they’d waited until late at night to start dumping kept it from being entirely too comical. This company had certainly greased a lot of hands under the table, hopefully with whatever vile, murky green substance they’d just begun pouring into the bay.

They had private security, too – at least six nightstick-wielding guards that Masako could see, and probably a few she couldn’t. Well-trained, likely ex-military, and padded over in heavy armored vests. That, and the fact the station was a small, open-air space, with little in the way of cover aside from any unattended drums, had so far kept her away.

She turned to the reflective glass of a large, darkened window beside her on the warehouse roof, taking in her own short-cropped hair, scowling visage, and battle-worn leather jacket.

“So… what’ve you got for me?”

Reflective silver washed over her body like jagged tendrils of spreading frost, followed quickly by a second wave of green and black that spread out and took a solidified shape. Predictably, Masako’s ranger armor consisted primarily of midnight green, flexible panels over a black undersuit, with heavier, faintly yellow-edged scaled plating on the gauntlets and calf-guards. Additionally, her gauntlets each featured a set of two red-orange-glowing, backward-curving spikes that functioned as blade-catchers, and three lighter, yellow-orange glowing horns crowned a fierce, dark green helmet with a silver mouthplate and two slanted, red oval bug-eyes for a visor.

“Nice,” Masako adored with an unseen smirk, the single word sounding all the more badass with the voice filter. “But it’s still missing something…”

More nano-metal activity began from her shoulder blades, producing four large sheets of thick, flexible material – two that draped down her back and two larger, more sharply angled ones that rolled over forward. The yellow edges joined together down her front and back, and under her arms, forming a deep green, jagged-edged longcoat with lightning-like patterns of thinly yellow-edged red running down to the four blade-like coattails.

“That works.” She liked the look of the helmet nodding along, and crossed her spiked arms over the new coat with another extended nod of approval. “Let’s see what you can do.”

As she leapt from the roof’s edge, the coat parted into four sections resembling Battra’s wings, trailing behind her like a cape and falling back over her into the longcoat the moment she hit the ground. The workers had only a moment to startle before she looked up and started forward, flexing her gloves to build charges of red lightning along her forearms before lunging clawed fingers out ahead of her. A wide fan of bolts knocked four workers off their feet, leaving orange-glowing, smoking burns in their sternums as they hit the ground, unmoving.

There were shouts and hurried movement from the slightly-raised section to her left, and she turned to where three of the guards were shoving workers aside to move in on the threat. The red lenses of Masako’s mask cackled purple for an instant, then unleashed concentrated beams of purple energy, sweeping a horizontal arc across the platform. The men that weren’t instantly burned in half across the middle were launched into the air when the double-beam’s path intercepted and detonated several chemical drums, the fiery explosions sending burning, screaming bodies sailing away from the dock and into the bay.

She turned her attention back ahead, and fired a shorter burst of eye-beams that burned molten holes through two more guards exiting from the ground-floor door of the watchtower. A semi-casually-thrown bolt of red lightning struck another worker off the edge to her right, and many more danced from her fingers to the remaining targets as she stepped into a twirling spin that made her wing-coat catch air.

One idiot had gotten in close, swinging his nightstick as Masako rounded towards him. The entire Battra suit cackled red as it shifted to pure energy, lunging forward around both weapon and guard in a concentrated bolt of lightning that immediately reconstituted the ranger several meters ahead on the other side. Only moderately disoriented by the teleportation, Masako turned on her heel and sent a pair of lightning blasts into the guard’s back, holding them until they burned out through his chest and he collapsed with a pained yell cut short.

Masako stared at her hands, turning them over to confirm they were solid again. We can DO that?

I PASS THROUGH AN ENERGIZED STATE WHEN SWITCHING BETWEEN LARVAL AND IMAGO FORMS, Battra explained, BUT IT IS AN ABILITY I CAN ONLY CALL ON SPARIN—

Three more guards poured out of the tower, and Masako leapt into pure energy. She resolidified with an elbow cracking against the first man’s ribs, jolted a diagonal and appeared with a knee collapsing the second’s abdomen, and struck a reverse, zig-zagging angle toward the third, materializing fists caving downward into his skull. Another bolt carried her past and into the tower doorway, where she raised her hands and sent lightning cascading up through the open-plan stairwell and burning through the several people still inside the building. She quickly struck back out again, reappearing in the middle of a now-silent loading dock.

…What was that? You wanted to say the teleporting works just fine?

THAT IS NOT WHAT IT IS FOR.

At that moment, three sets of boots hit the ground to her right, and Masako turned back to face the building she’d leapt from to begin with. In her exact same landing spot were three new figures rising to meet her, the leader in shining black armor flanked by the two others in steel grey and a metallic auburn-reddish brown.

Masako let her arms fall slack to the sides, sighing. “And, of course, the Rangers show up to spoil the fun.” She made a show of mock surprise as she looked to the bodies all around her, then visibly restored her own confidence. “Oh, no, you didn’t, because you’re too late to save the poor, defenseless corporate lackeys poisoning the water supply.”

She crossed her arms and tilted her helmet, daring them to talk back.

WHO ARE THESE RANGERS? OTHER HUMAN BEARERS OF THE COINS?

Got it in one, Masako thought with a half-smirk, half-scowl. They have the power to change things, but they don’t. They go around playing ‘hero,’ but only when there’s a monster on the loose to punch with a giant robot. Bunch of self-entitled teenagers in kaiju costumes who never did anything heroic except clean up their dedicated bad guy’s messes. Just let me know how hard you want me to hit ‘em and I’ll try not to enjoy it more than you do.

There was a challenge in the silver teeth surrounding the Godzilla ranger’s visor, his fists curling inward and tensing with disgust. The Anguirus ranger took a threatening step forward and made a noise that might have been an audible snarl. Only the Rodan ranger seemed to keep her cool, but her own readied, clenched fists were far from agreeable.

But if any of them were going to say anything, the twin red-orange beams that stuck Masako in the right shoulder beat them to the punch.

Masako gasped and hissed, rounding as steam rose from the burn on her armor. At least this time, the damage hadn’t burrowed through to her skin.

The fourth ranger hit the ground, black and yellow forewings and red hindwings reshaping into a similar, if less jagged longcoat to Masako’s own. The two zipper-forming edges were a sharply-contrasting yellow, while red and orange eyespots graced the lowered front coattails, the lightning-like triple tendrils of gold crawling down to rest and curve just above. Her armor was white on her upper arms and thighs, but black from knees and elbows down to gold gloves and boots, the panels of her gauntlets and calf guards outlined and segmented thickly in more, reflective gold. Her helmet was striped-around with gold-edged black like an hourglass, wider at her mouthplate and at the top of her head between protruding, but surface-fused antennae, and narrower between the bold, white rings that surrounded her wide, blue oval and hex-patterned eye-lenses.

A furious scream echoed through Masako’s ringing skull.

MOTHRA!

…I take it you two have some history?

Light gathered at the Mothra ranger’s antenna ridges, a short warning before she fired a barrage of dual-beams that struck the ground at farther and farther distances as Masako leapt back. As the firing angle neared the horizontal, Masako teleported out of the way, reappearing far enough to the Mothra ranger’s left to make her quickly turn.

Masako cackled just a bit, building red lightning charges in her hands, but the Mothra ranger leapt upward at an angle, dodging the first bolt and catching air away from the second by gliding on extended wings. As Masako began to track the new angle above, the Mothra ranger kicked a deflection off the side of the watchtower and dropped back toward the outmaneuvered Battra ranger with a piledriving elbow.

Having physically leapt backward that time, Masako barely made sufficient space before countering with Battra’s purple eye beams. The Mothra ranger swung her wings forward, a sparkling field appearing between the edges and scattering the beams into a cluster of narrower energy lances that shot back in reverse. Energy teleportation carried Masako out of the line of fire and placed her behind her opponent, a solidifying, spinning kick catching the Mothra ranger in the lower back. Another pair of beams struck the moth of light as she fell, sending her hard to the concrete ground.

Feet hit Masako along the backs of her shoulders, toppling her over as well, but she stumbled into a distance-gaining forward lunge and rounding spin, rising face-to-face with the Rodan ranger.

The woman’s visor was shadowed by the beak-shaped brim of her helmet, burnt orange against the auburn, a color also held by the diamond-shaped studs running down the narrow, slat-like segments of her form-following torso armor. She thrust her arms out to the sides, and more of the lighter color became visible in the stretches of fibrous material that formed gliding wings, stretching from her waist to the ends of the baton-like extensions that had just slid out from the underslung edges of her gauntlets. She swiftly brought those arms and wings forward, a burst of propulsion energy from the gauntlet structures simulating a gust of wind before the hidden central weapon barrels followed up with narrower purple heat beams.

Sent backwards and off her feet by the first attack, Masako felt the second strike her in the upper chest, the coat taking most of the damage. She finally managed to call herself into the energy state just as the Rodan ranger began to charge and swing her left wing-arm like a weapon.

Masako struck her in the twin-horned back of her head with an elbow, following up with her own purple beams for good measure. The material of a blocking wing seemed able to momentarily take the damage, but not the blowback power, and the Rodan ranger ended up propelled off the dock and into the water.

Masako barely had time to duck below the long, silver sword the Godzilla ranger had pulled from his back sheath and swung at her head. The weapon had a black handle, but the crossguard was silver too, and really formed more of an extension of the blade, shaped almost candlestick-like into four smaller points. The smaller blades paled in comparison to the main length, but gave the weapon an overall shape that generally resembled one of Godzilla’s back spines.

He rounded for another swing, and Masako teleported away just as the blade glowed blue, unleashing an arc of propelled energy. When the ranger found his target again, he arced the sword overhead and brought it down in parallel to the ground, sending several charges of blue energy down the blade until it erupted into a wide beam of blue energy along the length and out toward Masako. The Battra ranger dodged, stepping through energy and knocking the Godzilla ranger off his feet with an elbow thrown to the side.

Then, the Anguirus ranger was staring her down, the sharp edge-angle at the front of his faceplate turning the right and left halves of his helmet and visor different shades in the uneven light.

He was more armored than the others, the heavy grey plates reducing the black undersuit to the barest outlines of his joints. Small, conical gold spikes adorned his form in clusters on his shoulderpads, one each at the backs of his elbows, running in parallel, arcing lines over his collarbone and down to the top of his chest, and on his helmet – one directly above his visor and four in a loose crown pointing upward around the back of his head.

The ranger reached behind him, pulling away both the flattish dome that acted as a hind carapace and the handled object beneath it. He brandished a heavy mace and rounded shield, both steel-grey and covered in the same gold spikes.

Masako sidestepped as the first swing of the mace swept low and hit nothing, again as the second inadvertently knocked over a chemical drum, and for a third time as a heavy bash left shattered concrete where her feet had been moments before. It was a rage-filled, brutish attempt at combat, and also apparently a feint, as on the next swing, the ball of the mace extended from the handle on a chain, forcing a teleport that barely managed to take Masako out of the attack’s range in time.

Rounding the spiked flail over his head, the Anguirus ranger snapped his wrist and sent the weight slinging forward, knocking fragments of concrete out of the guard tower as Masako energy-leapt toward the water’s edge and charged up her eye beams.

Although it was his off shoulder being targeted, the Anguirus ranger managed to round the shield into the line of fire just in time, blocking the purple beams with the spike-studded, convex metal surface. Masako didn’t let up, but the shield held against the attack for far longer than the Battra ranger felt safe standing still to continue.

Sure enough, the Anguirus ranger had enough strength and movement to send the weight of his flail higher on a further-extending chain and bring it crashing downward, directly on where Masako would have been if she hadn’t, just then, teleported to directly behind him.

She readied red lightning in her hands, but the Anguirus ranger thrashed suddenly out to the side, the purpose of the movement only becoming clear when Masako heard the edge of the shield ricochet off the corner of the tower and felt it strike her hard in her left shoulder blade.

The steel and gold knight caught the shield back on his left gauntlet like a returning, magnetic frisbee, and swung out for a bash with his now-retracted mace, but Masako scrambled out of range before she initiated her teleport. The trip through energy carried her up two short, wide flights of stairs and into the bed of a now-unoccupied flatbed truck. The moment the ranger’s visor had tracked her there, she threw the movement into reverse, but hooked her fingers around the upper edge of a chemical drum that had never been offloaded.

In the process, the energy state passed part of Masako’s aura on to the canister, temporarily dragging the large cylinder with her into the bolt of red lightning, She stopped on solid ground with a twirl on her reappearing ankle, releasing the drum with its gained momentum and watching it reconstitute as it sailed through the air toward Anguirus.

The shield, and the strength of the bracing body behind it, was more than enough to halt the movement of the heavy projectile, and in fact, the heavy drum bounced off the shield’s spiked surface, diverting almost directly upward.

It rose less than half a meter above the ranger before twin purple beams struck it midair, creating a sudden explosion that knocked the Anguirus ranger not only off his feet, but nearly a half-dozen meters backward to skid along the concrete of the dock’s lowest level.

A beam of blue from the Godzilla ranger’s sword chased Masako out of her former standing spot and off the raised sections of the platform entirely. The Battra ranger wasted little time in racing an energy-jumping, zig-zagging path toward her opponent, firing off short bursts of her eye beams on each stop. The spine-shaped blade seemed capable of taking the hits on its flat side, but the ranger holding it physically stumbled with the impacts.

Masako had nearly succeeded in a leaping kick to the Godzilla ranger’s head when twin red-orange beams struck her off-course, and she ended up in a stumbling roll on concrete that she was pretty sure had twisted her ankle.

She pushed off the ground with a wild, clearing sweep with her eye beams, managing to hit both upright targets for at least a short duration. In their stunned states, Masako teleport-slammed her full weight into the Godzilla ranger, tackling him to the ground just in time to slip her hand around the hilt of the Anguirus ranger’s discarded mace weapon.

Mothra had her wings fully spread, bolts of orange lightning striking forth from their forward surfaces, but Masako energy-leapt past and behind the storm. Exiting the energy state with a spin, she sent out the length of the Anguirus flail, arcing the weight just past the Mothra ranger’s head and catching a loop around her neck with the chain.

The Mothra ranger choked and gasped at just the impact momentum of the heavy chain alone, before Masako had even begun to pull tight. Battra’s rage fueled the muscles that wrenched at the strangling noose, a sense of satisfaction dawning as desperate, gold-gloved fingers hooked into metal links but failed to attain any leverage.

It wasn’t long before green, red, and yellow wings had extended, the Battra ranger pushing off the ground. Despite the involvement of little, if any displacing movement against the air, Masako’s sustained flight pulled strongly upward and away from her ensnared enemy, like a kite trying to escape on a heavy wind.

Wait. What the fuck am I doing this for?

The strain in her arms let up, causing the distinct hiss of a partial breath at the other end.

NO! MOTHRA MUST BE DESTROYED!

Beneath her helmet, Masako’s face screwed up at the logic. That’s not even Mothra, that’s just her ranger! Can you even actually kill a kaiju at this point?

ALL WHO SERVE MOTHRA MUST PERISH AS WELL! And then, with a tone that was, well, less tantrum-like and more genuinely confused, WHY IS THIS JUST NOW AN ISSUE FOR YOU?

Masako might have had longer to form a reply, if a sudden, rapid gust of wind from above hadn’t completely overpowered the Battra suit’s maintained lift and sent her crashing to the ground, the chain falling slack as the Mothra ranger was also knocked off her feet.

Even the recovering Godzilla and Angurius rangers, as well as the Rodan ranger, recently having climbed back to the dock, were knocked flat to the concrete once again, a cross-shaped shadow passing over their prone bodies on its way to the distorting ripples of the water’s surface beyond.

Filling the air with the soft, but briefly deafening sound of rustling wings, a dragonfly the size of a small, recreational airplane skimmed over the bay for several hundred meters out before taking a sudden nosedive into the shadowy depths.

The Rangers sat up again and turned around to look, though Masako couldn’t be sure whether they’d actually seen the culprit as clearly as she had. Moments later, it hardly mattered, as two more dragonflies of the same size passed farther overhead in unobstructed view, crossing the same distance over the bay before performing the same splashdown.

Masako followed the Rangers’ eyes, keeping her ears tuned for more buzzing, and noted when more dragonflies began approaching from the shore on the other side of the water, barely distinguishable in the golden haze from the clustered buildings. They, too, dropped out of sight around the same point, near the middle of the large, ocean inlet expanse between the two largest portions of the city.

Battra provided a single, darkly-whispered word.

MEGAGUIRUS.

The water in the center of the bay began to bubble harshly as if boiling, and moments later, exploded upward in a geyser, reaching hundreds of meters in the air.

Masako still had to tilt her neck significantly higher than that, to lay her eyes on the gold and violet, insectoid creature that loomed almost deathly silent in the sky above.

A dragonfly whose wings were like those of a dragon, whose forelegs were narrow claws like those of a crawfish, whose tail ended in a downward and forward-curving stinger like that of a hornet, and whose reptilian head boasted a set of lizard-like jaws filled with jagged teeth.

Megaguirus screeched, and left a motion-blur afterimage behind her as she moved more quickly than a human eye could process, appearing at the far end of the bay with her vibrating wings already slicing across skyscrapers mid-flight.

The Rangers turned back around, exhaustion in their stances, and their visors all coldly staring down Masako as she climbed to her feet.

“She was distracting us…” said the Mothra ranger, her quiet words marked equally with scornful judgement and solemn, dawning horror.

Masako put up her hands. “Hey, I had nothing to do with that.”

She knew her tone was still ambiguous enough that they probably thought she was gloating. She wasn’t quite sure she would mind, if that were the case.

“It doesn’t matter,” the Godzilla ranger grunted. “Let’s go.”

They left Masako standing there on the dock, as they – with visible difficulty – performed their acrobatic leaps of departure, disappearing into the buildings leading away from the water.

Across the bay, Megaguirus was cast even more golden in the lights of the falling city around her, the blur of her afterimage zooming back and forth between the severed and crumbling structures. For a giant, toothy dragonfly, she seemed to be enjoying herself, screeches of apparent amusement filling the air for kilometers around.

The Rodan and Mothra zords were the first on the scene, diving down from the clouds to take the dragonfly kaiju by surprise. Antenna beams from Mothra and a uranium heat beam from Rodan burned deeply enough to draw smoke from either draconic wing, prompting a screech of pain as Megaguirus disappeared quickly out of firing range.

A barrage of golden, cone-shaped missiles rising out of the city heralded the Anguirus zord’s arrival, the payload launched skyward from the robotic ankylosaur’s carapace. Curving to align with their target, the missiles actually managed to track Megaguirus effectively through several zig-zagging bursts of flight, but the dragonfly ultimately managed to lead the projectiles straight into the towering bulk of the Godzilla zord. A beam of atomic breath was knocked off course, tinting a swath of the night sky blue as the machine staggered backward, sparking, out of a cloud of smoke.

The damage to the city was already impressively high, the bodycount likely soaring no matter how empty those buildings were at night. Usually it only got this bad in a long, drawn-out battle against a far more powerful opponent, like Destoroyah or a team of enemy zords.

The difference here was that Megaguirus was fast, causing as much destruction in seconds as most kaiju managed in minutes.

The difference was also that the Rangers clearly weren’t at their best. The flight of the Rodan and Mothra zords demonstrated relatively slow reaction times, their weapon aim slipping as well. The Godzilla zord was taking hits it could usually dodge or tank more effectively, and though the Anguirus zord leapt valiantly from mounds of rubble, its teeth and claws fell short of even Megaguirus’ afterimage before falling back to the earth.

“She was right, wasn’t she?” Masako asked in a whisper, putting all her weight on her uninjured ankle as she stopped at the edge of the water. “We were distracting them.”

…WE BOTH KNOW THAT WAS NOT OUR INTENT.

Masako shook her head. “No, the… the Xilien or whatever. He knew we’d stir up trouble. He used us, to draw the Rangers’ attention and buy time for Megaguirus to set up. By the looks of it, we wore them down pretty bad, too.”

The Rangers might lose, she added in passing thought, as the battle continued to tilt in Megaguirus’ favor. Finally seeing it about to happen, Masako wasn’t sure how she actually felt about that.

On one hand, it would be satisfying to see them fall, for the part-time heroes of false hope and empty promises to get what they deserved. On the other hand, Megaguirus was a real, genuine factor that needed to be considered, since revenge aside, leaving a giant prehistoric dragonfly around to do whatever afterward would probably lead to some adverse ecological effects, let alone what plans the Xiliens might have for her.

And yeah, occupied buildings were also dropping left and right, and while Masako was long bereft of the energy to care whether ninety percent of the people in them lived or died…

It was still only ninety.

Statistically, at least some fraction of the lives ended by Megaguirus were those whose passing was undeserved enough for Masako to mourn, and that just didn’t sit right.

Especially since this was all at least a little bit her own fault.

Across the bay, the four mechanical kaiju facsimiles gathered for their final play, invoked with far less damage already dealt to the enemy kaiju than they would usually have held out for.

The Godzilla zord’s upper torso split in half, making space to accommodate the head and tail that folded in to become, respectively, the center of the chest and a multiply-split and nested spine between the now-dual columns of silver back plates. The zord’s small arms wrapped around to clip the clawed hands backward over the shoulders to bulk out the upper torso, and the folded-over neck also split apart to allow a megazord head to rise between another divided row of plates.

The Anguirus zord leapt, detaching its tail as it left the ground, and then its main body split apart just below its throat. The bottom half containing the square-tiled underbelly armor swung out behind to become the upper arm, while the zord’s head and four limbs all folded and condensed under the carapace to replace the lost mass and become the inward bulk of the forearm. A grey-plated and gold-fingered fist slid out from where the neck had folded under, and the Anguirus zord attached to the Godzilla zord’s left shoulder, the spiky carapace becoming a forearm shield.

The Rodan zord circled in from behind, its smaller tail retracting inward as otherwise, the same top-bottom split occurred. The section with the diamond-shaped chest spikes formed the upper arm, as the neck, head, and legs condensed under the zord’s back. The wings then folded over the back in a mirror to a roosting posture, forming a second forearm shield as an auburn-plated, orange-fingered hand slid out from behind the folded-away neck and the Rodan zord connected to the Godzilla zord’s right shoulder.

The Mothra zord dove in from above, slotting in its legs to lock with the Godzilla zord’s folding-away back plates. The massive pair of wings lifted the megazord enough for two larva-shaped secondary zords to attach as boots and lower leg armor, the upward-angling spikes at the ends of their tails now protruding from the megazord’s knees.

Megazord Goji hefted the Anguirus zord’s tail as a sword in its Rodan hand, bringing to bear the steel-grey weapon’s gold, spike-serrated edges and the parallel spikes at the end that formed a sort of spade-tip. In a rush, the humanoid mech bolted forward, leaping to a glide with Mothra’s wings and propelling itself by the green energy beams firing from the bottoms of the larval zords’ heads.

Screeching in challenge, the dragonfly kaiju easily dodged the leaping sword-swing, lowering and spinning at the end of her escape path to stare almost gloatingly at the bulky, landing machine’s much slower rounding turn. The megazord brought up its Anguirus-carapace left forearm like the shield it was, and launched a barrage of spike missiles, but Megaguirus rapidly vibrated her wings, creating a distortion around herself that caused the missiles to explode before they could harm her. She barged forward through the projectiles, detonating them with her mere proximity, and wound her right arm into a quick, bashing claw attack that left the stumbling megazord rattled and momentarily unresponsive as she darted away.

“I don’t like that,” Masako decided, shaking her head. “I don’t like being messed with, and don’t like people thinking they can make me a part of their plan and get away with it.”

Reappearing in the megazord’s disoriented, searching view with an announcing screech, Megaguirus broke the sound barrier, darting a low path toward the combined machine with her stinger poised. The attack struck the megazord’s left shoulder, sparks flying as the Anguirus zord was wedged completely off the attachment joint. The tail point continued along its course and punched a hole through the Mothra zord’s left wing, hooking into the metal and tearing away yet another zord as the dragonfly sped past. The Mothra zord was dragged through the air for several city blocks before Megaguirus spun rapidly, throwing the weight free with a pleased screech and watching the helpless machine crash backwards into a crumbling parking garage.

Answer me honestly, Masako continued, popping the corner of a hollow smirk at the timing of the Mothra zord’s misfortune. Do you?

The one-armed megazord stood its ground, sword raised in challenge as Megaguirus snarled a smile and clacked its claws. The dragonfly’s chitter was almost certainly mocking laughter.

…THE XILIENS HAVE NO RIGHT TO MY POWER, EITHER. THEY SEEK TO DESTROY THE HUMANS, BUT THEIR GOALS ARE NOT MY OWN. THEY SEEK TO CLAIM THE EARTH FOR THEMSELVES. THEY ARE MY ENEMY.

Mine too, then. Masako smiled fiercely. One more question… do we get a zord, too?

Distantly, red lightning rocked the deeper waters beyond the bay. Masako turned to her left just in time to watch the upward-striking bolts coalesce in the air above, solidifying from a red glow to a solid, primarily dark green hovering object.

Like all the zords, its appearance was somewhat simplified and rendered with harder edges than its organic counterpart, but down to the colors, horn placement, and wing shape, it was unmistakably Battra, even from several kilometers out.

The zord was drifting slowly closer to shore, but Masako cut the distance with a trip through a lightning bolt, appearing in the cockpit a fraction of a second later. It was spacious for a single pilot seat, with lightly-padded, bright red interior décor, and a pair of hand controls that acted as more of a link to Masako’s power and will than any kind of mechanical steering.

Masako drove the zord forward through the sky, stiff metal wings remaining parallel to the body even through several experimental tilts. She could sense the large reserve of power within the machine, and all the ways she could utilize it, including lightning from the wings and directed, heavy energy beams from the eyes.

Six hours ago I was beating up gangsters with batons, and now I have a fighter jet.

Megaguirus sped a flurry of glancing strikes around the megazord, easily outpacing the overwhelmed humanoid mech and drawing showers of sparks with each slice of her sharpened wingtips. The machine resorted to throwing a punch with its remaining arm, one Megaguirus easily dodged, the dragonfly reappearing immediately behind her adversary and latching onto both metal shoulders with her claws. Her tail curled up from the left side of the megazord’s waist, the stinger at the end piercing the eye of the Godzilla zord where the saurian head lay dormant at the center of the combination’s chest.

Blue energy surged from the wound, chaotic electrical volts sending the megazord into sparking convulsions while stealthily drawn power traveled back through Megaguirus’ tail. Lingering near the side of the megazord’s head with smug condescension, the toothy, reptilian maw of Megaguirus twisted into a cruel, sadistic smirk.

Twin purple beams struck the dragonfly in the face.

Megaguirus vanished from behind the megazord, and darted back into view, placing itself out over the water and directly in the path of the Battra zord’s rapid approach. A burned face screeched out in rage, wings vibrated to an ascending roar, and the dragonfly charged.

Seen that smile too many times not to wipe it off, Masako thought with a fury that came easily. You’re going down, and if your little swarm went hunting anywhere near Desolation, I’ll bring you the fuck back to life just to kill you slower.

She drifted up and to the right and flipped the Battra zord’s wingspan vertical, the zord’s left wingtip drawing sparks against Megaguirus’ armored back as the dragonfly passed underneath. Both combatants rounded in the air and flew in for a second pass, the Battra zord leveling out and firing a series of double eye beams that Megaguirus dodged around in a darting, angled spiral.

The dragonfly opened her claws, clearly ready to grasp Battra by the wings and bring her impaling stinger up from below, but Masako tilted skyward at the last second. The Battra zord’s front pair of mechanical, jointed legs slammed against the top of Megagurius’s head, sending the dragonfly into a brief, disoriented dive while the zord ramped up higher.

Continuing to pull up, Masako completed an upside-down curve, exiting far above the battle into a vertical dive and firing her eye beams downward. Geysers of steam shot upward from the water all around as Megaguirus zig-zagged a frantic path of avoidance, making a break through the raining fire and back toward the cover of the city.

The Battra zord rotated through the dive and leveled out in pursuit, keeping low over the water as long as possible and firing beams upward to force Megaguirus higher into the air. Finally, the small band of coastal docks passed beneath, and Battra ascended to move in.

In a flash, Megaguirus darted to the side, and back into line behind the dark moth. Blue energy cackled at the end of her stinger, the absorbed power from the Godzilla zord coalescing.

Masako banked right, then left, then finally spun a full barrel roll to keep the blue beam from attaining a consistent lock. The back edges of the Battra zord’s wings sustained minor burning damage, but the dragonfly kaiju’s stolen energy expired before the stinger beam could dish out anything further.

Megaguirus screeched, and sped ahead, closing the gap. Masako pulled her zord into a long left curve, tilted and lightning-patterned wings slicing vertically through the air above the city as the dragonfly swerved as well to keep up the pursuit.

On the ground, the megazord aimed its Rodan fist at the sky, unfolding the shield-forming forearm wings until they stretched the zord’s full wingspan out to either side of the arm. A cable of red-orange energy snapped across from wingtip to wingtip, drawing back at the midpoint to sit behind the pommel of the Anguirus tail sword that lowered into place like a crossbow bolt.

It was their final attack, the one they called upon to end every fight, but usually only when a kaiju was at its weakest. Sure enough, the spear-like projectile was dodged handily by a full-speed Megaguirus, and continued on its path into the upper atmosphere before vanishing to pure energy and reappearing in the crossbow arm for another shot.

Even the brief interruption wasn’t enough to shake Megaguirus off Makaso’s tail, or even make enough space to turn around and fire.

Still, seeing the Rangers’ weapon reload for the first time she could remember it ever having needed to, actually managed to give Makaso an idea.

“Hey, Battra? Do you think we still have that… other power?”

Battra sighed, which was also a weird thing to happen inside Masako’s head.

THAT IS NOT WHAT IT IS…

Armored claws slammed down on top of the zord’s wings, sliding forward enough to hook over the front edges and drag Megaguirus fully on top of the machine. Six partially vestigial legs found frictional purchase between the spine-simulating armor ridges in the zord’s carapace. A toothy maw cried out in victory.

…YOU KNOW WHAT? GO AHEAD. TRY IT.

Masako channeled power into the controls, and cackling waves of red energy coursed over the Battra zord, fueling a brightening red glow over the whole of the machine even within Megaguirus’ grasp. The curved point of a stinger lunged upward from below, only for its target to disperse from the physical realm in a blinding flash of red light.

Megaguirus cried out in pain, her stinger now embedded deep into the underside of her own thorax.

A bolt of red lightning struck from above, pushing Megaguirus further onto her stinger and down below building level, all as a forming shape exploded outward from the impact on the dragonfly’s carapace. Six small arcs of energy rounded down past the bases of draconic wings, becoming mechanical legs that secured a cage-like hold around Megaguirus’ thorax. The zord’s own solidifying, stiff metal wings hinged slightly upward and caught the air, overpowering the kaiju’s flight and dragging her sideways across the city.

Drifting into a wide intersection, widened further by damage to the corner buildings, Masako caught sight of the partial megazord directly ahead, crossbow still formed. Infuriatingly, the machine hesitated, the Rangers apparently still unable to process having all the actual work done for them.

“Can I talk to them? I want to talk to them.” Masako voiced aloud, only for the icon of a zord-to-zord communication channel to appear on her viewscreen. “Good. Now… shoot this fucking dragonfly while I have it contained, you skreeonking banana-oil-headed imbeciles!”

…WHAT WAS THAT?

I don’t know, I ran out of good swear words after ‘fuck.’

Megaguirus struggled, screeching and flailing and slamming the backs of her claws upward against Battra’s wings, all to no avail. The megazord finally aimed the weapon properly, firing the sword directly toward the pinned kaiju.

Masako teleported her zord out of the way at the last second, reforming in the air beside the megazord with a view toward the point of impact.

As the sword pierced the creature’s body, all of the unleashed kaiju’s physical mass was converted back to pure energy, drawn into the weapon’s wake like a collapsing vortex until a bright light took the monster’s place, then vanished with the brief sparkle of a tiny star. Somewhere, Megaguirus dropped into the city’s wreckage, re-sealed into a power coin.

Masako didn’t bother listening to whatever the stunned Rangers had begun to say to her, before turning the Battra zord on a dime and firing a pair of purple energy beams directly into the megazord’s upper torso.

The combined machine sparked, detonations appearing across its frame, and toppled over entirely, laid out flat on the multi-lane city street below.

“Later, losers,” Masako broadcast over shouts and cries of protest, smirking as she cut the line and pulled quickly into the sky. They were probably very confused, and she hoped they would be.

The earliest band of morning light crossed the horizon, brightening the sky as the Battra zord performed several unnecessary barrel rolls, speeding away into the break of dawn.

Masako settled into her pillow with a groan as the morning sun poured in through the window, across the corner spread of the wooden computer desk, and into the small bed that occupied most of that side of the room prior to the small nightstand flush with the opposite wall.

She’d tried to cover herself with a sheet, but it had ended up hooked over one foot and twisted tight around her midsection instead, and she’d been too sore and tired to correct it. Warm light bathed bare skin, irritating the freshest of the many bruises and burns across her body.

Blood tricked faintly from a knuckle on her right hand, and she watched the small trail of red flow down the skin to near her thumb. Strangely, though, the bleeding stopped almost as soon as she’d noticed it, and over the next several minutes, she watched the wound seal itself shut.

YOUR RANGER STRENGTH IS ASSISTING WITH HEALING YOUR INJURIES, Battra supplied at Masako’s confusion.

There was a long, somewhat nervous or hesitant pause.

WITH MY OWN POWER, I AM ABLE TO HEAL THEM INSTANTLY, IF YOU WOULD PREFER.

…Yes, that might be helpful, Masako deadpanned.

Warm, golden light appeared over the most recent disturbances in her skin, and the night’s worth of pain and soreness eased away. She was still tired, but smiled at the relief, shifting a bit to get more comfortable now that she didn’t have to tiptoe around so many wounds. She snuggled against her pillow with a soft exhale.

Sorry I can’t be your badass murder-planeteer all the time.

BATTRA ACKNOWLEDGES YOU ARE MORTAL. TIMES OF VULNERABILITY ARE TO BE EXPECTED.

Masako blinked, trying to decide how much of that had been genuine. I should also probably apologize about how awkward this is going to get, with you in my head all the time.

I SEE NO REASON THAT IT NEED BE.

A smirk almost gave way to a laugh. We’ll get there, trust me.

Battra was quiet for a long time, almost enough that Masako wondered whether she’d finally get the chance to fall asleep.

THESE PEOPLE HERE. THEY ARE THE ONES YOU STILL CARE ABOUT?

Yes, Masako answered. She hadn’t said anything to the others on her return, about Battra or the battle or anything, but she’d already decided she would. This power would not be kept hidden from those who needed it.

These people… they know. They know how much destruction humans cause, they’d change it if they could, and everyone here has been hurt by humanity just as much as the Earth has. They don’t deserve to have to fight for their lives every single fucking day, but apparently someone has to, so… so I do.

She hoped Battra’s expectations also applied to the tears in her eyes.

I’d do anything to keep them safe. Whatever this is, that has to be a part of it. If you want all humans extinct, you can just wait ‘til the end of our lifespans. You’re immortal, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.

…IF WHAT YOU SAY IS TRUE, BATTRA FINDS THESE TERMS ACCEPTABLE.

Thank you. Masako closed her eyes with a tearful nod. When she opened them, her gaze fell upward on the reflective glint from the power coin, where it rested on the edge of the desk. My turn. Why do you hate Mothra so much?

Battra half-grumbled, half-sighed. Still weird.

MOTHRA IS THE DEFENDER OF LIFE, AND TO HER, THIS INCLUDES HUMANITY. SHE BELIEVES SHE CAN SAVE BOTH HUMANS AND THE EARTH. IT IS A FOOLISH BELIEF. SHE WILL CONTINUE TO PROTECT THEM, TO FORGIVE THEIR MISTAKES, UNTIL THE END, NOT INTENDING FOR THE EARTH TO DIE IN THE PROCESS BUT ALLOWING IT ALL THE SAME FOR HER UNWILLINGNESS TO CHOOSE.

Masako nodded along. Plenty of people like that, too.

Battra was hesitant, but only for a moment. YOU SHOW A SURPRISING WILLINGNESS TO ACT, EVEN THROUGH DESTRUCTION AND DEATH. WHY DID YOU REFUSE TO KILL MOTHRA’S RANGER?

Oh, there’s no mystery there. Just plain, unashamed, personal bias. Masako shrugged with a guiltless, defiant smirk. You met me while I was dumping bodies in the river, I’m allowed to have bad qualities.

She let the silence settle, reading Battra’s confusion, and lightly sighed.

Sometimes I just… feel like I could reach people, with enough time. Or that there’s a chance someone might be on my side, even they don’t show it. I’m not always right, but… I guess I want to keep believing the people who give a shit aren’t alone in the world. You said it yourself, Mothra doesn’t actually want to cause that destruction, she’s just hopelessly conflicted.

OR DELUDED.

Sure. Point is… maybe I empathize too much by default, at least until I get to know someone. It’s selfish, really. Or instinctual. I don’t know. She stared again at the gleaming edge of the coin. Haven’t you ever wanted a family?

Battra was silent, at least for a longer moment. ONCE, I THOUGHT PERHAPS I COULD.

Masako blinked again, surprised at the admission. You wanna talk about it?

NO.

There were no words after that. If Masako knew her history, she had a pretty good idea what Battra was thinking about, but she wouldn’t pry.

She reached up to the desk’s edge, taking the coin and tilting it in her fingers. She lazily watched the silver and amethyst catch the light, then drew in her arms and held the amulet close to her chest, where it would hang once she found a chain for it. The metal was a smooth and foreign texture, but warmed from the sun and not cold against her skin.

Well, I’ll listen if you ever do.

It was night, and engines sounded in the dark. Revving cycles acting only as envoys for the deafening roar that sent pure horror through the souls of all who heard it.

Masako stood her ground, the others gathered far behind her. Most were inside, as she’d pleaded, but some had only just arrived with no time to find shelter. Others were foolhardy in their bravery, but bold in their show of it.

The lead cyclist wasn’t dressed in street clothes like the others. His naval-style suit was silvery grey, his hat and patterned eyepatch all imitated relics of a bygone age. He stood with a smirk as the monstrosity slowed to a stop just behind him.

The pride of the Red Bamboo land fleet was an eighteen-wheeled tanker truck, armored with welded-on steel panels and porcupined with garish, meter-long spikes angled in all directions. Ladders wrapped up around the sides of the tank to the low-railed walkway atop it, where four maneuverable, turret-style heavy acid cannons were piped-in directly to the source, two at the front and two at the rear.

“Ah, chosen to die with dignity?” the leader joked with amusement in his one visible eye. “Too bad you don’t have any. Today is the day all you freaks will be cleansed from this city once and for all.”

Masako returned his confidence, crossing her arms with her own, knowing smirk of defiance. “Or, it’s the day we find out how flammable that stuff you use is.”

The leader’s eye showed skepticism, in the moment before the wind shifted. His, and those of the rest of the Red Bamboo, rose skyward, while Masako’s remained locked ahead.

A gigantic, winged silhouette passed above, cutting off moonlight between the tops of buildings. Shouts had only begun when the twin purple beams lanced downward, engulfing the tanker truck in a sudden fireball that swept over the entire intersection and several dozen meters down all four roadways like a miniature supernova. The bodies closest were vaporized instantly, those with enough distance merely thrown to the ground with the death sentences of burning chemical fires.

Masako walked slowly through the flames, her ranger gauntlets forming up to her elbows. The few Red Bamboo who had escaped the fire were cut down with casually-thrown energy bolts – including one who technically didn’t need it, as he’d been impaled to the ground by one of the truck’s metal spikes, launched from the explosion like a spear.

The sharply-dressed leader rose in Masako’s path with a yell, but a bolt to his chest threw him back over his downed cycle, weapon dropped from his hand as he lay choking on the ground.

More frost-like metal completed all except Masako’s helmet, her-wing-coat rolling down over her shoulders as she approached the fallen man with a stern grimace.

“Moth…ra?” the leader babbled, staring up to the now-clear night sky with fear, blood trickling at the corner of his mouth as he began to convulse.

“Nope,” Masako snarked coldly as she stepped on his fallen body and allowed her boot to sink into the fresh injury. The leader writhed more intensely, and Masako pressed deep, leaning over so her own, cold eyes were aligned with his. “There’s a new moth in town.”

Metal formed over her face, solidifying the midnight green helmet and sprouting three glowing, fiery horns. A pair of red lenses closed across the line of their locked gazes, and turned purple.

Chapter Text

The wind was picking up over the open sea, echoing through the Battra zord like a steady, ominous hissing sound. Turbulence ever-so-slightly rocked the wings as the mechanical moth held course, skimming along the lower edge of the cloud layer.

Through the viewscreen, Masako zeroed in on the faint disturbance in the water below, a blemish of constructed solidity thrown about by strengthening waves.

ANOTHER WHALING VESSEL? Battra inquired from inside her mind. Given the bulk of the morning’s activities, it wasn’t such a far-off guess.

It would be the fourth they’d sunk to the wretched depths, today alone.

…Nah, Masako decided, taking in the size and shape, and making out what details she could. Think smaller, crueler, and more wasteful.

Sent down in a lightning bolt of brilliant red, amid the greys of the sea and brewing storm, the Battra ranger struck into being at the center of the small fishing boat’s top deck, rising from a knee and fist to reveal a crown of fiery horns and wide, burning red, bug-eye lenses of judgement. Fists clenched, below gauntlets augmented with glowing spikes, and the warning colors of red and yellow ran jagged down the shape of a midnight green longcoat taken by stowed wings.

There were shouts, some more confused than fearful, but that distinction failed to linger. It wasn’t long before Masako had burned a man stone-dead with a burst of red energy to the sternum, stolen an entire, flopping mako shark into her arms, and heaved it sideways off the boat in a bridal-style throw that couldn’t have possibly looked intimidating.

Then, a pair of purple eye beams cut a rounding swath across the deck to set it ablaze, burning through equipment and causing the crew to duck and leap away in fear. All trembled before her.

The distant rumble of thunder broke the terrified silence, as Masako cast her fury-filled gaze upon the ship’s captain.

“Please…” the old man begged, palms brought together as if in prayer. “Have mercy… why do you do this, what have we done?”

“What have you—” Masako balked with fury to equal Battra’s. With a motion quick enough it made the men behind her gasp and tremble, she sent a pointing finger toward a wide, plasic basin set into the wooden deck, it’s bottom already filled an inch deep with more vibrantly rose-colored blood than water. “What the fuck do you mean what did you do?”

The man pleaded again. “This is our livelihood! It is all we have! The money is here, on the sea when the land has forsaken us, and whatever I can earn is all I can do for my family!”

Masako sighed, her shoulders slackening as she fell to a low grumble. “Why does this shit have to be so morally complicated?”

DOUBTS?

“Oh, no, don’t worry, I’m still gonna do it,” she assured, refocusing back on the captain and relishing the moment he trembled. “I’m just not gonna feel too good about it.”

Red lenses cackled with purple, and the twin beams shot out at a slightly widening angle, striking the elderly man in both his shoulders. His severed arms fell to the deck, steam rising from the stumps as he cried out in agony.

Masako took two steps forward, and sank the claws of her glove into his fishing vest, lifting him clear off the ground with one arm and bringing his screaming head into a close view of the Battra suit’s fierce helmet.

“Good luck,” Masako snarled coldly with a hiss, and heaved the two-limbed man over the side of the boat, watching the geyser rise as he splashed into the sea.

Okay, I lied… that did actually feel pretty good.

It was only for a moment, though, as she turned away from the water and toward the other, horrified fishermen still on the boat. The gargled, choking screams from the rush of water below finally made her wince.

“Actually…” she made a slightly apologetic, far-too-casual tilt of her head, then set her hands over the low wall around the deck to peer back over the edge.

Eye beams charged again, ready to at least make the guy’s death quick, when instead, the water all along the side of the boat churned upward in a central mountainous rise surrounded by writhing splashes that cracked like whips.

A pair of bulbous, pale red and slickly reflective mounds rose first from the sea, each inset on its outer side by an immense, lazy yellow eye with a diagonal black pupil slit. A larger mass dragged behind, most of it remaining submerged, but from the visible portion alone, it was easily larger than the boat Masako was standing on. A multitude of tentacles finally broke the surface, some arcing only to slap the water again, with one particularly fierce one swinging the screaming, disarmed captain about through the air by one of his ankles.

The giant octopus heaved itself up out of the water enough to easily swing its caught prey down into the gap between its front tentacles, the beak on its underside snapping shut as the creature’s immense bulk fell splashing back down onto the tumultuous sea.

“Well, that solves that problem…”

The Oodako’s eyes only just now seemed to register the seafaring vessel directly in front of it, and with another heave, it slammed itself forward, rocking the boat enough that even Masako stumbled. When the ranger managed to right herself, she’d made it barely fast enough to watch as the massive octopus dove swiftly underwater.

Tentacles rose from all around the small vessel, catching the other sailors by surprise and snatching them up off the deck, all while the boat continued to shake from the creature’s main body slamming into it repeatedly from below.

“Actually, that solves all the problems!”

Masako gave a mock salute to the struggling, dying sailors, then vanished upward in a return bolt of lightning, reappearing in the Battra zord’s cockpit and watching from safely above as the giant octopus continued to devour the ship’s crew and finally, drag the boat itself down below the waves.

Minutes later, thunder struck one more, and rain began to pour, a great fog rolling over the sea and shrouding the surface in its obscuring mist. The Battra zord was caught in momentary turbulence, tilting at least forty degrees from the horizontal, and just when it seemed the rough patch had run its course, the machine became rocked by less intense, but continuous winds that only seemed to be increasing in strength.

THIS DISTURBANCE WOULD BE NO OBSTACLE FOR BATTRA, BUT THE CONSTRUCT HAS ITS LIMITS. PERHAPS THIS VENTURE HAS RUN ITS COURSE.

Masako would’ve agreed, had her eyes not then spotted, through the obscuring fog, the nonetheless distinctive bright white of a ship’s hull.

Wait. There!

It was gone in seconds, a thicker layer of mist shielding the object from view, but Masako had enough of a heading to go on. She brought the Battra zord lower, the haze clearing away the deeper she ventured, until finally, the ship revealed itself.

As did the immense, rocky coastal mountainside it had somehow been thrown upon by the storm.

It was far enough away that she didn’t have to worry about crashing, but her hands still gripped tighter on the controls for several seconds at the shock of the large, formerly hidden landmass that she hadn’t had any inkling of moments earlier.

The boat was larger than the standard fishing vessel, but not by much, and from a cursory glance, it had no clear signs of any fishing equipment mounted to what was left of the deck. What was left, because the white-hulled ship had been broken into at least three pieces, likely in the same incident responsible for it now being stranded, landlocked, two hundred meters above sea level on a creviced stone ledge above a sheer cliff face.

THAT ISLAND…

Masako had still been wrapping her head around the boat when Battra’s ominous words bowled through her thoughts. The island? What’s so special about the island? What is it?

FOR SOME OF US, IT WAS HOME.

Wait, you mean…

It was a wide island with many peaks, possibly part of a chain if the more distant ones had water between them, though the central peak stood high above all. The surface was darkened by the pouring rain, almost as if it had been raining here for far longer than the past several minutes Masako had experienced it, but a large portion of the visible surface was populated by dense vegetation. Relatively small, unnatural structures that had at first appeared like radio or cell towers, were in fact built more like immense stadium lights, spaced far apart in the gaps between the taller mountain peaks. By now, they were falling clearly into disrepair, with most stripped of their checkerboard protective plating and several almost completely toppled.

Far below the shipwreck, in a small, seaside rocky cavern near the chopped waterline, several sand-red tentacles coiled closer to the body of a giant octopus even larger than the one Masako had watched devour the boat, this one attempting to squeeze itself into the gap to protect itself from the strength of the churning waves.

Monster Island.

There was still fog and storming winds all around, enclosing the hovering Battra zord in a cyclone-like tunnel that rendered the island visible but nothing else, aside from the immediate sea below.

IT COULD BE AN OLD WRECK.

No, look at the split trees, the minor landslides around it. That spot’s freshly disturbed.

AN UNFORTUNATE VESSEL CAUGHT IN THE STORM.

“And thrown two whole Godzillas high in the air?” Masako couldn’t help but state aloud. “Face it, Battra, there is a mystery on Monster Island, are we really gonna just leave this alone?”

The bolt of red lighting deposited Masako on the rain-soaked ledge, where she was careful to keep her footing. She found herself grateful that the ranger armor acted as a seal against the elements, and walked through the continuing downpour with little in the way of discomfort. With no guarantee it could keep aloft in the storm, and in lieu of hoping for a safe landing site, the Battra zord converted itself back into red energy and struck downward into the depths of the sea.

WHAT IS IT YOU HOPE TO FIND HERE?

A really, really big safe filled with diamonds, Masako thought with a smirk. Maybe some rare earth metals, a complete Spinosaurus skeleton, a physical backup of Geocities, the last Mark Cerasini novel… I’d probably settle for a whaler who died in a really funny way, to be honest.

They’d made it to site of the wreck, and… it was a mess. Pieces of metal strewn about everywhere, and much more damage to the trees and hillside than should have been caused by the boat’s impact alone. On closer inspection, the disturbances in all cases seemed to have been largely caused by sets of parallel, tearing claws. The culprit didn’t remain a question for long after that, as the crash site was also littered with wiry and rain-disheveled, but nonetheless brilliantly red feathers, each of them at least as long as Masako was tall.

THERE, MYSTERY SOLVED. AN OOKONDORU ATTACKED THE VESSEL AND BROUGHT IT HERE.

Masako paused at that, eyes narrowing.

Maybe… but what’s got you so worked up, anyways? You’ve been freaking out about this the whole time, were you… were you here when…

I WAS NEVER INTERRED HERE, NOR DID I RESIDE ON THIS ISLAND FOR ANY EXTENDED TIME EVEN WITHOUT THE DEFENSES. I WAS ACQUIRED ELSEWHERE.

Then what’s wrong?

BEING HERE PRESENTS AN UNCALCULATED RISK, WITH NO PREDETERMINED REWARD. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE PURPOSE.

Wandering into the open interior of the ship, scanning through what was still intact enough to search, Masako arched an eyebrow. Are you worried about me?

Her mental image of Battra looked offended. WHAT CONCERNS ME IS THE UNJUSTIFIED THREAT TO AN AGREEABLE HOST, OR THE POSSIBILITY THAT MY POWER COIN MAY SIMPLY BE LOST HERE AND NEVER RECOVERED. I AM YET TO SENSE A WORTHWHILE REASONING.

You’re in my head. You already know what I’m thinking.

AND THERE IS NO REASON TO BELIEVE THERE IS EVIDENCE HERE.

But if it’s anywhere, Monster Island is as good a place to start looking, and if there’s even a chance we can figure it all out… the coins, the rangers… I still don’t know why you’re not more on board with this.

Battra fell silent, and Masako figured that was just as well. The shipwreck offered little insight into her immediate investigation, other than the lack of bodies and the conspicuous presence of several detailed maps of Monster Island. The former suggested the crew had either escaped, been eaten, or some mixture of the two, and the latter proved that whoever was on board had come here intentionally, looking for the island instead of being slammed against it coincidentally.

Monster Island had been abandoned for almost twenty years, at least officially. The fact someone was seeking it out now caught Masako’s undivided attention. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do some more looking around, see if anyone did survive after all.

And if they did, they certainly had some explaining to do.

What Masako had determined to be the most obvious route away from the crash site, was a narrow, descending ravine traveling farther inland, like a deep crack opening directly into the face of the mountain. The path below her feet was a steep slope of loose, finely-crumbled rock, the smallest pieces resembling gravel.

Mist from both rain, and audible rushing water somewhere below partially obscured the path ahead, but it was clear the opening curved gradually to the right, and dropped enough in elevation that it might very well have reached sea level again at the bottom. Though every surface of stone was colored darker by the wash of rain, as Masako carefully navigated downward, she found that the rock fragments near the flattening-out bottom of the hill were rounder, like pebbles, eroded by far more frequent exposure to water.

The mist was denser in the valley, a space wider than the initial ravine and seemingly acting as an intersection with other paths between sheer rocky cliffs. Waterfalls, no doubt strengthened by the downpour, dropped hundreds of meters to a pebbled ground that parted the flowing streams like a permeable, easily-rearranged delta.

And something was moving through the fog ahead.

Masako dropped to a knee behind a larger, boulder-sized, oval-shaped stone, her left shoulder against the smooth rock as she matched her line of sight to the top surface.

There were sounds, now. The shifting of pebbles under larger, heavier feet. The croaking, almost purr-like, internal fluid adjustment of a stomach jostled on walking limbs. A wild, ear-piercing shriek that cried out in a sudden spasm but quieted the very next moment, only to repeat the process as the shadow moved closer.

Two limbs – only two that connected to the ground, but with elbow-bends instead of knee-bends. Horizontal posture, with a long, whip-like tail that intermittently counterbalanced and dragged behind it. Narrowing, crocodilian jaws, with a more consistent silhouette than the shifting muscle on the rest of the creature, possibly the result of increased armor in that area. Approximately four meters in height, if distance could be judged accurately, and at least three times that in length.

“Skull-crawler,” a voice whispered, which surprised Masako because it was a very different intonation than Battra’s. “Keep quiet. It’s been screaming like that for twenty minutes, I don’t think it actually knows we’re here.”

Masako spent the next several, tense minutes processing the fact that another person was sharing her cover, with the mist between them thick enough she could only see a vague silhouette even less than a meter apart.

The skull-crawler wandered aimlessly, but didn’t approach. Instead, it scooped its jaws down into a gap in the rocks at its feet, retrieving a plump, bulbous, almost pillow-like object with several stubby, pointed limbs. It threw the shape about several times to get the best grip around it, then swallowed the thing whole, letting out another screech the moment its throat was clear again.

“I’m moving in for a clearer shot,” the voice whispered, a focused intensity twinged with just the hint of excitement.

“I’ll cover you,” Masako spoke at low volume, in case the ranger helmet filter startled her mysterious companion.

The lithe, readying silhouette seemed to pause for a moment, but shook off the oddity she’d almost managed to properly notice, drawing her weapon and chancing a low crawl toward a position closer to the two-legged reptile.

Whatever she was holding, it certainly seemed small for something meant to deal any damage to a thick-skinned, partially-armored reptile over twice her height, but since there was a chance both ranger and alien weapons were potentially on the table, Masako withheld her inherent skepticism for the moment.

The silhouette stopped behind another rock, aiming the object in her hands and lining up her shot. In fact, it seemed like lining up her shot was the only thing she was doing, as almost a full minute passed without any weapons fire. Even only a few meters away now, she seemed frustrated, lowering the device and messing around with some type of target-assist panel…

Masako sighed, the exerting becoming a low groan as she quietly voiced her frustration aloud.

“That’s a fucking camera, isn’t it?”

It might have been her own quiet words, or some other sound or movement the other girl had made, but the next thing Masako knew, the skull-crawler was raging again with purpose, and her mysterious companion was shouting RUN! as she barreled back through the fog.

Masako ran, too, if only to head off the move of running back to fetch her the other girl was making. They split the difference, angling to Masako’s right and the other girl’s left and converging in a direction that seemed to be toward clearer skies.

The ground beneath Masako’s boots changed quickly from rounded stones to shallow water, interrupted repeatedly by what felt like large, spongy hills. It was only as the fog cleared to a gentle haze that she both processed the nature of the new terrain, and identified the object the skull-crawler had eaten prior to seeking out its current prey.

Sea stars, the kind that were more plump than spindly, each between two and five meters across and crowding the rock-bottom shallows so densely that the points of their legs intruded into the gaps of others more often than not. The water was scarcely a few inches deep, rendering most of the creatures’ soft, pale orange bodies above the surface.

Farther out to Masako’s left, the other girl was visible in the open, moving swiftly with purpose on her brown, practical running shoes. Her neat, black hair was cut at a sharp, inclined angle, the lower points at the front reaching shoulder-length. She wore an army-green T-shirt, khaki shorts, some kind of brown, sleeveless, open-front jacket that acted more as back protection than anything, and had a dark red backpack slung over her shoulders. She leapt almost expertly from one sea star to the next, a small, orange camcorder still clutched securely in her grasp.

Still mostly in the thicker fog, the skull-crawler was in close pursuit.

Phasing red and leaping through a bolt of red lightning, Masako reappeared on the sea star the other girl had just leapt from, facing down the reptile and unfolding her coat into the four sections of Battra’s wings. Splayed in the air behind her like leaves of a clover, the sheaths of fiber charged with energy just as her outstretched arms did the same.

From Masako’s hands and wingtips, a storm of Battra’s red lightning rained sideways on the skull-crawler, striking into its opened mouth and launching it backward off its feet. In the clouded air around it, it writhed its crocodilian head skyward, darker smoke pouring from between its silhouetted jaws, then turned fully away into a stumbling, choking retreat.

Masako’s coat fell back around the rest of her ranger armor as she rounded, finding the other girl still running clear toward the end of the shallows. They’d fled into a steep, coastal ravine, with hundreds to thousands more of the overgrown sea stars crowding the vertical, rock walls on either side with the same packed density.

Set in the middle of the gap at the far end, was an angled, but overall mushroom-shaped piece of bright yellow machinery the size of a two-story home, its paint faded with age. When functional, it would have released a cloud of sensory gases to dissuade kaiju from leaving the island, but like the other artificial structures on the island, it had fallen into obvious disrepair.

Masako bolted ahead again, resolidifying in-step with the other girl as they both approached the remains of the gas emitter. “It’s gone,” she voiced aloud, both of them slowing to a splashing stop in the ankle-deep water between several of the starfish.

The girl had turned around quickly, staring long into the fog of the inland waterfalls before she was satisfied the creature had indeed retreated. She let out a relieved, whistling exhale, and finally started a turn toward Masako.

“Heck of a close one, wasn’t it—” Her eyes were wide, blinking. “…Battra?”

Masako crossed her arms, tilting her helmet with an invisibly arched brow.

“I mean, obviously not Battra, just… a person dressed like Battra. For some reason.” Recoiling with an almost fearful cringe, she seemed to roll that thought over in her head for a while before it clicked. “Oh, you’re a ranger, aren’t you?”

Masako didn’t miss the way her enthusiasm waned, replaced with something almost like disappointment or disapproval.

“Yep.” Masako confirmed.

The girl thought to herself another moment, then settled to a near-scowling, stern focus.

“So, you have Battra’s powers, right? And you used them on the skull-crawler? Can you help me find the rest of my team?”

There was a begrudging acceptance of necessity, but unexpected collectedness, from this… by her outfit, Masako would have said tourist, but by her actions, she could probably stand to upgrade that assessment just a little.

“I can, if you tell me why you’re so interested in Monster island,” Masako bartered. “Let me guess, investigative journalist?”

“Megazoologist,” the girl corrected. The slightest bit of warmth passed back onto her face, an offer of peace in her considering, brown eyes. A three-pronged shark’s tooth hung from her neck on a length of black cord, and in greeting, she held out the one free hand that wasn’t still holding the treasured camcorder in a vice. “Lucy Casprell.”

“Battra ranger,” Masako deadpanned, her arms still crossed.

“Really?” Lucy crossed her own arms in turn, looking more amused than offended. “Can’t even give me a name?”

“I don’t trust you yet,” Masako said, internally wincing that she’d added the yet without thinking. She told herself it was only because Lucy had said she was a scientist, and that inherently meant she was probably worthwhile.

Lucy seemed about to call her out, but relented. “We need to hurry. If you want the story, you’ll get it on the way.”

She backed up to the edge of the small clearing of water and climbed up one of the larger starfish, the creature lazily flopping one if its legs into the air as she ascended. Hands to her mouth, Lucy called out into the surrounding ravine.

“Professor? Kristina? Is anyone out here?” She tried several more times, focusing specifically on the direction of the gas emitter, and let the echoes last a few more seconds after that before dropping her arms in frustration. She leapt back down, and started at a determined, but clearly exhausted pace back down the ravine toward the waterfalls.

Even as Masako fell in step, Lucy couldn’t seem to help her repeated, amazed glances at the sea-star-packed walls of rock rising up around them.

“Pisaster gigas,” Lucy recited, eyes lighting up at their sheer multitudes. “They were bred here, as a self-replicating food source for the kaiju that needed physical sustenance. It looks like they’ve gone unchecked without so many of their usual predators.”

They do sort of look appealing, I can see it. Ever tried one?

BATTRA IS AMONG THOSE THAT DO NOT REQUIRE SUSTENANCE.

“Is that why you’re here?” Masako snarked aloud, “To study some starfish?”

“And a whole, upended ecosystem left unchecked for nearly two decades,” Lucy countered. “I’m with Professor Ando’s Kaiju Investigation Team, we’re here to record what we can figure has happened in all that time, and document whatever’s left of the megafauna. There were always a few species here that weren’t quite on the radar when the others were taken.”

The way she talked about the kaiju, it was already pretty clear why she had a problem with rangers.

“…I don’t know how it happened either,” Masako said quietly. “Neither does Battra. We’re still trying to figure that all out.”

Lucy stopped.

Masako looked at her oddly, registering the turning gears visible through skeptical, but reconsidering eyes.

“Do you have Battra’s memories?” Lucy asked slowly.

“Not unless they’re… what was it… ‘actively on the surface.’” Masako reconsidered only a little teasingly, chin resting on a curved finger. “Or wait, that’s only on my end. Not by default at least, I don’t think.”

Lucy’s eyes were wide now, fists clenched as if to hold in the overwhelming hope and awe beneath the surface. “Do YOU… have a telepathic link with Battra?”

I CAN SEE LITTLE TO BE GAINED FROM REVEALING SUCH INFORMATION. I WOULD CATEGORIZE IT AS GREATLY UNWISE.

Masako smiled beneath her helmet.

“Battra says no.”

Lucy quite nearly screamed, leaping in place until another thought occurred to her. “Wait, is it the same for all the rangers?”

Well, she’s certainly warming up to the idea of rangers, at least a little.

“I…” Masako paused, processing the question for the first time. “I’ve kind of been assuming so, but the guardian moths could always be a special case, with their inherent powers. The other rangers and I don’t exactly talk, so…”

“Wait…” Lucy paused again, remembering to keep walking again with a slight look of guilt as she mentally worked through her point. “Do you just… live here, or something? Is that why you were on the island already?”

“Nope, saw the crash from the air. Landed here to investigate, ended up hiding from that skull-crawler, and then you were talking to me and I kind of went with it. I thought those things were only on Skull island.”

“They were,” Lucy confirmed. “But they travel underground, could have migrated here for the food source. Or it could be a new subspecies. Red-speckled skull-crawler?”

“…did it have red speckles?"

“I think so,” Lucy pondered, starting to open her camera as if to review the footage, but thinking better of it. “Or it just got wrapped up by an Oodako recently. Those suckers are nasty—like, the suckers on their tentacles, anatomically, not…”

“I’m sure the giant octopi took no offense to the coarse language.”

Lucy sighed, but gave Masako a look. “Let’s just get going. If I have to stay in this rain any longer than I have to, I’m gonna freeze!”

They made it through the steam cast by the waterfalls. Masako had kept careful watch for the skull-crawler, or any more of its kind, but none showed their bone-white faces during the tense moments the two humans had their visibility hindered beneath the vaporous shroud.

On exit, they chose another rocky, ravine-bottom slope – this one leading upward, out of the coastal rock formations and into the island’s interior. The rock wall on the right side had an overhang at the very top, leaving a rare dry spot along the formation’s base that Lucy gratefully used as a respite from the weather.

“So, what’s Battra like?”

Masako considered the words, and the clear, excitable curiosity Lucy clearly couldn’t help.

KEEP IN MIND, I AM STILL LISTENING.

“Edgy,” Masako began with a smirk that she was pretty sure also carried into her voice. “Edgy like you wouldn’t believe, but it’s not like I’m innocent of that, either. We match each other, in a weird way. He tells me which people we should kill, I tell him which people we probably shouldn’t kill.”

Lucy was quiet for a bit. “That’s… a joke, right?”

“How much do you know about Battra?”

“…Right,” Lucy mumbled awkwardly. “Kinda sorry I asked, then.”

There was quiet for a while, but remarkably, it didn’t last.

“I never really got to see, like, an actual kaiju. I wasn’t even old enough to remember them at the time, just the footage from back then. I know they were all… destructive, sometimes on purpose, even the ones that were ultimately on our side. It’s just how they were, being giant monsters and all. Battra was a protector, wasn’t he?”

“Of the Earth, not people,” Masako corrected, an index finger in the air. “Easy mistake to make.”

“I know, but… he had a change of heart in the end, helped Mothra against Godzilla. Didn’t it stick?”

Masako felt the grumble in the back of her head, telling her this wasn’t a subject to be talked about, but she already kind of knew that. “I don’t think it did,” she said simply, and with finality.

Lucy seemed to know not to pry beyond that, but shrugged away her saddened mood. “Our emergency plan was to head for any of the kaiju control structures. They all usually had some kind of access hatch for maintenance.”

The pieces fit together, to Masako’s surprise. “Is that why you ran for the gas emitter?”

Lucy nodded. “I figured, if the opening to the sea was as big as I thought it was, there would have to be one, right? And I was pretty sure I recognized that ravine from my research, anyway. Kamoebas got stuck down there once, and they had to airlift him out!”

Lucy had managed a bit of a smile at that, and Masako would admit she did too. Especially once she’d mentally pictured the rock turtle’s bulky, armored shell wedged between the cliff faces, his extendable neck probably still able to reach the bottom to happily gulp down sea stars. She was pretty sure she even heard Battra laugh, but it was distant enough she might have imagined it.

She was stirred from her thoughts by a faint, but carrying voice from farther up the slope, and immediately snapped to attention.

“…Lucy, is that you?” the voice repeated, high-pitched and uncertain.

Masako had to quickly move to keep up as Lucy broke out into a run, exerting only the minimum amount of caution absolutely necessary as she ascended the crumbled stone.

High up on the cliff to the right of the passage was one of the stadium-light-style structures, and Masako would admit she hadn’t known quite enough about the island to tell whether it was once a simple light source, or had acted as part of the sonic containment barrier. Either way, enough of its support tower had been torn away that it couldn’t possibly still serve its function.

But directly below it, halfway down the sheer cliff face it was built upon, was a small, square opening likely used for access by helicopter, and much farther below that, at the ground level of the slope, was a scarcely visible, human-sized metal door frame set into the rock. Two people were hanging half-in, half-out of the entrance, waving urgently.

Lucy reached them first, jogging to a stop on the squared-off stone that acted as a partial step-up to the doorway. The girl who had called out had light brown hair that flared outward to points before reaching shoulder-length, and behind her was a darker-skinned boy dressed in green. Both greeted her with lightly-placed hands on her arms and shoulders, helping her into the small hallway set into the cliff face.

Masako had reached the entrance, when, inside, Lucy broke away from the others to look around. It was a darker space than even the clouded island, lit only from the doorway, but a metal frame staircase was visible in the back, likely leading to the upper sections of the access station. Lucy turned back around, casting hopeful and pleading eyes on the others.

“Is anyone else…”

“No, just us,” the brunette said, solemn and apologetic as Lucy’s heart visibly sank in disappointment. “Sorry.”

Lucy breathed, then in an instant, became suddenly mortified, eyes widening in guilt and realization. She pulled the brunette immediately into a tight and desperate hug, tears falling as she sobbed through the other girl’s moment of stunned surprise and quiet reciprocation.

“Gotcha, Mars,” Lucy whimpered softly. “I’m so glad you’re okay, it’s just—"

“I know,” the girl called Mars answered just as quietly, hesitantly resting her head on Lucy’s shoulder and crying silently until they broke apart.

“You too, Kyle,” Lucy stumbled through, still wiping at her eyes.

Kyle was staring, concerned and visibly defensive, back down the hall toward where Masako knew her suit was silhouetted in the light, probably over-dramatically.

Wait, no… the eyes, horns, and arm-spikes glowed. It was definitely over-dramatic. She heard a distant bolt of lightning from somewhere behind her, and audibly sighed.

“Oh, she’s with me,” Lucy reassured, a hand over Kyle’s shoulder. “This is… the Battra ranger!”

The introduction was inevitably awkward, but Kyle did seem to relax just a bit, even if he was clearly still a little bit on guard. “I’m gonna trust you on this, cause we don’t really have a choice,” he said, his face slipping back to an easy smile as he moved against the wall and made space for Masako to enter.

Masako leant against the wall opposite him, crossing her arms, but slowly dropped to a kneel when the other three sat down to rest. Masako wondered whether she really was too used to her ranger strength, as the others took relaxing breaths and began to discuss amongst themselves.

“I had eyes on everyone at the beginning,” Kyle admitted, sounding oddly guilt-ridden as he recounted the events to Lucy. “We all cleared the first gap, away from the condor, but I saw the professor stumble on the rocks. Jason had him up quick, with Shannon taking his other shoulder. They drifted left, and then you, Kristina, Shawn, and Jeremy looked like you were grouping up off to the right, but when we got to the fog, I started losing people. Then the skull-crawler showed up, and… Mars was the only one left I could see, so I grabbed on to her and ran.”

“It’s not your fault,” Mars assured quietly, tapping Kyle along the upper arm and looking a lot like it wasn’t the first time she’d had to say it.

“I didn’t see anyone else,” Lucy said, lowering her gaze and seeming somehow even more distraught. “After the skull-crawler it was just me by the waterfalls, until she showed up.” She directed a lazy elbow at Masako.

“Our phones and radios aren’t working either,” Mars added with a frown, but a tiny bit of faux reassurance. “Something with this storm. The others are probably fine, just hiding out in more of these access places. We just have to find them, and then…”

“And then what?” Lucy questioned in challenge, though it wasn’t harsh. “We’re really down a boat at the moment, and I doubt there’d be another one left here, after all that time the monsters had this place to themselves.”

Mars turned to eye Masako fearfully, but curiously. “Could you fly us out of here?”

“I do have a zord, and it does fly,” Masako confirmed with reservation, “but you just said way more names than I have room for in the cockpit. If we could find some container, like a vehicle or a bunch of nets, I could probably carry you…”

“In this weather?” Kyle questioned. “I don’t think we should chance it, even with a zord. Anything that goes up now is gonna get shredded by those winds, or pelted with lightning, and that’s if the condor doesn’t get to it first.”

“It shouldn’t even be flying in this weather, that much water in its feathers messes up its thermal regulation,” Lucy pointed out, a look of puzzlement crossing her face before she shook herself out of it and turned to Masako. “do you have any way to call for help?”

Masako’s immediate answer was no, but the more she thought about it…

“Okay so technically… I do have access to a zord-to-zord communication channel, but I don’t know the range on it, or whether the Rangers can even get the message if they’re not in their zords, too. And if they are in their zords, they’ll probably be in the middle of a battle and won’t be able to help, and on top of all that, there’s only a fifty-fifty shot they believe me, anyways.”

In a sea of strange looks, it was Mars who asked, “Why wouldn’t they believe you?”

“…We’re not exactly friends.”

“There still might be a working comm tower,” Lucy cut in, the interruption seeming an intentional topic change. “The main hubs were always more protected, mostly underground. It’s a long shot, but it might be a powerful enough signal to get through this weather.”

“So, we find the professor, gather everyone, and then make for one of these hubs,” Kyle surmised, nodding along with the plan, before turning to Masako. “And if that doesn’t work, we can try your communication channel thing.”

“So, how long should we wait to see if this rain clears up any?” Mars asked, looking worriedly out at the storm.

At that moment, though, the sound of rain grew less harsh, the light from the entrance almost seeming brighter. Curiosity peaked, the others all made moves to stand. Masako moved to the doorway, and indeed, the storm had calmed overhead, though it still seemed to be raging on other parts of the island.

“Still no signal,” Mars said, frowning again, as she stared frustratedly at her pastel pink cell phone.

“But the rain’s light enough,” Lucy declared. “Let’s get going.”

As Lucy and Kyle drifted to the front of the group, engaged in pooling their collective knowledge of the island layout and their team’s established emergency planning, Masako found herself in the back of the very short line, walking next to the brunette.

“Mars?” She asked quietly, not actually sure whether she wanted to get the girl’s attention or simply wanted an explanation on the name.

“Oh,” the girl chuckled a nervous laugh, but played it off with a wave. “It’s Marcia. Marcia Marshall,” she groaned with emphasis. “Ever since I told Lucy how much I hated it, she’s been coming up with nicknames instead. That one’s just stuck for a while.”

Masako considered that, retreading the tone of the admission a few times and trying to reconcile it with Mars, or Marcia’s appearance. She wore a light, sky-blue top with lace at the short sleeves, a thin, dark teal fabric choker, several wristbands and hair ties on her right wrist, and a pink hairclip in the same shade as her phone.

Still, Masako spoke at lowered volume. “Is there… another way you want me to talk about you, or…”

The brunette blinked a few times, her eyes widening in surprise but a smile forming soon after, small and amusedly fond. “Oh, no, it actually is just the name, and only when it’s my full name, really. It just gets annoying sometimes! Don’t worry about it, though, Kristina’s asked me that same question three times already.”

She paused, then, seemingly alarmed at her own words, and cast a nervous glance ahead toward Lucy and Kyle. Seemingly satisfied that whoever she’d been concerned about hadn’t noticed what she’d been worried about them noticing, she dropped to a whisper.

“Probably shouldn’t mention… until we find her, I mean,” she half-assured worriedly.

They exited into a wider, somewhat grassy, fern-covered plain, though much of the terrain was still loose dirt and immense boulders that might appear like normal rocks next to a kaiju. Jagged mountain peaks rose to either side with only small, infrequent gaps between, creating what could be at least a two-way giant monster walking path that curved around to the right the farther into the distance it went.

There was the twisted-off base of another stadium light on a nearby ridge to the left, the rest of the tower now a crushed mess of metal frame resting on the valley floor. Sure enough, there was another helicopter entrance directly below the standing remnant, and a well-hidden but discernable doorway set into the vegetated, angled slope at the foot of the cliff.

A screech from overhead made the traveling group freeze. It was only a moment, and they ran for the cover of a group of trees against the mountainside.

An Ookondoru soared into view, its ruffled and untidy, crimson feathers fluttering in the heavy winds while its immense wingspan remained static and outstretched in a glide. From the black, slightly-hooked beak at the end of a rounded head and moderately long neck, it screeched again, but made no move to dive toward, or even look down at the valley.

“I don’t think this one sees us either,” Lucy whispered.

“It sounds angry,” Marcia added at a similar volume, shaking with unease.

“Probably from the rain, right?” Kyle reasoned, then looked to Lucy for confirmation.

“…Maybe,” said Lucy, seeming unsure. “Something doesn’t feel right, though…”

The condor circled a few times, until its drift on the wind carried it away from the valley, its intermittent, violent cries growing more distant.

“Let’s hurry,” Lucy decided on instead, turning her attention to the doorway farther along the border of the valley.

It was a short journey through the rain-soaked ground, and their footprints weren’t the first to have left imprints in the mud.

Backed cautiously into the shadow of the doorway, even with the large ferns limiting line of sight on either side, a girl with long, brown hair and a medium tan skin tone cautiously waved the others in, wide eyes toward the sky.

“Shannon!” Lucy greeted, this time with an immediate hug that the other girl also seemed surprised to receive.

“Dios, you’re alright!” Shannon gasped, eyes passing to the others with hope and silent thanks before widening again as they found Masako. “In here, quickly,” she urged, rather than make note of the stranger, though her eyes remained wary.

It was another narrow hallway, but in the back, near the staircase, a heavier-built guy with rectangle-frame glasses and a full, blond beard and ponytail had set up a portable lamp on the third stair. He also had a medical kit, and was currently applying a bandage to the injured leg of an older, white-haired Japanese man, also with rectangle-frame glasses.

“Professor Ando!” Lucy called out, moving quickly towards the two in the back – three, actually, as another boy was resting in the shadows further up the stairs, with a dull blue shirt, a messenger bag slung over one shoulder, neatly-styled black hair, and a face Masako instinctively wanted to punch for some reason.

“Lucy?” Professor Ando sat up as the others moved further into the hall, Lucy settling beside him and taking his arm for support. “Oh, Lucy, thank heavens you’re safe. Who else is with you?”

He adjusted his glasses and looked over the others, and either he didn’t notice Masako at all, or actually had no discernable reaction to her presence, which was just a bit unsettling.

Lucy was looking around as well, as if double-checking the population of the shelter with futile hope. “That makes… almost everyone,” she said, with a bleak smile but a still clearly tortured heart as her face fell. “How’s he doing, Jason?” she asked ponytail guy, latching on to the present matter of Professor Ando’s injury.

“He won’t be running anytime soon,” Jason reported with a frown, “but it isn’t as bad as we all thought. He should be fine, as long as we can avoid any more surprises.” He didn’t seem at all confident in the chances of that condition’s fulfillment.

“It seems we may yet consider ourselves fortunate,” Professor Ando spoke up again. “The storm has let up?” he questioned until Lucy nodded, then added, turning to Masako with an arched brow, “and who is our esteemed guest? Care to introduce yourself?”

The eyes that weren’t on Masako before, all were now, with differing levels of uneasiness.

Beneath her horned helmet, Masako rolled her eyes. “Clearly, I’m the Gorosaurus ranger.” She brought up her hands, threading a few cackles of red, electrical energy between her splayed fingers.

“Either way…” the professor noted with a small chuckle, “I suppose we all have your thanks. I suspect your help here must go quite against your monster’s nature.”

Masako was taken aback. “Well… you’re scientists, aren’t you? Your work helps protect the Earth, and no matter the field, you have an appreciation most humans don’t.”

It was Professor Ando’s turn to be somewhat surprised by the words. “I see. Our intentions here were to study the long-term effects of the monsters’ departure from the ecosystem. You give us far more credit than we’d claim, and in truth, the minds of those in power will always be resistant to the truth we seek to convey, but it is our earnest dedication to do what we can to preserve this planet we all call home.”

See, Battra? Scientists. They’re important. We have to save them.

…BATTRA HAS SAID NOTHING. WHOM ARE YOU TRYING TO CONVINCE?

If that thought gave Masako pause, she had little time to reflect on it, as she soon heard other voices, too faint to be from those in the room. The professor and the other students seemed to pick up on the commotion as well, all holding still and quiet to listen.

“…see, there! Footprints. Looks like it could be more than five distinct sets!”

The pace of a trek through the mud increased in hurried speed, and it wasn’t long before another figure rounded into the light of the doorway.

The student wore a light grey jacket, a darker grey backpack slung over his shoulders. His black hair could be described as ‘sharp’ all around, from the slightly-ruffled spikes above his forehead to the point of his goatee. His glasses were sharper rectangles, catching the light from Jason’s portable lamp as he meticulously took in the sight of all the others with dawning relief.

“Shawn!” Shannon called out, pulling the new arrival into a half-hug that the boy resisted initially, but ultimately was able to relax into without diverting his attention.

Arriving close behind Shawn was yet another student, her searching eyes far more expressive as she stopped abruptly with a hand on the wall for balance. In only seconds, she exhaled the breath she probably shouldn’t have been holding, a bleak, grateful smile crossing her face.

The girl wore a dark grey tank top with a light blue, denim jacket overtop, the sleeves torn off and several multicolored buttons pinned to either side of the collar. Matching blue shorts were layered over metallic purple leggings, stylistically torn in places. Her boots rose almost to her knees, rubbery black and fastened to her calves with three heavy buckles each. The bands on both her wrists were black and studded in silver spikes, a match for the choker around her neck. Her hair, including her eyebrows, was dyed neon pink, the left side shaved fully to a buzz-cut and the right side falling down her face to only chin-length at the longest. Her visible left ear had round piercings on the lobe and in the top curve, with two rings around the rear edge, and the other ornaments spread across her face included round studs above and below the outer point of each eyebrow, another centered at the lower edge of black-dyed lips, and a ring around the left side of her nose. Her blue eyes approached a lighter shade with hints of cyan, and—

I BELIEVE A CONVERSATION HAS STARTED.

…Oh. Uh, thanks.

“—nothing, really! I just slipped and fell on the rocks,” the pink-haired girl – possibly Kristina, if Masako was remembering the names correctly – explained, trying to hide the bloodied scuff on her elbow that Lucy had nonetheless found.

“She didn’t fall.” Shawn said simply, but with fire. His focused eyes had found face-punch kid at the back of the room, and weren’t letting up their scornful glare.

Lucy had followed his gaze in an instant, and looked back at the injured girl, eyes severe. When she spoke, it was a command, not a question.

“Kristina, what happened.”

“Like she said, she slipped and fell on some rocks!” Face-punch kid tried, unsuccessfully, to smooth over with a confident smile.

“I saw what you did, Jeremy.” Shawn insisted.

“He probably didn’t mean it, he was just running and we… ran into each other,” Kristina placated, and by her eyes, Masako could see what she was trying to do, but Lucy clearly wasn’t going to take that for an answer, her eyes now joining Shawn’s again in Jeremy’s interrogation.

“You pushed her down, she could’ve died.”

“What the hell, Jeremy!”

“Hey, if she got in my way, it’s not my fault—"

Masako’s glare had found Jeremy as well, though it was only brief. With a sigh, she put up her hands and stepped out to act as a solid wall between the furious students.

“Okay, okay, I get it. This, is the part of the movie, where you all get mad at each other, and start making stupid decisions, so can we not? ”

At the firm words, there was a prolonged silence, with only the rain from outside and the distant screeches of several skull-crawlers drawing the group back to reality. When the quiet broke, it was Jason, shuffling over to Lucy and Kristina with some of his medical equipment in hand. “I should probably take a look at that.”

Masako caught a glance at Jeremy’s pleased smirk.

You know, I really, really want to snap his neck, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t go over well.

“Kristina and I located one of the Island’s hub stations, out through a mountain pass in the other wall of the valley,” Shawn began explaining, begrudgingly. “It’s a smaller one, and we didn’t have a prolonged chance to look it over, but there may be some more equipment we can use.”

“Then, that would be our best option, at the moment,” Ando approved with a nod.

Jason’s eyes found Masako. “With the professor like this, it’ll be a long walk. Cover us, if we run into trouble?”

“If it gets us out of here sooner, sure. I’ll fry anything that gets too close.”

The two new arrivals now seemed to direct their interest Masako’s way. It was the pink-haired girl that held out a hand. “Kristina Sumres. Your coat’s pretty rad.”

Tensing only slightly, she shook Kristina’s hand, thankful her face was covered. “Uh… Masako.”

VERY SMOOTH.

…What are you talking ab—wait.

Shit.

Behind Kristina, Lucy arched a telling brow. “So, you trust us now?”

Even in her flustered state, Masako noticed the way Kristina had found Lucy’s side immediately upon backing away, their hands clasped together with reassuring firmness in a silent, passionate communication the two tried to keep subtle from the rest of the group.

“Actually… yeah. Yeah, I do.”

They kept to the trees again, when they could. The rain now seemed even lighter than it had only minutes earlier, a faint drizzle that barely seemed to wear at the others even while they crossed slowly over open ground.

Hidden between two opposing slopes that overlapped from afar, a narrow field wrapped through the mountains on the right side of the valley, teeming with older-looking trees and once-prehistoric plants that might have escaped trampling even while the island had been the home of titans.

Lucy’s mood had improved markedly, as she happily snapped pictures and recorded footage of several stout plants she had identified as cycads and a taller tree called stigmaria. Kristina was always close at her side, at one point guiding her away from a fan of sharp plant leaves that apparently carried a potent toxin.

“So, you’re a power ranger?” an unbothered voice inquired of Masako. It was Shawn, having gravitated to walking quietly at the ranger’s side.

“Yep.”

“And… Battra’s motives exert an influence on your actions? Or the reasoning behind them?”

“…It’s more like we agree most of the time, so it’s easier to work together.”

“Hmm…” Shawn pondered, his gaze briefly drifting to the higher mountains above. “Unlikely that happened at random. Are the other rangers so in line with their kaiju?”

Masako found that an intriguing thought. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not even sure they all have voices in their heads, or if it’s just me. Well, me and Mothra, probably.”

Shawn was in deep thought again, more intently this time. “Does Battra know his top flight speed? How about wingspan in meters? Does he make a cocoon like Mothra? What about an egg? There are a few more gaps in my notes, actually…”

BATTRA WILL NOT ENTERTAIN THIS.

“Well, I think I know the cocoon one,” Masako began, tapping a finger to her faceplate. “It’s more of an energized state, the larva disappears and gets reconstituted into the imago.”

Shawn had taken out an electronic tablet, typing out notes in the shelter of denser vegetation cover overhead. “Interesting. Can he use it to turn back into the larval stage, from the imago form?”

…Well?

…YES.

“Yes, Battra goes both ways.”

STOP THAT. THEY DON’T KNOW YOU’RE SMILING LIKE THAT, BUT I DO.

“So, is there ever, technically, a reincarnation process?” Shawn pressed on. “Or is it just a back-and-forth conversion of the same instance?”

Just give him the answers.

FINE. IF MY EARTHLY FORM IS DESTROYED BY OUTSIDE MEANS, MY ESSENCE MUST RECOVER IN THE EGG STATE, BUT MY CONSCIOUSNESS REMAINS THE SAME NO MATTER THE CONDITION OF MY PHYSICAL BEING. THIS IS ALSO TRUE FOR… MOTHRA. CREATING AN EGG OR A LARVA PREMATURELY IS SIMPLY A WAY TO CIRCUMVENT THE RECOVERY PROCESS. GUARDIAN MOTHS ARE ALWAYS ONE ENTITY, EVEN IF SPREAD ACROSS MULTIPLE MANIFESTATIONS AT ONCE.

Masako relayed the information, though with less grandiosity. Shawn nodded along, cataloguing the information with a look of impressed contemplation. After that, Shawn simply stared at the tablet intently, as if searching for more questions he knew he had, but was struggling to remember in time to ask them.

The smaller valley opened up to a wider stretch of flat land on the coast, ending in a sheer cliff that seemed far closer to water level than the one the boat had been wrecked upon. More mountains on either side sheltered the open ledge with a containing curve, making the space one that had likely been moderately difficult to access by kaiju not capable of flight.

Even still, the hangar entrance that had once been a set of retractable doors in the ground was smashed inward, forming a square hole in the part of the field toward the cliff’s edge. Pieces of the false terrain sloped downward into the pit on both the right and left sides, providing an easy way for the travelers to descend to an artificial garage now full of damaged vehicles.

The bubble-canopy helicopters were all smashed and in pieces, as were the all-terrain 4x4s. There was a single, large transport truck, but it was hopelessly upturned on its side. Passing through the carnage, the group made it to a doorway on the water-facing wall – too small for any kaiju to have passed through, even the newly-arrived skull-crawlers.

Entering the doorway, the first part of the floor was a threshold to a pair of descending staircases on either side, while the rest of the large, singular room extended as a solid floor toward a wide window to the sea on the far side, reinforced with spans of solid titanium forming a grate between the large, rectangular glass panes. There were computer terminals to either side, gated off by small, guiding handrails that formed a perimeter around the central gathering area of the room, which was situated around a large table featuring a scale, topographical depiction of the island itself.

The first thing the group did was filter down the first flight of stairs on either side, finding themselves almost fifty meters off the ground in a large, very-high-ceilinged room beneath the observation deck. The stairwells zig-zagged back and forth, fire-escape style, down to the distant floor, which was at water level and was, in fact, intruded upon by artificial canals between the metal plating around it. There was another grated window letting light in, similar in size to the first and much smaller in comparison to this room as a whole, and water-carrying tunnels in the two forward corners appeared to provide boat access to the outside.

And of course, while the room was clearly designed to accommodate larger vessels, of the kind that could have carried the entire group off the island, there were none to be found in the presently-deserted underground marina.

“Look, over there!”

It was Marcia who’d spotted the small motorboat, stored out of the water and resting on a metal framework in the back right corner of the floor far below. It was barely a two-seater, perhaps three.

“No way that’s big enough,” Kyle observed, shaking his head.

“Still, we could send for help, right?” Marcia continued to press, though her confidence in the solution was fading fast.

“It would take days in something like that,” Jason decided, hand to his chin as he sized up the vehicle from afar. “If the engine lasts, and that’s if the storm doesn’t kick up again. It was probably only meant for maintenance on the island, or passage to and from larger ships that couldn’t get into these docks themselves.”

Slowly, they retreated from the lower chamber, gathering both on the floor and in swivel chairs scattered around the observation room. Jason tried to get one of the terminals online to access any communication equipment, but he seemed to be running into trouble with power.

“Anybody have a generator on hand?”

“Surprised you don’t,” Masako snarked lightly from where she’d begun to mock-brood in a corner, arms crossed.

Shannon spoke up. “Doesn’t Battra make lightning?”

Masako blinked beneath her concealing lenses. “I… would that work? ”

Jason frowned. “Depends on how well you could focus it. There’s a difference between shocking something and applying power to it, you could fry the system if you’re not careful.”

Well, you’re a god, aren’t you? Can you do that?

IT WOULD BE RELATIVELY SIMPLE TO—

They all heard it. Distantly, the sound of an engine starting up. Echoing from far below.

Kyle looked around the room, and sighed. “Where’s Jeremy?”

By the noise, the motorboat was already speeding away, so the group rushed to the window instead of the stairs. Sure enough, the small boat left a trail of disturbed wake as it struck out for open water, a single blue-shirted occupant at the controls.

Then, the glass in front of them hissed with incoming wind. They each backed a step away, as in the sea below, the waves became more chaotic, Jeremy’s boat rocking dangerously even against its built momentum. The sky darkened overhead, stormclouds gathering to a strength that rivaled the enclosing torrent the Battra zord had arrived in.

And then they saw it.

Appearing from behind an obscuring, rocky cliff on the rightmost side of the view provided by the window, an immense waterspout moved in, crossing the water far ahead as if on course to intercept the tiny boat. Easily over a hundred meters across, perhaps two hundred, and rising endlessly into the clouded sky, the cyclone continued to drift parallel to the shore, bringing with it the fall of rain and the full fury of the raging tempest.

“Jeremy…” Marcia cried softly, her hands over her mouth in horror.

And then, all eyes were on Masako, most of them pleading – including Lucy’s and Kristina’s.

“…Fine.”

Lightning carried her back to the stairwells and down all the way to the floor below, where she sized up the leftmost corridor leading through the rock. Even the water within the compound was agitated, waves splashing over metal decks and walkways.

Look, I hate the guy’s guts too, but if I let him die intentionally, the rest of them will blame me, and get upset, and trust will break down, and things probably won’t go well from here on out.

YOU COULD LET HIM DIE UNINTENTIONALLY.

It would still mess the rest of them up pretty bad. They actually care about this asshole.

AND YOU WOULD SAVE HIM, BECAUSE THESE OTHERS OF YOUR TRIBE WISH YOU TO?

I… guess?

THOSE YOU CARE FOR WILL NOT ALWAYS DEFINE WORTHINESS THE SAME WAY YOU DO. THEY WILL HAVE COMPASSION FOR THOSE THAT DO NOT DESERVE IT. THIS SEEMS, AS HUMANS WOULD SAY, A ‘SLIPPERY SLOPE’ TO CARING ABOUT EVERYONE.

Masako sighed, and it was almost a hiss, as she focused on the narrow passage ahead and jumped forward into a bolt of red lightning.

Maybe it is.

She reappeared with her wings outstretched, gliding over the water in the pouring rain. She knew she wouldn’t last against the winds, but she only needed a fraction of a second to locate Jeremy’s boat, and strike forward once again, materializing in the back seat of a vessel tossed about by cresting waves.

“Wha—” Jeremy shouted, turning around with wide, fearful and additionally shocked eyes only for Masako’s arms to tear him out of the seat. The Battra ranger kicked against the back of the operator’s chair, as if to flip them both out of the boat and into the wake, but before they could hit the water, they both vanished in a bolt of red.

Momentarily, they collapsed at the back of the underground docks, at the foot of the same stairwell Masako had leapt from. Jeremy was on the floor, panting quickly and heavily.

Masako stood, rolling her eyes as she looked down at him. Jeremy looked at her weakly, with surprise and just a tiny bit of fear, now directed solely at her.

“I would’ve let you die,” Masako admitted, though it was phrased as more of a threat. “But for some reason, those people up there still care about you, warts and all.”

She leaned in, glowing eyes making him suddenly tense up, but her next words were relatively calmed, and preceded by a quiet sigh.

“Do yourself a favor, and figure out how to be sorry. It’ll get you a lot farther in life than whatever this shit is supposed to be.”

She led him back up the stairs by the shoulder, walking all the way. Professor Ando was there to greet them both at the top. The look he gave Jeremy was scolding, but mostly relieved, and he set a hand on the boy’s shoulder with kind reassurance.

He then gave a nod of thanks to Masako, who crossed her arms with an ambiguous glare.

Jeremy retreated to a corner, not saying a word as he scowled with downcast eyes.

The rest of them watched the storm.

The boat was nowhere to be seen, but the waterspout persisted, now much farther toward the left of the view and approaching a rocky cliff on the opposite side. Masako joined the quiet, stunned and awed observance until the cyclone had disappeared.

“Why’s it moving like that?” Lucy asked, after seeming to spend a while trying in vain to locate the answer herself. “It seemed… regular, just like the other one. Not wavering at all. Could the island’s currents do that, or…”

“Not that I’m aware of in my analysis,” the professor said with a frown, equally at a loss.

“Wait…” Shawn spoke up, an idea clearly forming by the way he had started frantically diverting his attention between the rock the waterspout had disappeared behind and a search of the immediate area of the room. He gripped a hand around the strap of his backpack, and stared blankly ahead, seeming to sort through information mentally. “Wait, I think I have something!”

He darted toward the table with the representation of Monster Island, the others making room around the edges as he swung his backpack around, opened the main zippered section, and began to dig through it.

Shawn slammed a tall, silver, insulated thermos down on the south end of the topographical map, in the flat area of light blue that represented the water just off the coast. He pointed just past it, to a sheer, water-facing mountain slope that now looked very familiar.

“We were here, right after we ran into the waterspout and it threw us inland.”

He then grabbed hold of the thermos, rounding the corner of the table as the others in that section backed away even further. He stopped when he’d slid the thermos in a quarter-circle, ending at the eastern edge of the map. He pointed back toward a south-southeast point, where Masako recognized the waterfall ravine.

“It was still pouring rain, storming heavily when we were all separated, and Kristina and I were scoping out this building. But right before we all ran into each other…”

He grabbed the thermos again, dragging it along another turn, and this time everyone cleared away from the table, leaving a full path around. He left it to the northwest of the island, then ran back around to indicate the valley, the small dividing range, and the coastal overlook they were all now standing within.

“…the storm started getting weaker.” He pointed back and forth a few times, between the building on the nearby side of the table and the thermos he'd left on the opposite.

Lucy gasped. “It’s the same storm! It’s going counterclockwise around the island!”

Shawn nodded. “Exactly, because after we walked all the way here with the professor, and Jeremy tried to take off in the boat…”

Jeremy crossed his arms and rolled his eyes weakly, but Shawn paid no attention, as he was already racing around the table. He caught the thermos with a reaching left arm, and dragged it with him to complete, then overtake the full circle, placing it back in front of the overlook structure where they’d all just seen the cyclone minutes earlier.

“…it was here again, and it brought the worst of the storm with it. When the cyclone is closer to us, the winds and rain are heavier, and when it’s on the other side of the island, the storm lets up.”

The professor nodded, but seemed to have reservations. “It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, given what we’ve seen, but how would a storm do such a thing?”

“Hold on…” Masako cut in, still processing the information. “You said the storm lifted you out of the water? Not the Ookondoru?”

Lucy shook her head. “We got blindsided. The waters were getting rough already, but it came at us from the side. The next thing we knew, our boat was circling up it, until we got launched at that mountain. Then the condor attacked.”

There were about five seconds were several of the others, and even Lucy herself, noted the ominous portent in the words. The room was tense, almost superstitiously so, as if everyone was waiting to see whether fate would be tempted exactly as Lucy’s order of events had suggested. When the moment passed, those who’d partaken sighed with relief, a few showing the beginning signs of embarrassed laughter.

Then the grated window shattered inward, with a downpour of glass shards, as immense curving talons hooked through the gaps in the remaining metal cage.

Amid horrid screams, from both inside and outside, Masako watched the grate buckle, bars compressing between crushing claws and the whole of the protective barrier inching outward, the sound of flapping wings corroborating that the bird was trying to wrench it free.

“It won’t hold long!” Jason shouted amidst the chaos.

The eye lenses of Masako’s helmet cackled with a buildup of purple energy, Battra’s twin beams lancing out and leaving burns across the exposed flesh at the bases of the condor’s claws. The bird screeched again and let go, but only moments later, a quake coursed through the building from above. The impact repeated again and again, the condor trying to bring the hidden roof down on top of the station’s occupants.

“Stay here, I’ve got this!” Masako yelled, running for the door. At the threshold, she disappeared into red energy, striking back to physical form on the other side of the open vehicle hangar.

The Giant Condor flapped its ruffled, feathered wings, leaping into the air and bringing its weight down on top of the concealed shelter.

Bolts of red lightning struck upward from the water off the coast, a red form coalescing in the sky.

As the zord materialized on approach, Masako remained tense as the storm roared above it.

So far, so good…

A bolt of storm lightning struck the zord’s left wing in a violent flash, sending the machine tilting to that side. A fire had started at the point of impact, flames building even as the zord righted itself shakily and the rain continued to pour.

Dammit. Masako shrugged. Guess it’ll have to do.

She bolted into the cockpit, materializing to blaring alarms. Taking the controls, she brought the damaged zord toward the mountain range and around for a strafe in the direction of the water, setting the condor in her sights.

Raising its neck, the condor turned, catching sight of the machine and letting loose a wild, horrific screech from its parted beak. It flapped its wings frantically to lift itself, then pushed back against the air, launching forward with feathers fluttering in the wind.

Masako dodged to the right, but the condor mirrored the maneuver to the left, the two circling one another until the bird was close enough to reach out and hook its claws around the Battra zord’s legs. It twisted, throwing the Battra zord hard against the side of a nearby mountain.

Reeling in the shaken cockpit, Masako shot upward just in time to avoid striking condor claws that now tore into rock instead of metal. The Battra zord circled overhead, flames trailing from the ring of exposed machinery around the moderately-sized hole through its left wing.

WATCH THE STORM.

I know, I know… wait.

The Battra zord dropped lower, just as a pair of lighting bolts struck two rocky peaks. With a screech, the condor pulled its claws free of the mountainside, turning and soaring quickly upward to meet its opponent.

Masako swung her zord’s first pair of legs to the sides, slapping with force to part lunging condor talons, then swung to a vertical orientation to match the bird’s as the two fliers collided. She pincer-struck the middle and rear pair of two-clawed, insect feet around the bird kaiju’s feathered underbelly, finding the grip was more secure than Masako had expected given what she knew of the species’ physiology, and despite the damage to one wing, the zord caught air and was able to take control of the colliding spin.

With a mechanical heave, Masako tilted the Battra zord nearly to inverted flight and threw the Ookondoru out of the spiraling grapple, launching it higher into the sky above.

Lighning struck the Giant Condor in the back, sending a fiery glow through the kaiju’s body. The dark lines of bones and arteries were briefly cast visible, backlit in orange, and a side effect was the revelation of just how completely emaciated the creature had somehow become beneath its layer of feathers. Its torso lacked the pot-belly known in others of its kind, shrunken nearly to skin stretched over bone, and the rest of its body fared little better.

Trailing smoke, the creature fell, but caught the air on its wings, and let out a pained, furious screech as it charged again for its opponent.

Condor claws took handfuls of the Battra zord’s exposed legs, sparks flying from the strained limbs as the screeching kaiju pulled both fliers into a spiraling dive. Embers from the zord’s damaged wing were dispersed into the trail of the combined, spinning meteor, while the undamaged wing surged with energy.

Hinging and flapping the stiff wing against the condor, Masako sent dozens of red energy bolts into the avian kaiju’s flesh, forcing the creature to release its grip from the convulsions alone. Parting from the dive, Masako struggled to pull out of her descent, but managed a parallel flight only meters from the ground.

The condor slammed into a mountain on the southern side of the hidden cliff-face overlook, and tumbled down against a smaller spire before sprawling on the flat ground closer to the shadow of the dividing range.

Even more smoke now rose from its singed feathers, but the condor yet stirred, rising on taloned feet and kicking off with its wings. Instead of engaging its opponent, however, it surged forward, quickly crossing the ground toward the smashed-in vehicle hangar.

Which was fine, because the others had stayed inside, just like Masako had told them.

The Battra ranger sighed.

Lucy was out in the open, her camera having been up and recording the battle overhead despite the wind and rain. Kristina, at least, was tugging at her other wrist, trying to pull her back, but Lucy wasn’t budging.

The condor cawed, its beak parted for an easy meal, and only then did the two students begin to scramble back down the grassy slope of collapsed roof.

They weren’t going to make it.

Masako pulled against the controls, eye beams charging up as the zord dove toward pursuit.

The twin purple beams hit the ground, and surged forward faster than the condor’s flight as the Battra zord’s angle changed through the leveling curve. They intercepted the creature at about the midpoint of the right wing, burning across the limb’s dorsal surface, igniting feathers…

…and completely severing the outer half of the wing from the bird’s body.

Oh shit.

The Giant Condor fell out of the air, kicking a cloud of dust from the ground as it impacted and slid to a stop just shy of the open hangar. Its pained, dying screech filled the land and sky as the severed wing tumbled across the ground and over the cliff, into the sea.

Masako hadn’t expected it to be that weak. Malnourished was one thing, but this… this was something else.

Then the condor stood up.

The creature leapt, pushing off the ground with its remaining wing, several hops carrying it into a frantic turn to face its attacker. The bird screeched to the heavens, its beak parted to the sky like a warbling, unholy war cry as its neck swung back and forth in convulsion.

Masako hit the beams again, and swerved left, the Battra zord’s turn carrying the attack in a horizontal sweep. Purple light sent flames rising from the condor’s exposed neck, and once they passed, the cry had been silenced. The creature’s head hit the ground near its left foot, while its neck fell with the creature’s body, to end at a cauterized stump farther out to its right.

Taking a deep, unsettled breath, Masako continued the Battra zord’s spin into a swerve, drifting backwards over the flat ground to the facility’s northern side and setting the flying machine upon its six feet. The rain had finally put out the last embers from its wing, leaving only a gaping hole through the layers of metal.

What the fuck was that about?

When Masako appeared at the upper edge of the slope to the hangar, Lucy and Kristina had both returned, this time accompanied by Jason. Lucy looked especially saddened, and there was little mystery why that was.

“I… didn’t know it would do that,” Masako mumbled guiltily. “The wing. Then it was… I don’t know.”

“I don’t know either,” Lucy voiced back, carrying more confusion than blame. “I was watching, and everything about what happened up there, and down here… it was weird.”

Cautiously, the four of them approached the condor’s corpse, each of their minds spinning for any kind of explanation.

“There’s plenty of those sea star things here, right?” Masako posed with a frown, “it should’ve had more than enough food if that was the issue…”

“Even if it was starving or dying, it’s wing and… neck shouldn’t have been structurally weak like that,” said Lucy, her face screwing up. “And it definitely shouldn’t have got back up.”

“Looked like something out of a zombie apocalypse,” Kristina began, almost jokingly. “Night of the screeching dead!”

Lucy stopped.

“That… that’s it!” she spoke up, almost cheering in revelation as she turned and took Kristina excitedly by the shoulders.

Kristina had closed her sparkling-magenta-shadowed eyelids, smiling as the other girl appeared ready to pull closer in her abounding joy, but Lucy had already turned back toward the condor, quickening her pace as she rattled off her new, inspired hypothesis.

“It was flying in the rain, right? Screeching mad, and… and the skull-crawler too! They behave sort of like that all the time, so I didn’t think much of it, but…”

“You… think the monsters are zombies?” Masako stated in disbelief, noting that Jason was exhibiting a similar difficulty in following the logic.

“No, not…” Lucy continued, “but they’ve been acting strangely the whole time. It was like… like some kind of infection. Like a hate plague!”

“Or like rabies?” suggested Kristina, now running alongside Lucy with little remaining outward sign of disappointment.

Lucy seemed embarrassed for only a brief moment. “Yeah, or like rabies!”

They were approaching the condor’s body, the stump of its right wing facing them while its feathered back rose up like a small hill behind it. Seeing it up close, Masako now had a better sense of just how bad of a shape the kaiju had been in all along. Its feathers were twisted in all directions, even more so than they’d appeared to be, and it was missing entire patches of them all along its body. That hadn’t been visible at all, as those parts of its exposed skin were still a very similar shade of red, but up close almost seemed to be growths of very fine red fur, or a red moss of some sort.

The creature was still, but as Lucy rushed up to the tattered remnant of its wing, something stirred on the surface.

Masako barely had time to react, leaping forward through energy and taking hold of Lucy’s backpack by one hand. As she pulled the girl back, she lunged out her other arm, red lightning building down the gauntlet and striking out through her fingertips.

The three tiny, leaping creatures exploded midair from the energy bolts, scattering into chunks of spiny red flesh and splatters of yellow and white-green fluid from inside.

They weren’t alone. A patch of the non-feather red substance on the condor’s wing disassembled into more of the dinner-plate-sized creatures – some sliding in a crawl on their six radial limbs, others leaping into the air without seeming direction, and others writhing the thin, threadlike yellow tentacles between their legs, opening and closing hidden jaws in their bumpy dorsal surfaces in some sort of threat display.

Masako ushered the others back again and again, arms held out like a barrier in front of them, as the leaping creatures managed to draw closer, some spraying geysers of liquid from their dorsal jaws. “More starfish?” she asked, noting similarities in the structural appearance even if these creatures were clearly something else.

Lucy shook her head. “Not starfish, these are…”

BAREM.

“What’s a Barem?”

“They’re created by…”

Moving around the island, faintly visible far away past the mountain peaks, the circling cyclone kept to its path, following the will of the sea dragon in the waters beneath it.

DAGAHRA.

Chapter Text

She tried to suppress the sound as much as she seemed able, but Lucy winced and cried out, recoiling from the three small wisps of steam where droplets of the Barems’ acid had made contact with exposed skin on her upper left arm.

Kristina was at her side immediately, and Jason soon after, while Masako spread her wings as a more substantial shield between the students and the approaching creatures. Their leaping was becoming more coordinated, or perhaps simply more effective by sheer volume, as more Barem jumped from the Giant Condor’s corpse to seek out new sustenance.

“We have to get her inside!” Jason yelled as the group continued to back away. Masako saw the others turn, breaking into the closest thing they could manage to a full sprint while helping Lucy along from either side.

Masako’s wings and gauntlets coursed with red, bolts of energy striking at the advancing horde. Barem burned and dissolved to ash, but more of the creatures recovered the losses in progress almost instantly.

Glancing out to the side, Masako issued a command to the grounded Battra zord. The machine’s undamaged right wing, too, now surged with energy, and the red bolts struck forward like the cackling crack of fireworks. Out of the wing’s leading edge and at sharp angles from the underside, the storm of lightning vaporized the Barem on the ground, then washed over the condor’s body, lightning it up with flashes and smoke as the toxic creatures were cleansed.

Masako reached the doorway just as Jason was opening his medical kit, Lucy knelt on the ground with Kristina close and holding her steady. Marcia had pulled out a water bottle from her small backpack, taking a cloth from Jason’s kit and holding it to the rim.

“No,” Jason began sharply. “You need fl—”

“—owing water for acid burns,” Masako recited beside him.

Marcia frowned, but handed over the whole bottle, allowing Jason to carefully pour it down Lucy’s arm, guiding Kristina into the right angle of support.

Jason passed a strange glance at Masako. “Medical training?”

Masako shook her head, suspecting her helmet had hidden her light sigh. “Nope. Just… experience.”

Jason nodded with understanding, and set back to work.

When the storm was at its weakest, the cyclone on the farthest side of the island barring any unexpected movement, Masako took the Battra zord up.

The insectoid machine was rocked by wind, not helped by the hole burnt through its left wing. Still, Masako found a steady altitude, and hoped.

“This is Battra ranger calling lame rangers, repeat, Battra ranger calling lame rangers.” She half-scoffed, rolling her eyes at the expected silence. “I’ve got a bunch of tourist-scientists stranded on Monster Island with Dagahra, that seems like the kind of thing you should get involved in…”

She waited around thirty seconds, then tried one more time.

“Hello! Egotistical, do-gooder assholes, we have a legitimate situation here! Giant toxic monster on the loose! I’m sure it’ll be your problem too, soon enough!”

Masako was about to simply give up, and shut down the channel, when a new window popped open on her viewscreen.

“Oh, uh… sorry! I was just…” The maroon-armored ranger paused in thought, his helmet bearing a small, orange forehead-horn that curved upward, and double-points along the sides that evoked claw-shaped ears. “…Is this a real mission thing, or…”

“Yes, it’s a real mission thing!” Masako nearly shouted, then calmed from exhaustion, breathing slowly while she considered. “To tell the truth, I honestly didn’t expect anyone to answer. Is there some kind of battle I’m interrupting, or…”

“Oh, nope, no battle!” The Baragon ranger cheerfully confirmed, then paused.

“Guess it’s lucky you were in your zord, then, what’s the occasion?”

“Yeah… it’s just a… a training exercise.” The relief of a believable excuse settled over the ranger’s visible features. “This is a… a very, very important training exercise, and definitely not my entry into the mile low club or anything like that.”

Behind lenses, Masako’s eyes widened in brief surprise, before she registered both the emphasis in the other ranger’s tone, and the contents of the small ledge visible in the rear of the cockpit – a cooler, a metal cutting board, a jar of mayonnaise, and piles of lettuce and diced tomatoes.

“So, when you say that…” Masako squinted. “You’re talking about a club sandwich.”

Proudly, the crimson ranger held up a plate to the camera, containing a sliced segment of said food item. “Yeah! What else would it be?”

Masako snorted, the only thing she could do to keep from fully bursting out with laughter. At the other ranger’s complete confusion, she simply took a long, smiling breath inside her helmet, resting her elbows on the dash. “It’s been a long day for me, okay? Dagahra is loose on Monster Island, and somehow I’m the one stuck here babysitting a bunch of horror movie antagonists.”

The Baragon ranger… stared. For long enough that Masako started to replay her own sentence in her head.

“Sorry, I meant protagonists,” she corrected. “I watch those movies differently.”

“…Really?”

“No, I don’t watch horror movies,” Masako admitted, unsure why she was being honest now of all times. Something about this kid’s obliviousness just got to her, she guessed. “Every scene in a horror movie is a way I’ve already watched one of my friends die in real life, so there’s no point.”

Another long, blank stare.

“No, I’m not fun at parties,” Masako deadpanned. “Are you gonna do anything? Anyone… else, you could call, maybe? You’re part of that, what, west coast team or something, right? The second megazord the other rangers fought that one time, and now you’re friends?”

“We were mind-controlled. By the Xiliens.”

“Right, yeah, that.” Masako stared for a while, hoping he’d finally pick up on the urgency.

“Oh, and I’m Yuzo!” He began instead, then stopped suddenly, in mild panic. “I mean… Barragon rrangerr,” he corrected, tilting his head down and ‘arr’-ing his ‘r’s as if imitating a growl.

Masako rolled her eyes, but found herself smiling again. Curiosity dawned, then, as she recalled a lingering question. “Hey, does Baragon, ever… talk to you?”

“What? No, nah?” Yuzo brushed off.

Masako blinked. “He… doesn’t?”

I WAS ACTUALLY FAIRLY CERTAIN THAT—

“We’re not really on speaking terms, ever since he tried to get me to eat all the animals at the petting zoo,” Yuzo explained with a wave, “but usually he just gushes over how amazing human food is and tries to get me to make more friends.”

“…Oh.”

“So, anyway…” Yuzo began, uncertain, but his confidence rose when he seemed to strike at the correct memory. “I’ll just… get back to the surface and tell the guys. About the Dagahra thing. We’ll be there in no time!”

The signal cut out, and Masako was left taking deep breaths, before gently lowering the Battra zord out of the heavy winds and back toward the ground.

Any chance we could fix that wing?

I BELIEVE THE CONSTRUCT CAN ONLY BE RESTORED FROM DAMAGE BY EXTENDED TIME IN A NONCORPOREAL STATE.

And how long will that be?

MULTIPLE OF YOUR HOURS.

Masako exited the zord, and directed it out over the water, where it disappeared into crimson lightning once more.

Well, let’s just hope it’s a while before we need it again.

The walk back to the overlook building was quiet, though Masako remained cautious. Most of the Barem had been dealt with, but there was always the chance of a lone straggler ready to cause a bad, acid-filled day for anyone who wandered too close.

Professor Ando was resting in a swivel chair, cleaning off his glasses before returning the cloth to a pocket in his brown expedition jacket. He took the time to straighten out the necktie he insisted on wearing with it, before standing to greet Masako as she entered.

“Any luck?” he inquired, his hopefulness about intermediate.

“…I think,” Masako answered truthfully. “I was able to make contact with a ranger, and I’d say… maybe a seventy-five percent chance he can get his team to cooperate.”

Shawn perked up. “Serious business rangers, or party rangers?”

Masako had never heard them described like that before, but she could see it. “If those are the options, I’m pretty sure we got the party rangers.”

“So we’re saved!” Jeremy declared with a smirk that hid his relief behind false confidence, reclining back in a swivel chair with his hands behind his head. “Just gotta chill here for a bit—”

“Don’t say that!” Shannon outburst suddenly, the scowl on her face twinged with fear. The dim, staggered light shining through the twisted window grid lit up her golden-yellow tank top and toned arms as she rose from her seat on the floor and stood firm in challenge. “We’re still stuck on this island, and anything could happen before help gets here!”

“She’s right,” Kyle agreed, though possibly speaking only to diffuse the building tension. “We still need to be cautious.”

Professor Ando had been about to say something, when he paused at the sound of several loud, overlapping screeches from somewhere outside.

From how argumentative she’d been only moments prior, Masako might have expected Shannon to use the event as a retort against Jeremy, but she’d gone silent instead, her eyes wide and alert.

The wild calls built to a chorus of cacophony, the hunger cries of an advancing horde.

Kristina sighed with a shudder as she took Lucy’s hand and held it tight. “Now I really hate that I brought up zombies…”

Several skull-crawlers leapt into view, clawed feet gripping the bars in the cage as they lunged their armored heads through the gaps.

“They do have red speckles,” Masako chided, eyeing the Barem parasites clinging sparsely across their bodies as she brought energy to her eyes and gauntlets.

A powerful barrage of targeted attacks knocked the climbing reptiles free of the window and presumably, sent them tumbling to the water below. That might be a problem if they found the tunnels to the lower floor, presuming more hadn’t already infiltrated that room and were now working their way up the stairs. With that, plus the doorway to the open hangar behind them, there were far too many entrances to cover effectively.

They needed to get out, now.

As three more skull-crawlers fell from the windows, their bodies just barely too wide to fit through the gaps in the metal frame, a fourth had scrambled up to the left side, making progress while the Battra ranger was occupied with the others.

Exhibiting a momentary flicker of ingenuity, it gripped the reinforcement bar below it with its right leg, then contorted its left shoulder, pressing its other foot palm-first into the bar above it. Exercising its muscles, the reptile pushed on the two metal beams until they strained apart, creating enough of a gap that the creature was able to propel the bulk of its long body through the opening in one smooth, rapid movement, with the frame snapping back in place behind it.

Masako dealt with it quickly, beams lancing into its left side and out the right, but more skull-crawlers attempted to follow its methods, pushing themselves gradually through the bars. Their jaws snapped as they struggled, and several Barem were scraped free by the movement, adding to those leaping from the crawler that made it inside to begin a new attack on the room’s occupants.

Jason was moving quickly around the table with the map, snapping pictures of the island’s three-dimensional layout with a handheld camera much larger and professional-looking that Lucy’s. One of the Barem lunged for him, but missed and landed on the recreation, its six legs draping and slowly sliding over the crest of a mountain range. Whiplike tendrils spasmed threateningly, accompanied by a loud hiss, as if to declare the creature’s imagined dominion over all.

It was turned to ash by a sustained bolt of red lightning, Masako dealing with the smaller creatures while striking the larger reptiles with burning attacks that left them dead but not pushed back through the window. Crocodilian heads hung limp into the building, while the blockage of their bodies seemed to momentarily stall the infiltration efforts of the living creatures now crawling around behind them.

In the moment’s offered calm, Masako bolted to the left-side staircase, indeed finding at least seven skull-crawlers already occupying the lower room. Several were just climbing out of the water, while others were clinging to the outer railings of the stairwells, ascending in two parallel columns. Masako let loose her eye beams on the zig-zagging frames, easily melting the thin metal and freeing the stairs from the wall.

From just below her perch and all the way to the floor, the skull-crawlers now had to contend with a sheer metal wall that resisted their penetrating claws, as they did on both the right and left sides of the room. They’d make easier progress on the bare rock face that composed the far wall, but would have trouble again with the metal ceiling.

That was two entrances cut off, but not for long. Masako returned to the room, and made for the doorway in the back.

The hangar was only faring slightly better as an escape route. Two skull-crawlers were already wandering down the slope on the left side, while a third leapt from behind scattered wreckage in the pit itself, screeching loudly at Masako from atop the overturned transport truck.

Under the creature’s weight, the overturned vehicle shifted.

“…I have an idea,” Masako sneered, still staring down the nearest creature.

“Will it work?” Asked someone from behind her who was probably Jason.

“I have no clue, but I’m about ninety percent sure that if it doesn’t, I’ll still be alive afterward and we can try something else.”

With that, Masako leapt out to meet the skull-crawler, and was instantly blindsided when it turned on nimble feet and swung its powerful tail, catching her from the left and sending her crashing into the hangar wall farther off to the right.

Sliding to the floor, Masako regained shaky footing, lifting her gaze to find the creature leaping down from the truck while the two others took flanking positions behind. The one closest to the doorway snapped at the others still inside, but they quickly backed out of reach of even the creature’s extendable tongue.

The closest skull-crawler charged, intending to use its armored skull like a ram, but Masako leapt through lightning to appear overhead, spinning to throw a bolt of energy downward at its spine before reappearing on the floor, her back against the top of the truck’s covered canopy.

Enraged, the skull-crawler turned for another charge, but by then, one of the other two had rounded from the doorway-side, appearing from around the truck’s front bumper to lash out with its tongue. Masako teleported aside, but the charging crawler skidded to a stop at her disappearance, both of them casting noses about in a search before Masako lightning-struck them both from atop a damaged helicopter in the hangar corner.

At their screeches, Masako hit the floor, placing both crawlers between herself and the truck. The reptiles started running, knocking into one another in their haste, and Masako rushed ahead to meet them. A red bolt carried her, again, over the creatures and toward the truck.

Second time’s the charm?

I DO NOT THINK THAT IS THE SAYING.

Scrambling, the skull-crawlers turned in opposing directions, their heads colliding in the middle before the now-leftmost creature kicked its companion aside with a powerful foot. Rushing at its prey, the reptile held its skull forward, only for Masako to perform an acrobatic leap over the truck the moment prior to the collision.

Masako wrapped her hands around a metal exhaust pipe on the air-facing side of the truck’s undercarriage, using her own, hanging weight in an attempt to aid the momentum from the skull-crawler’s collision. The truck was thrown into a wavering tilt from the impact, Masako’s feet almost reaching the ground, but the effort hadn’t been enough, and the vehicle fell back on its side.

Shit, Masako thought, and was then alerted to the third skull-crawler who’d lingered behind the truck. Now with its prey in sight, the reptile lashed its tongue, the tree tendrils at its forked end reaching hungrily for the Battra ranger.

Masako expertly flipped overhead, landing in a readied stance on the upturned side of the truck’s canopy while the tongue’s fork wrapped around the exhaust pipe she’d been holding onto moments earlier. The skull-crawler dug its claws into the concrete, and pulled back.

Sliding to a stumble on her now-tilting perch, Masako held her hands out in wavering panic, and was thrown off her feet when the skull-crawler wrenched the truck fully over.

Flat on her face on the concrete, Masako pushed herself up, glancing behind her to find the transport truck now standing on all four tires.

Slowly, her glance turned back to the approaching skull-crawler, the reptile almost seeming proud of its ingenuity as it jogged hungrily for its meal.

“…Okay, enough of this.”

Purple beams burned into the reptile’s open mouth and down the internal length of its horizontal running stance, choking it with black smoke as it stumbled and fell to a rolling stop just prior to reaching for Masako.

In a bolt of red, the ranger had retaken her perch on the truck, now able to stand on the actual upper side of its canopy. Another pair of sweeping beams left a deep, burning gash along one of the remaining crawlers, from hip to snout and passing through its left eye, and caught the other through a roaring screech, severing the top half of its head entirely.

As she spun on her feet, her coat opened to an umbrella of wings, red energy coursing through the membranes. Bolts struck out by the dozens, finishing off the skull-crawler with the burn wound and reducing to ash the Barem that had been knocked free, or were now poised to leap from corpses.

“Anyone think you could get this working?”

Jason rushed out through the doorway, keeping his head down as he made the short run for the truck. More skull-crawlers had gathered around the edges of the pit, and Masako built energy throughout her gauntlets, wings, and eyes all.

As hungry reptiles leapt and were struck down by beams and lightning, Jason pried a panel open from below the truck’s dashboard, pulling wires and twisting them as he tested the ignition. Finally, the telltale sound of a starting engine heralded one bright spot of hope in one hellish day.

“Where’d you learn that?” Masako shouted with approval, turning to stretch out her left wings like a knife and bombard a crawler with several red bolts from the edges.

“Saradia,” Jason shouted back, stepping down from the truck’s side door and waving over the others still in the building.

“Soldier?” Masako grunted as one skullcrawler managed to leap in close.

She drew inward and thrust upward with her right elbow, the two red-orange spikes hooking into the creature’s throat and splitting its lower jaw in half up the middle. A powerful discharge of energy from her other hand sent it sprawling back to the ground, the truck only shaken a little from the brief impact of its feet.

“Photographer,” Jason corrected, one hand on the edge of the door frame to steady himself while he hoisted the others up into the vehicle one by one.

“Let me guess,” Masako began with a smirk, firing off another sweep of purple eye beams to ward more skull-crawlers back from the pit’s edge. “Once the bombs start dropping, it doesn’t make much of a difference?”

Professor Ando had ushered the students ahead of himself, and now Jason was watching his injured leg, carefully guiding the older man up into the transport.

“You’re not far off! Now, let’s get moving!”

Shawn took the wheel, and in no time at all, the truck was rumbling up the left-side slope to the top of the pit. Masako struck her beams across several skull-crawlers’ inverted knees, and used a burst from her wings to shock another out of its leap as the transport cleared the final upper ledge and raced off onto flat ground.

There were skull-crawlers on all sides, but Masako managed to keep most of them at bay, focusing her beam fire on their legs to stop them in their tracks. While she was concentrating on a horde to the truck’s left, a solitary crawler snuck in from behind, its reaching limbs taking hold of both sides of the truck’s canopy before pulling its entire body forward across the roof in a headbutt.

Masako felt the dense bone collide against her spine, knocking her ahead until she was hanging over the truck’s cab.

“I told you this thing looked too much like a loaf of bread!” someone yelled from inside.

With its claws hooked securely into the cover on either side, the skull-crawler threw off the truck’s course with its weight, the vehicle beginning to swerve chaotically. As Masako clambered back to the canopy’s front ridge, the reptile screamed and lunged with its jaws, shaking the truck even further with its reaching attempts to snap the ranger up.

Masako split her eye beams wide, targeting the bases of both the skull-crawler’s limbs and pressing the attack until the reptile screamed in pain and steam rose from its hips. Finally, the remaining, snakelike torso of the creature dropped against the canopy roof and quickly slid off the back.

The limbs fell to either side of the truck, dragging on the ground with the toe-claws still pinned in place. Vibration shook the left-side limb free after a few seconds, but the one on the right held firm.

At least, until another skull-crawler dropped from the mountainside and charged, illuminated in bright headlights and making a run for the truck from directly in the vehicle’s path.

Masako leaned back over the windshield. “Swing a left!”

Shawn complied just as the collision neared, and Masako watched with a smile as the trailing, severed limb caught air, smacking the other creature in the face and becoming finally dislodged from the vehicle in the process.

“Hell yeah!” Masako yelled with a fist-pump, getting back to her feet just as the truck swerved back on course to take the narrower, more vegetated path through the mountains.

Navigating the shadowed trail of a darkened ravine, Jason and Shawn managed to locate what might well have been the only paved road on all of Monster Island. Headlights beaming ahead through the gap, the team pressed on, clear to the end.

Surrounded on three sides by sheer rock wall, the fourth by another outlet to the island’s eastern coast, was the largest of the communication hubs, and the only one to feature an open airfield surrounded by above-ground buildings.

Even this place had been largely ransacked, the edges of the space littered with the trampled remnants of satellite dishes and shield generators. The dim light through the heavy storm was cast upon red-brown rock, the atmosphere taking on an odd, almost sunset-like quality despite it still being in the early afternoon.

The transport truck approached cautiously over the abandoned, concrete airfield, toward the north-side rock wall and the mostly intact command complex – a scaffold of multi-level, stacked building modules that formed a relatively thin layer of human construction set flush against the sheer cliff behind it. The forward surface was reinforced by a heavy cage of interlocked vertical, horizontal, and diagonal metal beams, bashed-in in several places but holding overall.

Only meters from the apparent entrance, the group filtered out of the truck, the sideways-parked vehicle acting as a shield against anything approaching from behind.

Then, there was a loud, unfamiliar sound like a demonic, distorted chattering, emanating on a constant buzz from several of the nearby, wrecked structures on either side.

“What is that?” Marcia gasped, her entire body shaking, with her arms drawing inward and bracing for a likely ineffective defense.

Kyle was keeping his eyes on the others – all the others – placing his back against the side of the truck to gain a collective view of the entire group. He clearly wasn’t planning on leaving anyone behind, ever again.

Shannon had her hands over the straps of her purple backpack, eyes wide with haunting unease, ready to run at any moment.

Shawn had his mind intently focused, ears turned toward the noise in an attempt to resolve its true nature. His lips had settled in a stymied, frustrated frown.

Jeremy was edging toward a pile of loose rubble closer to where the group stood, the refuse including at least one long piece of metal rebar that could serve purpose as a makeshift weapon.

Jason placed himself opposite the truck, the group behind him as he braced his knees to duck low.

Kristina had Lucy’s hand, even as Lucy herself looked about for any shelter, any plan of escape. She saw Jason’s apparent plan and started diverting her attention to the nearby debris, as well.

“That sound….” Professor Ando pondered aloud, seeming to have yet, some distant familiarity that Shawn lacked, even if the answer evaded him just the same.

Then, the buzzing doubled, and shapes shot upward.

Masako’s first thought of comparison was the meganula, but these were smaller, and much louder. Indistinct, they swarmed through the air, darting blurs of blue, white and neon green.

Speed wasn’t their advantage for long.

Masako shot upward to the nearest entity, leading its trajectory and drawing back her left arm to rake it with her blade-catchers. To her surprise, she found the forearm spikes tearing not through flesh, or even a chitinous exoskeleton, but metal.

There wasn’t time for a further examination. With the machine taking a nosedive, Masako bolted to the next, and the next, catching hold of neon green wings shaped like helicopter rotors and tearing them free of a blue dorsal plate covered in thin, backswept needle-spines. Another leap through energy found her barely avoiding the lunging, mechanical limb of a mostly white-plated, wasp-like stinger. Her forearm spikes found several spots of translucent green plating on the side of the stinger bulb, tearing through them and, as she’d predicted, causing the robot to catastrophically vent the energy contained within.

She struck to the ground in time to engage a machine that had perched upon the truck’s upper canopy, Kyle caught squarely in its sights. The insectoid construct screeched down at him, its two upper, miniscule white fangs and much larger, lower, skeletal white half-jawbones parting to an even more demonic, synthesized roar.

It was built like a wasp, the main paneling cast in white while a deep, reflective blue formed the dorsal armor on its head and spine-covered thorax, several upward-facing plates on its four, segmented legs, its rear pair of hook-shaped feet, and one segment of its stinger tail just before the wider bulb. Between, there was a black understructure visible for the joints, and while its two insect-mimicking antennae were short and white with black receiver tips, there was a third, thin, radio-control style antenna offset on the left side of its head. Its glowing, red eyes were large and spherical, set wide but shaped for unobstructed, forward visibility, and its green wings rested outward-parallel like those of a dragonfly, the front pair with forward-facing sickle hooks at the outer ends and the back pair with the same structure pointing to the rear.

Masako’s eye beams struck it between those demonic, half-deer-skull side mandibles, its entire head exploding in sparks before the rest of it slumped backward over the truck.

The professor gasped with recognition. “Those are Cameron Winter’s cyber-flies!”

Jeremy swung his makeshift bat, but the fly darted away in a blur, reappearing behind him and firing a blue, electrical beam from its stinger. Jeremy convulsed, surrounded in surging volts of energy, and collapsed on the ground.

Masako made to lunge, but was struck in the back by three electrical beams at once.

The energetic assault brought her near to her knees, but she tensed, red energy surging through her to counter. When she stood with arms wide, her own lightning reversed the current, striking back to the three hovering flies and detonating them in showers of sparks and warped machinery.

She rounded, but found her next move stopping short.

There were four cyber-flies remaining, surrounding the group in a tight square. In each of the ensnaring cages formed by their insectoid legs were an unconscious Jeremy, a panicking, fear-stricken Marcia, a calm and outwardly resigned Jason, and a struggling, seething Lucy.

Loudspeakers all around the airfield crackled to life.

“Hello. Is this thing on?”

The falsely amiable, casual voice was edged with superiority. Masako looked to Professor Ando for confirmation, but the older man didn’t seem to be hearing what he’d expected to.

“Yes, well… do mind my little guard dogs, here. I got them special from an old colleague of mine. Professional courtesy and all that…”

At the base of the main complex, a set of wide doors opened, revealing a flat, metallic platform with black-and-yellow caution stripes stickered around the edges.

“Since you’re here, I suppose it’s only fitting you stick around and watch the show. Do consider my invitation carefully, I’d certainly worry how your friends might fare if you refuse.”

All at once, the four cyber-flies shifted their leg-cages tighter, prompting momentary gasps

Energy was coursing through Masako’s gauntlets, but she looked around to the others. Kyle was furious, Shawn was stricken still behind the glare of his glasses, Kristina was distraught, and Shannon’s eyes were dark and pleading.

“We’ll do what he says, for now,” the professor spoke quietly, though it was also more a plea than an instruction, in Masako’s case.

Whoever this fucker is, I’m going to enjoy gutting him like a fish. Or a fisherman.

BATTRA WILL ENSURE HIS DEATH IS AN UNENDING TORTURE.

Masako let the charge dissipate from her gauntlets. Dropping her arms, she took the first step toward the offered platform. “Let’s see this fuckin’ show then.”

They filled out the outlined space, the cyber-flies and their captives taking position at the four corners. Their hovering was finely attuned, as the machines kept level with the platform even as it began to rise up through the center of the complex.

Kristina’s eyes never left Lucy. Masako questioned whether any kind of reassurance would even be received. Her fury was building, but even then, a blind rage wouldn’t save them like treading cautiously just might.

“You’re fast,” Marcia spoke up weakly.

At the words, the cyber-fly imprisoning her shifted its legs in warning, seeming keenly on guard.

Masako shook her head. “Not fast enough.”

She wasn’t sure that was quite true, but it was what she wanted their captor to think, either way.

Marcia smiled, a tear falling. “Just get Lucy and Jason, then.”

If Masako could imagine an entire elevator full of people, all reacting as if they’d been stabbed in the heart, this was pretty close. If several of them had been struggling to refrain from rushing at the cyber-flies before, they were barely managing it now, for an entirely different reason.

“How adorable,” the broadcast voice drawled, his sickeningly vile amusement readable through the audio alone.

Rather than stop in any kind of dedicated elevator space, the platform simply rose to the level where it became the center of the floor for a larger room above, one with a front window overlooking the airfield, sets of active monitors and terminals to either side, and a doorway on the back wall that hissed open upon the ascent’s completion.

Exiting the wide hallway behind him was an American man, closer to Professor Ando in age. He had auburn hair, likely dyed, and carried with him a seven-barreled, rotating-chamber MASER rifle that looked enormous in even his muscular arms.

Smiling, he gestured to the screens around the room, most showing inert views of the island while several seemed set up specifically to track various points along the cyclone’s path.

“How lucky you all are, bearing witness to the latest venture of the great Leon Heron!”

Masako glared through static lenses, smirking where he couldn’t see. “I’ve never heard that name once before in my life… nor do I think I will remember it.”

Leon narrowed his eyes, but it became a boastful smile momentarily. “Well, surely you know me by enterprise. My company deals in everything from diamonds to… paper napkins!”

“We’re millenians, we don’t buy either of those things,” Masako clapped back, then paused, setting a finger to her chin. “Think I actually used the wrong word, there…”

Leon was about to reply, when he received some kind of electronic alert, and frowned, pulling a yellow-plated control pad from his suit pocket. He sighed, shook his head, and tapped a control, before directing his attention to one of the screens.

On the monitor, the waterspout diverted from its path around the island, and dispersed to scattering winds as it neared the shore. From below the sea, the bright teal, wide, curved-wing carapace of Dagahra rose into view, the tall, beige-gold dorsal spikes breaking the surface in a single, fin-connected row down the creature’s back.

A crown of three similarly-structured spikes adorned the reptilian head, with more fins around the hinge of the jaw and below the chin to contrast sharply with the creature’s teal skin and create an appearance similar to a bearded dragon. With thick, forward-pointing spikes protruding from bulky shoulders, the sea dragon waded onto land, sturdy front legs marching forward while the rear limbs dragged flat, more prominent fins running down the sides.

Dagahra… seemed to stumble, clearly exhausted, disoriented, or both. He barely managed to drag his long, jagged-fin-fluked tail fully out of the water before collapsing in a heap, breathing deeply as he fell to rest.

“Very well, regain your strength, if you must,” Leon spoke with open disdain. “Your endurance will be satisfactory for my purposes soon enough.”

From within the grip of the cyber-fly, Lucy squirmed, her face somewhere between confused and appalled. “You’re… making him run laps? ”

Leon smiled happily in her direction, but there was not an ounce of warmth within it. “Dagahra yet has its limits, but as it gains strength, the fortitude to sustain its abilities indefinitely, it will be the perfect weapon in my arsenal. Barem will paint the tides red across the world, the life-giving currents broken from their enduring shape to leave dead zones in their wake. The very sea itself torn asunder, lashed to chains and made mine to do with as I please!”

“To what end?” Professor Ando began sternly, stepping to the front of the group with building, righteous fury. “To lay siege on ports? On Nations? To hold entire coastlines hostage? To destroy intercontinental trade, or set your own balance to the world’s naval strength?”

Leon smiled with impressed surprise. “All… very good ideas, let me write those down.” He scoffed, and shook his head. “But no, I’m not in this for a payday, or out of a misguided sense of patriotism.”

“Of course not,” spoke Masako, dull disappointment in her exasperated tone. “Didn’t you hear him before? It’s not about anything reasonable, it’s about us. He wants us to watch the show.”

Leon grinned fiercely, eyeing the Battra ranger with impressed glee. “Very good. Yes, yes… you know what’s up, don’t you?”

“I know your type,” Masako leveled in deadpan accusation, “I know what gets you off these days, no need to hide it on my account.”

“I never intended to,” drawled Leon, eyes taking in the room with open, indulgent cruelty, “I know what’s… fragile, in this world. I saw you, all those like you cry your crocodile tears when the rainforests burned, and I knew, oh, I knew… I knew just how to break you. Everything precious to you, I will take away, and why? Because I can. I can, and I will, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me! You have no power, no way to save whatever it is is so fucking important today, and that’s just how life is. The sooner you see that, the sooner you’ll see that you’re all, irritating whiny brats with such astounding cognitive dissonance you actually believe the real world cares one iota what any of you have to say!”

Battra seethed, his appetite for death coursing through Masako like a power all its own.

Masako took a long breath that became a whistle.

“So, to summarize, some boyband asshole in a leather jacket and sunglasses handed you the Dagahra coin, and said ‘hey, do whatever you want with this!’ and you said ‘golly gee, absolutely I’ll terraform the planet for the Xiliens!’ because you’re exactly the kind of spiteful, no-life, corporate burn-out who would shoot yourself in the dick seven times in a row with a smile if you knew somewhere in the world, a teenage girl was gonna CRY about it. Did I miss anything?”

The last, faltering but persistent strand of overconfidence holding up Leon Heron’s smile snapped at the sound of distant, gathering screeches from outside.

“Right, forgot,” Masako corrected, unmoving except for the thumb she hooked casually back over her shoulder. “We also led a bunch of those things here.”

Leon tapped at his control again, a fierce focus in his eyes, and from the sounds outside, Masako realized his action had been to launch several cyber-flies out from other parts of the building, the insectoid machines buzzing toward the reptilian horde scrambling across the pavement. The next set of sounds was more unclear, but from the appalled shock on Leon’s face, the Battra ranger could only picture the rapidly-silenced flies having been pulled out of the air at the ends of extendable, adhesive tongues.

“In a turn of events that surprised no one but the non-biologist.”

Scowling, Leon rushed right back to his control, but the moment was broken by an exploding shatter, the sound of a rock avalanche, and a screech similarly intoned, but far outclassing the skull-crawlers’ own in sheer, ear-splitting volume.

“…Aaaaand there’s a big one, now. Just a guess.”

Nearing, thunderous footsteps of a lengthy stride approached at a rising tempo, and at the first missed beat, the entire command complex shook, as if stricken by an earthquake. Leon stumbled, the weight of his rifle throwing him off. Masako disappeared in a flash of red.

One after the other, Masako solidified midair at neck-level to the cyber-flies, the spikes on her right forearm prying through metal like a can opener. She remained in place only long enough to fully separate the antenna-bearing component of each machine from the rest of its body before moving on to the next, the twisting motion of her arm forming one complete, momentum-carrying rotation across four separate points in space.

Now solely cages of metal with wings halting still, the headless remains of the mechanical insects dropped like rolling weights to the floor, their captives shaken but unharmed.

Masako’s charging eyes found Leon’s face, but Professor Ando’s fist had found it first, the alleged business magnate slumping unconscious against the wall with blood dripping from his teeth.

Kristina pried Lucy free of the cyber-fly’s inactive but position-locked arms, while Shannon ran for Marcia and Shawn struggled to free Jason. Kyle and Professor Ando approached Jeremy, but the captive insisted on quickly kicking himself free of the mechanical legs before the others could lend their assistance.

The giant skull-crawler screeched from below, the continued shaking and a glance out the window revealing the immense reptile was currently clinging vertically to the protective cage by the strength of its two limbs. Regular-sized skull-crawlers rushed up all around it, and while most were still attempting to scale the lower levels, one of the creatures was already upon Masako to the point she leapt back through energy to avoid being caught in the rush of shattering glass. The reptile lunged straight through the bars of the cage, having far less trouble with the wider, triangular gaps, and planted its clawed feet on the floor of the room.

Masako heard it before she saw it – a coughing, but laughing, maniacal whisper of “How tragic…” as a bloodied, but conscious Leon aimed his multi-barreled rifle toward where Shannon and Kyle were guiding Marcia toward the exit.

At the exact same moment, the skull-crawler lashed out with its tongue, the forked, slimy pink appendage rapidly crossing the room toward Shawn.

One jump through lightning placed Masako already knocking the weapon from Leon’s hands with her left elbow, her right hand taking him by the wrist. The second jump pulled the man along within the transport aura, both of them spinning out into the path of the skull-crawler’s tongue.

Masako let Leon stumble backwards into the wrapping tendrils of the tongue’s fork, watching his shocked face as the pseudo-limbs caught around his waist and towed him along with a pulling force that tore him off his feet. The skull-crawler slung its tongue upward at the last moment, allowing the man to catch air before falling into the reptile’s open jaws.

The crocodilian mouth engulfed feet and legs, then snapped shut to the level of Leon’s shoulders, his ribcage crushed on impact with his head and arms hanging loose around the tip of the creature’s snout. The skull-crawler writhed low, then high again into another jaw-opening, upward toss, ready to swallow the man whole on the next gulp.

Masako wasn’t that merciful.

A pair of purple energy beams struck through the skull-crawler’s heart, striking it dead. Its left ankle gave out faster than its right, and the creature fell slumped to the side, with an impact that sent its half-chewed prey sliding partially from its toothy grasp.

With most of his torso crushed inward and gushing blood, the still-alive and convulsing Leon Heron was set upon quickly by three of the reptile’s Barem, and coughed up a concoction that seemed to include some of their acid as well as fragments of his own crushed and melted bones. Masako walked closer with slow steps, watching parts of him twitch, before finally letting loose red lighting from her hands – a barrage that reduced him and the Barem to ash, but acted slowly enough that most of Leon was still alive, aware, and physically unable to scream when the burning started.

She halfheartedly turned back to the others, hoping to get back on track with an escape route, but of course, she had to contend with the stares.

Most were unsettled, Lucy included, with a few, including Kyle and Marcia, looking as if they might wretch at any moment. Jason and Professor Ando seemed only slightly disturbed. Jeremy was frozen in fear. Shannon was mortified.

Masako sighed.

Right. Actions have consequences. ‘Shannon will remember that,’ or whatever. Can never just have everything work out, can we?

The rattling and roaring picked up, and Masako rounded with a pair of eye-beams, striking a second skull-crawler with a sustained blast that pushed it back out the window with a singed underside. While the ranger was occupied, two more of the reptiles leapt in to either side, clinging to the bars of the cage as they snapped their jaws and readied their tongues.

Masako held out her arms, prepared to split her focus, when a barrage of linear, precise red energy fire roared past her right ear, battering one of the skull-crawlers with burns and knockback power until it cried its last and dropped clear of the building. A second barrage to the left followed quickly, taking out the other creature as well. Startled, Masako turned back around, finding a sight that drew her brows completely to her hairline beneath an outwardly-static helmet.

If the rotary MASER had looked enormous in Leon’s arms, it looked ridiculous in Lucy’s. With some difficulty, the lithe college student tilted the weapon high enough to blow smoke from the barrels.

Behind her, Kristina was backed against the edge of the doorway, with the widest, dumbest, blissful grin Masako had ever seen on a real person.

The facility rocked violently, a creature’s low growl reverberating enough for the vibrations to add to the shaking. The triangular, bottom profile of the big skull-crawler’s pointed head rose past the level view through the shattered window.

“Time to move!” Masako called out, running with gesturing hands to usher the others out through the room’s exit.

As they made their way through the segmented hallway, they could hear more skull-crawlers leaping into the room behind them, the taps of clawed footsteps carrying across the reverberating metal floor. Ahead of them was the last door frame before the outer shell of the complex seemed to end, giving way to a stone-wall passage carved into the cliff-face beyond.

As the last of the group crossed the threshold, Jeremy swerved off-course, boldly snatching the MASER rifle from Lucy and slamming the gun’s stock against the wall control for the doorway.

“We’re not gonna make it!” Jeremy screamed in fury, making a dive back through the closing door to seal himself in with the charging skull-crawlers. “Keep going, I’ll—”

Oh, for fuck’s sake…

“I’ll get him! Just go!”

Spinning on a heel, Masako braced her palms into the way of the edges of the closing doors, using her ranger strength to apply a burst of countering force that shattered the motor mechanisms within. With her right hand, she reached out and snatched Jeremy by the back of his shirt, tearing him backward while her left gauntlet sent a sustained blast of lightning into the floor. Traveling across the metal, the red, surging current stopped the two nearest skull-crawlers in their tracks, electrifying them on the spot.

At the passage’s far end, the giant crawler twisted its body, attempting to drive the conical wedge of its immense jaws between the metal beams of the protective cage. The renewed bout of shaking pulled a gap in the seam around the walls near Masako, where metal exterior met stone interior.

Throwing Jeremy aside against the left, stone wall, Masako stepped over to examine the gap, but it fell closed with a pause in the straining movement.

The Big One bared teeth, with parting jaws, through a cage opening it had buckled wider, but the brace still kept its mouth from opening wide enough to utilize its tongue. In fury, the creature shook the entire complex again in an attempt to further its progress.

Now, the seam pulled wider, and Masako leant forward, turning to take a viewing angle directly along the plane of the gap. Unobstructed, dozens of the thick, metal bolts that fixed the complex to the cliff face were laid out in her vision, pulled only partially from the rock.

Energy cackled over the Battra suit’s eyes, and the twin purple beams lashed out into the gap, melting through bolts or causing detonations in the rock they were embedded in. To Masako’s right the entirety of the facility was cut free from the cliffside, and as she swung the beams down and around to her left, she only needed to perform a partial upward cut before the remaining anchors all broke free at once.

Slowly, even as more standard-size skull-crawlers rushed down the hallway eager for a meal, the artificial part of the complex tilted backward, then fell faster. With a startled cry from the Big One, and several of disappointment from the small ones now standing at the other side of a too-far gap, the falling metal framework went horizontal and crashed to the airfield below with a loud, reverberating rattle through metal scaffold.

When the dust cleared, the Big One was alive, but struggling in vain to maneuver, pinned beneath the human structure with its jaws still caught in a metallic noose of the the now-wreckage.

Turning with a sigh, Masako wrenched the rotary MASER from Jeremy’s hands, holding it loosely by the scope-mount in her off-hand while she stared at the boy with a welling fire.

“That was stupid. That was beyond stupid, and no matter what you might have been thinking, it wasn’t a fucking apology.”

“…You’re right,” Jeremy sneered a pained hiss, reluctantly at a loss as he turned his eyes away with a grimace. “Clearly, you had it handled.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Masako scolded, then paused. Taking several, slow breaths, she turned the last into a heavy, admitting sigh. “But I know why you did it, and as much as I hate to admit it, it’s not really your fault, specifically.”

Jeremy waited a long moment before looking up in mild curiosity, shielded with a show of belittling, confused skepticism.

“I can hate you,” Masako said, the words blank of malice. “I can hate you all I want, I can justify it with rationales, priority of the innocent over the guilty… and if you’d pointed that gun any other direction, I would’ve been right to. But the one thing I can’t do is blame you, not if I’m being honest with myself. At the end of the day, you’re only doing what the rest of the world told you to do.”

Her eyes left the still-confused boy resting against the wall, drifted over the void where the rest of the building used to be, and returned with focus as she pointed sharply at nothing but open air.

“That… that was making it about you. That was taking the easy way out of responsibility. Forcing others to think highly of you, out of the one kind of respect you can earn by doing something with anger. That was about you being right, because you’re not allowed to be wrong.”

Masako dropped to a knee, a forearm resting over the other as she leaned over Jeremy.

“I’m not asking, I’m begging, for your sake. Learn. To be. Wrong. Because once you can, then you don’t have to BE every single fucking mistake you’ve ever made. They can be what they’re supposed to be, mistakes, instead of a part of you that you have to defend. Don’t let your pride turn you into a monster you literally do not have to be.”

She pointed the other direction, farther down the hallway, and tilted her head.

“Those people? Your friends? They’re more important than being right, and saying you’re sorry is how you let them know that. How you let yourself know you have something worth changing for.”

She held her hand forward, palm open with an offer.

Jeremy took it.

Pushing further through the mountain, the passage was collapsed in places, the only intact route leading to a slight upward slope in the direction of storm-dulled sunlight. There were still clouds in the sky when Masako and Jeremy stepped into open air, but it was the clearest the island had been since any of them had arrived upon it.

The others were gathered where the passage had let out, in a small fissure of bare dirt and stone bordered in places by higher, grass-covered ledges around it. The wall on the far side was continuous, and more than a meter tall, but the nearer side had enough gaps to provide a view back over the mountain, where parts of the airfield and rocky bay were visible beyond it.

Sat upon larger boulders, many clearly exhausted and shaken out of their wits, the students seemed to snap back to reality only when joined by the last of their party. Shannon refused to meet Masako’s eyes, but from beneath the embrace of one of her arms, Marcia managed to.

The professor was farther to the east, adjusting his glasses as he tried to discern something in the distance below.

The were on the highest curve of a rounded hill, with the fissure extending into downhill passages on either side. To the east, that fissure became a moderately steep ravine between higher rocks, with enough of a visible straight-shot downhill that Masako could barely make out a small boardwalk installation set up in what appeared to be a hidden-away corner of the same rock-surrounded harbor that connected to both the airfield and the ocean.

There was a boat.

A yacht, specifically. At least that answered the question of how… that wannabe real-life Captain Planet villian, whose name Masako had already forgotten, had both arrived at the island and had intended to leave.

And if Dagahra stayed asleep long enough, now it was how Professor Ando’s Kaiju Investigation Team was going to leave.

There were footsteps in the gravel beside her.

“If Cameron Winter is selling off cyber-flies…” Shawn began, with mounting, existential worry.

“Then the Xiliens’ kaiju handouts just got a lot more dangerous,” Masako completed with a nod, “but that’s not a mystery we can solve from this island. That boat down there’s our exit.”

Masako found she could almost be proud. The end was in sight, and all her charges were accounted for. She wasn’t sure when they’d become her responsibility, but she wasn’t going to think about that right now, because suck it, horror movies. She was here, alive, with the professor and all…

…all seven students.

Fuck. Who’smissingwho’smissingwho’s—

By the panic in her eyes, Kristina had noticed Masako’s alarmed posture and realized before the ranger had, but it was again, Kyle who said it aloud.

“Where’s Lucy?”

“She…” Kristina was clearly struggling with distress, but she was putting the pieces together. “We saw on the monitors. When it came ashore, that place…”

“I recognized it from the miniature,” said Jason, with a calmer but still worried tone. “It’s not far. Lucy could have made the connection too.”

“What are you talking about?” Jeremy spoke for the first time since the tunnel, the words laced with genuine interest and concern.

Groaning to herself, with the sound breaking into overwhelmed frustration midway, Kristina slapped a palm to her left temple, only wincing slightly at the tension the gesture must have put on her piercings. “She’s going to get footage of Dagahra.”

Masako tensed and shook with a low grumble, but relaxed into a sigh. “I’ll go get her.”

Kristina was less than a meter away, staring coldly and fearlessly into the Battra ranger’s lenses in an instant. “I’m going with you.”

It was an intensity that simply couldn’t be argued with. “I believe you,” Masako said instead, with a nod of both agreement and respect.

She turned, then, to the others, eyes drifting past to size up the defensibility of the ravine leading to the dock before focusing finally on the professor.

“The rest of you are getting on that boat, and staying hidden until we’re back.” She held out her left hand, lazily offering the MASER rifle held within. “Who wants this.”

Professor Ando claimed the weapon, though seemingly only to avoid the responsibility falling to any of his students. He held it with an almost familiarity, though, shooting back a smile. “It should be simple enough to figure out.”

Masako had one last command, angling her neck sharply. “Jason, I’m counting on you to make sure that boat’s safe. I wouldn’t rule out sabotage… or gross neglect.”

Jason nodded with understanding, then took a moment to plug Kristina’s phone into his larger camera, transferring over a zoomed-in view of one of the pictures of the island model. “You’ll want to go down the other side of the hill, and out through another valley. This path here.”

“Got it,” Kristina memorized before Masako had a chance to. She turned to the ranger, a questioning, possibly nervous look on her face. “So… are we going to do that… that thing?”

Masako took note of the route, judged the distance down the west-facing side of the hill, and threw her arm around Kristina before sending them both surging forward in a bolt of red lightning.

The immense leaps across space carried them down the slope and through most of another wide valley, bordered by mountains on both sides. On the third, however, they exited the energized state with Masako’s ranger armor beginning to spark and surge with overtaxed expenditure.

“Guess it does have its limits,” the ranger voiced aloud, holding still and a step’s distance from Kristina until the surging fizzled out.

BATTRA WOULD RECOMMEND GIVING THE ABILITY A REST, ESPECIALLY AS YOU NOW APPROACH DAGAHRA, AND MAY NEED IT SHORTLY.

Noted, Masako thought with an eye-roll, before turning to Kristina with a helmet-tilt of apology.

“We can’t be far now,” Kristina stated hurriedly, content not to press the issue. She set off through the remaining stretch of rocks and still-drying mud, as quickly as she could without burning out.

Masako caught up, pulling slightly ahead as they approached the narrower ravine that formed the last leg of the planned route. It was clogged up with a recent rockslide that created a steeper upslope into the gap and, presumably, a similar downslope on the other side, but it was climbable without crawling, and probably not the sort of thing that would have stopped Lucy even if it wasn’t.

Testing the rocks, Masako found a stable route, Kristina following behind. The other girl was breathing heavily, which was to be expected, but something about it was intoned differently, more severely, than a simple physical exhaustion.

“You good?” Masako inquired, half under her breath.

Kristina was quiet for a while, continuing to take large step after large step up the rocks, but when one of her exhales cracked into a quiet whimper, something seemed to break all at once.

“She always does this!” Kristina snapped, more distraught than critical. “At first it was just… brave. Enthusiastic. You know how we all get about our work… some of us, at least. Before, it wasn’t even real, proper-sized daikaiju, and… a lot of the time, I was right there with her, too! But when it’s again and again, every time, it starts to feel like… like I don’t know! It’s one thing when getting the footage, or just getting to see the creatures up close, is the most important thing to her, but sometimes I worry that maybe it’s… the most important thing to her.”

Masako processed that, clearing the highest group of boulders blocking the gap. There was a downslope, also navigable, but the ravine curved too far to the right to see anything past it even from the vantage.

“I’m not… even sure she knows how I feel about her,” Kristina confessed, her voice small and solemn. “I haven’t really been overt, I guess. Maybe I’m afraid to be. I don’t… know what she wants, how much she wants… If where we are right now isn’t… clear to her, then she’s probably expecting something I can’t…”

Kristina paused, her audible pattern of movement growing more focused and cautious. “Sorry. I get it. Not a heart-to-heart.”

Masako stopped briefly on a boulder that only wobbled slightly. “I actually don’t mind,” she spoke quickly through a single breath, considering as she began moving again. “It helps.”

“Helps with… what, exactly?” Kristina asked, skepticism in her voice.

Ahead, the runoff from the landslide and the stones already on the ground mixed to a more level path around the final turn. “Helps me justify to myself why I’m so determined to save you.”

Kristina was silent for a few more steps. “Let me guess… you share Battra’s opinion on humanity as a whole?”

Masako sighed, readying her voice in the closest she could manage to complete deadpan.

“I’ve spent the last six years bashing heads in on the streets to protect my friends from beatings and acid attacks. I have trouble emotionally relating to anyone who’s lost fewer than five close loved ones to targeted killings. Sympathy for human life in general disappears somewhere around the fifteenth time you’ve seen a guy happily married with a wife and kids pull a knife on someone you care about like he doesn’t even think it’s murder. So yeah, Battra and I get along fine.”

That bought almost a full minute of silent walking.

“…It sounds like you’re using other people’s trauma as a punchline.”

Masako had to stop at that. “What?”

Kristina carried on a few more steps until she was side-by-side with Masako. There was a hesitance in her expression, but also something bleak, that felt all too familiar. “Maybe I’m… not right in the middle of it like you are, but it’s not like it doesn’t hurt!”

Wide and shaken blue eyes stared deeply into red lenses, almost as if gazing past the armor entirely to meet the broken soul beneath.

“I know what goes on out there, and… yeah, I tune out when I can, because… I don’t need to spend my whole life grieving for people I’ve never met, but still feel like I know on a level so deep there aren’t even words for it. Maybe you’d think that’s the same thing as letting it happen, but one person can’t bear the weight, the pain, of every last evil in the world, not even you!” She took a breath, then calmed, taking a chance with a weak smile and reaching a hand to Masako’s shoulder. “I guess what I’m saying is… I care. And it’s not some empty thing, either.”

Masako shuddered, but sighed, her voice faint as her armor rippled, the metallic layers pulling away for her first, unfiltered breath of island air.

“I believe you.”

Kristina smiled, and pulled Masako close, the warmth in the embrace the same sort of bleak, knowing kind she’d once felt only among outcasts.

When they drew apart, Kristina took in Masako’s unsure stance with a gentle frown. “For someone who talks so much about your friends, you seem really alone.”

Masako caught her own averting gaze, slackened, and met the other girl’s eyes with a sigh. “I don’t… get close… anymore.”

Kristina saw through the words with not a moment’s doubt, a faint, sad smile turning the corner of her dark lips. “Maybe it’s okay to try again?”

Masako shook her head, the spreading frost of ranger armor coating her body once more. “Let’s take care of you first.”

She moved to start walking again, but stopped, passing one last glance back at Kristina.

“Lucy cares a lot about you, trust me. Don’t be afraid to be honest with her. She would listen.”

The ravine narrowed to the pointed end of a fracture, with barely enough room for one person to squeeze through at a time before opening to a rounded, grassy cliff overlooking the valley and inlet below. Dagahra rested halfway up from the beach, the flattish curves of his stowed wings casting shadows on grass and sand. His reptilian skin was a brilliant aquamarine under the gently cloud-filtered sun, the beige-gold of his fins like polished sandstone.

Lucy was about halfway from the rocks to the cliff’s edge, her camcorder focused in as the slumbering beast’s body rose and fell from slow breathing.

Masako lingered near the crumbled stone around the entrance, gesturing Kristina forward.

“Hey, Lucy…” the pink-haired girl greeted with a shaky smile, crossing the distance at a stride that passed for casual. Her glance at Dagahra wasn’t entirely one of fear and worry, but she didn’t allow herself to linger.

“Kristina!” Lucy yelped in surprise, lowering her camera for a short moment as she perked up. She looked over with a bright smile as her friend joined her, then pointed excitedly. “Look! I’ve never seen one up close before!” She leveled her camera once again, staring down the viewfinder. “He’s beautiful, regal. Body characteristics of both reptiles and fish, similar to Titanosaurus. The hind legs look semi-vestigial for walking, and probably aid more in swimming, and if I’m remembering right, those shoulder points are part of the Barem production system.”

Indulging Lucy for another look at the sleeping kaiju, Kristina nodded. “It really is the view of a lifetime… but we need to go, Lucy.”

“Just a minute!” Lucy readjusted her camera. “He adjusted his tail a few times, I think I might get a better look at those flukes! I can’t tell if they’re horizontal or vertical yet…”

Kristina’s left hand was on Lucy’s shoulder, and with a moment’s hesitation, she stretched her right arm to faintly touch the line of Lucy’s jaw. “I know, but… we really need to go, now.”

Her guiding motion didn’t seem to need any force, but when Lucy’s head was turned, the fingers stayed, there being no objection from wide, soft and attentive eyes.

Kristina smiled, through what seemed to be several kinds of fear wearing on her nerves. “For me, okay? Just this once?”

Lucy breathed softly, blinking, then ever-so-slowly lowered her camcorder, closing it without looking. Her left hand caught Kristina’s as it left her face, already reaching for the fingers she curled into her own.

Dagahra shifted with a snort of air.

Masako rolled her eyes and stood from behind a boulder, waving the others over quickly. Lucy backed away, Kristina more ready to run but not letting go of the other girl’s hand.

Kicking up dust when he planted his palms, Dagahra lifted himself on muscular forelimbs, yellow eyes opening with an immediate, unsettling air of murderous intent.

“He’s… not controlled anymore, right?” Kristina asked, shaking.

Masako dragged them both back a few more steps by their backpacks, rounding to place herself in front. “Maybe not… but he’s still Dagahra.”

Dagahra roared to the heavens, a deep, warbling growl escaping his throat.

“RUN!” Kristina yelled, dragging along Lucy as the two turned back down the ravine.

Masako followed closely, judging the difficulty of the landslide blocking the way. She lunged at the others’ backs, wrapped her arms and wings around them both on either side, and carried all three through a red bolt of lightning.

The jump cleared the steeper slopes and deposited them at the opposite end of the ravine, but Masako’s armor sizzled with sparks – fainter than last time, but a warning nonetheless.

“Damn! Still on recharge!”

Hearing the rumble of disturbed earth from close behind them, they made a break for it, running clear out into the wide valley. Masako scanned for an opening to the sea to call her zord, still unsure it would arrive quickly enough even if its repairs had completed.

Dagahra leapt over the dividing hill, planting a foot on either side of the ravine and bellowing again from his perch. As he marched along the higher ground, his weight finally took its toll on the mountain, the rock below it breaking into another landslide that carried the sea dragon sliding out into the valley behind his prey.

Masako brought light to her eyes, ready to simply turn and bombard the immense kaiju with all the power she had, when the ground in front of the fleeing party was broken, with force, by a sudden geyser of rock and dust.

In the confusion as the three stumbled to a stop, the only clear sight amid the falling debris was the unmistakable, bone-white headplate of a giant-sized skull-crawler, jaws snapping in the air.

No, no, no! Not now!

No way out, no way…

Except, the crawler was writhing unnaturally in the dust, its whole body thrown about violently from side to side. As the sound of falling rocks faded, the sound of crushing, snapping bones took its place, one of the reptile’s legs scrambling futilely against the locked vice of reflective, violet-maroon mechanical jaws.

With a wild throw of the machine’s neck, the battered and limp skull-crawler slammed into the foot of a mountain on the north side of the valley, rolling back down until it fell still. With a metallic roar, and another series of head-shakes, the hinging panels of lobster-claw-shaped ears helped clear the remainder of the dust, revealing the metallic quadruped in all its stout, adorably fierce glory.

“Sorry I’m late!” Yuzo shouted through the zord’s external speakers. “Did I miss anything important?”

Still closing at a steady pace, Dagahra let out an attention-grabbing growl, narrow-eyeing the new arrival with more skepticism than caution.

The Baragon Zord’s upward-curving nasal horn flickered with an orange glow, and Masako spread her wings over Lucy and Kristina, pushing them to the ground and shielding them from the radiating waves of heat as a beam of condensed flame shot forth from the zord’s jaws.

Dagahra recoiled from the blast, his aquatic flesh singed but his resolve unshaken. A loud bellow pierced the sky before he looked upon the maroon machine with fierce, irritated wrath.

To the northwest, another zord stealthily scrambled up a mountain on a similar quadrupedal frame, plated in bronze with a single row of long, narrow, almost sickle-like silver spines forming a short row on its head, and lining the rest of its body from base of the neck to the tip of the tail. As it leapt from the peak, a copper, metallic film stretched out from its sides to its wrists and ankles, allowing the machine to glide like a flying squirrel.

The Varan zord caught air to some distance above Dagahra, then retracted is gliding wings and curled into ball, surrounded in the row of spines and beginning to spin like a buzzsaw. Dropping hard on an unaware Dagahra’s back, just between his shoulders, the zord drew blood and a rage-filled scream from the sea dragon, before propelling out of the spin in a gliding leap that carried it in a curving path along the south mountain range and back around to face the creature head-on.

Shielded some several hundred meters behind the Varan zord, the Baragon zord leant forward, dropping its head to the ground. “Get on, I’ll take you to your friends,” Yuzo broadcast from the cockpit, the voice heard only just well enough under the more distant, metallic roar of challenge from the other machine.

Taking hold of the other two, Masako energy-leapt the three of them the short distance to the zord’s back, taking a shielded spot in the small dip between two of the machine’s prominent, horizontal dorsal ridges. They settled in with braced limbs as the zord leant back upright and turned on its feet, beginning with a gentle, speedy trot away from the ensuing battle.

“You didn’t tell me you… knew Baragon!” Kristina yelled at the top of her lungs, between the impacts of the zord’s now-galloping stride. “I can’t believe I’m… riding on Baragon!” She paused through a few more leaps. “Well, the Baragon zord, I guess…”

“Technically,” Masako countered with the same volume, smiling beneath her faceplate, “I actually did confirm… the other rangers can hear their kaiju. Baragon’s in the head of the ranger… who’s in the head of the zord… so we are riding Baragon right now!”

“So, what do you think, Kristina?” Lucy yelled across Masako, who was securing them both from the middle. “Second best moment of your life?”

“Hell yeah!” Kristina cheered, throwing her unoccupied hand up in a fist, before looking back with a sudden, reflective confusion. “Wait, what’s the first?”

Lucy smiled fiercely. “Wanna go out with me?”

“Baragon didn’t know he had so many fans!” Yuzo broadcast from the front of the zord. “Also, we’re talking again. Hold on, I’m taking us down!”

The Baragon zord slowed momentarily, its forelimbs setting to work raking their heavy claws through rock. It didn’t burrow completely underground, but rather, dug an open-air, sloping ditch that cut the corner of the sheer cliff face, leaving a new, zord-width ravine that carried them more gently down to the airfield below.

The yacht had left the hidden-away dock and was waiting in the open, just at the edge of the water, aligned parallel to the shore. The Baragon zord skidded to a slow-enough stop at the edge, and Masako struck a short jump to carry herself and her passengers on-board.

“Okay, everyone else, it is your responsibility to stay rational, calm, and collected,” Masako ordered, before gesturing vaguely to Lucy and Kristina. “These two here are suffering from a case of horrible timing, and will be of little help at the present moment.” She looked through the window to the cabin, where Jason and Shawn were busy looking over the many, many controls. “Can either of you two drive a boat?”

Shawn mouthed something through the glass that Masako really hoped wasn’t we’ll know in a minute, and pulled a lever to start the motor. Thankfully, the yacht turned slowly to face out toward sea, and began pulling away from the airfield’s edge.

With hundred-meter-high rock spires rising on either side, some intruding in from the edges and creating uneven, alternating gaps the farther from the shore they reached, the harbor was one with many open spaces of water, but a relatively narrow direct path out to sea. The boat was aligned on the proper course to thread the needle, but had yet to reach even a quarter of the distance across the first, roughly circular pool.

Dagahra crested the cliff on the opposite side, the Varan zord struggling in his jaws. The dragon bit down on the machine’s midsection, eyes widening as he seemed to acquire a taste for the metal.

The Varan zord swiped with a set of silver claws that drew blood from Dagahra’s neck, and the pained dragon shook the would-be-meal side-to-side several times before throwing it against the cliffside that once held the command complex. Planting a foot around the rocky ledge on either side of the trench Baragon had dug, Dagahra heaved himself forward on two limbs, leaping fully from the higher ground and landing with a sparking, metal-twisting crash on the grounded remains of the command structure itself.

The Baragon zord made a half-turn, parallel to the shore with its neck on an angle toward the sea dragon, and fired its beam, the flames spreading to a plume of fire as they washed over Dagahra’s chest and throat. The dragon roared high, and dropped low, aiming his shoulder ports toward his opponent and discharging from each a missile-like burst of Barem-infused red smoke. The attacks struck the Baragon zord’s front and back hip on its right side, knocking it clear off the airfield’s edge and splashing down into the water beyond.

Unimpeded, Dagahra began marching, again dragging himself forward on strong, planting forelimbs while his rear, water-prioritizing limbs kept up with a knee-walking style of primitive locomotion. His jaws and shoulder spikes cackled with crimson energy, evil eyes finding the small boat among the waves.

Something disturbed the water between the Baragon zord’s splashdown and the fleeing yacht, moving perpendicular to the small boat’s path and battering it with light, rippling waves. Writhing like an eel, a snake-like form slithered just below the surface of the harbor, shimmering a bright emerald through the vibrant blue water.

On a neck segmented into connected, flattish squares, the wedge-shaped head of the Manda zord broke the water, roaring a challenge with its lower jaw hinging down from where it was nested, nearly flush, within the lower surface of the upper. Two large horns jutted backward from the widest point of the wedge, creating a shape like the point of an arrow, with two shorter, smaller horns fitted in parallel just behind them.

Dagahra eyed the partially-surfaced serpent with hesitance, but belittlement, looking distinctly unimpressed as the wavering length of the rest of its body floated to the surface from neck to tail.

The Baragon zord leapt from the water just behind, throwing its front legs over the slack of Manda’s body and resting half-out of the water like one would upon a pool noodle. A curved horn flashed, and another heat beam struck across the water’s surface back to shore, bathing Dagahra in fire.

Dagahra ducked low once more, opening both his jaws and the beak-like halves of his shoulder spikes, and pouring forth three crimson beams laced with lightning-volts of pure black. The combined blast struck the water just ahead of the two zords, knocking the Baragon zord back into the harbor and throwing the lighter Manda zord several dozen meters into the air.

Roaring, and without hesitation, Dagahra leapt into the water, and sunk below the surface.

It was only moments before the Yacht beneath Masako’s feet was being drawn backward, its progress reversing as the currents shifted and strengthened. The waterspout began anew at the spot of the dragon’s descent, rising skyward and drawing dark clouds back over the island.

Rain poured and thunder struck, and as the three zords recovered and readied to engage, the base of the cyclone, just below the water’s surface, cackled aglow with crimson.

The Manda zord lunged in an arc across the boat’s stern, just as a wide ring of pure crimson energy began below the waves and broke through the surf. Traveling like a flying saucer, the attack created its own, minor whirlpooling currents beneath it as it skimmed the surface toward its target.

The metallic serpent took the hit, letting loose a metallic screech as it dropped below the waterline. From what Masako could tell, the zord had taken no serious physical damage, but the energy attack had left it with some sort of glow as it sank deeper.

Dodging lightning, the Varan zord glided through the storm, but was struck out of the sky by another of Dagahra’s energy rings sent skyward. Baragon crawled upon a smaller rock mound that wasn’t quite a spire, but was struck off it just as quickly. With more crimson energy building, the cyclone prepared to deliver more of its energetic fury to attackers from all sides.

Masako and the others had no time to prepare, or even to properly observe, and could only weather the winds and harsh waves that rocked the yacht as the second cyclone surged past. Traveling from prow to stern and beyond, the smaller, narrower waterspout moved at breakneck speeds across the harbor, kicking up surf as it made a beeline for the larger funnel and slammed into it head-on.

The collision immediately dispersed the winds from both weather anomalies, leaving only clearing air and churning waters in their wake, while the spinning and disoriented sea dragon floated to the surface and slowed to a wavering halt.

Then the music started.

Well… Masako could only very generously categorize it as music. The grating sound that filled the air, blasting from distant speakers and warring strikingly with the raging storm, was a thing that could only ever be described as a heavily-sampled, electronically-distorted, blatantly misogynistic white boy rap song.

At the farthest end of the rocks where the harbor met the sea, the Titanosaurus zord stood tall, slamming a fist to a palm in time with the beat. On the last impact, it leant its long neck forward, then threw its entire upper body back, narrow crocodilian jaws cackle-roaring skyward.

Fuckin’ party rangers…

The Titanosaurus zord swiped its tail side to side, rapidly moving another waterspout behind it from its right to its left, all while Dagahra’s frustrated eyes attempted to follow it. After a convincing fakeout to the right, the zord swiftly moved it left again and sent it forward, rocking the other side of the fleeing yacht as it brushed past it to collide with Dagahra.

Shaken and knocked back by the winds, the sea dragon recovered, shoulder cannons brought to bear as twin shells of red smoke thundered through the air and struck the bright, metallic brick-red zord in the gold plates of its chest.

The demersal saurian machine recoiled from the impacts, one near its right shoulder and one near its waistline, but stood firm. With clawed, mechanical hands, it scraped the harmless distributions of Barem from the thick metal plating, shaking off its fingers into the water with a slow, taunting ambivalence.

Snarling and lashing his finned tail to propel himself forward to meet the new adversary, Dagahra split the water like a speeding cargo ship, head and stowed wings held above the surf.

Swaying its neck with a cackle and winding up its fists for a beating, the Titanozord broke out into a longstepping, wading run through the harbor, and Shawn quickly swerved the boat right, taking it far out of the way of the charging titans.

On approach, Dagahra dove suddenly below the surface, remaining submerged while Titanosaurus took several more long strides. At the point the monsters were to cross, a linear series of red energy lances fired directly upward from beneath the water.

As the zord was still recoiling from the multiple strikes to its throat and left flank, Daghara shot upward out of the water, curving midair to face the left side of the towering, saurian machine. Muscular arms took hold of the Titanosaurus zord’s left shoulder and the back of its neck below the fin, as Dagahra fell and twisted over the right shoulder in an attempt to topple the machine with his own weight. The zord nearly fell, but reached back with its slender, mechanical arms instead, grabbing the sea dragon to flip him completely over and forward.

A wide, cup-like geyser marked Dagahra’s rough collision with the water, but the sea dragon rolled himself over with a simple writhing twist among the spreading waves. Leaping up with lunging, open jaws, Dagahra was met with a left hand tight around its throat while a mechanical right arm sent a sharp jab into his scaly chest. Freed from the hand by the force of the punch, Dagahra fell upon a powerful uppercut to the chin, somersaulting backwards from the force and falling toward the waves of the harbor once again.

A writhing tail cracked like a whip, smacking the Titanozord off its feet as well. They both stumbled into recovery but Dagahra struck first, a powerful triple-beam sending out spirals of crimson and magenta lightning to converge on the mechanical titan’s breastplate.

Titanosaurus shot backward through the water, the larger and lower of the replica’s dorsal fins cutting the harbor like a knife. Propelled like a projectile with a southeast heading, the zord careened toward Masako and the others on their stolen, evading yacht, now veering into a smaller sector of water out and to the right of the first.

Breaking the harbor’s surface with a solid wall of quickly-rising water, the Baragon and Varan zords leapt upon two small, rounder-topped rock formations, the Manda zord held in both their jaws and stretched between them to cross the path of the approaching Titanozord.

Before it could reach the fleeing boat, the red, gold, and orange mech’s back fin was caught in the metal serpent’s slack, stretching the Manda zord backward like a rubber band as the two saurian quadrupeds strained their necks and dug in their claws. At the rearmost point of the catch, the Titanozord drew back its right arm and made a fist.

The Baragon and Varan zords wrenched their heads forward again, pairing the sharp tug with the slingshot recoil of the Manda zord to throw the Titanosaurus zord back across the water. As if rebounding from a boxing ring, the Titanozord threw the momentum behind its traveling punch, socking Dagahra in the face with enough force to crack bone and flip the immense beast on his side.

The spreading wave from the creature’s fall caught the boat with a rough shake, but their course endured. Masako took another count of everyone aboard, noticing as Kyle made sure to do the same. Though the storm had weakened past thunder, the rain seemed to swell with purpose, at the same time the music did.

The Titanosaurus zord had Dagahra held against the side of a rock spire, using a left fist to pummel the dragon’s head against the stone, three times to the introductory beat of the chorus. Reaching with its right hand, the zord snatched the dragon roughly by his left head fin, and bashed his skull against a different spire through the next part, until the rock formation shattered all the way through on the fourth impact.

Dagahra managed to hook the claws on his left foot into the remaining base of the spire, rising with his teeth hungering to tear through metal, but the Titanosaurus zord brought both its arms skyward, bashing two fists into the top of the dragon’s head before spinning into a kick that impaled three toe claws into the side of Dagahra’s neck and sent the creature tumbling back to the water.

Then, the zord doubled forward with impressive balance, biting into Dagahra’s upper jaw with its own metal jaws. The machine thrashed the sea dragon dramatically back and forth as the final part of the chorus built, before snapping back upright with enough power to lift Dagahra clear out of the sea and into the sky. The zord then performed a dexterous full-body spin to slap the dragon hard with its opened fin-tail, sending Dagahra fully into a crash-landing against the tarmac of the airfield.

With the kaiju down for the count, the Titanosaurus zord rounded and stood upright, its upper body splitting apart and collapsing the head and tail inward with a similar pattern to the Godzilla zord. The split halves of both orange fins retracted almost completely into the rest of its metal frame, leaving ridge details on its back and at shallow, down-sloping angles on either side of the megazord head – which had a small, orange, fin-like crest of its own.

Both the Baragon and Varan zords extended across the middles of their torsos, revealing large universal joints between the separated front and back halves of their bodies. As they leapt in the air, their hind legs retracted and tails curved to form bulky shoulders, with Baragon’s ridges and Varan’s row of spines acting as detail on the front-facing side of each. The front ends of their bodies rotated one-hundred-eighty degrees on the joints, heads hinging away into chests under shielding pairs of paws while fists slid out to replace them. Baragon’s ridges and Varan’s spikes graced the undersides of the megazord’s forearms, Baragon on the right and Varan on the left.

The Manda zord was the last to arrive, flattening to its full length as it mounted itself horizontally on the megazord’s back. Just behind the serpent’s front legs and just ahead of the hind legs, the zord split, lengthy handles unsheathing from the hollow tube of the middle section. The small limbs aligned outward, but angled forward at the elbows and knees like the secondary blades of sais, forming the crossguards of two long, narrow swords formed by the serpent’s neck and tail. In the Baragon hand, the right blade bore the arrow-tip point of Manda’s head and horns, while in the Varan hand, the left blade ended in a multi-spiked spade-tip not unlike that of the Anguirus sword.

Dagahra stumbled, righting himself with strained effort as the flapping, loosened curves of his stowed wings kicked up dust from the rubble. Even as he stood on weakened joints, his eyes were fire, and as the megazord posed dramatically for the continuing battle, the dragon took to the air.

With wings extended, Dagahra crossed the harbor in a sustained glide, his toothy jaws nearly looking smug as his massive form made haste for the megazord. His mouth and shoulder spikes all snapped open, bombarding the combined machine with three spiral rays of magenta-crimson.

Megazord Titano crossed the twin Manda swords in front of itself, the point of intersection taking the hit from the converging beams. The megazord was pushed several hundred meters backward from the sheer force, sliding ahead of the advancing sea dragon, but took only minimal damage from dispersing bolts of energy lightning.

The Manda swords took on a coloration intermediate between the two shades of energy that had struck it, glowing with absorbed power. The moment the attack was halted, and Dagahra pulled up to gain altitude over his opponent, the megazord faked a backward-leaning dodge and reversed with a quick overhead swipe of the left blade, leaving a long, sparking gash in Dagahra’s underside from the base of the neck to the right thigh.

Dagahra faltered in the air, tilting precariously and nearly colliding with a more distant rock spire before righting himself and banking into a wide curve. Gaining height into the clouds enclosing the sky above, the dragon returned with a vengeance, shoulder cannons firing off alternating bursts of energetic thunder in a long strafing run toward the megazord’s position.

The megazord swung both its arms with a moderate level of precision, blocking and absorbing several of the energy attacks but missing others. One attack struck hard into its left shoulder, tipping the machine into a partial stumble while the right arm struggled to intercept the next two.

The yacht was almost clear of the final pair of spires, twin formations creating a loose gateway to the sea beyond. Masako was leaning tensely on the back rail, looking out over the vessel’s spreading wake and keeping herself as a wall between the others and the battle behind them.

For what little that would do against a giant-sized kaiju.

Or a giant-sized screwup from the idiots in the zords.

“It doesn’t look like they’re doing too well…”

Turning around, Masako found Lucy the next level up, braced between the railing bars of the higher balcony section attached to the cabin. Kristina was at her side, hands keeping tight hold of Lucy’s free one from two separate routes around the bar between them. Lucy’s other hand was holding the orange camcorder, strapped securely to her wrist, but while she appeared to have once been filming the battle in earnest, she wasn’t watching the viewfinder anymore, the device lowered to reveal the worried look in her attentive eyes.

Masako looked back, and the equation was a simple one. Dagahra could fly, giving the airborne sea dragon a significant range advantage over the grounded, melee-focused megazord.

The one counter the machine seemed to possess was a move where it drew its swords back to align past the opposite shoulders, then forcefully scraped them out against one another, sending an x-shape of magenta-red energy arcs up into the air toward Dagahra. The passing dragon took the hit in the right flank, drifting off course with smoke pouring from the wound but regaining composure quickly, and the attack had used up all that remained of the energy the two swords had collected, reducing the blades to bare, emerald green metal once again.

“We’ll be okay,” said Lucy, drawing Masako’s attention away from her thoughts and to the faint smile on the girl’s face as she softly nodded.

“I’ll keep her out of trouble,” Kristina assured, with a slightly teasing smirk.

I hadn’t even planned that far out yet but okay. Here goes nothing, I guess.

Red lightning struck upward from beside the boat, and Masako held her breath until she could see her zoid forming fully, with both wings completely intact. With a smirk of her own, she launched herself into the cockpit, taking the controls and punching it toward the battle.

Dagahra roared a challenge, diving on a steep diagonal with his shoulder cannons open and firing.

The megazord braced, left sword taking the hits while the right sword readied behind for a probably useless swing into the air.

Masako tapped the communication channel online.

“Hey losers, need a lift?”

The Battra zord’s legs slotted into the megazord’s back, locking the smaller machine in place with lightning-patterned wings extending far out past the shoulders. With a power boost from the combination, Masako’s zord lifted the rest of the gestalt quickly up and forward, flying on closing intercept with the surprised and momentarily stunned sea dragon.

“Hell yeah!” screamed a snide, douchey voice Masako already didn’t like. The readied swing of the right blade became a javelin-like stab, hooking overhand as the megazord banked to catch up with Dagahra’s last-ditch attempt to pull higher.

Energized in a reddish hue, the right-hand sword plunged down the open barrel of Dagahra’s right shoulder cannon, the kaiju wailing from the pain.

With momentum still carrying the opponents past one another, they twisted a fraction of a turn in the air before the megazord wrenched away the bade, the Manda horns behind the sword’s tip catching like a barb and tearing out a large chunk of flesh that included the lower half of the cannon’s cone shell. Dagahra had been yanked toward a nose-dive, and nearly collided with a mountain before skipping off the side with his forelimbs and curving back into the air.

The megazord was faster with Masako at the wings, spinning toward the wounded dragon and crossing its blade-arms. The last of the absorbed energy was used up in another cross-wave attack, the x-shaped projectile hitting dead center on the shoulder injury and sending the kaiju careening with a dangerous tilt. Dagahra bellowed with rage, and angled skyward, punching through the remaining cloud layer and out of sight.

At Masako’s flight controls, the megazord ascended to match, the grey shadow over the island giving way to brilliant sunlight above. The upper surface of the cloud layer reflected crystal white like snow as the light washed over it, the same gleam brightening the metal of the combined machines to a nearly blinding shine.

The Manda swords rippled, then burned bright in a shade of starlike gold.

Dagahra swooped into view, giving off a startling, tooth-baring growl before dedicating his jaws to the buildup of energy. Twin spiral beams fired from the dragon’s mouth and intact left shoulder cannon, the Megazord dodging handily to the side but gaining speed into an intercept course.

Dagahra fired again and again, the megazord zig-zagging in two dimensions to avoid the attacks while retaining its speed on approach. As collision neared, Dagahra readied his head for a physical bite, the claws on his front legs raising forward in anticipation.

“Take us higher at the last second, then spin us in about face,” the douchey voice commanded with an implied smirk. “If you get what I’m saying.”

“On it,” Masako replied quickly, the moment in question only seconds away.

As the combatants closed in, Masako pulled up to pass overhead, then took Battra’s wings into a drift, spinning the megazord around to face backward and shift from prone to upright. The machine’s arms hefted the twin swords above its head, shining with golden light, and swung them both in sweeping, downward and backward cleaves.

The pendulum-style blades struck Dagahra just out past each of his shoulders, carrying through the opposing movement and slicing the dragon’s wings off completely. With a confused, pained roar, Dagahra began dropping out of the air, quickly sinking through the clouds.

The megazord dove, breaking back into the dispersing storm with the left, Varan arm extended forward while tossing the Manda tail sword briefly out of its grip. The Varan zord’s stowed front limbs hinged out from the top of the larger forearm, spreading like Rodan’s wings but incompletely, in more of a slingshot-style configuration. The Manda tail lowered into the gap, now horizontal and pointed like a spear, while a strand of orange energy supplied the tension for the endgame weapon.

The sword was launched downward, spearing Dagahra through the back and silencing his roar into the spinning vortex of collapsing matter transfer. The resulting, miniscule coin glinted small sparkles in the air, and the magazord gained speed, the Varan hand opening and catching the tiny artifact in the dark depths of its closing fist.

They pulled out of the dive, taking to a hover in a sunbeam as the stormclouds fragmented and gradually drifted away.

“Okay, that was awesome,” the douchey voice began, most likely the Titanosaurus ranger now that Masako was looking clearly at the other camera views. “You’re pretty good. Probably pretty hot, too. You know, if you ever want to…”

“I will DROP THIS MEGAZORD RIGHT NOW,” Masako rage-deadpanned, her finger hovering on the clamp release in full view of the camera.

The Titanosaurus ranger froze up, then slipped deceptively back into a casual posture, attempting to brush it off. "Whoa there, okay, okay. Get the picture, but can’t blame a guy for trying—”

Masako released the clamps, and watched the combined mass of the other four zords fall over eight hundred meters to the ground below. The impact kicked up a dust cloud a mile wide and left a crater deep enough it might have made a new lake were it closer to the sea.

“I’m really sorry about him…” Yuzo spoke over the channel just before Masako disconnected.

The Battra zord made a slow, gliding loop around Monster Island, energized wings discharging bolts of red lightning by the thousands. The storm rained down on clearing waters, cleansing the island of Barem while leaving the rest of the ecosystem intact. One fear-stricken giant octopus scrambled away from the onslaught, left unharmed even as Barem became miniscule vents of embers and steam all through the sea around it.

With the infection purged, the island calmed, and the other four zords climbing from the crater and leaving by way of the sea, Masako let out a long, relaxed sigh, set her chin in an elbow-supported palm, and allowed her own machine to drift aimlessly on air currents.

Do we… go home now? she asked aloud in her thoughts.

I SUPPOSE THE TASK IS FINISHED, Battra supplied only a little helpfully.

It doesn’t feel finished.

THEN SEE IT THROUGH. WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

Masako took the secluded moment to breathe away her nerves, her eyes finding and tracking the small, white shape of the distant, departing sea vessel. She considered following them along from above, to make sure nothing went wrong, but decided that was just plain rude.

Instead, she brought her pursuit closer alongside, a few hundred meters to the right of the yacht and roughly the same distance higher in the sky. Briefly, the two craft were connected by a thin, diagonal, red line of condensed, traveling energy.

The professor had found a slanting deck chair on the vessel’s starboard side, and upon Masako’s arrival, seemed to make at least a little effort to show that the purpose of his present reclining was to rest his injured leg. “You’re back,” he announced with little surprise.

Masako stood, realizing no one else had actually seen her yet. The designated pilots were occupied in the forward part of the cabin, while the rest of the students sheltered in the larger interior section were either facing away from the starboard windows or, in Lucy’s and Kristina’s case, fast asleep snuggled together under a single blanket.

Under her helmet, no one could see the way Masako smiled with more genuine warmth than she would ever admit. As for the knowledge of the occurrence, Battra would just have to deal.

“Not surprised to see me?” Masako joked as she leant casually against the outer railing. “I guess it makes sense. You do seem to know more about ranger stuff than you’re letting on.”

If Professor Ando felt caught, he didn’t show it. Casually, he stood, and made his way over to the railing. Setting a tired hand down on the metal beam, he looked out into the water, he and Masako facing in opposite directions as he stayed quiet for another moment.

“I’m afraid I know little more than you do,” he admitted after a while, the words colored with a quiet laugh. “They read us in, of course, the minds they’d gathered back then. A think tank of sorts, with a moon-shot directive to ‘solve the problem of giant monsters, once and for all.’ I was for it, in the beginning, and by the end I’d started to realize I was against it, but as it turned out, it didn’t actually matter.”

He turned to look Masako in the eye, the Battra ranger sparing a lens to hold his gaze.

“Of all the plans we’d concocted, new weapons and containment initiatives… what happened on that day was something not a single one of us could explain. Whatever power sealed the kaiju in the coins, it wasn’t something we created, nor had we speculated upon anything of the sort. I’ll guarantee you every last member of that committee has spent the last two decades wondering what the hell really happened, and not all of us are content to remain in the dark.”

Masako blinked. “Is that why you were here? On the island?”

Professor Ando gave a light wave with an idle hand. “Among other, more official reasons, of course, but it matters little now.”

“Sorry it didn’t pan out.” Masako acknowledged with a downcast shrug.

“Perhaps it wasn’t a total loss,” the professor mused, staring back into the distance where Monster Island had nearly disappeared. “Seeing Dagahra resurrected from the long past now has me thinking of something… peculiar.”

Masako eyed him curiously. “Thinking about what?”

“About the last time a kaiju was sealed away, held as prisoner by a disc of metal.”

Waves rolled around the boat, the time passing in long hours to the mainland. The Battra zord had kept at its persistent hover, far off starboard and gliding through the air above.

From the smaller deck on the roof of the cabin, Masako stared out at the machine, arms crossed over another railing as she pondered. Was the auto-pilot feature inherent of the zord, or was it tied to Battra’s consciousness somehow? It wasn’t direct control, she knew, since that would have evidently gone against the purpose of the coins’ existence in the first place.

Of all people, it was Shannon that climbed out of the roof hatch, awkward in held silence as she sat down on one of the built-in benches set along the sides.

“Yeah, I’m back,” Masako spoke up. “Just need to make sure you all don’t sink, or break down at sea, or… this morning I watched an Oodako attack a finning boat pretty far away from the island. Can never be too careful out here.”

When the quiet only continued, Masako sighed, and turned toward the girl on the bench. Whatever she’d been about to say, though, the eyes on her stopped her in her tracks.

Shannon broke off her staring, eyes lowering in hesitance.

“Kristina says you’ve seen a lot of death.”

Masako had picked up on it before, but now she could see it plain as day. “So have you.”

Shannon jumped faintly in surprise, but looked up with both fear and understanding. “You may have the power, the drive, of a monster, but you, yourself, are still human. Your soul might not always be able to endure things Battra’s will with ease. I hope you aren’t forgetting that.”

With a sigh, Masako shook her head.

“I was like this before Battra,” she admitted, taking a seat on the far end of the bench and allowing her ranger armor to slip away. “I do bad things to bad people, and most of the time it’s still less than they deserve. I understand not being able to stomach that… that’s how I was. Then I had to not be.”

“Revenge is a sickness,” Shannon said with far too much certainty. “You can’t let it take you.”

“I do what I do for the people who are still alive,” Masako stated firmly. “It’s not about revenge… not anymore.”

There were definitely more holes Shannon could have poked in that argument, like the clear indulgence she’d shown today when she hadn’t needed to, but the other girl stayed silent, almost respectful in her restraint.

They sat like that for a while, until Shannon left without a word. The seas were calm, and safe harbor approached for those Masako had taken under her charge.

So, gonna call me out? You’ve been quiet for a while.

WHAT ARE YOU EXPECTING BATTRA TO SAY?

Masako would admit some amount of surprise. Well, we can start with why I went to the island, and DON’T tell me you don’t already know.

…THERE WERE TWO REASONS.

Yes? And?

…YOU WISHED TO SAVE LIVES. BEFORE YOU KNEW OF THEIR WORTH.

I know. Fancy that, I actually wanted to be the hero for once. Must seem an awful lot like weakness.

YOU HAVE PROVEN, AND CONTINUE TO PROVE, YOUR COMMITMENT TO THE EARTH, MASAKO. YOU HAVE EARNED SOME LEVEL OF TRUST IN DETERMINING WHICH HUMANS ARE TO DIE, AND WHICH TO BE SPARED. BATTRA OFFERS NO CRITICISM.

None? You sure? I could’ve always just turned around and left, if that was the call, but I took the chance they’d be good people, which even I know should be the wrong move from what I told you about the odds of that.

PERHAPS YOU ARE NOT FALTERING, AND WE ARE BOTH SIMPLY LEARNING THAT REALITY IS NOT WHOLLY AS WE PROFESS IT TO BE.

Masako paused at that.

You good, Battra? That sounded like…

I AM ALLOWED TO BE WRONG.

There was a cavernous silence in Masako’s head, but one Battra held in reserve.

I HAVE ALWAYS IMAGINED HUMANS AS BEING RULED BY IGNORANCE, OR SELF-INTEREST AT THE WORST, BUT TODAY I HAVE SEEN DESTRUCTION OUT OF MALICE, CRUELTY, AND INTENT, TO A DEGREE I HAD NOT CONSIDERED AS A FACTOR. I BELIEVE I CAN NO LONGER ATTRIBUTE RESPONSIBILITY TO HUMANS AS ONE SPECIES, ONE COLLECTIVE THREAT.

Masako twisted a bit of a smirk. Took you long enough.

THIS DOES NOT ABSOLVE THOSE WHOSE INACTION PLACES THEM ON THE SIDE OF CATACLYSM, BUT I WILL ALLOW YOU THIS: WHEN WE HAVE ROOTED OUT ALL THOSE THAT REPRESENT THE SUM OF TRUE DANGER TO THE EARTH… PERHAPS THERE WILL BE CAUSE TO REEVAULUATE THE FATE THAT MUST BEFALL THE REST OF YOU.

It was a long, several moments before Masako could decide how she truly wanted to react, but a breath of relief pushed through. Thank you, she thought softly, then added, I didn’t need that, but it’s appreciated.

AND THE OTHER REASON? Battra prodded, moving on quickly. WHY ELSE WAS THE ISLAND OF IMPORTANCE?

If you don’t already know, it’s only because something’s stopping you from believing it.

…YOU MEANT WHAT YOU TOLD ME, ABOUT INVESTIGATING THE IMPRISONMENT OF THE KAIJU.

Battra, you talk a lot about my ‘tribe.’ Not just the people I protect, but the people I trust, and think of as family, whether I’ve met them or not. What you don’t seem to get, is that you’re part of that, too.

She reached into her jacket, pulling out the medallion now on a chain around her neck.

I still don’t know a lot about the power coins, but I get the sense that I could just… crush this, destroy it somehow, and you’d be free. That’s how it must’ve worked with Dagahra, Megaguirus, probably most of the other kaiju the Rangers fought. But I can also sense that what’s stopping me from doing that… isn’t me, and somehow I doubt you’re that scared of the Rangers putting you back that you wouldn’t even try. Something’s different about us. We understand each other, and maybe… maybe that’s the point, and if even the Xiliens could realize we’d be good together, I’m probably not the only one who’s got it figured. Whatever these coins were made for, the Rangers are what came out of it, and it’s not just about powers, it’s about… being the same. Having to fight the same battles. And that’s been just about my entire fucking life, so yeah… not so hard for you to be family to me.

Battra fell silent again, which at this point, was about as much as an eye-rolling, faintly grinning Masako could have truly expected.

You can tell me later.

Chapter Text

…and despite the shocking drop in radiation levels to well below safe limits, G-force is currently urging all citizens to remain indoors and on high alert, especially if you reside in an area affected by the fighting, as any piece of the creature known as Destoroyah, no matter how small, has the potential to be extremely dangerous. G-force personnel are currently sweeping the streets with extreme-low-temperature weaponry, the crisis in downtown Tokyo assumed to be ongoing even as we continue to track the creature that sources have confirmed is not the same Godzilla that battled Destoroyah just hours ago, but is in fact…

Feeling a hurt she would never have expected and still found puzzling, Meru closed her eyes and laid her head back on the passable G-center medical wing pillow, in a vain attempt to tune out the recounting of events. Her injuries weren’t severe enough to keep her bedridden, but she’d opted to let herself rest as much as possible. The last thing she needed was to overexert herself and make something scar.

This world of monsters and abnormal abilities and military superweapons shouldn’t have been hers in the first place, and she certainly didn’t want to carry scars from it.

Sure, she’d found herself capable, fluent in the language that was the moving machine of crisis management, but in the end, she was just doing her duty to the world. An extended tour that would one day be over and she could finally have the quiet life she’d been promised. A part of her was almost resentful chance had seen fit to saddle the world with another Godzilla, ensuring that humanity would remain in dire need of ESP for what was likely years to come.

But Meru couldn’t be resentful that Junior had lived. She couldn’t see him as a nuisance, a cruel tragedy for mankind, or even simply as an animal, like the ones whose bones she’d dug up back in the states. Not anymore.

And she owed her sudden, frustrating yet unavoidable change of heart to the woman currently occupying the chair beside the hospital bed, a now-inattentive hand still resting over Meru’s in a reversal of the event she suspected had started the whole thing.

In the wake of the battle, Meru’s recent close colleague, opinionated rival, and fellow psychic had been given leave from duty after ‘experiencing a major trauma.’ Officially, that trauma involved being thrown by their helicopter’s explosion, having to flee through a crumbling airport while warring monsters reduced it to rubble, and only narrowly being rescued before a cataclysmic radiation event. But it was obvious to Meru, as it was to more of their colleagues at G-center than she would have expected, what the deeper truth under the surface was.

Miki was in mourning.

Her eyes were glued to the small television screen mounted on the wall, where aerial footage from news choppers continued to track the protruding, jagged and twisted purple spines of the immense creature swimming just beneath the waves. Junior had changed course, heading now for the Ogasawara island chain. Some suspected he was seeking out his technical adopted brother, others that he was looking to reestablish contact with Rodan, but whatever the case, the team in charge of the Monsterland project was said to be on high alert.

Miki hadn’t spoken in over an hour, and Meru couldn’t blame her. Losing Junior, then losing Godzilla, only to get Junior back as the new Godzilla, had to be a lot for her to process. It was a lot for Meru to process, and she’d seen both creatures as dispensable abominations only a day ago. She was certain the psychic link between them had persisted even after they’d lured Junior into the city, as how else would she have felt Miki’s joy and wonder, then her anguish and sorrow, as the day turned to night and the sequence of tragedy unfolded?

Obviously, they’d become supernaturally entangled, probably a reaction between her own strengthening powers and Miki’s fading ones. Obviously, that was why her mind, in between bouts of being flooded with guilt, kept circling back to the memory of laying her hand softly over Miki’s in the helicopter, or of Miki screaming her name, rushing to her side, when the rubble came down and took out her leg. Why it was so fixated on, comforted in a sense of belonging, by the gentle weight of Miki’s hand on hers now.

And it was obviously why Miki had stayed by her side, because there really was no other explanation for that. Not when Meru had been the one to craft the cruel plan of sacrificing Junior, had been responsible for the events that led to Miki falling to her knees in desperate tears.

In shame, she’d started trying to slide her hand out from under Miki’s, only to have it locked in a tighter embrace. When she looked up, Miki was still coming to her senses with a guilty frown, casting worried eyes on her.

Unable to meet them, Meru looked away. “I’m… I’m sorry, Miki. For everything.”

“We had no other choice,” Miki said, not quite like she believed it but like she wanted Meru to.

“I was cruel to you,” Meru conceded, the one thing no one could justify about her role in the ordeal. “There was no need for that. I was out of line.”

“You didn’t know!” Miki insisted, too quickly, kindness waiting to meet Meru’s startled eyes. “You didn’t understand Godzilla like I did. Most people don’t.” It was her turn to look away, as sadness settled back in. “I’ve been dealing with it for a long time, and you weren’t the first to put me in that position, to have to hurt one of them. Once, I’d almost killed Godzilla, and only Rodan giving up his fire power saved him. I don’t know what I would have felt if that plan had succeeded, but I know it’s not right to blame people for wanting to protect themselves. Sometimes, even, I can’t help but feel guilty, when Godzilla caused so much destruction, took away so many people’s loved ones. You’re not to blame for thinking me strange, and callous, in having love for such a being.”

There was hurt on her face, and at once, Meru remembered how excited, how hopeful Miki had looked the first time the two had had a chance to talk all by themselves. Before all their differences started to become apparent. Even saying she just wanted a normal life had hurt Miki somehow, begun driving in the wedge between them.

Now, Meru wasn’t sure what normal was anymore.

“I didn’t see monsters today. I saw a parent mourning a child, and a child crying out for a parent that wasn’t coming home. You’re not wrong to have love for them.” After probing for quiet allowance to be able to move it again, Meru turned her hand over and clasped Miki’s tightly. “And I’m still sorry, whether we had a choice or we didn’t, that it had to end this way.”

Through her stunned surprise, Miki couldn’t hold back the beginning of more tears. Her hand firmly embraced Meru’s, and she closed her eyes with an assuring nod, fighting for composure before turning back up to face the television screen.

“End, and beginning.”

As something like life breathed back into Miki, Meru could feel it too, a quiet solace as they both returned to watching the broadcast. For a long time, it was just more speculation about what Junior would mean for the world – whether he would be friendly, or an enemy, or something much more complicated than either.

Eventually, the constant tracking of Junior as he crossed the sea was relegated to a small window in the corner of the screen, the focus shifting back to the conditions in Tokyo. Luckily for the survivors of the battle in its immediate aftermath, there hadn’t been any further sign of Destoroyah, but as the creature could exist in forms smaller than could be perceived by the human eye, hope of its complete destruction wasn’t something Meru dared to have faith in.

As the minutes and hours passed, and when even relevant news of the recovery efforts began to trickle in slow, time was inevitably allotted from the ongoing situation to highlight other worldly matters. After all, the new year would arrive in the coming days, promising now to bring with it another scheduled rocket supply mission bound for the moon base, the Bureau of Science and Technology’s secretive new clean energy plan underway in Osaka, and a large-scale Houkoku Corporation logging project in Hokkaido, which was set to move forward in spite of fierce protests from environmental groups.

That last one, at least, was evidently cause to shake Miki from her vigil, her fingers idly tracing the edge of one of the hanging, coin-shaped earrings she’d put on earlier and seemed, at the time, to hope in vain would give her guidance. She’d frowned again, this time out of deep disappointment.

“Have we learned nothing?” She whispered, mostly to herself but Meru couldn’t help but be attentive to her distress. “What kind of world are we leaving for the generations to come?”

She looked tired. Tired of fighting, tired of death and destruction, and also, Meru realized with a sudden start, just tired. “Have you had any rest?”

Now, Miki looked caught, resistant to the very idea. Her eyes went back to the corner of the television screen. “I need to watch. I need to be awake, if…”

On some level, Meru understood that. But Miki had apparently been fighting her exhaustion all night, and it was visibly starting to take its toll on her. “At the speed Junior’s moving, he’s still more than half a day away from reaching the island chain. It’s better if you get a little sleep.”

For once, Miki didn’t argue, but she didn’t move, either. Her eyes passed over the small room, furnished only with uncomfortable metal chairs, then fixed themselves on the room’s single exit and stared blankly, lost.

…Right. G-center, of course, had to be a modern art nightmare of unforgivingly hard surfaces, and available bed space in the medical wing would be scarce as it was, not to mention the fact that the moment Miki walked out that door, she’d have to face the reality that she was mourning Godzilla, while everyone else on base was mourning their comrades who’d died in battle against him.

And so, Meru Ozawa did what she did best, for the better or the worse – solve the problem.

With an intake of breath, she shifted herself over on the medical bed, moving as far toward the left side as she could without the risk of falling. As far as she’d gone to appear somewhat cold, distinctly professional in her position here, now it didn’t seem to matter anymore. Something about having been connected—being connected, she was sure—to the other woman’s mind made it an easy, natural thing to share space, especially after a tragedy.

And if anything could make Meru doubt the two of them were still linked, it was Miki’s surprise at the action – a momentary shock and parting of lips at the realization of what was being suggested. Their hands, still linked, were now stretched out awkwardly over the increased distance, as if Meru were about to tug on Miki’s arm and beckon the other woman into bed with her.

It was the first thought in a long, long time that had made Meru nearly break into a childish grin at the ridiculousness of it all. Thankfully, she contained herself, and was in the process of building a summary of her logical reasoning that wouldn’t spill awkwardly and half-constructed from her lips when it became a moot point anyway – by then, Miki was already carefully climbing into the vacated half of the bed, not a word passing between them, nor needing to.

It was a tight fit on the small bed, and Meru used a light pull of their joined hands toward herself to confirm it was alright if they ended up touching. Somehow this ended with Miki pressed wholly against her uninjured side, her head propped up on Meru’s shoulder at an angle from which she could still see the TV screen in the moments before she drifted off.

As she distributed the single, acceptably warm knit sheet as best she could over both their bodies, Meru decided not to mention the renegade arm that had curled around her waist to cling against the back of her shoulder, touch halfway between gentle and desperate. She moved her own free hand around to Miki’s shoulder, soothing softly as Miki shook quietly in distress and let out the rest of the tears she’d been holding back.

“They’re not just creatures,” Miki spoke up when she’d started to calm again. “They’re warnings, too. About how we treat the Earth, and each other, and the dangers still waiting out there… and we haven’t listened. All this time, they’ve been telling us, and we haven’t listened.”

“People are stubborn,” Meru assured, well aware of what she was really saying. “They’re set in their ways, but… but maybe they can change.”

“Maybe…” Miki agreed, though by her tone, not truly believing it. “But I guess, my fear is… that instead, we’ll just do whatever it takes to avoid having to.”

Masako fired from the tree line, purple eyebeams scorching a row of bulldozers and setting off a cascade of explosions.

With a running start, she leapt, gliding on open wings like a frightful apparition. The first worker cowered in fright, and a hard kick to the head sent his body crumpling with a snap against one of the severed wooden stumps littering what had only minutes ago been a vast swath of shadowed Hokkaido forest floor. Masako dealt swift punches and kicks to the rest, a rapid flurry of blows that only slowed once the first shovel came swinging in her direction.

She grabbed it and pushed back, knocking its wielder out with a jab of the handle before thwacking another man’s skull with the flat of the blade. With some clever wristwork, she diagonally sheared off the shovel’s end against the next attacker’s revving chainsaw, sending the new wooden spear-point out in rapid, pain-inducing jabs against the worker’s padded vest. Recovering, the man swung the chainsaw a second time, only for Masako’s curved, orange-glowing forearm spikes to dig a trench into the flat side and out to the rounded end, pulling back and tearing the chain free of the rest of the assembly.

Time seemed to slow for Masako as a red lens moved with a turning helmet to follow the torn-out chain as it flew past her head. In a flash, she caught one of the broken ends in her armored glove, cracking it like a whip and swinging it back at her opponent. With wide eyes, the man narrowly evaded several razor-edged strikes. Masako swung at his head, and a few blades near the end of the chain embedded in the thick plastic of his hard hat. Twirling, Masako wrenched the hat from his head, spun it in a wide arc, and slammed it back down in a hit that sent him limply to the ground.

Catching a large and fast movement in her peripheral, she backflipped high, narrowly clearing the large, lengthy mass of wood that swung in from the side and passed underneath her. She landed on her feet and, okay, she could give at least a little credit to the guy who was both brave and coordinated enough to use the excavator’s claw arm to start swinging around a four-meter-long tree trunk as a battering ram.

Masako backed up and took a combat stance, waiting for the brick-red vehicle’s rolling treads to track further toward her before performing another backflip over the weaponized log. She only had time to rock on her feet before leaping again to evade the backswing. Midair, she twirled to face the attacking piece of machinery, her clawed fingertips sending out bolts of burning red lightning that burst the log into splinters.

Alright, you’ve had your fun.

She backed up again and lunged forward, sidestepping a downward slam from the now-empty claw that kicked up a cloud of dust from the soil. Eyes and horns glowing like embers, Masako sprang upward like a demon through the dark haze, grabbing hold of one of the lower hydraulics to swing herself atop the maneuvering arm. Standing across the highest joint, she wavered for balance as the operator both adjusted the arm outward and started rotating the vehicle’s top assembly in an attempt to throw her off.

Masako made a forward roll down the slope of the arm’s first segment, kicked out backwards with her feet, and launched herself through the shattering front window of the glass canopy. Her arms took hold of the stunned operator, her knee broke the control chair backward from its base, and her spinning foot kicked out the back window, uninterrupted momentum carrying them both into open air and then to the ground below.

In a field of splintered roots and now shards of glass, Masako pressed her heel upon the logger, leaning over him with silent rage behind her helmet’s fierce lenses.

“Tell me what happened here,” she commanded sharply of the cowering man. “Tell me you at least remember!”

It took the man a moment to recover from the shock, and several more even to process what she was asking, but he relented with his hands up.

“Some… huge monster almost thirty years ago!” he pleaded, shaking hands shielding his face. “Ancient… rocks or something. A shrine.” He threw one arm out to point insistently to his left. “There’s a few acres up in the shadow of the mountain we’re supposed to leave alone, but we’re clearing the rest and—Gaaahhhhh!” he screamed as Masako applied more pressure. “It’s just the job! Don’t kill me, please!”

Masako kicked him in the chin and watched him roll to the side, curled up and waiting for death.

With a rough, warning sneer, growled loudly enough to catch through her helmet filter, she turned instead and headed up to the mountain he’d pointed at.

By no means had she been careful with the logging crew, but neither did she stop to make sure every last one was dead. She blew up the rest of their equipment and, by the noise, left at least most of them groaning in pain, but breathing.

Maybe she was getting soft. Maybe she just knew they weren’t really the ones to blame.

After Mothra’s jumpstart and almost three decades since, the growth around the reconstituted monument was nearly indistinguishable from the older trees left in other areas of the forest. There was enough shade overhead to keep the undergrowth light, and it took only a bit of wandering to locate the loose crown of rocks and the cross-inscribed-in-circle that marked the location of Desghidorah’s tomb.

In the center of the cross was a small, circular opening, a few centimeters in diameter. There was a dark, narrow hole, as if someone had drilled precisely down into the rock.

THE SEAL HAS BEEN TAKEN.

They’d both expected that. And Desghidorah?

NOT WITHIN THE CHAMBER, YET NOT BROKEN FREE, AS THE MARKER HERE REMAINS.

They took him too. Sealed into a coin. Maybe even the first monster they did it to. Masako knelt on the glyph in the rock, staring at the small opening as if she could see all the way down. Technically, she could probably use Battra’s energized state to phase herself in, but she was pretty sure there was little to be gained from doing that. But… it still doesn’t make sense. Desghidorah was kept in a physical chamber underground, not inside the seal itself like the kaiju are in the ranger coins.

PERHAPS THERE IS ANTOHER COMPONENT WE ARE STILL MISSING. HOWEVER, I NOW MORE THAN EVER BELIEVE YOUR PROFESSOR ANDO WAS CORRECT. ELIAS TECHNOLOGY WAS ALMOST CERTAINLY INVOLVED IN THE CREATION OF THE RANGER COINS.

Well, at least SOMEONE’S catching on.

Masako whirled around, arms up and alight with red energy, but all she managed to catch in her vision were the trunks of trees.

That second voice in her head hadn’t been Battra’s. In fact, it hadn’t really been the kind of voice she would’ve associated with any Kaiju at all, except maybe Megaguirus. And she was pretty sure it hadn’t been her own voice, either, unless she’d actually gone off the deep end and entered her cackling, maniacal villain phase.

NO.

…What?

Battra sounded more annoyed than fearful, which made Masako drop her guard just a little, though she kept scanning the trees, catching only the glimpse of a shadow that might’ve been a… slowly-wing-flapping bat drifting sideways behind a tree trunk?

WHATEVER SHE WANTS, OUR ANSWER IS NO.

‘Our?’ Come on, Battra, you know better than to trust a human being!

AND YOU HAVE ONLY PROVEN YOURSELF WORTHY OF MUCH THE SAME. I OWE YOU NO GROUNDS FOR MY ACTIONS.

Masako let her arms drop even more, back straightening and eyes blinking behind lenses. I… feel like I stepped in the middle of something…

There was the faint, audible drone of small-scale hovertech and a disturbance in the wind, and Masako whirled around to face the source, finally locking eyes with… a goth samurai pixie witch riding a miniaturized cyborg dragon, which might have been the raddest series of words that had ever passed through her thoughts.

“So,” the five-inch-tall woman declared aloud, resting her tiny chin on a tiny palm and making an unimpressed show of looking Masako over. “You’re the worthless human I have to go through to talk to Battra now.” She jerked her dragon right at Masako’s face, the Battra ranger flinching backward and getting a close-up view of the dragon’s surprisingly cute, toothy smile and the woman’s pleased, vindicated grin.

AND BE THANKFUL FOR THAT, BELVERA, Battra addressed, his dull rage warning that if he’d had his way, there would already be lightning and laser beams involved. But Masako was pretty sure he didn’t actually mean—

I DO MEAN IT.

Scratch that, she was definitely sure he didn’t mean it. Or mean that he’d actually be aiming to kill. It was something subtle in Battra’s tone that Masako hadn’t been able to pick up on at first, but that she’d slowly been learning to recognize, even retroactively.

Masako stepped back and took her first long look at Belvera, who it turned out was indeed about four-to-five inches tall and wearing a black, red-and-purple accented, feathered outfit that sat intriguingly on the line between a dress and a suit of knight’s armor. She squinted inside her helmet as she put the pieces together, finally raising a finger at the small woman and only half-tempering the smile in her voice.

“…Are you Battra’s Mothra fairy?”

The question was answered with a loud internal groan from Battra and, simultaneously, an external burst of gleeful laughter from Belvera, who reeled back and kicked a leg in the air, leaning far enough backward on her dragon mount that she seemed at risk of tumbling off.

Masako flinched back her arms from the instinct to reach out and catch her fall.

It was right then that Belvera stopped laughing, something defensive and suspicious making itself known in her posture as she shot Masako a glare. She didn’t linger on it, pulling at the dragon’s collar-handlebars to fly herself higher up in the air and behind Masako’s head.

“You’re lucky I need Battra’s help so badly,” she began, continuing to flit and glide about with the seeming intention of making Masako keep having to turn around just because she could. “Badly enough I’ll chance involving one of you, but only because it’ll all be worth it in the end.”

NEITHER OF US HAVE AGREED TO HELP YOU, OR WILL.

Masako worried a lip and shrugged.

I mean, she hates humans too, shouldn’t we at least hear her out? If she’s like, a belated part of the deal with you, I wouldn’t actually mind—

SHE IS NOT. AND WE ARE GETTING RID OF HER AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. PREFERABLY WITHIN THE NEXT MINUTE. BATTRA WOULD APPRECIATE IF YOU COULD BEGIN WORKING TOWARDS THAT OBJECTIVE.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Belvera had yet again zoomed right up to Masako’s faceplate, with yet another piercing, though uncertain glare sizing her up. Without a word, she zipped off, and resumed monologuing.

“A few decades ago, my sisters and I unlocked an ancient power called the Elias Triangle. Tragically, we had to use it all up to stop Grand Ghidorah from destroying the world. However, it’s taken years, but the components of the Triangle have finally regenerated themselves. The problem, of course, is that the power needs all three of us to assemble.”

Masako had been listening to the fairy’s story with a long wince of confusion. “So… hypothetically, then, where would we be involved?”

Even with her size and at a distance, Belvera managed to distinctively roll her eyes. She darted quickly in a blur, pausing at a hover over Desghidorah’s marker and throwing an irritated gesture out at the empty spot where the seal should’ve been.

“You’ve both been getting close to the truth, but here, I’ll catch you up a few steps ahead. I’ve been waiting more than twenty-five years for the triangle, but my sisters have been missing for the last twenty – vanished off the face of the Earth in the year 2004, same as all the monsters. It wasn’t the seal of the ancient Elias the humans used to create the coins, Moll and Lora were directly involved somehow, and now I’m sure it wasn’t willingly.”

“Moll and Lora?” Masako pondered, processing Belvera’s words until the realization hit. “Your sisters… you three are Elias, aren’t you?”

“The only ones left,” Belvera spat with a huff, and darted away before Masako could read her expression. “Before today I thought maybe I was the last now, but hours ago, I heard my sisters’ pitiful screams, calling out through some momentary break in whatever force was keeping them hidden from me.” She buzzed by Masako’s helmet, slowing down just long enough to pointedly show off her gleaming, sadistic grin. “But it was enough. I had Garu-Garu trace the location. I know where they’re being held now, and once you two help me steal them back from those human fools, with the power of the Elias Triangle I’ll rule the world!”

After a bout of over-the-top glee, Belvera finally settled in the air, hungry eyes awaiting Masako’s reply. Masako narrowed hers, staring the small woman down while Battra huffed apathetically in the back of her mind. The air was tense, and the forest was silent.

…I’m gonna call bullshit on at least half of that, but you can pretend I didn’t. “Yes, I’ll help you.”

WHAT!?

Masako winced at Battra’s disgust, and pretended to miss Belvera’s grimace of uncertainty. “I think what Belvera here is trying to say,” she steered instead, gesturing an aside at the fairy that didn’t quite connect, “is that right now, both of our searches are leading to the same place. She has the location, and we have the power to break in. If we join forces, we can both get what we want – the truth about what happened to you, and…” She absently waved a hand. “...whatever rhombus of terror thing Belvera’s after. I know you two have some history, but rule number one of surviving in a world that’s out to get all of us, is you have to be able to work with people you don’t like.”

With a light sigh, Masako softened her scowl and uncrossed her arms, tilting her helmet at Belvera with a casual shrug.

“…Maybe this can be a learning experience, for you both.”

The Battra zord flew just above the cloud layer, the overcast skies concealing its presence from the ground. Below, and leading only a few dozen meters ahead, Belvera rode Garu-Garu through the upper wisps of condensed moisture. Several times she had to steer hard to get the dragon to turn properly, but the odd procession made steady progress in zeroing in on Moll and Lora’s location.

One hand on the controls, Masako rested her helmet’s chin on her propped-up fist.

What’s your deal with her, anyway? She hates humans just as much as you do. Thought you’d be BFFs.

WHAT?

Friends. It just seems like you’d get along. Why don’t you?

BELVERA IS RECKLESS IN HER PURSUIT OF HUMANITY’S END. MORE THAN ONCE, HER SCHEMES TO DESTROY THEM HAVE BROUGHT PERIL TO THE EARTH IN THE PROCESS. SHE ALLIED HERSELF WITH DESGHIDORAH AND DAGAHRA, CREATURES THAT WOULD DEVASTATE THE PLANET AS WELL AS THE PEOPLE.

Idiots. Dagahra wasn’t my doing, that was just a coincidence. And remember, it was human beings that unleashed them both!

AND NOT UNTIL GRAND GHIDORAH’S RETURN, WAS THIS DANGER ENOUGH OF A REASON TO DO ANYTHING BUT LOOK ON WITH APPROVAL. SHE MAY CLAIM THAT SHE CARES FOR THIS PLANET, SHE MAY EVEN ACT TO PREVENT ITS CERTAIN DESTRUCTION, BUT ANY DISASTER LESS THAN APOCALYPSE IS, EVIDENTLY, AN ACCEPTABLE SACRIFICE TO SATE HER BLOODLUST.

The earth can recover once the humans are gone, but if they’re left unchecked, they’ll push it past the point of no return!

YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN A FOOL TO TAKE SUCH A CHANCE, IF THE EARTH EVER ACTUALLY MATTERED TO YOU.

If the Earth actually mattered to YOU, you’d be agreeing with me!

‘A more extreme environmentalist than Battra’ was not on the list of people I thought I’d meet today.

…You know what? I don’t need to justify myself to either of you.

Belvera’s telepathically-conveyed huff signaled an end to the discussion, at least on her end. Seemingly out of exasperation alone, Battra respected it, but Masako still couldn’t shake the many questions she was left with.

…Hey, Battra?

YES?

Do you know… WHY she hates humans?

NO, SHE HAS NEVER ELABORATED. HER HATRED HAD ALREADY REACHED ITS BOILING POINT WHEN I WAS CREATED TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO. AT THE TIME, I WAS CONVINCED SHE TRULY SHARED MY MOTIVES, AND ONLY BY HER ACTIONS SINCE HAVE I REALIZED THE CAUSE IS SOMETHING YET UNKNOWN TO ME.

Masako nodded absently, curious about a few details Battra had let slip but not in the mood to pry, and kept her eyes focused ahead on Belvera’s guiding flight – if the Elias was still listening in, she made no acknowledgement. The sky was calm, but grey, and though she tried, Masako couldn’t seem to help the involuntary twist of sickness in her gut, the familiar hollow feeling that came with not knowing, yet knowing…

YOU ARE THINKING IN HUMAN TERMS. DO NOT.

Masako paused, blinking. She was used to letting her thoughts get away from her, but not so used to having someone there to notice when it happened. Thanks, but I still don’t—

We’re here.

Doing her best to refocus, Masako stalled the Battra zord at a hover, searching down past the small dot of Garu-Garu in the sky below. The clouds were thin enough that she could make out the silhouette of the high spire, and the unique slanted shape of the roof below it.

“McKay Tower?”

IT HAS SIGNIFICANCE?

“It’s like the bay area’s main commerce hub. One giant skyscraper filled up with office space, snobby restaurants and service industries, a super-secretive research and development division, and two perpendicular monorail stations where the track runs right through the building twice on a long loop around some of the nearby blocks. It’s all owned and funded by Boss McKay, second richest man in the city.”

IS HE THE LEADER OF A CRIMINAL OGANIZATION?

Masako smiled. “Nah, the ‘boss’ thing is supposed to be ironic. Like a persona thing. Does it for the press cameras and the fans, but he’s really just a rich inventor and a philanthropist. Reads bedtime stories to kids for charity, that kinda shit.”

AND THAT’S ALL? NO UNDERHANDED SIDE-BUSINESS?

“If there is, he does a good job of hiding it. Like I always say, if there’s one honest billionaire in the world, it’s Boss McKay.”

…BUT YOU DO NOT THINK THERE IS EVEN ONE?

Exactly.

Lightning striking McKay Tower was common. Red lightning less so, but it was as good an entrance as any. In minutes, Masako was slipping quietly down the upper floors, her armor receding until she was just a street kid in melted leather that also had no business being here but was less suspicious than a power ranger.

The difference was probably still balanced out by Garu-Garu hovering at her shoulder.

“It was somewhere in this building, they can’t be far.” Belvera announced, her face stoic with the late-added flicker of a forced smirk. She’d shown no surprise nor interest in seeing what Masako looked like out of armor, in fact she didn’t seem eager to meet the human’s gaze directly at all.

Masako nodded slowly. “Take it your sisters didn’t give you a floor and a room number?”

“We’ll scour this place top to bottom if we have to!”

“That’s gonna be tough with you out in the open like this.”

“Relax, I know how to stay hidden,” Belvera drawled apathetically with a scoff and an eye-roll, before flying Garu-Garu up toward a wall vent near the ceiling. The cyber-dragon discharged a burst of purple lightning from his toothy maw, blowing the vent off its screws.

The sound of the blast, followed by the clatter of the vent on the floor, made Masako flinch defensively and wince harder with every bit of additional rattling until the hall was finally quiet. Then she heard a delayed grunt of surprise from around the next corner up ahead, followed by the scuff of hurried boots.

Belvera…

BATTRA TOLD YOU SO.

The uniformed guard darted around the corner, locked startled eyes on Masako, and began to draw his tonfa-style nightstick. Masako sighed and put up her fists, feeling the crawl of nanometal as it began to materialize on her skin.

Then, the guard stopped.

Masako narrowed her eyes, but held the first trace of armor for only a few moments before letting it, too, recede.

The guard remained motionless with his tonfa only half-drawn, his eyes cold and vacant to go with his unsettlingly blank expression. Belvera’s telepathic laughter filled Masako’s head, and she started to put the pieces together, noticing another vent cover near the guard and watching a shadow pass behind the vertical slats.

Relax, the minds of human beings are weak and primitive. Just try not to alert more than one of them at a time. I’ll be right behind you.

The guard re-holstered his tonfa, and then assumed a completely neutral stance, arms at his sides and gaze fixed forward. Masako crept past him, but he stayed put.

Creepy, she thought, wincing before a smirk. Creepy and useful. I like it.

She continued on, finding a staircase and descending several levels before a pair of employees conversing on their way up made her divert back into her current floor. It was a more populated set of offices, and Masako crept carefully, Belvera subtly mind-nudging the few who weren’t laser-focused on their assigned tasks. When she’d found a quiet intersection, a sudden, large number of incoming footsteps made her back up flat against a wall while she waited for the group to pass.

“And of course, you’ll find our best coders hard at work…” an excitable, overly-hand-gesturing tour guide explained, droning on about the McKay corporation as he walked backward through the crossing-corridor of the intersection. He was followed by several young people wearing passcards around their necks, probably students, their heads nodding along to his words.

Well, almost all of their heads.

It was her professionally courteous sense of knowing when a person was up to something that drew her narrowed eyes to the last girl in the group, just a step too far behind the others to truly mesh with the mob. Whoever she was, she was clearly nervous, an unsubtle scan of her surroundings just barely missing a direct pass over Masako’s hiding place.

It wasn’t just fear, though. There was intent. This girl was about to commit a crime.

This soft, homey, coffee shop, school library sweetheart with the exact, utterly basic fashion sense and disposition Masako looked down on and envied all at once. The girl’s dark hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, a cozy white sweater-jacket with brass zippers hugged a coral-pink undershirt, and a tight red skirt to mid-thigh revealed only black leggings down to white jogger boots. All she was missing was a latte of the most garishly overmarketed seasonal flavor.

…Battra? I think your human broke.

NO, THIS IS JUST HOW SHE IS AROUND OTHER WOMEN OF HER SPECIES. HER DECISION-MAKING WILL FALTER MOMENTARILY, BUT SHOULD REMAIN WITHIN ACCEPTABLE DEVIATIONS.

This happens a lot, huh? Too bad. We don’t have time for--

She could be in trouble! Masako snapped in thought, but breathed as she faced telepathically-conveyed annoyance on two fronts. The girl had walked past minutes ago now, and Masako was just standing in the hallway like an idiot. But… we have a mission to complete, let’s go.

As she turned and marched away, she thought she detected surprise from Battra and a huff of confused, skeptical gratitude from Belvera. The latter, she silently dared to prod any further, their game of mutual willing disbelief on thin ice as it was.

Down three more levels, and she’d managed to keep her thoughts free of both guilt about the stranger’s unknown situation and any line-crossing truths about Belvera. She was staring down and walking past another guard stalled by Belvera’s mind control when her tenuous peace was once again shattered.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to be down here!”

Masako froze, quickly searching both ways down the hall and, failing to find any additional guards, taking a peek through the glass of the windowed management office she’d been slowly working her way around.

Directly across, in the hallway on the dark, vacant office’s other side, an angered guard had already drawn his baton, staring down not Masako but… oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me.

It was the same damn girl, broken away from the tour group and having apparently been working her way down a different stairwell. She was backing away from the guard, her hands up in front of her and flickering on the border between a placating surrender and an imminent clench into fists.

Belvera?

Not my problem. Unless you want me to let this one here loose on you, that is.

DON’T ANSWER THAT.

Masako saw the issue. Neither the advancing guard nor the girl had seen Masako or the stalled guard, but if unfrozen, the stalled guard would be able to hear and see the new commotion easily through the glass. …Nevermind, let me handle this.

She shook her head, and crept the rest of the way around the office. The girl wasn’t making any effort to look through the glass, but once Masako stepped around the last corner and into direct view, her alarmed eyes went even wider with surprise.

Masako smirked with a wink, and snapped out a baton.

The girl winced, hard.

The guard had heard the noise, and was mid-turn with a gasp when the baton struck him across the temple, rendering him limp and laid out flat on the floor.

“So,” Masako began, keeping eye-contact with the wary girl while she flat-palmed the baton end to collapse it and stow it back in her pocket. “If I’m breaking into McKay tower, and you’re breaking into McKay tower, who’s flying the SY-3?”

The girl was quiet, for a surprisingly long time. She at first looked annoyed, then her faced screwed up a couple different ways before eventually settling on a kind of melancholy optimism. She sighed and looked back at Masako, taking a few steps forward but stopping with a note of discomfort before she could run into the body stretched across the floor between them. “Alright, first, thanks for the assist… and second and third, who are you and what’s your deal?”

Taken only a little aback by the directness, Masako shrugged. “Masako, and I’m…” She paused, only a second’s falter in her confidence before a certain sly defiance took its place. “I’m a contractor. Good-guy Boss McKay says his new ‘energy revolution’ is environmentally safe, but let’s just say I represent some interested parties, with deep pockets, who wanted a second opinion.”

It was an easy lie, because it was the sort of thing she’d done before – minus the rich benefactor part, but people tended to have easier trust in a profit motive. The other girl had nodded along, listening only enough that her neutral expression gained a slight uptick when Masako mentioned the environment. Very interesting…

An awkward silence abounded. Masako tilted an eyebrow. “And you?”

The girl froze up, then, appearing to just now process the consequences of her prompting. “Oh, I’m Naoko!” she began quickly, with a fake-ish, cringing laugh, before looking in all directions for invisible assistance. “And I’m, uh… my… father…’s technology, the… stolen… I’m trying to get the designs back!”

Masako kept up her smile and agreeing eyes. Guess everyone’s lying today… “Well, then, Naoko, it sounds like we’re both headed to the R&D floors...”

“Exactly!” Naoko interjected brightly with a raised finger, suddenly immensely pleased with herself.

“…and it looks like you could use the help, so…”

“…We put aside our differences and work together?” Naoko proposed hopefully, with only a slight eye-narrow of irritation. “I can take care of myself, by the way, but I would appreciate the help.”

Masako hinged out a finger, then retracted it back. “We don’t actually know our differences yet.”

With a knowing look, and at the same time, a sad wince, Naoko glanced down at the guard, then back up. “Is he gonna be okay?”

Oh, right… Masako cringed, teeth grinding behind a sustained smile. “I… don’t know?”

Naoko sighed slowly through her nose, but moved past it, stepping around the body – and awkwardly into Masako’s space, where her white sweater suddenly looked ten times as cozy. “So, sounds like you’re the expert, lead on?”

Masako blinked, looking around for some clue in the empty hallways. “Sure… just let me, uh…”

DOWN.

“Stairwell! Back… to the stairwell!”

Naoko nodded dryly. “Uh-huh?”

Even I didn’t think humans were this useless.

Shut up.

There definitely wasn’t a chill in the hallway air, but Masako still felt cold stepping away, working past more empty offices with Naoko in step.

IF YOU KNOW SHE IS LYING, WHY WORK WITH HER? AND DO NOT SAY ‘PLAIN UNASHAMED PERSONAL BIAS.’

Masako sighed out loud, then really hoped Naoko didn’t make anything bad of it. Do I have to spell it out for you? Plenty of reasons a girl like her would need to get back at a man like Boss McKay. Most of which, she’s never going to be honest about with a complete stranger. I thought, by now, you could figure at least that much out on your own.

I HAVE FIGURED OUT YOU HAVE SOME NOTED BLIND SPOTS WHEN IT COMES TO TRUST.

Well aware. It’s just better that, than the other way around.

It was quiet, inside her head and out, as Masako slowly pulled open the stairwell door and ushered an equally-hushed Naoko forward before guiding it closed again. They tiptoed down stairs in silent synchrony, the other girl suppressing a giggle whose cause remained an enigma.

You really think trusting Naoko is a mistake?

NO, I THINK BELVERA WAS THE MISTAKE.

I heard that, Battra.

YOU WERE MEANT TO.

“So, uh… I like your jacket.”

Masako looked up from where she was maneuvering her skeleton key in the middle of the weird spiderweb-shaped grated fence blocking their path. “I, uh, like yours too, it looks… really soft.”

Ignoring the tinge of red on both their faces, Naoko smiled and shrugged. “The, uh, the distressed look, it really works for…” she lifted up her hands and made a vague encompassing gesture. “…for this whole thing, you’ve got going here… did you do that yourself? How’d you get it to…”

Masako’s face slowly fell, but luckily, she was back looking at the lock again. “Red Bamboo acid cannon,” she deadpanned with a frown after some contemplation. Best to just get it over with.

Naoko was quiet long enough to be worrying, and her next words were soft and delicate. “Is… that how you got…”

Masako turned back enough to confirm Naoko was pointing at her neck, and took another outright pause to tug back the collar of her jacket, revealing more of the angry reddish burn scar that spread over her right shoulder and up in two thin, parallel splash-lines that ended just below her jaw. She half-shrugged and managed a fierce grin. “Don’t worry, I got them back worse.”

It did nothing to lighten Naoko’s affected mood, so Masako took a breath and frowned.

“You… have a problem, or…”

“No,” Naoko jolted, as emphatically as she seemed to have the energy for. She looked, really looked, into Masako’s eyes, then glanced away. “It’s just… it’s scary to… get confronted with what my life might have to be like someday.”

Masako considered that, considered it for a long moment – knowing what her distressed punk clothes and third-buzzed short, two-thirds-combover-and-curled-at-eye-length hairstyle said about her to the general populace and yes, knowing what the Red Bamboo’s main reputation was for, in broad terms at least. Still, her question was low and tentative. “You too?”

Naoko looked up with a bleak half-smirk, another blush starting on her skin, then looked away again. “I mean I don’t… really know, but… whenever my family talks about what my future’s supposed to be… who I’m supposed to be with…”

She shivered, no, trembled. Hugged herself in fear. Masako cautiously held out a hand – thankfully, due to her ranger healing and Battra’s divine level-up, no longer in constant need of being bandaged around the knuckles – and was surprised when Naoko took it quickly. Stunned by soft fingers scrambling for reassurance.

“They’re religious, like, big into it,” Naoko continued. “Like, ‘have no personality outside of it’ into it. I mean, I used to be, too – well, I kind of, um…” she hesitated, her lips pressed in a thin line. “Let’s just say I’ve had a… crisis of faith, recently, maybe helped things along. Point is, there’s… just no version of this where they don’t disown me eventually, or worse.”

Hmph. That’s humans for you.

Tempering her curiosity at Belvera’s need to interject, Masako nodded along, having heard the story for the umpteenth time herself. “Look, Naoko? If you ever need somewhere to stay, that’s… that’s kinda my thing. There’s this place out in the dark zone, I’m the one who run things there, it’s—”

“The condemned sector?” Naoko questioned, deeply skeptical. “Isn’t that where the freaks live?”

Masako gave a long, intense arched brow. “Freaks like girls who don’t want husbands?”

She watched the exact moment Naoko’s eyes bulged in realization. “Oh.”

“…Among other things.” Masako subtly, nervously slipped her hand out of Naoko’s and resumed working the lock. “You do have to get along. Get along and don’t hurt anyone, them’s the rules. There’s no ‘freakier freaks’ place to kick anyone out to, it’s all or nothing.”

The lock finally clicked, and the overlapping lower panels fanned apart, opening up the bottom section of the circle for the two of them to crawl through.

“I guess I have a lot to learn, huh?” Naoko commented once they’d made the crawl, to Masako’s impressed relief. It was a few steps further down the hallway when she added, “I’m pretty sure my friends would have my back, though. I need to give them the credit.”

Masako smiled, like one smiles at a shooting star before it fades. “Could your friends mount a counterattack on a police raid?”

“What?” Naoko stumbled, blinking. “I mean, th-they could…n’t. Definitely not, ha ha, why… why would you ever ask that?”

Masako met a forced, all-but-eye-twitching smile with disturbed calmness. “Because it could come to that? They don’t really ‘have your back’ unless they could, and would, fight the whole world for you. And the world will come for you, we all learn that eventually.” She started walking again, and pointed at her neck. “Let me have learned it for you.”

She heard Naoko gulp, but no other sound but heavy breathing, as they walked on.

“You… did take a while to answer that, though,” Masako made one more query with an arched-brow glance aside.

“It’s…” Naoko struggled, then rushed, “…cause Daisuke’s a cage fighter! Basically. He’s like the champion of underground… stuff, he fought a bunch of… I didn’t really want to know the details, but he’s a big deal. Now he goes around his neighborhood, like, beating up drug dealers and… people who sell weapons, to keep that stuff out.”

Masako winced and grit her teeth. “Sounds like your friend needs to learn about collateral damage.”

Without warning, Naoko burst out with a laugh that… very quickly became a guilty, sad and mortified laugh, but she shook it off enough to give Masako a very weird look. “I mean… that’s… definitely true, but, how’d you…” She crisscrossed stuttering, pointing fingers in front of her. “…get that from that?”

“Black market drugs and black market medicine use some of the same pipelines. I might be the one patching up and resupplying the same people your friend beats half to death.”

Naoko was stalled with a taken-aback, disturbed and disbelieving look. “Huh? I’m… I’m sorry?”

With a huff, Masako waved it off. “Eh, it’s complicated. I offer protection in exchange for cutting out the hard stuff and focusing on saving lives. Not many takers, but if this Daisuke person scares ‘em a little more… who knows? Eventually, I’d rather make them obsolete altogether, but unless you happen to know some meth labs I can scrap for parts…”

She trailed off when she realized she was probably only digging herself deeper, but Naoko seemed to, if very uncomfortably, accept the attempt at reassurance. “But yeah, Daisuke’d be cool, almost certainly,” she continued instead. “And Koji would do whatever Daisuke does. Those two are basically inseparable. Kiyo, though… well, there’s still some bad blood between us.”

Masako winced again, this time in sympathy. “What happened?”

“Her boyfriend died in a car crash and I told her ‘everything happens for a reason.’”

Masako winced harder. “Ouch.”

“I KNOW!” Naoko slapped both palms over her face, first in embarrassment but it morphed into guilt and outright sobbing. “I was so awful, how did I never see it?”

Resisting the urge to laugh, Masako offered a softer smile instead, unsure Naoko would notice. “The part that counts, is that you know now. That’s lucky. You have a chance to do better, not many people ever get to the point of having that.”

There was definite surprise in the look Naoko shot her back, as well as an amount of curious fondness that Masako swore made her heart beat faster. But no, that was probably just… anxiety for the mission. Yeah, that was it.

Suuuuuuuuuure.

Shut up.

The two of them continued past a partially-reflective wall, and Masako paused, staring for a moment at her own reflection. She tapped a few fingers to her neck, thinking about her burns and realizing it had been a long time since she’d felt this self-conscious about them.

THE OFFER STILL STANDS, YOU KNOW.

I’ll… think about it.

Masako highly suspected it was begrudgingly, but Belvera had started to be more careful about how she used her mind control, such that Naoko only seemed mildly suspicious about how the security guards always about-faced or left the area at the exact right moment. Masako smirked to herself as she swiped an access card from the back pocket of a guard who was prevented from turning around, proceeding toward the elevator with a wary-eyed Naoko in tow.

None of the R&D floors had direct stairwell access, and the main elevators passed right by, leaving navigation between floors to a jumble of dedicated secure entrances and exits. This particular elevator had only one alternate destination listed, and Masako and Naoko backed up to either wall, out of sight of anyone who might chance to look through the doors upon its arrival. As a precaution, Masako drew and snapped out both batons at her sides, eliciting a startled blink from Naoko.

Well, startled and… probably something else, by the way her face reddened the more she stared. Masako gave a smirk and a wink, only deepening her partner-in-literal-crime’s uncontrollable blush. After a few moments, Naoko agitatedly twisted away, face in her hands trying to hide her embarrassment as she again, involuntarily giggled at something Masako could only guess at.

Stop! she swore she heard the girl whisper under her breath.

Masako, for one, found herself delighted at the development… for only a few seconds longer, before the amusement began to drain rapidly from her face.

This was stupid. Pointless. Worse than pointless, it was fake, fleeting. A lie of momentary, carefree happiness to silence a hundred thousand visceral screams. What was she thinking, standing here indulging some tiny spark of personal satisfaction while her people and her planet were being starved and twisted and butchered? What right had she, to ignore the writhing, wretched, world-ending pain that never ceased? To be like all them, looking on with utter indifference while—

Oh, for Moth’s sake, shut up and kiss the girl!

…What?

Blinking, she heard Belvera’s telepathic sigh.

You don’t actually think all the pain and suffering in the world is going to END, do you? If that’s what you’re waiting for, you’re even more naïve than the rest of them. Human beings don’t do anything but destroy, and when it’s not the planet, it’s one another. A whole society incapable of anything but blood and death and cruelty. Your kind isn’t worthy to inherit the earth, and you never will be. Trying to pretend otherwise won’t get you anything but disappointment. If you want my opinion, just get on with it, and live your stupid life while you can.

Masako wanted to argue, wanted to scream, really. But more than anything she was taken aback, and suddenly curious. Inherit the earth…

Is that what this is really about? she asked the growing silence in the air. Us replacing the Elias?

“Hey… are you okay?”

Snapping back to right in front of her, Masako stared blankly at the deep, affectionate concern in Naoko’s lingering eyes. She felt too itchy with darkness to meet them, and glanced aside with a heavy breath.

“Yeah, I was just… thinking too much.”

A soft bell chimed, and the elevator doors slid open, thankfully revealing empty hallway on the side immediate opposite. The sudden tension left Masako and Naoko, their ready stances relaxing for as long as it took for them both to realize the trouble they were about to be in.

That’s too many for me, Belvera observed curtly, confirming what Masako could tell by the sounds of footfalls and distant, vague conversation. As much as she wasn’t going to get an answer to her question, she wasn’t going to get any effective help from the tiny woman, with so many guards active on this level.

“Hey, do you… do you trust me?” Naoko asked softly, wary hope in her eyes.

DO NOT.

“I, um… well, mostly. Why?”

BETTER…

Naoko looked nervous, but gulped and reassured herself, eyes narrowing as she looked over what she could see of the floor. “So, I think… if we’re just… really quiet, we can probably slip past them, without them knowing we’re here.”

That’s it, that’s your plan? Masako wanted to say, bluntly, but there had been something earnest, assertive, and strangely confident in Naoko’s words. It also wasn’t like she couldn’t fight her way through, very easily, if it came to that. “Uhh, okay, go for it. I’m game.”

There was a smirk on her lips as she waited to find out what exactly Naoko’s big play was, but every last electrical impulse of snide anticipation vanished from inside her skull when Naoko’s arm was suddenly around and squeezing her shoulders.

She shivered from the contact, her body pressed right up against the side of Naoko’s and enveloped in softness and warmth. Her heart was beating stupidly fast, her breaths a challenge to make silent. Even her vision was starting to get fuzzy, like she was looking through water, as the two of them took their first, synchronized steps out into the hallway.

Masako kept her hands clenched on her batons, but somehow, Naoko was right. They passed about a dozen guards, some that should have definitely been able to see the two of them in their peripheral vision, but yet, they remained undetected all the way to the other side of the floor.

Are you out yet? I can’t see either of you through any of the vents down here.

Yeah, made it past the guards, going one floor lower, Masako thought, as she and Naoko very carefully closed the door to another short, dedicated stairwell. She was desperately missing the contact now, but her vision was back to normal again. Or at least it was as long as Naoko’s face really was that red.

Masako lingered, but shook herself out of it and leant back against the wall, taking a breather without looking. It was better this way, they had work to do, not—

BELVERA WAS RIGHT.

“What?” Masako said out loud.

“Huh?” Naoko replied, stiltedly, her eyes going nervous.

Masako looked aside to her, holding a wide-eyed stare. “I was just… confused, that’s all.”

“Oh,” Naoko acknowledged as if stricken by terror. “Well, uh… we made it, so… let’s not think too hard about it, agreed?”

With a sigh of relief, Masako relaxed. “Agreed.”

That was close… now what the exact hell did you mean by that?

IT IS UNLIKE YOU TO DENY YOURSELF THIS SORT OF INDULGENCE, EVEN IN THOUGHT. ESPECIALLY ONE YOU OFTEN CONSIDER AN ACT OF REBELLION ALL ITS OWN. AS BATTRA HAS OBSERVED, YOU UTILIZE SUCH REMEDIES TO PREVENT YOUR HUMAN MIND FROM BECOMING OVERTAXED, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU NOW RISK BY—

Don’t, Masako stung with a sharp sneer. We don’t talk about this, Battra. I don’t DO this anymore. Other things, sure, but not… not this.

With one last, fading sigh of acknowledgement, Battra went quiet, leaving Masako and Naoko to creep down the stairs in relative peace.

Belvera, apparently, didn’t get the memo.

This is really the perfect time to make your move, if you were ever going to.

I think, by now, you should be aware it’s more complicated than that. I don’t even know what her other preferences are! I don’t think SHE knows what her other preferences are!

Doesn’t matter. She clearly already likes you. If anything can change that now, it just proves everything I’ve ever said about human beings.

…That’s?? …Not?? …Correct??

Then you’re the one proving it all on your own. Have fun dying alone!

In a few moments, it became apparent that the stairwell wasn’t leading down to another doorway, but descending now with an additional outer rail into the middle of a wider room filled with monitors and other expensive-looking research equipment. Masako and Naoko crept quietly, hunched to near the height of the railing, only to thankfully find that the room was currently empty.

The next room, as visible through the large, double-tiered glass panes on either side of a double-door checkpoint entrance, was not – a half-dozen men in lab coats were crowded around a well-lit, circular table, which at its center contained a silver, reinforced-looking briefcase with a greenhouse-style roof curve along its top edge.

“Hmm…” Masako murmured aloud, with intent to direct their search. “I wonder what’s so important inside that briefcase.”

“What indeed,” Naoko sneered from beside her, evidently in no need of coaxing.

Whirling her batons once, Masako stepped up to the first set of doors while Naoko used the stolen keycard. It worked on the first, then the second, and the pair stepped into the room.

The six lab-coated men whirled around, drawing not beakers or vials or even the guards’ nightsticks, but the cobalt-ringed, silver plasma-vent pistols that had become the latest hot item in gunrunning after one too many thwarted alien invasions left them scattered loose in sufficient numbers to consistently fall into exactly the wrong hands.

Welp, the whole ‘being a human badass again’ thing had been fun, but the stakes were far too high now to keep it rolling, especially when she had Naoko to worry about. Her skin crawled with nanometal as she readied to—

An air vent near the ceiling was blasted from the wall in a shower of purple sparks, and Garu-Garu’s winged form darted out in a rounding curve, the humans’ alien pistols abruptly moving to ineffectively track the high-speed new arrival. The three forward intakes on each of the tiny cyber-dragon’s wings crackled with yellow electricity, the beams converging to add power to a purple lightning breath weapon that burned a hole deep into one man’s chest and sent him stumbling backwards into another.

Flying past at close range, Belvera used a tiny glint of silver that must have been some kind of dagger to slit the second man’s throat as he spun, a spray of blood creating even more confusion as the rest of the men fired off invisible plasma rays heralded by laser sounds and vents of steam from the weapons’ barrels.

When Belvera and her aerial mount finally stopped at a hover, it was behind one man’s shoulder, just as his posture stilled and his eyes went blank.

Before the others could react, the possessed man fired three shots, scoring direct hits to all their foreheads. Then he pressed his weapon’s barrel up into his chin and fired a fourth, his dropping body leaving in the air only a stoic, composed, and definitely-not-playing-around Belvera.

With the room silent, Masako put up a shaky finger where she guessed Naoko was looking. “Okay, so, I can explain that—”

Garu-Garu made a quick dart past the table, Belvera leaping off mid-flight and landing expertly near one of the shorter sides of the briefcase. She brought up what was probably the dagger and prepared to jam it hard into the metal, only for a panel to slide open just as she did. Masako’s words died in her throat as she watched part of the table’s formerly-smooth surface rise up like the leaves of a vampire plant, sending Belvera tumbling into the dark interior as more shaped metal shuttered closed around the briefcase like another layer of armor plating.

“Belvera!” she shouted, reaching out, only for a ring of narrow metal bars to rise up around her through the holes in the grated floor. Once at their full height, the bars hinged inward to form a cone-like shape, extending hidden, pointed ends that rested just centimeters from Masako’s neck like a ring of spears closing in from all sides.

Can you hear me in there? Belvera? Please…

THE CONTAINER MUST BE SHIELDED AGAINST HER TELEPATHIC POWERS.

Masako had just enough time to glance to her left, noting that a fearful and stunned Naoko was in a similar, prickly predicament to her own, when another set of double-doors at the opposite end of the room hissed open.

One boot resounded on the grated floor, then the other, the lights in the room glinting their bright, meandering patterns on the smooth, polished surface of midnight blue ranger armor with sparse highlights in maroon red. Masako took note of the helmet – top edge of the visor styled like a reptilian upper jaw, forehead crowned with a three-pointed, translucent orange crest, the top point branching off into its own smaller set of three. Each gauntlet was edged with two backswept, three-pointed crystal plates with similar positioning to Masako’s spikes, and a set of two small, narrow, single-point crystals was sticking up from behind the ranger’s shoulders, angled out slightly from the vertical to form a V-shaped alignment with one another.

“Hmph, moth to a flame,” spoke the modulated voice of someone who thought he was clever. The Spacegodzilla ranger continued into the room, examining the briefcase by running a palm along the top of the handle. “Figuratively speaking, of course,” he admitted with a self-indulgent shrug.

In a moment, though, he looked up in mocking surprise, playing as if he’d noticed Masako and Naoko for the first time. He made a casual stroll around the table, the line of sight from his visor never leaving the two girls.

“…or is it?”

Standing a full head taller than either with the distance now closed, the Spacegodzilla ranger was looking between them both with something that could have been genuine curiosity, as if he was trying hard to figure something out. Masako just glared back, confidence leaking through her anger and coloring her feral grin.

The Spacegodzilla ranger took a step back with another shrug. “Ah, well. It’s gotta be one of you.”

He flicked both hands up with index fingers extended, and the crystals on his back drew outward along their axes, revealing that they were, in fact, the pommel-spikes of two conical crystal daggers, whose main spikes were two-to-three times as long and half-again the diameter at the base. Faint surges of light green electricity ran upward along his forearms, the color mirrored in small flashes of his forearm spines and in cackles that sparked across the revolving daggers themselves.

Spinning in the air in opposite, symmetrical directions, the two daggers eventually settled with the main spikes aligned straight ahead, points slightly lowered to account for the height difference between the ranger and his targets. The ranger tilted his head, sarcastically whispered ‘bye-bye,’ and flicked his fingers, the daggers striking forward like missiles.

Masako was a silhouette of red lightning, upside-down with one arm reaching through Naoko’s prison to touch her shoulder, and then they were both along the left wall of the room, staring backward at where the two crystal daggers had embedded deep in the metal doors exactly behind where both their heads had been. In another flash, Masako was standing in front of Naoko, hands on both her shoulders, smirking madly.

“Watch this,” she beckoned, and disappeared again.

Her elbow struck the side of the Spacegodzilla ranger’s helmet, stunning him long enough that a retaliatory swipe-back of his left arm plates cut through nothing but air, Masako already on the other side of him in a roll on the ground. She struck back to the doors, kicked off into another red bolt, and materialized with her boot planted hard into his visor.

She glanced to the side, locking eyes with Naoko as the nanometal armor built from her foot at the point of impact, traveled up her leg, torso, and down her other limbs, and started building the Battra helmet around her face with her last visible gesture being an overt wink before the lenses covered her eyes.

Battra’s wings formed out behind her, acting as an air brake to make her stop short of where the momentum from the kick to the face was taking the Spacegodzilla ranger. Boots down, Masako held her arms wide and crackling red, then brought them together in a forceful clap, sending out a combined bolt of lightning that was soon joined by her eye beams and more lighting from her wingtips once they’d copied the movement of her arms and curled forward.

The combined attacks, planned and executed in a fraction of a second, struck the Spacegodzilla ranger in the chest right out of a three-point brace, overpowering his attempt at friction and sending him crashing through the glass observation window on the other side of the room.

When she turned around and faced Naoko, Masako wasn’t sure what she expected. Fear? Awe? Total blank shock? Arousal? But she found, under the other girl’s intense gaze, that she certainly hadn’t considered disgust.

Anger, in fact, and the targeted kind. Standing with fists clenched, Naoko seethed with such fiery hatred, Masako couldn’t help but be taken off-guard.

An explanation arrived in the form of a slowly-spreading metallic glint, silver nanometal washing over Naoko’s body to generate a black undersuit layer coated in white armor panels. Gold lining edged her black forearm and calf-plates, condensed to a main armor color by the time it reached her gloves and boots. In moments, Masako was eye-to-eye with wide blue lenses on a rounded helmet, and slowly retreating from the potent threat display of familiar black, yellow, and red wings with fiery eyespots.

Oh, FuCk.

The Mothra ranger charged forward, a quick shot of coral-orange energy beams lancing out from the front faces of her antennae-shaped helmet ridges. Masako took another step back, a partial wing curving around her upper body to block, then hesitantly put up her forearms for an incoming melee strike that never connected. Confusingly, the Mothra ranger’s body flashed orange, and shot apart like a firework into a swarm of tiny, translucent moths that winked out like embers.

The next thing Masako knew, her legs were being swept out from under her, and she tumbled to the floor in time to see the Mothra ranger rise up from behind her, right elbow high toward the ceiling with a fist primed for a downward punch. Masako’s hands instinctively clapped to either side of her opponent’s forearm, feeling the moment the armor plate shifted outward and resisting with even more strength as a curved stinger-spike slid out from the gap, extending past the ranger’s fist and stopping with its wicked point just barely and shakily prevented from piercing Masako’s throat.

Mothra’s wings curved down around them both like a tent, a sparkling field appearing around Masako. She tried to phase, but only crackled with red before solidifying in the exact same spot, her energy contained by the mimicry of Mothra’s scale attack. She heard footsteps, and just managed to turn her head enough to see the Spacegodzilla ranger approach the table, left hand snatching up the briefcase by the handle while the right called back the twin daggers, beckoning them to slot themselves back down into V-alignment on his back.

“He’s… getting away!”

Masako felt just the slightest let-up in the pressure being put behind the stabbing arm, but could only continue to beg mercy from the stoic and unmoving Mothra ranger – from Naoko. That was Naoko. She stared through her own lenses into Naoko’s blue ones and hoped some semblance of her pleading look managed to make it across.

“Let’s just… call a truce, okay!”

NO TRUCE! TRUCE NEVER WORKS OUT FOR BATTRA!

“You were here for the Elias!” she realized aloud, as she glanced aside again and felt her heart snap as the Spacegodzilla ranger escaped back through the break in the glass with a captured Belvera in tow. “So were we! And now that asshole is getting away with at least one of them. We have to stop him, don’t you know that?”

Naoko hesitated for a moment longer, but finally, the stinger spike retracted, the panel falling flush again with her forearm. “Fine,” she sneered with a filtered voice, and burst again into flickers of orange energy-moths.

Masako rolled over quickly, eyes focusing on the hallway beyond the broken glass in time to watch the energy moths appear again in the act of condensing back into a flash of orange light that became the Mothra ranger, who then fired more antenna beams in the direction the Spacegodzilla ranger had presumably fled.

Masako was a bolt of red lightning, appearing only a step behind Naoko and breaking out in a run. The Spacegodzilla ranger was a blur of armor disappearing past the next corner, and they both used their teleportation powers again, getting him back in line of sight and firing beams immediately.

The Spacegodzilla ranger glanced back and held his right forearm up behind him to block, the arm-plates flashing yellow before a series of projected yellow polygons tessellated into a defense screen that blocked antenna and eye beams alike. More-or-less centered spatially in line with his arm, the shield moved only slightly as he rounded his wrist with a green cackle between gesturing fingers, the twin daggers both drawing up to follow along in the air above him as he ran.

Masako added red lightning from her hands, putting more pressure on the barrier as Naoko did the same with a mirrored storm of yellow-orange. The Spacegodzilla ranger braced his foot, coming to a stop with a steadier stance behind the shield even as a slowly-increasing opacity in the yellow suggested it was becoming overloaded. His forearm plates and this time, even his helmet crest flashed a bright red-orange, and he flicked his fingers again, the hovering daggers acquiring the red-orange energy cackle as they spun around in parallel while facing the exterior wall.

The energy between them coalesced to a building charge in the center, until it was expelled from between the forward points in a recreation of Spacegodzilla’s red-orange heat beam that Masako couldn’t remember the name of. The resulting explosion blew a large chunk of wall out of the side of the building, the dust not yet cleared when the Spacegodzilla ranger leap out through it.

Masako and Naoko were behind him in an instant, leaping through smoke into freefall with their wings keeping them aloft at a steady glide. The Spacegodzilla ranger was falling, slowed the slightest measure by cackles of green that signaled telekinesis was in play, and drifting toward a long, narrow bridge that seemed to be sticking out of the building over a dozen floors down.

It took the slow build of a mostly-silent vehicle engine to catch Masako’s brain up to speed, and she watched the city monorail pull out of the station directly below her. The Spacegodzilla ranger made a slow, one-hundred-eighty degree turn as he dropped relatively gently to the speeding monorail’s roof, and he looked up just in time to watch as Masako and Naoko let their wings go slack in order to hurry and touch down before they ran out of train.

They were at the far ends of two cars, one accordion-joint equidistant between them. Side by side, the Battra and Mothra rangers braced their feet with wings backswept by the wind, arms brought up in near-identical combat stances as they faced down their enemy.

“…So, you’ve fought this guy before?” Masako tried, sparing only a quick glance at Naoko.

The question was met with a brief silence, but finally, Naoko sighed. “Nope. This guy’s new.”

The two shifted for balance as the monorail rounded a tight curve past a reflective skyscraper. Nearly unmoved in comparison, the Spacegodzilla ranger held firm, appearing morbidly curious enough to wait for his opponents to make the first move.

“So, what’s the game plan here?” Naoko continued. “How do we get the briefcase?”

Masako stared coldly across at the Spacegodzilla ranger’s vice grip, and shrugged. “Cut his arm off?”

Even through the helmet, Naoko managed a judging look. Shaking her head, Masako chose to roll her eyes and ignore it.

Battra? Spacegodzilla, give me a rundown.

CREATED FROM THE MERGING OF GODZILLA CELLS WITH AN UNKNOWN CRYSTAL LIFEFORM, SPACEGODZILLA WAS DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HIS DESIRE TO EXPAND, DOMINATE, AND SUBJUGATE. HIS ENDGAME WAS TO SEED AS MUCH OF THE UNIVERSE AS POSSIBLE WITH HIS OWN CRYSTALLINE ESSENCE, EXPONENTIALLY INCREASING HIS POWER AND CAPACITY TO CONTROL.

Masako took a heavy, whistling breath. “Alright, I don’t usually do this, but I’m gonna make the call right now that we absolutely shouldn’t feel guilty after we kill whoever’s under that armor.”

The monorail curved out onto a longer, direct stretch, and the Spacegodzilla ranger lifted his right hand, two fingers signaling the daggers back into beam formation.

“Watch the color of his energy,” Naoko quietly warned, leaning a measure closer. “Orange is beam, yellow is shield, green is telekinesis.”

“Way ahead of you,” Masako assured, keeping any boastfulness out of it.

Sure enough, her opponent’s spines and crest flashed orange, the daggers building another charge. Before the beam could strike like lightning, Masako and Naoko were already in their phase states, crisscrossing in mirrored zigzags along the monorail’s roof with only Masako leaving a visible trail. The Spacegodzilla ranger struggled to aim and fired beams wildly, getting lucky enough to make Masako divert her last jump to fall short of her target but failing to stop Naoko from closing in for a punch right to the stomach.

It was confusion that gave Naoko the advantage, as while she had the potential to appear anywhere with no warning, she consistently appeared before her intended attack and not during it, suggesting she had a limited mastery of the power in comparison to Masako with hers. Nonetheless, the Mothra ranger managed a follow-up left hook across the chin, then a diagonal, upward sweep of antenna beams that scorched across the ranger’s chestplate and momentarily scattered the pair of daggers readjusting overhead.

Masako bolted to appear midair from behind, a roundhouse kick to the back staggering the Spacegodzilla ranger long enough for her to secure a looping grapple around his left arm and pull, all while engaging a sustained, close-range eye-beam burn to the back of his shoulder. Raising a leg, the ranger kicked Masako back hard in the midsection, freeing his arm enough to swing the briefcase and slam it like a hammer up into her chin. Even disoriented by the impact, the only thing crossing Masako’s mind was the possibility it might have injured Belvera, and a new rage began to take over her senses.

While Naoko’s antenna beams from the other side forced the polygonal shield back into use, Masako lunged, only to find a speeding crystal dagger aimed right at her head. Narrowly leaning out of the way, Masako kept at it, dodging the second dagger in her phase state and materializing in a crouch at her opponent’s feet. A quick vertical scrape with her forearm spikes drew sparks from the Spacegodzilla ranger’s chestplate, and a bolt of lightning from her left palm destabilized his shield-projecting forearm. Naoko, however, had already leapt to the right side of the train, using her wings to glide in parallel and circumventing the shield entirely, her antenna beams striking a direct hit to the front of the Spacegodzilla ranger’s left shoulder and further wearing down the armor.

Dissipating the shield and drawing the daggers furiously with a green-sparking fist, the Spacegodzilla ranger brought one down to spear the roof at the feet of the disappearing red silhouette where Masako had been, and sent the other hurtling through a firework-burst of vanishing orange moths. Masako was a step backward firing her eyebeams again, drawing out another right-arm shield that faced the front of the train while Naoko recondensed along the left edge of the roof. Throwing out her left forearm, it wasn’t another stinger that slid out from underneath the raising armor panel, but a hexagonal, seven-barreled projectile weapon that fired a shotgun blast of stinger-flechettes at the Spacegodzilla ranger’s weakened shoulder.

With a filter-conveyed grunt of pain and frustration, the ranger dismissed the shield and tore a handful of bloodied darts out of his shoulder, hurling them into the red flash where Masako had been, but she was now on his other side hooking away his left arm with an elbow spike while sweeping his leg in the other direction. He fell, but called a crystal dagger to his free hand, spiking it through the train roof and gaining an anchor point to curl up and double-kick Masako in the chest. Pushed a few steps backward, she stumbled for just a moment, looking up to find the Spacegodzilla ranger tossing the dagger in the air while building a charge of green energy down his forearm.

Thrown forward like a punch with an open palm, the telekinetic blast sent Masako sprawling on her back and rolling, the pair of spikes on her left gauntlet quickly digging into the train’s roof to keep her anchored. On the far side, Naoko leapt up with unfurling wings, only for the Spacegodzilla ranger to snap around accented in orange, parallel daggers firing a beam attack into the Mothra ranger’s chest and sending her rolling away toward the front of the train.

“I will usher in a new era of human achievement!” The Spacegodzilla ranger boasted loud and angry, casting a cold faceplate at both downed enemies before fixing a steady gaze at the sight of Masako’s defiant lenses. “And no foolish heroics by Earth’s bygone defenders are going to stop me.” He readjusted the arrangement of twin daggers, building another charge aimed at Masako’s head while he took slow steps toward her prone form. “Especially not ones who inexplicably choose such weak and frail bodies to be their champions.”

At that, Masako hissed out a laugh, the chin of her helmet audibly tapping the monorail roof as she got control of herself. With a heave, she planted her free palm face-down, and pushed up enough to get one knee under her.

“I’m gonna ignore that last part. Cause I’m mad enough already.”

Rising on her palm, knee, and foot, Masako yanked her forearm spikes out from the metal, making a pointed clench of her liberated fist while her eyes never left her enemy and his stubborn, stubborn hold on that briefcase.

“But heroics?” she spat, incredulously, between breaths as she stared him down with new fire. “Let me make… one thing… clear as crystal.”

With a stabilizing step forward, feeling the vibrations of the shaking train beneath her, Masako slowly rose up to meet the wind.

“I…”

Another step, elbows drawn back at her sides with spikes aglow.

“…am going to tear you…”

Another step, red volts cackling between her flexing fingers.

“…into little…”

A final step, glaring unmoved up at the ranger and his charging beam from inches away, purple volts surging over her lenses.

“…tiny pieces.”

Spacegodzilla’s beam fired, too late. Masako was already a punch to the left side of the head, a roundhouse kick to the stomach, a sharp knee in the lower back, a heavy stomp on the left foot, a sidekick to the right leg, three quick jabs to the chest and an uppercut, palms bringing the back of a helmet down on an ascending knee, a spinning heel to the exposed throat, a falling kick to the right knee, a punch in the left shoulder, and a rake of spikes across the chest all in the span of the first few seconds. The Spacegodzilla ranger attempted to block with both his gauntlet and the briefcase, to call down an energy beam, and even to put up his shield again, all to no avail as Masako continued to pummel him from all sides. It was only when she’d begun to tire, and had significantly expended vast reserves of Battra’s energy in a short time, that an unforeseen counterattack managed to make her stop in place.

Masako resisted, both physically and through attempts to jump across energy, but though she could move her limbs her torso was anchored in place, green telekinetic power cackling across both the surface of her armor and the Spacegodzilla ranger’s tired, desperate, outstretched arm.

It took a moment for him to grunt in pain, take deep breaths, and collect himself, but eventually he was standing again to almost his full height, a wordless glare of exhaustion directed at his captive.

And it was at that moment, something shimmered in the air over his shoulder, almost like… like looking through water.

“Oh, huh,” Masako spoke aloud, sparking in her opponent a sudden head-tilt of concerned confusion. “So that’s what that was…”

There was a flash of de-camouflaged movement, a squelching-scraping sound, and an obscuring spray of blood carried on the backwind of the moving train, but when it all cleared, Naoko was standing behind the Spacegodzilla ranger, the point of her stinger-spike sticking out through the front of his bleeding left shoulder.

With an involuntary twitch of pain, the Spacegodzilla ranger let go of the briefcase, the metal cage bouncing once off the train roof before careening over the side. With the telekinetic pressure failing, Masako dropped to her feet and rushed to the edge in time to watch a small, dark, winged shape dart toward the falling object, four tiny reptilian legs catching tight around the handle.

“Garu-Garu!” Masako cried out, in breathless relief. The heavy case was clearly an overburdening weight on the miniature dragon, but through sustained effort, he just barely managed to stay aloft, flying low and parallel with the train while slowly diverting off to the right.

Taking a step back, Masako rounded just in time to catch a trio of red-orange flashes, the Spacegodzilla ranger making a fist and drawing back the twin daggers. A beam struck right through where Naoko had been, a starburst of moths clearing the area of impact while the pained-but-determined ranger switched his energy to green and held a hand out toward Garu-Garu.

Green cackles washed over the briefcase, and it started to swing toward the train, requiring Garu-Garu to tilt his flight to adjust. He couldn’t keep aloft and resist the telekinetic pull, but flapped his wings valiantly as the case was reeled back in.

“Don’t let up!” Masako cried out, and lightning-slammed herself into the Spacegodzilla ranger, interrupting his telekinesis and leaving another vertical scrape up his chestplate with her forearm spikes. She followed up with burning eyebeams, staggering him in a diagonal toward the other side of the train while Naoko dove in with a flying kick, nearly knocking him off the edge. Wavering for balance on one leg, he called a dagger to his right hand in reverse grip and leant back inward with a furious swipe, the crystal blade passing over Naoko’s head as she performed a low backflip and landed beside Masako. Bracing his other foot, the Spacegodzilla ranger doubled down for a charge-and-stab, curving the dagger point through the empty silhouettes of both opponents.

Masako reappeared downwind with just enough awareness to lean out of the way of the second, telekinetically-controlled dagger. Stepping back with his left arm still swinging mostly-limp, the Spacegodzilla ranger tossed up and threw the dagger in his hand by the longer point, a duck and a pair of eyebeams shooting it out of the air before Masako was a bolt of lightning hurtling towards him once again.

Yellow flashing on his right forearm, the Spacegodzilla ranger put up his shield, but Masako’s bolt of energy arced and curved. With a smirk beneath her helmet, she reformed in the space between the ranger and his shield with an arm looped around his midsection and yanked him onward with her momentum.

The shield vanished into nothingness as the ranger was physically pulled away from it, Masako tackling him into a distant, hard bounce on the roof of the train. As they gained air, she brough a palm up and put it down on the Spacegodzilla ranger’s faceplate, driving the back of his skull into a second, crater-forming impact on the roof that flipped them both end over end and sent them rolling even further forward.

Near the monorail’s sloped front window, Masako hooked to brace, crept to a knee, and watched the Spacegodzilla ranger shakily rise to his feet. She leapt, did a twirl in the air until one set of backswept elbow-spikes was pointing directly at him, and jumped across space, hooking a spike through the wound in his shoulder and using her momentum to roughly tear through the upper border of flesh, skin, and armored undersuit. Landing beneath a spray of blood and amid a pained scream, she let loose with her eyebeams, targeting the injury until it smoked.

The Spacegodzilla ranger staggered backward, and put up an arm to desperately call for a weapon, only for a set of orange beams to hit him in the chest and swipe up across his helmet. Naoko landed beside Masako, fists clenched. The two exchanged a quick glance and a sharp nod.

“Let’s finish this,” Naoko spat.

Fumbling in the air a few times, the Spacegodzilla ranger finally managed to catch the called dagger, and the plates on his forearm flashed an energetic sky blue.

Masako blinked, and leant toward Naoko in a whisper. “Hey, so, uh… what’s blue mean?”

There was a quiet beat of two seconds before an explosive cloud of dust and debris shot up from the left side of the train, Naoko leaping away on instinct and colliding into Masako, who had to put a foot out to brace but held onto the Mothra ranger protectively as the blasts continued one after the other in the gap between the monorail line and the row of buildings alongside. Huge bolts of bright blue energy shot up from the center of each cloud, arcing toward the Spacegodzilla ranger’s outstretched dagger as if drawn in by a lightning rod, and the energy surged through the ranger’s body, spawning minor convulsions and eventually concentrating around his injured shoulder.

“He’s restoring his energy!” Naoko called out, slowly breaking away into a combat stance despite the shaking that now rocked the train from debris raining down on it. Masako spared a blast of eyebeams to disintegrate what looked like it might have been a large chunk of road pavement kicked up by the commotion below.

With gradual, partial movements, the Spacegodzilla ranger raised and shakily held out his left arm, calling and catching the second dagger as that set of plates, too, flashed with blue. Masako braced herself knowingly, and watched as another set of lightning bolts burst up with dust, this time from the right side of the train.

With a peek over the edge, she confirmed that the bolts were actually tearing through the streets and sidewalks below, sending civilians running and cars scrambling. It was almost like the energy was projecting from somewhere underground, but she strongly suspected she didn’t have time to think about that right now.

The Spacegodzilla ranger’s shoulder wasn’t finished healing, that much was obvious between electrical volts that passed over it, but his arm was moderately usable, muscles flexing along with the strength pose in the rest of his body as he performatively bathed in his restored power. Energy bolts continued to be drawn in, often tearing up through adjacent streets or out the sides of nearby buildings as they all angled toward the pair of daggers.

There was a wash of brightness from the right side of the track, and all three rangers turned their heads at once, the taller skyscrapers giving way to another wide expanse of park space and single-story buildings. Garu-Garu was a speck in the sky, but clearly visible, and the Spacegodzilla ranger’s ankles twisted to brace.

Oh, no you don’t…

MASAKO, WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT—

The Spacegodzilla ranger leapt, an electrical storm of neon blue still encompassing and following his moving form as he propelled himself through the sky toward Garu-Garu. Masako was a single bolt of red to counter, lancing on a direct collision course.

Her shoulder hit something solid, and she felt the flesh-searing pain of lightning burning through her armor in seconds. Her skin was fire, her vision hazy and too-bright from the massive convergence of energy, the sky tumbling in all directions as she and her enemy spun around and around without end.

In the chaos, she saw a silhouette and grabbed tight, hands secure around the wrist and above the elbow of the Spacegodzilla ranger’s injured arm. A dark shape entered her peripheral, and she flexed what was left of her wings to take control of both their momentum, heaving around in a wide, hurricane swing as the shadow closed in.

With a crack the corner edge of a building exploded into a cloud of dust and bricks, and whatever had regenerated of the Spacegodzilla ranger’s shoulder joint was shattered in much the same way as Masako swung him by his arm directly into it.

…The next thing she remembered, she was waking up to a hazy, half-reddened view of the sky, alarms sounding in the distance and dust still clearing overhead.

MASAKO. YOU ARE AWAKE. I AM DOING WHAT I CAN TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE, BUT YOU CAN’T AFFORD TO TAKE ANY MORE HITS LIKE THAT.

With breaths that sounded weird to her, she stumbled to her feet, bracing a palm against the brick wall of a building and stirring at the odd stinging sensation that directly touched her skin. Wincing, she held both arms in front of her, and examined several jagged, meandering tears through gauntlet and undersuit alike that revealed bare skin underneath and deep red burns running down the middle of each. Gold light flickered up and down the paths, Battra’s healing at work although evidently stretched thin at the moment. Further examination revealed her wings were hanging around her in tatters, and more lines had cut through the rest of her armor in much the same way. Masako ran a hand down her face and discovered the red haze in her vision was a result of the still intact right lens, the part of her helmet containing the other having been blown into shrapnel.

In the middle of the street, rising out of a pushed-up crater in the pavement, was the Spacegodzilla ranger, his left arm now hanging by a single strand of muscle or ligament that had been stretched out to several inches in visible length by the limb’s weight. His movements were slow, stunted, head contorted to the sky as his helmet filter caught several sounds that were clearly desperate, feeble, pleading expressions of pain.

Masako laughed, even as the man reached a hand to the sky, caught a single crystal dagger, and tore up the street with lightning. She flickered to red and jumped a meter to the side as a bolt of blue passed through where her torso would have been, continuing to smile, burning and numb as she watched the Spacegodzilla ranger’s arm slowly reel back up to his shoulder and anchor itself by a few more solid connections of regenerating flesh and bone.

“You’re not even a fighter, are you?” she boasted aloud in the silence, once the lighting had halted and the only surge of blue was the absorbed supply coursing back and forth across the ranger’s body. “Just a spoiled rich punk used to having power, and not needing anything else to get what you want. Well, you’re playing with the real monsters now.”

She was a flash of red striking forward, delivering a right hook at a non-irrelevant percentage of the speed of light and watching her exposed knuckles explode in geysers of blood as they struck the side of her enemy’s helmet. She followed up with a left hook to the other side, and when the Spacegodzilla ranger’s left arm flailed about in an attempt to stop her, she grabbed it hard and twisted it at an angle only made possible by its partial injury. Flailing in pain, the ranger raised up his right arm and tried to stab down on her with his dagger. She dodged, spun, and hooked a leg over his inner elbow, snapping back her shoulder and elbowing him in the faceplate.

He stumbled back, and wound up his dagger for a railspike lunge, but only managed to stab the overlapping gaps between the forearm spikes of the gauntlets Masako had crossed in front of her upon spinning around. Yanking on her arms as if to pull them apart, she ensured the dagger was locked in the inner curves of her front two spikes before bringing up her leg and kicking him hard in the underarm of his right shoulder. With his pain broadcast in a gasping grunt and his stance staggered, Masako unhooked her right arm from the dagger and threw her left backward, wrenching the blade from the Spacegodzilla ranger’s hand and sending it clattering somewhere on the street behind her. Without delay, she went in for a left hook to his midsection, then as he buckled, grabbed hold of the translucent crest on his helmet. She yanked his head forward and performed three successive hard punches to the base of his skull before bringing a knee up to his sternum and sending him tripping backward out of the crater.

Masako dusted off her hands, taking slow steps in advance as the Spacgodzilla ranger propped himself up by his elbows. Pushing fast off the ground, the indigo and crimson ranger built a neon green energy charge down his gauntlet, readying a telekinetic attack before a pair of coral-orange lasers struck his chest and knocked him nearly off his feet again.

Wings spread wide, Naoko landed on the pavement beside Masako, the upper sheaths of mainly black and the lower ones of mainly red coalescing down into a longcoat that was definitely more intact than her gunmetal green counterpart’s. With one aside look at Masako’s tattered state, she made a fierce turn back toward the Spacegodzilla ranger, crossing her arms with flattened, edge-on palms to make a sharp-pointed X shape.

The leading edges of her hands and forearm gauntlets sizzled with bright, defined lines of sky blue, then sent out a duplicate projectile X of pure energy, which struck the unexpecting Spacegodzilla ranger even as spines flashed yellow as he tried to raise his shield. With her enemy pushed a step back toward the building on the other side of the street, she followed up the first X with not one, not two, but an entire procession of X-blasts with a steadily increasing rate of fire until they nearly appeared as one flickering beam, at which point Naoko sliced her arms apart like scraping swords and sent out a final, bluish-green pulse that knocked the Spacegodzilla ranger through the building, out the other side, and possibly into the next building behind that one although the smoke and dust made it difficult to tell.

“…That’s what blue means.”

“Daaaaaamn,” Masako whistled, though it was stuttered from being out of breath. “Was that an Aqua Mothra power?”

Naoko just turned to her, expression blank through her helmet. “So, are you… gonna be okay, or…?”

Masako raised up one arm, examining the gold threads working their way through her wounds. “Hate to disappoint, but probably.”

Before Naoko could respond to that, a small shadow passed over them both, accompanied by a high-pitched, whining semi-roar not unlike an exasperated cat’s. Garu-Garu dropped into view, making efforted flaps of his tiny wings as he lowered the large briefcase to the ground in front of the two of them.

Masako dropped her smirk in an instant, rushing to the case and jamming an elbow spike into the middle of the curved top at the nearer edge. With her other hand pressing down, she jerked back and wrenched off both the outer and inner layer of the side panel, leaving a dark opening to the inside. She dropped to her knees with a hand laid palm-up on the ground near the entrance, and took heavy breaths.

“…Belvera?” she pleaded, though she wasn’t sure with whom, her voice soft and gentle and already breaking apart at the seams.

She breathed a near-tearful sigh of relief as the small woman stepped out from the shadow, rubbing at what looked like a few bumps and bruises but otherwise at least intact enough to bear a pointed scowl and to turn around immediately on exit to furiously kick the container.

“It’s empty!” Belvera screeched, seething with her fists at her sides. “They were never here, it was all a dirty human trick, and I fell right—”

With her hands in the air, she’d turned around in exasperation and finally looked directly at Masako, her words stopping in her throat to be replaced by a wincing, cringing look of discomfort as she took in the present state of the Battra ranger.

“…what in Moth’s name happened to you?”

Masako cracked a bleak smile, unsure if any of it was actually visible.

Belvera’s continuing blank stare eventually just became a quick sigh and a roll of her averting eyes. “This was a waste of time. Garu-Garu!”

She snapped her fingers in the air over her head, and waited until her summoned mount flew just above her to leap onto his back. She took one last, non-lingering look on the pair of rangers, then zoomed up and off into the distance.

Masako let out a long breath, then stood back up, finally letting more of the stinging pain get to her. She set her gaze back on the cloud of smoke around the hole in the building, as did Naoko.

At that exact moment, Masako flashed into a translucent red phase state, an instinctual reaction as she looked down and fascinatedly watched one of the Spacegodzilla ranger’s daggers fly out through the middle of her midsection from behind.

From a straight course parallel to the ground, both daggers spontaneously began to somersault end over end as they converged toward the force drawing them in. Reaching out of the smoke just as it cleared, the Spacegodzilla ranger caught them both by the hilts with longer blades up, flicking his wrists to let them rest idly to the sides as he walked slowly back across the pavement.

Corporeal again, Masako put her fists up, only to freeze even more solid at the faint sound of a sharp intake of breath from beside her.

Where should have been the convergence of many small, translucent orange moths back into a collective shape, was instead a ranger who hadn’t yet become so in tune with her phase ability to react on the slightest necessary impulse. Naoko held a hand across her stomach, blood seeping out from between her fingers as her legs finally gave out and she began falling to her knees.

On the first of a pair of heartbeats, Masako had an arm around Naoko’s shoulder to keep her steady, and on the second, the two of them were a bolt of red lightning higher than the tallest skyscraper, as the clouds parted and the Battra zord swung down into the city’s visible airspace to hover at a slightly nose-up diagonal. The lighting bolt curved overhead to deposit the two rangers inside the cockpit, and Masako had Naoko resting against the left side wall behind the pilot’s chair before she was then at the controls, firing bolts of lightning from every last square centimeter on the undersides of her zord’s wings.

The Spacegodzilla ranger had his shield up, already a burning opaque yellow and only getting hotter as it fended off the storm of red converging on a single point. Masako only pressed further, ready to cleanse this new ranger from the face of the Earth when a loud rumble split the air and a cloud of kicked-up dust and rocks obscured her vision.

Then the Battra zord shook, drawn down toward the city at an angle from some immense power that had taken a crushing hold on the left hindwing. The ground rose up to meet her, then rose past her, dust obscuring her view although the zord was obviously falling much farther than its altitude should have allowed.

All that was visible now was a firestorm of glowing sparks, in tandem with a violent vibration that rocked the zord from where the outer edges of its wings were grinding against something solid. Eventually that stopped, and there were a few more seconds of falling before the zord did not simply crash upon but was thrown down upon a solid surface.

Dazed, Masako looked around the cockpit interior, relieved to find Naoko visibly breathing although not showing any reaction beyond that. With that reassurance, she then turned toward the viewscreen, watching the clearing shroud of dust as it slowly resolved the spots of illuminated light somewhere behind it.

Crystals.

Dozens of them, each 20-30 meters in length at best estimate, and luminescent with a soft white glow that made visible the underground cavern whose floor, walls, and ceiling they were sticking jaggedly out of. As Masako watched, they crackled with blue energy, the lower crystals feeding jumping surges to the higher ones until those ones that populated the ceiling lanced out bolts of energy from their tips. Instead of straight from the points, the strands of energy shot back at odd angles to strike back up into the roof of the cavern, bits of rock falling from where they bored their way inside and presumably all the way up to the surface.

“So that’s where he’s getting his energy from…” she mused idly, still shocked at the sheer scale of it all. Were there Spacegodzilla crystals under the whole city?

She didn’t have time to follow that line of thinking, as there was suddenly something very large looming over the Battra zord and obscuring almost the entire viewscreen. Positioned even vertically or upside-down, the soft orange glow of strangely undisturbed pools and rivers of lava wound between larger chunks of semi-reflective, dark-colored rock, the aggregation bearing the size of a small mountain but the shape of a humanoid being hunched over to all fours and walking on its knuckles like an ape. Hot steam vented from the maw of an eyeless stone head, the jaw hinged like a bass and the three rocky horns jutting out nearly horizontal from the back of the ‘skull’ and hooking slightly down like Rodan’s.

“Hey, Battra… which Kaiju is that?”

…I DON’T KNOW.

“You what?”

The lava (or was it magma down here?) monster raised an arm – the shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints ringed with bands of orange molten rock – and made to slam it directly upon the Battra Zord’s head, Masako barely lifting and steering the machine far enough back to merely be showered in fragments of kicked-up rock. She took more strongly to the air, barely managing a one-eighty spin without clipping a wing on any of the crystals lining the walls, and gained speed in the opposite direction, as the cavern was cast aglow by a stream of magma spewing from the monster’s wide-open maw. With impressive momentum across distance, the magma spray lathered the upper ceiling of the tunnel, dripping down like rain and sizzling at least a few cavernous holes into the upper armor of the Battra zord’s wings before Masako managed to get clear of the attack’s range.

“Are you telling me that’s a new kaiju?”

PERHAPS MORE SO THAN YOU REALIZE. ITS APPARENT MINERAL STRUCTURE SUGGESTS IT IS NEITHER MUAN NOR ATLANTEAN IN ORIGIN. THIS CREATURE IS A COMPLETE UNKNOWN.

“Hold on, what or what in origin?”

A flying boulder hit the wall of the cavern, just missing the Battra zord and shattering into fragments Masako had to adjust to dodge.

“Nevermind, we can open that can of El Gusanos some other time, let’s just focus on getting ourselves the hell away from it.”

There was an echoey, ominous, strangled-elephant-like roar from far behind, and a rumble started to reverberate through the long tunnel. On the next intersection, Masako spun around to find the rock creature had rolled itself into a ball as was giving chase, although slower than the Battra zord’s flight speed. She tried the eye beams, and noted that they left faint traces of molten burns around the creature’s body, but accomplished little else – like trying to bore into a mountainside.

She drifted left, out of view and into another tunnel, where she spun again and started down the new path, also populated with crystals. She caught a brightness out of the corner of her vision, and looked over to find Naoko’s armor was now glowing in a white light that partially washed out its detail and color, occasional faint surges of red energy flowing from her helmet down to her boots.

SHE HAS ENTERED A HEALING TRANCE.

“Hold on, Naoko,” Masako pleaded at a whisper, her voice breaking. “Just hold on a little longer, okay? I’m getting us out of here.”

The Battra zord exited the narrower cave and found a larger, vaguely spherical chamber whose flatter ground level was covered in a dense forest of even more crystals, some even bearing strange colors. It was almost quiet, peaceful – at least until a sound like the inverse of crunching glass built up to a sharp scrape and a narrow, energized spike of neon purple flew just across the evading Battra zord’s bow.

The projectile hit near the cavern ceiling and exploded in a small shockwave of energy. Rounding with the zord on a hovering swivel, Masako caught sight of a thin, reflective purple tendril that had risen up out of the forest, just behind a sea-urchin-like growth of pale purple crystals. The grouping of more long, narrow, purple crystals at the end of the tendril energized and gathered itself for another attack, firing a quick sequence of three crystal darts that Masako narrowly managed to escape with only a grazing slice across the armor on the underside of the left wing.

There was a low, echoing and rumbling roar that nearly sounded like wind blowing through a cave, and the mass of purple crystals shifted and rose. It became suddenly apparent that the tendril was the tail and the crystal mass was the carapace of… a Spacegodzilla version of Anguirus? The creature had chalk-white skin, and the growth of backswept crystals extended all the way to its forehead just above its narrow-slitted, reddish eyes, and was mirrored below a too-wide grimace of underbite teeth by a smaller fan of crystals protruding from its lower jaw.

Space-Anguirus leapt impressively high from his hiding spot, spinning in the air and skidding sideways on the ground, left wrist and left ankle kicking up broken crystals from the cavern floor as he slid while his scorpion-curved tail fired off a moving volley of projectiles. Ascending to dodge those, Masako only just barely noticed the mountainous silhouette of the rock creature, who’d now made it to the entrance of the larger forested pocket.

Flexing its sharp, stone talons in front of its expressionless face, the rock monster then located a bulbous outcropping of rock to its right with a number of crystal spikes growing out of it. With force, it jammed its fingers down into the rock behind it, using its immense strength to claw the ground forward until the outcropping shattered into a spray of debris with enough speed to be launched high and far across the underground chamber.

None of the thrown crystals maintained their point-first alignment, but Masako was still maneuvering to dodge a number of giant log-shaped objects tumbling through the air. In the chaos, the white-and-purple crystal creature was suddenly filling her viewscreen, its high leap sending it straight into the Battra zord with crystal-clawed hands taking hold of the wings.

Under the weight and momentum, the Battra zord was forced out of the air, colliding dorsal-side-first with the wall of the cavern. Besides the impact, a loud and sharp metal-shearing noise reverberated through the zord’s interior as the point of a crystal spire on the wall broke out through part of the left wing joint. A barrage of red lightning had little effect in dislodging the kaiju holding the zord down, the attack only finding hard surfaces resistant to its effects.

With no other option as the perpetually-grimacing crystal creature raised a purple-scaled, long-clawed hand, Masako pulled the whole zord into phase state, striking back up into the air and coalescing in a flash of red. The left wing was still sparking and stunting the zord’s flight, and Masako took a desperate turn to evade when the rounding crystal kaiju opened his maw frighteningly wide and generated a focused, bright pink energy beam.

The beam made a sweep across the cavern ceiling, piercing the air with both a hollow, wind-like channeling sound and the audible hard-striking-on-impact of hundreds of crystal fragments also launched down the middle of the energy column. Spinning edge-on to dodge a crossing of both the beam and the rock monster’s magma spray, Masako found an opening in the cavern wall and slotted the zord through, entering a new tunnel and making distance as fast as she could without crashing into any protruding crystals.

It wasn’t long before the sound of shattering stone and tumbling boulders signaled the rock monster had dug the tunnel’s entrance wider. Then Masako heard the rolling, and within minutes, had the crystal creature nearly on her tail as it galloped at an angle along the curved slope up to the tunnel’s right-side wall.

“We need to find a way out of here, Battra. Even just a crack to the surface small enough we can phase through…” She trailed off, glancing worriedly at Naoko and taking deep breaths inside her helmet. “It’s only a matter of time before we run into a—”

The zord careened into another, smaller spherical cavern, evading the incoming crash by pulling a continuous, wide curve along the back wall until Masako found herself passing back across the entrance and narrowly avoiding a shot from the crystal beam.

“…dead end.”

Crying victory with his creepily inanimate roar, Space-Anguirus brought around his tail and launched another volley of crystal darts, Masako dodging back and to the left to try to put the corner of the threshold between them. In response, the monster bounded forward into the cavern, landing on his hind legs in a skidding twist to face the Battra zord before breaking out into a two-legged run with only a few hand scrapes for balance. He leapt, spinning in the air to try to strike with the crystals at the end of his tail, only missing because Masako took the zord higher to hover far above him.

She was forced even higher when the rock monster exited his roll into a bounding run with his fists, digging his knuckles into the ground to brake before throwing his head back and sending out another magma spray.

Now dangerously close to the crystals protruding down from the ceiling, Masako could only veer to the side when an intense volley of darts from Space-Anguirus’s tail flew past her and detonated against the roof of the chamber. The explosions sent several crystals falling down like stalactites, along with some actual stalactites, broken-away chunks of rock, and… water?

WE MUST BE UNDERNEATH THE BAY.

It was only a low trickle, falling through the cavern like several reflective strands of spiderweb, but Masako had an idea, and a way out. “Hold on,” she begged of an unresponsive Naoko, as she flexed her hands on the zord’s controls, “we’re almost there…”

The rock monster dug both hands into the ground, braced, and hurled the results upward, a geyser of boulders not quite reaching the Battra zord but propelled the rest of the way by a spray of magma that sent them hurtling upward like meteors. Masako felt the heat, but managed to dodge, frustratedly observing that the attack lost too much speed on the way up to do any significant damage to the integrity of the cavern. The crystal creature made up the difference, however, sending up a crystal beam that Masako was able to keep just ahead of and lure into chasing her through the already-weakened point. A series of explosions across the ceiling turned the small trickle into a cascading waterfall, steam kicking up at the bottom from the sheer distance it had to fall to pool among the lowest crystals.

Grimacing, and rounding for a tight turn, Masako veered directly upward into the channel of falling water, wings slicing through the spray on either side. Before either subterranean monster could prepare another attack, Masako was focused in on the single deep blue spot that marked an open passage to the ocean above.

A bolt of brilliant red struck up through the water, into the sky, and up past the clouds, departing the dreary day in the silent haze of a distant storm on the horizon.

…bringing the total to fourteen just in the past several hours alone. This startling wave of accusations comes on the heels of what was initially an outpouring of support for Mr. McKay, who re-entered the news cycle following an official statement that the tech mogul was ‘injured, but recovering’ after the brazen, broad-daylight attack on his building this afternoon. Another development, speculated to be part of the same incident although no definitive link has been confirmed, is the rumor that a mysterious creature rose up from the ground only minutes after the explosion, only to disappear back below the streets. The supposed emergence took place eight blocks from McKay Tower, although from the blurry photos obscured by dust and debris, there’s no way to know for…

Rolling her eyes at the small television mounted up in the corner near the ceiling of her room, Masako took a long, whistling breath. “Guess we know who the Spacegodzilla ranger is…”

She couldn’t keep her voice from shaking, turning bleak. She swiveled once more on her creaky chair, away from the dark skies outside her window and toward the sarcophagus of glowing, color-faded armor resting stiffly on her bed.

Her own burns from Spacegodzilla’s lightning had finished healing almost an hour ago, and every second since had been tinged with panic and faint self-reassurance that Naoko’s injury would only take just a bit longer. When the low, almost undetectable energetic hum finally went quiet, and the white glow faded from the armor as the nanometal began to recede, Masako released her anticipation with a shaky, frigid breath but didn’t feel true relief until she saw Naoko breathing.

The first thing Naoko did when she opened her eyes was warily scan her surroundings, her hands first clenching into fists before she locked eyes with Masako and relaxed into a simple hard glare. Then that, too, became indecisive when she really took in the distressed state Masako hadn’t been able to recover quickly enough from, and the interaction just became a long, awkward silence.

Until Masako broke it with a tentative smirk.

“…So, your crisis of faith was finding out God was a butterfly.”

There was a little bit of a laugh in it, but mostly discomfort and rolled eyes as Naoko looked away. “Something like that…”

She fussed over checking where her injury had been, and Masako averted her eyes for the duration. There at least wasn’t any remaining damage to her skin, or to her clothes from being run through, which was consistent with what Masako had observed – places on her forearms she’d seen burned down to the flesh were now covered with as-intact-as-they’d-been-before jacket sleeves. She suspected whatever a ranger was wearing when they morphed ended up in some kind of dedicated pocket dimension while they were armored-up, and returned only when the ranger armor as a whole was dismissed.

After taking breaths as if to reassure herself, Naoko made a wary glance back to Masako, and carefully shuffled off the other side of the bed. Struck by curiosity, she walked around toward the window, Masako nodding and rolling her chair further back into the curve on the corner section of the long desk while Naoko frowned at the darkness and leaned over the rightmost end to get a better look outside.

The moonlight cast a ghostly presence on the silhouettes of charred, empty skyscrapers, some with large chunks broken out of them. Their towering presence blocked most of the view to the intact part of the city even during the daytime. Now, it must have seemed like Desolation went on forever.

“We’re really here…” Naoko whispered, in a kind of awe that was tainted with pity.

Masako only saw home, now: the cast-out refuse and escaped livestock of human society, living now in the cold skeletons of its pride, as if a cataclysm had been called down upon it to create the space it refused to yield.

“Can’t Battra heal those?”

Startled by the close-sounding words, Masako turned quickly to find the object of Naoko’s staring had at some point shifted onto her. The girl’s eyes flashed apologetically, and she took a step back.

“Sorry, it’s… it’s just…” She winced in sympathy. “I had a scar on my knee from when I was eight, and it’s gone now, cause I had Mothra take care of it, along with, uh…” She hesitated, and blushed, wavering on legs held in too narrow a stance. “Shutting down some… other… processes… I won’t be needing—anyway, I just… figured Battra’d be able to do the same thing with your burns, I…”

Masako shrugged and looked away, staring blankly. “He can, it’s just… complicated.”

Naoko was quiet for only a few long seconds “Are you like, afraid, or…?”

“Nothing like that,” Masako assured, turning back with a brief smile. “I mean, I’m not gonna say I don’t have Battra messing around in my DNA, there’s some things I can justify from a community resource standpoint, but… with something like this, where it’s just…” She frowned, and gestured to the burn at the same time her hunched-up shoulder was instinctively trying to keep it hidden. “…we all have our scars here. It’s not fair if it’s just me.”

Oh, Naoko’s eyes seemed to say. She closed them and nodded slowly, making an acknowledging glance behind her toward the room’s door and jumping in surprise when at that exact moment there was a light knocking from the other side.

“Masako? You in there? You didn’t check in, and I have a delivery you didn’t add to the posted drop-off schedule, meaning we had to check it, meaning at some point you’re gonna have to explain to Taro in demolitions why you ordered this stuff. And then also explain to me why you ordered this stuff, cause it’s pretty weird even for you.”

Smiling in earnest, Masako parkoured over the bed and opened the door, meeting Azusa’s stern glare as she held out a large cardboard box with a smaller box balanced atop it.

“Sorry, was in a bit of a rush this morning, almost forgot about these,” she said with a small, offered wince, accepting the boxes and setting them roughly on the floor by the entrance. “Ranger stuff, you know.” She pulled Azusa into a tight hug, one the other girl played at reluctantly accepting but leant into desperately the way she always did.

“I know I worry about you,” Azusa said, soothing her back and making her feel at least a little guilty about not checking in.

“Sorry,” Masako admitted, “I just got a little distracted. But you know you really don’t need to worry about me, I have the power of God and anime on my side! Well, at least the first one…”

“Yeah, you were distracted,” Azusa teased, pulling away with a wide grin as she moved to finally acknowledge their guest. “You brought home a… oh.”

Masako felt herself shatter from the same break that took Azusa’s voice down to a quiet, shaken whisper, color draining from her face and all her movements becoming indecisive flickers from stillness. Masako whirled around with the flash of a pained snarl, a clench toward a fist, but settled back down to disappointment as she took in the sight before her.

Naoko was wide-eyed in shock with her face in a cold twist of disgust and fear. She’d backed toward the shelves in the far corner of the room, a finger up and pointing.

“What—wh—wha… what is th…”

Masako took a deep, hissing breath, and ignored her, placing a hand firm on Azusa’s wrist and moving into her line of sight until all that was there was her bleak, reassuring gaze. Azusa had already moved on to the eye-roll stage, however.

“New here?” She deadpanned as well as she could manage – which was a lot, with practice.

“…Yeah,” Masako confirmed, shrugging a more-or-less shoulder.

Azusa let Masako see through her guard, but nodded with a partial smile. She’d need time, but she’d be alright. Masako reluctantly let go and watched her leave, then fell to slow, stilted movements as she closed the door and turned around with a blank expression.

To her credit, Naoko looked mortified with guilt, both hands held to her mouth as she faintly convulsed in frantic breaths.

“That was Azusa,” Masako deadpanned, offering a bit of reassurance in the form of a merely-anticipatory brow raise. “She’s the community’s logistical leader – the administrator, treasurer, and all-around numbers-cruncher. And my sister.”

Naoko wailed a long moan of distress, deflating like a balloon and sinking nearly to the floor. “I… I’m so…” Her eyes shot to the door. “Can I apologize? Please! Please, I didn’t—”

Masako put up a hand, closing her eyes and shaking her head with something that didn’t quite reach a smile but wasn’t neutral either. “She knows. Or will. Not exactly the first time this has happened.”

Naoko was able to overlap some of her personal guilt with just general sadness, and with a breathless huff, pulled the folding chair from the small table by the bookshelf and sat herself limply down in it. Masako walked around to the foot of the bed, sitting down on the edge to face her.

“We all have our scars here,” she repeated, offering a branch of understanding for when Naoko finally dared to meet her eyes.

Naoko nodded, but paused, taken with a curious startle that Masako made an anticipatory sigh and eye-roll at. “Umm…” she gestured worriedly at the door. “Are you… also…”

Masako ascended her brows toward her hairline with a smirk. “I am my people, and they are me, and I shan’t forsake any label, no matter how reviled, to gain favor.”

Predictably, Naoko’s stare was wary and confused. “Er, what?”

“…That’s a polite way of saying it doesn’t matter and I’m not telling you.”

“Oh.” Naoko took the answer with grace, but visible discomfort. “Sorry.”

It was awkwardly silent again, Naoko kicking her feet as they sat together in a small box of warm light amidst darkness. With a frown, Masako took a long breath. “You can leave, you know.”

At Naoko’s additionally urgent look of hurt, she tensed in a panic and backtracked.

“You can stay, too, if you want to! Offer from before still stands! It’s just it’s pretty late, probably someone wondering where you are, and…” Masako scratched her neck as her cheeks flushed.

Naoko shrugged, still frowning at the floor. “I’m staying in the city, alone, so no one’s waiting up for me. And tomorrow should be clear. No classes, at least, so nothing unless Daisuke calls another early meeting…”

She froze, then, looking as if she’d let something slip. Even with her nervous eyes in full view, it still took a few seconds for Masako to catch it and put up a lame smirk.

“Your friends are the rangers.”

Naoko’s nod was barely a nod, but her half-rolled-back eyes confirmed it.

“Ooh! Let me guess!” Masako began, excitedly tapping a finger to her chin. “Daisuke – champion fighter who thinks people need to be saved from themselves, that’s a Godzilla ranger if I’ve ever heard one. That means Koji must be Anguirus, which leaves…” All mirth left her face as her demeanor hit a brick wall with a hard wince. “…shit.”

Naoko narrowed a confused eye. “What?”

“Kiyo,” Masako answered solemnly, processing with small nods as she closed her eyes. “Rodan ranger tried to join her boyfriend, didn’t she?”

Naoko froze, resistant to answer, but once it was apparent it was no use, she let out a slow breath, nodded, and spoke just above a murmur. “A couple times. How did you know?”

“Because the real Rodan dove into a volcano to try to die with his mate – and then, I’m pretty sure, tried to die for Godzilla once, too.” At Naoko’s still-confused look, Masako continued. “A friend of mine pointed out we tend to be similar to the kaiju we’re partnered with – maybe too similar, sometimes. It was already making a lot of sense, and now I think you’ve just confirmed it.”

Naoko thought about that for a long time, clearly experiencing some intense reflection on the subject. Finally, she nodded, satisfied. “I think… for me, it’s my faith in people.”

Masako certainly wondered what Battra would’ve had to say about that, but come to think of it, Battra hadn’t said anything for quite a while. She looked into the back of her mind, found the equivalent of a ‘stay out!’ sign taped to the door, and decided to let that be.

“Mothra once told me that she helped the human world against Godzilla, even though her whole island told her not to. They said the humans didn’t deserve it, after everything they’d done, but Mothra didn’t think like that. They needed help, and so she gave it.” Naoko took a pause, face screwing up in thought. “I guess, when I think back, I’ve never really been exactly like my family. They always condemned the people they hated, decided they were evil and deserved to die, but that never made any sense to me. They’re still people, and I always tried to see that.” She winced, and her guilty eyes were drawn back to the door. “Just… maybe I don’t always get it right the first time.”

Masako was quiet, taking the words in with unexpected melancholy. “…Well, I guess when you put it like that, it doesn’t sound completely stupid…”

Naoko tried to stifle a giggle. “How very Battra of you.”

Looking only a little offended, Masako crossed her arms, but shrugged acceptance. “I guess I don’t really need to explain my side of things, then.”

Showing a solemn reaction, yet appearing surprised by it, Naoko looked away, then back again. “No, I… guess you don’t.”

With their third—or was it fourth?—awkward silence of the night, Naoko fell to glancing aimlessly about the room, until she was suddenly struck by curiosity, eyes on the boxes Masako had set by the door. “What did you order, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking I mean…”

Before Naoko could backtrack too far, Masako grinned broadly to dispel any doubt, setting aside the smaller box and taking the larger, flatter box across her knees. She materialized one single finger-claw of armor and used it to slice through the re-applied tape, pulling apart the box flaps and slowly tilting it toward Naoko like a long-forgotten treasure. “If you’re sticking around long, I guess you can always help me set this up…”

Naoko’s eyes went wide, almost appearing aglow, with a single dart from the contents back up to look at Masako. “Oh, she’s going to hate this. And absolutely yes, I’ll help!”

It was with an ease that hadn’t seemed likely a few minutes ago, that Masako and Naoko sat inches from one another at the desk, the latter having brought with her the folding chair from the bookshelf table. Naoko was currently holding one instruction booklet up to the light, frowning at it as she turned it back and forth like a new angle on the same picture would be any more help. There really hadn’t been nearly enough adorableness like that in Masako’s life as of late.

“Do you… actually think she’s going to come back?” Naoko asked after another few minutes, when it had been quiet for a while except for the sound of snapping plastic.

Feeling her mood take a turn, Masako shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I made an impression, maybe I didn’t. She still didn’t find what she was looking for, and I’d like to see that through, if she’s willing to let me.”

When she looked back at Naoko, the other girl’s face was considering, and unexpectedly soft. “You really care about her, don’t you?”

Masako frowned, shrugged, and fit together the two angled purple panels in her hands. “It just… didn’t seem like she’d been able to trust anyone before. She’s mad at the world, I get that. Plus, you know, she’s small and pretty and I can’t help but feel protective.”

She heard just a bit of Naoko’s laugh. “You’re really not what I would’ve expected, back the first time we fought.

Masako winced, looking back up nervously. “Sorry, about the…” She held two fists on either side of her neck, miming a chain.

Naoko shook her head with a shrug, looking a bit nervous too. “Sorry about the… stinger.”

Gulping, Masako tried to reconcile the nervous, slightly-blushing girl in front of her with the brute trying to stab a spike through her neck, and found it very difficult. “You’re not what I would’ve expected either,” she admitted with a shrug. “I thought all the rangers were pretentious and self-obsessed, doing it all for the glory of punching a giant monster but never willing to get their hands dirty and change the system. I hated you because we were all crying out for help, and you were the ones with the power to really change things, if you wanted. Ironically, it was probably some version of that faith of yours that kept me from killing you that day – I figured you’d have a story. I just didn’t think it would be so much of the same story.”

Having been quietly guilty again, Naoko looked down at the little rows of assembled accessories she’d lined up on the perimeter of her workspace. “If she comes back, I want to help too. Mothra hasn’t said anything in a while, but I’m pretty sure she’s with me on this. She never stopped caring about Belvera the same way she cares about Moll and Lora.”

Admittedly, the prospect of a longer-term team-up made Masako feel things she definitely wasn’t going to linger on. “Thank you,” she said solemnly instead, before smirking just a little. “Yeah, Battra hasn’t talked to me in a while either, don’t think this’ll go over well, but deep down, I do think he cares too, even if he’ll never admit it.”

The rumble in the back of her thoughts tellingly didn’t reach open hostility.

“So, do we have any leads?” Naoko spoke up as she consulted the instruction booklet again. “What happened while I was out?”

Masako blinked, and smiled. “Oh, do I have a story for you…”

Sitting asleep with her head leant back against the edge of the mattress and her feet kicking at the old wooden desk whose middle drawer never closed all the way, Masako missed it when the small shadow passed across her window – missed the first, second, and third time, ten-to-fifteen minutes apart each, until finally a tap-tap-tap on the glass made her drowsily glance upward and smile.

Slowly, she stood, and slid open the window just enough for Garu-Garu to fly in and up through the gap in her outstretched arms. While Masako handled closing the window, Belvera’s disappointed, judging look was fixed on the bed behind her, where Naoko slept ungracefully, but peacefully – and beautifully, but Masako wasn’t entertaining that thought right now.

Finally, when Masako stepped back, Belvera flew down to glare at her. “Tell me you at least offered to get in bed with her. Don’t act like I don’t know it’s what you both want.”

Masako huffed a faint laugh, but frowned. “Naoko needs space,” she insisted, despite the way her body stirred at the suggestion.

“Only cause humans hurt each other too much to trust each other.”

Masako felt a wince of guilt, remembering the chain again, but shook it off in favor of curiosity. Somehow, she felt like she was getting closer to having Belvera all figured out, yet couldn’t quite put the pieces together right.

Speaking of putting pieces together…

“Well, wanna join the pity party?” Masako offered with arms outstretched at an angle toward her room’s most recent addition, which was set up on the rightmost part of her desk space near the end of the window. “Make yourselves at home, stay a while!”

Belvera took one turn in the air to look, and huffed her own muted, incredulous grumble before speaking in flat deadpan. “You bought me a dollhouse?”

Masako crossed her arms. “No, I bought you a haunted castle. See the bat stickers?”

Belvera turned around to give her a look over her shoulder, but did fly over to the desk, dropping off not near the castle but in the middle, closer to where Masako was standing. Garu-Garu, however, made a low squeak and excitedly flew off before she could give him an order, the small dragon circling in the air several times before divebombing into the small, round cat bed that was set up beside the castle like a garage.

After a huff and a stomp of her foot, Belvera reluctantly let the matter drop, and turned toward Masako, who was already setting herself back down against the side of the bed. Walking to the edge and putting her hands on her hips, Belvera looked down expectantly.

“So, nice place you have here. I took a look around.”

And by the momentary fear in her eyes and slight flinch backward, she’d definitely noticed the way Masako bolted to attention, suddenly wide awake and ready to fight if she had to.

“Relax, I didn’t hurt anyone,” Belvera said with her hands up, rethinking her mischievous tone halfway through the sentence and letting it drop before the end. “Just curious what Battra’s up to these days. I never took him for the type to have followers.”

“It’s not a cult,” Masako insisted, feeling the slightest grunt of approval from the back corner of her mind where Battra still wasn’t talking to her.

Belvera rolled her eyes, as if to ask why isn’t it? but relaxed and appeared to reluctantly psych herself up for something. “So, maybe today didn’t work out so well,” she began, averting her gaze toward her flexing fingers, “buuuuut, if you think two times might be the charm, well—”

“We’re not going anywhere,” Masako assured with a nod, a gesture back toward Naoko, and a bleak smile. “We’ll help you find your sisters.”

At Belvera’s stricken, combative look, she rolled her eyes, put up a lazy hand, and continued.

“To finish your super mystery parabola thing. Because we’re all still lying to ourselves.”

Belvera hissed a breath out through her nostrils, but eventually she let drop her combative stance and just started pacing uncomfortably on the desk, before sitting cross-legged at the edge and fixing Masako with a skeptical, but mostly perplexed look. “One more thing. You basically burned half your skin off trying to get me back, so why’d you do that? What do you get out of it, what’s your angle? You humans always have one.”

Masako grinned. “Plain, unashamed, personal bias.”

“…Okay, what does that even mean?”

Taking a long breath, Masako softened her gaze against Belvera’s irritation, tempering her emotion but making it clear all the same.

“It means, when you say you don’t trust humans, I’m inclined to believe you have a good reason.”

Belvera was defensive again, so Masako let her head fall, closing her eyes in final retreat.

“You don’t have to tell me anything. I don’t need to know. I just… didn’t want to be the next human being who let you down.”

It was quiet for a long time, and then the silence broke with the immensely soft sound of tiny platform heels on wood. Belvera had leapt down to the edge of that one middle drawer that never closed right, a reserved and tempered expression on her face when Masako’s eyes opened to meet hers across the distance.

“You really want to know what made me like this?” Belvera tempted, half-joking. “I think it was back when the first proto-human bashed another one over the head with a rock. More or less.”

Masako didn’t laugh, and Belvera’s smile flickered until it faded and she averted her eyes.

“All that stuff humans do to each other?” she began instead, leaving it at that when she correctly sensed Masako was well familiar. “The Elias didn’t do those things. We were peaceful, and we knew how to respect one another. Our ancestors all banded together to fight off invasions, to protect the world and make things better for everyone. We didn’t let people suffer, or turn our backs when they needed help, and we certainly didn’t hurt each other for personal gain.”

She took a long, shaky breath, and sat down, kicking her feet off the edge of the drawer.

“Moll and Lora weren’t old enough to remember that. Lora could barely walk on her own when Mothra saved us – saved just us. I’m the only one who knows anymore what the Elias were. Everything after that… the wars, the tyrants… most of it’s ancient history to you, but for us, it was the world we had to watch over. And Moll and Lora…”

Grimacing with something that went back and forth between sadness and anger, Belvera clenched her fists and finally looked down in shame.

“I was the older sister. I had to say something so I said… I said they would get better. That you were still learning. I never believed it, but after enough times, my sisters did. They’ll never know the truth – how far away you really are from anything close to learning. I’ve had to watch you crawl your way up to space travel twice, and you never gave up your hatred or your twisted need to exploit others. But I’m the reason my sisters kept putting their faith in you, why they were so damn trusting and naïve. I did that, and now who knows where it’s gotten them?”

Before Masako could vocally reassure her, in any way that could have been accepted, Belvera looked up at her. Looked her directly in the eye, like she hadn’t before.

“And it’d be bad enough without you having to look like us too. Do you have any idea just how many of your dumb faces I’ve had to look at over the centuries? How many of the other Elias I knew and remember, that I’ve seen in those faces? Bet you don’t have to guess the kinds of things I had to watch happen to them. I tell myself you’re not even intelligent, that you don’t understand pain, because that would at least make it easier, not that I ever really believed that either. I took a look around because this little setup you’ve got going? You actually got it right! One tiny pocket of something even a little bit like our civilization, something like home, and it’s only because the human world that cast you out gave you no choice! Left you scarred and rotting in some deserted ruins because that’s all they’re capable of, millions of years of history gone and all that’s left is a savage mob that hunts anyone kind and decent down like animals…”

She trailed off because Masako had flinched her left hand into the air, which now lingered, hesitantly, fingers twitching, in the space between them. Masako met Belvera’s wary eyes with only a question, her intentions signaled loud and clear in her thoughts knowing they’d never be accepted if put into words.

Belvera continued to stare back absently with neither confirmation nor denial, her answer only manifesting as a small telepathic flicker of nervous acceptance.

Ever carefully, watching for any sign of discomfort, Masako moved her hand across the rest of the distance, only half-sure she’d even figured out how to do this. She rested the side of her palm on the drawer’s edge to Belvera’s right, fingers curling supportively behind her, and very, extremely gently brushed her thumb up and down Belvera’s arm.

Belvera closed her eyes and breathed softly – ambiguous between ease and annoyance – but leant into the touch all the same.

It was only seconds, really, before she put up her forearm and batted Masako’s thumb off to the side. As the hand retreated, she stood up without any clear emotion, taking a long moment to watch Masako with the closest thing to gratitude she was probably ready to express – still a kind of incredulous scowl. Unable to find words, even mean-spirited ones, she just nodded, turned around, and impressively for her size, jumped the full distance back up to the top of the desk.

She looked back, once, at the edge, and Masako took the opportunity to smile softly as her own tired eyes started to pull closed.

“Goodnight, Belvera. And welcome home.”

Chapter Text

The sea churned with bile, tumultuous waves crashing in chaotic frenzy, dragging with them the corpses of hundreds of creatures of the deep. In skies so saturated with toxic mist the moon shone through it with the color of blood, winged shadows cackled with delight, swooping down to tear greedy chunks out of rotting whales and mosasaurs.

Rising with each breach of the surface, Battra’s yellow, knifelike crest fell to split the waves, over and over again. Tsunamis hundreds of meters high could not move the hardened, spiked armor of the larva, and the shadows knew well to steer clear of the dark moth in his steady advance.

One creature had not heeded the warning, or perhaps could not, its whiplike slither in the water easily felt even across the great distance. Battra’s glowing red compound eyes, passing above and below the surface with each contraction of his segmented body, scanned both fields of darkness for any sign of the approaching foe.

Beneath, it was. A writhing, teal-green serpent with a crown of long, narrowed horns. Two sets of small grasping legs spaced down its body. Ferocity in its bared fangs.

That one’s Manda. Don’t get caught in his coils or give him a chance to latch on. His scales can absorb and store energy. If you shoot, don’t miss!

Battra didn’t intend to. Without warning, he dropped well below the waves, directly into the path of the advancing serpent. A surge of yellow-orange lightning coursed up the spiked armor segments that made up the back of his head and coalesced up and down his horn, darkening to match the shades of the sky above. Drawing his head back and snapping it forward, he sent out a bolt of lightning that cast a sunset red glow through the murky deep.

Reacting just in time, Manda loosened the tight pattern of his swimming motion, becoming a widened coil that allowed the bolt to pass harmlessly through the middle. With alarm, Battra watched as smaller electrical offshoots were drawn out of the lightning and attracted into Manda’s body, his scales taking on the red glow until he appeared nearly to be made of hellish flame. With the attack passed, Manda tightened his coil again and switched to a violent, back-and-forth lashing. Battra moved to duck, but Manda leveraged his snakelike body to a full stop in the water, letting his tail catch up and then spinning to crack it forward like a whip. Aimed to follow the larva’s attempted escape, the barbed tail-end struck hard against the side of Battra’s head, discharging the built-up energy on impact in a burst of light and rolling him upside-down in the water.

A squealed roar and a torrent of bubbles escaped Battra’s mandibles, and he urgently twisted his form until he could bombard Manda with another bolt of horn lightning and twin bolts of purple from his eyes. But Manda was at home in the water, even so toxified, darting about with enough speed and maneuverability to not only dodge multiple volleys of lightning, but make a tight curve around each bolt until his body surged with electrified purple and red.

Manda looped into a spiral somersault and brought the tip of his tail down on Battra’s head, just to the side of his crest. While the dark moth was still recovering, three more hits to the face and neck dispersed the rest of Manda’s absorbed energy, and bludgeoned Battra into a daze. Baring teeth, the serpent lunged and clamped onto the fleshy base of Battra’s left tusk, nostrils flaring in view of the eye above as the rest of Manda’s body looped several times around Battra and closed in tight.

Battra! What are you doing? Don’t let that oversized worm take you down!

Casting a sharp glare at nothing, Battra internally groaned. The serpent’s muscles constricted against his exoskeleton, inflicting enough strain the dark moth feared his armor might crack. But he could barely move, and even his own attempts to writhe against the pressure felt weak and weaker still with every moment that passed. For a moment, there was nearly peace, just the pressure and the calm of deeper waters as the entwined monsters slowly sank toward the bottom.

But shadows moved in the emptiness, the bloated corpses of fishes, mollusks, and marine mammals and reptiles alike. Not simply from the polluted seas, but now, so many that hadn’t survived the temperature shock and anoxia of the changed currents. Such hubris, such carelessness…

Battra’s eyes flared red like the moon, energy surging around them. Enraged, he thrashed back and forth, holding up the many spiked feet on either side of his body so they poked at the thinner scales on Manda’s underbelly. He lashed out with the forked trident of spines at the tip of his tail, scraping several times against the excess length of Manda’s until with one final lunge he managed to spear one of the longer spines between scales and deep into flesh.

Manda’s jaws slipped as he gasped a low, gurgling roar, and the grip he regained on Battra’s tusk wasn’t nearly as secure. Battra bashed at the loosening coils with his two largest, hooked feet, pushing one length of Manda’s body far enough away that he could use the point to scrape at it, indenting several scales at disturbed angles. Wrenching and twisting his tail spikes, he wedged the impaled spine deeper and deeper, until blood clouded the water and Manda was forced to let go, hastily putting distance between himself and the dark moth.

Second incoming! Above you!

Battra looked on high toward the water’s surface in time to watch the shape descend – a lizard with a spiky, fishlike face, gliding down through the water like a manta ray on stretches of skin that joined its forward and rear limbs. A single row of thin, sickle-curved spines ran down the middle of its back to the end of its tail.

It’s Varan! He’s as good in water as he is on land and in the air. Watch the spines when he curls up!

Parting the water with cupped, webbed hands, Varan leant forward into a somersault, lashing down with the spines on his tail and grazing Battra’s left flank as he dodged to the side. Battra repaid the reptile in kind, spinning in a tight circle and scraping a row of sharp foot spikes against Varan’s tough, scaly hide. He uncurled and flexed his tail segments quickly, pursuing his new, descending opponent with a barrage of lightning and a main pair of legs ready to strike downward.

Varan’s pseudo-carapace of tough back armor tanked the energy attacks, and as Battra’s hooks closed in, the reptile twirled to swim inverted and reached upward to catch the limbs in his webbed hands. The two monsters locked gazes for just a moment, before Varan leaned back, pulling Battra down and curling up into a fierce double-kick to the caterpillar’s underside.

Battra was sent sprawling, crashing through an unidentified mass that broke apart too easily to be made of rock or earth. A set of legs combed through the silt on the ocean floor, splaying apart with the protective curve of a segmented body to bring the dark moth’s uncontrolled slide to a gradual stop. In the process, Battra’s arrival had kicked up an obscuring cloud that included debris from artificial structures, as well as the unmistakable shapes of several bloated human corpses drifting idly within the disturbed sediment.

You’re already over the continent, or what used to be part of it. The rich and powerful moved inland and built their sea walls. They left everyone else to drown.

BATTRA CARES NOT FOR THE SUFFERING OF HUMANS.

Good for you. Varan’s closing in on your right side.

Turning, Battra saw the silhouette of the triphibian reptile, at a diagonal forward hunch on his hind feet as he strolled across the seafloor. In the clouded water, Varan was ghostlike, moving between submerged buildings as more flood-washed refuse drifted upwards with every step.

Battra lit up the water with a triple energy blast, but Varan was quick, pushing off the bottom and using his gliding wings to drift overhead of the attack. Varan stalled with his arms spread wide and brought his hind legs up for a powerful kick to Battra’s face, staggering the bulky larva.

On landing, Varan brought his right arm around for a horizontal sweep of his claws, scratching the armor on Battra’s face and narrowly missing his eye. With a shove forward from his many legs, Battra slid himself backward, dodging the next swipe and kickup up even more of a dust cloud. While Varan was following through, upper body momentarily twisted aside, Battra reared up on his hind segments, battering Varan in the shoulder with his largest right foreclaw and sending the reptile crashing down onto his side.

Through the mist, debris, and bodies, Battra sent lightning up his horn and struck at what he could see of Varan with bolt after bolt, making the reptile squirm as he tried to get up.

Watch it, Manda’s coming back!

The slithering serpent appeared out of nowhere, one moment a head with snapping jaws breaking through the clouds and the next, a long, scaled body crossing far too close in Battra’s field of vision, cast in warm reddish light by Battra’s attacks and indeed drawing their energy unto itself. Manda vanished into the clouds again as quickly as he’s appeared, but now there was a glow swimming through them, around them, split up by the silhouettes of the buildings the serpent passed behind.

Varan tried to get up again, but even with Battra’s onslaught halted, he appeared to convulse and stumble, reaching for and scratching at the side of his neck while his jaws broke loose with a strangled roar, air bubbling up past the widened whites of his eyes.

Battra could nearly feel pity for the creature, succumbing faster than his serpentine ally to the devastation his creators had wrought upon nature. But as Varan gulped down poison and recovered enough to swipe once again with deadly claws, he was simply an obstacle standing in the way of Earth’s dark salvation. Batting aside the attack with the flat of his horn, the dark moth lunged, impaling the weapon’s point in Varan’s shoulder and pushing forward through the reptile’s cries of pain. Eyes flashed and lighting traveled up the horn, dealing searing heat past the barrier of Varan’s thick skin – until the light in front of Battra suddenly paled in comparison to that behind him, and a powerful coiling strike of Manda’s tail exploded along his right flank.

Sent sailing through the murky depths, Battra collided with the waterlogged structure of another sunken building. Catching sight of Manda writhing about for another attack, Battra pushed off with his largest legs, gaining altitude and beginning to swim. Manda, however, handily dodged an attempted ram of the dark moth’s protruding horn, instead coiling around Battra and digging the claws of his forward limbs into the creases of Battra’s carapace.

Attempting to dislodge the serpent once again, Battra found Manda capable of learning from past mistakes, this time leaving more than enough distance between his coiling neck and Battra’s sharp spines as he clamped his jaws down at the base of a right tusk.

However, with a loose hold consisting only of three anchors, there was no chance of crushing or constricting, leaving the serpent’s intentions a mystery – until a scrambling Varan pushed himself above the refuse. Manda lashed his tail out toward the triphibian reptile, whose front paws caught it just at the base of the flared end. Curling fully around the acquired handhold, Varan formed his row of back spines into a circular saw.

Like a violent tug on a rope, Manda’s body contracted.

Bubbles escaped Battra’s parting jaws in a pained screech, yellow-green hemolymph clouding the water, as the bladed back of Varan, spinning on Manda’s twisting tail, made a quick slice through the dark moth’s carapace.

Lashing out in the other direction, Manda’s body was soon stretched to its limits and simply rebounded, bringing the saw back for another strike that left another bleeding cut between two legs farther down Battra’s left side. No matter how much Battra struggled, he could not escape the strange dance the three monsters found themselves in, Varan always being drawn back for yet another devastating impact.

You’re stronger than that, Battra! You’re cleverer than that! Show these worthless human pawns what you can do!

Battra stopped struggling.

He waited.

And when Varan was already sailing towards him once more, he roughly twisted his body from end to end, the bladed tips of his feet nearly mirroring a double helix. This time, the water was clouded with dark red instead of yellow, a different muffled screech resounding as Varan’s spines struck scales instead of chitinous armor.

Manda detached immediately, struggling for a moment even against the body still curled around his tail until Varan let go, drifting aimlessly in the water as the bloodied serpent made his panicked escape. Battra wasted no time before converging all three beams at the wound in the triphibian reptile’s shoulder, setting off a plume of dark smoke as a pained, twitching Varan scrambled away and drifted down to the sea floor…

“Run!” Masako commanded, but they did not run, even as tanks rolled over the burning hills.

Fire spread across burning banners, boots marched and guns fired. She was a storm of red, reaching for hands that reached back from beneath charred wreckage, only to refuse to be moved. With fury, she spun in place, eye lenses sparking to life as intense purple prism beams, which she swept across the line of tanks. Explosions shot skyward, only for the next wave to roll over the collapsed remains of the first, wreckage crushed under new treads.

“No,” Masako sneered, and spread her wings, unleashing lightning upon the burning fields. Tanks went up in smoke, this time two, three waves only for more to roll in behind them. Shells exploded all around her, and she took steps backward, still firing. She could not stay, never take such a way out when someone still needed her.

Something that wasn’t a tank shell detonated the ground in front of her, shooting up a plume of smoke from a crack in the dry earth. From it burst forth a living creature, muscled like a reptile but armored like an insect – smooth and dark in blue-green, a centipede rearing up like a cobra. Its eyes were set far back on a shovel-like head, its upper jaw toothy like a lizard and its lower, a pair of parallel mandibles with singular teeth hooking upward from the ends.

What the hell is that?

BATTRA DOES NOT KNOW, BUT YOU ARE ALSO DREAMING, MASAKO, SO THAT MAY EXPLAIN IT.

…Wait a minute, wh—

Masako’s eyes blinked open in darkness. She reflexively tugged the sheet around herself, fingers passing over skin and finding the dense field of scarring on the right side of her upper back. She breathed and caught moonlight from the window – it was late enough she should think about getting up anyway. She shood her head with an empty grin.

Still can’t get used to you being able to just TELL me that.

THERE WAS… SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT IT, THOUGH.

Masako paused at the edge of her bed, narrowing her eyes. Like what?

BATTRA CANNOT BE CERTAIN, BUT… THAT CREATURE… I DO NOT THINK IT HAILS FROM YOURS OR MY THOUGHTS ALONE. IT IS TROUBLING, YET I DO NOT SENSE DANGER.

Sighing in slight relief, Masako slid off the edge of the bed and started getting dressed. More strange happenings to add to the list, then. Reminded, she sent a mental nudge to the most recent addition to her own little pocket of the supernatural, and set her mind to the task ahead.

The night was still young, the moon shining bright, and Masako had her elbow braced on the side of the still-unrepaired watchtower, leaning casually against it in full ranger armor as Belvera slowly, one wing-flap at a time, drifted forward in flight past her other shoulder.

“So, you are aware Naoko is also a ranger?” Belvera’s smirk was half-irritated, half-smug.

Masako lightly sighed, resigned to seeing where this was going. “Yes.”

“And so, you’re aware the possibility of her having to wait alone for a few minutes before we get here isn’t quite the end of the mortal world?”

“…Yes?”

“Then, you’re also aware that us showing up a full half-hour early to prevent that outcome was entirely unnecessary?”

Masako took a long breath. “I’m just… well, in case.”

Circling to face her directly, Belvera’s smirk was now more smug than annoyed. “You know there’s only one conclusion to draw from all this, right?” She began to guide Garu-Garu into a fluttering, leaf-tornado twirl through the air in front of her, and Masako rolled her eyes in preparation. “You liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike her.”

“It’s a courtesy I’d show anyone in her situation, ranger or not.”

“But you did it this time because you liiiiiiiiiiiiike her!”

“This is established information, you’re not saying anything groundbreaking.”

“Then what’s stopping you?” Belvera asked piercingly, Garu-Garu now at a sudden, stalled hover a few centimeters from Masako’s faceplate.

LOGIC? A DISTASTE FOR HYPOCRISY? A SENSE OF HONOR AND COMMITMENT TO PRINCIPLES?

Masako smiled under her helmet. “That.”

“Come on, are you really going to let Battra decide who you can and can’t date?”

“He lives in my head. He should at least get veto power.”

THANK YOU.

Belvera rolled her eyes.

“Besides,” Masako continued. “In addition to the ten-millennia-old rivalry we’re playing host to, and the inevitability that one day we’ll be outright trying to kill each other, there’s also that we both already tried to kill each other, not to mention all the deliberate gaps in my history that she needs to decide on her own whether or not she’s comfortable with. And more importantly than any of that, is the simple, plain and unrepenting truth that I. Don’t. Do that anymore.”

“And that means what, exactly? That you won’t let yourself fall in love ever? All because—”

Thanks to Belvera’s telepathy, Masako’s warning glare was effective even through her helmet, and the Elias backed off a half-meter’s hover with her hands held up in defeat.

“…You still could’ve picked a better spot for your date than the place where the two of you almost fought to the death.”

“It’s a place we know we’ve both been to. And also, it’s not a date, it’s a mission. Specifically, a mission for you.”

“It can be both!”

Masako rolled her eyes and took a sigh, catching the quick hesitance in Belvera’s tone that meant she’d probably been filling time for her own sake more than for any genuine investment in Masako’s love life. Relaxing again, she fell to silence, and was in the middle of debating the chances that Naoko had turned on her, this was all actually a setup, and she’d have to fight the rangers again when a telltale inverse-firework of orange light snapped the Mothra ranger into existence in the night sky several stories above.

Circling down, Naoko made a gentle spiral of descent that ended when she freed her wings of lift and dropped the last several meters to an elegant, feet-first landing. Masako tracked the quick movement – and she definitely wasn’t checking out the curvature of Naoko’s white, semi-form-fitting chest panel before the wings closed over it to form a longcoat, she was… confirming it was the same design as her own armor, that was all, not like either of them had much to stare at anyw—

You liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiike her.

Masako gulped down the sappy swell of warmth inside her and approached the new arrival, a silent negotiation taking place between expressionless helmets. Naoko nodded once, and, when the two of them were standing less than a meter apart, turned to look out over the water.

There was a churning beneath the waves, shapes indiscernible in the dark current, until the first of the objects broke the surface – three metallic islands of reflective copper-brown, divided by narrow grooves, with the first bearing a shallower slope that extended forward into the water and the last trailing behind it yet another near-identical segment that wasn’t quite high enough to be fully above the gentle roll of the waves.

The first that had risen was farther out, and the second was closer to shore, the same sets of platforms forming the highest series of points on two identical Mothra larva zords. On each of the forward, head segments, a small set of panels slid open, the movements synchronous.

With another nod, Naoko vanished in a flash of orange, recondensing in the air above the farthest larva before dropping in the doors. Masako struck like a red lightning bolt toward the nearest larva, falling into a command chair similar to the one inside the Battra zord. She waited another few moments for Belvera to fly the distance, the moonlit silhouette of Garu-Garu making a nervous, hesitant hover above the doorway but eventually descending into the canopy and being sealed in by the closing panels.

“Right,” Naoko spoke up, her helmet visible in the active zord-to-zord communication window on the main screen. “I don’t think you can control that larva directly, but I’ll have it follow mine. How big did you say the opening was?”

“Big enough the waterfall covered the whole Battra zord except the wings. If the cavern hasn’t collapsed since, it should still work as an entry and exit point.”

“As long as we can find it first,” Naoko said, and then focused on the controls she was holding. In a moment, Masako felt her larva angle its head downward and turn, the limited visibility in the darkness of the bay still resolving the silhouette of the other as it made the dive toward the bottom.

As the two support zords sunk deeper, a set of spotlights switched on from the front of Naoko’s zord, which itself was illuminated more clearly moments later when the spotlights on Masako’s followed suit, the tiny blue eyes casting strong, blue-tinted beams down through the water. In a few more moments, they were in range to search the illuminated seafloor, beams sweeping to and fro from the larval zords’ articulated sockets.

Having paid zero attention to the location of the fissure at the time, Masako wasn’t surprised when it took them nearly an hour to successfully locate it. Fortunately, the opening had been preserved when the cavern filled up with water, and once the twin larvae were directly overhead, the faint glow of crystals could be seen from far below. Naoko’s larva entered first, brushing a few loose chunks of rock off the side but making the dive without any serious hindrance.

When Masako’s larva descended, she took a moment to marvel at the crystals the way she hadn’t quite been able to last time. Submerged in water, the sight of the glowing spires piercing out from all sides of the spherical chamber was even more serene. It was hard to remember just how dangerous they were, and that what their presence meant was likely even worse.

“So, any chance we got lucky and your mineral menaces got taken out by the flooding?”

Masako considered Naoko’s faintly-hopeful query with an eye-roll. “I don’t think rocks can really drown. The crystalline one might have been partially organic like King Ceasar, but I’m doubtful it would matter much. Could’ve snuffed out the volcano monster though, or at least petrified it, all its joints seemed to be made out of actual hot magma.”

Searching the bottom, however, even into the next passageway beyond the chamber, yielded little sign of either creature. It appeared they’d both lived to fight another day.

About halfway down the passage Masako had been chased through by both creatures, the floor-to-ceiling water gave way to an air pocket in accordance with a continual, slow rise in elevation. Both larvae surfaced, finding that the narrow-but-dug-wider opening at the end was submerged just enough that one larva at a time could pass through the very bottom.

Through that opening, the water had spilled into the larger cavern where Masako had first encountered the crystal creature, filling it about halfway to the ceiling. Crystals glowed all around, both above the water and below, and Naoko seemed to exercise additional caution against any potential underwater spires that might be high enough to damage the floating zords.

Marked by the only half-flooded crater where the stone creature had uprooted a cluster of crystals, the passageway beyond remained dry, and the small, recessed sets of treads on the bottom of each larva segment caught ground as the zords climbed the small hill. Scurrying forward with alternating upward pumps rolling back down the segments, the two larvae entered the cave and were able to easily snake themselves between any crystals protruding from the floor.

“About here?”

“A little further,” Masako replied, searching her memories for details amid the chaos of her prior mad dash. “There should be an intersection up ahead somewhere, left is to where we were pulled under, straight ahead is… I dunno, I didn’t look that way.”

“Well, let’s start with—” Naoko cut herself off abruptly as a loud, gruesome roar echoed through the underground. “Or… maybe one of them will find us.”

Masako tilted her head as the same roar echoed again. “Might be wrong, but I… don’t think that’s what either of them sounded like.”

“Great, there’s even more stuff down here.” Naoko shrugged a sigh and steered her larva zord to follow the sound, Masako’s guided along with it.

Partway down another cave, there was movement on the right, where two crystals at low-to-the-ground angles crossed each other in a kind of archway. Claws first, what crept out on eight legs was a black-armored, narrow-bodied scorpion, not large enough to seriously threaten the zords but probably enough to easily lift a sedan in its tweezerlike pincers. It stopped in the zords’ path, arched its back and stinger high, and let out a deep, echoey, growling roar much louder than its size, body frame, and species should have suggested.

Naoko brought her larva to a halt, taken aback at the threat display of the single creature, and the confidence with which it walked forward, stinger high. “Uhh, what do we do?”

“Make some Rodans?”

Both Masako and Naoko had to suddenly pause, the latter adjusting where she was looking on the communication screen and the former slowly turning her head to stare blankly at Belvera hovering beside her. Belvera just shrugged ambiguously.

“It’s what you humans did last time…”

THESE CREATURES DO NOT REACH SIZES MUCH LARGER THAN THIS ONE, BUT WHERE THERE IS ONE, THERE ARE USUALLY MORE.

Naoko hinged open her zord’s small, boxlike mouth to let out a chirp of deterrence, and when the scorpion continued to approach, she angled the head joint slightly upward instead. Underneath, and with its protruding surface nearly flush with the bottom of the head, between the ski-like landing struts that angled upward to form the larva’s tusks, was an internal, swiveling sphere structure that revolved around to reveal a dish-like recess that charged with blue-tinted, bright green energy. The dish shot out a small burst of the same green rocket thrust the larvae used to propel the megazord in their jet-boot configuration, striking the scorpion at almost point-blank and sending it tumbling backwards through the cave.

Hitting the wall, the scorpion scrambled and righted itself, seeming at least fine enough to attempt another charge. In response, Naoko lowered the head again, opened the mandibles, and fired what at first appeared to be an explosive shell until it burst open into a large net, wrapping the scorpion up and rolling it onto its back. Its pincers were already starting to gnaw at the steel cables, but it looked like it would be stuck there for quite a while.

There were more roars from deeper in the cave around a bend to the right, including something faint that seemed like it could have almost been human shouting. Naoko drove along the path of the cave, leaving the scorpion struggling as both zords passed it.

The next cavern had a high roof and a steep slope up on the left side, toward the plateau of rock above which seemed to be where the noise was coming from. Naoko rounded a curve towards it, raised the head, and fired an anchor cable from the mouth, the line following the incline of the rocky slope but overshooting it and embedding in the ceiling of the higher cavern. Masako’s zord set a similar anchor, and the two larva began rolling up the slope, pulled along by the cables.

Climbing over the top of the hill, before signaling the anchors to combustively detach from the rock above and retract into the zords, the twin larvae entered a new area with multiple immense stalactite-stalagmite pairs acting like support pillars throughout the cavern. The structures towered over the crystals, and actually had a few occasional crystals growing out of them as well.

Winding through the obscuring columns, the two rangers slowly got a better view of what looked to be a kind of scorpion frenzy, several of them filtering out through different holes in the rock at the sides of the cavern and converging toward one spot in the middle of the floor. Using crystals as cover, three smaller humanoids were running in the general direction of the zords, though likely hadn’t seen them in their panic.

“What are those idiots doing down here?” Naoko shouted as she urged her zord forward faster.

Masako took note of the most visible human’s bright yellow shirt and purple backpack, and sighed.

“What?” Naoko paused to ask, prompting a low, embarrassed groan from Masako.

“…they’re my idiots.”

Thankfully, the doors on top of the larva zord responded to her desire to leave, opening to let a red bolt of lighting pass through and arc into the wider cavern.

Running through a narrow passage between smaller, several-meter-high crystal spires, Jason Ford kept his arms wide, hands pressing at the backs of Shawn Lelonzo and Shannon Nunez to urge them both forward. In alarm, likely at the closeness of the scorpion’s growl just on their heels, he took the other two tight around the shoulders and leapt to the side, pushing them out of the path of two jabbing pincers that speared forward and snapped closed on empty air.

All three tumbled face-first at the cave floor, bracing and likely sustaining bruises but scrambling to their feet and rushing deeper into the field of crystals. The scorpion managed to weave its way partially after them, but got stuck on the outside of a tightly-packed ring of spires where the gaps were too small for it to squeeze through. It roared and hissed, its arms looped around the pair of crystals it was directly blocked by while it tried unsuccessfully to force its head through the middle.

Materialized in gliding form, Masako rained down prism beams, managing to jostle the creature partially aside before the impact of her feet on its right flank shifted it enough that its right claw unhooked from around the crystal. She landed near a set of shifting legs as the creature corrected its stumble and attempted to face her in the cramped space, left claw snapping at her from around the other spire before the right claw rose and made a lunging jab.

Masako bolted to upside-down in the air above, striking beams on its carapace and twisting out of the way of a bludgeoning swing of its stinger-tail. She landed on the ground in the middle of the loose crystal ring and fired her beams on a sustained burn, the attack still seeming to have little effect on the scorpion beyond its directional force.

“What is this, the cave of things beams don’t work on?”

“It’s a Centruroides tenebris!” Shawn shouted above another scorpion-roar, prompting Masako to glance behind her. The three megazoologists were backed up against a larger crystal toward the other end of the ring, Jason’s arms around the others again although Shawn had partially shrugged one off to speak. “They’ve been found hibernating inside solid volcanic rock, suggesting their outer armor protects them from extreme heat, even being submerged in molten lava!”

THAT’S NOT IMPRESSEVE.

Yeah, well from my perspective, it’s still really annoying!

Shawn, at least, managed to sound genuinely excited, even with multiple of the creatures working their way through the crystal maze in an attempt to make a tasty snack out of him and his friends. Masako suspected her own sudden arrival may have had something to do with that, as behind his obvious concern for the other two, Jason also bore a relieved and encouraging smile.

Shannon, however, didn’t seem to have acknowledged Masako’s presence at all – her eyes were wide and haunted, staring blankly as she retreated further under Jason’s arm, hugged herself, and faintly shook.

Masako pushed that gut-twist of concern aside as she rounded back on the scorpion, which was now again pushing itself against two crystals. This time, it leveraged its body from side to side, attempting to give more reach to either claw as they each snapped at the humans in turn. Its vocalizations were growing even more frustrated, and with impatience building, it finally lowered itself down to the ground, wrapped its arms tight around the crystals to anchor itself, then arched the back sections of its body up and forward to utilize its stinger.

Taking a step backward, Masako let the stinger ineffectively probe and lightly scrape the ground in front of her, the scorpion unwilling to put full force behind it without a sure target.

“There’s a weak point in the armor,” Shannon voiced with determination through her obvious distress, focus slowly returning to her eyes.

“Right!” Shawn enthusiastically took over. “The armor’s thin and flexible on the underside of its prosoma, just behind the chelicerae!”

The scorpion now shifted itself to the side and chose to overlap its gripping pincers around one crystal spire, attempting to uproot it and even managing to shift it slightly on its base while Masako took the moment blankly staring at Shawn.

“Okay, so I know a little arthropod anatomy…”

“Hit it in the throat!” yelled Shannon, now smirking and miming a quick, forceful uppercut.

Even with the shaky, scissor-like hold the scorpion had on the crystal with its pincers, it finally managed to pull the whole thing out of the ground, immediately dropping it so it rolled on its side and the creature could easily step overtop it. Masako didn’t let it make much progress, diving forward in a roll past the pincers to stop at a kneel and propel herself up in a hard punch to the soft underside of its pseudo-head. Immediately, the scorpion’s forward-set pair of hunting eyes adjusted in a way that uncannily resembled a human’s dilating pupils, and its roar took on a note of panic, but any further reaction was cut off when Masako’s eye beams burned up through the creature’s weak spot and caused it to slump over dead, lying halfway across the downed crystal with enough room for Masako to climb out from between its many limbs.

The distant, echoing roars didn’t stop, however, and in fact got closer, as more Centruroides approached the ring of crystals. Jason and the others hurried away from the spire they were backed against when another scorpion reached its claws through the gaps on either side. A third scorpion, large enough to stand above the height of the crystals, held its long arms high and plunged its pincers down toward the center – but fell short of its prey as it was wrenched suddenly backward, its tail caught in a set of stubby, horizontal metal jaws.

From ground level in the dark, crystal-lit cave, the Mothra larva zord’s bulbous block of a head looked immense – only just taller than the scorpion it was dragging along by tread-power, but many times more massive. While the presumably occupied zord moved backward, its twin was circling around the left side of the crystal field, steadily chugging along forward.

Masako turned her focus back toward the smaller, reaching scorpion on the right side, finding it had instead opted to try climbing up over the crystals in its way. Waiting for the right moment of alignment, Masako teleported just behind its head and kicked it hard between its dorsal, compound observation eyes, spearing its vulnerable throat directly onto the point of the crystal underneath it.

As the dead scorpion slumped on its pike, Masako was already taking hold of Shannon, Shawn, and Jason one by one, her red bolts flashing through the cave like the spokes of a wheel as she adjusted for the circling larva zord’s movement speed and deposited all three on the top surface of its head.

“Isn’t this a Mothra zord?” Shawn asked aloud, as the four stumbled for balance on a surface hopefully higher than the scorpions could reach.

“Long story!” Masako barked while taking position at the fore, quickly counting seven living Centruroides still swarming about the cavern, not including the big one Naoko was currently using her zord’s elevated head to swing back and forth against large crystals on either side.

“The cable car!” Jason called out, reaching and pointing with the arm that wasn’t occupied steadying Shannon by the shoulders.

Masako followed his gesturing to a part of the cavern that must have been obscured by one of the tall rocky columns when they entered. From what appeared to be a neat hole drilled down through the cavern ceiling, a long hanging cable nearly reached the floor, its lower end attached to a structure that resembled a metal shark cage. Said shark cage was currently caught in the pincers of a scorpion, and as the creature backed away, it not only managed to fight against the apparent reeling-in of the line but get it snagged around a diagonally-growing crystal, translating the savage efforts of repeated backward pulling into a direct downward force on the rest of the cable. With one final pull, the whole thing seemed to give way with a screeching rumble, and several smaller chunks of rock broke loose from the ceiling as something that looked very much like the narrow end of a construction crane became stuck down through the hole, protruding by a few meters.

Jason groaned loudly with an eye-twitch, a light facepalm over his glasses, and a head-shake. “There goes the rest of our equipment…” He recovered quickly though, refocusing on Shannon and Shawn and keeping watch around the perimeter of the moving zord.

It was Shawn who called out, however.

“Hey, Masako? I think that one might…”

He was pointing to the back end of the zord, where a scorpion scrambling partially up the ramp of a crystal managed to gain a foothold on one of the lowest segments of the tail, just in front of the rear spike. It scrambled up quickly and began to advance toward the fore, partly stymied by the shifting terrain as alternating segments moved up and down along with the zord’s forward movement.

Shannon was briefly struck again with a peculiar kind of horror, but managed to still herself with a breath, somewhat at peace even as Shawn eyed the creature with fear and Jason looked quickly to Masako for assistance. Before the readying Battra ranger could engage, however, the entire larva shook violently as if caught in an earthquake, casing the four humans as well as the advancing scorpion to stumble for balance in equal measure.

With a quick eye, Masako caught the shift in the ground below, as a mostly-straight line progression of cracked and pushed-up plates of the stone cave floor crossed underneath the moving zord from right to left. She followed the mobile fissure farther off to the left, up the wall, and she was pretty sure everyone was watching it by the time it curved all the way overhead and started moving across the ceiling. Broken chunks of rock and loosened crystals fell in its wake, a dangerous rain that was luckily a great distance ahead off the larva zord’s bow and towards the far wall of the chamber.

A loud rumble and shift in the apparent stability of the cave structure only increased, and once the fissure had extended to about the center of the ceiling, it reached its breaking point in a sudden pseudo-detonation, sending down a cascade of falling boulders and a thick dust cloud that nearly obscured the immense, metallic crimson object dropping like a rock to the cave floor.

Stuck on its back for the moment, the Baragon zord kicked its feet frantically in the air, managing to dislodge the few additional Centruroides that had been clinging to it as it fell and presumably as it burrowed. Snapping its jaws repeatedly upward, it managed to catch one of the flung scorpions, and bit down on it, a loud crunch resonating as the pressure of the toothed vice managed to break through its tough exoskeleton. Wagging its tail and rocking its weight from side to side, the zord finally managed to roll over and then climb back to its feet, letting out a screechy roar of challenge as it shook its head and caused its hinged ears to flap about.

Masako, who pretty much despised the other rangers and everything they stood for, couldn’t help but smile and even almost do a fist-pump at Yuzo’s unexpected and timely arrival.

She blamed it on the zord just being too darn cute.

“Masako! The scorpion!”

Whirling around, the momentarily distracted Battra ranger found the larva-jockeying Centruroides to be now only a few segments behind the head, and gaining ground. Bracing her feet, she broke out in a run, leaping onto the nearest segment just as it hit its rise and making it to the other end while she could still leap out and down to the one following.

They met at a junction, the scorpion holding its claws above its head in defense when the segment its front four legs were balanced on sank lower and the one supporting its rear four legs rose higher. With its body arced upward, it lashed out forward with its stinger, Masako barely twisting out of the way of the point and letting it stab the air beside her. In another moment as the stinger pulled back, the shifting segments pushed the scorpion’s front end higher while support dropped out behind it, and Masako intentionally let her left foot slip out from under her, falling to a hard stop on her left shoulder and firing her eyebeams up underneath the scorpion’s tilted body. Smoke billowed from a direct hit to the throat armor, and the scorpion collapsed immediately, forcing Masako to roll back out of the way of a pair of falling claws that had been preparing to skewer her.

She righted herself just in time to see the results of Yuzo’s attack on the rest of the scorpions – namely, that the Baragon zord’s flame breath had managed to knock a few of them around but was unable to do any lasting damage. The Centruroides were swarming now, a few trying to get footholds in the joints of the quadruped’s limbs and crawl up on top of it while Yuzo frantically maneuvered the jaws to bite the advancing arachnids, either crushing them or swinging them so hard parts of their bodies snapped off.

The scorpions were tenacious, she’d give them that, but after enough thrashing of limbs and gnashing of teeth, either their self-preservation finally kicked in or they simply realized they weren’t getting any kind of meal out of the armor-plated, albeit plump and animal-shaped machine. The ones who managed to survive the ordeal scurried away into adjacent caves, and after a few minutes of warily looking around, the Baragon zord fell to a contented stillness.

And stared across the distance at the two Mothra larva zords, which had finally rolled to a stop at the edge of the clearing and by the placement of their heads, formed a triangle with Yuzo’s. After a few tense moments, the Baragon zord’s hatch popped open, and Masako saw movement starting up the centrally-placed ladder along the inner compartment’s back wall.

To her surprise, however, not one but two rangers emerged and momentarily stood on top of the zord’s head. The second ranger was about two heads taller than Yuzo, and was armored in a brighter, more standard red color than Yuzo’s maroon, a hint of orange visible on his helmet making Masako preemptively sigh in irritation.

The pair of them effortlessly performed ranger-strength leaps down to the ground, landing far from their own zord and making it closer to the center of the space between all three before stopping in place to announce themselves.

“So!” the taller ranger hollered out casually, hands framed to a point around his mouthplate, in a voice Masako unfortunately recognized. “Can I be the first to say… what’s a nice girl like you, doin’ in a place like this?”

Yuzo elbowed him hard in the unprotected side, making him partially double over and audibly sputter in pain even at the great distance, and that, at least, made Masako grin.

“So, they growl, huh?” Masako asked casually, passing the time.

Shannon had paused on the way to kneel before one of the dead Centruroides, placing a hand on the nearest prong of its pincer and appearing to mumble out a quiet prayer. Both Jason and Shawn seemed to understand what was happening better than Masako did, and out of politeness she’d waited until the quiet words were finished, although Shannon was still kneeling in silence.

“The smaller ones sqeak,” Shawn confirmed, holding up a finger-and-thumb measurement that, if taken at face value, suggested Centruroides tenebris occurred in sizes small enough to be comparable to regular scorpions. She was torn between her doubt at that possibility and her trust in Shawn’s commitment to exact detail.

“It’s kind of cute, actually,” Shannon added with a bleak sort of smile, standing back up with clearly concealed distress that Masako decided not to comment on. After how the girl had reacted to her the last time they met, she still wasn’t sure where she stood with Shannon.

Shawn was, by then, urgently digging in his backpack, eventually producing a tablet and pulling up a video before shoving it in front of Masako. And unless they made Tupperware containers in much larger sizes than she was aware, that was in fact an about ten-centimeter-long scorpion scurrying around and making little eep! sounds.

It was, in fact, kind of cute.

Naoko was already standing with the other rangers when Masako and the three kaiju investigators walked across the last stretch of ground toward the middle of the clearing. The Mothra ranger had her hands up in what looked like slight panic, but she passed a glance at Masako’s companions, and even through her expressionless helmet, her brief gaze seemed curious and contemplative.

“Look…” Naoko returned to her apparent groveling. “Just… could you please not tell Daisuke about this? At least not yet, it’s still—”

The Titanosaurus ranger – confirmed via the webbed-edge, bladelike fin curving up the back of his helmet and the smaller earlike protrusions in the same color – cracked a laugh and shook his head, interrupting Naoko’s thought before putting his hands up. “Relax, just messing with you! Since when have I ever told Daisuke anything important?” At Naoko’s shocked silence, he put an arm around Yuzo’s shoulder and made a friendly wave at Masako as they both turned to face her. “Besides, we like the Battra ranger.”

“You do?” Masako and Naoko gasped at once.

“I dropped you out of the upper atmosphere,” Masako added doubtfully.

“Yeah, and it was awesome!” the Titanosaurus ranger countered with glee, before parting from Yuzo and backpointing a thumb at himself. “I’m Shinji by the way, and this is Yuzo for anyone who didn’t know.” He directed his thumb aside, then took a glance at the rest of his audience, peeking behind Masako to size up the three without armor. “Care to maybe introduce your friends here? Especially this lovely lady…”

Glaring, Masako took a protective step in front of Shannon, lightning building down her forearm to cackle in her open fist.

Please tell me Titanosaurus wasn’t actually this much of a dick.

I STRONGLY SUSPECT NOT. I BELIEVE THIS PROBLEM IS UNIQUELY HUMAN.

Even with a full head of height over Masako, Shinji backed away semi-fearfully with his hands up. “Okay, okay! Sheesh. Ain’t no crime!”

“I’m still sorry about him…” Yuzo mumbled apologetically.

“Okay, enough of that, why are you down here?” Naoko asked Shinji first, then realized her question applied to almost everyone in the group and titled her head a little toward the others.

“I believe I asked first,” Shinji countered, his helmet angled at Masako in a way she was blood-boilingly certain was a wink.

“Technically Naoko asked first, when we were in the zords,” Masako said, crossing her arms and neglecting the fact that instance hadn’t included the other rangers.

Shawn raised a hand. “You still haven’t introduced us…”

“You humans can never do anything right,” Belvera hissed, flying in on Garu-Garu and making everyone stop and look. “Shawn, Jason, Shannon, Masako, Naoko…” she listed, rounding in a circle and hovering for a moment at each person’s shoulder until she got to Shinji and Yuzo, and stopped. “…and you two already went.”

“…Whoa,” Shinji gasped, staring in awe.

“Bad idea,” Masako half-warned, half-hoped he’d try it.

“You’re an Elias!” Shawn thankfully interrupted, pointing eagerly.

“And you’re a nerd, congratulations.” Belvera flew back and hovered near Masako. “And we’re here because a bastard by the name of Boss McKay, also known as the Spacegodzilla ranger, also known as the asshole whole took… something important to me, filled these tunnels up with crystals and seems like he’s using them as some sort of breeding ground to create more crystal-hybrid monsters. So, if he has some secret lab somewhere where he keeps all the things he steals, chances are it’s down here. Anyone with any other reasons, feel free to chime in.”

Jason was scratching his head. “That actually explains… a lot.”

“Oh snap, there are villain rangers now?” Shinji looked shocked. “Besides us?”

After that, Belvera’s hurry it up glare got things moving.

“We were also investigating the tunnels,” Jason began, pressing his glasses into place on the bridge of his nose. “After that news footage suggested… something leapt up from under the ground to attack you,” he nodded to Masako, “we figured we were dealing with a possible underground kaiju, and not one we could identify by silhouette. We’d just determined these crystals we found instead were of a similar composition to the city structure seeded in Fukuoka in 1994, when we were swarmed by those Centruroides tenebris.”

“Well, we’re here because Yuzo heard from Kiyo who heard from Daisuke that Koji was going to dig down here tomorrow to investigate, so we figured, since fuck Daisuke and his whole team… present company excluded… from that definition…” Shinji nodded faux-respectfully at Naoko, and received a hiss that crackled in Masako’s voice filter. “…and since we have the obviously superior burrowing zord, we’d hurry up and get down here tonight, discover what has to be discovered, and take all the credit for ourselves!”

Naoko’s helmet-roll signified an eye-roll. “With half your team?”

Shinji shrugged. “Hey, we’ve got a torso and an arm, we can punch!”

Masako narrowed her eyes. “Can you even summon the Titanozord down here? Somehow, I can’t picture it digging its way out through one of these walls…”

Shinji paused a moment, looked around, and paused again. “Huh.”

Yuzo tiredly let his arms swing about. “I tried to tell him…”

“I hate to interrupt, but…” Shawn stepped in the middle of the group, having pulled up a map on his tablet that seemed to interest even Belvera. “When we were planning this, we used a cutting edge below-surface scanner that was supposed to detect large anomalies in the bedrock’s composition. We figured we were looking for the monster, and got three signals. This one must’ve actually been the Centruroides nest, but we split up the group to also investigate the two others here and here.” He pointed out two of the marked spots on the map – which unfortunately looked more like an indecipherable mess of overlapping partial tunnel renderings, otherwise – then looked up at Belvera. “If you’re looking for some kind of underground laboratory, I’d strongly suspect it’s at one of these two locations.”

Yuzo nudged his way into the slowly gathering crowd and stood on his toes to get high enough to reach over and point on the map. “We can get to this one quicker.”

Everyone looked at him, and he simply nodded matter-of-factly.

“You know how to get there?” Naoko was the one to question aloud.

“Yep. More specifically, Baragon does. He’s the one who dug most of these tunnels. The other one looks like it could be closer, but the only way is a more winding route to avoid some tougher bedrock. It also goes too deep to even be on this map.”

Masako crossed her arms and tilted her head at Yuzo. “Well, I’m already feeling better about you tagging along.” She passed a skeptical glance at a hopeful Shinji. “You, not so much.” She smiled as she watched him deflate.

Belvera hovered impatiently over the proceedings. “Right, so let’s get on with it! Which way to the faster one?”

While Yuzo started looking around to get his bearings, Jason took a better look at the map. “That’s where Lucy, Kristina, and Kyle were headed. The readings showed extremely high temperature hotspots in the area.”

“There’s a magma chamber there,” Yuzo spoke absently, then perked up. “This way!”

“Alright, saddle up!” Shinji called, making a running start for a superpowered leap back up to the top of the Baragon zord’s head. He snapped some kind of staff-propeller into existence that he twirled above his head to keep at a brief hover before dropping down beside the row of three smaller spikes between the zord’s ears.

Yuzo slid two sets of gold-bladed battle claws from the panels on his lower arms, four on each hand, and jumped into a twirling swan dive down into the solid rock making up the floor of the cave. A few moments later, he shot out of the rock wall high above his zord, steam venting from the ridges on the back of his torso armor to propel himself through the air. He landed next to Shinji and they both leapt in through the opening roof hatch.

As the others quickly sorted out seating arrangements, Masako stepped back, feeling a mental nudge from Belvera.

What’s up?

The scorpions. I tried to control one, but I couldn’t. There’s another telepathic element in play, I felt its influence on all of them.

Do you… think your sisters are involved?

If they are, they’re not doing this willingly, but… we already knew that.

It still doesn’t make a lot of sense…

If they’re here, I’m getting them out. I don’t care who gets in my way.

No one’s getting in your way, you’ll just have a lot of backup. I trust these people—well, all of them except Shinji, but still. If you tell them what’s going on, they’ll help.

Well, forgive my tens of thousands of years of experience that says otherwise! She visibly rolled her eyes, and mentally sighed. Let’s just get moving…

And of course, Masako ended up with all four of the non-rangers occupying her own borrowed larva, mainly because they all knew her the best, something Naoko seemed to have cheeky opinions about that she was, for the moment, keeping to herself.

“Depictions of the guardian moths date back about as far as human history does,” Shawn rattled off nonetheless, focusing intently on his notes. “No one has any clue how old they are, but if you’re talking to one…”

“Battra’s ten thousand years old,” Masako supplied, remembering the figure vaguely. “Mothra, I don’t know. Probably a good bit older?”

“Cretaceous,” Belvera muttered irritably from the far wall, making Shawn’s eyes go wide.

WHY IS SHE HELPING?

Because she knows how much it annoys you. And because both of them need the distraction.

Belvera and Shawn were currently having a staring contest across the zord’s interior, one Belvera was winning by sheer indifference. “No, I won’t elaborate. Next question.”

Reluctantly, Shawn nodded, and returned to his notes. “Unconfirmed and sometimes contradictory reports hold that an incarnation of Mothra encountered from 1996 to early 1999 was called Mothra Leo by the Elias and used male pronouns. If that was in fact the case, then as a member of the same—for lack of a better term—species, does Battra also exhibit gender fluidity?”

…wait wait holy shit?

DO NOT.

But do you? Or… okay, you don’t actually have to tell me but—

…YES, AS IS THE CASE WITH ALL GUARDIAN MOTHS.

Masako hoped the squeal that escaped her was inaudible through her helmet filter, but by the looks she got, she suspected such a hope was in vain. Damn, and you didn’t tell me?

I HAD THOUGHT IT WAS OBVIOUS…

So what was lady Battra like?

EXACTLY AS I AM NOW. THE DISTINCTIONS ARE NOT SUCH THAT HUMANS WOULD COMPREHEND.

Back in the zord cabin, it had taken a few mild nudges from Jason for Shawn to nervously abandon the inquiry, and he was currently pestering Belvera about Garu-Garu, to the Elias’s clear discomfort but begrudging acceptance.

“Can I get some air?”

It was Shannon, who hadn’t spoken in a while and still seemed shaken. She was nodding toward the ladder at the back that went up to the roof hatch.

Masako considered, trying to parse the girl’s troubled expression. “Only if I can come get some air with you and make sure you don’t fall off or anything. Safety rails weren’t in the design specs.”

Shannon agreed easily, as if maybe that was her intention all along. She worked her way up to the opening doors and Masako followed.

Despite her ranger strength and reflexes, and even the added mass of the armor, Masako actually had a tougher time balancing on the larva head’s top surface than Shannon did, somewhat awkwardly replicating the half-cross-legged lean the other girl had managed effortlessly. For a long time, they looked up at the cavern walls, the light from multi-colored crystals revealing the finer detail to the point that the glowing horn in use by the Baragon zord, as it steadily trudged ahead of the rolling larva, wasn’t quite necessary.

“I’m sorry about Shinji,” Masako said after a while, taking the only guess she could reasonably make or have any available input on.

Shannon looked startled, then shook her head with a small laugh. “I can deal with guys like him,” she assured, a smile hiding just a small falter Masako wouldn’t have picked up on if she wasn’t looking. “Just wasn’t really expecting it. Honestly, I’m surprised anyone bothers.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Masako said immediately, prompting a look from Shannon that was both grateful and amused, but more so the latter.

“I’d expect him to be more choosy, is all. Guys like that have a list of things they want. This Shinji chico is either desperate or has some strange tastes.”

“I’ll keep him in line, don’t worry,” Masako assured, looking away and crossing her arms.

“I wouldn’t doubt it…”

Shannon trailed off to silence with the subtle darkness in those words, but took the time to work up her voice, at least by how even it was when she finally spoke again.

“Centruroides tenebris was discovered near San Lorenzo in 1957, a horde of them that destroyed the town and one big one that made it to México City. They’ve surfaced a couple more times since then. The last one was in 2019, when they attacked Salinas. I had cousins living there.”

“Oh.” Masako nodded slowly. “I wasn’t sure…”

“It wasn’t the scorpions,” Shannon said darkly, shaking before she pushed on. “They thought it was, at first, when they found… what was left. Almost started a panic, thinking they’d returned. It had been months since the last of the scorpions were killed, but in all that time, no one had bothered to fix the lights on the streets people had to walk home on at night.” Shannon shook her head, taking a heavy breath. “Men did it. It was a femicide.”

Masako gulped, nodding along, having known where this was going for a while. One crisis out of the hundreds jumbled up in her head. Must be nice, a cruel part of her thought, to have only lost two people to hatred. She wasn’t going to say that, though. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgave the scorpions,” Shannon closed her eyes. “They are just creatures, living in a world they no longer recognize. I want to study megafauna so we can learn how to better prepare, teach the world how to respond to these new crises effectively, so no one falls through the cracks.”

“That’s… admirable,” Masako decided slowly, “that you still believe that would work.”

Shannon gave her a look. “And what would you do, instead?”

“I think you already know.” Masako turned away, then sighed, then took a moment to grumble, then glanced back “Look, for your sake, I hope you don’t end up like me.”

Her shoulders dropped, and she turned away with finality, crossing her arms and hanging her head.

“…But for everyone else’s sake, I kind of hope you do.”

It was quiet again for a while. Masako wanted to take it back. But also, she didn’t. Shannon hummed deeply in concern.

“You feel that… you’re alone?”

Masako looked back around with a tilted faceplate. “I now have two people who regularly talk inside my head.”

“You know what I mean.” Shannon narrowed her eyes seriously. “And you are not alone in this fight. Much of the world is fighting it with you.”

“Oh yeah? Well, it sure doesn’t feel like it!” Masako snapped, grimacing around her teeth. “A lot of people talking, a lot of people begging… not many doing the fighting part.”

In the end, she was grateful for another silence. She took another long sigh.

“My family… is the kind you get ‘cause you’ve been through the same shit. A couple million people scattered around the world, in hostile environments, enduring things I couldn’t even make you understand if you wanted to, and you really, really don’t.” She uncrossed her arms to flex her claws in front of her. “And I got my wish. I have the power of a god at my fingertips, and I still can’t save them all. So yeah, maybe I feel like I could use a couple more of the monsters around here actually acting like monsters…”

“Be careful what you wish for, alma cansada.”

Masako sighed and settled, taking Shannon’s pitying eyes as a cue to shelve the topic. “Monsters is… probably one of those words that’s just going to be endlessly confusing. Wouldn’t have been a problem if there were heroes when there were supposed to be, but… we’re long past that now.”

Before it could be quiet for a long time yet again, the Mothra larva zord lurched to a stop. Masako quickly caught herself and turned with concern to Shannon, who looked like she might’ve scuffed an elbow doing the same. Shannon brushed it off easily, though, and seemed more interested in the opening canopy doors. Jason was at the top of the ladder just underneath, light from the crystals reflecting in his glasses.

“Shinji says there’s something strange up ahead.”

“Alright… what are we looking at?” Shinji asked as if he’d hoped to come up with the answer himself during the pause.

Masako thought it looked like a very big and kinda longer pair of binoculars with cobalt blue metal creeping up around the sides, but she wasn’t going to be the one to say that. Still in the Baragon zord, Yuzo managed to wedge a set of claws underneath the thing and flip it over, revealing the charred extent of the same cobalt metal that formed a vehicular roof and a hatch-like canopy with sloped sides and what might have been a windshield.

“It’s a tank!” Jason exclaimed.

If it was a tank, then either it moved like a sideways steamroller or those cylinders that made up the undercarriage were more like twin rocket turbines. If not for the armored nature, the size might have more likely suggested a hovercar, but parallel grooves at either side of the front end appeared to show the broken-off attachment points of what might have been mounted weapons.

Naoko leapt up onto the apparent vehicle, taking a hold on the edge of the hatch and hinging it upward far too easily to reveal an empty interior stained in places with dried blood. “Maybe someone evacuated the wounded?”

“Or the scorpions picked it clean,” Masako almost didn’t want to suggest.

“I can’t say I’m familiar with the design, but this wreck is at least a few weeks old,” Jason spoke without really having to do much examination. Something had taken him over, and he gave Masako a look that was both an acknowledgement of her hypothesis, and a request for aid as he started a careful, methodical search of the surrounding area, beginning at the wrecked vehicle and proceeding up the slope in the cavern floor it had likely rolled down.

Masako gave him a slow nod, and followed.

For just a moment, Jason paused with uncertainty, and glanced back at Shawn and Shannon. He frowned, cast his gaze over the rangers as an afterthought, and just shook his head. “All must’ve seen this by now, anyways.”

“Seen what?” Shawn asked, between bouts of quietly interrogating Yuzo.

War, the answer turned out to be.

More tanks strewn across the cavern landscape, crumbled stone fortifications, deep and bright scratches through metal, rock, and everything in between. The slope led up to a multi-way intersection, with some tunnels even branching out at different elevations, creating a number of high-ground weapons posts, none of which seemed to have mattered.

“What… did this?” Naoko pondered with sadness and distaste.

“Who did they do it to?” Shannon added, horrified but curious as her fingers traced the intricate decorative carvings on a piece of broken-off stone.

“I’m… guessing our people went in there?” Shawn spoke up after another bit of silence, pointing towards the one exit that wasn’t like the others.

While the rest were rocky and mostly round-sided caves, the opening along the right side of the cavern, between where most of the carved stone rubble now lay, was a regular shape. A hexagon with a taller top half than bottom half, about the same size as all the other passageways, with flat, constructed walls running far enough through it that the visible end was a speck of golden orange.

Jason sighed. “They definitely went in there.”

“Uh… I don’t want to make a big deal of this…” Everyone then turned to look at Yuzo, who was trembling in his armor as he peered nervously around at the wreckage. “…but all this stuff is kinda freaking Baragon out right now.”

Naoko looked at the walls, then back at Yuzo. “Nothing like this was here when Baragon dug it out?”

Yuzo emphatically shook his head back and forth.

“Titano too,” Shinji said quickly, with an uncharacteristic waver in his voice. “He’s… not good.”

Hovering nearby, Belvera hmphed and made a low swoop past a chunk of rock. As she did so, lines of vibrant cyan-green energy flickered to life, running through the carved crevices to reveal the stylized shape of a serpent’s head, one that seemed to be wearing plated head armor and that had ammonite shells for ears. The lines coalesced at the partial statue’s bared front teeth, as if charging up to fire, but fizzled out as Belvera’s flight took her out of range.

“That’s because they’re remembering their creators.”

As everyone turned to Belvera for an explanation, Masako’s memory supplied her with a partial understanding, and she rolled her eyes. “Guess we’re opening that now, huh?”

The others were looking at her, now. Including Belvera, who hovered a bit closer in intrigue.

Masako eyed her back, an arched brow beneath her helmet. “Muan or Atlantean?”

Belvera’s stoic face split into a grin. “Smart.” She flew up to hover in the massive expanse of the constructed cave, appearing almost a speck in the dim light provided by a few crystals that had broken through the stone walls, cylindrical standards spaced throughout its length that appeared to contain perpetually-burning coals, and the faint glow from the tunnel’s far end. “Alright, better listen up, cause I’m only going over this once.”

Slowly, the rangers and megazoologists climbed the broken-up steps of the grand entrance and set foot on the flat, distinctly roadlike surface at the bottom of the tunnel. A mechanical commotion from behind indicated the zords were automatically following along, but leaving distance. Belvera kept in front of the pack, and fairly high up, but didn’t stray from easy earshot.

“So, about twelve thousand years ago, when the ice was almost done melting, you humans had formed up into two main civilizations: Atlantis, on a continent in the Atlantic Ocean, and Mu, on a continent in the Pacific. Back then, Japan was Mu territory, but Atlantis wanted it. They didn’t quite know it yet, but they were on the verge of harnessing Universal Energy, or as they called it, Mana. Just bad luck that on all of Earth, Japan’s the center of it.”

“Is that why monsters keep attacking?” Shawn asked in the darkness, and Belvera shook her head.

“A few times, yes, but mostly it’s just a matter of proximity, and familiarity. You’ll get that part later. Anyway, yada yada, they came to a shaky agreement where the independent kingdom of Nilai-Kanai would host a few Atlantean scientists, so they could study the whole damn thing, but then Dagahra happened, and Mu was all too happy to use their earthquake generator to solve both problems at once. Atlantis got pissed and began to attack, and you’ve got warships crossing the North Pole and going down through the Bering Sea. Mu fought back, Atlantis started throwing nukes around, and then Mu thought, ‘hey, now there’s all these nuclear explosions everywhere, maybe we could use that for something?’”

“Whoa, whoa, wait…” Jason had his hands up. “If this was only a couple thousand years ago, wouldn’t most of the Pacific still be radioactive?”

Belvera waved it away with a hand. “Atlantis technology was decades, even centuries ahead of what you’ve got. Don’t take this the wrong way, they were still massive A-holes, but their weapons were refined, efficient, and they made damn sure they could blow up a city and then build one of their own on the same spot before they went out and started fucking using them. All the dormant proto-kaiju scattered like undetonated landmines around what used to be Mu territory were supposed to just be regular energy sponges. They weren’t designed for your twentieth-century hell-on-earthmakers. Muan genetic science might have created kaiju, but you assholes made Godzilla.”

A moment of immense curiosity was immediately shattered by a collective, dour silence, which was probably Belvera’s intention.

“Titanosaurus wouldn’t fight,” Shinji half-murmured, the sound nearly drowned out by distant mechanical footfalls.

“Bingo,” Belvera snarked. “World’s largest draft dodger high-tails it right to the bottom of the ocean. Muan mind control was never perfect. They had their guardians – the ones they took with them a few millennia later, when what was left of them split off into the Mu remnant, Seatopia, the Azumi, and the Iwaya – but the rest of the monsters were just left alone to destroy whatever was in their path. And conveniently, that was usually the Atlantean invasion forces. Atlantis tried to make their own kaiju to counter, and had a few short-term successes, but in the end, they went the same way as Nilai-Kanai, leaving Mu to prosper alone over the next two thousand years. Until they fucked up Earth’s climate so bad they needed to make a machine to control it, and then, because they were real fuckin’ dicks, decided to use that to fuck it up even worse.”

Masako narrowed her eyes, face scrunching up where the others couldn’t see it. “Hey… that… sounds kinda fam—”

“Look!”

It was Naoko, pointing out through the tunnel’s end, which they’d gotten significantly closer to.

Past the stone walls, the next area was actually more or less an intact natural cavern formation, with the main road curving off to the right and down a gentle slope while light shined in on it through a jagged window formed by a wall of stalactites and stalagmites. Only a few pairs actually met in the middle, and when the whole group rushed over to take in the sight of the immense chamber beyond, it was a rather clear picture, with only the highest part of the ceiling and the immediate downslope obscured from view.

And it was an incredible view, even Masako would admit. The orange glow was from a magma pool the size of a large lake, with one plateaued island in what approached the middle, as well as three smaller islands surrounding it. Upon the central plateau was built a wide, circular city that rose up gradually in a spiral, the lowest level built on platforms that extended far past the plateau itself and included bridges to smaller spiral cities on the other islands. The construction appeared mainly in white marble, with partially curved and sloping building designs that might be considered modern art by surface standards. There was even, somehow, green grass in specifically-arranged courtyards, mostly alongside the road, which wound upwards along with the spiral.

“So…” Masako asked, finally, once again. “Muan or Atlantean?”

Belvera flew out a bit further, face screwed up from the brief glance Masako caught. “I… don’t know? Because the spiral city design is definitely an Atlantean thing, but look at those red and blue geothermal pipes underneath, running up from the magma to those power stations on the second level? That’s Mu technology. Never seen those two together before. And the building style is all Seatopian, even if right now it looks like it’s seen better days…”

Upon closer inspection, the green grass, one likely indicator of recent inhabitance, served as a counter to the fact many of the buildings were damaged or crumbled. The main city had clearly also fallen victim to Spacegodzilla crystals, with a few spearing up to the second level from the plateau below. The bridges between islands, and a number that crossed to the perimeters of the magma pool including one that appeared to connect below and farther off to the right, were lined with the broken-off, dark stone remains of what might have been more of the serpent-styled defensive statues. There were also more of the tank vehicles scattered on the bridges and in the city streets, in between regular craters in the pavement that Masako really hoped weren’t footprints.

“How long ago did your people get here?” Naoko spoke up, likely spying the same evidence.

Shannon gulped as she spoke. “Long enough to be anywhere down there…”

“But this… battle, I guess… happened weeks ago, right?” Shawn insisted, thumb and forefinger pressed tight on the edges of the metal dog tag he wore around his neck.

Walking down the road confirmed it ran along the right side of the magma chamber, on a narrow cliff face that might have been intentionally carved out to support it. The stalactites and stalagmites opened up to give a full view of the interior, and Masako paused, deathly still.

Hanging directly above the highest level of the main city was a jagged chandelier of crystals. The glow as they reflected light from the molten rock had tinted them slightly golden, away from their inherent color of pale, lavender purple.

She heard the faintest, slightest hint of voices echoing in the cavern.

The crystal chandelier shifted in place.

Red lightning struck her forward, and she was gliding, far out over the magma with one island passing beneath her. The voices were still loud, familiar, oblivious. She narrowed them down to the top level of the main city, because of course that was where they were – a wide, circular, grassy courtyard with dirt dug up in the center and the five gigantic marble statues around the perimeter now broken and crumbled to be mostly unrecognizable.

“…appears to be some kind of formation of crystal stalactites.”

Another bolt forward, and Masako located the three figures of Lucy, Kristina, and Kyle standing in the grass, all looking upwards at the mesmerizing sight above them.

“Like… crystalactites?”

Small dustings of crumbling rock started falling. Kyle had his hand to his face in a sigh. “Of course you two would come up with a name like crystalac—”

Masako appeared right in front of them, half-doubled over from exertion, startling wide eyes from all three. Kristina’s eyes in particular, though, flickered from surprise to sympathy to deep worry to a wordless demand for an update – which, okay, was a fair set of assumptions.

“Talk later, run now!” Masako barked out, throwing an arm up behind her. “That thing is alive.”

Kyle snapped into action immediately, taking the other two by their backpacks and urging them away from the courtyard center. There was suddenly a more violent shift from above, causing them all to look skyward again, including Masako, as the whole sea-urchin-like mass of purple crystals began lowering out of the cavern ceiling. Upside-down, the toothy grimace of the chalk-white-bodied crystal creature was just as fierce and just as frightening. Or at least it should have been.

“A new kaiju? This is amazing!” Lucy yelled with wavering glee, her camcorder up for just a few seconds before she lowered it at both Kyle’s and Kristina’s urging. “And terrible, obviously! I’m running, I’m running!”

Masako bolted up to the inner rim of the circular overhang that ran around the courtyard, which was supported by a large number of densely-spaced marble columns. Her eye lenses crackled purple and she swept a pair of prism beams overhead as the three students made their escape, chunks of falling rock being blasted apart before they could reach the ground.

The crystal creature tilted out of his upside-down perch, extracting his right arm and leg and letting those limbs hang down to impact the courtyard first as he released his hold and fell the short distance. The series of three small earthquakes ended on the left foot, the creature resting on a tripod stance before lifting up his right hand and flexing both muscled arms. An empty, echoey roar filled the cavern, and his slender tail lashed out behind him, the barbed crystal end smashing through another chunk of what appeared to have once been a dozen-meter-high marble statue of a coiled Manda.

Lucy, Kristina, and Kyle had made it under the ledge, so Masako leaned over and swing herself below, getting a ground-level view of the kicked up grass as the creature took a heavy step forward. His narrow eyes seemed fixed on Masako in particular, and he reared back an arm to make a swipe, only for something to loudly burst in the air way off to the left.

The creature had barely reacted to the sound when one of the Mothra larva zords’ net projectiles ensnared his right arm and shoulder, prompting a growl of irritation just as a second net deployed and wrapped around his head, becoming tangled in the crystals on his carapace.

Taking slow steps backward, Masako passed through a doorway, which framed her view of the crystal creature flexing his left hand’s long fingertips, made of the same purple crystal that adorned his back and so sharply-bladed they seemed to ring with sound just from the act of moving them past one another. One rough grab of the net, and the creature was slicing through the cables easily, freeing his right hand enough that it could begin to do the same.

Past the threshold was an interior space that was brightly lit by more basins of perpetually-lit coals. The walls were white marble with Shisa faces carved in relief, and the smooth floors were tiled alternatingly with black and dark sand red. Kyle directed the group back the way we came up, which turned out to be a tube-shaped skybridge decorated with miniature, sitting Shisa statues between the overhead-wrapping windows, the whole thing running across the open air out past the stone-built incline down to the next level of the spiral.

The other end connected to a higher floor of a tall, cylindrical building, but as they all rushed towards it, Masako caught a glimpse out the windows of the two Mothra larva zords, still all the way back at the edge of the magma pool and parked on the curving road, heads turned and lifted to fire energy beams across the distance. The beams had only succeeded in drawing the monster’s attention, and it waded and bashed through another part of the courtyard perimeter structure, preparing to retaliate with a crystal-shard-infused energy beam of its own. Before it could, the ceiling above it began raining debris, including one of the protruding crystals, whose size immediately drew the creature’s attention upward.

The Baragon zord once again fell from a cavern roof, a little offset from the crystal kaiju’s spiky back. Its front and back legs wrapped around the surprised monster’s upper left arm, the added weight toppling it over and back down into the center of the courtyard.

“So, does this one have a name?” Lucy asked excitedly, reaching the spiral staircase running down the center of the building attached to the skybridge.

“Not that I or Battra know of,” Masako replied with a shrug, reaching the threshold last. The building was also primarily lit by its windows. “I’ve been calling him Space-Anguirus.”

“Why?” Lucy asked as if that was unimaginably insulting. “Anguirus is way cuter!”

Kristina smiled and half-rolled her eyes as she took a brief slide down a handrail, so she was probably confident she didn’t have any real competition from the spiky kaiju.

“I like what Kyle called him,” Lucy offered instead. “Crystalac?”

Almost tripping up, Kyle offered an unsure, narrowed-eye glance up over his shoulder, before he realized. “Oh, no,” he insisted, on subsequent upward glances to subtly keep track of the others’ positions on the spiral. “I’m not taking credit for that one, that one’s all you two.”

Kristina grinned semi-nervously, turning to Lucy. “Okay, but is that with C’s or K’s?”

“K’s, obviously!”

The staircase descended into a once-luxurious lobby, whose walls were populated by decorative stonework. They all raced towards an open doorway whose inside frame was set just below a set of painted stone reliefs that depicted a bright yellow-orange sun and a red half-moon. The street level entrance was framed by large, quadrupedal standing Shisa statues to either side, which faced the wide, paved road that even had a white chalk traffic line running down the center.

Masako glanced over her shoulder as Krystalak stood up amid the rubble of the courtyard, low roar booming and tail snapping from side to side. Though much smaller, the Baragon zord defiantly shook its head with a mechanical screech, horn flashing and spewed fire burning almost uselessly against the shield of Krystalak’s crossed forearms. As the smoke cleared, Yuzo brought his zord into a sudden lunge, biting down on Krystalak’s right bicep, just below the few haggard crystal spikes at the shoulder. Roaring in pain, Krystalak wavered and was nearly brought down, but managed to spear his right hand’s fingers into the zords’ flank and bring around his free left hand to grasp around the machine’s upper jaw.

Prying against the zord’s biting force, Krystalak dug his left finger-spears into the roof of Baragon’s mouth. With a violent motion, he wrenched his arms apart, and tearing metal resounded throughout the underground city as the Baragon zord’s upper jaw was torn clean off, taking the horn and ears with it.

“Yuzo!” Masako couldn’t help but scream – a catastrophic error, when Krystalak immediately shifted his attention down toward her and her companions.

He seemed to eye them and the building they’d exited from with something approaching glee, and his barbed tail rose up like an aiming tendril, launching crystal darts down at the base of the tower and up along its rear-facing side. The first explosion weakened the base, the next few sending cracks through its structure, and the final one broke it apart from the skybridge, sending the whole tower collapsing forward as it crumbled.

It was a mesmerizing sight – first, the entire tower slowly losing its shape as it cracked apart, and second, the small figure in red and orange falling alongside, leaping between individual pieces of rubble like stepping stones before propelling himself off the last one to shoot toward the ground much faster. The sound of the collapse drowned out the beginning, but not the end, of the perpetual warning yell that built in volume as Shinji careened toward impact.

“Geeeeeeeet doooooooooooooown!”

Masako brought the others near-level with the street, one wing draped over Kyle and the other over a huddled Lucy and Kristina. Shinji landed close by, his feet cracking the pavement on impact. With a snap of his fingers, generating nanometal instantaneously composed a dark red bō staff in his hand, the ends bearing very slightly bulkier, rectangular shaping that hinged open to reveal a pair of orange-bladed battle fans. With an initial heave and fluid footwork, Shinji twirled the double-ended spade high above his head, immediately kicking up dust and a number of visible currents of wind that swept breezelike over the tarp of Masako’s wings, all converging ominously toward center.

The falling building was torn apart as it entered the building cyclone, fragments of rubble kept aloft and carried by the winds in a steady orbit overhead, all guided by the forceful spinning of Shinji’s weapon like an oar directing a current.

Masako picked out a smaller building to the left, on the far side of the road and on the outer edge of the level, and with a set of three bolts, moved Lucy, Kristina, and Kyle under its shelter. With a fourth, she took Shinji around the waist and brought him along as well, watching the gyre of levitating rubble collapse from a distance and spill onto the street.

The debris had only settled for moments before more debris rolled down on top of it, as Krystalak broke his way down the slope from the upper level in a partial slide. He spotted Masako and the others peeking out through the shadow of the doorway, and rose onto his hind limbs to bellow out the beginning breath of a haunting roar.

A three-segmented crimson metal tail slapped him in the face, shutting him up.

Krystalak staggered, and all eyes were drawn back to the ruins of the top level, where the Baragon zord’s four feet made a hasty repositioning trot in the follow-through from the tail swipe. The turn revealed that despite the loss of most of its head, there was still, nested between the teeth of the lower jaw, an interior portion of the upper jaw that contained the lower half of the zord’s now convertible-style open-air cockpit. Krystalak recovered and made a lunge with both clawed hands, but still fierce at the controls, Yuzo directed the zord into a forward leap, bladed paws outstretched and slamming into Krystalak’s palms.

With its rear feet still scraping and digging into the terrain, the Baragon zord held out for some time in the pushing match, long enough for another webbing capsule to shoot in like a rocket and explode near the two combatants. The resulting net wrapped around both of Krystalak’s outstretched arms, binding them together. Recoiling with a glare in his eyes, Krystalak brought around his tail, smacking the Baragon zord off its feet and sending it rolling. He continued to struggle against the net as he lumbered farther along the street, and both Masako and Shinji stood protective near the building’s entrance, but Krystalak paid them no attention this time.

His gaze shifted upward, noticing something else, moments before an array of thin, jagged, red-orange cackling energy beams bombarded him from out of the sky.

Masako had to exit the building and hurry to the corner to see the cause. From unnoticed, stone-built catacomb holes hidden farther up towards the ceiling of the surrounding cavern, a number of the metallic cobalt hover tanks swarmed with the binocular headlights of active undercarriage generators, the beams originating from metallic weapons mounted on the fronts like hood ornaments. There were a little over a dozen of them in total, and they were accompanied by a single, weaponless, yellow-plated bus-like vehicle with a similar, if elongated, flight mechanism.

Krystalak let loose a beam into the swarm, the vehicles maneuvering out of the way and continuing to fire from all sides as they closed in. Masako’s gaze shifted down and to her right as a few of them speed in close to distract the monster by flying in tight circles. Then it shifted left again she heard the heavier engines of the hoverbus approaching from farther up the street. The longer vehicle, cinched across the middle into two modular sections, swerved in to hover sideways across the main road. A DeLorean-styled bay door flipped up from the side of the rear compartment, revealing several humanoid figures in suits of metallic armor, each steadied by a fist clenched tight around a handhold attached to the ceiling.

The soldiers ran and leapt from the edge, boots hitting the pavement as they hefted large, blocky, two-handed rifles with the appearance of stone and the same shape as the stylized sea serpent defense turrets, just arranged wholly horizontally and on a smaller scale.

Krystalak began to ignore the beams from the tanks, which didn’t actually seem to be doing any more damage than the other beams Masako and the others had tried on him. Spotting the attack force below, he reared his head back and pulled his arms as far apart as he could, letting his next beam pull double duty in burning a path up the street towards the soldiers as well as shredding through the cables of the net.

The armored soldiers leapt to either side, ducking and rolling away from the flares of discharged energy and the crystal fragments, boulder-sized and left behind white-hot, embedded in the scorched pavement. When they got to close to the beam’s intensity, flickers of blue-purple energy fields activated to shield the soldiers’ armor, which appeared to be composed of many sharp, silver scales that became the most jagged at the forearms and calves and where they ran in heightened ridges over the shoulders. Their helmets nearly resembled silver ranger helmets, but without any distinctive mouthplates and with flatter, slot-like visors that were still rounded at either end.

The apparent leader, by her distinctive bronze scale-suit and additional layered-over armor padding, rolled to a stop on braced feet and aimed her rifle skyward. Unlike the others, her helmet had a fully circular visor with central cross-bracing like an old-timey diving suit, and below that, a decorative ‘lower jaw’ with jagged teeth on the top edge and a shape like a steam locomotive’s cowcatcher. Cyan-green energy ran along the sides of her rifle, concentrating to the serpent’s bared teeth before erupting in a narrow, concentrated blast of five parallel beams, all racing upward toward the looming Krystalak.

Unlike any previous beam attack, this one appeared to hurt, if only because it hit the strange yellow orb Masako hadn’t noticed was embedded in Krystalak’s upper chest, winged by a small spread of reflective purple ridges. The other soldiers took aim and fired identical attacks on the same strange gem, eventually getting Krystalak to back away while attempting to shield with his forearms. When soldiers on the right and left advanced and scaled the terrain, gaining additional angles on their target, he turned tail and ran, his tail firing off a few crystal darts at random to cover his escape as he leapt from the edge of the city level and down several more layers towards one of the bridges.

The bronze-armored commander signaled a halt, as a larger, wider, flatter, green-plated vehicle pulled into view, four hover-cylinders making up the undercarriage and dozens of small compartment doors opening up on top of its sloped sides. Launching upward out of the chambers like rockets were a number of smaller aerial vehicles, too small to be piloted, jet-black in color and shaped like a cross between torpedoes and manta rays with the tips of their wings upturned. The things that were probably drones pursued Krystalak down to the bridge, where they fanned out and arced back inward, striking and violently exploding along the edges of the bridge beneath the monster’s feet in a cascade that caused the whole structure to shake and begin to crumble.

Moving at top speed, Krystalak narrowly escaped the falling sections of the bridge, making his way to the cavern’s perimeter and using his spearlike fingertips to scale the sheer rock wall. More drones crashed and exploded around him, but he soon disappeared into a fissure near the ceiling, fading sounds of footfalls and reverberating tremors indicating that beyond that point, he’d found some open path to further escape.

The soldiers didn’t miss a beat before aiming their weapons up toward the ruins of the top-level courtyard, where the Baragon zord was just again rising to its feet. Energy fire struck along its flank, detonations sending sparks flying and causing its movements to stutter.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Shinji grumbled into a shout, leaping to a sprint at the same time Masako did.

Via a bolt of instantaneous travel, Masako got there first, a midair kick taking the rifle from the hands of the first of a pair of tightly-grouped soldiers. She followed up with a hard punch to the face that activated the purple-blue shield and made him stagger, and was immediately a few meters to the right, tearing the rifle from the other man’s hand by the barrel and swinging it in a full circle to bash him off his feet with the stock. Before Shinji had even engaged another silver soldier with his staff, Masako was in the air beside the bronze leader, knocking her weapon to the ground with an overhead slam of the stolen one, and following up with a roundhouse kick that warded the woman back several steps.

There was immediately no more rifle fire, and Masako knew instantly the entire mood had changed. Several soldiers were holding their weapons uncertainly, looking between one another with their expressionless helmets, and the bronze leader appeared momentarily stunned or startled, her taken-aback gaze fixed solidly on Masako’s helmet as if she were looking at a ghost.

“Yeah, that’s right, you better be scared!” Shinji boasted with a pointing finger, conspicuously stepping up beside Masako.

With obvious shaking, the bronze leader steeled herself, reaching behind to her lower back and drawing a pair of two-toned metal scimitars. Both the hilts and blades appeared to be split between two different materials, and as the parts of the hilts immediately in her leather gloves began to glow molten orange and distort the air around them with heat, the same change proceeded up the forward edges of the blades, as well as a few spreading, fan-like lines behind the edges that overall gave the weapons the intended appearance of bony fish fins.

From high above, vents of steam partially breaking his fall, Yuzo landed to Masako’s right, nodding at the leader’s display and deploying the four blades from each gauntlet. The gauntlet panels opened up on top, producing small, forward-facing nozzles. Yuzo rotated his palms skyward, and flame burst from the nozzles, flaring upward through the claws for several seconds. When the flamethrowers switched off, the claws were glowing with heat, much like the leader’s scimitars, and Yuzo readily posed with them.

Masako waited for someone to move, except it was none of them, and actually one of the metallic cobalt hovertanks, which came screaming into the stalemate and rammed Masako in the midsection, carrying her back through the streets until she slammed into something tall and made of stone that knocked the wind out of her even with her ranger strength.

Panels covering a narrow section in the tank’s hood hinged apart, and what rose up from in the middle to stare Masako in the face was not the barrel of any traditional weapon, but the open, toothy jaws of a small, metallic statue of Manda, serpentine body rendered in a wavelike curve and a charge of red-orange energy building in its mouth.

In a bolt, Masako was out from between the tank and what turned out to be a decorative streetlamp, now on top of the vehicle behind the tail of the Manda statue and staring down at the canopy hatch. She dug her clawed fingers underneath the forward edge and heaved, tearing the hatch clean off and sending it flipping through the air until it landed with a clatter on the road behind.

While she’d been building a charge of lighting in her other hand, she instinctively let it dissipate, when what she found inside the tank was not, in fact, a soldier in armor but actually a teenage girl in a purple dress and a white headband who stared back up at her with no fear whatsoever.

In fact, she reached into a compartment beneath the dash and, before Masako had even processed the first set of information, was shooting at her with an even smaller stone serpent pistol.

“What the hell?” Masako gasped, backing away off the edge of the tank and attracting the attention of the leader, who abandoned her sparking heated metal blade fight with Yuzo and charged into a sprint towards her with a furious scream.

Masako put her hands up, using a curled wing to block the continued pistol fire from her right and teleporting out of the way of the leader’s forceful scimitar swipes. With a well-placed kick, she managed to dislodge the weapon from the leader’s right hand, then bolted to the other side of her and caught her left wrist for an over-shoulder throw that left her sprawled out on the ground. She took a brief break to grab the girl’s pistol by the barrel and throw it aside, before appearing high in a glide over the rest of the advancing forces and using her prism beams to scorch a line in the pavement, causing them to stumble to a stop out of their rush.

With their attention, she descended slowly to the ground beside the prone leader, wings folding into her coat again. The girl tried to sneak up behind her, with no weapons, just fists, and with a sigh, Masako bolted to the side, causing her to stumble forward and out in front.

“Alright, LISTEN UP,” Masako shouted, with an intimidating surge of purple over her eyes and her clawed fingers up and tensed in furious confusion. “I’ve got a lot of fights in me, for a lot of people, but I don’t know WHO you are, so if you want one, you’d better give me a damn good reason!”

The girl seemed only momentarily at an interested pause, but the leader quickly got to her feet and stretched a stopping arm out in front of her, backing them both away. Yuzo and Shinji moved in to either side, but not close enough to prevent Naoko from appearing in a condensing flash of tiny energy moths right beside her. Naoko let an idle, concerned hand rest on Masako’s tensed arm, and just the simple action eased the conflict on both Masako’s side and on the side of the soldiers – the latter experiencing another enigmatic moment of collective, shocked confusion.

“So, who are you?” Naoko repeated, taking over and, by the angle of her inclined helmet, deciding to address the question to the leader first.

“You don’t already know?” the leader asked, expressing only more deep confusion, but admittedly, Masako’s main takeaway was that this woman’s voice was hot. Incredibly, step-on-me hot. “But… you brought machines, like Antonio’s ally from the surface!”

She was gesturing up to the now-abandoned Baragon zord, and Masako forced herself to pay attention. “Ally from the surface? Let me guess…” She gestured to herself. “Armor like mine, except blue and red? Pair of floating crystal daggers? Ego the size of a small planetoid?”

Several of the soldiers exchanged glances, as if they found this familiar.

Masako nodded. “Okay, let’s get this settled then, that guy’s why I’m here. He’s kind of my mortal enemy at the moment. I have reason to believe some of our people might be at his underground base, and I need to get there as soon as possible, not fight you, so maybe instead… we could make a deal? You help me, I help you?”

“Done,” the leader said immediately.

Masako lurched her head back. “What? That fast?”

Another soldier clearly seemed uncomfortable – apparently a newer arrival, with a darker graphite-colored scale-suit. His double-ended trident had dagger-like points that were all still glowing with heat, from a conduction channel that ran up and down the handle in a helical spiral from his glove. “The Empress would never—”

“The Empress isn’t here!” the leader snapped back. “And it is our duty to get her back, by whatever means and opportunities become known to us.”

Trident guy just huffed and glared skeptically toward the young unarmored girl, as if she was somehow at fault for all this, but offered no further comment.

Carefully creeping around the perimeter of the standoff, Lucy, Kristina, and Kyle eyed the soldiers warily, but with interest. “Empress, the diving suit armor, the explosive drones…” Lucy put together aloud once they were safely near the rangers. “You’re from Mu, right?”

The leader turned briefly, and gave her a hesitant, non-hostile nod. “Yes, and no. And I suppose, yes again. It is where so many of us begin, if one looks far enough back. But in the more relevant sense, yes, it is true. Not long ago, I was Agent 67 of the Mu Empire in Exile. But since the time of unity, that which we wish to preserve, even now, as new lines are drawn, I have found it fitting to return to my older, Seatopian codename. From the days when Element X was the greatest threat to our underground existence…”

With the finality of another faint nod of acceptance, she reached up to her jawed helmet and began to slowly remove it, freeing her long, silky black hair and oh no it wasn’t just the voice.

Though hidden by the armor, Naoko seemed to be having the same reaction as she was. Lucy’s and Kristina’s beet red faces were far more obvious. Shinji whistled.

With her helmet cradled idly in the curve of her waist, the intensely attractive leader offered a delicate smirk, a bat of her lashes, and an outstretched hand. “Agent Piranha. It is pleasant to make your acquaintance.”

A few seconds later, Naoko elbowed her out of her daze, nodding at the offered hand, but a countering glare revealed Naoko was more-or-less stuck in the same daze herself. After a long few moments of vague and frustrated helmet gesturing, they both awkwardly shook the same hand at once, which Agent Piranha seemed to find both amusing and endearing.

“…Oh! I’m Naoko,” Naoko remembered, awkwardly, to add, after another long pause. “And this is—”

“Masako.”

Piranha’s near-laugh and wave of a hand calmed the moment. “Further introductions can wait. We will take you to the emergency council at once.”

Except trident guy clearly couldn’t hold his temper any longer, clenching his fists with a lurch forward, almost lunging at Masako. “But she’s—!”

“Quiet!” Agent Piranha commanded, then paused and breathed for a moment to compose herself. “Our forces are already stretched too thin. We cannot hold to the legends of the past when the truth is plainly far more complicated. We are not our enemies, Agent 44.”

Masako looked warily between them, and echoed her eyes with a clawed finger. “What’s going on?”

Something curious, yet cautious, crossed Piranha’s face. “We… should, indeed, ask of you… how it is that you do not know us, nor wish us harm, when you wear the face of the destroyer.”

…Huh?

“No, this is Battra,” Masako deadpanned, pointing at her helmet, still at a loss for any understanding.

Neither Piranha nor 44 seemed to know what to make of her comment, nor did they appear eager to offer further explanation. But Masako’s own circling thoughts, and an unnerving hesitance at the back of her mind, began to make up the difference.

She realized, then, that she hadn’t heard from Battra in a long while. He was still there, of course, but he was darkly, awkwardly looming. Not fully retreating like he often did to avoid the subject of Naoko, but reticent to draw attention to himself regardless. On reflection, he’d been like that ever since they’d found the first of the ruins…

“Oh,” Masako said aloud.

The civilization you were created to destroy 10,000 years ago. It was the original Mu, wasn’t it?

CORRECT.

All eyes were still on her, and she slowly put her hands up, shoulders inching toward a shrug.

“Well… this is awkward…”

Battra’s compound eyes swept across the settling clouds of sediment in the drowned city, wary for any sign of further hostility from his opponents.

Leave them, they’re not your enemies! Attack the human beings!

Battra could find little reluctance as he departed the scene, drifting closer back to the surface as he resumed his stead course. A sideways heave of his head above the waves left water trailing from his horn, a screech echoing in the night as he appeared at last to his ill-fated hosts, a dark specter at world’s end.

Moonlit currents sparkled red, broken by the hulls of hundreds of submarines formed up in defense, behind them the forbidding seawall and its line of serpentine defense turrets. Behind them, the land, and only in the distance, framed by lightning and its own energetic chaos, was the black mountain. Both a monument to the humans’ mastery of the land, and the stepping stone to their dominance of the skies, the upwrought mound of dark stone rose higher than even the clouds, the twelve artificial spires at its peak continually charging with their horrid blood-crimson lightning. Even as Battra watched, another discharge was sent high into the atmosphere, detonating in a shockwave that passed overhead in all directions.

Far nearer though, in only the first of the visible foothills behind the seawall, the land exploded from a new, metallic peak rising from underneath. On the momentum of the spinning drill, another defender rose up through the dust on unfolding wings and landed on two-toed, insectoid feet. The bipedal beetle clacked his drill-half hands together in anticipation.

Nearby, a sheer cliff face supporting a temple atop it exploded out from the side, another gigantic humanoid figure marching eagerly forward to join the beetle. Reflected moonlight was caught in gemstone eyes, dust casually shaken from both fur and stone. The guardian Shisa clenched his fists and flicked his doglike ears skyward, staring down the threat with perpetually-grimacing teeth.

Battra’s hellish eyes remained undaunted, matched by the fury of the tiny priestess who drifted close on her winged mount to hover beside him.

On a different day, he would note the small distinctions between the pain that dwelled in both their tortured hearts, the desperation fueling their unending rage, hope and love all violently torn out of broken frames held together now by chains of spite.

But for this one, horrid and beautiful moment, perhaps in all of time unending, there was not a single command of hers that was not a mere, redundant echo of his own thoughts.

Battra… DESTROY!

Chapter Text

Battra… DESTROY!

If she’d said the words aloud, they would have broken her voice. She’d waited so long, pleading with the Earth as she watched the Mu people tear each other apart, and now, finally, there was answer. There was justice. There was judgement.

Lightning from Battra’s horn and eyes washed over the submarine fleet, detonating the machines themselves along with the pill-shaped yellow canisters a few of them were attempting to mine the water with. With a writhe in the surf, Battra lunged forward in a caterpillar curl, scraping the closest subs apart with the tips of his feet and following up with another sweeping pass of his beams to ignite those farther afield.

The serpentine defense turrets, another concept borrowed from Nilai Kanai, cackled with green light as they unleashed their converging fire. Battra was suddenly struck by dozens of beams at once, warded back into a panic by their sheer numbers. Even his horn, surging with burning power, could only strike out at one turret at a time from above, too slow to weed out the progenitors of his pain as smoke rose from his face and neck.

Dive, Battra! Get back in the water!

The yellow horn fell like a guillotine, the surf parting and reconvening until it evened out. The water became strangely quiet for almost a full minute, and Belvera watched from above with building anticipation and worry.

Alright, now, where are you… she wondered as she drifted further inland on Garu-Garu, passing high over the seawall and sharing her tense confusion with the two bipedal defenders wandering the dark countryside.

Then, the earth began to shake, and Belvera smiled.

With a roar that echoed through the disturbed ground, Battra’s horn broke the surface, coming up through a grassy plain behind the seawall. A dust cloud gathered, turning Battra’s eyes into demonic lanterns as prism beams coalesced to fire.

Struck from behind in dancing chains of purple lightning, all turrets in range were blown to rocky bits. A few buildings caught in the crossfire were cataclysmically severed at the same level, the energy scorching them clean through-and-through.

Hooking his largest legs over the edge of his burrowed crater, Battra heaved himself up onto the terrain, just as heavy footfalls brought him to alert. With drill-half hands held low and pointed forward, Megalon was making a run in from the side, two-toed feet thundering on the earth.

The beetle’s Megalon. He can spit out napalm grenades and his horn can shoot lightning like yours, but he’s too dumb to use any of it effectively. Should be a breeze.

At the last moment of Megalon’s approach, Battra ducked aside from the half-drills and brought his tail-end up out of the hole in the ground, snapping it like a whip at shin-level and sending Megalon tripping forward over it. With a turn and a leap, Battra followed the ditch carved by the beetle’s slide, landing half on top of Megalon with leg tips clacking over the surface of black-and-yellow striped elytra. A large, hooked foreleg fell down on the back of Megalon’s head as he tried to rise, bashing his face back into the dirt.

Battra’s mandibles let out a taunting screech, even as his armor sparked with the impacts of green-blue weapons fire, incoming from the nearby slope where Muan rider pairs trudged downhill on their six-legged kilolon mounts. Battra let loose a triple volley of prism lightning and turned his head to let more bolts dance across the ground, incinerating the smaller beetles until there was nothing left but smoke rising from their burned-out husks.

Husks which shook and rattled and rolled down the slope as the footfalls of King Caesar sent the mountain itself trembling. The shisa was running at a slight angle along the hillside, likely trying to get at Battra from the left side where he’d just been firing his beams. Battra cast irritated, wrathful eyes on the new foe.

King Caesar. I don’t know why they call him that, he’s a giant shisa, it should be King Shisa. Either way, smash him. He moves pretty fast for having all that solid rock armor, and whatever you do, don’t—

Battra’s head spikes cackled with orange light, a pair of purple prism beams tearing through the hillside on a course for Caesar’s feet. Caesar kicked off into open air, crossing in front of Battra as the beams swept along to follow. It was a full cartwheel leap, and Caesar was upside-down with his head in place to absorb both beams into his right eye once they caught up to his position.

At that moment, Megalon put his drills together, and managed to catch the grooves well enough in the terrain below to pull himself out from underneath Battra and further underground. While Battra was still processing that, King Caesar landed on his feet, trampling a bit of forest to Battra’s right as he continued the momentum of his run. From his left eye, a condensed purple prism beam carved the ground on a diagonal path toward Battra and, on impact, threw the larva high and curling in the air to crash down a few dozen meters away.

Like I was SAYING, don’t shoot any beams at him, especially not his face! His eyes’ll just catch them and throw them back out ten times as strong!

Rolling back onto his many feet, Battra deeply grunted in annoyance, but had little time to seethe as King Caesar leapt and kneed him in the side of the face, bringing him down again. He swung his head crest upward on offense, but Caesar grabbed it around the middle, the sharpened edge doing little to harm the other monster’s bricklike skin. Caesar wrapped his left arm around the back of Battra’s carapace and lifted the larva up off the ground, pinned against his rocky side, while many sharp legs wavered for purchase. Caesar struggled with the muscular strength of Battra’s writhing for a few more moments before seemingly giving up, and instead turned and threw Battra with impressive distance, enough that Belvera had to turn around and fly into the vicinity of another mountainside to track his landing.

Belvera smiled as a squadron of aerial drones attempted a bombardment, only for Battra to direct a trio of beams skyward, setting the propelled explosives off like fireworks. She smiled wider as Battra continued to sweep the beams down and across the level of the terrain, reducing a nearby inhabited settlement to cinders. Only the heavy, enraged, pounding feet of King Caesar coming over the hill brought the larva rounding his head to glare once again at the lion-dog kaiju.

King Caesar took wide, diagonal steps in a zigzag approach, arms low and hands out to the sides while his head tilted with each footfall in a mocking intimidation display. Battra was having none of it, and scuttled with his many legs into a powerful forward leap, slamming into King Caesar’s center of mass and making him stumble. His largest legs hooked around Caesar’s upper arms, pinning them to his sides, and the several decently-long legs right above them splayed and wavered with Battra’s neck as it swung from to side to side, claw-tips drawing sparks as they scraped repeatedly against the sides of Caesar’s face.

Dirt and dust started to kick up nearby to the two struggling kaiju, followed by a drill-bit point poking up through the ground a few hundred meters away.

Watch it, Megalon’s coming up behind you!

The Beetle parted his hands just long enough to heave himself out of the broken earth, and then put the drill halves back together. He held the combined, spinning drill out in the air past his left shoulder as he ran forward, clearly intending to use it to batter the back of Battra’s head.

Battra curled the tip of his tail around one of King Caesar’s legs, pulling it out from underneath and causing them both to fall over just as Megalon tried to intercept. Underneath the passing drill, Battra swung out with his head crest edge-on, slicing into the gap between the hanging scales on Megalon’s left thigh and drawing a spurt of yellow lymph-fluid.

Megalon stumbled, stopped the drill on the edge to separate his hands, and used the left half to urgently pat at the bleeding injury. In what was probably a fortuitous accident, a bout of panicked skipping on his feet got him turned around enough to face Battra again, and he took an opportunistic shot at the larva with his lightning horn.

Battra leapt back in recoil, but King Caesar eagerly craned his neck to take the electric bolt in his right eye upside-down, then leaned upward to fire it right-side-up from his left. From the force of the bolt striking up along his exposed throat and face, Battra was sent flying completely off Caesar, and a yellow-green spray followed his severed right tusk as it spun end-over-end through the air.

King Caesar stumbled to his feet, with Megalon happily hopping up to stand beside him and posing with his nearer half-drill held diagonally in the air. Caesar ignored the gesture and charged forward, leaving behind a dejected Megalon slowly lowering his arm. Before Battra could react, the shisa had heaved him up off the ground in both arms, turned around, and beckoned a roar to Megalon.

Halfheartedly perking up in interest, it took a few more roars amid Battra’s struggles for Megalon to react, opening his mouthparts to dispense a propelled napalm grenade. The red-sand-encased projectile struck Battra along the flank, exploding in a swell of flame that adhered to and continued to burn on the surface of Battra’s exoskeletal plates.

Belvera leant over Garu-Garu’s saddle in alarm.

Battra, get out of there!

Battra made a number of attempts to push or writhe himself free, but King Caesar held on implacably through several more napalm bomb hits. Finally, a muscular curl set them both off-balance enough for the next bomb to strike the shaggy mane tendrils draped across Caesar’s left shoulder, instantly setting alight the shisa’s fur.

In a panic, Caesar dropped Battra, and staggered on shaky feet as he tried to pat out the flames. Megalon paid no mind to his ally’s distress and adjusted to fire more bombs at Battra on the ground, setting the terrain ablaze as the burning larva undulated a steady path through them.

Battra was heading for the ocean, having set course toward a nearby slope leading down to the inside face of the seawall. Lightning from his eyes and horns struck at the smooth surface, creating cracks and small breaches that sprayed seawater over the nearby housing and maintenance structures. Hundreds of humans fled from the great larva’s approach, or from the accompanying, indiscriminate bombardment from their own beetle guardian.

But Battra’s movement was steadily slowing down, as more direct hits added to the bonfire on his carapace. Melting armor dripped from his burning neck and face, his green, red, and yellow coloration all faded together into an oozing, crusted brown, and finally, his legs froze in place, the ones attached to the terrain no longer pointed but fused to the surface like goop. The red light faded from his eyes, and what remained of Battra was merely a brown, burning husk in his former shape.

Belvera, however, grinned wide, still able to feel Battra’s life within.

Megalon had halted the bombardment, tilting his head curiously as he watched the flames fade to flickers upon his petrified opponent. King Caesar cautiously rounded from the lower part of the slope, having taken advantage of the leaks sprung in the seawall and returned to the fight with his fur merely singed to black on most of his left side. Numerous ground or low-hover vehicles, interspersed with creature mounts, approached Battra from all sides as the humans aboard them made an effort to surround and close off the area. With the fires burning out, the prolonged lull in combat, and the first visible shades of deep indigo-violet showing in the night sky with the setting of the red moon, it was one eerily quiet moment at the dawning of civilization’s end.

Then a crack resounded, the melted, dried form of Battra splitting open.

What had been the larva’s head crumbled and fell off, pieces of fused carapace crushing unwitting human bystanders. The back splitting apart jostled the small fires that lingered to either side of the fissure, most of them put out by the wind. A new carapace, composed of many backswept spikes of vibrant blood-red, rose out of the gap, followed by still-shriveled dark sheaths which were serrated on-edge with yellow spines – those being pushed aside by jagged, clawed, insectoid legs that quickly reached and established a secured grip on the broken shell below. A head with many horns, the largest of which were yellow-orange and lighted from within, rose to survey the world it had entered anew, the same red eyes casting the same dark judgement as Battra spread his wings.

He was beautiful.

Her vengeance was beautiful indeed.

None of the humans had reacted, taken any advantage to fire on the emerging creature. Even King Caesar and Megalon had been left to watch in awe, in the absence of any orders. The few minds Belvera spied upon showed her the reason, the delicious truth.

They hadn’t believed, at first. Battra’s larva was so different from Mothra’s, it had been reasonable that this was some mere giant creature that had chosen to attack. One that could be resisted the same as any other threat, and that signified nothing of consequence for anyone.

But now, they knew.

They knew, now, it was a god’s fury wrought upon them. A new guardian spawned from the Earth itself, the Battle Mothra. Thousands watched through eyes or screens as Battra dramatically lifted off, ascending directly vertical above the gathered onlookers as the undersides of his wings surged with building, crimson red lightning.

Some humans tried to run. Most didn’t bother.

It was an electrical storm with fury Belvera had never seen, the red-tinted brightness reflecting in her delighted eyes. The fleeing humans were split down the middle into wisps of drifting embers on impact, the vehicles exploding with flame and some of the lightning even reaching out to all sides and blasting buildings apart. Megalon was struck at least a dozen times across the front of his body, smoke billowing from each wound as he collapsed backward off his feet. King Caesar managed to catch one bolt in his eye, but enough of them struck his upper torso to send him toppling over as well, the intended counterattack veering off course and cutting a broader, red diagonal through the dark sky that merely served to illuminate Battra’s magnificence from above as well as below.

Belvera felt her body ease, relief in tearful eyes, and basked in the glow of devastation.

…Not going to get in on this?

Right. Let a whole civilization of humans know I exist. Because that always works out SO WELL for my sisters. Yeah, keep dreaming.

Fair enough.

So Belvera was… somewhere. That was everyone accounted for, with most of the others seated between the ridges of the Baragon zord’s back. Yuzo was still at the controls, though without the horn, the only light was from the eyes of the two Mothra larva zords moving on their own farther ahead, and from the engine cylinders of the Muan vehicles that hovered close by. They were traveling in caves so far down that not even Spacegodzilla’s crystals had grown there.

Which was convenient, since it was the same long route Yuzo had said they’d need to take to get to the third location. The location Professor Ando, Jeremy, and Marcia had been meant to investigate, and the one that, by vague process of elimination, was also probably the Spacegodzilla ranger’s secret underground laboratory. It was a bad combination no matter what way Masako thought of it, so she’d save that kind of thinking for when they were closer.

There were plenty of worse things to think about instead.

A mechanical creak resounded with the Baragon zord’s slow strut through the caves. Masako caught a helmeted glance from Naoko just beside her, and looked over at Shinji, who sat in the same valley between ridges, but farther toward the other side. The six thus-far assembled members of Professor Ando’s investigation team shared the ridge behind, more visible in their wariness and confusion. Collectively, they were a waiting audience of nine for Agent Piranha and that younger girl, evidently named Agent 106, who were both facing backwards from the front ridge.

Masako really wasn’t one for nervousness. Nervousness implied things mattered. “So, I’m clear on the whole ‘sinking of the Mu continent ten thousand years ago’ part, and then the survivors’ attempt to conquer the surface in 1963, and Seatopia’s turn in 1973, but it sounds like things have changed a lot since then. Gonna enlighten us?”

Agent Piranha – who, thankfully for almost everyone’s composure, had her helmet back on – exchanged a brief glance with the girl beside her, then nodded at Masako’s inquiry. “Yes, I should think that is in order. I suppose it all starts with a mission I was assigned almost sixty years ago…”

“There’s no way you’re sixty years old,” Shinji, of course, had to point out, incredulous. “There’s no way you’re thirty years old.”

Piranha hummed a little in her helmet. “You’d believe my true age even less. Life-extension technology was a divisive subject in the old days, some even parted ways with us because of it. Now, it’s simply a fact of our existence. Looming death, in the hourglass sense, was not such a specter for us as was the proliferation of atomic weapons, and worse still, the speed and numbers with which they could have been produced if the surface world ever obtained Element X. In 1967, I was sent to procure a large deposit that had been discovered in the artic ice. Human eyes had already fallen upon it, and so, Seatopia required a scalpel rather than a drill. However, I underestimated the leader of the criminal organization I was tasked to infiltrate. I was left with three gunshot wounds, two of which would have been fatal, but as I discovered on waking, a Mu submarine had been waiting in the depths, and several of their divers had infiltrated Dr. Who’s sea carrier in the night.”

“Doctor what?” Naoko asked, cutting in.

“No, What’s on second,” quipped Shinji immediately.

Piranha looked between them, confused. “…What?”

“Second base!” Shinji announced cheerily.

“He always says that but it’s never true,” Yuzo shouted from down below.

Masako grinned a little as Shinji sputtered.

“So, this, hmm, sea carrier…” Shawn mumbled, adjusting his glasses. “I’m guessing it wasn’t, perchance, bigger on the… nevermind.”

He backed down, but was offered an awkward, subtle fist bump from Jason, which he accepted.

“But seriously, what’s with the doctor thing?” Naoko pressed.

“Doctor Who?” Piranha asked innocently, and there was definitely an undercurrent of a smile there.

106 rolled her eyes. “His name was ‘Doctor Who.’”

Shinji recovered enough to look right at her, in deadpan. “Yeah, and that’s ridiculous. What kind of name has letters?”

Naoko, evidently, chose to ignore the growing glaring contest between the two of them, and focused back on Piranha. “So, you were from Seatopia, but Mu saved you? Why would they do that?”

“Information,” Piranha replied. “It became known to me that the survivors of Mu’s second destruction had taken up refuge deeper underground, creating the hidden capital city we are approaching now as we speak. It is a cavern surrounded on all sides by volcanic rock of a density that would give even Megalon difficulty on approach. The Empress, you see, had planned to go to war, and to take Seatopia as a stepping stone towards her desired revenge against the surface world. It was a game of spies against spies and I was a convenient captive, a treasure trove of all my country’s most valuable secrets so long as I could be kept alive, and thoroughly convinced.”

Jason frowned, suddenly solemn. “You mean torture?”

Piranha shook her head quickly. “It would never have been necessary. Mu was a violent and vengeful culture, it was true, but it had an Empress, something that could not exist in Seatopia. Once I saw that, it was an easy decision, and even more so once I learned of just how many lies Antonio had sold his people, and how many of those people believed those lies all-too willingly. The Seatopia of that time was a culture that used its myths as a means of control, and as a veil for the self-gratification of cruelty. I was glad to be rid of it.”

“Wait, hold up.” Shinji focused intently, his interest piqued. “So, you’re telling me… that when Godzilla and Jet Jaguar beat up on Megalon and Gigan, and sent Seatopia crawling back to the Earth from whence they came… that Seatopia wasn’t some sweet innocent victim of nuclear testing, they actually deserved what they got?”

Piranha humored him with a calm glance. “You would not find me saying otherwise.”

Shinji laughed.

Threw his head back and slapped his hands together, in a clap that echoed through the whole cavern. “Seatopia deserved it!” he bellowed, as if it was some mad revelation that was bringing him to tears. “They fucking deserved it!” As his laughter continued, it grew dark and bleakly ironic, to the point that everyone around him appeared deeply disturbed.

Does… this make any sense to you?

BATTRA IS AFRAID NOT…

“Uh… you done?” Masako eyed Shinji warily.

The last reverberations of a crazed snicker trailed off, and Shinji shook his head with a bit of a tearful eep. “Yeah, I’m done,” he choked out, and leaned back and crossed his arms in subtle fury.

Piranha stared at him for a moment longer before nodding and continuing. “Even with my help, Mu still fought at a stalemate with Seatopia for decades. In that time, I became the most trusted agent of the Empress, and attempted to inspire in our people something more than just a desire for conquest, but the virtue of our cause against Seatopia’s madness. I… believe I ignited a fervor, became a sort of icon of the people, but I was merely trying to pay forward a kindness that was shown to me, when I had least expected it. One day, it was reported that Antionio had sent Megalon to the surface, to aid in another attempted invasion from those offworld. This was the year 2004, and as our spies later discovered…”

“All the kaiju were gone,” Lucy realized with wide eyes.

“Yes,” Piranha confirmed with another nod. “Despite Antonio’s bold, insistent claims that Megalon had returned and was once again under his control, it became ever obvious that Seatopia was now without its guardian. Had I, a failure as an agent, returned to that country all those decades ago, there would have been no place for me of my choosing. Instead, I returned to my former home at the head of an army, with far greater numbers and fighting spirit than the Seatopians, who had relied too much upon their supposed god. It was a nearly bloodless victory, an anticlimax to our years of conflict. Antonio was imprisoned and his followers offered citizenship in a new, unified Seatopia. For many years thereafter, we were at peace, a nation of equals and a force for progress…”

Agent Piranha’s gaze drifted wistfully, perhaps mournfully, away from her audience, and now just seemed fixed on the direction they had left.

“That city you saw, its ruins… that was to be our shining beacon. Built in tribute to not only Mu or Seatopia, but with new inspiration from others that found their way to us, a safe haven for all. And it was designed so that, perhaps in time, it might be a place of trade and commerce, if we were to ever rejoin with the nations of the surface world.” She dejectedly shook her head. “But then, only months ago, the crystals came, and with them, the monsters. We know not how the partnership began, but that man you call McKay brought with him Antonio’s once-lost vision of an army of machines, as well as those giant creatures bent to the will of his thoughts. Antonio sits again on the throne of Seatopia, the Empress as his prisoner, and our people are once more divided, between those who deem themselves content with Antonio’s tyranny and those who, for the sake of themselves or their loved ones, refuse a return to the old ways. And so, we, here, have become the Alliance of Mu, until such a time as Seatopia can be reclaimed and our people freed.”

Masako sighed. “Well, you did one thing right, you actually went to war. And you could forget those dreams of reconnecting with the surface world anyway, it won’t be around for much longer. Assuming all this is true, though… you can count me in. If I wasn’t down here for my own reasons, I’d put Antonio’s head on a pike for free.”

“I’m in too, but if McKay’s controlling two monsters, we will need help,” Naoko reminded her.

Which was true, Masako had to admit to herself. The unskilled ability-spammer that he was, McKay by himself had been a tough enough challenge for her and Naoko put together, and between the four rangers that were here now, they didn’t even have a complete megazord to go up against one kaiju, let alone two.

“Mu thanks you, Masako, for your… enthusiasm,” Piranha said a bit shakily, then turned to Naoko with a far more steady, even awed warmth. “And you as well, Sun-in-the-West. But we will see what the council decides.”

She’d said it with finality, sending everyone back into long, awkward silence for a while.

Piranha and 106 turned around, conversing with one another quietly enough to be unheard, but from a hand on a shoulder here and there it was obvious enough Piranha was affectionate, likely parental, in a way 106 played at annoyance in trying to shrug off, making brief glances backward as if trying to make a point about her embarrassment.

Even still, there was an undercurrent of sadness, of bleakness, and Masako couldn’t be surprised. They’d have to be fairly desperate to be willing to put in a good word for – well, their version of the devil, in their version of parliament.

And how do you feel about all this, Battra?

PROVIDED THEY DO NOT BUILD ANOTHER CLIMATE CONTROL DEVICE, BATTRA SEES NO REASON TO DISAPPROVE A BARGAIN, GIVEN OUR CIRCUMSTANCES. THESE MU ARE NO EMPIRE. PERHAPS THEY COULD BECOME A THREAT IN TIME BUT, AT PRESENT, THEIR EFFECT ON THE EARTH’S ECOSYSTEM APPEARS NEGLIGIBLE. I WOULD SUSPECT THAT IN YOUR CASE, YOU MAY SEE THEM AS A POSSIBLE ALLY.

I was thinking that… but I’d need a clearer picture. I don’t trust them yet.

BATTRA WILL NEVER TRUST THEM, BUT AS YOU HUMANS SAY, APPROACH WITH AN OPEN MIND.

Or maybe we’re just as desperate as they are…

Shinji was kicked back, braced across the ridges with his shoulders and foot as he stared up at the darkness of the cave ceiling. Shawn was hunched over his tablet with a static frown, organizing the notes he’d apparently taken while Shannon and Jason observed the process intently from either side. Kyle was warily eyeing the hovercrafts travelling in synchronized flight, while Lucy and Kristina sat nervously still, hands folded on their knees.

“It’s… kind of a lot to take in,” Naoko said faintly enough her helmet filter rumbled gently over the words. She’d shuffled subtly closer into Masako’s space.

“Not really. Rolisican intelligence did the same thing to Saradia in the sixties.” Masako grimaced through her quiet seething, and put a tired hand to her chin. “But what resource is McKay after, I have to wonder…”

“Huh?” Naoko pondered for a bit, either understanding or brushing aside her confusion. “I kinda meant… that you apparently have a whole functional friend group outside of the edgy ranger vengeance thing, and they seem normal—or, well I mean, not like… you know what I mean.”

Oh. “It’s… a long story.”

“I’m sure…” Naoko trailed off, sneaking another glance behind. “They don’t look okay, though.”

She was looking mainly at Lucy and Kristina, who were putting on smiles but still clearly troubled and discomforted. Masako felt a surge of anger, directed at no one in particular. “Probably because we’re heading into a culture that’s been more-or-less isolated from most of the world and whose values we know next-to-nothing about. I’m skeptical myself, and you should be, too, but at least we have the benefit of literal gods watching our backs.”

Naoko tilted her head from side to side in thought. “Gods that have some influence…”

Should’ve done something with that.

YES. MY PRIMARY CONCERN WAS BEING WORSHIPPED BY THE BEINGS I WAS MEANT TO ERADICATE.

Then Mothra should’ve done something.

STORY OF BATTRA’S LIFE.

“Let’s tell them we’re dating.”

WHAT.

“What?”

“I mean,” Naoko rested her helmet on a curled-in fist, looking adorably thoughtful. “What are they gonna do, be homophobic at god?”

Masako blanched. “Uh…”

Say yes say yes say yes!

I thought you were supposed to be making yourself scarce?

“If… you’re okay with it?”

WHY WOULD YOU SAY IT LIKE THAT?

I don’t know!

Hahahaha! Yes!

“I’m the one who suggested it?” Naoko was absolutely arching a brow under her helmet.

Masako forced herself to breathe. “But…”

Naoko nodded a little in understanding, slipping a hand over Masako’s and curling gold-gloved fingers around dark green, clawed ones. “Mothra and I had a long talk,” she began guiltily. “I’m still really sorry about… before. There’s no version of this I’m not comfortable with.”

…We’re still talking about a fake relationship, right?

Keep telling yourself that.

The whole Baragon zord shifted a little too far on a step, making both of them hurriedly scramble for purchase, along with a few of the other passengers who’d been sufficiently complacent.

“We’re here,” Piranha announced, giving a look over her shoulder, if only to watch the reactions.

An announcement that made Masako a little suspicious, considering she was now staring ahead at a deep ravine that crossed the cavern path, the ground dropping out in front of the three zords with the Mothra larvae parked near the edge. On the other side, there was clearly the outline of what might have been a continuation of the cave, but from the way the zords’ lights shone upon it, it was blocked off by a flat wall of dark grey stone. A little maneuvering by the larvae’s heads revealed strange, gigantic faces carved into the cavern walls on either side of the obstruction – which, in only a moment, lit up from their eyes and mouths with a mint-green glow.

Tensing, because that was the same light from the serpent-turrets, Masako readied for a fight, but the glow subsided as quickly as it had appeared, apparently in this case acting only as a reminder that the defenses existed. Instead, a far more brilliant, golden glow began as the thin vertical line between the parting smooth obstruction, now clearly a massive set of doors that were on their rumbling way toward receding into the cavern stone to either side.

Gasps accompanied the revelation that the golden glow itself was provided by several cylindrical buildings, brightness like small suns visible through rectangular windows on every level with only thin framing between them. They ran from floor to ceiling at what Masako guessed were the four corners of a small city, but any closer observation was stalled by the realization that the air within the ravine was rippling with silver light.

From the parting of the doors all the way back across to the cliff’s edge near the heads of the Mothra larvae, the empty air suddenly became a visible bridge of teal-colored stone, with the width enough to accommodate both larvae side-by-side.

Another of the yellow double-bus vehicles hovered slowly out from the city and the Baragon zord’s height above the bridge, clearly intended as a passenger shuttle. It was probably the last moment they’d have any privacy for a while.

Masako turned subtly to Naoko.

“You should probably do most of the talking.”

“What?” Naoko looked startled. “Why me?”

“Because you’re the god to these people—what did she call you? Sun something? —and I’m pretty sure I’m evil incarnate to most of them, no matter how receptive Piranha seems to the idea.”

“I’m… sure they understand Battra was just playing a role in the Earth’s natural processes…”

Masako rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well… let’s not count on that.”

The council had gathered in a roughly square auditorium, two stories high, with a stage level at the far end that was railed off in stone except for the wide set of stairs leading up to it in the middle. There was a gold throne at the top of the staircase, set into the back wall, but it was unoccupied, the council members lining up along the stage at individual podiums with none taking the seat. There were mid-levels on either side of the stairs, bearing guards at attention around more barrels of perpetually-burning coals, and at the foot of the stairs was a small, raised platform from which Agent Piranha now dutifully gave her report.

Onlookers had gathered near the support columns at either side of the chamber, with more peeking in from the arched doorways that spanned the three non-stage sides as well as from railed balconies all around the level above. Everyone seemed just as nervous at their arrival as Masako’s companions seemed at just being here, all attention set on whatever was about to be discussed.

Masako sized up the council, trying to get a read. The friendliest, at first glance, was probably the dark-skinned woman with sky blue hair and a glowing blue amulet around her neck, or possibly the one with the floral-print one-shoulder top, small armband threaded with stone beads, and a red flower in her hair tie, but the rest all seemed irritated at whatever Piranha had to say. The Caucasian woman with wavy brown hair and tired eyes was at least listening through her frown. The councilor at the leftmost podium was a five-foot-tall cockroach standing upright.

Piranha finally stepped down and moved aside, beckoning to the rangers and their allies to begin.

Naoko stepped forward, and spread her wings, to several additional gasps.

“I am Naoko, and I speak for Mothra.” She moved a little to the side, and Masako obliged with a nod, furthering the distance between them so she had enough space to spread her own wings on cue. “And this is Masako. She speaks for Battra.”

Even more gasps, and one solitary shout in anger. Masako gave Naoko a hurried, reassuring nod.

“You may know us as enemies,” Naoko admitted, a little awkwardly. “But now, ten thousand years later, Mothra and Battra stand united, as allies. And so we, their rangers, stand before you as friends, as… seekers of truth and justice, and as… bonded lovers…”

Masako tilted her helmet sharply in an arched-brow gesture Naoko ignored.

“…and as enemies not of the people of Mu, or Seatopia, or of… whatever mix-and-match thing you’ve got going on now… but of the man you all know as the ally of Antonio.”

At that, the crowd went audibly quiet, which Masako dared to hope was a good sign.

“The surface world knows him as Boss McKay… which I’m still trying to wrap my head around. We also know him as the Spacegodzilla ranger, and just as we speak for the guardian moths, he speaks for an alien crystal-hybrid clone of… one of… both of our creations, really… that controls the crystals that infected your city and is bent on using them for world domination.”

Naoko gestured to the unarmored among the group, prompting a few looks and mutterings of disgust from the audience, which in turn prompted Naoko to panic a little.

“These people are also our allies! They’re dedicated to the Earth in a way that, admittedly, most people from the surface world aren’t, and so… they’ve earned our favor! Just as we’d be willing to grant all of you our favor, if you would help us in this matter, of locating the Spacegodzilla ranger’s secret lab. In turn, we would fight for you, bringing with us the power of both guardian moths in order to free your society from tyranny. That… that’s all.”

“All in favor?” hastily asked the Nebulan, who raised his insectoid hand immediately.

The others gave him a look, but the blue-haired woman followed suit, along with the flower-dress woman and a man in a gold shoulder-collar.

Piranha stepped back in front, near the raised stage. “I will take full responsibility for them.”

The tired brunette nodded and raised her hand also, making it five to three.

“Very well,” Piranha said, turning back around to face the group as she beckoned 106 out of the crowd. “Agent 106 will take you to your accommodations, once they’re prepared.”

“…Bonded lovers?”

Naoko shook even under the whispered remark. “Look, I don’t know either! I just thought it would be weird to say the word girlfriend in front of the high council of ancient societies!”

The ‘accommodations’ they were being led toward now were a multi-leveled, rectangular construction of stone, set deep into the back wall of the city and raised up at the end of several flights of stairs, the lowest of which had its base wider than the building itself. The structure was braced from below, above, and on both sides by thick walls of tan-gold brick, giving the appearance of a hollowed-out cabinet space with three large, brick-built cylindrical towers braced vertically and a pair of balconied rails running horizontally from tower to tower, connected to the back and to the side walls. By the size of the sparse windows, the towers were 10-12 stories tall and several rooms wide, and the rails likely contained one or two stories of hallways inside them.

The final staircase was narrowed a bit, between the brick supports of two railed, forward-extending platforms on either side that housed decorative streetlamps, but still wide enough for about twenty people to walk up side-by-side, if not for the four raised square bases blocking the way at even partitions across the line of the middle few steps.

Upon each base rested a different statue: Varan leant back and clawing at the air on hind legs, Megalon tapping his crossed drill-halves edge-on-edge one above the other, Manda curled up in a spiral with his face and fangs bared forward, and King Caesar, ears up, rearing for a punch.

“The four guardians of Old Mu,” Agent 106 explained. “They place them here to ward off evil.”

And why do I feel like I’m the one they’re supposed to be keeping out?

Masako stood for a moment under the statues’ watchful eyes, none of the others who hadn’t already made their way up daring to ascend ahead of her. Then she took one step onto the flight and marched defiantly up through the middle. On the top step she glanced back over her shoulder.

“They didn’t work.”

106 tried to stifle a loud, endeared chuckle as she and the last few stragglers made their way up to congregate at the doors.

The floors were light grey stone, the walls made up of large sandstone bricks that were cut to shape in archways, and the spaces between openings were covered with various art pieces made of assembled metal leaf. The stairs were in the sides of the building’s frame, and there were more hallways in the very back, with Agent 106 leading them up and then across to enter into the middle tower. Inside was a circular main room with a few cushioned chairs and tables prepared with refreshments, the walls lined all the way around with doors to individual bedrooms as well as a hallway exit to the balcony level on either side.

As the others got settled, quickly swept up in about ten different discussions, Masako lingered in the hallway with 106. “Thank you. I… still don’t know what your deal is. You swing a punch at a ranger in armor, what did you think was gonna happen there, exactly?”

Agent 106 blushed a little in embarrassment, scratching the back of her neck. “I uh… I don’t know…”

Masako caught the hint of something more to it, and her head-tilt wasn’t lost.

“I…” 106’s eyes went dark, but she quickly shook her head, getting back at least a half-attempt at a smile. “It’s not… you can ask Piranha, when you get a chance.”

“Look, if it’s not my business…”

“No, I…” 106 shook her head. “I think I want you to know, I just…”

Masako nodded in understanding. “Don’t want to have to say it.”

106’s eyes brightened in agreement, and relief. “I don’t think a lot of people here really trust you. I mean, obviously the Nebulans do. With what happened to their world, they lean a bit more in favor of Battra’s original motive as we understand it. But for everyone else, it’s… I think even Piranha’s just doing what she feels like she needs to, for all of our sakes. Mostly mine…”

Fearlessly, 106 took a step closer, and hooked a few fingers around Masako’s motionless, clawed glove, shrugging with a wistful half-eye-roll.

“But I won’t believe you’re some horrible devil that’s going to betray and kill all of us. And if you are, then I’m putting my faith in you anyways. I think, if nothing else, you’re gonna make them pay, and I hate when that’s the only thing that counts as good news, but if it’s the only thing left to feel good about… then I’ll take it.”

Masako wished for a world where she didn’t understand that sentiment, but resolved to be its instrument in this one. “I usually betray everyone, in the end,” she spoke quietly, stoically, “but that’s usually because no one can ever figure out when they’re betraying me.” She tilted her head in what she hoped would be read as a playfully arched brow. “For what it’s worth, I’m leaning towards letting you live.”

Bizarrely, 106 all-but burst out laughing again. “Wouldn’t put in too much thought if I were you…”

She quietly pulled her hand away, then, and smiled as she stepped back, angling to head back down the hallway.

“You sure you don’t want to stick around?” Masako found herself saying, gesturing to the others in the room. “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.”

106 shook her head. “You take tonight. I have a feeling your world doesn’t give you much time like this.” She turned around and disappeared into a shadow, the taps of footsteps fading out and leaving Masako with an empty hallway and a choice.

She glanced into the room, picking up from the chatter that Yuzo had apparently offered to taste-test all the food, at the same time he continued to answer everyone’s questions alongside Shinji and Naoko. Between those three, everyone else was too distracted to notice Masako’s absence – except Kristina, who hadn’t thought to check the door yet but was attentive in double-checking her headcount of the room.

But Masako wasn’t in the mood to be scolded for how much she hadn’t managed to let go.

She hid around the frame of the door, and lingered there for a moment, back resting against the stone. The voices soothed and irritated her, beckoning and yet enraging in equal measure. She clenched her fists and stormed off down the opposite hall.

THIS IS HIGHLY INADVISABLE.

I know.

WE HAVE NO NAVIGATIONAL KNOWLEDGE NOR ACCESS TO A ZORD.

Well aware.

YOU… ARE NOT SERIOUS.

I’m not.

The idea of getting lost in the caves, on her own, was almost enough to make her back down, and that in itself kept her from doing so.

THEN WHY—

Because I need to feel like I’m doing something, okay? I’m hoping someone stops me, but until then, I can’t just sit around when they’re out there. When they could’ve already been found and taken.

WHO ARE YOU SPEAKING OF?

…I guess I don’t really know that either.

She found her way to a stairwell, down to the lowest floor, and out through a secondary entrance that put her directly on course to walk out on one of the overhangs with the streetlamps. She’d made it almost to the light when she noticed there was someone else out here, almost hidden on the far side of the wide, blocky lamp support.

Agent Piranha had her arms crossed on the railing, looking out over the city. It wasn’t the highest view, but past her shoulder Masako could still see the two Mothra larva zords parked on a lot of bare stone near the city entrance, surrounded by the rebels’ modest contingent of vehicles.

“Restless as well?”

Masako relaxed at the question, but feigned irritation. “Forgive me for not being so content just waiting around.”

“You don’t know what happened to your friends. I can more than forgive that. But all of you are weary. Against the odds you may face, you can’t help them now.”

“Yeah, well I don’t need to be told that,” Masako snapped.

“At least your beloved is here and safe!” Piranha snapped back, unexpectedly.

Torn between outrage and pure, dumbfounded confusion, it was a few seconds before Masako remembered the ruse. “Oh… wait, your?”

Piranha flinched. “I… hadn’t meant to say that. I apologize.”

Masako tilted her head on approach, not quite at the railing yet. “What… ‘s going on?”

Piranha took in a long breath, and sighed, the sound of wind carrying in her helmet.

She shook her head.

“I would do anything for my Empress. Yet, here I speak of things I only wish were true. Her heart, she gives only to her scorn, and I fear now that it could only be more so.”

Turning around, Piranha leant back against the rail, one arm with an elbow rested upon it and the other hanging at her side, intermittently clenching into a fist.

“In six decades, she could not forget the last time she was held prisoner. She feels her pride was taken away, that she was broken in a moment of fear and panic. And just as much as I fear the rage consuming her even more now than it did then, there is also…” Piranha relaxed her fist in defeat, and lowered her head, shaking it. “When she swam toward the fires of her burning empire… no matter what she has told me, and told her people, I cannot truly believe she knew there was one of her submarines waiting for her just below.”

Masako crossed the remaining distance to the railing, putting her lower back against it and crossing her arms, and spoke tiredly. “Yeah, well… one of the people I’m still missing… same kind of worry.” She thought carefully for another moment, blinking. “Actually, two of them. Second one might be my fault, though. But it’s technically an improvement.”

Piranha glanced at her in a way that was probably an arched-brow, or amusement if Masako was thinking wishfully. “I suppose it is hypocritical of me to worry so. When I was shot the second and third time, I knew it would happen. It was in a desperate move to destroy Dr. Who’s control apparatus. At the time, I believed I had given my life to stop his machine. My weakness, my strength, was that I could not stand for the destruction he wanted to cause. Instead, I stood for the people of the surface world I had been taught to hate. I stood for those few among them, who had offered me escape, and protection, even when I tried to warn them of what I was.”

Masako waited for her words to stretch into silence, and nodded reluctantly. “Yeah. Guess there are some good people still up there, so Battra and I have both been learning. It’d sure make things a whole lot easier if there weren’t.” She paused, receiving no response. “Oh, and…” Masako tossed up a hand, then nervously curled her fingers. “106… told me to ask you… about… stuff.”

Piranha tensed, but nodded sadly, staring aimlessly up at the face of the building. “She… has a malignant growth, on her brain. Six months ago, we had the technology to treat it easily, but Antonio rose to power before we could. Presuming he’s merely taken control of the hospital, and hasn’t destroyed it, the only chance left for her is if we take back the city in time.”

Even a brief, telling glance between two helmets made it obvious how insubstantial the concept of ‘in time’ probably was.

“She has two weeks,” Piranha clarified. “She expressed the wish to join the ranks of the agents, so that she might die quickly in battle, rather than painfully and without dignity when her time is up, and I… I couldn’t deny her that.”

“So that’s why you agreed to this so easily.”

Piranha nodded again, with an audible, uncontrolled sniffle.

Masako observed quietly in dawning understanding. “She’s your daughter?”

Piranha shook her head quickly. “I was shot twice in my lower ribs, it would kill me to—”

“That’s not what I meant.”

For a few moments Piranha stared back at her, surprised. “I… suppose that may as well be accurate,” she admitted to them both. “Her birth parents are on the other side. They believe her condition means she was meant as a sacrifice.”

Masako casually seethed. “I wish I could say I’m shocked, but that’s how it works in our world too. If I see them, should I kill them, or let you do it? Or let her do it?”

Piranha didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “Perhaps you should get some rest…”

“Yeah, yeah,” Masako waved the comment off, pushing to her feet. “If you wanted a peaceful solution, you’ve got the wrong moth.”

She headed back to the stairwell entrance and rounded the edge of the doorway, momentarily shocked to find Shinji standing there, backed flush against the stone wall. He didn’t react at first, looking like he might have been shaking.

“What are you doing down—oh.” She couldn’t decide whether getting lost in the caves on her own would be better or worse that getting lost in them with Shinji. “Don’t kid yourself, you’re not going off on your own any more than I am. Let’s head back.”

She started walking up the steps, not sure whether she cared if he followed. A few moments later, she heard him scramble, and he hurried to walk beside her. “I wanted to talk to you, actually…”

Oh, joy… “I bet.”

“I just, you know, um, wanted to say…” Shinji stumbled over his words. “You know, someone would actually love you, right?”

Masako nearly froze in place, but managed to keep her steps even.

Did he… know she and Naoko weren’t really together? Had he figured it out somehow?

No, no, he wasn’t emotionally intelligent enough for that. This was bound to be about something way stupider.

“I mean…” Shinji continued, at a tone he likely considered cautious. “I don’t know what the situation is under that armor, if you’ve got… nasty scars, or whatever, but don’t ever think no guy would ever want you, or that you have to settle—”

Masako briefly wished the Earth really was flat, so that she would’ve fallen out into space by being this far underground. “Okay, I’m gonna stop you right there…”

They’d made it to the second landing, and she turned around to literally stop him in his tracks. She let her helmet do most of the glaring, because trying to be legitimately offended would just be wasting muscles at this point.

“I’m not settling for anything,” she began, slowly, as if trying to explain to—well, she wasn’t about to insult anyone by directly comparing them to Shinji. She thought she might have an easier time convincing the wall behind him. “I prefer women. In fact, I am only attracted to women.”

Shinji stared at her skeptically. “But I mean… you’ve gotta try dick at least once, right?”

Masako directed a loud, infuriated sigh up through the rest of the stairwell, then decided it wouldn’t be her responsibility to scrape Shinji up off the floor. “I have,” she told him pointedly. “I liked it. It was a woman’s.”

By his initial reel of disgust or disbelief, then his blank stare and indecisive shivering, Masako was pretty sure she’d broken him, as intended. In his confusion, he slowly raised a shaky arm until it could produce an equally shaky thumbs-up. “G-good for you?”

“I’m not picky,” Masako continued with a light shrug, her words thereafter deceptively cold and forceful. “I’m a girl. I like to kiss girls. I like to cuddle with girls. I like to be softly railed by girls. I like to be intimate and vulnerable in tender moments where we can feel loved and cared for despite the unending cruelty of the world around us. With. Girls.”

She shoved Shinji roughly in the shoulder with the heel of her palm. He wobbled a bit, but rebounded back to the same stunned, awkward, silent thumbs-up. It was clear he wasn’t going to be moving for a while.

Still, to close off any chance of having him follow her up the rest of the steps, Masako instead turned around and stormed off into the doorway on their landing, slowly making her way across the long hallway to the building’s other side.

It was amid the various works of art that she found it: a mural stretching wide enough along the back wall that it was difficult to see the whole thing with only the space of the hallway to back up in. Depicted in multicolored stone relief, Battra and Mothra faced each other down in their fierce, ancient battle.

The sky was bright and blue, and the ground below appeared to be cracked apart, darker blue water rushing up in stylized geyser sprays from within the gaps. The broken patches of land featured the four guardian kaiju – Manda, Megalon, King Caesar, and Varan – alternated with buildings, most of them depicted as being made of gold and in shapes that resembled temples or pyramids. Only one partition of land was empty, and Masako could easily follow the filled chasm of rubble down to the very bottom edge of the mural. Resting there, so deep that the Earth’s crust was depicted as not having been broken by the cracks, was the missing gold pyramid, surrounded by half-gears rising from the mural’s edge that appeared to represent the Muans’ geothermal machinery.

Huh.

IT APPEARS I MISSED ONE.

Battra sounded legitimately perturbed. I’m… sure it’s just symbolic? Of the undersea remnant that got built later on?

THAT IS CLEARLY MEANT TO SUGGEST AN ENTIRE ORIGINAL PALACE WAS HIDDEN AWAY INTACT.

Masako double-checked, and there were a few of what looked like sailboats depicted fleeing into the ocean at the right and left edges of the mural. So it was never a clean sweep either way, and obviously someone had lived, or else none of this city she was standing in now would exist. Why does it bother you so much?

ONLY ONE WHO WIELDED POWER IN THAT SOCIETY COULD HAVE ENGINEERED SUCH A FEAT.

Ohhhhhh. Billionaire got away. I get it now.

She suspected that before they’d met, Battra likely wouldn’t have made the distinction. A human used to just be a human. In some ways they’d both believed a version of that.

And they’d both been wrong.

But as concerned this present, troubling development, whoever of the responsible, the accountable, had lived when they ought to have died… was probably dead now, unless they were the Empress, or had become one of her advisors. There was nothing Masako or Battra could do about the life they’d lived, or if they were lucky, hadn’t lived. Thousands of meters below sea level tended to be the billionaire’s natural enemy, after all.

Something else about the mural caught Masako’s attention, and she stared, really admiring the dedication that had gone into perhaps the smallest detail on the whole piece of artwork – miniscule, just below and behind Battra’s wing, but unmistakable.

A tiny woman riding a tiny dragon.

Battra was intentionally quiet.

…Belvera? Think we need to have a talk.

It was a few more moments before the response.

Ah, took you long enough. West balcony.

Masako continued down the hallway, worked her way up to the next level, and doubled back, passing the ranger suite and exiting to the exterior balcony ledge. Belvera was pretty much right in her face in the doorway, a forced smirk hiding any fear or doubt she might be feeling.

“So,” she drawled, “you’ve finally figured out I was part of the reason all the Mu people died.”

It was said like a boast. Masako threaded her fingers together and let the silence draw out a moment longer. “I have a different guess.”

The comment made Belvera narrow her eyes, warily. “What’s that?”

“I think you were the reason some of them survived.”

Battra glided in a curve along the coast as his eyes charged with more focused and powerful prism beams, no longer dancing like lightning but searing like pinpoint lasers as they scored molten scars of destruction into the seawalls. One by one, the sections burst, floods washing in and claiming the cities on the continent’s shores.

Belvera let herself drift just above the surf, making herself watch as so many lives were consumed. Streets were flooded, buildings toppled, hundreds drowning or set upon viciously by the Barem that were brought in with the sea – somewhere out there, in this perfect storm of pollution-ravaged waters, Dagahra had awakened too.

There would be no more wondering, no more fearing, no more annoying twists of her heart at what could be happening inside those buildings or inside those chained, tortured minds. Those who suffered would see its end, and those who perpetrated it would never harm another.

The perfect equation.

Human beings couldn’t be trusted with any alternative.

In the chaos, Belvera’s attuned eyes and ears caught something else, a thin lick of flame moving in a horizontal line further inland and accompanied by an irritating chant. She sighed and rose higher, fleeing the coastal devastation before the lingering shadows realized they could have their fill.

The scourge on her enjoyment was the Emperor’s palace, the one with the funky front steps, two giant guard statues, and the big peak-roof-style hollow chamber near the top that he’d filled with a giant statue of himself on his throne. Trenches of spreading fire had ignited around from the back of the pyramid and along the sides, now going down the front edges of two inward-downward-converging staircases that lead to one of the landings on the staggered middle slope.

Battra was far away now, a dark shape gliding into battle with Mu’s air force on his course toward the black mountain, but who said he needed to have all the fun anyway?

That wasn’t Belvera’s first thought on the matter, but it would do.

She drifted over the light of the pyramid, observing the small gathering where the flames were to converge. The chanting priest was standing in back, with two guards alongside, and in front, a stone altar tilted diagonal, the lower end dipped into the trough of flammable ash. Bound by her wrists and ankles, a young girl with a bob of vibrant red hair struggled against the restraints, clenching her teeth but perhaps too proud to scream.

Belvera rolled her eyes, and took Garu-Garu on a sweeping course across the front of the landing, two casual belches of purple lightning disrupting the intended path of flame on either side. She spun back around to linger, glaring judgmentally at the four humans.

The priest stopped chanting.

“Battra rejects your offer of one human dying, in favor of the existing arrangement. Which is all humans dying.”

She drifted a little closer, watching the guards’ shaky hands on their rifles – simple shapes made of thin silver bars, detailed likenesses of Manda coiled around the weapons so the open maws formed the ends of the barrels.

The moment they flinched, she had Garu-Garu let loose a wide-burst shockwave of indigo lightning, the rifles falling from their hands and the priest’s stone tablet shattering on the landing as they were all thrown back several meters, tumbling on the ground with the purple-blue bolts still crackling across their bodies and causing pain. The guard on the right was the first back to his feet, but Belvera was in his mind faster, his eyes going blank as he obediently drew the dagger from his hip and plunged it into the throat of the other guard. The priest observed this, terrified and backing away, and rather than lean down to take the dagger from the dead man’s gushing throat, Belvera chained her telekinesis through her new pet, moving his arm rigidly about like a string-puppet. The dagger was drawn out into the air to hover, dripping, just past the length of his reach, and with another quick, jerky arm movement, it was instead buried to the hilt in the priest’s forehead. With one last movement, the puppeteered guard summoned the dagger free with just enough speed and just enough spin so that it landed point-in in his own forehead, his corpse dropping lifelessly to the floor a moment after the priest’s while Belvera grinned in satisfaction.

Then the whole pyramid shook, as if caught in a minor earthquake, the tremor lasting only a second and setting Belvera off-balance with alarm.

“If you really want to kill everyone,” the girl on the altar hissed out, “you’d better take it all the way to the Emperor. Before you’re out of time.”

There were sounds of shifting stone and metal machinery from within the pyramid. Belvera drove Garu-Garu right up to the girl’s face, demanding an explanation.

The human flared her nostrils with distaste. “This entire palace is designed to sink deep into the Earth. The Emperor already has a geothermal power supply there, so that he and his many servants can ride out whatever harm is to befall his dominion. Do you intend to allow him that?”

Belvera took a wary glance to make sure Battra was still far away. She made her choice, and told herself she wasn’t going to be careful, when it came to the end. “Him, surely not,” she spat out, backing a little ways away and turning her expression ambiguous. “The rest of you? Well… I suppose what Battra doesn’t know…”

With a small nudge of telekinesis, the binds on the human’s wrists and ankles snapped open.

The girl looked startled for a moment, but didn’t let it overtake her. She looked briefly over the carnage that had played out behind the altar, and snatched up the first-slain guard’s belt, complete with unbloodied dagger.

“But no guarantees,” Belvera insisted, as the girl took one of the Manda rifles, testing its heft. “You’d better be far enough down when I crack this continent apart.”

The pairs of guards stationed in the halls fell easily, after that.

One shot in the chest, the other shot up through the lower jaw.

One with a dagger in the eye, the other with a dagger in the heart.

One pinned to the wall by a trident in the neck, the other having slit his own throat.

The Emperor was speaking to his gathered servants in the throne room, and the guards at the perimeter took each other and themselves out quietly, at least until there were few enough left so the former sacrifice could walk down the middle of the crowd with her aimed weapon unopposed. The last two guards fell from the balcony amid panicked screams, one stabbing the other as they hit the throne steps and then rolling to the floor so that the other, dying man could stab him back.

Flying in from afar, Belvera took up a hover just beside the girl’s shoulder, basking in the shock and confusion of the Emperor. The man had the same straight-fringe bob haircut as just about everyone else, except his was silver, to match his triangular beard. A flat, blocky amulet hung from his neck and he wielded a curved staff of sorts, that ended in a small, horned skull.

“Sorry,” Belvera taunted coldly, “no eternal life for you.”

The redhead shot him in the throat, smoke billowing from the wound as he fell backwards towards his throne and the girl ascended the steps. She tore the amulet from his neck and held it high, to a slow, but growing cheer from the crowd.

By the rumbling in the chamber, it was clear the pyramid had already started its descent. “Like I said, no guarantees,” Belvera hissed at the girl, before disappearing into the crowd and back out through the halls.

She found the exit just in time to swoop upwards out of the deepening pit in the terrain, watching from above as small explosions detonated around the sides, causing rockslides that gave the sinking palace enough cover to escape notice.

She let her smile waver, and told herself that was a decent enough head start.

Belvera sighed tiredly, and drifted away in the air, heading toward the balcony rail.

From up here, Masako could see much more of the city, if it could be really called that. There were groupings of geothermal generators set up to the right and left sides, against the sheer walls and hexagonal furnace lights that indicated more machinery was at work behind. It was more or less what passed for late at night, in a city that literally would not have any context for knowing when to sleep, and there were only a few civilians out and about.

Masako leant on the railing beside where Garu-Garu was hovering, and waited.

“Not that it did much good,” Belvera admitted. “It didn’t take long before that Mu remnant turned out just like the old one – slave workers, human sacrifices, the whole lot. Seatopia put their trust in a religious demagogue who took society back to the stone age, and the Iwaya literally devolved, forsaking all technology and dooming a hundred generations to short, ignorant, suffering lives. The Azumi did relatively alright for a while, until they got it in their heads they needed a direct blood descendant to keep control over King Ceasar, then guess whose bodily autonomy went out the window?” Belvera shook her head, cracking a twisted, ironic grin. “And now I’m in all their mythologies, as an evil trickster who tried to get them to stray from the true path.” She leant down to gently stroke the scales on Garu-Garu’s head. “Even yours.”

Masako arched a brow. “If it helps any, I’ve always maintained the snake was the real hero.”

That earned an empty, muttering laugh. “Word of advice? Don’t bother with trying to save them. It’ll just end in more pain anyway, even if you won’t have to live to see it—or, depending on how being a ranger for an immortal being works, maybe you will. Either way, it’s not worth it, I’ve tried. Humans don’t get better. They just seem like they do, for a while, until someone appeals to your species’ fucked-up love of being angry at things for no reason, or invents another religion and you all eat it up like you were just waiting around to be brainwashed. You’re predisposed to destroy yourselves in all the worst ways, and the only way out is to just… end.”

Masako crossed her arms. “I make it a point not to judge or condemn people for being ‘predisposed’ to do anything. They just need a little more help and support. And I’d argue humans do get better—”

“Not fast enough.”

Masako lost her fight in an instant, even hated herself for having any to begin with. “…You’re right, forget I said anything.”

Belvera gave her a strange, even disappointed look, but it was gone in a moment, replaced with a lingering stare out over the Muan capital. “Desghidorah’s seal wasn’t buried all that deep, but for me, it might as well have been halfway to the Earth’s core.”

Curious, Masako watched Belvera carefully, filling her thoughts with as much warmth and encouragement as she could scavenge.

“Every couple centuries, every hundred years, even ten… every time you humans did something I couldn’t forgive, when I couldn’t take the screams and cries for help anymore… I’d go back to those mountains. I’d find someone, a drifter, a wanderer, someone in the nearby villages… and I’d control them. I’d make them walk, and if they survived the trip through the forest, I’d make them dig. With their hands if they had nothing else, until their bodies broke down…”

She shook her head, visibly shivering.

“None of them ever got far enough. The most hope I’ve felt in ten thousand years might have been watching that bulldozer strapped up with fucking dynamite roll up that hill.” Her twisted, maniacal grin cracked into existence one moment and was gone the next. “I thought it would be over soon…”

Masako reached out with a slow, gentle hand, but Belvera flew out of range, continuing upward to weave between the cavern’s upper stalactites until she was out of sight.

You’re about to have company. Talk later.

Masako sighed and set her hand down, half-expecting someone from Mu to show up but wagering it was more likely Belvera was just taking any excuse possible to flee from vulnerability.

The soft, wary, approaching footsteps and the hand that settled on Masako’s shoulder were Kristina’s, long nails sparkling in periwinkle. Blue eyes with a hint of cyan demanded Masako let her walls down, and just like that, her armor receded as she was pulled into a tight hug.

She figured it was some condescending thing, pity and a subtle lesson about taking the world on her shoulders… at least until Kristina started shaking, crying, her legs going weak until Masako had to put her own arms tight around the girl’s back and it was clear she was the one who needed this more. Masako lowered them both slowly, settling on the balcony floor with her back against the base of the stone railing and Kristina burrowed unto her neck and shoulder.

“I… was callous before,” Kristina said finally, voice carefully composed as if it could fool anyone.

“You had a point,” Masako assured.

A broken laugh. “Well, I guess I lost it.” Everything faded. She looked scared. “You were right,” she whispered, at the edge of losing her voice. “You were right…”

After that, well, if Masako wanted to gloat, or say I told you so, she had what felt like at least a full half hour, if not longer, to do that. Somehow, she didn’t find the time.

“At least… you followed my other advice…”

Masako rolled her eyes, and sighed. “Alright, before this gets out of hand, Naoko and I aren’t really dating. We just agreed to say that to see how these people would react. Actually turned up more results than I was hoping for. Still not entirely convinced.”

“Oh,” Kristina mumbled, squeezing her wrist a little. “Guess that’s why you’re out here alone?”

“Yeah, that’s always and ever been the only reason,” Masako deadpanned. “I don’t want to talk to anyone. You don’t want to talk to a specific person. And before you start, I already get why.”

Kristina let out a tired breath, and went back to shivering. “I don’t know if I’m scared she’ll decide I’m too broken right now to be worth the effort, or if I wish she would, and save herself.”

“Yeah. Because when I think of someone who can be so easily convinced to leave the thing they love most because it’s a dangerous world to have one foot in, Lucy is the person I think of.”

The laugh she got out of that was genuine for a reassuring duration before it turned sour.

“Don’t put too much thought into it,” Masako voiced more softly, re-securing her hold on Kristina and rubbing absently with the hand on her waist. “In a hundred years, the Earth’s atmosphere will be incompatible with human life.”

Kristina made a little bit of a confused sound.

“Microplastics,” Masako continued worriedly, “unregulated toxins in the air, food, and textiles. Our generation will have a one hundred percent cancer rate. Escalating nuclear tensions. We don’t have the international cooperation we’d need to stop another asteroid, or any other—”

“Is this what you sound like when you’re trying to be reassuring?”

“…What else would it be?”

Kristina had moved enough to look at her with a narrowed, teasing glare. “I’m pretty sure you’re just supposed to tell me it’ll be okay, not, uh, remind me of all the different horrible futures that might happen sooner.”

Masako shrugged with a faint smirk. “It’s all I got.” She took a breath, and let that pass between them unspoken, the helplessness. Then she let just enough darkness back into her eyes, because as long as she was around, they weren’t. “If we die, I’m taking the rest of the species with me. But my point here is that I probably won’t have to. Because it will be one of those other things.”

Looking only a little unnerved, but probably well past the point of caring, Kristina relaxed back into her shoulder. “Then give me some bullshit. What do you tell yourself to keep going, when you don’t have anything else?”

Masako leant back and stared half at the ceiling, half out past the edge at the rock formations in the roof of the cavern. “It’s dumb.”

“Still…” Kristina murmured, audibly tired and trying to ease towards sleep.

“It’s really dumb.”

A faint giggle. “Well, now I’ve gotta hear it.”

Masako sighed, and held Kristina a little tighter. She looked down to stare across the balcony to the wall at the other end, which had some weathering on the stones that held it together, but was far from ancient. Far from unsuited to its purpose or from serving the one it did now.

“I’ll tell you what,” Masako began, continuing on by herself in the long silence, as sleep approached for her as well.

“Say, by some miracle, we die here, but the rest of humanity gets to live…

They’ll try to forget us.

Try to absolve themselves of the fault, once they even realize the horror of what they’ve inflicted.

Cause you know they won’t see it that way until it’s over.

They’ll silence our voice, hope they can do it till we’re gone.

But they won’t wait long enough.

They don’t have the patience.

And some clever bastard’s gonna make it.

And some clever bastard’s gonna care.

And in a decade or so

when the dust is all settled

they’ll make a movie about us

with a rubber dinosaur costume

and the world will have to reckon with what they did.

“Well that’s… stupid big.”

“Hey, don’t knock it! They’re not even charging you the suite rate!”

Naoko was standing in the doorway to what was obviously meant to be hers and Masako’s room, given what she guessed was an empress-sized bed, with white and sky-blue sheets and what she hoped wasn’t actually a solid gold frame. The nightstands to either side appeared to have enough drawer space to clothe a small military detachment, and looked like they were constructed with a non-insignificant percentage of solid gold themselves. She was just going to completely ignore the decorative vases that would be worth millions in any museum.

She reluctantly gave up her blank stare and walked in, quickly waving Lucy along behind her because she really didn’t want any reminders she’d been singled out for… whatever all this was supposed to be, or must have cost. She didn’t even know Lucy that well, but everyone else had retired to the other rooms, and now the two of them were both just waiting around for their significant others. Except Masako wasn’t really Naoko’s significant other.

YET.

Right. And there was Mothra, in her head, being helpful as always.

IT’S A NICE ROOM. YOU SHOULD TREAT YOURSELF.

“It’s too much!” Naoko snapped, about to regret that she’d done so aloud.

“You never know when the good things are gonna come along,” Lucy insisted. “Enjoy them when you can, I know I would. Or at least I’d try to…”

Yeah. Great thing to complain about when certain people’s friends are still missing. Good going, me.

*SIGH* WHAT HAVE WE SAID ABOUT USING GUILT TO GUILT OURSELVES INTO MORE GUILT?

Don’t *sigh* at me, Naoko thought with narrowed eyes, then looked at the nearest drawer. “Do I even wanna know what’s in here?” she said, as curious fingers drew back the handle anyway.

The drawer was full of silk nightgowns. Except when she touched one, she could already tell it was better than that, like some special way softer and lighter Muan material. It was just a reflex to pull the whole thing up in her arms and press it against her face.

THERE YOU GO.

She had the thing still pressed to her face when she opened one eye wide and had to deal with Lucy’s teasing-but-also-curious smile. “Go ahead, take a few, I don’t care,” she tried to brush off casually as she set the gown back in the drawer.

WEAR IT.

“No way am I wearing that.”

Lucy was halfway through playing burglar. “Are you kidding me? Why? I bet it feels amazing.” Her smile turned to one that looked like it implied spicy things, and Naoko couldn’t stop a preemptive blush. “You two need the full experience—or, well, however much you two do, but I mean, when else are you gonna get an opportunity like this?”

To her credit, Naoko had made it exactly as long as it took for someone to directly bring up the topic. “We’re n-not actually, uh, datingwejustsaidthattosee how they reacted!”

Lucy’s grin faded into deep sympathy and a note of hesitance. “But… you want to be?”

Naoko took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “…Maybe.”

YES.

“…Okay, yes, but…”

Lucy gently set down her stack of loot at the foot of the bed, then took Naoko’s hand and opposite shoulder, guiding them both down to sit along the edge of the mattress. Then she seemed to flinch right as she noticed where her hands were, expressing a little bit of that awkward, curious reverence she’d been trying to hide around Naoko specifically all night, as she pulled both arms back and folded them in her lap.

TALK TO THIS ONE. I LIKE HER.

Rolling her eyes, Naoko fiddled with the hem of her soft white sweater sleeve. “When we met, we didn’t, exactly… know we were the Mothra and Battra rangers. She was cute, we flirted, we had a heart-to-heart, and I, uh… well, I wanted, uh…”

WE’VE TALKED ABOUT THIS. NO REPRESSING.

“Alright, I would’ve settled for, uh, going behind an alleyandlettinghertakeme so I’d… at least I’d have an experience…”

It was pointless trying to hide the red in her face. Even Lucy was blushing a little. “Well, that’s… bold. Can’t say I relate, but go on.”

“It seemed like the kind of thing she’d be into! Cause of her whole… vibes. Anyway, then it turned out we’d be working together, and now it’s awkward. And also she’s weird, and dark, and messed up, and she constantly says things I would’ve freaked about a year ago, and that I’m still not sure I shouldn’t still be freaking out about now. And I think if I like, made a list, of all the qualities in people I’d rather avoid for the rest of my life, she’d be on it at least a dozen times, except I know her now, and she’s…”

Naoko let her shoulders fall, as she inevitably smirked in fondness and earned a knowing, teasing smirk back from Lucy.

“…and she’s, just, capable of this love, like I don’t understand or… even know if I want to, half the time. But whatever it is, it doesn’t seem out of place with how deep into the shadows and fringe she gets. It’s just like, yeah, that’s Masako, and she loves everybody nobody else does. The more alone in the world you are, the faster she’ll throw herself into the fire to save you. Even if you’re her sworn enemy, apparently. And sometimes it seems like the only thing she doesn’t have is someone who can take care of themselves enough to be the one saving her.”

With just a brief laugh, then a foreboding shyness to her eyes, Naoko got quiet. Lucy seemed like she could tell there was more, already faintly nodding her head.

“She’s worse now, than when we met,” Naoko voiced aloud what she’d been privately observing in small moments throughout the whole mission. “I thought maybe she was just having an off day, but that’s not right, is it? Things are worse now.” Her eyes reached the ceiling. “Out there, I mean. She was always a little bit like that, like… I keep picturing a fly that got stuck in a room. Sometimes it’s just sitting there, but then every once in a while, it starts buzzing and throwing itself against the glass, and I feel like that’s what it’s like right under her skin. She’s not okay, but then, there’s nothing wrong with her either, cause how would you even fix that, make her be more selfish? I just… I look at Masako: a rebel, beautiful, mad at the world, and I can’t help but see… danger, because from everything I’ve been taught to think, she’d be dangerous to me, and from everything I’ve learned to feel, she’d be the one in danger herself, but against both of those, it’s her good qualities that are hurting her, and I just don’t know what to do with that.”

Slowly, a hand found itself sitting on top of hers again, and Lucy’s looked tired with a sad understanding that must’ve cut deep into her. Wordlessly, she slid down off the bed, her hand folding tighter as she led Naoko out the door, through the now-empty common room, and towards the small hallway that connected to a balcony exit.

With the stone door carefully moved aside, the view was almost like a clear night, the light from the city not quite reaching the height into the upper tier of the carved-out part of the cavern. Sort of a ways off from the circular hub of rooms, a few dozen support pillars down the length of the railing and closer to another entrance, Masako looked like she was fast asleep, with Kristina curled up in her arms in a way that made Naoko feel a lot of things, the more selfish of which spiraled into even more guilt that Mothra tried to soothe away.

“I wish she’d talk to me,” Lucy said with sorrow, and a held-back desperation to reach out and lend her own presence to Kristina’s sleeping form. “I can tell she’s… that this is getting to her, and I get it, I do. She doesn’t want to have to ask me all the important questions. To go from the biggest worry being whether someone will like you back, to having to ask that person ‘would you fight for me?’ and ‘would you die for me?’ it’s… it’s a lot, I know, but…”

Lucy shook her head, eyes never wavering. She looked smaller in the silence.

“She’s the one.” Lucy’s voice was quiet, reverent. “I’m gonna marry her one day, if that’s… still a thing, and we’re both still around. They can take her from my cold dead hands. If it came down to it, I’d run with her for as long as she has, and when time runs out… I might go with her.” A tear started running down her cheek. “D-don’t… tell anyone I said that.”

Because the voice in her head wouldn’t shut up, Naoko reached out a hand to brush off Lucy’s tear with her thumb, then quickly pulled it back. “That was Mothra, not me!” she insisted with her hands up. “To clarify. It’s not weird!”

Lucy just pulled her into a hug. “You’re new to this, I can tell,” she spoke with a smirk in her voice and tears that dampened Naoko’s sweater.

It didn’t feel real, or perhaps just not earned. It was something from that other world, the one Masako lived and breathed, where love was expressed freely because every day was someone’s last and you couldn’t go home anymore.

She had to keep reminding herself that was the world she lived in now, too. The other one, the safe one, hadn’t existed, wouldn’t have ever existed for her, and she should know that by now.

A few seconds later, Lucy pulled away a little awkwardly. “Or, um… should I bow?”

Finding pause for a giggle, Naoko waved a hand. “Mothra likes you, you’re good.”

Lucy made an expression Naoko’s whole family had probably spent generations trying to get people to make at the idea of love from a different god. She didn’t know it, but Mothra felt pretty much the same in reciprocation.

THERE REALLY IS SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT HER.

…You think she’d make a good Mothra ranger?

The expected silence from Mothra.

YOU DON’T HAVE TO KEEP THINKING LIKE THAT…

Naoko sighed. By now, tension had more-or-less left the space between her and Lucy, replaced by a sort of awkward consideration as they both fell back to watching over their otherwise-occupied partners. Or—uh, well, partner-adjacent in Naoko’s case. “That can’t be good for your back…” Naoko hurriedly spoke aloud to drown out an incoming snarky comment from Mothra, focusing instead on the way Masako had fallen asleep upright against a stone pillar.

Lucy gave her a meaningful glance, then shyly directed her eyes back to the room they’d been exploring a few minutes ago. When Naoko screwed up her face in confusion, Lucy darted her eyes back and forth again, then shrugged with a casual smirk. “What happens in Mu stays in Mu?”

Naoko froze solid, prompting Lucy to quickly do the same, and put her hands up.

“Not like—like, just cause there’s enough room! I’m not… I’m not propositioning Mothra!”

The giggling in the back of Naoko’s head made her roll her eyes, even while she was laughing a little bit herself at the absurdity. Because the whole thing was definitely absurd, not a humorous exaggeration of a real and unfamiliar situation she was about to have to navigate somehow.

REPENT, MY CHILD! ABSOLVE YOURSELF OF THE GUILT FROM THE GIANT BED BY OFFERING THE EXCESS SPACE TO MORE CUTE GIRLS IN NEED! AMEN!

Naoko was beginning to really despise Mothra’s ‘tee hee’ voice.

Lucy looked like she was about to backtrack, hurt but sympathetic, and Naoko decided she didn’t have time to parse why or how she was finding the idea of closeness objectionable, other than maybe because she wanted it, and that was still registering in her head as a bad thing.

WHAT IF WE…

…jump off the deep end.

Naoko took a deep breath, settled her nerves, and nodded.

They headed out, into the cave air that felt a little colder until they were in range of one of the potted rock burners. Naoko went first, sitting down at Masako’s side and holding a hand cautiously to her arm. She was like a wild animal—or, once she blinked her eyes opened and shuddered a bit, maybe more accurately a wounded animal—but she calmed down once she recognized Naoko and Lucy. She was still like that fly-on-glass Naoko kept picturing, something going on inside her head that was wearing the life out of her.

Kristina had a guilty look when Lucy woke her, but Lucy shook her head to dispel it immediately, also lowering herself to the floor to just be with her. It was easy, wordless between them, and Naoko wanted that, at the same time she just felt less alone from even being in their proximity. She put up a slight wry smile as she turned to Naoko. “We found the moth-ster bedroom. Come on.”

Masako seemed still half asleep, and had none of her guard nor her wit about her, but her blinking eyes took a turn at rolling. “Let me guess, there’s only one—”

“It’s big,” Naoko cut in. “It’s functionally the same as having multiple beds. Except that one person could still hog all the covers before morning.” She winced. “Apologies in advance if that’s me.”

That much, at least, gave them some levity to share as all four stood up and started making their way back inside. Lucy lingered by the foot of the bed long to enough to collect her treasure trove of eveningwear, before departing with Kristina under her other arm and a quietly-voiced we’ll be back that she visibly debated over and wisely decided not to accompany with a wink. That left Naoko a moment alone with Masako, or as alone as they’d ever be when they had a pair of moth gods along as full-time telepassengers.

“You sure you’re okay…” Masako mumbled out after a brief glance toward the bed, her eyes alert with concern despite her body’s overwhelming drowsy state.

Naoko smiled lopsidedly. “Oh, I think I’ll be fine…” she mused, already looking forward to sharing space, until she hit a roadblock and tensed up. “Unless… you y-y-didn’t want me to know…”

It took a longer while of Naoko floundering, but eventually Masako was struck with recognition and waved a lazy hand. “Battra… DNA… stuff. At this point, you wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“I wouldn’t?” Naoko blurted out, with a mix of emotions she hoped hid the small measure of disappointment that had unexpectedly slipped in from somewhere. She took a long breath, quietly let go of half her fantasies, and put a steady hand on Masako’s shoulder. “Good,” she said, and meant, in the same ways Masako’s eyes seemed to suggest she should mean it – no more, no less.

She backed up only to gesture at the still-open drawer.

“They also gave us—”

Whatever she was expecting, it wasn’t for Masako to shrug, turn half-away, and start immediately stripping off her clothes. Later, Naoko would kick herself for being too stunned to turn away politely, but also kick herself for not sneaking a peek when she had the chance, because the first thing her eyes locked on were Masako’s scars, and after that, she couldn’t look anywhere else.

As she faced the foot of the bed, Masako’s right side was on display in profile. Those angry red burn scars on her neck continued down onto her shoulder, where the skin was rough with a mottled texture that continued around and onto most of the relevant shoulder blade. It didn’t seem to cause her any pain, the way it moved with her as she used the arm, and probably didn’t either way with ranger healing and Battra’s extra regenerative boost involved.

I still wish she’d just let Battra take care of that…

I SUSPECT SHE CARRIES A GREAT DEGREE OF GUILT FOR BEING AS FORTUNATE AS SHE IS, WHEN SO MANY OTHERS ARE NOT.

Masako, sleepy and fully nude, turned around to reach for one of the nightdresses, and all Naoko’s eyes took from even that was the state of her left forearm, crisscrossed with slashes that were probably from knives. There were a lot of them, and now that Naoko was looking for it, a bit of linear scarring on the back of her hand that matched the same pattern on her palm. She’d caught a knife like that. More than once.

Naoko finally managed to turn away, took another breath to steady her nerves, and started undressing herself – trying and probably failing to do it as casually as Masako had. She really hoped Masako wasn’t looking right now, except that was a complete lie, and she actually really hoped Masako was. Because… well, yeah, stuff.

WHAT KIND OF STUFF? THINK ABOUT THE THINGS YOU WANT!

Not while she’s right here next to me I won’t!

SHE CAN’T READ YOUR THOUGHTS.

She can see my face!

If Naoko turned around, that was. Or then again, the redness was probably visible from behind somehow. In between garments she reached up to let her hair down, in case her blush had spread to her ears.

SHE WOULD WANT YOU TO BE OPEN WITH YOURSELF ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT. YOU KNOW ALL THE WAYS YOU CANNOT HELP HER, BUT BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF MAY BE ONE OF THE WAYS YOU CAN.

That finally gave Naoko some pause, just as she slipped on the sleek, airy Muan fabric and suddenly was calmed, comforted, and maybe even a little aroused at the way it felt more like a nice breeze on her skin than actual clothes. So if she was gonna play this game, then yeah, she hoped Masako was looking, not only because she kinda wanted to be seen physically, and preferably for that to be liked, but also because of her inherent shyness about the whole thing and how she… kind of… wanted to be close with someone enough that they would also know those little things about her and maybe would find it endearing or cute or something. Yeah. That too.

She turned around to find Masako practically already zonked out under the covers, so it was pretty much a moot point anyway.

IT’S NOT, BECAUSE NOW YOU KNOW.

Masako’s eyes blinked open with mild alarm, as if she’d just remembered something important. She reached over to where she’d piled her jacket and everything else on a chair, pulling a flattish, round-ended object from an inside pocket. It like a glasses case, except Naoko was pretty sure she didn’t wear glasses and was also pretty sure you didn’t put them on to sleep. Masako was trying to get up, tiredly, and Naoko took her hands, the object momentarily held between all four of their grips.

Masako tried to fight at first, but relented. “Find a… spot for this?” She asked as if entrusting a sacred duty, her thumbs plying at the seam. “Just in case she comes back.”

Nodding, Naoko finished opening up the case, revealing a large pocket that was sewn into most of one side, with a very tiny pillow stuffed into it. The other side had a bunch of smaller pockets of varied intentional shapes. The strange swell of warmth Naoko felt was enough to make her want to put a hand to her heart, and she was picking up a very similar emotion from Mothra.

Naoko found spot on a farther-away dresser, behind a stand-up photo frame with a miniature city mural, to set up the tiny handcrafted makeshift bedspace. She and Mothra were both pretty sure Belvera wasn’t going within a mile of it on principle, but if anyone could get a softer side out of her, maybe it was Masako.

There was a soft knock on the door just as Naoko made it back to the edge of the bed. “Come in,” she replied, just loud enough to be heard, and settled into the space Masako had left for her on her side. The door gently opened and closed, the lights dimmed, and the apologetically nervous pair of Lucy and Kristina tiptoed quietly around to start into the bed from the other end.

And it wasn’t weird.

Just… unfamiliar. Except it shouldn’t really have been? Was it only weird because she knew for a fact everyone involved liked other girls in a more than platonic way? Or just because she wasn’t really encouraged to still seek this kind of comfort as an adult, when she should really be out there finding it’s lifelong torment devil’s deal replacement somewhere else? Well, fuck it, because just thinking about that made her need this even more.

YOU’RE GETTING BETTER AT SWEARING, I’M PROUD OF YOU!

You are not at all like I thought God would be.

LOWERCASE G.

How can you even tell?

Naoko rolled her eyes, then shook her head in a quick, mortified apology to Lucy, whose friendly and reassuring gaze had met hers as they pulled up the bedsheets from either end to cover the four of them. It got quiet, and soothing like night, but Masako still looked tense – brought to tears now that didn’t seem all bad, but still significantly influenced by bad. She was leaning protectively into Kristina who was on her shoulder, the pair curled up as if to look through the miles and miles of solid rock up at the stars. Facing upwards enough Naoko could watch the glisten on Masako’s cheek and see the angry-terrified shiver of tightly-closed eyes.

You’re like this with so many people, aren’t you? Naoko asked in her thoughts, to the one she was looking at and who couldn’t answer. So why don’t you already have someone like me?

Naoko wanted… a lot of things with Masako, and at Mothra’s hovering insistence she listed them to herself: to feel safe, to feel wanted, to have some kind of equal distribution of leaning-on so she didn’t feel pitied and Masako didn’t feel burdened, to have… some kind of physical relationship that included touching and sharing space with fewer boundaries and… well, she wasn’t picky on the details of the lovemaking as far as she knew, as long as it was reasonable and not too intimidating. But more importantly she wanted to see Masako smile again, wanted there to be some positive nature to what they built together, to share the bright and happy, treasured moments she’d longed for ever since she’d first felt the freedom of knowing herself, and… well, now she was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen for a long time.

SHE WILL SAVE HER PEOPLE, OR SHE WILL BURN ALL CIVILIZATION TO ASH AND BATHE IN THE CINDERS, BUT UNTIL SHE HAS DONE ONE OR THE OTHER, SHE WILL NEVER KNOW PEACE.

The frown and sinking heart she’d held for Masako turned curious, and yet even more fearful at Mothra’s solemn tone. How do you know that?

BECAUSE BATTRA IS THE SAME.

Mothra paused a moment, but Naoko knew there was more. Knew there was a lot more…

MASAKO HAS REASONED WELL THAT OUR RANGERS ALL BEAR CERTAIN… SIMILARITIES TO US, FOR OUR MINDS WOULD BE TOO INCOMPATIBLE OTHERWISE, BUT I DO NOT BELIEVE SHE UNDERSTANDS THE TRUTH OF WHAT BINDS HER AND BATTRA SO STRONGLY.

Naoko hitched a small breath, eyes held steady on Masako’s vulnerable figure as if they could protect her just like that, from whatever was about to be learned without her knowing.

…What do you mean?

THEY WERE BOTH BORN IN WAR.

Naoko felt a door appear in her mind, one she had to open herself. When she did, she saw it – lakes that hissed and steamed like acid while dead fish floated to the top, lavalike flows of industrial sludge that made deserts of rotted stalks and skeletons, waves that flooded coastal villages and forests and swept away fleeing people and animals alike, the sky dark and tinted red, a machine sending pulses into the atmosphere…

BATTRA WAS BORN AMID CATACLYSM, THE EARTH ON THE VERGE OF DESTRUCTION AND HUMANS THE CAUSE. HE SAW YOUR PEOPLE AT THEIR VERY WORST, AND HAS NEVER STRAYED FROM THAT VIEW. HE BELIEVES THAT HARMONY BETWEEN HUMAN BEINGS AND THE EARTH IS IMPOSSIBLE, AND IN MUCH THE SAME WAY, MASAKO SEES THE HUMANS THAT THREATEN HER PEOPLE AS ENEMIES THAT COULD NEVER BE REASONED WITH. WHETHER SHE SEEKS IT OR NOT, IN HER HEART SHE DOES NOT TRULY BELIEVE PEACE IS POSSIBLE, OR THAT HER PEOPLE WILL EVER BE SAFE UNTIL THEY ARE THE ONLY HUMANS LEFT.

…But you still care? About Battra, I mean. After all this time, and knowing all that, you still want to make things right between you two?

I HAVE FORGIVEN BATTRA FOR MANY THINGS, AND THAT WAS MY OWN CHOICE. BUT WHEN MASAKO HURTS YOU, I WILL NOT ASK YOU TO DO THE SAME.

You say that like it’s inevitable…

I BELIEVE, PERHAPS, IT IS.

Why do you still try, then?

As if to really make Naoko feel worse about her question, and about trying to ignore the unsettled feeling in her stomach this conversation was giving her in general, Mothra went quiet. It was a while before she seemed to have figured out the right words.

BECAUSE IT HAS TAKEN ME TOO LONG TO REALIZE THAT THE EARTH… CREATED WHAT IT NEEDED. AND THAT WHAT IT NEEDED THEN, WAS BATTRA, WAS BATTRA’S VIOLENCE AND UNFORGIVING BRUTALITY. AND THAT I CONTRUBITED TO THOSE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MADE BATTRA NECESSARY, BY NOT INTERVENING SOON ENOUGH. I HAD GROWN FOND OF HUMANS, WATCHED THE SPECIES FROM ITS INFANCY AND THROUGH EVERY ACHIEVEMENT, AND I TRULY HAD HOPE THEY WOULD LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES IF I GAVE THEM MORE TIME, OR IF I FOUND SOME OTHER WAY TO REACH OUT TO THEM WITH PEACE.

Though she was noncorporeal at the moment, it was conveyed clearly to Naoko that Mothra was sadly shaking her head.

PERHAPS IT BEARS LITTLE THOUGHT THAT I AM IN PART RESPONSIBLE FOR BATTRA’S CREATION, AS THAT IS SAID AND DONE, BUT I DO FEEL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE WAY BATTRA IS. AFFECTED BY SUCH GRIEF AND DESPERATION THAT BECOMES RAGE…

Naoko looked over at Masako again, wondering if she should feel the same way. She certainly hadn’t lived for millions of years before Masako, nor had many opportunities to change things in the past, but she still felt… something, at the fact she’d had more or less what she’d consider a normal life up to this point. Masako was young enough they should be going to school together.

Maybe that was happening in some other world, where people actually treated each other and the planet better, after so many monsters teaching them lessons and so many times saying they were going to start. Maybe one where the two of them, the whole teams even, didn’t have to be rangers, or even one where they did, and still the most stressful thing that happened on off-days was training against holo-Xiliens in the caverns under the Gotengo.

I want to help her, Naoko decided. I know it will be difficult.

ARE YOU SURE?

Naoko nodded into the darkness. Yes.

THEN… EVEN AFTER MOLL AND LORA ARE SAFE, AFTER WE HAVE COMPLETED THIS MISSION, WE MUST FIND A WAY TO CONTINUE WORKING ALONGSIDE MASAKO AND BATTRA.

Mothra’s sense of urgency gave Naoko pause. Why?

BECAUSE THERE WAS ONCE A TIME WHEN BATTRA WAS WHAT THE EARTH NEEDED, AND FROM ALL THAT I HAVE SEEN OF WHAT HAS BECOME OF YOUR WORLD, I FEAR THAT WE NOW APPROACH THAT TIME ONCE AGAIN, IF IT HAS NOT ALREADY ARRIVED. WE ARE WITNESSING THE BEGINNING OF A BATTLE FOR THE EARTH. IF MASAKO AND BATTRA FIGHT ALONE, MANY WILL DIE, BUT IF WE OPPOSE THEM, ALL WILL DIE REGARDLESS. THERE IS NO LONGER A VIABLE SOLUTION WITHOUT VIOLENCE AND DEATH, BUT PERHAPS THERE IS ONE WITH LESS.

You mean… we help them?

IF NOTHING ELSE, WE MAY BE ABLE TO INFLUENCE THEM BOTH AGAINST UNNEEDED DEATH. THEIR HATRED RUNS DEEP, BUT I KNOW BATTRA, AND I STILL BELIEVE HIS CORE DEVOTION IS TO HIS REASONS FOR HATRED, AND NOT TO THE HATRED ITSELF.

Naoko didn’t doubt for a second Masako was the same way, but it still seemed like a lot to ask, or maybe it wasn’t her place to ask at all. But she still knew she had to try, maybe just for the sake of sparing what was left of Masako’s soul.

She was also already going behind her team’s back as it was, not that she felt, in the moment, like she wanted to let that stop her. Daisuke’s not going to be happy…

Mothra made a mental noise like nervous laughter.

GODZILLA CHANGES HIS MIND MORE OFTEN THAN I GO THROUGH MY LIFE CYCLE, BUT UNTIL HE DECIDES OTHERWISE ON HIS OWN, HE IS ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE TO REASON WITH. BUT IT MAY BE HELPFUL TO KNOW THAT WHEN HE LAST TURNED HIS BACK ON THE WORLD, IT WAS MYSELF AND RODAN WHO TRIED TO TALK SENSE INTO HIM, ADMITTEDLY TO SOMEWHAT MIXED RESULTS.

Naoko was pretty sure Battra would consider ‘mixed results’ a bit of an understatement.

It was only moments later that the true message hit her, and she frowned uneasily. I mean… yes, we’ve been getting somewhere closer to being on better terms, but… you really think I could get Kiyo to back me up on this?

SHE IS AN OPTION. I WOULD NOT ASK SUCH A TASK OF YOU WITHOUT GIVING YOU AS MANY OF THOSE AS I CAN THINK OF.

Naoko shrugged. You’re Mothra. Everything we do is going to be important.

Feeling sleep approach, she settled in, noticing she was now the only one of the four not participating in the cuddle pile at the middle of the bed. She quietly moved close enough to rest her face against Masako’s neck, not caring that it was the scarred side. She meant to curl an arm up around Masako’s shoulder and bicep, but Masako absently lifted her elbow so Naoko could thread her arm underneath, hand finding the front of Masako’s collarbone as if to use it for leverage to press herself closer.

Chapter two, she thought to herself, with a determined smirk. The power of incredible violence…

Masako woke up several times that night, each time finding herself tangled in limbs that only held her closer when fury dropped on her newly-conscious mind like a weight and demanded she prepare to push them away. She tried to force herself to calm, at least on the outside, knowing every shake and tense could be felt by those around her.

Once, she woke to the soothing, ethereal glow of what looked like three tiny Fairy Mothras – one orange, one lime green, and one aqua blue – fluttering in a circle near the ceiling. She was too drowsy to really process that.

She dreamt of that centipede creature again, this time running with it through what she’d guessed were the hallways of a burning school, firebombs flying in through the windows to a chorus of angry shouts. Flames ate at the crude, multicolored crayon drawings on the walls, some of them depicting kaiju – no, the angles were too squared. Zords. She thought she spotted one or two with rangers or megazords, and right as she was pulled from the dream, Battra handed her that last, startling image she would have forgotten otherwise.

In it, she held in her clawed fingers a partially-singed crayon drawing of what was clearly meant to be herself in her ranger armor.

In pencil in the margin, the illustration was dated 2011.

But it was also a dream, so it didn’t need to make sense.

In the morning, or what counted as one down here, Masako made haste to get the day moving quickly. Naoko had spent the night pressed against her, a hand only half-modestly high on her upper chest, and at some point, a thumb had slipped underneath her nightdress to curl on bare skin. Masako wouldn’t get much done if she gave herself any time to think about that. It was distracting, but not in the way she needed or in one that would really help her troubled thoughts. Nothing about last night had been helpful.

Except knowing that at least three people she cared about were safe next to her, at least for that moment. That part helped a little.

The streets were now a hustle and bustle of movement – not a full military mobilization, but rather an active crowd of onlookers gathering to see off the smaller infiltration force. There was a chaotic, celebratory dance going on in the main square, visually based on the coordinated swarm movements of people in outfits of various colors. A chorus had assembled along the side of the main walking path to perform the Mothra song, which could be heard even above the crowds.

Masako paused in thought, and smirked.

What’s the Battra song like? Does it have a guitar solo? I bet it has a guitar solo.

When Battra chose not to dignify that with a response, Masako continued her search for any other rangers headed to the boarding zone. She was in full armor, and was going to be noticed eventually, but either hadn’t yet drawn attention or hadn’t yet drawn attention from anyone willing to approach an acolyte of Battra—oh, there it was. Two Nebulans in the crowd, distinguishable now only by their lack of active holoprojectors. One was extending a long, copper-brown arm to point her out for the other, who nodded quickly in exuberance.

Finally, Masako’s eyes found Shinji, who was at the corner of the main path talking animatedly to 106 with his arm slung around her shoulder—Oh, HELL no. He certainly wasn’t if Masako had anything to say about it. She clenched her claws and stomped heavily towards him.

“…and I’m a one hundred percent, certified bad-ass,” Shinji was boasting proudly, making an emphatic fist with his free hand. “Not to brag, but I am the best leader, and also the best fighter. Really just, all around the best ranger out of all of them, I’ve got hurricane winds, a nice uppercut—"

“Yeah, yeah, right, sure,” said Masako as she slid up to stand right at Shinji’s other side. “This is the guy I picked up and dropped from low orbit for fun. He couldn’t lead or fight his way out of a paper lantern, trust me.”

Shinji looked affronted for only half a second, then dropped both his shoulders dramatically. “Okay, sure, I have off days, but Masako here,” he emphasized sharply with a double-leveling-knifehand gesture towards her, “is the real certified badass. She’s got lightning and lasers at the same time, she can teleport, she’s a literal divine being, and she’s totally—”

…Wait, what? Where is this going…

“—the absolute best person you want on your side, no matter what. Mothra may have more shiny powers, but Battra’s the one who will move heaven and fucking Earth to tear your enemies limb from fucking limb, and have fun doing it. Everything’s going to be A-OK when she’s around.”

As if she could read Masako’s static processing error of an expression, 106 flashed a sympathetic, confused but amused grin her way.

Masako grabbed Shinji roughly by the arm, tugging him away from the conversation and down the first few meters of the designated ranger walkway that bleachers had been set up to either side of. As she watched the Muan girl slowly disappear from sight, she felt, not for the first time, like she was a bystander in someone else’s story.

“Okay, Shinji, first, I’m gonna need you to tell me what that was back there, and then I’m gonna need you to tell me what that was supposed to be back there.”

“I was just… tryn’a give her a little hope, y’know?”

“Yeah, I’m sure that was all.”

“I’m serious!” Shinji insisted, then went a little quiet, a little nervous, inclining his helmet as his posture slumped. “Look, I… I overheard you talking to Piranha last night, and I just… want to make it clear that we’ve got this covered. No reason to stress. She thinks I’m a godlike badass? She thinks you’re a godlike badass? It’s all the same to me.”

Suppressing her annoyance at the eavesdropping for the sake of the crowds, Masako just glared at him skeptically. “Really?”

“Yes, really!” Shinji threw up his hands, and when a number of people hollered rambunctiously, he turned the gesture into a fists-up power pose directed at his audience. “Aww, yeah! Who’s your hero? Not Godzilla, that’s for sure! It’s me, about to open a can o’ Titano-whoopass!”

Masako rolled her eyes, but kept her thoughts to herself as she and Shinji resumed their walk down adoration lane.

“Hey, uh…” Shinji spoke very quietly, right next to her, even more nervous than before. “So, about our conversation? You know… the dick conversation?”

She didn’t look, but by Masako’s luck, she assumed there must definitely have been someone she knew standing in earshot of that, even if she hadn’t seen them just yet. She put a palm solidly over her faceplate and let it slide down. “Great. I’d almost forgotten.”

“Well, Titano wanted to say, umm… you know what, I’ll tell you later.”

He’d hesitated, and ultimately went quiet, as the two of them crossed the end of the walkway and stepped into the boarding zone. A few Nebulan engineers were still making finishing touches on the departure craft, which was one of the two-module yellow hoverbuses only its yellow plating had been mostly replaced with teal-colored armor that reminded Masako of the invisible bridge. Piranha was already standing at attention for their arrival, flanked by Agent 44 and another, gold-armored agent, whose scale-suit had been adjusted for their wider, flatter body and extra pair of limbs and whose helmet was broader, with two mirrored crescent-shaped visors near either side of the more bulbous top of their head. Four stone serpent pistols were holstered to their chestpiece in two vertically-stacked chevrons, the whole holster structure like a sternum-style piece of armor over where their four upper limbs connected to their body.

The chorus had, by now, switched to Mahara Mosura, and Masako had assumed pretty much all of Mu was probably hyped up for the ranger squad on the Mothra angle, or even on Titanosaurus and Baragon as unexpected returning warriors. But now, remembering what 106 had said, she found herself wandering if all the Nebulans had volunteered for this specifically because of her.

The engineers tested something on the vehicle, causing it to suddenly cloak itself like the bridge had, turning completely invisible. That revealed Yuzo wandering around on the other side, and at the establishment of visor contact, he rushed around the front end of the re-appearing vehicle to join Masako and Shinji.

The Mothra larva zords were staying put, because they were pretty much the opposite of speed and silence, but the Baragon zord had dug itself away into the rock before they’d slept, and since more than several hours had passed and Yuzo could summon that one from underground, it would be the one zord the entire team had that would be ready in a pinch, should they need it.

The chanting suddenly gained more fervor, so Masako was expecting it when Naoko finally made her way down the path. She wasn’t expecting to see Lucy, Kristina, and Shawn following her. If they were there to see her off, that made sense. If not…

“Don’t bother arguing, I already tried,” Naoko told her, tiredly, with a hand up.

Masako wanted to still argue, but she couldn’t. The logic was sound. Lucy and Kristina trusted Masako and Naoko in a dangerous situation more than they trusted the Mu people in a safe one.

“Those are our people still missing,” Shawn began, pushing up his glasses, “and if you’re invading a secret lab, I’m guessing you’ll need to access a secured data log at some point.”

Masako wouldn’t have doubted Shawn could be following similar logic to the other two, but she nodded her head in begrudging acceptance of the excuse.

One of the gull-wing-style bay doors on the infiltration craft swung open, revealing most of the interior of the rear compartment. With little fanfare, the agents directed the rangers and their allies inside, and Masako had a thought.

Last chance. You in?

A telepathic grumble of the affirmative was the reply.

Masako held up a hand as the door began to close. “Waiting for one more.”

Everyone looked at her, even the rangers remaining confused until the small, winged shape of Garu-Garu darted through the half-closed entrance. The agents all took a step back, half-reaching for their weapons until Belvera stopped at a hover next to Masako’s shoulder.

“The… herald of the destroyer?” Piranha asked, slightly awed and at least a little frustrated.

By his posture and audible grunt, 44 took more open displeasure at the mistrust. But thankfully kept his mouth shut. The Nebulan agent didn’t seem perturbed one way or the other, a slight shrug gracing their upper pair of limbs.

“Let’s make one thing clear,” Belvera said, crossing her arms. “I don’t really care what happens to you people, and you don’t need to know why I’m here. But you have a deal with Masako, so I won’t fuck it up if you don’t. Now let’s get going so we can all get what we want.”

The descent cage was abandoned, the line cut, the hole to the surface sealed off with crystals. No bodies or signs of a struggle. Dozens of cyber-flies patrolled the area, because of course they did. McKay must’ve been buddy-buddy with Cameron Winter, or with someone else Winter had lent them out to.

Masako and the others were lined up along the cavern wall, hidden from view of the patrolling machines, with the cloaked vehicle parked some ways away and Naoko near the front of the lineup, ready to apply her own active camouflage to herself, Masako, and Piranha if necessary. They’d been tracking the flies’ patrol patterns, having watched them hover around in the same set paths at least three times now.

They were glad they’d stuck around for the fourth, when the flies suddenly made adjustments to avoid a new machine, several times larger than they were, as it made its own, much wider patrol loop along the ground. It was the same combination of blue and white metal with red eyes, only in the shape of a rhinoceros beetle, marching on six legs with electricity cackling between the tuning-fork prong at the end of its horn.

“That’s a new one,” Masako noted. “Cyber… beetle?”

“Cyberlon,” Piranha provided. “It is designed after a beast of burden that lived on the old Mu continent. They are the tanks in Antonio’s army.”

While Masako was debating her next move, she watched the ground in front of her crack and split, releasing a sudden vent of smoke that caused her to step back.

“What is it?” Naoko whispered urgently – looking at her, not the ground, as a creature from Masako’s very nightmares rose forth from the earth and stared back at her with its split-jawed face.

Literally. It was the reptile centipede thing.

“Holy fuck, it’s real.”

“What’s real?” Naoko looked back and forth between them. “Is there something there?”

To her credit, Masako caught on quickly, warily noting the centipede’s stillness and taking a slow turn to gauge each one of her companions. “No one else can see it?” she asked, pointing.

“See what?” Piranha half-demanded, deferent but clearly concerned.

“What… does it look like?” Kristina asked with a tense expression while Lucy made a stranger one.

Masako took another glance at the creature, which was still patiently lingering in place. Its muscles flexed a little, its long body vaguely resembling a chain of connected human upper torsos and the middle part of its head possessing an oddly smooth and reflective appearance above a jaw full of teeth. “…it’s a bit like the alien from Alien, crossed with the human centipede.”

Shinji raised a hand. “I, for one, am suddenly glad I don’t see it.”

“I can see it,” Belvera half-boasted with her tone, drifting into a hover beside Masako and glaring at the thing. “But only when I’m looking through your thoughts.”

“I can…” Lucy curled a lip in concentration. “…sort of see an outline? I mean—Argh!”

“Lucy!”

Clutching the sides of her head, Lucy fell with a cry of pain into Kristina’s arms, wincing but appearing overall just stunned. “I guess someone doesn’t want me seeing it…”

Masako stared fire back at the centipede, hoping the whole mental thing was a two-way street and this thing knew just how thin of ice it was standing on right now. It even backed away slightly, as if in apology. Then it sunk low to the floor, more sets of arms helping it out of the ground like a zombie digging itself up from a grave, while the already-extracted part of it crawled a loose curve around where the group was gathered against the cave wall.

Masako watched it move around, and the others watched her.

Naoko leaned in close. “Is it going somewhere?”

The centipede started to disappear into part of the wall they’d passed by already, shrouded in the darkness of a shadowy spot where the crystal growths didn’t quite illuminate. Masako walked over, catching where the trailing end slipped into a crevice and putting forward her forearm. The red-orange glow from her spikes revealed a split in the rock, just wide enough for a person.

“It’s showing us the way,” Masako said, then stepped in after it.

The rest of her spikes, Yuzo’s horn, and a general glow put off from Naoko’s entire set of armor combined to cast the narrow passage in a dim orange light, even when it widened out into a slightly wider, uphill cavern with water-carved stalactites, stalagmites, and stalacolumns or whatever. The calmness of the others suggested they probably thought the vision had disappeared, but Masako could still see the multi-split end of its tail dragging along the ground just at the edge of the collective glow’s aura. Further up, her gaze started falling upon more of the same creature hanging upside-down from the cave ceiling, causing the tension to rise again.

Especially when she stepped a little to the side to avoid running into one, and suddenly quite a few of her companions were having some doubts.

“Are you certain about this?” Piranha toed the line between mistrustful in context and skeptical of the context.

“They don’t mean us any harm,” Masako assured.

“Then why do they look like that?” Shinji countered, probably imagining something much worse than reality.

“Because it’s a test,” answered Masako, just as she turned to find one of the centipedes reared up to near her height and staring right at her. “To see if I’ll react with violence anyways.”

The centipede parted its jaws, expelling the decayed upper half of a human skull attached to a long, cable-like tongue that held it lingering in the air. Several smaller centipedes of similar appearance crawled in and out of the skull’s orifices.

Masako cradled the skull like the face of a lover, feeling nothing but empty air on the border of the illusion. “Scarecrows, nothing more.” As the thing confusedly retracted the skull and tongue, she mimed patting it gently on the top of its centipede head as she passed by. “And these aren’t the kinds of things that scare me.”

Belvera was on the edge of her thoughts.

My sisters wouldn’t… do this. Communicate like this. Unless…

Unless something very bad happened.

We don’t know that it’s them, or that it’s just them.

Naoko was likewise walking close by, the orange glow on her armor helpfully resolving more detail in the path ahead of them. There must have been a similar concern on her lips, but she didn’t voice it, giving a simple nod that Masako wasn’t sure she understood.

Eventually, there was another tiny crevice that a few of them had to filter through single-file. Masako was first, followed by Naoko, then the three agents. At the sight of a clearly artificial, metal wall that looked to have been shoved against carved-out cavern stone with little clearance between, Piranha signaled a stop. Behind her, Agent 72 put up both their left hands, stopping the others before gesturing the rest backward.

Masako did as directed, and watched as 72 pulled out four small devices, one in each hand – disc shapes the same shade of gold as their armor, each with four adhesion claws spaced around the edges, by which they attached to the metal wall as 72 placed them strategically. 72 backed up, holding the small tube of a detonator in their lower-right hand, and thumbed the button, causing four narrow, targeted explosions that cut a makeshift doorway in the metal.

Light erupted through the new opening as the panel fell away, revealing a plain metal environment consistent with the idea of a laboratory. It was more-or-less sterile and spartan, but with hints of luxury in the cushioned bench and rounded-off, smoothed plates adorning the interface of a monitoring station.

Those were the only two things in this room, in fact, with the exception of a large window on the opposite wall from the one the group was now entering through. The room had a slight curve to it, and through the glass, it was apparent the rest of the facility was much the same, rounding all the way to the opposite side of a large open cavern beyond and forming a thin ring high on the rock wall. Masako and just about everyone else walked toward the window and looked down.

The floor of the cavern-under-observation was loosely a circle, lit from above by the brightness filtering out the windows and what looked to be external down-angled floodlights fixed around the base of the ring. The floor was populated by crystals, but different types than in the rest of the tunnel system – here, there were only single, angular spires of varied colors, as well as circular-base arrangements of many smooth, clouded-white crystals that were folded against one another to form enclosed cone-shapes.

There were four of the single spires – one a deep orange with brighter orange clouds of energy intermittently rising up its height like fire, one a dark blue-purple that pulsed with shockwaves and sparkles of magenta light, one a nearly glasslike yellow that softly emitted slow and foggy wisps that resembled branching lightning, and one a deep, oceanlike blue that cast a shadowy aura like light dispersing underwater. Each of the spires had a wider base and an hourglass twist in the middle, as if the formation had been built out of smaller crystals emerging from one another like steps on a spiral staircase, but the final crystal was larger and flared broader than the others, forming a definitive point at the top.

The cone structures were arranged to surround the spires, all closed and inert and connected to them by thin, wavelength-like strands of energy, in the color of said spire in a way that indicated they might be receiving energy from them.

All except for two craters that must have formerly been cone structures, the crystals splayed out like the petals of open flowers with many of them broken off and lying in pieces on the ground. One of these craters was placed where it must have formerly been connected to the purple spire, the other in the vicinity of the orange.

“No guesses what came out of those,” Belvera snarked absently.

Masako caught a glimpse of a dark centipede tail, stark contrast in the brightness, slipping through a partition doorway on the left side of the room. She followed it, and the others followed her.

A few rooms down, they encountered a segment of the facility where the wall opposite the window was populated with computer server towers, wired to a small standing access terminal and a very large display screen that loomed over the equipment. Shawn set to work immediately, navigating the files and making a lot of hmm sounds.

“It appears the crystal experiments here have been largely deemed a failure,” Shawn announced, causing a breath of relief to pass over those who’d been glancing down at the unopened crystal cone structures. “Only two subjects reached the size and strength McKay was hoping for, the rest either didn’t meet his expectations or died during the infusion process.”

Masako caught a faint sob from Lucy, and a sympathetic frown as Kristina put an arm around her.

“There’s… a lot of other data on here,” Shawn continued, eyes through glasses flicking high and low on the terminal screen. “There’s a… it looks to be from a message board, about trying to recreate the work of Dr. Jonathan Insley.”

“Who?” Piranha inquired suddenly.

“No, Insley,” Shinji corrected, his voice snide. “He’s a… okay, actually I don’t know who he is, I just wanted to make that joke.”

“He was a rogue genetic scientist who tried to make his own kaiju,” Lucy said, stepping forward, “but all his work was destroyed, his project shut down. There was evidence he’d gotten close, but Zilla and HEAT made sure nothing complete survived to be replicated down the line.”

“It looks like someone’s trying to fill in the missing pieces,” Shawn observed. “There are a lot of references to M-base and Z-base.”

“M-base is the Muans’ genetic signature,” Belvera cut in. “Z-base is the Atlanteans’. I think your world is getting closer to figuring out where the kaiju actually come from.”

“And where they can get instructions on how to make more,” added Shawn. “I just found McKay’s private notes, it looks like that’s the reason he’s so intent on worming his way into the underground.”

“But that technology is lost!” Piranha exclaimed. “Not even Seatopia has it any longer! All of this, everything he has done…”

“I think he’s beginning to suspect that. Here he’s talking about contingencies in case Antonio is lying, just stalling for time, but there aren’t any more entries after that.”

“What else is on there?” Naoko prodded.

“ESP,” Shawn provided, switching to a different set of files. “The oldest dates back to 1994, from a G-Force initiative called Project T. It looks like that was another failure, but he kept trying. The crystal-infused subjects, both his successes and surviving failures, all react to Spacegodzilla’s telepathy like drones to a commanding intelligence. There’s also data here on tests with a secondary telepathic signal output, and the response of various endemic subsurface organisms, including the Centruroides tenebris we encountered.”

“What secondary signal?” Masako and Belvera asked at once. Naoko was a fraction of a second behind them, with different wording, and gave up halfway.

“He talks about… subjects.”

“Plural?” Naoko asked quicker this time. “Multiple subjects?”

“Yes.”

“Different tests for each, or all the same tests?” Masako added on.

“…Closer to the latter,” Shawn decided. “The subjects are being treated as one entity, despite there being two of them. He also calls them ‘the sisters.’”

“WHERE?” Belvera demanded, aloud at the same time it blared in Masako’s mind and by their reactions, presumably everyone else’s.

“There’s…” Shawn recovered from his shaking. “There’s a section that’s… about on the other end of the ring from us. There’s telepathic shielding in the design specs, and a lot of cables and conduits leading there…”

Masako had a sudden flash of panic, and reached out. “Wait!”

Belvera was near the other door, but turned around, glaring but seeming at least moderately struck by the emotion in Masako’s voice.

“Remember last time?” Masako gritted out through teeth to keep her voice steady. “Let’s not be hasty, okay? Let’s get all the facts first.”

“What about the Professor and the others?” Lucy added quietly.

Shawn went back to his search. “There don’t appear to be any holding cells in this facility… but, it’s a lab, not a headquarters. Maybe they were taken to Seatopia?”

“Antonio has gone to greater lengths before,” Piranha added. “He has an inordinate fondness for keeping captives close to use as leverage, regardless of ease in getting them there.”

Though backed up, it was still somewhat shaky logic, and a chill went through Lucy and Kristina. “Anything… else?” Lucy hoped.

“Well, there’s—” Shawn paused, then started tapping again, his actions causing the large monitor screen to activate. Displayed upon it was a jagged, yet observably exponential line graph that Masako only didn’t recognize immediately by virtue of the many other kinds of things one could graph that produced results that were very similar.

“Climate data?” Lucy scrutinized with narrowed, confused eyes.

“I thought rich people didn’t believe in that,” Shinji voiced ignorantly.

“They believe in it, they just don’t care,” Masako corrected.

Simplistically, at least.

Because as she stared at that angry red line, piecing together what had already been found here, a different line of thinking made itself manifest. Too many coincidences…

“That’s why he wants to make kaiju,” she found the words slipping from her lips.

“Huh?”

Naoko had stepped in close, as if personally beckoned by the near-whisper.

“He’s a ranger,” Masako continued. “He doesn’t have to worry about toxic fumes, carcinogenic contaminants, deadly solar radiation… even without his armor, those things would heal automatically. Perks of having the power of a kaiju, and he wants an army of the same. An army, so he can coast through the apocalypse and rule over the aftermath like a king.”

There was silence, mournful silence.

Except for Shinji.

“Okay, but wait… we don’t know for sure rangers are immortal, do we? We’re talking about climate change, global warming, right? Doesn’t this plan kind of fall apart if McKay doesn’t live that long?”

Shawn, Lucy, Kristina, and finally, Masako each gave him blank, sad stares. Shinji looked between them with dawning confusion.

“…What did I say?”

“We’re not…” Shawn debated how to broach this, gesturing absently up at the display. “We’re not talking about decades here. We’re looking at months, maybe one-to-two years at most. Even some disasters that are already ongoing. McKay doesn’t have long to wait at all. He has this display down here because he’s racing against the clock to secure guaranteed power, to carve the biggest piece for himself out of the coming age of violence and uncertainty.”

“What…”

Piranha sounded… alarmed, devastated, incredulous all at once.

“We have to… to warn your people!” She rushed toward the display, the terminal, unsure what to do with either but pleading at Shawn to do something. “Take this… all of this data, to the surface, now! They need to know what’s happening to their planet!”

No one moved.

Agent 44 had a disapproving glare implied in his posture. Agent 72 joined with Lucy, Kristina, and most of the rangers in having a dark, sympathetic, pitying one. Piranha turned on her feet, becoming even more alarmed, more stunned, at finding herself at the center of inaction.

“…What did I say?”

“None of this is… new information,” Shawn said slowly. “We have this, all of this, already. Practically anybody can pull it up on a cell phone with like… three clicks.”

“They just don’t care,” Masako said, again. “Or they do, but feel powerless to do anything about it. Or they’re sitting around hoping someone else will. Or they’re actively ignoring it to stay rich. Or they’re planning to profiteer off of it like slightly-less-ambitious McKays. Or they’ve been brainwashed into really not believing it. Or they just fucking enjoy the pain of anyone who does care and want to die laughing, take your pick.”

Naoko shifted closer to stand at her shoulder, facing Piranha. “What she means is that most people actually are powerless to do anything in a society largely controlled by the wealthy elite.”

“Powerless?” Masako crossed her arms. “Did we like, lose the schematics for the guillotine?”

“Ugh, forgive her, she has Battra’s sensibilities.” Naoko turned to glare. “Murder is bad, Masako.”

“That statistic is biased because currently only bad people have the guts to commit murders. Good people need to start stepping up. We live in a time when more billionaires die from their own stupidity than as premeditated, justified consequence of their reckless, irresponsible, or at worst, genocidal actions toward the planet and the people who live on it, and that needs to fucking turn around… or just magnify in scope as it is, I guess. I’m not picky.”

“I thought…” Piranha insisted, pleaded, then looked to both the other agents and let her head hang, dejectedly. “I thought there was hope, for the surface. To live together. For all our peoples…”

“They can’t be trusted with their own people,” Agent 44 huffed, his arms crossed. “How could we ever trust them with ours?”

“They aren’t to blame,” Agent 72 spoke, a rarity. “But they were always going to be their own end.”

“I mean, there’s…” Naoko insisted, semi-earnestly. “There’s hope…”

“There’s not,” Masako corrected.

Shinji walked closer and shakily raised a nervous hand. “So, getting back to that ESP thing, Titano wants to know if, uh…”

Garu-Garu dropped into flight just in front of Masako’s faceplate, an impatient and overall pissed expression on Belvera’s scornful face.

“…Fight! …Fight! …Fight!” a soft and encouraging voice urged on from ceiling speakers that had just crackled to life, a whispered chant slowly gaining in volume.

Everyone stopped, shaken by chills at the intrusion.

Masako gave the speakers an unimpressed glare.

“How tragic, that all my enemies have gathered in the same place to die together,” McKay continued to grandiosely mock through the intercom, giving Masako and probably at least three of the others some particularly annoying flashbacks.

The metal in the facility creaked, as a rumbling started all around, a burgeoning shake in the earth originating from far beneath their feet.

“Oh, did I say tragic? Sorry, I meant convenient.”

“Yeah,” Masako deadpanned, eyeing the room for anything to brace on. There wasn’t much. “The real tragedy’s that no matter how much money you and your supervillain friends have, you’re all still suck sharing the one personality.”

A crash from outside illuminated the source of the shaking, as a frosted silver crystal spike broke up through the ground at the center of the cavern testing area. It was pointed at the end, but more blunt than narrow, a clublike quartz-crystal shape at the end of what turned out to be a narrower, straight tower that had only vague segmentation. Some smaller, sharper, cyan-colored crystals made upward diagonals as secondary growths from the main stem, and with a crack of crystalline reshaping that mimicked hinging joints, the club end opened into five or six irregular, angled claws like the petals of a strange flower.

Hidden within the claws’ former grasp was a smaller iteration of the hexagonal quartz shape, a vibrantly blood-red gemstone that began to levitate above the crown of spikes now at the spire’s peak. Level with the window, it surged with white lightning, building energy.

In sync, Piranha and 44 hefted their stone serpent rifles over their shoulders, aiming them toward the window as they surged with not solid green, but a rainbow of colors gathering toward the weapons’ bared teeth. Briefly, a fluctuating horizontal rainbow bolt connected the two barrels, then gave way to an energy field of short yellow lines traveling quickly back and forth, a barrier between the room’s occupants and the attack being prepared from outside.

But when the crystal fired, it was a thin, solid white beam aimed below the window, carving into the stone foundation and dragging across to set off a series of explosions. Metal creaked even more loudly and the room tilted forward, causing the agents to stumble and the protective field to collapse. The threshold joints at either end of the room sparked and screeched as the occupied segment broke away from the ring and tumbled.

At first, it was slow enough that everyone managed to find footing on either the window itself or what had been the wall around it, with what may have been wiring or cables holding back a true fall as they snapped away one at a time. The three unarmored humans found themselves wrapped in Naoko’s Mothra wings as a stinger-spike wedged in near a corner, and 44 got a similar idea, extending his collapsible, molten-ended trident on a diagonal to embed both ends into metal.

Masako hooked in her elbow spikes, and saw only Shinji staying in place near the middle, running with the turn of the chamber and formulating a plan with thrown glances. With purpose, he leapt toward the wall monitor when the room was fully upside down, rode the cracked, boot-imprinted screen through a quarter-turn that made it become the floor, then kicked off, leaping with such force that the sharp crest on his helmet shattered the window. High in the air above, he summoned his staff, and started twirling it rapidly.

Vision cut out as the chamber rolled almost a half turn further in freefall, but then something pushed back from below, leveling it out and beginning to spin it horizontally from end to end. Through the broken window, Masako saw the tower, then the rock wall, then the tower and so on, about a dozen times as the chamber was lowered to the ground by Shinji’s wind funnel.

It was still a bit of a rough landing, knocking loose more shards of glass from the window frame. The room was facing the base of the tower, with the colored crystal spires and many of the cone-shaped cages in view. Shinji landed on the stone with a flourish, and stood guard just beyond the window with his double-ended spade posed for a fight.

There was more crackling, from apparent loudspeakers overlooking the whole test zone like it was a sports arena.

“You think you can stand up to me? You won’t even stand up to my failures. Hmm, let’s see…”

A nearby crystal cage, connected to the blue energy spire, started to part itself open and immediately began spilling silver, limb-covered things from the newly-formed gaps.

The cage had apparently been filled with them, and as they tumbled and crawled, it became obvious they were ants. Car-sized ants with pairs of scimitar-shaped mandibles, waving antennae, and a silver-gleaming coating of some type of crystalline armor, which covered their entire bodies and grew out into crystal spikes at only a few regular points on their thoraxes and abdomens.

“I call these things the Armor Ants – clever, huh? Could’ve been more useful, but Antonio was really attached to the robot army idea. So I guess they are just going to have to feast on you.”

While slow-moving individually, as a swarm they moved quickly, collectively buzzing with a repetitive birdlike chatter that pierced the air like constant screaming.

Piranha and 44 were firing, parallel cluster-streaks of fluorescent green already trying to deter the oncoming swarm. Direct hits seemed able to knock them back, but couldn’t break through the silver shell, and there were too many to hold back for long. And another crystal cage was opening – one that had been linked to the orange, flamelike spire.

Nothing emerged immediately from this one, and in fact, the crystals were allowed to fully open to the point they were flat with the ground. Inside was an unmoving, quadrupedal shisa statue, though this one had a stockier build with high and broad shoulders, a lowered head, and a sterner pose to its face which lacked a mane except on its lower jaw. Its face was plated in gold, along with bulky, layered shoulderpads and the edges of a wide groove down its back, while emerald green, Manda-like scales decorated most of its body, its front legs down to its feet, its rear legs down to its knees, and the top of its long, thin tail where they formed a single file line down and up the curve toward the cylindrical chamber at the end that must have served as a torchlight.

“That statue is stolen!” Piranha announced, still trying to deter the ants.

Masako watched the dark eye sockets behind the gold mask come alight with a red-orange, crystalline glow. “I think, now, it’s a little bit more than a statue…”

From just above the angled brows of the mask, the groove in the statue’s back ignited into a burning bonfire flame trench – stopping just at the base of the tail but presumably continuing on through the inside of it, as moments later, the torch at the end flared to life. Said torch continued producing flame and smoke as the statue began to wave the whole of the long tail back and forth like a whip, the rest of its formerly solid-stone body shifting and, in places, partially breaking as it came to life. The stone claws on all four feet shattered, replaced by red-orange crystalline claws growing out from the inside, and where there weren’t scales to hide it, the same color appeared through the new seams of movement. Four more geysers of flame erupted, from the sides of its neck and from its elbows, and the creature let loose an echoing, crystal-edged roar that rivaled the ants’ in haunting terror.

“Allow me to introduce Fire Lion. Real shame this one didn’t make the cut. Imagine the irony!”

Rather than engaging, Fire Lion prowled in waiting behind the Armor Ant swarm, walking a slow, curved path toward the right flank until its body became suddenly wreathed in its own fire and it disappeared as if burned away completely. It reappeared on the path toward the left flank, already walking the opposing curve as it was revealed from flickering fire, then performed the same trick a few more times in an emerging pattern.

Another cage, near the yellow spire at the far side of the testing area, opened to a fluttering of wings lifting their owner into the air. It was a cyber-fly, but several times larger than the others, the blue and white paint job having turned to lighter and darker shades of purple while the red eyes and yellow-green wings both had turned to solid, crystalline yellow. More yellow showed through frequent cracks in the metal plating, a result of the size increase, and the rear legs had lengthened compared to the forward ones. The stinger had been overtaken by a vast growth of yellow crystal, like a pineapple of short spikes, currently folded once under the rest of the tail that loomed parallel over it like a thin support brace.

“Lightning Bug, queen of the cyber-flies! Yeah, that… sounded better in my head…”

The Armor Ants were at the fallen chamber’s crash site, undeterred as a whole by either the agents’ rifles or the combined lightning from Masako and Naoko. Agent 72 had all four pistols out, aiming for antennae and leg joints, but the weaker blasts weren’t enough to dent the chrome finish. Shinji whacked a few with his spade before realizing the blade wasn’t cutting, and didn’t retreat fast enough to dodge an ant that lunged in from the side, encircling him at waist level with the hollow of its claw mandibles. He screamed as it lifted him in the air.

Agent Piranha one-armed her rifle and drew a molten scimitar, slicing off the nearest of the ant’s mandibles and sending a grateful Shinji scrambling back into cover. Cover that was bending and creaking and twisting as the ants swarmed up around it. Yuzo’s and 44’s heated multi-prong stabs had finally blocked the side openings with a few ant corpses, but light started to shine through from above, and several chains of ants pulled the roof apart and unfolded the section of building like it was the foil wrapper around a burrito.

The agents all nodded at one another to get in sync, and now all three sent rainbow surges through their ranged weapons. Lightning chained between both rifles and into a triangle whose weird third point was all four of 72’s pistols, then was replaced by a dome form of the streaking yellow barrier, containing their allies within it while smaller, but identical fields surrounded a few ants that were too close and slowly moved them backward despite the creatures' struggling.

At this, Fire Lion roared in tandem with a screech from Lightning Bug, the former beginning to leap towards the barrier while the latter flew high above. Fire Lion skidded to a stop nearby and curled its tail forward, discharging a few fire projectiles from the end, while Lightning Bug surged yellow lightning out into her wings and rained bolts down upon the barrier as she hovered over it.

“We can’t hold this!” Piranha screamed, as the barrier started to fail and 72 struggled to direct the repulsion bubbles with their pistols.

“Do something!” 44 demanded.

“Alright, rangers…” Shinji said with a self-reassuring nod, shaking off his bout of panic. “Let’s—”

The ground cracked in several places and shot up plumes of smoke, cutting off Shinji’s cry and even causing the ants to stumble. A roar like a deep, distorted or even whale-like version of Battra’s resounded from deeper below, and Masako watched the dark silhouettes of large, mandibled heads rise up like pillars on all sides.

More nightmare centipedes, except now they were large enough to rear up several stories tall.

They bellowed, and bared teeth, and swiped with barbed reptilian arms, and the other creatures retreated in fear. There was no fighting, because the centipedes still weren’t real, but as one lashed its head back and forth at the Armor Ants, another loomed darkly over Fire Lion, and yet another snapped upward at Lightning Bug… for the moment, they seemed to be real enough.

“What? What’s going on? What are you idiots afraid o—” McKay paused, then returned with a vile, guttural, sinister calm. “Oh.”

Sparks flew from the remaining curve of the construction above, cables running along the outside surfaces now surging to life with an apparent overload of electrical power.

“Oh, you BRATS want to play too?”

The power surge followed the lines around the ring, converging on an apparent junction about opposite the gap, and then—

There were screams – two of them, or… one? Two? She could hear and feel nothing else.

“Masako!”

Then there were more than two, because a couple people were calling out for her, in what she slowly recognized was the present, the immediate here and now.

MASAKO!

Masako! Seriously, wake the fuck up!

Oh, and two more inside her head. What was that, six? Seven?

As her vision returned, she saw the agents had retreated backward, a little toward the rock wall, and had formed a smaller barrier, this time with only themselves along with Lucy, Kristina, and Shawn inside. Shinji and Yuzo were outside of it, the former kicking up a whirlwind to try to dispel the ants while the latter ducked and weaved, spearing them through armor with his burning claws. The centipedes had vanished, nowhere to be found.

Masako heard a louder bird-chitter and turned back around, finding herself face to face with four Armor Ants. They walked in more-or-less synchronized steps, waving their heads back and forth in a manner that sent their antennae swinging about. Through the pained screaming that still haunted her, Masako charged and fired a pair of purple prism beams, but it only glanced and sparked off the fronts of the ants’ silver faces.

At the same time comprehending the power surges still being sent toward that junction, she angled her beams upward and farther to the side, diverting them up one wall until they’d severed the external cables. But she’d only managed to cut off a small section of the incomplete ring, the rest was still feeding power into the attack, and the ants were still marching toward—

A fierce battle scream caught her attention, and she looked above her in time to perceive Naoko, her hands held above her head in a joined fist as cyan-colored energy crackled over her forearms. She landed just at Masako’s side, slamming her fists into the ground, and a half-second later, four columns of cyan light shot up like geysers from below the Armor Ants, flipping them high into the air. Landing on their backs, they struggled, helplessly waving their limbs.

“Masako!” Naoko demanded. “What are you doing?”

“Can’t you HEAR them!?” Masako shot back, not realizing until she spoke how loud the words would be. “They’re here! They’re calling for help!”

Naoko stared blankly. “Who?”

Belvera hovered at her other side, expression grim but not shocked. It clicked.

“You can’t hear them,” Masako observed. “It’s… it’s just me. They’re calling for…”

Not Mothra.

Battra.

The electricity was still being rerouted, and the voices were still screaming. Fire Lion flickered into being on the edge of view. Lightning Bug made strafing attacks to rain down electrical pulses from her wings. The Armor Ants crawled over their upturned comrades. The gemstone at the top of the crystal tower surged for another beam strike, and the cyan secondary growths on its stem fired off like missiles, twirling slow paths through the air as they determined their targets.

Masako felt a hand on her shoulder. Steadying. Naoko’s.

“I’ll protect them,” Naoko stated firmly, with a nod. “You do what you have to. Take Leo.”

She understood the first two parts, but… “Who’s Leo?”

Naoko raised her other hand, palm-up, and motes of green light condensed in the air above, forming into one of the small Fairy Mothras that Masako had sworn she had seen last night. It was lime green, with Mothra Leo’s wing patterns, but then it glowed and shifted, taking on an even smaller form that might have been indistinguishable from a regular Luna moth aside from the obvious lime-colored luminescence in its wings.

The tiny moth hovered a moment over Naoko’s hand, then darted forward, head-on into the approaching onslaught of Armor Ants. Ducking and weaving between many legs, it flew a zig-zagging line underneath several of the chromed insects, each of which was subsequently caught in another one of those geyser-like energy columns that flipped it aside.

It was clearing a path, and Masako ran behind, even having to jump through her energy state several times to keep up. With the horde concentrating on the others, it wasn’t long before Masako was clear of them altogether, darting across flat stony terrain with the occasional cone-shaped crystal structure to navigate around.

The cyan crystal missiles in the air redirected to follow, but Leo took her in a weaving path through those as well, until she was in range to fire prism beams at the cable junction. With a slight split in aiming, she was able to sever the cables right at the connection points on either side of the ring segment, cutting off the flow of energy to whatever – whoever – was inside.

“I swear, the hoops you jump through to think you have hope,” McKay taunted. “To think that anything you do even matters. The end of the world is coming, and I just can’t wait.”

A broken screech revealed Lightning Bug was flying to intercept Masako, farther off to the left of the cavern. A flicker of flame followed by a roar heralded Fire Lion, running and leaping in parallel but on her right side.

Sometimes it’s not about the world, McKay. Sometimes it’s not about hope, or a future. Sometimes it’s just about the next five fucking minutes.

Leo diverted left, prompting Masako to veer out of the way of a series of flame volleys launched from Fire Lion’s tail. She lined up the junction segment of the facility above with a point on the carven floor's shallow curve up to the sheer rock face. She noted she was veering towards it at a diagonal from the effect area of the orange fire crystal on the right, placing that of the yellow electrical one farther away on her left with her goal about equidistant between both.

And someone’s…

Leap-stepping over some crystals lying flat, a few broken, as she traversed the crater edge of what she assumed was the volcano monster’s former cage, Masako dodged another volley of incoming yellow lightning from Lightning Bug’s wings.

Calling…

Fire Lion’s crystal claws tore up stone, its strides becoming more violent, its body cast aglow by approaching proximity to the orange crystal spire that had birthed it.

My…

Lightning Bug screeched and veered away to linger in the air above the electrical domain, her spiked crystal club unfolding from its insect-abdomen-like placement as her tail straightened out.

…Name.

Lightning Bug slung her tail club out on a partly-glowing cable, the slack spanning the distance to the ground and giving the weapon less than a meter’s clearance as it swung toward Masako like a wrecking ball. Sliding low underneath with an energy-jump at the last second, Masako appeared at a twist on her heel, watching as the club rounded a wide arc and ended up smashing a significant chunk off the peak of the yellow-colored spire instead. A surge of energy from the broken-away crystal pieces traveled up the retracting cable, forming a bright aura of yellow energy around Lightning Bug that sent off its own close-range field of hexagonal light patterns.

There was another crash as Fire Lion leapt and charged claws-first into the orange crystal, breaking away a deep groove from one side. A fiery aura was absorbed into the statue, an emberlike red-orange glow adhering like a wash of paint to Fire Lion’s body, brightest between scales and grooves in armor. Aiming its torchlike tail sidelong at Masako without breaking a stride as it hit the ground, Fire Lion emitted from the tip a concentrated, narrow red-orange heat beam that seemed to be fed by the power surge, the extra glow on its body already starting to diminish.

Masako leapt high as the beam scorched a path under her feet, then bolted back to hit the ground running when Lightning Bug flew in low, the electricity radiating from her body sending a barrage of bolts in every direction. Fire Lion disappeared in a flicker of flame and appeared directly on the path in front of Masako, torch tail lashing forward to unleash the rest of the heat beam in a horizontal sweep that forced Masako back up into the air, her wings spread.

A screech announced Lightning Bug was divebombing in from the right, the surge field around her quickly gaining brightness.

Masako sped toward Fire Lion, tilting her wingspan left and right to dodge a volley of standard flame attacks. When Lightning Bug was only meters away, unleashing the rest of her power surge as an electrical shockwave, Masako teleported ahead to place herself behind Fire Lion, shadowed away from the blast. She hadn’t counted on Fire Lion then also teleporting out of the way, allowing at least some of the shockwave’s brunt to slam into her from behind, but as she stumbled and rolled on the ground she was only being pushed further toward her goal.

With little time to recover, she watched as Leo swooped in and made the arc from the cavern floor up to the sheer cliff face, moments before she would arrive there herself. Cyan energy surged in a faint trace-circle in a spot on the ground, and in understanding, Masako stumbled onto that spot and braced her feet, looking straight up.

The powerful geyser of light propelled her upward, giving her the momentum to run vertically up the cliff face while she regained her senses and strength. High above, Lightning Bug hovered into view, then dropped into a vertical, buzzing nosedive on direct intercept with Masako’s ascent. Faint lime-green rings rose around Masako from an angle below and behind her, some kind of reverse tractor force Leo was exerting to sustain her momentum.

Masako eyed up Lightning Bug’s back, where her four cyber-fly wings narrowed to thin lengths at the base, mounting joints all close together. She tried to judge their spacing…

Electric volts surged down those wings, an attack readying. With a moment’s forewarning, Lightning Bug started to angle herself in the air, wings slowing her fall as their downward surfaces were moved into firing position.

In a bolt of red, Masako was braced against the crystal-animated machine’s carapace, feet planted between rows of spines and her forearm spikes digging into the metal around the wing mounting joints. With a little guesswork and a furious tear through plating, she’d managed to get one spike hooked around each joint at the weakest spot, and with all her strength, she heaved with her arms and pushed off with her legs.

Everything gave all at once, and as Masako leapt upward, she watched Lightning Bug enter freefall just below, all four detached wings twirling independently on their own axes like shards of a broken window following the brick.

Masako twirled in the air herself and, with a sharp heel kick, broke the actual window of the observation ring’s junction segment. Stopping on the floor at an angle, she caught a glimpse of the crystal tower, now surrounded on a few sides by protective, glacier-like walls of ice blue crystals grown together. In a reverse firework of orange moths, Naoko appeared standing atop one, crossing her arms and unleashing a flurry of Aqua Mothra X-blasts that actually managed to create cracks in the tower’s stem. The floating red crystal’s beam lashed across the space she’d been standing, but Naoko simply appeared in the air on the other side.

Turning to face the far wall of the room, Masako spied the device the cut cables had fed into, a partial capsule shielded by retractable plating. She ran towards it, eyes fixed on one goal, but her peripheral vision caught when the light of the room changed, suddenly brighter and darker all at once and cast in warmer, fiery tones.

Blocking the ceiling lights as it flickered into being directly above her, Fire Lion reflected on the floor and walls, mid-pounce with right paw drawn up to strike directly at the containment pod. With a split second to spare, Masako teleported herself to intervene, materializing only for her heels to dig deep into the buckling floor panels, hands clinging to either side of Fire Lion’s palm and shaking as her arms strained under the pressure.

Fire Lion’s gold-plated face was impassive, but its crystal eyes beneath were fierce. Sharp crystal claws taunted, just barely held back from the range where one flick of a finger could slice open her ranger faceplate. The crystal thing inside the statue, or that was the statue now, was waiting for her strength to give out.

The twin voices inside the pod, inside her head, were begging her to fight.

Purple light flickered over her lenses, and prism beams struck the middle of Fire Lion’s palm, burning against the stone. Masako screamed as she fired, feeling Battra with her, as if they’d reached another tier of synchrony. Her mind flashed with fire, with the image of that crayon drawing from her dream, with the planet Earth half-scorched and herself standing, fists clenched, against the ashes. There was a brightness that made shadows grow long, a shatter that sent Fire Lion recoiling, a stumble on three legs as the creature processed that its fourth foot had been broken down to the heel, including the stumps of what had been akin to crystalline bones running through to the claws.

Leo fluttered above a recovering Masako, sending a small zap of cyan lightning down toward the floor at Fire Lion’s feet.

The first energy geyser struck the lion right in the chin, snapping its head back. The second hit its chest, bringing it up to hind paws, and the third lifted it awkwardly off the ground by its mid-abdomen. Bringing energy to her lenses, hands, and wings, Masako delivered her full complement of beams and lightning, blasting Fire Lion back toward the window while at the same time, Leo contributed a forceful barrage of green rings that provided the final push in successfully sending the statue falling back into the pit below.

Masako turned and latched onto the metal plating of the containment pod, digging her claws in and tearing one large panel free. An interior layer of translucent, dark rose-colored mineral shielding shattered into small fragments that spilled out, the breakage continuing as Masako ripped away the remaining panels.

Inside, bound to a metal framework and wired into the severely damaged electronics, were two human girls, facing apart with their eyes hidden by the visors of silver helmets that must have been part of some kind of neural interface. The helmets were pouring out smoke, both girls’ heads slumped over with blood trickling down their cheeks and from the corners of their lips.

For just a moment, Masako feared the worst, but she could still feel their mental presence brushing against hers. She hesitated, with clawed hands hovering near the girls’ bare and bound wrists, about to dismiss her armor but now getting the distinct sense it was her armored appearance that gave the two of them some strange sense of safety.

Carefully, and with mental prodding, she tore through the bindings on their wrists, then ankles, then the ones around their midsections. They were dressed in plain, sterile, light blue shortsleeves and jeans of almost matching shades, and both their dark hair fell in short, face-framing cuts similar to Lucy’s, though currently less neat as a result of the electric shock. Removing the first of the two helmets, careful of sparks and of the red wires that fed upward into the machinery, Masako was no closer to glimpsing that girl’s eyes, as in the lighting and at the slumped angle, her defined brow hid them in shadow.

They’re not… I don’t think they can move…

Masako removed the other helmet, slightly startled to find the same exact face beneath it. The two were identical. One weakened hand curled around Masako’s wrist, and faintly squeezed.

Battra? Can you—

She was shocked by the speed at which she felt healing energy running through her palms. She had been desperate, expecting refusal. Now, she supposed she should have at least expected reluctance.

…Okay, what gives?

BATTRA LIKES THEM.

She almost lost her grip on both the girls’ hands—and her footing on the flat ground, for that matter. You… you do realize these are humans, right?

An explosion from outside brought her back into the moment, at the same time the girls shifted towards her, having regained enough mobility to step into her arms, lean against her for support, and bury their heads in her shoulders.

As more sparks flew, a nearby impact of something shaking the room toward collapse, Masako spread her wings and used them to bundle all three of them together before letting the red lighting pull them fast backward out into open air.

Twirling as she momentarily hovered, she watched as the crystal tower, broken from its base, careened toward the ground, the floating crystal sending out one last energy beam that cut a swath up into the cavern ceiling.

Masako made another jump, then glided to the ground, the two girls hiding in her arms as she brought them to a landing in the middle of the group of allies. Naoko appeared nearby at the same time, hand out to catch Leo as it turned itself back into energy and was absorbed into her arm. She then looked immediately upward, as rocks started to fall.

Fire Lion, pointedly growing a new, entirely crystal paw to replace the broken one, charged at them, backed up momentarily by a wingless Lightning Bug, running bipedal on her digitigrade hind legs. Both outpaced the scattered, slow Armor Ants in evading the beginnings of the ceiling collapse, but eventually a larger rock managed to pin Lightning Bug to the cavern floor.

There was little time to celebrate, as the unstable, crumbling area of the ceiling was expanding in scope, soon to fall upon the entirety of the pit. The group had made it to the cavern’s actual intended exit, but now had to contend with the cyber-flies and cyberlon they’d managed to evade on the way in, the robots forming a defensive line that it was taking precious time to break through.

Agent 72 ducked and rolled to a crouched stance in front of Masako, just in time to put up their pistols and form a linear barrier alongside Agent 44. The cyberlon had opened its carapace into four pop-up armored petals, revealing three sixteen-barreled box missile launchers on articulated machine limbs that began launching napalm bombs on high arcs in their direction. Several bombs detonated against the barrier, flame streaking down it and pooling at the base, while others surrounded the group with miniature bonfires. Yuzo leapt into the ground, burrowed underneath the barrier, and surfaced near one of the cyberlon’s six feet, swiping his claws through the leg before proceeding to gut the machine’s underside as quickly as he could before the cyber-flies turned their shock stingers his way.

Noticing Masako had her arms full, Naoko took to the air and chained orange lightning through the cyber-flies from above. 72 holstered one pistol and retrieved another detonator-like device, only this one seemed to have no effect for several long seconds until the remote-controlled hoverbus decloaked as it sped in through the cavern entrance just above the destroyed robots. Piranha was quick to usher everyone towards the opening bay doors right as the vehicle landed.

It was then Masako caught sight of Fire Lion making one last run for the transport, tearing up the ground with claws eager to sink into flesh. In moments, fire spread from the statue’s mane to cover its entire silhouette, and Fire Lion once again vani—

Shinji made a fast swipe with the fan end of his spade, sending out a built-up gust of wind that struck Fire Lion mid-teleport. Not only was the fiery aura blown out like a candle, but the crystal-animated statue was suddenly bereft of both its burning mane and its tail flame, skidding to a confused stop on the cavern floor. It didn’t have long to be confused, as a massive boulder descended moments later and crushed it.

“Happy birthday, motherfucker!” Shinji shouted with glee, making a thrown-fist gesture of pwnage.

A landslide of collapsed rock formed in place of the secret laboratory’s cavern entrance, a few small boulders still bouncing and rolling off the slope as the Muan hoverbus reactivated its cloak and sped away into the underground cave system.

It was quiet, with a noticeably uneven distribution of tension. Masako was pretty sure Agent 44, maybe even Piranha, would soon demand an explanation on the subject of the two additional passengers, but the latter agent at least had the courtesy to provide a pair of vibrant purple emergency blankets from the vehicle’s supplies.

Battra’s healing hadn’t cleared away the blood on the twin girls’ faces, nor had it done anything to resolve their obvious signs of distress, and distrust.

“Their names are Mallory and Minette,” Belvera announced, having been lingering near the two strangers for some time despite the difficulty their presence must have represented to her. “They’re an ESP hivemind.”

Masako looked between the two identical faces just peeking out of huddled blanket cocoons. A frown tilted at her lip. “Do you… know who’s who?”

Belvera scoffed. “At this point, I don’t think even they know who’s who.”

A hush passed over the transport. “W-what do you mean?” The comment came from Shinji, of all places. “How does that work?”

Any sense of malice or confidence faded from the Elias’s sobering expression. “Overreliance on telepathic communication. When you talk too much just in your thoughts, they can get mixed up a little. Something sorta like it happened with my sisters, every once in a while they’d start talking at the same time, even dressing alike. It was cute, not a big deal, but these two… I don’t think they’ve ever spoken to another person out loud before, at all. I’m not sure they can.”

“Is this… permanent?” Naoko asked.

“How much does it matter?” Masako semi-quietly added on, still attentive toward Belvera.

“No clue,” Belvera answered with a miniscule shrug, looking down at the two. “Their collective head is a pretty messed-up place right now.”

Masako noted Agent 44 making a pointed step. The interrogation was incoming either way, and so, careful of the transport’s movements, she placed herself in front of Mallory and Minette to block the others as much from view as she could.

“You were controlling the scorpions? Maybe other creatures in these caves. You were… the ones he was testing?”

The two girls glanced at each other briefly, then turned to her and nodded.

“How did you end up down here?”

That made them flinch, and Masako felt a sting of guilt. One of them hesitantly looked at Belvera, who spent a moment concentrating intently, then explained.

“They were going to the ESP school in Paris when it was burned down by a hate mob in 2011, probably presumed dead along with everyone else. It looks like the attack was really incited as a cover for black market weapons dealers to swoop in at the last minute. They’ve been passed around for a little over a decade, changing hands until they wound up with McKay.”

Idly, Masako took in the reactions behind her, ranging from gasps to even quieter silence. In the middle of her own, her eyes widened beneath her lenses. “The dream, you… you knew about me, back then, before the rangers were even a thing? You saw the future?”

“…What dream?” Naoko asked with a strange note of suspicion.

Mallory and Minette looked up, their eyes no longer in shadow, now taken over by a solid white glow – one that didn’t seem to cast outward light, yet energized the space from eyelid to eyelid.

“Whoa…” Shinji voiced slightly above a whisper, probably peeking around from somewhere. “Can they… can they do different colors?”

Masako ignored him. “So, the centipedes. Even the one before… you’ve been calling me?” Two hesitant nods – a caveat somewhere. “Ever since… the tower?” Affirmative. “You sensed me there, that’s when they started, so… you were at the tower?”

They nodded, and there was something shaky in it. Masako pieced it together, and felt her heart sink as she sighed a little.

“He used you to lure me there. Us there.” She gestured to Naoko, and Belvera. “Moll and Lora’s telepathic call, you… mimicked it? He never had them at all?”

The slowest nod. Belvera turned away in the air, then quickly darted off to somewhere out of sight.

Guess yes-no questions from now on…

“Some of our friends were captured here. Were they taken to Seatopia?”

They considered that for a moment, then warily nodded. The gasps of relief were probably Lucy’s, Kristina’s, and Shawn’s.

“Now. Do you…” Masako caught her breath, and made a few small nods of reassurance. “Do you have somewhere to go? Somewhere I can take you? Home?”

Mallory and Minette shook their heads.

Masako nodded again, firmly. “You do now.”

The moment was ruined a little by Shinji saying the same exact thing, at the same exact time. Masako nearly snapped her head around, at least three different biting remarks on her tongue, but she abandoned the exchange with an eye roll and a faint hiss. Instead, she looked between Mallory and Minette, unsure what to do with her hand but holding it in front of her with slow movements.

“I’m here. You have me now. Okay?”

The gentle, vulnerable words had an effect. The two still looked unsure, individually making worried glances at the others on the transport, but together they made one last nod, a tiny movement as if they were trying to hide it. They settled into rest, and their eyes retreated back into shadow, marked by a new narrowing of bitterness crossed with the trace of bleaker smiles.

Masako looked up to gauge how far they’d traveled, and they were some distance from the site of the lab already. But what caught her eye most was Naoko, who was holding still, staring at Masako with a stark posture to her helmet that… felt unnerving. Judging, or fearful?

IT IS NOT HER. IT IS MOTHRA.

…What does that—

Her thoughts froze as her eyes found again the windshield, outside of which part of the cavern wall ahead of the vehicle was crumbling away. A massive stone hand reached out, and then the shock of the crash sent her off her feet.

The hoverbus was spinning end-to-end, rocking as the cylinders tried to counterbalance the heavy slap from above. They couldn’t do both that and keep the ship aloft, and so sparks flew, the spinning bus screeching to a stop on the rocky floor of the faintly downward-sloping cave. Masako sat back up, found a view through a window, and saw the gigantic humanoid silhouette break itself free of the wall to loom in the glow of both the crystals and of itself.

“How did it see us?” Piranha demanded.

“Well, it doesn’t have eyes, so…” Kristina pointed out, “…probably the same way it sees anything.”

Agents 44 and 72 stood at either end of the opening bay door, weapons held at the ready even when standing against a kaiju. Masako hoped this one had a secret weakness, too, but by the two agents’ postures, she was starting to guess she wasn’t that lucky.

“Incredible,” Shawn analyzed, stepping out onto the cavern floor between the agents and merely adjusting his glasses while the giant took an earthshaking step closer. “It’s like the statue, and the cyber-fly. Crystals reacting with inorganic materials. An obsidian creature, created as part of an insidious plot to take over the underground. An… Insidian? No…”

He shook his head, rejecting that idea, and stared in awe at the looming giant.

“Obsidius.”

Settling to a stop a few hundred meters away, Obsidius half-drooled, half-belched out a stream of what Masako decided she was going to call lava because even though they were all still underground, it was outside Obsidius, and she figured that distinction was more important. The lava wasn’t close at all to the ship, but it slowly spread out along the floor of the cave, likely some of McKay’s theatric influence showing through. Coated in molten-orange rock that showed no signs of cooling, the cavern became lit like the bowels of hell itself.

“What’s… that over there?” Naoko spoke up, joining the large group that had begun standing on the ground outside for some reason. Everyone was easily accounted for, at least. All four rangers had now joined the three agents in a defensive grouping, Lucy and Kristina had moved up to either side of Shawn, and Mallory and Minette had tied the purple blankets around themselves like cloaks, lingering back near the ship with Belvera hovering nearby.

Naoko’s question was muddled by Obsidius’s decision to throw its magma-mouthed head back in an elephantine roar, bulky arms raising up to beat on its chest like an ape. But Masako saw what Naoko had well enough, a trickle of stone falling from part of the wall to Obsidius’s left – something else about to break through.

Krystalak? Please don’t be Krystalak. We’re screwed enough already.

The tips of gold, metal claws broke through as the seam began to split and crumble more overtly.

“Oh,” Naoko settled with relief, but wariness. “Little far away to summon your zord, Yuzo…”

“Umm…” Yuzo began slowly. “That isn’t me. I’m not doing that. Not Baragon.” He started quickly shaking his head.

Masako glared at the claws, ones that Obsidius had just turned toward in curious acknowledgement. The rock crumbled away further and a steel-grey snout forced its way through, metal teeth between gatorlike, mechanical jaws and a gold spike pointing upward from the tip of the nose.

“Oh,” Yuzo said matter-of-factly, shoulders dropping instantly as confusion was snuffed out like a flame. “Koji’s here.”

MA-A-A-AR-RO-O-ONKK!!!!!, the Anguirus zord screeched, planting its forepaws on either side of the channel it had dug before launching itself face-first at Obsidius. The rock creature made to easily bat the machine aside with a dense forearm, but Koji kicked off the rocky surface into a backflip, his zord skidding backwards down the tunnel on sparking feet.

Immediately, the upward-pointing, conical spikes on the zord’s back shot upward like gold rockets, scattering on different winding trajectories but all arcing back toward Obsidius. The monster’s cry sounded pained this time, and the cloud of dust and smoke that followed definitely contained a few small fragments of broken-off black stone.

But there wasn’t any time to process that, nor for Obsidius to recover, because Koji had merely used the chain of explosions as a smokescreen, his leaping zord’s bared teeth and outstretched claws shredding the dust cloud and crashing right into Obsidius’s unguarded upper torso.

Obsidius brought its arms up to throw the Anguirus zord overhead, but as it tumbled, the machine’s jaws clamped and locked around the middle spike on the back of Obsidius’s skull, determinedly hanging on and even forcing the rock creature’s gaze skyward while its four mechanical legs began scrabbling for purchase on the stone carapace.

While Obsidius stumbled about, trying to dislodge the stubborn machine digging chunks out of its backside, all of the Anguirus zord’s carapace missile tubes reloaded in sequence, more gold spikes replacing the fired ones. Turning perpendicular to the cave’s route, Obsidius finally managed to throw the hitchhiker off by rolling into a ball, sending the Anguirus zord right into the wall before backing up and rolling forward again to bash against the machine.

Koji brought up both left legs and kicked hard, managing to throw Obsidius back for long enough to roll his zord upright. He turned and lunged, planting and twisting on both front feet to spin the zord like a top and strike Obsidius with the sharp, multi-spiked point of Anguirus’s tail. The hit sent Obsidius’s ball form spinning around as well, the creature unfurling with a notable dizziness that left it vulnerable to another barrage of Anguirus missiles.

This time, in addition to chunks of broken rock, the barrage set off a few small geysers of magmatic blood, Obsidius retaliating by spraying a more concentrated lava blast from its maw. The Anguirus zord started galloping in a quarter-circle curve, keeping a slight lead over Obsidius’s sweeping lava beam, but suddenly diverted straight into the attack, powering through the molten rock in an aggressive leap. The zord emerged glowing, pouring off steam, its armor partially compromised, but a set of claws slashed right at Obsidius’s mouth, leaving a gash of broken rock from the right corner and down the side of the monster’s neck.

The Anguirus zord landed on its feet, stumbling, sparks shooting off from where parts of its armor were burned away to reveal hints of the gridlike understructure. Obsidius clutched a large hand to where molten rock was bleeding out of its neck, then turned around, readying its unoccupied arm. The Anguirus zord was already burrowing down, disappearing into a crater at the cavern floor and leaving only the steam pouring off its frame to drift back upward.

Obsidius scrambled for the crater, digging its sharp fingers into the rock on either side to widen the tunnel before quickly following the zord down. Only moments after Obsidius descended, an inverse crater rock was pushed up at about half the distance toward the downed hoverbus and closer to the right wall of the cave. The Anguirus zord’s claws and snout protruded again, followed by the rest as it clambered back up from below.

Unfortunately, Obsidius proved faster than the damaged zord, breaking free of the tunnel’s exit with a pair of large, reaching arms – one of which slammed down on the escaping Anguirus zord and pinned it in place. Three curved spikes raked up through the rock in front as Obsidius exerted force down to raise its head, lava still spilling out of the throat gash despite not really doing the same from the big open mouth that was there all the time.

Pinned under one hand with its mechanical frame beginning to buckle from the pressure, the Anguirus zord let out a desperate, screeching roar skyward, this one far more sustained and emphasized with a reverb that shook the whole cavern. There were faint traces of air distortion in a conical path emitting from the zord’s jaws, and high on the ceiling, where those jaws were currently aimed, webs of cracks began to form in the crystal spires protruding downward.

The breaks all occurred around the same time, broken crystal fragments including large chunks beginning to rain down upon Obsidius’s half-emerged body. The rock creature withdrew both arms to shield itself against the debris, which soon proved to be an unwise move as a now-more-mobile Anguirus zord redirected the sonic scream directly at its foe. It was subtle, but now there were even faint cracks forming along the surface of Obsidius’s rocky hide.

Obsidius threw a punch that dislocated the Anguirus zord’s jaw at the same time it broke away a significant part of its own hand. The monster planted both palms against the floor of the cavern, making to finally pull itself up out of the ground.

Before it got the chance, there was a rumble and, farther back in the cavern, another upward splitting of earth, the indicator line of something burrowing just below the surface. The line sped a fast path directly toward Obsidius, as if preparing an attack from behind, but disappeared, only to reappear as it started kicking up the ground in front of Obsidius and continued forward.

Across the moment in between, Obsidius had frozen still.

Yuzo shrugged. “I mean, it’s all the ground, right?”

The Baragon zord broke the surface in front of them, taking several dizzy, wavering steps up the incline it had created toward the open air of the cave. Its partially-melted body glowed and steamed, rivulets of molten rock still caught in its joints and crevices and continuing to burn away at the metal. When it shook its head triumphantly, both ears and the lower jaw melted off completely and went flying. The zord stalled mid-roar, and collapsed onto the cave floor.

Obsidius came back to its senses, shakily began again to lift itself, and once it had, cast down the confused gaze of its magma-mouth to observe, at the same time everyone else did, the immense hole that had been burrowed clean through its torso. Aside from a few loose streams of magma dripping down from the upper part to the lower part, there was now a wide open window in Obsidius, through which one could observe the rest of the cave behind it.

“Did you…” Piranha stepped forward, eyeing Yuzo urgently, yet impressed. “Did you kill it?”

Just when it seemed Obsidius was about to keel over dead, it threw its tilting motion into a downward scrape of its sharp claws into the cave wall. It repeated the motion, until it had created an opening to hurriedly force itself into, rock collapsing behind it as, from the sound of the distant rumbling and quaking, the obsidian kaiju continued its subterranean retreat.

In the calm, the hatch on top of the Anguirus zord’s head hissed open, and a grey-armored ranger with gold spikes leapt out, beginning a slow trudge across the terrain.

“Oh,” Naoko realized, suddenly nervous beside Masako. “Oh, shit.”

Masako felt strangely stricken by the same nerves. Anguirus was as good as a direct line to Godzilla, so any illusions of secrecy were about to be shattered. Her head was already spinning trying to compose an explanation, and she could tell Naoko was struggling with the same thing. It was, admittedly, the kind of reaction Belvera would’ve had a field day with if she were in a better mood.

Koji had made progress, passing the snout of the downed Baragon zord with a passing glance from his angled helmet visor. He was only a short sprint away from the gathering when the first voice spoke, and it wasn’t Masako’s or Naoko’s.

“Yo, Koji! You wouldn’t believe what I found out!”

Shinji stepped forward past the others, an undisguised sharpness to his tongue and combativeness in his movements. Masako shot him an urgent look that asked where is this going? but was ignored.

Koji stalled in place, helmet tilting with curiosity at the outburst.

“Seatopia… fucking deserved it!” Shinji spat, still with the air of a clenched smile. “And Antonio… is a warmongering, kidnapping, brainwashing bastard who teams up with other warmongering, kidnapping, brainwashing bastards to stomp all over everyone below them without batting an eye. And he was that way long before nuclear tests ever had anything to do with it, so guess what? Your best friend’s little tantrum? WAS FOR NOTHING!”

Koji clenched his fists, but dialed it back, taken strangely as he truly processed the words. “It wasn’t just Seatopia!” he snarled, with a voice even more scrappy and snippy than Shinji’s as he raised a pointing, accusing finger. “He did it for you!”

Shinji threw back his head in laughter, just like before.

Umm, what context am I missing here?

OH. BATTRA UNDERSTANDS NOW. WHEN GODZILLA REAPPEARED IN 1984, NOW AN ENEMY OF HUMANITY, HIS CHANGE OF ALLEGIANCE WAS PREDICATED ON TWO EVENTS: HIS STANCE TAKEN AGAINST SEATOPIA IN 1973, WHICH INADVERTENTLY PLACED HIM ON THE SIDE OF CONTNUED NUCLEAR TESTING, AND HIS AGGRESSIVE DEFENSE OF TOKYO IN 1975, AS A RESULT OF WHICH, DESPITE BEING FREED FROM THE SIMEONS’ MIND CONTROL MOMENTS EARLIER, TITANOSAURUS WAS DEALT NEAR-FATAL INJURIES AND WAS LEFT COMATOSE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA FOR DECADES AFTER. GODZILLA CONCLUDED HE HAD GONE TOO FAR IN BECOMING THE HUMANS’ ALLY, HAVING REJECTED HIS OWN PRINCIPLES AND TURNED HIS BACK ON FELLOW KAIJU, AND THAT SUCH FAILURES NEEDED TO BE CORRECTED.

“He’s… he’s sorry!” Koji insisted, making no headway against Shinji’s uproar. “That’s how he shows those kinds of things! It destroyed him, what he did to Titanosaurus, I mean… Anguirus should know!” Koji absently rubbed his neck. “He went to war for you…”

Shinji kept laughing. “And that’s what he thought Titano would’ve wanted? More death?”

Koji was left a little stunned, and more stunned when Shinji materialized his staff, flicking out the blades and holding it dangerously behind him. In confused turn, Koji snapped the circular shell-shield off his back and onto his left forearm, hefting the morning star in his other hand.

“Titanosaurus doesn’t hate Godzilla because of the fucking injury,” Shinji seethed.

WHAT?

“What?” Koji echoed aloud. Naoko expressed similar confusion. Yuzo was quiet.

“Godzilla had one… fucking job…” Shinji held up a shaking finger. “Kill Mechagodzilla. And he couldn’t even do that right. Couldn’t… d-do it fast enough…” His hand started to shake more violently, and he clutched it to the side of his helmet. The fist clenching on the spade started to make it twitch, and a faint breeze in the air jostled the ends of Masako’s wing-coat.

Koji just lurched his head back. “What are you even talking about? What do you mean fast enough? What do you mean more death? You lived!”

Shinji laughed so darkly it seemed, at once, to bring him back to a calm.

A deceptive calm, not unlike the one before a storm.

“That’s all you care about… no, no, that’s all you see. Just us monsters, right? Back then, at least, maybe. You know, I forget, sometimes, that this whole…” He waved a finger in a circle, pointing at the side of his head. “…human-kaiju mind-link thing IS THE REST OF Y’ALL’S FIRST RODEO—”

“Enough!”

Naoko had appeared equidistant between them, hands outstretched with warding palms.

“I don’t… know what this is… but we can’t be fighting each other! We need to get back to the Mu capital, so we can figure out how to save our friends, retake Seatopia, and stop Antonio and the Spacegodzilla ranger.”

Koji turned sharply to look at her. “The what?”

“Yeah,” Shinji hiss-sighed, turning away on his heels. “You deal with that.”

Masako watched, wide-eyed, as Shinji bid his stomping retreat. Eventually her legs remembered how to move, and for reasons she wasn’t going to try to find logic in, she hurried to catch up with him before he did something stupid.

Her hand on his shoulder actually got him to stop, which she supposed shouldn’t have been that surprising. She rolled her eyes in her helmet but stood firm. “Are you… are you fucking okay, dude?”

“Nah,” Shinji joked bleakly, shaking his head. “Not anymore, and Titano ain’t either. Think that’s why we work so well together…”

He laughed to himself, and took a calming breath, then looked back at Masako.

“Right. Earlier. Before. Titano just wanted to say thank you, for… for being a person who loves people for who they are, and…”

He paused, choking, nodding, the picture of resigned solitude as he stared up into the vastness of the cavern.

“…and not what they’re made out of.”

Chapter Text

In the hazy, indigo-purple skies of a corrupted early dawn, Battra’s prism beams lanced through the airborne formation of silver-cobalt flying wings and manta-black explosive drones, splitting the rest of the Mu sky defense force into scattered flanks to the left and right. Banking to a ninety-degree tilt, the dark moth skimmed the fog above and below with his wingtips, a hundred bolts of crimson lightning lashing out from the symbolic patterns on both upper and lower wing surfaces to grant the remainder no shred of mercy.

The toxic shroud grew thin as Battra approached the geographical center of the Mu continent, where three great rivers flowed forth from a bountiful upspring in the highlands. What had once been a paradise was now a jagged metropolis of gold-trimmed limestone – sharp obelisks, towering squared monoliths framed by columns, many-stepped pyramids and tiered, sloping complexes built into the hillsides. Deep grey communication towers in the simplified shapes of vertically-stretched human heads kept watch on the city from all sides.

Battra might have been largely indifferent to these changes, mourning the loss but not so provoked into hellbent rage, were it not for the offending monstrosity that had reduced the basin itself to a mere tributary running round the perimeter. Using Muan tectonic science, the black mountain had been driven up through the center to choke the rivers, a dark stone peak upon which rested the crown of the twelve spires. For the dark moth, the Earth’s cruelly-siphoned life energy cackling blood-red between them was a burning flame, reflected in the hue of compound eyes that soon surged instead with prismatic violet.

As the pair of beams now lanced towards the spires, they met resistance, a pale blue-purple sphere appearing in an instant is if it had always been there, just unseen. Reacting, Battra beat his wings to soar higher and drift aside, clear of collision with the new globe that frustratingly defended his target. Another burst of prism beams, accompanied by wing lightning as Battra fluttered a slow, controlled revolution around the mountain’s peak, still failed to leave a dent in the barrier.

A small landslide a bit lower on the slope drew Battra’s attention, just in time for Varan to roar in defiance, the triphibian reptile likely forcefully driven back to battle despite his injuries and condition. With a running kick off and a spread of his forelimbs, Varan dove into the sky, surprising Battra with a tackle that sent the edges of his wings fluttering in the wind as both creatures began a chaotic descent.

Battra latched his six legs onto Varan’s limbs, discharging red-magenta electricity enough to weaken the reptile’s hold, then beat his wings to twist the two into a midair spiral that threw Varan off. They’d barely parted before a spinning drill replaced Varan as the darkness in Battra’s vision, the moment even seeming to slow as Battra’s head tilted just far enough aside to avoid being shattered by Megalon’s combined hands. Miraculously, the two flying insects breezed past one another without either taking damage, but as Battra steadied in the air, the quick and near-majestic aerial maneuvering of Megalon on his thin, black-tinted, triangular flight wings implied the beetle had no intention of such luck repeating the next time.

The three monsters were only about a third of the way down from the mountain’s peak, and Varan still had gliding time, maneuvering back around to coordinate an attack with Megalon. Battra focused Megalon, firing off prism beams that glanced seemingly harmlessly off the spinning drill. At the last moment, he beat his wings hard, and while he was burned by a panicked lightning bolt from Megalon’s horn, he confirmed he’d dodged the intended pair of physical attacks when sparks flew from the glancing impact of the drill on the spinning buzzsaw of Varan’s back spines.

Halfway down the mountain, Varan uncurled and kicked again off the slope for more air, while Megalon rounded now from the far side. Battra caught an updraft and soared higher over both, banking with a dramatic twirl to sweep his prism beams downward, but was caught unprepared when one of the purple beams shot back upward from the direction of the ground, shearing fragments of spiked armor from the left side of the collar around his neck joint. As yellow-green lymph spilled from the injury, Battra missed Megalon breezing up past him and then descending with a heavy foot pressed to the underside of his thorax. Plummeting, Battra screeched in pain as he felt a quick pass of Varan’s back spines shear roughly against the base of his right wing, not completely severing it but leaving its movements ragged.

With his other wing, Battra sent dozens of red bolts up into Megalon, causing the beetle to kick hard and separate the two. Trying with difficulty to control his descent, and much closer to the ground than he’d realized, Battra still managed to locate the source of the errant prism beam – a half-singed King Caesar standing amid the city and looking skyward.

Even right in the moment, a horn lightning beam from Megalon grazed past Battra and down toward its true target of King Caesar’s right eye, becoming absorbed into the gemstone conduit within the shisa’s skull. Finally able to put power behind his wings, Battra veered off to the left, avoiding the blast’s powered reflection but only making it into a short glide over the city before he felt a sharp vice close around the back edge of his left hindwing.

Struggling, but held in place in the air, Battra turned to find Manda had latched on with his jaws, the serpent’s body stretched out in the air and the end of his tail wrapped around King Caesar’s left forearm. As if being intentionally condescending with his grinning teeth, Caesar tilted his head just enough to accept another incoming beam from Megalon, then expelled the brighter golden energy right into Battra’s exposed underside.

Not only was the dark moth unable to flee as the intense burn continued, but since the attack passed along a parallel trajectory to Manda’s outstretched body, wisps of light were absorbed into the serpent’s scales and contributed to a charging golden glow. When the lightning finally ended, King Caesar wrenched back his arm at the same time Manda retracted into a coil, reeling Battra into close range with only enough presence of thought to attempt to stabilize himself in the air. Manda released his jaws, but only so King Caesar could draw his arm back in a preparatory lash, powerful energy surging across scales as the legendary Mu serpent was whirled around like a whip.

The quick impact of Manda’s horned cranium discharged golden light in a brilliant shockwave, one that shattered the peaks of nearby buildings and sent Battra into an uncontrolled tumble. Passing kilometers over the edge of the city and across open water, the dark moth found himself slammed back-first into the lower slope of the black mountain, dazed and nearly unconscious.

A shadow fell over the moth as Varan landed on the slope to pin him down. Fighting easily against weakly-moving legs, the reptile held Battra by the base of each wing and leaned in to bite down hard on the already injured part of the moth’s neck. Battra was flooded with pain, his struggles intensifying, until he was aware enough to use his foremost and hind legs to lock down Varan’s limbs while the middle pair latched at the webbed sides of the reptile’s torso and pushed.

Soon without the neck range to continue biting, Varan instead tried to shake the insectoid limbs off his own, but with a swell of rage, Battra dug the nearest sharp-clawed foot into the still-unhealed wound in Varan’s shoulder. To intensifying cries, Battra surged electricity through the limb until Varan was the one struggling, then forced the reptile back enough that a pair of prism beams could send him careening down the slope and splashing into the basin waters.

Battra beat his wings back against the mountain slope, just enough to tilt forward, then caught air and ascended into a weary, exhausted, but determined flight. There was no sign of Varan surfacing, but across the water, King Caesar stood tall, with Megalon having landed to his left and Manda having crawled at a spiral to loom around a tall obelisk to his right.

Napalm bombs burst into flames midair as they arced out over the water, the glow and sizzle of their chemical fires still burning bright even once Battra had dodged every one and they were left sinking deep beneath the waves. Manda threw himself in a daggerlike forward lunge between buildings and slithered through the wake he created as he splashed down, disappearing to the depths before springing up into a high arc with parted jaws to strike at Battra from above.

Battra twisted briefly to inverted flight, catching Manda’s head with several clawed feet and pulling the serpent along underneath as he finished the turn and righted himself. With a sudden veer to the left along the shoreline, he gave the struggling serpent enough speed on release that the long, scaled body crashed into both bipedal defenders at shoulder height, Manda continuing to roll like a log as he sprung upward off the faces of his stumbling, off-balance allies.

Wings slicing the air in a horizontal spin, Battra swept prism beams over all three guardians, singing Caesar and Manda the most severely while Megalon was mostly spared by Caesar being in the line of fire. The beetle took advantage by slapping his drill-hands together and spreading his wings as he ran at Battra, city blocks shaking until Megalon had caught air. Battra flew directly at the incoming drill, a pair of prism beams intercepting a bolt from Megalon’s horn in a cloud of purple and orange sparks so dense Battra was able to dodge aside without the beetle being any the wiser. As the air cleared, however, a strong bite snagged Battra by the left wing, Manda’s tail wrapped around another obelisk and providing an anchor that forced Battra’s flight path to curve right into King Caesar’s fist.

Flipped over by the strike to the face, Battra fell to the pavement on his back, King Caesar looming overhead and leaning down to grab handfuls of the insect’s fighting, scratching legs. Manda still pulled at his wing greedily, the stone of the obelisk beginning to crack and crumble under the pressure of the serpent’s coils. An idea forming in his rattled brain, Battra surged purple energy over his left eye, firing a single prism beam that King Caesar easily absorbed at the close range.

Before the shisa could fire, however, Battra pulled hard in the tug of war with Manda, the obelisk finally giving in as a strong flap of the dark moth’s wing wrenched the serpent’s coils through the downpour of shattered stone. Manda’s body slapped against King Caesar’s head just as purple light flashed in the left gemstone eye, the beam eclipsed by green scales close enough in the line of fire that the beam glanced off for a brief moment before Caesar directed the rest of it skyward. Manda screeched in pain, a small trail of smoke seething off his body as he crashed through a column-faced building and writhed on the street below.

With a kick from all six legs, Battra pushed himself off Caesar, then battered the stone giant with winds from steadily-flapping wings. Caesar dug in his heels and swiped at Battra with his claws, only for the moth to soar higher. The whirr of Megalon’s drill pierced the air, the beetle coming around for another attack.

Battra veered away to fly in a tight circle, wingtips pointed at sky and ground as bolts from Megalon’s horn struck, each moment, the air where the dark moth had just been. The flight had been precise, targeted, and brought Battra right in again to slam hard into Megalon’s side just as he passed near King Caesar.

Stone flew amid a deep, ferocious wail as Megalon’s drill scored across King Caesar’s throat, down most of his left arm, and obliterated the left hand that unfortunately found the point. The shisa fell with a ground-shaking impact, almost drowned out as Battra continued to dig his claws into Megalon’s hide and guide the immense beetle into a midair tumble.

The pointed peak of an obelisk was pulverized in an instant as Megalon crashed through it sideways, rolling midair and bouncing once through a town square before being stopped along the slope of a pyramid.

As Megalon stumbled and scrambled for purchase trying to right himself, Battra drifted down toward the remaining portion of the obelisk. Stone was chipped away in clouds of dust as Battra’s claws dug into the surfaces from either side, pairs of legs finding purchase around it from the rear pair up to the fore. Over the broken end at the top, Battra inclined his head down, watching from his perch as Megalon rose onto his feet.

There was a moment of calm, the beetle standing wearily before the perched moth and his wings spread wide like sails.

Then, with no need as a means to keep aloft, Battra’s wings surged once again with red lightning, the expelled electrical storm directed and sustained. Megalon was pushed back into the pyramid as he was scorched by bolt after bolt, excess energy detonating in smaller explosions across the stone around him. For almost a full minute, the beetle bore the assault, even trying in vain to step forward or push off the crumbling pyramid with his half-drills.

Finally, Battra relented, leaving smoke to rise skyward from the charred guardian in the slanted crater. Megalon finally made that step forward, though by the way his body tilted and swayed, it may have been less intentional than it appeared. His arms hung limp at his sides, his face as inexpressive as it was by default, only an enigma behind bulbous, compound eyes that reflected the shine of the rising sun.

Megalon slumped, tilting past the grip of his toes, and the city shook twice as the last guardian fell first to his knees, then face-down on the streets of a doomed world.

Taking off, Battra surveyed the city briefly, satisfied none of Mu’s kaiju were showing any signs of rising. He turned his gaze once again to the black mountain, watching the light change as the sun peeked out from behind the east-facing slope.

But… something was wrong.

Something about the lighting, the way even the nearer slope brightened. The way Battra’s own shadow was cast upon it, as the sun yet remained in his vision.

He turned, to spy a second sun brightening in the west. A golden light that glinted, straining at Battra’s compound eyes, until the shape of it could be resolved from a simple bright spot to an incoming being, carried upon gently-flapping wings.

Hatred, derision, displeasure churned and blazed within Battra. He knew this being on instinct, his rival, a defiant purpose inherited from his creation and given name by the priestess waiting as he broke free of his emerald shell. Mothra, the one who had failed, who had allowed such love of the humans to endanger the Earth.

Even now, the pests chorused their voices, singing for the moth of light. It swelled through the city, from ruins and rooftops, the revolting chant building in—

Wait.

That… wasn’t… Mothra’s song…

SHIII-SAAA, SHIII-SAAA, SHIII-SAAA! Kingu… SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-SAAAAAAAAAAAA!

As if the moment had slowed, Battra turned in the air, his rounding eyes only now catching the sight of King Caesar, already risen his feet, his one good hand held high overhead as it threw a narrow, uprooted obelisk like a javelin.

The next sensation Battra truly registered was his back, or most of it, slamming against the slanted side of another densely-built pyramid. His legs twitched around the obelisk’s stem, which protruded from the underside of his thorax while the point was buried somewhere deep in the pyramid behind him. Neon lymph flowed profusely from the site of the impalement, and with what senses he was regaining, Battra could hear the rush of water from the other side of the pyramid. Lening his head back, he could just barely see the peak of the black mountain upside-down in his view, the twelve spires sending off another atmospheric pulse.

King Caesar took slow steps toward his pinned prey, ears repeatedly perking as if taunting the dark moth to cry out in pain or defiance. Battra felt the world slipping, but his energy remained, far from depleted and even itching to be utilized. He wouldn’t last long… in this form…

Deep inside Battra’s mind, thoughts assembled. On the surface, his eyes flashed with purple, and a pair of prism beams surged toward King Caesar’s face.

Caesar caught the beams easily, drawing both at once into his right eye, but Battra didn’t let up. He added lightning from his wings, bolts of crimson coalescing like a vortex to also feed the gemstone lens. More and more of Battra’s power refracted through a cranium of crystal, its devastating potential multiplying tenfold within.

Breaking off the attack, Battra didn’t waste a moment as Caesar prepared to return it. A red glow of a different kind surged completely over Battra’s form, his shape fading and flickering as branching, thunderlike wisps sought the ground until the winged insect vanished and a bulky, armored caterpillar dropped onto the pavement.

The pyramid exploded, the powerfully reflected maroon-crimson lightning-coiled beam tearing through the stone where the pinned imago form had resided only a fraction of a second earlier. Many legs scrambling on stone, Battra’s larval form rumbled forward faster than Caesar could adjust, leaping at the last moment and angling his horned head on a sideways twist. The yellow, bladelike crest on Battra’s head slotted up through the gash in King Caesar’s neck, the point piercing upwards into the skull and becoming wedged tight as the beam’s aim was thrown high.

Watching with his left compound eye as energy blasted into the mountainside, little power seeming lost over the distance, Battra strained his neck even more, using his wedged horn to aim the direction of King Caesar’s head as he pleased. The combined and magnified output of all Battra’s energy attacks blasted fragments out of solid stone as it raced up the massive mountain towards the peak, only stalled for a moment by the Muan forcefield before the bubble inevitably shattered and a violent reaction of energy produced a horrid explosion of blood-red smoke and fire.

Fragments of the twelve spires tumbled out of the obscuring fog, still charged with surges of stolen energy that primed them like explosives of their own. Secondary detonations cascaded down the mountain’s slopes, setting off a chain reaction once they found the cables and power converters that supplied the rest of the city. As if struck by invisible projectiles spewed from the volcano in the making, a number of buildings in the surrounding city, even at a significant distance from the mountain itself, flashed brightly with purple-blue light as their own apparent protective energy fields overloaded and shattered, leaving them defenseless.

Even now, Mu still knew nothing of how close they’d been to perfecting what the Atlanteans had mastered at their twilight – and, inexplicably, been spared of the Earth’s ire despite. If Battra had been around then, he would have corrected that mistake. If human beings were capable of this, then leaving them at the mercy of their own creations was still too kind a fate.

Battra wrenched his head, and threw off King Caesar, the living but spent guardian now fully down for the count. Manda crept away at a snail’s pace, the back half of his body nearly dragging limp. A low, pained chitter from Megalon was a whisper on the wind, and the sail of Varan’s distant row of back spines, briefly breaking the water’s surface, set a sure course for speedy departure.

Only the moth of light offered challenge, the golden glow fading from her wings as her darkening shadow passed over the scene of Battra’s judgment thus enacted. There was a question in the reflective blue of her larger, rounder eyes. A question of endings, and if this was one.

If it was enough.

The surge of crimson as Battra took to the skies, his imago form born anew, was his answer.

This was only the beginning.

Alright, spill: why do you like them so much?

Minette and Mallory giggled near the wall, one of them twirling with her arms up to show off the most recent combination of elegant pink-purple robes and gold, jewel-encrusted necklaces, bracelets, and belts – all of which were likely intended as gifts for the moth rangers but, well, at least someone was getting enjoyment out of them. The other of the pair simply watched with a considering, judging smile, half-serious. They’d done this a few times with different, increasingly gratuitous combinations of jewelry, but did seem to have some method to the selection. Benefits of having two sets of eyes, Masako supposed.

IN SIMPLE TERMS, BATTRA LIKES THEM BECAUSE MOTHRA DOES NOT.

Masako watched the two switch roles in their game, a frown on her lips. She really doesn’t, does she. How do you figure?

IN PART, HER REACTION, CONVEYED THROUGH NAOKO, AND IN PART BECAUSE THEY FIT A LONGSTANDING PATTERN. BUT… THERE ARE MORE COMPLICATED TERMS AS WELL.

Masako arched a brow. Which are…?

TO BE COMPLETELY HONEST, WERE IT NOT FOR YOUR INPUT, BATTRA WOULD LIKELY HAVE CONSIDERED THESE TWO TO BE NO MORE THAN PAWNS TO PLAY AGAINST MOTHRA. BUT WHEN YOU DISCOVERED THEM, PERHAPS IN THE MOMENT BEFORE…

Yeah, I felt that too. What was it?

RESONANCE. YOU SEE, YOU ARE AWARE MINETTE AND MALLORY TRUST NONE BESIDES YOU, MYSELF, AND EVER MORE LIKELY BELVERA. AND YOU ARE NOT SO CERTAIN THEY ARE WRONG TO HOLD THAT VIEW.

Growing troubled, Masako sent yet more thoughts of gratitude to the single Elias in the room, hovering nearby as, more-or-less, a translator. No one was going to broach the topic of her quick turnaround, nor the similarities between the twins’ circumstances and those Belvera feared for her sisters, but whatever the cause, her help was appreciated.

IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I FELT THAT PARTICULAR SENSATION FROM YOUR MIND, OR PERHAPS MERELY THE FIRST TIME I RECOGNIZED IT AS SUCH. IN THAT MOMENT, PART OF YOU FEARED EVEN THOSE YOU TRUSTED MOST, BEGAN WEIGHTING THEM AS POSSIBLE THREATS TO MINETTE’S AND MALLORY’S SAFETY. TO HAVE THE DESIRE TO PROTECT, AND TO FEEL TRULY ALONE IN THE ENDEAVOR, TO KNOW THAT IN THE QUEST ENTRUSTED TO YOU, YOU MAY GO TO SUCH EXTREMES EVEN ANY POTENTIAL ALLIES WILL ABANDON YOU… THAT IS WHAT IT IS TO BE BATTRA.

Masako nodded slowly, solemnly, tapping idle fingers on the round table. The horseshoe curve. That’s not… I don’t know if that’s what I want to be, but I won’t leave anyone behind for the sake of appeasement. People aren’t bargaining chips.

BATTRA DOES NOT WISH THAT FOR YOU EITHER, AND NOT SIMPLY BECAUSE YOU REQUIRE ALLIES MORE THAN BATTRA EVER HAS. THAT EXISTENCE IS A LONELY ONE.

I guess it’s only half ironic for me to say ‘I know.’

SPEAKING OF WHICH…

Battra was hesitant, which was weird.

I WAS NOT AWARE I HAD THE ABILITY TO HEAL OTHER HUMANS BESIDES YOU. NOT UNTIL I TRIED IT TODAY. YOU MAY BE INTERESTED TO KNOW THIS… THERE MAY BE A CHANCE, THAT IN TIME, AND WITH REFLECTION, THIS COULD EXTEND TO ALTERING OTHERS ON THE LEVEL THAT I WAS ABLE TO—

Stop.

Masako hitched a breath. Battra went quiet mid-sentence. Mallory and Minette lost their smiles and turned toward her with worried glances.

I mean… don’t stop trying but… either figure it out, or don’t. Don’t… don’t give me hope, okay?

Minette and Mallory had made their way to the center table of the common room, each setting a comforting hand over Masako’s so the three layered over one another. Masako blinked away tears from her eyes, and watched the two girls nod their unwavering support, then make tiny, identical smiles of relief when she breathed and settled back down.

She was soothed almost just as much at seeing the twins make such an overt gesture of connection to another person, even if she didn’t fully understand it yet. Masako did what she thought was right, what she thought was needed, but she wasn’t sure she deserved to be anyone’s superhero, at least not in any way that involved crayon drawings and over a decade’s worth of expectations.

It wasn’t long before feet could be heard shuffling outside, and shadows loomed in the doorway. Out of armor, Agent Piranha had her long hair pinned into a bun, and was wearing an elegant pink dress topped with a collar that emulated a larger relative of the turtleneck, but was wide enough it managed to show off a fair bit of skin around her neck and shoulders. Swaying back and forth on one side of her, Agent 106 seemed amused at the fact Naoko’s cheeks were a similar shade to Piranha’s dress, if not redder. Masako clenched her teeth, but couldn’t pretend she was immune herself, especially not after 106 met her eyes and smirked even more deviously.

Shannon, Kyle, and Shawn followed them in, maybe more out of curiosity than anything, but if Masako did the math right, those were probably the three that would be staying behind next so they may as well grow acquainted. They gave excited smiles to Minette and Mallory—though all except Shawn’s were at least a little forced—and settled on one of the curved couches on the room’s perimeter, while the other three new entrants joined Masako at the table.

Minette and Mallory had taken the last two seats, but looked bored already, instead utilizing the time to silently, but meticulously fiddle with jewelry.

Piranha wore doubt on her face. “Perhaps a different setting, would—”

“If we’re having a conversation about them, they should be present,” Masako insisted, setting the mood in the process. Naoko remained stoic, looking slightly less uncomfortable than Piranha. 106 wavered, but ultimately gave Masako a warm glance of trust.

Belvera swooped over, setting Garu-Garu to a hover just above the twins’ heads. “They won’t look like it, but they’re listening.” She grinned widely. “They’re listening very carefully, trust me.”

On cue, but still not looking up, Minette and Mallory mirrored Belvera’s grin.

“So first of all,” Belvera continued, “they’ve decided Minette is the one on the right and Mallory is the one on the left.”

“Decided?” Shannon spoke up worriedly.

Belvera shrugged. “Fifty-fifty shot that’s the way it used to be. They’ve managed to separate themselves out a little since we found them, but it doesn’t really feel like it’s a priority.”

“Which is up to them,” Masako added.

Shawn raised his hand. “Is Mallory the one on the left under all circumstances, or just according to where they’re sitting right now?”

The two spared a moment to look up at him, though it didn’t seem confrontational, at least not to the degree with which they usually acknowledged other humans. More… considering.

“Good guess,” Belvera supplied. “It’s the first one, for the record.”

Shawn nodded, a simple appreciation of fact. “And I’m assuming this is from their point of view? Like two halves of one body?”

Belvera nodded. “You’re getting it faster than I thought.”

Masako’s thoughts produced what if they’re facing different directions? but she chose to let that one stay internal. Shawn’s ease with the situation had at least softened Shannon’s and Kyle’s reservations considerably. Piranha was another matter…

“They’re people,” Masako began, eyeing the two Muans and hoping this was an indication of distance and confusion rather than complete unfamiliarity with the concept. “They just communicate differently, have a different sense of self shaped by experience and unique circumstances. And other humans failing to understand that is precisely why they don’t trust a single other human in this room except me.”

“It’s not that, it’s just…” 106 struggled to explain. “ESP is a little outside our spheres of knowledge, especially a unique case like this. We don’t have a lot to compare it to, seeing as Seatopians and Muans don’t get it and we’ve only had one or two outsiders who experienced it on any level.”

That furrowed a few brows in the room. “Muans don’t get ESP?” Shawn was the first to say aloud.

Masako might have been skeptical to the point of a snarky comeback, except they actually did seem to have a working knowledge of what it was. Now it was just genuinely interesting.

“From what we understand, it is a relatively new phenomenon,” Piranha began. “No recorded cases exist from the time of the Old Mu Empire, and it has been encountered only among humans originating from the surface over the past few thousand years. It can occur in descendants of the Azumi, who of course, remained on the surface, but not in those born of Seatopia or Mu.”

“That’s because it was developed on the Venus colony.”

Everyone looked at Belvera expectantly, and after a moment of gloating, the grinning Elias just rolled her eyes.

“I don’t know how, okay? Just that when King Ghidorah chased their asses back to Earth five thousand years ago, they all had freaky foresight powers and even a few with telekinesis. The country of Selgina? Venusian central, although it was pretty much gone from their cultural memory until Princess Salno got ancestor-possessed in ’65. But the original survivors have descendants all over the world now. Hence, ESP.”

Reactions to Belvera’s speech varied, but Shawn’s was sharper, more severe, as he silently realized something no one else did. He didn’t voice his thoughts, however.

“Seatopia and Mu have just been isolationist for so long, and your contact with the surface so fleeting, it never worked its way into your genetics. Especially with your longer lifespans, which the Venus colony didn’t have to nearly the same extent.”

“That was their main disagreement, yes,” Piranha nodded slowly, understanding dawning. “Though it seems they managed to preserve themselves in other ways.”

Kyle had his hands up, fingers pointing as he tried to follow the conversation. “You had space colonies? In 8,000 BC? Where did they go?”

Masako’s brow wrinkled, as she distantly remembered another conversation with the darker Elias. I think I knew this already…

Belvera rolled her eyes again. “Where they went is most of what you’ve been calling aliens for the past seventy years. That, or their various genetic engineering projects run amok. Some of which I’m pretty sure overthrew their humans, which I’m obviously pleased about.”

Piranha nodded. “Many of them broke off contact years before the fall. Most due to political disagreements like those of the Venusians. We had no way of knowing what happened to most of them for many thousands of years, with one exception: Seatopia retained a means to access a single, undestroyed transmitter array, on the easternmost island remnant of our once-great continent. Through it, we maintained communications with one of our most distant space colonies and, later, after they destroyed themselves, with the species that inherited their technology.”

“The Nebulans?” Masako questioned, immediately receiving a warm nod from 106.

Kyle snapped his fingers. “That’s why Gigan showed up to help Megalon in ‘73!”

“Correct,” Piranha continued. “When we retook Seatopia from Antonio, we contacted them once more, and found them devastated, barely clinging to life. The Xiliens had passed through on their way to Earth, and had unexpectedly managed to take control of Gigan, setting him loose on his previous handlers to expectedly lethal results. We offered the surviving Nebulans residence in Seatopia, and they joined our Mu Alliance when the fighting broke out again.”

Masako nodded through the end of the tale. “Another reason we should err on the side of collective respect for every kind of being. You want there to be two sides to this: Antonio’s, and everyone else’s. Not a hundred different factions getting organized like the rungs of an acceptability ladder when the group above them won’t take them in.”

Naoko shook her head. “No, you want there to be one side. With everyone on it, working toward the betterment of all.”

“If that were practical, sure,” Masako agreed with a shrug. “It’s just not.”

“It’s the only way to end this peacefully,” Naoko argued, getting a little irritated.

“Who says it needs to end peacefully? I think it’s obvious which side should die.”

“No side should die!”

“Spoken like someone on the side that’s not already dying.”

“I think it shouldn’t be Plan A,” 106 spoke up quickly, bringing Naoko to an agreeable calm and Masako to a hard wince. “But… let’s not save it for Plan Z either. We can be realistic without being bloodthirsty. Plan… C or something.”

Naoko wrinkled her lip. “Still a little high…”

“The more letters you go down—” Masako began, but stopped when 106 continued in her place.

“—the more you’re putting the rest of us at risk. We’re well aware. If there’s a chance at peace, at redemption… we find it quickly, or not at all.”

Piranha stared down at the younger girl with a mix of pride and heartbreak, but made no disagreements or adjustments. “If we are to discuss this further, we should do it in the war room. The others are already waiting.” She addressed single, succinct nods to Masako and Naoko. “Join us, when you are prepared.”

The procession exited quickly, leaving only Naoko behind with the room’s previous residents. There was still a tension between her and Masako, but it lightened.

Mallory and Minette seemed to have taken worryingly little faith from the conversation, and Masako took them aside, albeit still in Naoko’s earshot. They had a question, and they didn’t need to ask it aloud.

“No, I don’t trust them,” Masako answered. “Any of them. Not completely. But I do know them, and that means… of all the people in the world, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell, or… or in Seatopia that they’ll do anything to hurt you. Not without asking me first, at least, because I’m pretty sure by now everyone knows I’m the one taking responsibility for you. And if the Mu people do try any funny business like locking you up…”

Masako snapped her fingers, and gestured aside with a smile.

“…Belvera here will have the ones responsible going all 17B on each other in no time. Or… something something there’s probably a well-known horror movie example that I would know if I watched them instead of just looking at the posters. Basically, mind control with extra paranoia.”

Belvera crossed her arms coldly, painedly, but with a smirking edge, as she turned up one wrist to examine her nails. “I am how most abandoned, haunted asylums got to being both of those things.”

It still didn’t seem to be enough reassurance for the twins, but it was something.

Walking side by side through the hall with forming armor, Masako and Naoko left Belvera be, as it was already abundantly clear she no longer had a stake in any of this. It didn’t need to be said aloud, and through their momentarily linking thoughts, Belvera seemed grateful nobody had asked.

Naoko was quiet, Masako noticed – while, admittedly, also being quiet. She decided to wait until they were out of the building, walking through side paths that were carved out like scenic trails in the cavern stone.

“Okay, hit me with it. Honest take on Mallory and Minette.”

Naoko looked at her strangely. “What?”

“Yours and Mothra’s,” Masako clarified. “If you’ve got a problem, you should be able to put it into words.”

Naoko sighed, and it was a little like a huff. “Well, first of all, they give me weird vibes.”

Masako nodded, almost laughing as Naoko straightened her back and crossed her arms. “I think at this point we need to step back and have a serious conversation whenever we’re about to categorize something as weird.”

Naoko hissed through her nostrils enough that her helmet filter turned it into loud static. “Alright, but since you asked… Mothra says they have a ‘great capacity for evil.’ Now wait a minute.” She had her hands up. “I did get her to admit that it’s not set in stone yet. They haven’t done anything evil outright, but… in the past, apparently this never works out. They’re too hurt, set opposed to so many, many people, and they have powers. Powers that they can lash out with, and when they do… from where they’re standing, there’s really no end to their target list. It’s them against the world, which is sad, but also really, really bad news for the world unless they’re stopped.”

Masako nodded again. “So damnation is justified by the number of people who believe in it.”

“Believers aren’t evil!” Naoko stressed. “Not… by association, or whatever you’re thinking. They go about their lives like anyone else, they just—”

“—are willing to condemn someone to death without a second thought, because devil. We’re talking about witches and shit, right?”

“The real ones and the fake ones and other, similar cases, yes,” Naoko breathed out, probably already knowing she was a bit of a hypocrite for taking the other side on this.

Despite also having reason to take the side she was taking, Masako realized. “You’re not wrong, it’s just… you said that’s how you related to Mothra, you weren’t willing to take doctrine at its word. You started with just doubts and you eventually got to where you are. Maybe not everybody in the crowd deserves to go up in flames, but I’d still rather it happen to all of them than to the one who is burning. I don’t know what kind of person that makes me, other than… I guess one who factors in suffering and pain to the value of a person’s life, or the value of who deserves to live.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong either, just… that the lines of what makes someone a villain aren’t drawn according to motive. It’s not just what happened to someone, it’s what they become, and at some point it’s Mothra’s job to put them down.” Naoko’s voice got much quieter, as she added, “Not that she hasn’t made mistakes before…”

WHAT WAS THAT? Battra chimed in with what wasn’t a genuine question, but was instead dripping with sarcasm. Masako grinned wide beneath her helmet.

“Alright, any other pressing questions?” Naoko asked, probably as a distraction.

Masako pondered a moment. “Yeah, what was that trick with Fairy Mothra Leo? Last night it looked like you had… three?”

“You remember that?”

“Vaguely. I wasn’t sure it was real until you brought out Leo in the fight.”

Naoko nodded as if taking that in, then brought up her right palm. Flecks of orange, lime green, and cyan light spread out from her forearm like glitter in the air. Three fluttering forms began to dance above her hand, composed of translucent light, one in each color. Naoko watched them, seeming calmed and wistful.

“Well, you already know Battra was supposed to stop Keizer Ghidorah from making it to Earth in 1999,” Naoko began. “And you know Gorath isn’t any normal asteroid cocoon. Mothra failed in the late seventies, so we had to do that whole move-the-Earth-out-of-the-way thing, and Keizer had been trying to make it here even since all four Ghidorahs first located Earth back at the end of the Cretaceous. So many more moths died in space back then. It’s a one-way trip, and you basically just… ram it. Discharge your energy to set it off course, and make sure it doesn’t land on Planet X or Mars or something and actually just gets kicked back out into the galaxy.”

Masako nodded along, knowing most of this, but she was admittedly curious about the Cretaceous era stuff Battra wasn’t around for.

“So, since Battra wasn’t in any condition,” Naoko acknowledged with a wince, “Eternal Mothra was eventually the one who went out to confront Gorath. But when he flew into space, he shed all the powers he’d absorbed during that life cycle, from the ten-thousand-year-old trees, Gogho, the prehistoric Mothras… all of them, into a bunch more Fairy Mothras that flew back toward Earth. Like Gogho, he gave each one a heart, and the responsibility of using or granting Mothra’s powers as they individually saw fit.”

Naoko held out her hand toward Masako, the three Fairy Mothras beginning to circle around in the air between the two rangers.

“The orange one is the original Fairy, it’s just hanging around until we find Moll and Lora again. The green one, you met, is Leo, and the aqua one is, well, Aqua. But there’s more still scattered all around the world, like Armor, and Lightspeed. I’ve been tracking them down one at a time, and so far, they’ve all agreed to help me, and lend me their powers.”

Masako watched the three apparitions circle, their translucent forms in flux as they changed shape. With the other two, it was harder to tell, but Aqua intermittently switched back to a form with an X-like wing arrangement, and all three appeared to possessed disguise forms, in which they resembled regular moths or butterflies with the only distinguishing feature being a notable wing luminescence in each of their main colors.

“If I see any, I’ll let you know,” Masako said with a nod, quietly comforted at the idea Naoko was getting stronger.

As the two rangers started walking again, the Fairy Mothras scattered, fluttering about in exploration of the partially-preserved natural shaping of the cavern for several minutes until they seemed to dissipate and return to Naoko’s armor. Though the paths were winding, Masako knew they were getting closer to the war room – another marble building adjoined to the one where the council sat, but probably with less of an open-air construction.

“So… Piranha, huh?” Naoko voiced after a while.

“Yep,” Masako agreed. “I would.”

“Me t—” Naoko stuttered. “I mean, that’s… ugh, I’m so confused! She’s like a thousand years old, right? Maybe more!”

“I mean, if that’s a problem for you.”

Naoko stared, then stopped and threw up her hands, “I don’t know what to do with this information.”

Save for Masako’s quiet snickering, it was silent again for a while. Then Naoko stepped in front of her and pointed with a sharp, interrogating finger.

“…This has some selfless, altruistic explanation that’s going to make me have to reconsider my principles, doesn’t it?”

“I mean, I wouldn’t exactly say selfless,” Masako rolled her eyes, “but… look, I don’t even want to get into this, but as a ranger, it’s not like there’s any power dynamic that doesn’t fall in my favor by default, anyway.”

“Which…” Naoko softened a bit, as something occurred to her and she stepped aside to let them both start walking again. “…is part of why you’re so upset with Shinji, right?”

“A little,” Masako nodded, “except now I just kind of want to know what the fuck is going on with him.”

“Yeah…” Naoko replied absently, but her thoughts seemed to be elsewhere. “But… our power dynamic isn’t in your favor, right?”

“I guess not,” Masako shrugged, to the tune of a strange, momentarily relieved sigh from Naoko. “I mean, you’re the one getting all the bullshit superpower DLC…”

“Oh,” Naoko said quietly, clearly troubled.

Masako decided to, purely hypothetically, throw her a bone. “One might say it’s a feature, not a bug.”

“Seatopia’s northern sector, once comprising a third of the kingdom’s total territory, was utterly destroyed by catastrophic tectonic shifting that occurred due to underground atomic detonations performed near fault lines.”

The war room was surrounded in marble, with elegant wall murals broken up by pillars. Agent Piranha was leading the meeting with a physical map spread out on a broad table, several objects set atop it to represent apparent structures and assigned personnel maneuvers.

“This relay tower here,” Piranha indicated a large model of an Easter Island statue, “is one of the last standing structures in that region, and was once used as part of the array that sent orders to awaken Megalon. The mountainous region surrounding it is, under Antonio, considered a forbidden, holy ground. This is an easy cover-up for the fact it represents the original entrance to Seatopia, far preceding the heavily guarded main entrance to the southeast.”

All five rangers were present in armor, along with Lucy, Kristina, and Jason. Koji had his arms resting skeptically on his desk, and having not been present for whatever the others had told him, Masako could only assume he was still only as invested as he needed to be in order to prepare a report of the events for Daisuke and Godzilla. He was shooting her in particular a number of antagonistic glares, which Masako could only assume were accompanied by grating teeth.

“Our spies have located a tunnel passage with an exit at the tower’s base – one that may be known to Antonio and perhaps a trusted few, but for which Antonio’s deception of his people would prevent it being assigned security in any significant volume. He still insists Seatopia is three million years old, and that it sank from the surface in a pre-constructed habitat bubble, something even a basic analysis of the country’s carefully-carved stone borders would disprove.”

Belvera would’ve probably scoffed at the three million years claim, had she been present.

“Here, only a short mountain trek south of the tower entrance, this dome-roofed building in the red foothills is our grand museum – or, rather, to Antonio, it is his hall of trophies, where he collected stolen treasures from his conquests against the surface. He has also traditionally held prisoners here, and so we suspect this is where we will find the Empress and your friends.”

Piranha nodded toward Lucy’s group, who were gathered together, and then generally at the rangers but mostly Masako and Naoko.

“Phase One of the attack will be an infiltration – the eight of you, myself, and a handpicked team of Mu Agents will proceed down the slope from the tower entrance, enter the museum, and locate the prisoners. Standing orders for Phase Two will hold that the Agent escort break into three teams – the first: to accompany the six noncombatants back and away from the fighting, the second: to surreptitiously move the Titanosaurus ranger across the city to the Seatopian reservoir, where he may attempt to summon his zord, and the third: to hold ground alongside myself and the other four rangers while our army breaks through the main entrance to provide support. These are merely standing orders, however, because once the Empress is located, battle command will transfer immediately back to her.”

This was the part of the plan Masako didn’t like, and Piranha’s voice carried similar doubts and reservations. The Empress was still an unknown, and could easily fuck things sideways if the power transfer happened at the wrong moment, or even at all.

106 had looked nervous the entire time, because of course she did. Her life was riding on this battle maybe more than anyone else’s. And there was always the chance they could walk into the city and find out it was already over for her, had been all along.

Because it always had to be a battle, a struggle, even for a people who’d been doing this for a lot longer than one tends to think of modern-comparable human societies having existed. Battle lines were drawn, threats identified – in this case, detailed drawings of Obsidius and Krystalak, with an as-complete-as-could-be-assumed list of powers and abilities – and the next generation of soldiers formed up ready and waiting to find out if they had a future.

“And no sacrifices,” Shinji spoke up, again uncharacteristically serious. His visor was glaring straight at Piranha, as if to pierce the message through to the soul of the once-desperate woman who had long ago made a split-second decision Shinji really wasn’t supposed to know about. He passed a less intense gaze at 106, earning only a weak smile in return.

“Phase Six,” Piranha continued, somewhat nervously, “in our win scenario, will involve securing the city with an ordered stretch of all accounted forces, and then we will have to decide what is to be done with the survivors…”

“Or.” Masako couldn’t help it, she stood up. “Since those people chose to align themselves with a tyrant and a regime whose doctrine is a thin veil over a sadistic delight in human suffering… maybe there just won’t be any survivors.”

She was out the door before anyone could disagree.

Even herself.

Her feet carried her to the paths, to caverns that stayed within the light of the main chamber but ascended above street level and diverged away into recessed alcoves.

What if Belvera was right?

Battra’s reply was a mental grunt, not entirely dismissive.

It’s… basically like talking to myself from the future, isn’t it? She’s been doing this for thousands of years, so if she says that life only inevitably leads to suffering and torment… doesn’t that mean it’s true? Doesn’t that mean we’ll never really change? That we’ll be fighting the same battles over and over and over again?

In her mind, only silence. Only watchfulness.

Well? Why aren’t you answering?

BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT ASKING, NOR LISTENING.

Masako almost thought she registered something like fear in Battra’s words, but it was a fleeting notion. It’s us. Belvera and I. We’re the ones who CARE, not just about the Earth, but about people too. We’re the ones who can’t just let bad things happen, the ones who take a stand, and maybe she’s so messed up after all that time because she’s figured out what I haven’t yet. That only way that works is just… just ending humankind altogether. I don’t WANT to believe that, but how naïve must I look, thinking I know better?”

She wasn’t sure when she’d switched from thinking furiously to shouting through the caves, voice breaking from tears flowing down to wet the inside of her helmet. Her thoughts had turned to blood, loss, pain in withered eyes that no world could heal, as she begged for Battra to answer her. He would agree, wouldn’t he? That was kind of his whole deal.

BREATHE, MASAKO. REST AND BREATHE.

She laughed instead. “Why do I get to breathe? Why do I get to know any moment of peace? Because I’m lucky? Because I’m a fighter? Because I have you making sure they’ll never take from me what they can take from everyone else? I don’t deserve it, Battra.”

GET OFF YOUR FEET, BEFORE YOU FALL.

“Why should I?”

PLEASE.

She hit the ground knees first, it didn’t hurt. “This is why the coin really chose me, right? I’m supposed to become more like you, aren’t I? Maybe I just wasn’t there yet…”

GO TO NAOKO.

“So I can mess her up too? She doesn’t need my help. She believes in morals and rules and labels and maybe that’ll save her. People like her get to fight and live, not just fight. Maybe without us, the dark and disgusting ones, they can actually win. Yeah I know that one’s bullshit, but maybe we should try it again, just in case. Maybe—”

MAYBE YOU CAN GIVE UP?

There was a door in her mind, then – one she had to open herself, but she could feel Battra practically begging her to. Was it some pacification spell? Something that would make her forget?

Fuck it, maybe she’d reached a point where she was willing to try that.

If she forgot anything, it was in the face of overwhelming sensation. The gentle roar of rushing water was a sound that was paradoxically both loud and quiet, both at the fore and in the ambience, greeting Masako before she’d even opened her eyes.

The mist in the air was cool on her skin, but not freezing. Birdsong chittered and buzzed and ratcheted to the point some of the multitudes must most probably have belonged to insects or amphibians. Some were close, above, distorted by quick movement of their sources, at the same time brief shadows passed over Masako’s eyes, eventually stirring them to blink open.

She was lying on her back, oddly at rest, not looking through her helmet any longer. She was on something soft, which turned out to be a sort of padded bench or sofa, but futuristic and streamlined and shaped in a slight curve where it ran along a wall or railing whose top was a solid, smooth bar and whose standing structure was an uninterrupted glass pane in a full circle.

It was an observation deck, three couches spaced evenly around the platform’s circumference, alternated with three storage cabinets that also mingled with the perimeter curve. Masako couldn’t look down to see if the structure was at the top of a tower, or just floating in air, but by a guess, it was probably the latter.

Seeing as she was directly over open, rushing yet calm water, in some enormous, hidden-away basin where multiple waterfalls converged down from almost all sides. There was an island, in shade and shadow and partial mist, pure green from ferns and twisting jungle trees, only a little ways away such that Masako could stare level at the tops of the tallest trees. She couldn’t reach out and touch them, but she could make out hidden birds and even large stick insects crawling on the nearest branches and leaves.

She took a breath, and found herself laying down again, just tired but soothed as misty air filled her lungs. Staring at the wrist of the arm laid alongside her head, and stretching her legs out behind her, she realized she was in her Mu royal nightwear and her scars were gone.

A couple birds and dragonflies flew back and forth between the larger island and a few higher oases of trees and ferns that had found footholds along the sheer cliffs between the falling water. Sometimes they alighted on the rails of the floating platform, as a sort of waystation or just in showing curiosity. The water continued to fall, to kick up mist when it reached the bottom, and to flow slowly out through the one side of the curve not obscured by a sheer rock face. The fog was heavy there, but Masako could see the vague shaping of an endless jungle, following the paths of multiple rivers emerging from the basin and weaving through the land.

Sensing something, she turned fully around, resting on a forearm as she sat up and looked up to the highest-center part of the surrounding cliffs.

Battra rested there idly, wings spread wide from unseen riverbank to unseen riverbank such that two waterfalls seemed to intentionally spill out from underneath their shadows. Still and calm, he loomed – watched – over the basin, and over her.

“So… this is your happy place?” Masako exhaled faintly, raising her voice now seeming an unneeded effort. “…Cool. I dig it.”

Battra slowly inclined his head upward, the many interlocked, parallel hooks of his mandibles parting in their pair of sideways jaws to emit a deep, almost birdlike chirp.

Masako half expected all the nature around them to stop moving, but it didn’t. The rush of the waterfalls continued to be the most steady presence, half-drowning out everything else including Battra. A flock of birds took off all at once from the island’s trees, but it was moments later, and of their own volition. Their dark, fluttering silhouettes crossed the glimmer of a rainbow as they ascended up past the falls at a diagonal.

The splash of a fish jumping made a plop noise in the water below, followed by the steady croak of an amphibian, then the low guttural purr of a large, flat-bodied reptile as it paddled on its belly through a thicket of submerged roots at the foot of the verdant island. The tandem red-orange blurs of two small mammals chased one another up the trunk of a tree, disturbing a large black-and-pale-colored beetle, whose wings made a sharp, piercing, bleating buzz while it hovered near the shaken branch in search of a new landing site.

AT TIMES, IT CAN BE MORE A PLACE OF GRIEF, Battra’s mental voice rang out, to accompany another solitary, low chirp and a tilt of the head, AND AT OTHERS, ONE OF REMEMBRANCE, FOR THE REASON I WAGE WAR. OR, THIS WORLD AS I WISH IT TO BE, IT CAN ALSO BE A BLIGHT AND SCAR OF THE MIND, IN FOCUSING THOUGHTS ONLY MORE SURELY UPON THE REAL LOSS BEYOND THE BARRIER OF ILLUSION. BUT I DO NOT THINK IT WILL BE THAT FOR YOU.

Masako’s eyes fell demure as she slowly bit her lip, but awe and reservation were fleeting, both. She focused on letting herself breathe, sure all of this was additionally meant to say something poignant about humans benefitting from nature more than they realized. Battra didn’t bother to say it out loud, or even in thought, but it was implied.

It also seemed like maybe it was working. She was sure the only reason there weren’t tears in her eyes was that she was too exhausted to cry.

“One thing I don’t get…” Masako murmured idly, stroking a finger along the smooth metal railing in front of her. “Why is there technology in your perfect world?”

BECAUSE IT IS NOT A TRUE ENEMY OF HARMONY, Battra revealed, to her honest surprise. AND, ALSO… BECAUSE I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT YOU COULD EXIST HERE.

…Okay, she was crying now.

If she remembered again, it was because she was being jolted from her thoughts by a rough arm, curled fingers wrenching back her shoulder. She stumbled as she realized she was still kneeling, and quickly swiped a forearm’s worth of spikes that missed her possible attacker only because she’d leant their intention toward a warning swipe.

The Anguirus ranger stepped back out of range, glaring downward as Masako’s helmet on her turned neck glared upward.

“What’s a ranger like you even doing here?” Koji growled angrily.

“I don’t know, what have you heard?” Masako snarked cooly.

“Stop playing games!”

“Ha! You’re one to talk, aren’t you?” Masako stood to her full height – still a few centimeters shorter than Koji, but the glow in her spikes made up for it. “I’m here to show Antonio what real gods think of faith without question. Not your little ranger games of good guys versus bad guys, but a battle with real consequences for real people’s lives.”

“Yeah,” Koji snapped in a laugh. “’Case you haven’t heard, we’re the ones saving the world.”

“And I’m the one doing something about it.”

The pause lingered, either because Koji was struck by her words or still hadn’t made sense of them. Masako sighed, and dropped her confrontational posture.

“If you must know, I was here because the Spacegodzilla ranger had me convinced he was holding the Elias captive. You know, Moll and Lora? Mothra’s fairies? I feel like they should be important to your team too. But I’m also pretty sure now that was all a lie, and none of us are any closer to saving them. I’m still here because I actually give a damn what happens to these people, another thing you should probably care about more than me if you really think you’re the heroes here.”

Koji considered her words with obvious suspicion. “That seems a little agreeable for the ranger who double-crossed us and cost us the Megaguirus coin.”

“I don’t recall ever single-crossing you in the first place, and seriously? You didn’t just go and pick that thing up? It was right there!”

“Yeah? Well, with our megazord in critical condition, someone got to it before we did, so now there’s another potential outbreak or possible ranger we have to worry about.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” Masako sniped back, then took a breath. “And for your information, I’m actually just an agreeable person… when I’m not being attacked for doing what I have to, to save all of your lives.”

“You’re violent and uncontrollable.”

“We’re monsters. Don’t try to tell me Anguirus never knocked a building over.”

“The point of being rangers is to do better now.”

“Well, I think the kaiju were fine the way they were - without accountability to human interests.”

“Then why don’t you break your coin already? Set Battra free?”

“Because you’d just put him in a cage again.” Masako huffed, struggling again to force clam. “And… because it’s an opportunity. When we started this, Battra saw humanity as a virus to exterminate, and I saw it as a monolith to break at the foundations. But whether looking down from on high, or up from the dirt and filth, we were both wrong. Every day, we get closer to the truth of who our real enemies are. You and your team aren’t on that list anymore. I’d advise you to stay off it.”

“Or what?”

“Or—”

Masako was cut off by a shuffle of armored feet skipping off the stone behind her. “Or you’ll have even more to regret!” Shinji growled, running up to stand at Masako’s left while Yuzo took position at her right. “Quit messing with my team, Koji!”

“What?” Koji and Masako said at once, the latter whirling around in offense. Koji’s disbelief through his cutting “She’s on your team?” was tempered as he recognized Masako’s simultaneous “I’m on your team?” for what it was.

“Yeah!” Yuzo shouted with an innocent cheer that took a whole lot of credibility away from his otherwise-intimidating battle stance. “You combined with our zords that one time!”

“That was one time!” Masako countered, quickly shaking her head. “That doesn’t mean—”

“Come on!” Shinji pleaded casually, seeming to realize at the very last second that throwing an arm around her shoulders was a very bad idea. “You’re our winged upgrade kit sent by a mysterious benefactor! You’re the edgy loner with the same powers as us who eventually realizes we need to work together! You’re the Misery to my CPR and Yuzo’s Reese’s Puffs! You have to join!”

Koji crossed his arms. “You’re on thin ice already, Shinji, we’ll just have to see what Godzilla has to say about this little stunt—”

“Yeah?” Shinji was, predictably, riled. “Well, Godzilla’s all sorts of NOT HERE, so you can shove it up your spiky little—”

“Campfire.”

Everyone stopped – Masako because hearing Naoko’s voice enter the conversation put her on bluescreen, Koji because something about the word she’d said made him also freeze the fuck up all of a sudden, Shinji because he’d been looking right at Koji when he’d stalled out, and Yuzo because he hadn’t been doing anything in the first place.

Koji slowly turned his head at the Mothra ranger, as if demanding to be told he’d misheard. “What?”

“Campfire,” Naoko repeated firmly. “I’m calling it.”

“Hell no!” Koji snapped. “No way are we doing Campfire with an enemy!”

He was pointing at Masako, but another pointer finger from Shinji quickly crossed the other way over her shoulder. “Right back atcha, but about you this time! Wait… Campfire is like Too Many McNuggets, right?”

“…Maybe?” Naoko shrugged. “Do I want to know what Too Many McNuggets is?” She shook her head as if needing to clear her mind of Shinji’s idiocy. “Look. We’re the ones down here, and these people need our help, are you really going to turn your back on them?” She was looking mainly at Koji, who showed signs of relenting. “Even if it’s just this one time, we need to be able to work together.”

Masako still wasn’t sure what was happening, or if she should be concerned, but slowly, everyone around her seemed to acquiesce to the mysterious idea even Shinji and Yuzo seemed to understand better than she did.

“Yeah, just good luck finding a campfire,” Koji contributed as his final word, before he started slowly walking and searching about, falling into step with everyone else.

“Do they even have wood down here?” Asked Shinji.

They couldn’t find a campfire.

But high up in the winding carved paths, a decent trek into what resembled an underground hiking trail, there was a cauldron of burning coals and enough loose boulders that the rangers, with their strength, could arrange them into a decent circle.

It was like the upper floors of the building they were staying in – far enough and high enough away from the main city that it was almost like night, looking down on the glow of civilization. More coal burners from higher and lower and to either side on the zigzagging path brightened the surroundings more than just the one burner would have alone, and the coals didn’t crackle quite like a fire, but the mood was set nonetheless.

With the city on her left, Masako faced Naoko across the heated air from the burning coals, Shinji and Koji seated clockwise from the latter to the former with Yuzo on the other side. The five rangers were silent, a question waiting in the air, answered when Naoko’s armor flecked with silver and receded back underneath her usual outfit of white sweater, coral top, red skirt, and black leggings.

Shinji went next, and he was about what Masako expected – tall, lanky, air of stereotypical coolness, neatly messy black hair, reflective bright red jacket with an angular pattern of orange split across the open front that wasn’t exactly a lightning bolt, but not a single triangle either. Goldenrod yellow undershirt, black cargo shorts edged in light grey, red sneakers that matched his jacket, and a smirk that had probably subsided considerably but that suggested some trace of it was permanently etched on his laid-back, forcibly cool and confident face.

Masako wasn’t sure why she expected Yuzo to be younger – okay, she was pretty sure why, on multiple counts, she just thought she’d had a better handle on tempering those assumptions. But Yuzo seemed to be around twenty or so like everyone else, just short, his large maroon puff jacket deceptively making him look rounder outside his armor than he had seemed to be inside of it. His short, brown-grey hair stood straight up, his wide eyes looking to the others expectantly.

Following the current zig-zag trend, Koji was next, and he was probably the first true shock. Under the knight or gladiator-like appearance granted by the armor, Koji was scrawny, more a scrapper than a bruiser, dressed in slightly worn browns and greys that blended into one another. His dark hair was messily spiky, a scar went vertical down the center of his face but veered off to the right of his nose, and he smiled with a number of chipped teeth. Most amusingly, he wore a small grey backpack with gold plush ankylosaurus spikes on it.

Masako had figured out this moment was coming and had been steadily preparing, not that she was particularly shy. She let time pass just long enough for Koji to shoot her a now-slightly-less-intimidating expectant glare, then allowed her own armor to recede as well.

“…Honestly, I expected more spikes,” were the words out of Koji’s mouth.

Masako paused, and considered her bare wrists for just a moment, realizing she didn’t have to worry about repeatedly rebandaging her hands anymore. “I may take that into consideration.”

From where her eyes, and apparently mind went, Naoko seemed partial to the idea. Yuzo was just smiling like he’d coaxed a hermit crab out of its shell and was very thrilled about it. Shinji hadn’t stopped ogling her since the reveal, but thankfully, instead of speaking, he just gave her a quiet double-thumbs up.

Masako hated the reflex that had her looking away shyly, and hoped to Battra she hadn’t blushed.

YOU DID.

…Well, there went that hope. Curse her vain weakness for approval euphoria.

“Okay, I’ll start,” Naoko spoke up, nodding herself into action. “I’m Naoko, and I’m a Power Ranger.”

“Hi, Naoko!” Shinji and Yuzo said teasingly, Masako said seriously, and Koji didn’t say because he was still too busy glaring at Masako with distrust.

“And I…” Naoko continued, a little nervously, a little sadly. “… used to believe in a different god than the one I’m talking to now on a regular basis. I was kind of a jerk about it.”

Oh. That’s where this is going.

“My family… is really into it. Scary, now, that I can see it from the outside. Like it’s sucking away so much of any individual personalities they might have had. They even run this big ranch and religious retreat, Angel’s Wing. Been building it up since before I was born. They have a church there, and followers… and I’m scared of what’s going to happen when I have to tell them I don’t want the kind of life they want for me.”

The standard response seemed to be silence, attentiveness. Everything said through gestures, with kind eyes and worried, sympathetic frowns highlighted in the fiery glow from the coals.

Yuzo nodded the heaviest, an indicator he was going to start speaking next. “My name’s Yuzo, and I like cooking, model trains, and cute animals!”

A few laughs persisted, but they were tempered with knowledge of what was coming next.

“And people think things go over my head, but… they don’t, most of the time. I just see how other peoples’ lives are going, and they seem so complicated. Scary. That’s what I don’t understand, sometimes, is why more people don’t want to just stick to the simple things. Maybe it only works that way for me, and that’s why no one ever wanted to be friends with me.”

Concern flashed, but he waved it off. It was good to see he seemed confident that was in the past.

“I didn’t ever picture myself as a ranger, as someone who helped people. I just wanted to keep to myself, but, well… I figured out once that it’s not always about people who waited their whole lives thinking they’d be good people in a crisis. Sometimes it’s about whoever just happens to be standing there, who suddenly knows they have to step up. And I have all of you now, and you’re pretty cool, so I think it worked out.”

Shinji, especially, was smiling earnestly, only faltering once he motioned to the be the next to speak. That motion consisted of unzipping his jacket pocket, and pulling out a worn, crumpled piece of paper that had obviously seen a lot of folding and unfolding.

“What, you had to write yours down?” Koji jabbed without mercy.

Masako’s insides felt suddenly hollow and cold. “I don’t think that’s what that is.”

“My sister and I…” Shinji choked a little, started shaking, and didn’t stop. “…used to be close. We did everything together, always knew what the other one was thinking. Kids are like that, I guess. Then we got older, our parents started pushing us in different directions, into totally different worlds, and… we lost touch. I didn’t even… when she left this, I felt like I already hadn’t known her for years. I must’ve read it a thousand times, hoping I’d find some secret code I’d know on instinct, something she left for me, but I still don’t know why. I should’ve… I should’ve been there. I should’ve never stopped being there.”

Having already dropped down to product of society, Masako’s threat assessment of Shinji had quickly spiraled all the way to collateral victim of society before her very eyes. Masako hated it, but his overall behavior made some amount of twisted sense. He might even genuinely think he was being sweet and supportive, the only way he’d ever been taught.

Shinji seemed to be done speaking now, so how Titanosaurus had anything to do with this, if at all, was probably going to remain a mystery for another time.

A world in which Koji spilled his own tragic backstory without making Masako go first might have seemed completely alien about a minute ago, but his previous barb had come back to bite him in the worst way. Swallowing guilt, he nodded, and took next.

“A few years ago, some o’you might remember, there was this crew in town, pushing the hard stuff. Real kick to it, somethin’ for both the study hards and the party hards – and I ain’t tellin’ you which one I was. ‘Round then, Daisuke was out bustin’ em up real bad, and there I was, in the wrong place at the wrong time. They… dosed me up with somethin’ even worse, and sent me out like an attack dog so they could get away, an’ I don’t remember much of what happened after that, but apparently Daisuke and I fought. Really tore into, and kicked the shit out of each other before he realized I was just some kid hyped up outta’ my mind. I woke up in the hospital with him all bandaged up and bloody in the chair next to me, I smiled like an idiot, he smiled like an idiot, and that’s how we became best friends.”

Masako nodded along with the others, and at spotting a wince directed her way from Naoko, just kept nodding and looked at Koji. “For the record, I hated those guys. They were pricks that wouldn’t make deals with me.”

That got a couple of eyes on her, so she rolled her own and clarified.

“And by that, I mean they just wanted to deal drugs to kids, and not medicine to refugees. Honestly.”

Between looks of disbelief, or concern, or loss of patience from the usual suspects, Masako took a moment to steady herself. She technically could probably get away with only saying things Naoko knew already, but… no. She was all in.

“I’m Masako,” she began, keeping her arms crossed and her voice even, and didn’t necessarily direct attention to waiting for the others’ reactions. “I like… stuff, I guess. Whatever’s fun that I have time for, or get my hands on. Sometimes I have to dump my friends’ half-melted bodies in the river. I… lost someone, a while ago, in a way that’s worse than just losing somebody. I don’t know what rumors you might have heard, but I don’t…”

She chanced a look into Naoko’s eyes, and found just softness, sadness, patience, and an understanding nod.

“…but I don’t think I can get that close to anybody again,” Masako continued, watching Naoko try to hide her heart breaking. “I got revenge, I guess. Killed everyone responsible, to the last. As a pure expression of the odds, my last murder also turned out to be a rescue, and I decided I liked that better. So that’s what I became. A protector. And then I started trying my damnedest to save the Earth, too, because… I wanted to buy time. No one who’s only known suffering their entire life should have to start living in a world that’s already ending.”

She looked up at the others, finding a lot of uncertainty, a lot of solemn yet careful patience.

“That’s why I hated you. The Power Rangers,” Masako sneered out the name. “You saved the world, but you never bothered to change it. Never did anything about all the violence, the corruption, the hate, and the ignorance of humans destroying themselves with the nerve to take the rest of us down with them. I had to fill that void, become the champion of everyone you didn’t care about. Not just the ones you feel sad for, then turn away in shame, but the ones that disgust you. That half of you have probably been roped into so-called righteous crusades against, because no one really believes in letting go of bigotry, they just don’t want themselves to be the target anymore. Not everyone’s perfect, not everyone’s…”

Shyly, nervously, she looked at Naoko.

“Not everyone can be good and acceptable in the way the world wants them to.”

She turned to Koji.

“Not everyone can stay clean.”

To Shinji.

“Not everyone can bear to live in a world that’s killing them.”

To Yuzo.

“Not everyone thinks the way people want…”

Masako looked down at her folded hands, again not waiting for reactions.

“…or loves the way people want, or has a personality the way people want, or can live without causing problems or being scary. Not everyone can control the feelings they have, can feel empathy at all, or can even… subsist without leeching kindness off others, or care about me in any way even if I care about them, but as far as I know everyone can feel afraid, can feel alone, and that’s enough for me. That’s enough. For me. And if that makes me a villain, then I guess I’m a villain. Moth knows, I feel like one sometimes… but people are people, and I’m not leaving them in the dust just because you and everyone else decided they weren’t worth caring about. I didn’t think you’d get that, and to be honest, I still can’t be sure you would. But if you emptied out my black, black heart, you’d just find love in it. Twisted as it may be.”

Silence.

Then Koji trying, and failing, to hold in a laugh.

“What?” Shinji demanded. “She’s being serious!”

“No, it’s…” Koji calmed himself, grinning. “It’s just… the whole human part of why we’re on different sides is so wild to Anguirus right now.”

“I know, right?” Yuzo said, amused himself. “Baragon says we wouldn’t even last one decade in the time-out corner with Kumonga.”

“Weak,” Koji agreed with a nod.

At Masako’s deeply confused looks, passed from one to the other, Koji turned to her with a somewhat gentler, considering smile.

“If there’s one thing the monsters finally learned after so much time, it’s that… they’re all here to stick around, whether they like each other or not.”

“And if there’s two things they finally learned,” Yuzo continued, “then the second one is… it’s better if it’s all of us, together. Even the weird and not-so-nice ones, as long as they still show up to help when it counts.”

“Or just for moral support.” Koji made a face at Yuzo.

“Baragon got there eventually!” Yuzo complained. “Where was Anguirus when Ghost Godzilla showed up? Stuck at the airport with Varan?”

Koji winced a little, but mostly rolled with the verbal punch. “Point is, I guess…” he began, turning back to Masako. “Way I’m seein’ it, if this Antionio guy wants to draw lines that go so far as to cross his own damn species? Maybe it’s time the Monster Island Crew… plus a few honorary members… showed ‘im a thing or two about getting along.”

He slammed a fist into his palm, in a way that convinced Masako that maybe they both needed to invest in spiked cuffs for emphasis.

“And when we win, I’m taking you all to The Bone Zone!” Yuzo cheered emphatically.

“W-what?” Koji stuttered, his eyes startled. Naoko looked mortified.

Masako smiled nervously. “Let me guess, it’s something totally innocent and wholesome… right?”

Shinji nodded. “It’s one of those touristy places that lets you dig up fake dinosaur bones. Last time we got a Varanopode. It’s actually pretty fun.”

The gates to the city rumbled as they slowly opened, the noise nearly drowned out by the cheering and triumphant music as the attack force readied to depart. Behind the twin Mothra larva zords, a fleet of Muan hovercraft was lined up in formation on the cleared main street, pilots weaving through the spaces between to reach their personal hovertanks while armored agents loaded themselves into hoverbuses and support crews boarded drone carriers.

The Rangers, along with Lucy, Kristina, Jason, and Piranha’s handpicked infiltration team, were slowly gathering at one of the yellow hoverbuses, the experimental stealth craft unable to be salvaged in time.

“Um... hey. Masako? Shinji?”

The two rangers, who’d happened to be standing next to each other for reasons Masako was questioning a little less than she would’ve earlier, turned around to find Agent 106 smiling at them both. She was wearing a white dress now, which hung only over her right shoulder, where it was fastened with a large, oval-shaped red gemstone surrounded by pearls. An identical jewel pattern centered the belt that cinched her waist. She was radiant, almost glowing with divinity, and Masako realized darkly that she was probably dressing for her own funeral.

She stepped forward and took both of their armored hands, her smile fading a little but she tried hard to keep hold if it. “Whatever we find when we get there… you did your best, okay?”

In contrast to her daughter, Piranha walked up in full armor, over her shoulder slung a rather large and heavy-looking travel pack that might have held another entire suit of armor inside it. Given their mission, Masako wondered if that was exactly what it was.

“106…” Piranha began, stepping closer and spending a long moment still as if considering taking off her helmet. With one hand on the strap of her backpack and the other poised to do something else, she decided against. Instead, she reached into a small pouch at the side of the pack and withdrew what resembled an amulet on a short chain.

It was a small, metallic silver, twelve-pointed star, the four spikes in the cardinal directions being longer with a wavelike top edge while the rest were smaller and spaced in pairs. It was actually fairly similar to the middle part of the Mothra symbol, but the more wavy and twisting detail in the center framed what looked like a pair of eyes.

“For good fortune, child of a better Seatopia,” Piranha said as she held out the object, sounding like she was smiling bleakly, proudly, beneath her helmet, “and ill fortune to one’s enemies, should you require it.”

106 took it, holding it in her palm where it rested the full width of her hand. Looking up after a moment, she lost the fight against her tears, and took Piranha in a desperate hug – one the fully-armored woman could only awkwardly return, a gentle arm keeping its spikes away from the girl’s skin with only a hand to touch with reassurance.

The moment passed too soon for either party, and then 106 was departing toward her own hovertank. The beveled-square hatch closed over her like a coffin lid, and Piranha looked sadly away, joining the team boarding the bus.

The fleet lifted into the air, following in a slow hover behind the advance of the larvae. If Masako’s wandering eyes caught a shadowy presence near the lower corner of the retracted gate, sneaking out of the city away from the attention of the main fighting force, her mind didn’t consider it worth taking note of.

Lingering as a speck in the sky on the periphery of the doomed city, Belvera watched with interest.

The machines had been destroyed, but what her eyes tracked was the cascade of failures, shields going down. Particularly the shielding over the structure on a raised plateau close by, a war bunker set like a sentry to watch over the black mountain, as well as the capital city’s surrounding lands.

After all, it was the place from which the mountain itself had been raised, and from which destruction could be wrought upon advancing armies or a revolting populace. Destruction that would have come from beneath their very feet.

As Battra, surging with fiery light from a renewed metamorphosis, took the skies to battle Mothra, Belvera set her sights on her true prize – the Muan people’s famed earthquake generator, now defenseless to her whims.

Or, she would have, had she been left alone in her dark vigil.

But Mothra’s presence on the scene had brought with it, a particular pair of annoyances.

“…Belvera?”

Moll’s voice didn’t get to her – it didn’t! Not the way there wasn’t a shred of accusation in it. Not the temptation in the way most of it seemed to merely confirm ‘good, you’re already here,’ with a note of confusion small enough Belvera’s next words could easily dispel it. Not the inherent trust left in the air for her to catch and make her own.

But no… there was no going back anymore. Here, with Fairy pulling up alongside Garu-Garu, the mystical moth and the reforged dragon gently fanning the air with their wings as they held their passengers aloft, would be the last time Moll would say Belvera’s name like that.

“What kind of creature is it?” Lora just had to ask over Moll’s shoulder, making Belvera run through the same set of thoughts again only this time, slightly more painful – plagued at once by visions of the three on Mothra’s back, newly the last of their people with nothing to greet them but snow and ice as far as the eye could see. Three to shoulder the weight of loneliness, and Belvera alone to shoulder the weight of memory.

“I almost looks like… but no, it can’t be!”

Moll almost had it. Belvera, not teetering on any precipice of course, kept her voice even. “A guardian moth. A new one.”

“Can’t Mothra stop it?” Lora begged, glancing worriedly to Moll for guidance.

Moll remained impassive, eyes sharp on the battle unfolding between two gods.

Spinning together in the air on interlocked legs, the two moths beat their wings once to draw apart. They each readied to fire, but Battra’s prism beams were faster than the pink-orange sparks that lit at the ends of Mothra’s antenna before her head was thrown back by the impact at the base of her right wing near her neck. Beating her wings faster now, Mothra created a field of scales that glinted in the sunlight, turning Battra’s next attack into a sunburst that sent narrower purple beams splitting in all directions. As Battra recoiled, Mothra took a dive and twirled beneath her adversary, sending bolts of yellow-orange lighting up at the dark moth’s underside. Singed, Battra darted up at an angle and whirled around, surging crimson raining down on the city and angling out forward until the fleeing Mothra had curved into a vertical ascent that took her higher. Battra looked upward with a screech from his jaws, and fiercely pursued his enemy toward the cloud layer.

“…How could it even exist in the first place?” Moll appeared more and more troubled by the moment. “What’s its purpose here? Why is it fighting, and killing?”

“His name is Battra,” Belvera said, letting this last moment draw out until the intended nerve of unease was struck irreparably. “The Earth has heard my prayers and created him, and now I’ve brought him here, to carry out its will.”

Battra’s prism beams were a beacon skyward, the purple glow permeating clouds that at once, flashed with orange. A vortex began as Mothra dodged into a circle of flight, the winds from her wings clearing a void such that Battra emerged a clear target for a powerful headbutt to the thorax. The two moths tumbled, Mothra with the upper hand and dealing blows with her wings as the linked deities fell once more toward the city below.

“Mothra has failed the Earth,” Belvera continued, leaning back and showing her stunned sisters a cocky grin. “See how she struggles? Doesn’t she know she’s out of favor? The Earth needed a god to save it from human beings, and that’s what it created. The Battle Mothra has gone to war, and claimed victory. You’re already too late.”

Something snapped in Moll’s hardened glare, hurt well-hidden but not erased. “You’re responsible for this?”

It was enough that Lora’s shock turned to horror. “But what about all these people?”

Belvera snorted. “Oh, their deaths have been a long time coming. For some of them, it’s a better fate than to keep living, and for the rest, it’s deserved, on account of those others. The books are balanced.”

“Belvera, you can’t!” Moll broke for the first time.

“Just give them a chance!” Lora pleaded. “They’re still learning! They’ll get better!”

“And who told you that?” Belvera spat, no longer smiling. “Who told you everything you know about what we once were and what they could be, if we just gave them enough time? I lied to myself most of all, but I’m sorry I made both of you naïve and stupid along with me. The human beings will never live in harmony with the Earth like the Elias did. They’ll never stop cheating and stealing and exploiting each other, and doing the same to the planet they live on. We could wait around another ten thousand years and we’d be right back here again, so no more chances.”

Of course, it was all pointless. Lora wasn’t hearing the words at all, as distraught as she was, and if Moll had found any sense in them – which she almost looked as if she might have – she’d surely take the truth to her grave.

Their eyes were all drawn to the city, at the crashing sound of Mothra being slammed down into vaguely-cubical building whose framing columns started crumbling outward. Battra loomed above, lighting in two colors dancing in the space between as the pair continued to fire on one another.

“Enjoy the show,” Belvera taunted as she veered Garu-Garu off to the side and started away. “For as long as this world has left.”

Several seconds passed before Moll and Lora understood her intentions enough that rainbow beams of light began strafing her from behind. She had Garu-Garu dodge to either side, up and down, to avoid the fire from Fairy’s antennae, never diverting from her course directly at the bunker on the mesa.

Belvera flew down through the small frame of a slanted window on an upper floor, weaving through a crowd of confused personnel and momentarily getting her annoying sisters off her back. Once she was in the hall, the beams started up again, as did the cries of her name and commands to stop. Her sisters managed to overlap their hands and generate a concentrated burst of green energy, but Lora’s shakiness threw off their aim, and it simply blasted apart a lantern-holder beside the entrance to the stairwell while Belvera sailed on through.

She had Garu-Garu tuck in his wings and fly upside down through the bars of the railing, gaining ground over her sisters who took the long way. An indigo blast knocked back the two guards who’d barely noticed her, and the complex circuitry and control stations on both sides of the next hallway ticked to life and began flashing with varied colors as Belvera exerted her telekinetic control over technology. More of Fairy’s beams nearly grazed her again as the path of pursuit leveled out, and in reply, emergency doors grinded out of the walls, floor, and ceiling to jut partially closed, forcing the small moth to dodge in all directions.

Refocusing on the set of doors ahead of her, Belvera started them closing slowly, leaving just enough room for her to lower herself on Garu-Garu’s back as the dragon twisted sideways. They cleared the gap into the control chamber just as the doors sealed shut, though Fairy’s beams continued to hammer the new barrier from the other side. It wouldn’t be long.

Light from three thin, ground-level windows shone in on the hexagon-shaped room, viewports on one part of the perimeter while control stations rested in the lowered middle. The humans within were already scrambling, not much seemed to change for them as those stations began overloading with power surges that fried their operators, and when one man pulled out a pistol and began shooting the others. Belvera loomed over it all, reaching into the walls and adjusting the targeting parameters while she cranked the station’s power settings up as far as they could go.

The big red button was unnecessary, with as deeply as she’d tied her thoughts into the machinery, but as the last human alive took a blast of energy up through his lower jaw, she drifted forward to the middle window where she could leap off Garu-Garu and stand beside it.

She took one last look out at the city, where Battra looped by on an extended chase as his prism beams leveled buildings in an attempt to shoot down Mothra. Belvera smiled, turned around, and perched her heeled platform boot atop the earthquake generator’s activation switch.

The sealed doors blasted apart, a starburst of bright, icy rainbows flaring behind the dot-ringed shockwave of green as Moll and Lora posed with their hands crossed. With no hesitation, Fairy flew right at Belvera, her sisters’ determined faces unmoving as impact neared.

Belvera stomped down the moment before Fairy’s large, fluffy head rammed her, the window shattering instantly from the force and leaving three Elias and one moth tumbling outside amid glass shards. They fell the short distance to a grassy field, the blades up to Belvera’s waist but sparse and patchy enough to stand in.

She brushed herself off, her sisters rising warily to meet her. If they thought they’d won, their certainty began to founder when their eyes met her dawning grin.

Signals chimed from the building they’d departed, and only as soon as Moll and Lora had turned to look back did the rumbling begin. The top of the plateau shook beneath their feet, and even far away, Mothra’s cry of confusion echoed over distance. Buildings collapsed one by one, rubble cascading, and it was only the start.

Belvera’s sisters snapped to face her, Moll serious and Lora struck with fear. Fairy rose up behind them, but Garu-Garu hissed through a toothy smile as he emerged from the broken window, circling in the air to give the moth pause.

Loud cracks startled those unaware, the terrain fragmenting close enough to make Lora recoil with audible fear. Moll caught her shoulder to steady her, but her eyes returned just as quickly to the smiling, dark orchestrator of the chaos unfolding.

“…Belvera, what have you done?”

As if in answer, the cracks in the earth grew more violent, splitting the air in symphony and drawing themselves in bold across the faces of mountainsides. Fissures opened up, venting geysers of steam, water, or magma, whole sections of rock falling away only to be swallowed by the valleys beneath. City blocks disappeared in sinkholes, and the black mountain, even with the broadness of its base, began to tilt sideways as its foundations were upended.

Belvera threw her arms to the sides, tilted her head back, and laughed.

If the world could not remember the Elias, could not remember that kindness had once dwelt upon it, then let it not remember cruelty either. Let it not remember callousness, heads turned away at suffering, the lust for power and control. Let the works of the mighty crumble, let them fall into the sea, until the idea there had even been a Mu continent, let alone the hell forged upon it, could one day fade from this planet’s past altogether.

Water flowed gently below, waves crashing at angles along a sandy shore, as the two Mothra larva zords crossed a rock bridge in an underground cavern and the attack fleet slowly followed. They were deep in the caverns now, hours from the Mu capital, and the only reason there was any light at all seemed to be a bioluminescent lichen-like organism that coated the stalactite-riddled chamber ceiling, giving the underground river the appearance of a blue-white, misty sky above.

Ships littered the shores, many rusted to the point of incomprehensibility while others appeared mostly intact. Masako didn’t know a lot about boats, but she had the… sinking feeling these were all from different eras of time, some even approaching the modern era.

“I have heard your surface world calls it the Dragon’s Triangle,” Piranha explained. “At least, this is where some of them end up.”

She gestured away from the window Masako and several of the others had gathered to look through, and towards the one on the other side of the hoverbus, where the river continued out underneath the other side of the rock bridge to run along a long, down-sloping path where the light from the organism colony eventually cut out.

“It is said that if one travels all the way down to the ends of this encroaching sea, one might find the wreckage of the scuttled ships the original Seatopians arrived upon.”

“So, we’re getting close, then?” Jason surmised, receiving a gentle nod from Piranha in confirmation.

Masako looked back at the clearer beach in time to watch several quadrupedal, brown-black-colored reptiles skip and jog along the sand, large back sails rocking back and forth with the rougher movements. “Dimetrodons?”

Lucy was nodding, already with her camcorder out to film them. “I’m, uh, not gonna show anyone this,” she clarified, but didn’t put the camera down.

Something shifted in the water, at about the middle of the wide expanse, then a smooth purple shape broke the surface with all the grace and mass of a whale… that happened to be purple, and have four tiny back fins spaced in a square arrangement. Instead of a fluked tail flicking up through the water, those observing were treated to a more reptilian appendage, with bone-colored spines and a few smaller fins behind a narrowed, pointed tip.

Kristina gasped. “Is that…”

A long, sauropod-like neck breached the water, rearing back like a snake as the narrowed, bony-pale face let loose a haunting, fog horn cry.

“A CRYPTOCLEDIUS!” Lucy and Kristina shouted at once, arms looped around one another as they positively vibrated with excitement.

Masako lurched back, anticipating a fight, but the aquatic creature seemed curious more than aggressive, letting out a few more ghostlike sounds in the direction of the moving convoy but not venturing any closer. There was something about that face, though… sunken eyes indistinguishable from what looked like empty sockets in a skull… that still gave Masako chills. It was too… familiar…

“It’s been suggested they’re the most recent evolutionary predecessor to the Skull-Crawler!”

Ah, there it was. Masako nodded and let Lucy rattle on.

“The hypothesis goes, they found themselves in an environment that experienced droughts, and began dragging themselves on land with those extra clawed forelimbs, see, there? And eventually those became walking limbs and the fins became vestigial. Seeing one living underground… it practically confirms it! Not that I can really admit this evidence, but still!”

There was no arguing against Lucy’s excitement, but… she did seem particularly nervous, acting the way people did when they were focusing on something they were passionate about as a distraction, but fearing they were on the verge of running out of steam. Everyone here probably felt the same thing to some extent, but a couple glances at Kristina revealed she was eyeing Lucy with concern as well – and worse, with confusion.

“Umm… yeah,” Lucy started to say awkwardly, as attention for the trio died down. She glanced at the other two both with a reluctant, but knowing frown, and turned off her camera. “Just… thinking too much. I… I mean, for one…” She took a long sigh. “The professor would love to be seeing all this. And Jeremy… he hasn’t been that much of an ass lately! I never would’ve thought he’d take our work seriously, but… and RC! We were all worried for a while, but she’s been…”

“RC?” Masako asked, a few seconds before her mind would’ve worked out process of elimination.

“Marcia,” explained Kristina. “It’s the middle two letters of her name.”

“Actually, I meant it like Ar—”

Kristina’s sudden, exasperated head shake set Lucy backtracking.

“—I mean yeah, the middle two letters of her name. That’s what it is.”

The strained, embarrassed grin on Lucy’s face was just another temporary measure before her mood collapsed again, an almost subtle shake in her voice and occasionally her shoulders.

“…she’s been better. Really better, like… okay, sometimes she still has us worried, but then other times, it’s like she’s suddenly living life for… well, life, like she has me wondering if we finally got through to her. And now… and now I have to wonder if everything’s gonna change…”

Kristina tried to reach out, but Lucy shifted away – then froze, realizing what she’d done, and shook her head quickly.

“I’m sorry, it’s… I should just be worrying about all that, but…” Lucy glanced at Masako. “Shawn… told us all that stuff you found out about ESP, and, uh… I just, um… what does it mean that I could kinda see part of Minette and Mallory’s telepathic centipede thing, when nobody else could?”

Immediately at an understanding, Kristina tried again and, this time, took Lucy’s hand without resistance. “Nothing that has to change anything about us. Nothing we can’t work through.”

Lucy breathed, and fell sideways into Kristina’s waiting embrace, hiding her tears of relief in the collar fold of a denim jacket. She sniffled a bit as she was quietly, reassuringly soothed, just out of the others’ lines of sight.

Masako watched them with mixed emotions, ultimately giving them their space and returning her gaze to the window.

Look at me now. A thousand kilometers below the Earth’s surface, about to go to war against an ancient civilization, and I’m looking at a six-limbed reptile with a skull for a face that would apparently make a bunch of scientists pop out the champagne and scream ‘told you so!’

Battra was quiet, knowing that for the first time in a while, he wasn’t the one she was talking to.

I… yeah. I know I don’t have much to say anymore. I know I keep trying to forget, and trying not to, all at the same time. I know I don’t really think this matters.

The Cryptocledius seemed to grow bored of the convoy’s presence, and slunk its neck back below the water’s surface, leaving the waves to re-orient themselves in its wake.

I know if you wanted me to be happy, I’ve let you down.

Naoko was standing nearby, a little ways apart. She was giving Masako space, and by her silence and posture, she probably already knew what Masako was thinking about.

“Does this… someone…” the Mothra ranger’s words were careful, almost a whisper, but gentle, unjudging, and encouraging, even curious. “…have a name?”

Masako sighed and looked back down at the water, staring deeply into it as if she could see into the farthest depths.

“If she found one, she didn’t get a chance to tell me.”

Walking just to the edge of the shadow of the giant statue’s chin, Masako flattened her hand to block out the intense light from Seatopia’s artificial sun, as she gazed out over the distant terrain.

Toward what she understood was the west, red sand plains stretched for as far as she could see before the light in the distance obscured any detail. To the north and south, the land began curving gently upward toward small pointed peaks that gave way to taller ones and, eventually, to mountainous walls that turned vertical toward the cavern ceiling. All the space in the middle, however, was split into an orderly, crisscrossing grid of pale grey roadways, centered around one split-lane highway that ran east-west through a curved-road intersection connected to a bridge running north-south over it. Forming an almost butterfly-wing shape, the sections of land outlined by the curved ramps up to the bridge were filled in with healthily green grass fields, a landscaping choice that was reflected in spotty rectangular patterns in sparse other areas of the white-marble-building city that seemed to have grown up around the intersection like the beginnings of an oasis.

Where one could just crane one’s neck to peer past the back of the rocky terrain framing the statue, Piranha pointed out the northern sector, where there was evidence of the rubble of another settlement, buried in nearly unfathomably-sized sections of rock that had fallen from the roof of the cavern. Masako felt, then, that on some level she could understand the fear and anger Seatopia must have held against the people on the surface.

She thought of 106, and decided it was easier to think the dead had deserved it.

“It’s still there,” Piranha whispered, her gaze seeming to find a pair of symmetrical, outward-sloped marble towers rising like the sail of a sailboat out of a half-cylinder roofed building. Her words were nervous, blank, a seeming conscious attempt to expel any meaning. Because just because the building was still standing, said nothing concrete about the technology inside.

The trek to the museum building consisted of a treacherous descent down the mountainside the statue was perched upon, then a grueling climb up and around the smaller rocky peak that hid most of the traversed ravine from the lighthouse-like watchtower affixed to the museum dome’s northwest side. It was barely more a cone than a cylinder, with a wider saucer crowning the top and two stacked observation balconies facing the museum dome itself. Luckily, there was another, smaller ravine trench that ran the other side of a third, even smaller rocky hill that blocked the tower’s view all the way to the museum’s east-facing service entrance.

The museum was… empty, which was unnerving. Weren’t there guards? The halls were dim, enough to suggest the exhibits weren’t in use. The ceilings were grids of thin, clothlike, white tiles with gaudy polka-dots, broken up by hallway-spanning solid metal beams with lines of reflective mirror domes on the undersides. The walls were, by default, a burnt orange reminiscent of the red sand, with small wall lights on low power between the exhibit windows.

Masako tilted her head, staring through the glass and deep into the eyes of a two-meter-long, green-and-white, three-dimensional cartoon dolphin, affixed to smaller but similarly-shaped red and orange dolphins on either side by a weird sort of rotary paddle system.

What… the fuck?

“Aww, I want one!” Yuzo announced cheerily at her side.

“Is this what Antonio considers a ‘conquest?’” Koji snarked, shaking his head as he walked past.

“It… speaks to me,” Shinji said, standing on the other side from Yuzo. “On a weird level.”

“You three, come on!” Naoko waved them forward. “I know it’s cute…”

“The prisoners should be on the lower floor,” Piranha spoke as they all caught up with her. She was directing them to a stairwell door set aside from the entrance to what looked like a larger, circular exhibit gallery. Before anyone could go, though, she went through first, drawing one of her scimitars and flooding the channels of the blade with its magmatic glow.

It was even darker one level down, the weapon a stark contrast to shadowy halls with only reddish emergency lights. It didn’t quite look or feel ‘dungeony,’ in fact there was an air of luxury to the visible furnishings, but there was still a distinct sense of foreboding.

Finally, they encountered two guards – the first of which Piranha dispatched with a bash from the hilt of her scimitar, and the second she knocked unconscious by palming his face and slamming the back of his head against the wall.

“I will decide whether to kill them on my way out,” she said curtly, before carefully using the blade of her weapon to breach the pair of reinforced double-doors the men had been guarding.

Several of the group tried to rush forward, Lucy and company among them, but Piranha froze halfway through the door, her stop sudden enough to bring everyone to a stumbling halt.

“Just me,” she whispered shakily, her free hand finding the strap of the pack she’d carried all the way here. More confidently, she turned to the graphite-colored, trident-wielding figure in the back of the crowd. “Agent 44, take them quickly to the other holding area. We will regroup in the gallery upstairs, ten minutes.”

“Are you sure—”

“Not the time,” Piranha snapped, but tried to ease herself. “Override.”

Agent 44 nodded, acknowledging the apparent code word. “I guess you’re with me,” he grumbled to just… everyone, generally, after Piranha had disappeared through the doorway.

It was a long walk with the most negative person in the entire Muan army being technically in charge, but it was a short walk physically. No one spoke, or gave any indication they wanted to speak, especially Lucy and her friends. Masako supposed that, mentally, they were in the same place she was – avoiding a number of difficult questions that would be answered momentarily, one way or the other.

In the end, it was Shinji who rushed forward into the larger holding area before anyone could stop him, one end of his staff striking the first guard in the sternum while he brought the other upward to crash against the second’s jaw. He activated the fan-blade on that end, and in a twirl, sliced apart the lock on the cell door made of heavy metal bars.

He was about to get back at the first guard, who was only stunned, but Jeremy had already knocked the cell door out of his way with a shoulder and charged at the guard with a swinging punch. Even stained in dust with his clothes fraying at the seams, the boy had enough strength to drop the guard to the floor, where he followed up with a fierce kick to the struggling man’s stomach.

“Jeremy!” Lucy shouted, rushing over and grabbing his arm to try and calm him. Jeremy just tried to throw her off, but after a few tries and once his wide, panicked eyes registered the scene in front of him, he made himself go still with a shaky breath.

“It’s Marcy! They took her down below!”

Only two people had been in these cells – Jeremy, and Professor Ando, who looked similarly worse for wear with his glasses cracked in one lens.

Masako was a bolt of lightning, ricocheting through the halls until she found another stairwell that went downward.

The lowest level of the building wasn’t even furnished, with dim orange lights embedded in the bare, red sandstone walls and illuminating the rocky, dusty floor below with only the grated ceiling appearing metallic. A few paces down the passage’s slow curve, there was even a mass of dry-looking plant roots that had been left growing out of the wall and down through the floor, probably a part of the ivy Masako had seen growing on some of the stone outside.

She paused at that, because… well, of all the things she’d had a few fractions of a second to be afraid of finding down here, a dead Seatopian guard with blood dripping from a gaping chest wound wasn’t on the list. He’d somehow been thrown against the mass of roots and had become tangled in it, kept from falling fully to the ground but clearly and unmistakably dead.

Masako kept moving, barely registering that the next dead guard she found was also tangled up in the only other mass of plant roots she encountered, growing out of the opposite wall.

She heard a quiet whimpering from up ahead, and rounded the last part of the bend into the rounded-off dead end of the passage.

Three more dead Seatopian guards, laid out like they’d fallen backwards into the points of a triangle, all bleeding from similar stab wounds.

Marcia was on the floor in the middle, hunched over and crying as she shakily held onto one of their trident-spears across her knees. The bladed end shone with reflected light, slick with blood.

“Hey.” Masako stepped closer, holding her hands up as nonthreateningly as she could with the claws on her fingers. “Hey, it’s me.”

Marcia looked up, her eyes more shocked and troubled than scared or hurt. Masako looked the girl over, relieved to find that while she was a little dusty and had specks of blood on her clothes, she didn’t even look as roughed-up as Jeremy and the professor had. She wasn’t finding any words, though, even if the sight of the Battra Ranger had seemingly given her racing thoughts some unknown sense of direction.

Masako knelt down across from her, watching the trident shake in Marcia’s tightly-clutching hands.

“I… I think I killed them,” Marcia choked out.

“You did what you had to,” Masako assured, remembering with a gut-wrench that most people weren’t quite as accustomed to taking lives as she was.

Marcia shook her head, almost managing a fake smile but just seeming to make herself more alarmed. “I don’t… I don’t even remember it…”

Carefully, Masako put her hands on Marcia’s claimed weapon, calming the shaking but not making any move to take it away until she’d met Marcia’s eyes again. As if just realizing she was holding it, Marcia made a half-stunned nod of acknowledgement, and after a few reluctant seconds, slowly let go of the trident. Masako carefully maneuvered it out from between them and set it aside.

Masako held out her upturned hands, thumbs to the sides and fingertips angled towards each other to give Marcia space to grasp around her palms. After a few moments, and with a nod, Marcia did, and Masako gently helped her up off the floor. Marcia leant into her shoulder as Masako guided them back through the stone passage.

“Thank you,” Marcia whispered quietly, shakily and somewhat awkwardly, as they passed by the two other dead guards on their way back to the metal steps that spiraled down into the rock.

Lucy and Kristina were at the top of the stairs – just them, which had Masako immediately on alert, but she held her tongue while she hurried Marcia into her friends’ waiting arms. “It’s not her blood,” she offered quietly, just to assure the concerned eyes that briefly questioned her before returning to their more immediate focus.

Marcia cried and clutched at Lucy’s and Kristina’s hands as they worked to calm and soothe her, but something about her was still caught up in shock and, perhaps, wonder – some of her momentary thoughts seeming to be occupied elsewhere.

“…Why are you down here alone?” Masako finally voiced, when a moment had passed.

Kristina nodded, and winced nervously, as if expecting that, and broke away while Lucy pulled Marcia fully into a hug. “Agent guy took the professor and Jeremy up to the gallery, and Jason to look them over. The other rangers are sweeping all the floors for any more guards. I think that’s something new that just came down from the Empress – we’re supposed to be taking this building now and holding the line here.”

Masako rolled her eyes invisibly. “Just great.”

They were almost back to the gallery when the explosion hit, shaking the corridors around them. Marcia screamed, and Lucy held her while Masako and Kristina rushed ahead, making it to one of the entryways less than a minute later.

Jason was diving out through it towards them, Jeremy and the professor both pushed along in his arms, while a silver-armored agent headed up the rear, twirling back around to one-hand aim his serpent pistol at something inside. Without a chance to react, Masako watched the moment the crystal dagger struck him in the helmet visor, his body going suddenly limp, deprived of life instantaneously as it collapsed to the floor.

There was a hole in the gallery’s ceiling dome, clear to the bright artificial sun outside. Rubble was scattered on the floor, and two more agents were on the ground with it. McKay in his Spacegodzilla armor caught the dagger as it returned to him, twirling it around only for a graphite-armored hand to snag his wrist and twist it out of its intended attack vector.

Agent 44 was charred, blackened, his suit torn and burned away over half his body. His helmet was gone, and his left arm ended at the elbow, where the frayed skin gave way not to blood and bone, but to what looked more like melted plastic and sparking, twisted metal. His remaining arm overpowered even McKay’s ranger strength for long enough to jerk back with a sharp, incredibly fast elbow to the face that looked like it nearly sent the ranger sprawling.

“Ya just won’t quit, will you?” McKay spat back, kneeing the agent in the midsection and throwing his dagger back into the air for a telekinetic attack.

“Thought you had enough of me!” Masako snarled as she teleported in front of him, ready to intervene, only to find herself restrained by green, surging energy and lifted off her feet.

McKay’s dagger clattered to the floor behind him, his hastily outstretched arm devoting all his energy to preventing Masako’s escape. “No!” He growled. “You get to watch!”

Agent 44 recovered, only for McKay to immediately punch him so hard in the right side of the head that his left ear, as well as a circle of skin around it, popped out of his skull on the end of a long, metallic tray that had several upright CDs slotted down into it. 44’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed to the floor, as lifeless as the other agent had been.

With a wave of McKay’s hand, Masako was thrown to the side and slammed backward into one of the support columns between exhibits, the energy still containing her no matter how hard she struggled or tried to phase. The Spacegodzilla ranger regarded her for a moment, as if considering, before something off to Masako’s right caught his attention instead – in the direction of the entrance she’d run towards along with—

“You’ll do!”

With his other hand, McKay pulled, towing Kristina into the room with another grasp of green, surging power. Masako fought, but McKay’s grasp on his powers seemed to have improved enough to contain both of them at once. He continued to keep Masako steady, while reeling in a struggling, punching, kicking Kristina who just grit her teeth stared him down.

There was a tilt of beginning in the otherwise-impassive stare of McKay’s faceplate, as if he was about to gloat, about to make some point of his sustained power over the two of them. It must have died on his lips when pistol shots started peppering his armor, and he had to choose to drop one of them to bring up his shield. Kristina rolled on the ground, bracing with a palm and looking back at the same time Masako turned her head.

Lucy had the fallen agent’s gun in her hand, her face serious.

“One shall stand, one shall fall, motherfucker!”

Kristina’s eyes went wide. “Lucy, no!”

McKay lowered his shield a bit, just to stare at Lucy over it and make it clear he thought of her as a joke. He passed an incredulous glance to Masako, then back to her, and put a quick, emphatic shake though his arms. “The hell you think you’re gonna do?”

Lucy snarled, baring her teeth, as she said “Improvise.”

Rather than shoot again, she tossed the pistol like a fastball, making McKay drop his shield to telekinetically catch it on instinct. Lucy was already in a roll, one that carried her past a piece of debris on the ground, from underneath of which she snatched one of the other agents’ dropped stone serpent rifles and heaved it along with her. She came to a firm stop at a kneel in front of Kristina, one foot bracing on the ground and the rifle propped up on her leg, and fired.

Intertwining mint-green blasts struck McKay in the chestplate, staggering him for only a moment until he brough up his shield again and began blocking the attack effortlessly. He laughed in a way that sounded like mocking congratulations fading to dark certainty.

“Time to finish this once and for all!” Lucy shouted with fury, slowly getting to her feet while still firing what was yet another absurdly large weapon for her frame.

“Don’t!” Kristina begged, having grown increasingly more panicked and desperate over the last few seconds. She reached out, but had to brace an arm over her eyes as the glow from Lucy’s weapons fire brightened and even dust began to kick up around her.

Lucy’s hair was fluttering as if in intense wind, her shark tooth necklace beginning to hover up into the air on its string, when she opened glowing-white eyes and screamed,

“YOOOOU’RE ALLLLLL MIIIIIIIIIIIINE!”

The green glow of multiple beams faded red in an instant, snapping together to one solid laser with a dense, chaotic spiral coiling around it. McKay freaked the fuck out as his shield started to opaque almost as fast it had under the lightning storm from Masako’s zord.

Only Masako saw the hand behind his shield curl into a twist, two fingers flicking upward.

“Look out!” she shouted in vain, as two crystal daggers rose up off the ground and lingered in the air behind the Spacegodzilla ranger, ready to be sent forward any moment. Kristina saw them and lunged at Lucy, only for the light to vanish from Lucy’s eyes as she turned around instead, dropping the rifle and shoving Kristina back out of the path of the daggers flying toward their mark.

Even restrained, even far away against the wall, Masako felt the cut of wind slamming into her as it crossed the room like a knife. It stunned her for a moment, even as she fought the loss of sensation.

When her vision cleared, the gallery was split in half by a slightly-tilted circle of grey, spinning fast like a vortex. McKay’s daggers were caught in it, circling like sharks and by their speed and momentum, resisting the ranger’s attempts to draw them back.

On the other side, Lucy and Kristina were both on the ground, slowly regaining their senses and looking up at Shinji, who partly knelt under the shadow of the vortex’s slant, facing them as he held out his double-ended spade and twirled it rapidly behind his back.

“I thought I said… no sacrifices.”

It was friendly, but his posture wasn’t as he calmly stood back up and turned around, continuing to hold McKay’s daggers hostage within the small hurricane. With a focused wrench of his weapon to the side, he dissipated the storm in a gust that sent both daggers flying in through different shattering display windows. Slashing his weapon again before his enemy could act, he sent a fierce cut of wind at McKay almost like a sharp, flying blade, then proceeded to do the same thing several more times, impassive and cold as he took a stern step forward with each movement.

When McKay finally reached again for his daggers and sent them forward, Shinji brought himself into a fluid, skillful dance, weaving his staff around him to generate a funnel cloud that kicked up whatever debris hadn’t already been swept about. McKay quickly discovered that trying to control his weapons inside a localized windstorm wasn’t quite working out in his favor, especially when Shinji just swiped his spade horizontally and caught the daggers with an air current, twirling on his feet and heaving the strike back around to launch the daggers out directly at their owner.

McKay managed to divert one, but had to bring up his now-bright-yellow shield to block the other, making it skip upward over his head at the cost of the shield fully shattering. With that, he finally disregarded his hold on Masako enough for her to teleport out of it, the Battra ranger kicking only a single foot off the ground as she angled into another lightning bolt that carried her straight at him.

Caught by surprise, McKay spun from the punch to the face, but completed the twirl with a dagger trailing after his hand, nearly catching Masako in the side only for an upswing from Shinji’s staff to deflect it toward the ceiling. Shinji lunged forward in a jab, striking the Spacegodzilla ranger in the shoulder while Masako caught up with the action and contributed a partial roundhouse kick to the stomach. Shinji spun his staff fancifully as he activated the fans, then lunged past Masako to make a number of quick bladed strikes that scraped sparks of McKay’s armor. Masako’s prism beams struck one, then two daggers as McKay called for them, buying Shinji more time to make a horizontal slice across McKay’s throat that drew a spray of blood.

McKay’s hand caught in a tight hold on the stem of Shinji’s spade before it could complete a potentially-decapitating forward stab, and while throwing it aside, he quickly surged green energy up his gauntlets and caught both rangers in his telekinetic grasp.

Seemingly without enough strength to contain them both indefinitely, he instead threw them far apart to the sides of the room, breaking two more gallery exhibits in the process. As glass shards flew and mounted items fell off armatures, Masako crashed back-first into the chest piece of a set of samurai armor that looked about a size too big to fit the tallest and broadest human she was pretty sure could exist. She stumbled to her feet as she fell downward, nearly tripped over a spiked club longer than she was tall, and made haste to rush back into the fight.

Before either she or Shinji could make it back to center, Koji bounded through another entrance and leapt over a pile of debris, forming the fourth cardinal direction approach vector as McKay took a few steps forward while preparing his daggers overhead. Instead of continuing the charge, however, Koji gave a meaningful look to the incoming daggers and dropped to a slide on his knees, his arms spread wide with mace and shield in hand. He slammed both together like a mallet on a gong, sending out a sonic shockwave that shattered the rest of the exhibit widows, proceeding forward from the extended plane of space from where he’d been holding the shield. Masako watched carefully as the flying daggers passed through the shockwave, from the points back through the hilts and finally the pommel spikes, all the crystal portions taking on threadlike cracks.

She fired her prism beams, lines of purple energy targeting the weapons from the side and blasting through both, detonating the cracked spikes in explosive bursts. The remaining hilts dropped to the floor, and McKay simply stood stunned, at a loss.

A pair of pink-orange beams striking him in the chest marked the entrance of the other rangers, Naoko and Yuzo taking up position near a standing Koji while Masako formed up alongside and Shinji skidded to a halt in front of the group.

The Titanosaurus ranger looked back briefly over his shoulder, and called out, “Mothra! Battra! Your gauntlets!”

Masako looked down at her forearms, confused, only for the larger armored pieces containing her spikes to suddenly break away, leaving only the thinner, more basic ranger gauntlets underneath. She had no idea they could do that.

“KAIJU… SPIKE!”

With a shout, Shinji tossed his fans-closed staff in the air above him, where it hovered horizontally. Yuzo’s detached smaller arm panels flew in and clamped to either side of the forward end, deploying their claws in parallel to form an eight-bladed spear point. Masako’s green-yellow gauntlets were next, clamping in a similar fashion just behind Yuzo’s to add their backswept orange spikes to the fierceness of the spearhead. Naoko’s smoother, gold-black gauntlets aligned behind those, seemingly only to provide weight.

The whole arrangement dropped back into Shinji’s open hand, where he heftily reared it back for a javelin throw.

“FINAL… STRIKE!”

The throw hit McKay dead center, immediately launching him backward into a wall and through it, the explosion leaving a tunnel clean through several hall-widths and clear out the side of the building. The tiny, dark silhouette of McKay vanished to a speck in the distance as it blasted off toward the artificial sun.

A few seconds later, all the individual ranger weapons flew almost invisibly fast back through the opening and replaced themselves in hands or on forearms.

Slowly, a few others filtered back into the room – Jeremy and Professor Ando, along with Jason, who was supporting a confused Marcia against his shoulder. They approached, but gave space to Kristina, who was up to her knees, shedding tears, and scrambling to keep a very tired-looking Lucy from falling over.

“What happened?” Jason whispered urgently, settling the closest to the pair while still checking over Marcia.

“I don’t…” Lucy murmured, then blinked at least semi-awake, as if she could keep herself in that state only by looking right at Kristina’s eyes. “I don’t even know how I did it. I’m just… I’m not going on without you.”

Kristina sniffled, slightly shook her head in disbelief, and smiled like she was about to wail in despair and weep in joy all at once. “Don’t you dare leave me banging on any glass, you absolute NERD!”

She shoved Lucy lightly in the shoulders, then just as quickly pulled her back into a tight hug, rocking her gently.

The Empress of Mu, at violent stride, walked in through the main doorway. Her hair, cut off sharply between chin-length and shoulder-length and again at her bangs, was a bright, vibrant, semi-reflective pastel red. Her brows and winged eyeliner were deeply black, the space between them smoky with faint turquoise blue, and her fierce lips nearly matched her hair in shade. Around her forehead, she wore a decorative band of gold with many overlapping semicircles imitating the points of a crown. The ornament was threaded around its base with a strand of white pearls, which merged at the front into several short strands that hung in a loose curtain toward the space between her eyes. Her scale-suit was a metallic maroon at the upper chest and shoulders, fading briefly to an emerald green near her elbows and then to vibrant teal blue down the gauntlets. There was a more extensive show of emerald down her ribcage, waist, and hips all the way to her knees, which marked the beginning of another teal gradient that solidified at her boots.

Piranha was at her side, the pair accompanied by the four remaining agents, including Agent 72. After a glance at the Empress, as if to ensure she wasn’t immediately needed while her leader surveyed the confusing sight of the Rangers, Piranha rushed to the side of the downed Agent 44, cradling his head and gently pressing her fingers to the extended ear section. The disc-holding tray began a mechanized, smooth slide back into 44’s skull, at which point he blinked back to awareness.

“Agent 44,” Piranha gently commanded, “you will accompany the surface-worlders away from the fight, you’ve done enough.”

The android simply smiled back. “I’m afraid, as per programming, I must be contrary.” With his good hand, he grasped at something on the stone floor, which turned out to be his helmet as he slotted it back over his head and rose to his feet. “I’ve still got some fight left in me.”

The Empress strode across the gallery, meeting Masako and Naoko, who strode back to meet her.

“So it’s true,” she began curtly, with an apparently-permanent scowl. “You serve us now?”

Masako crossed her arms. “Serve is a strong word.”

“But we’re in this fight with you,” Naoko added hastily. “We fight for you and your people.”

“Believe it or not, we agree on something, and that’s helping you topple Antonio,” Masako continued, tempering her attitude just a little. “Don’t fuck it up.”

“They have aided us this far,” Piranha interceded, leaving 44 to practice one-handing a rifle and instead, sidling up to the Empress with a subtle hand on her shoulder. “They are worthy allies, and grant our authority already more weight than perhaps they should, given their station and ours.”

The Empress didn’t seem particularly happy with that logic, but she also seemed to realize she was on a time table, and didn’t argue. Naoko was the one who nodded to wrap things up, offering a quick “We got this,” before rounding to march through the hole the Kaiju Spike had made in the building.

The tunnel of broken walls opened up to the wide, railed, white marble balcony that ran around the base of the dome but was still several floors off the ground on the city-facing side. Masako only advanced far enough to register that a large detachment of Seatopian forces had congregated on the red sand field just beyond, forming a gradual arc to face the museum building. Behind them on a slant was the double-lane highway, the entrance having opened up facing just south of west, and across said highway to the south was a steep-sloping hill built up with multiple overlapping structures on several ascending tiers. From there, a sparse spread of onlookers watched the scene from balconies, but few appeared intent to play any part in the fighting.

Naoko stepped up to the blocky railing and stood upon it, spreading her wings before anyone below could make a move. It had the intended effect, at least for now.

“I speak for Mothra, the Sun-in-the-West, goddess of Infant Island and protector of the Earth! You have allied with an enemy of this world, but he is defeated, and Mothra is merciful. All of you who surrender this pointless pursuit of conquest, who give up your hatred, and your scorn for your fellow people, you will be spared. Bring forth Antonio at once, to face justice, and you can be welcomed again into a world of peace, harmony, and mutual trust.”

What was merciful was that no one in Antonio’s army had anything to say to that. Masako regretted giving Naoko this chance already, but her reservations had doubled as it occurred to her the sorts of things that might’ve been hollered back, and imagined suddenly Naoko crumbling under the verbal assault of enraged and unfiltered adherents to the vile.

Instead, the steadfast silence of men in strangely business-like uniforms or concealing white cloaks ushered in only a sad sense of disappointment. A few hmphs echoed throughout, but they clung to their weapons – surface-built energy rifles, probably also courtesy of Solstice Technologies.

“Seriously?” Naoko pleaded with a trace of hidden tears. “None of you?”

“Told you so,” Masako muttered. In truth, it was likely mob mentality more than collective, unrepentant guilt, but she wasn’t going to burden Naoko with that, given what was to come next.

Naoko sighed, and crossed her arms. “Alright, then I guess we do this the other way.”

Masako was a bolt into the red sky, appearing above Naoko and looming for a moment with wings spread. Just long enough to spur realization, before she was a bolt to the ground below, emerging midair in a twirl toward a move she’d been saving for a special occasion.

The toe of one boot hit the ground, and her prism beams were firing. She dropped toward a kneel at the same time she spun in a full circle, toes drilling into the sand as she twisted, until she reached three-hundred-sixty degrees on three points of contact, lowered like a prowling cat poised to strike.

The crowd, at once, collapsed all around her, whether they’d been burned through at the neck or at the calves or anything in between. Cyberlons stumbled to account for missing legs, the machines on the periphery having absorbed whatever energy hadn’t spent its range and power in flesh. Only in the farther lines, away from the field of carnage, was there anyone left standing to step backward in fear as the Battra ranger began a slow rise to her feet.

“Your great destroyer has arrived…”

Masako sneered the words in a way that tempted at a deadpan, as she mimed cracking her knuckles, let her wings, surging with power, flare out behind her, and began her steady advance at a near-casual stroll.

“…the end is near.”

Cyber-flies swarmed immediately, either rising up from behind the infantry lines or emerging from various hangars hidden around the city, and rattled the red-sunset air with their overlapping nails-on-chalkboard metallic screams.

Once she’d phased out of the way of a cyberlon napalm strike that set corpses ablaze, Masako reluctantly focused her mechanical adversaries hard, using her forearm spikes to tear out the cyberlon’s exposed machinery from behind so she could hurl the cube-like napalm bomb hives up into the air and set them off inside the cyber-fly swarm with her prism beams. It took her about a second, long enough to draw friendly fire towards the cyberlon before she was far away, watching it spark and burn while she dismantled another one in a similar fashion.

In the chaos of Masako ripping through their back line, more of the Seatopian forces fell victim to fire from on high, beams from the Mu agents’ serpent rifles flanking Naoko as she glided over the field raining down lightning and antenna beams. Koji descended on a cyberlon with a downward smash from his spiked shield, flattening it against the ground with splayed out legs, and as he rolled forward, the machine exploded in sparks as Yuzo drilled up through the top from the ground below. Just when Masako had started wondering whether they were supposed to fight the forces starting to flow in from the rest of the city like this, an explosion set off a cloud of smoke near the underground kingdom’s main entrance.

Emerging from a dark silhouette, the four-cylindered green drone carrier led the charge, manta-winged missiles rocketing upward before maneuvering in the air to chase after the swarming cyber-flies. Masako watched one fly turn around and fire an electrical surge from its stinger, successfully detonating the drone early but still being consumed by the resulting, momentum-carried blast of fire and shrapnel. Hoverbuses swooped in, drifting low and passing sideways underneath arcing napalm bombs to deploy more armored agents, while the hovertanks roared on overhead, engaging the thinned-out ranks of the cyber-flies in an aerial dogfight.

As Naoko landed beside her, Koji and Yuzo caught up in their periphery, and the Mu agents rushed forward to fill out the front line, Masako found herself in the midst of an unfolding land war, the collected ground forces making a desperate play to disable the cyberlon mobile artillery.

Masako and Naoko spread their wings, bolts of lightning zapping napalm bombs out of the air as Mu agents fired from positions all around them. The cyberlons were tough, adaptable, and capable of not only inflicting massive damage with a single attack volley, but rendering whole areas of the battlefield unusable. What had very briefly been the frontline was scattered now in pockets of terrain not consumed by burning fires. The rangers and agents had narrowly eliminated the three machines remaining on the ground outside the museum when one Mu agent cried out in warning, pointing to another perched on a battlement on the built-up slope, opening its carapace to fire.

In a bolt, Masako was gliding in front of it, disrupting its targeting sequence with her spread wings while a pair of prism beams lanced down through its head. She caught the forked horn that was severed in the head’s explosion, and brought it down like a battleaxe on the remnants of the machine’s neck for good measure, watching it spark and collapse while she extracted her makeshift weapon. Unfortunately, more of the beetles were emerging from the narrow alleys between buildings, using the layered city as cover from which to rain napalm on the battle below.

See, now I’m torn, because on one hand I should probably take care of this myself before the Empress does something dumb like order explosive drones to bombard the inhabited city, but on the other hand I actually don’t fucking care about civilians who also hold the same hateful ideology as the soldiers do.

Before she’d really finished that thought, she sighed and begrudgingly let the proverbial first hand win out, appearing in front of the next closest cyberlon and using the horn-axe to cleave off its front legs. While it rebalanced, Masako blasted an archway above into falling rubble that crushed its unfolding carapace panels closed again, the killing blow through its exposed head only coming once Masako had climbed through another phased diagonal and twirled back to face it while she kicked a third cyberlon off the edge of a rampart.

What the fuck has gotten into me? I’m going off the shallow end and I hate it.

Masako scrambled up an ivy-grown stone wall between two balconies and jammed the tuning fork end of the horn around the length of another cyberlon’s, forcing it upward so she could blast it underneath the head and send the machine staggering toward vertical on its hind legs. With an assist from her phase state, she bashed herself into its underside, knocking it through the gap of residential buildings it was creeping through and laying it out on its back in the middle of the street.

An energy bolt struck Masako in her armored chest, glancing off with only a slight pushback.

She was standing on a main, ever-so-gently-sloping road, part of a zig-zag that went up the hill with civilian habitations on the outward side, storefronts on the inner side, and the main dome of a palace-like building looming ever-present a few levels higher. Facing sunward and on a slight descent down the main road, Masako found the culprit of the shot – a Seatopian woman standing off to the left near a storefront window, holding a white and yellow Solstice pistol in one hand and tucking a child into her side with the other.

Masako’s peripheral caught movement on a rooftop to her right, and she snapped red lightning from pointed fingers, zapping a grey and beige rifle from the arms of a man who’d been aiming it down towards her. Leaving him unarmed and stunned, she rounded her gaze back on the woman before she could fire again. There were several more people in the street – unarmed, as far as Masako could tell. No cyberlons in the immediate vicinity, though she could hear their mechanical stomping sounds at a distance.

“Put it down,” she snapped, with little patience and a regret that it hadn’t been less.

The woman held firm with her aim and her gaze – not much of a threat to a ranger either way, but Masako wasn’t the one standing in the line of fire anymore. In her head, she was Azusa, who this woman would have shot just the same without hesitation. She was a hundred of her people, with faces to be seen more devilish than Battra’s visage but names and joy and laughter to know them, and one with none of those things at all.

With each one, a surge of crimson ran down Masako’s gauntlets, adding to the twin storms brewing between splayed, clawed fingertips.

Beating wings of orange moths passed through her vision, the flash of Naoko condensing at her side. A hand caught her shoulder – not rough with any outburst of judgement but softly and without force. Few times had Masako felt so vile, so monstrous, so much of a failure and a traitor as when she let the charge between her fingers dissipate into nothing and swallowed her scream inward.

Naoko’s hand rubbed her shoulder. Even amid the chaos, there seemed a moment of calm.

The storefront beside the woman exploded in a horizontal geyser of stone, glass, and one large, sharpened black pincer. She barely had time to process and pull her child closer before the claw snapped shut around them both, spraying the street with blood.

The man on the roof screamed, jolting Masako and Naoko from their stunned daze in time to watch twin appendages threaten to stretch him in two, only to slam him back to the roof top instead so a stinger-barbed tail could arc up into the air and be brought down in impalement.

The overlapping roars of untold multitudes of Centruroides tenebris heralded a new battle cry.

The nearer scorpion broke further out of the building and eyed the two moth rangers with its unsettlingly humanlike hunting eyes, then ignored them entirely in favor of joining the other scorpion, now descending down the side of the habitation, in a hostile pursuit of the remaining Seatopians in the street. A third scorpion cut off any escape from farther down the road, and more were swarming over the city with startling totality given they seemed to have arrived out of nowhere only moments ago.

Masako felt weirdly vindicated. Naoko… looked she was having a breakdown and might throw up in her helmet, which would probably be unpleasant. Masako didn’t get that, wondered if it would even help to try to offer comfort when she was clearly so numb and passive. But she took Naoko’s hand and wasn’t brushed off.

Amid all the roars and crumbling buildings and legs scraping stone, weapons fire caught their attention, coming from the dome of that palace-like building higher on the hill. Energy blasts cut lines upward around it, the target soon revealed as a scorpion that appeared at least twice as large and significantly more armored than the others crawled around from behind and let loose a roar of conquest over the structure. It clacked its claws in the air, then reared back its right arm and jammed the pincer in through one the palace’s windows. A single scream echoed from inside, and the firing stopped as soon is the scorpion withdrew its prize.

The screaming man was wearing a white toga fastened at the belt and right shoulder with red gemstones, far less flattering on him than 106. From the distance, it was hard to make out much detail beyond that, but there was something reflective and metallic crowning his forehead.

“…Antonio?” Naoko managed to mumble out, confused.

Rather than cut the Seatopian leader in half, sting him, or eat him, the scorpion continued to hold Antonio in a raised claw, as if aware of the fact using him as a shield would keep the Seatopian forces from firing. In fact, that… that seemed exactly the case. As the claw intently raised Antonio for a clear view of the top of the scorpion’s forehead, two figures revealed themselves upon the creature’s back, raising from under dark cloaks that had disguised them just behind the hump of the observation eyes.

Mallory and Minette rose to their feet upon the scorpion’s carapace, not showing a single sign toward loss of balance even as the scorpion postured in intimidation. The two clasped hands firmly, eyes flashing white with such intensity that forks of electricity surged backward from the corners in the direction of their temples.

As they did so, the movements of dozens, perhaps hundreds of scorpions shifted at once. Some in pursuit of prey appeared to lose their hunger, their movements slowing as they turned away from the chase in orderly fashion. Others formed up in parallel, seemingly intending to create columns of advance in a direction facing directly down the slope. The larger scorpion followed, scrambling down the side of the palace semi-smoothly on eight legs and carrying Antonio right along with the center of the marching formation.

“…Mothra told you!”

Naoko lurched away to pursue, but Masako’s grip on her hand stayed firm, causing her to twist her movement instead into a successful wrench away and turn. For just a moment, the Mothra and Battra rangers held fists raised towards one another.

For just a moment.

It was impossible to tell who let their arms drop first, but the tension broke as easily as it had formed. “How do we stop them?” Naoko asked with a pleading, resigned, yet steady voice.

Masako resisted the urge to answer with we don’t. In actuality, she wouldn’t have said she had complete trust in what was happening, only a hunch. A glance upward revealed the tiny, gliding silhouette of Garu-Garu, a speck between the dogfighting hovertanks and cyber-flies. She was a little surer, then, but convinced she would still need to play a part.

“Leave it to me,” she said, and ran back down the stretch of alleyway between buildings to leap off the stone edge and spread her wings.

Naoko was gliding beside her, the pair maintaining most of their height even as the scorpions poured down the multi-tiered slope like dark, many-legged water down a cascade of waterfalls. A smaller scorpion descended to one of the streets and took a marching cyberlon by surprise, spreading its pincer arms wide before snatching the machine from either end and prying it up in a tilt towards itself with three legs still on the ground. Effortlessly, the scorpion sprung the back half of its segmented abdomen to a full vertical and curled its tail all the way around to pierce the beetle’s exposed underside, a position that would have meant stinging itself in the face were it not for the barrier of machinery to thoroughly gut with the point of a stinger.

On the ground level and a little sunward, another group of five cyberlons that had intended to engage Koji, Yuzo, and the Mu agents now had, instead, an avalanche of Centruroides charging in towards its flank. The cyberlons managed to rotate and engage in time, opening their carapaces and showering the new attackers with a rain of napalm bombs, but the scorpions’ immunity to intense heat only meant the Seatopian artillery now had to contend with a half-dozen giant angry scorpions that were also on fire.

To the right and further into the Mu lines, a group of three scorpions held their claws side-forward with pincer-tips facing one another, like bulldozer shovels or locomotive cowcatchers. The braced limbs functioned as shields when blocking most of the fire from serpent weapons – which the scorpions’ armor seemed largely immune to regardless – but acted like pinball flippers whenever they encountered Mu agents, knocking the armored humanoids aside with ease as they worked to clear a path for the larger scorpion ridden by Mallory and Minette.

That scorpion made haste toward the museum building, easily using its legs to scale the rocky slope up to it on the southeastern face. Creeping over the edge of the balcony, it used its free left claw to bat at the agents stationed there, striking Agent Piranha with such force she careened over the side and had to catch herself on the sheer wall by digging in one of her scimitars. Then it reached past them into the dark of the blown-open hole in the wall, to snatch a second prize.

Upon retrieval, the sight of that highly-visible crimson-green-teal scale armor identified the Mu Empress as the humanoid figure now struggling in the scorpion’s left claw. Making off quickly with both she and Antonio, the largest scorpion let itself slide back down the slope to ground level before breaking into the closest it could manage to a full sprint, rounding the building and sneaking past the other rangers’ position to take off north-westward.

For a brief moment, Muan and Seatopian forces raced alongside one another, pursuing the creature that had abducted both their leaders, A crowd formed, paced to speed with those on foot as a number of threatening scorpions both funneled them together from either side and warded back any aircraft that dared approach.

Only a few shots were fired in the entire exchange, all harmless against tough exoskeletal armor. Perhaps, if nothing else, from the sheer shock of seeing the scorpions acting in coordination to take and hold hostages, both armies appeared to get the message.

The largest scorpion was headed up toward another area at the foot of the mountains, at what more or less formed the northeast corner of the main city if one traced its boundaries onto the open parcel of flat, sand plain that seemed to be reserved there specifically. Right at the westernmost edge of the larger mountain group, there was a small alcove at ground level, where stood a large ceremonial stage with a smaller, silver transmitter statue at the far end against the rock.

The stage was raised a meter off the ground with all vertical surfaces plated in a hexagonal-scale pattern of silver leaf, this extending to three small square portions raised a little higher – two at the back corners and one even higher and further back at the statue’s base – as well as the blocky foundations of four thin lampposts that each branched out into a horizontal wheel of lightbulbs to illuminate the area even in the alcove’s partial shadow. The tops of the stage itself, the three standing platforms, and the stairs connecting them were patterned with alternating black and sand-red tile, drawing out geometric shapes and guidelines that traced the stage’s perimeter edges and lead towards the lighter stone construct at the very back that supported the statue and its controls.

The scorpion crawled up the wider set of front steps, and with barely enough room to maneuver, turned in place on the middle platform, its tail idly knocking down both the statue and the fifth, smaller, starburst-like light fixture set directly in front of it. The head of the falling statue chipped stone out of the low, grey brick wall built in line with a trailing-off rocky ridge on the west-facing side of the alcove, tearing away some of the ivy growing down the nearer side and sending a breeze through the small spread of shrubs or herbs poking up from the farther side.

The crowd was held back at least a dozen meters by four of the other scorpions, which had formed up two to either side and were openly threatening to close in and block off the middle. As the gathered troops slowly acclimated to the situation and sorted themselves into Muan and Seatopian, Masako and Naoko touched down in the cleared space of sand that opened up between them, wings falling into coats as they took in the scene from ground level. Piranha, Koji, and Yuzo were among those at the forefront of the Mu column, the former’s armor doing little to hide her obvious distress.

Antonio had light brown hair in thick sideburns and a mustache, and his metallic crown band was adorned at the forefront with a small, stylized rendition of Megalon’s head. He pushed at the pincers around him with grit teeth and apparent strain in the defined muscle bulk in his shoulders and forearms, but continued to have no success.

The Mu Empress wasn’t faring any better, her scowl fierce enough nearly to hide her shaken fear and panic. If she’d had a weapon at any point, she’d lost it, along with any advantage she might have of freeing herself from the scorpion’s clutches.

Minette and Mallory stood regally hand-in-hand, their flowing orchid purple dresses overlapped by long-sleeved, black cloaks, left open but fastened with one button at the sternum beneath the many overlapping gold necklaces hanging there. Masako supposed that at some point, they must have decided to take fashion advice from Belvera.

“Hear ye, hear ye!” the nearly-spoken-of devil mocked, descending on her draconic steed to hover just off to Mallory’s left. The Empress turned around to give the dark Elias a briefly-stricken, wide-eyed stare, while Antonio paid no mind.

The scorpion shifted, drawing both claws back closer to its open, strangely toothy maw. Startled by the false implication, the Empress and Antonio were caught unaware as the twins reached out to pluck their respective crowns from the two rulers’ heads. The pair inspected the articles with curiosity before grinning in approving mischief.

Then, for the smallest of shared moments, all signs of stress, anger, and coldness vanished from Minette and Mallory’s faces. Their eyes deeply met, and they lovingly set their pilfered crowns upon one another’s heads instead.

“Presenting…” Belvera continued, smiling with vindication and clearly having way too much fun in her role. “…their highnesses, the Queens of Seatopia!”

Minette, with the beads of the Empress, and Mallory, with the Megalon band, shifted back into focus across their half-turns, their faces seeming to take on sharper, harsher lines as they linked hands and let their scowls of condemnation face the crowd.

Only half-needing the telepathic prompt she received from Belvera, Masako stepped forward, and the other scorpions let her pass. It was quiet enough her boots could be heard with each step on the red sand. She approached the main steps of the stage, but inevitable had to stop short, with the larger scorpion’s looming claws extending out past the edge.

“Stop them!” the Empress demanded, grasping at an appeal, while Antonio quietly grappled with the reality of enemies on all sides.

Belvera hovered down to linger next to the Empress, earning herself a cold glare but smirking right back. “Why should she? What have you done to deserve help? What have any of you?” She directed her gaze upon the crowd. “You’re all about to be introduced to the judgement you should’ve had long ago. Your new queens know you even better than you know yourselves. They believe in the real qualities of human beings…”

In the back, Naoko muttered something that sounded a lot like She’s still on about that?

“…and they know very well the hypocrisy of these two, who, if they ever deserved your allegiance, they certainly don’t anymore.”

The Empress hissed. “You know nothing of what I’ve suffered to be here! What of—”

“Well, that makes all of us, then,” Belvera cut in, sounded fierce and disinterested all at once, the words rolling off her tongue with scathing dullness. “Because we don’t know, and you forgot. Slavery. Human sacrifices. Is it really still righteous anger when you reinvent suffering all over again?” She passed a meaningful look up to Mallory and Minette, as if acknowledging their approval, then resumed. “You can say you’re better than Antonio, and you’d even be right about it, but is that enough? And more importantly given your current predicament, who is it enough for?”

Belvera darted off, circled, and flew down to hover just in front of Masako, though she was still speaking loud enough for everyone to hear.

“How many of these people here have their hearts wired all the same, to twist discomfort and disgust into hatred and punishment wreaked upon the innocent? Whispers in their heads that make them shove aside other people as wrong and less deserving. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not just the Seatopians. It’s the Muans you’ve called your allies, too. It’s the people you call friends, even the ones who’ve been burned by it themselves! So, the guardian moths want to intervene in this war? Want to bring Mu to victory?” She threw back an arm, in gesture to Minette and Mallory. “They want to know, what does it change for us?”

Belvera didn’t even seem to realize it when a tiny purple spark flashed across the sheathed dagger at her waist. She hadn’t been telepathically conveying the meaning what she’d been doing, but Masako understood it all the same.

“You swore allegiance to me!” the Mu Empress snapped, incorrectly and desperately, apparently having realized the futility in all her other appeals except the one to rigid obedience. “These fools intend to usurp my power! They’ve declared themselves queens!”

Masako rolled her eyes beneath her helmet. “No,” she sighed, “they’ve just learned they need a position of authority to escape judgement. Royalty is the only example they’ve heard of.”

An uncertain look passed between Mallory and Minette. Either they hadn’t expected her to guess that, or they hadn’t realized it themselves.

“Also I think an empress still outranks a queen, but that’s beside the point.” She looked up to meet Minette’s and Mallory’s glowing eyes directly. “You’re right,” she said.

She took a step back, broadening her volume to clue in the crowd.

“Let us answer to those we hold the lowest, and be at their mercy.” Masako spoke, her arms out in a grand gesture. Then she let them drop, and idly flicked a claw as if grasping for a thought. “But now I do have to ask… what happens when that’s not you? What if someone else got powers enough to fight for themselves, against the rest of the world?”

The pair’s brief moment of confusion and receptiveness began to elapse, but the glares couldn’t take over completely. Doubt had unmistakably begun to creep in.

“Is there no one that even you would write off? Someone you’d sneer down at, think of as undeserving to be lifted up by even your brand of justice?” Masako let that linger, then shrugged casually. “Maybe not. But I’d consider that very carefully. Because you know me, and you know I’d fight for them too.”

She turned around, and addressed the crowd, feeling Battra’s presence and insight as she carefully prepared her words.

“The Earth has two moth guardians. One that considers humans part of the planet’s ecosystem, and one that doesn’t. That’s because you’re on trial. You separated yourselves from the planet you live on, and no, I don’t mean when you became a technologically advanced society, that’s just the natural course of humans being humans. A skyscraper is natural in the same way an anthill is. A prosthetic limb is natural in the same way a seashell is. A vaccine is natural in the same way a cicada’s wings are – they have little microscopic spikes on them that kill bacteria by stabbing them in their cell walls, it’s actually really, really neat, but more to the point, not even the climate control device was your fuck-up. Speaking as someone who lives on the surface, that would actually be a really good idea right now! …provided it was used responsibly, with respect to the planet, and for the benefit of all life. And there’s the fucking problem.”

She let her shoulders drop and glared.

“How can you ever live in harmony with the Earth, when you can’t even live in harmony with each other? The twelve spires were a symptom of a larger fault, one that began when you decided the things humans did were different from all other life, and had to be judged. Judged by gods, kings, demagogues, it doesn’t matter. Because even if any of those judgements you made had good, scientific reasoning behind them, you obscured that, and made them infallible decrees. Made something that couldn’t evolve when the situation changed, that nobody could reevaluate later, because it wasn’t science anymore, it was belief, it was trust, it was authority written by power. Your place in the Earth’s ecosystem could have been the pursuit of knowledge, the advancement to a world where you could help yourselves, one other, and the planet, but you fractured yourselves instead. Drew dividing lines until your default was putting disdain for difference before solidarity for similarity. You created a conflict, a struggle for power and dominance, one in which you used the Earth’s very life force as a weapon.”

Naoko stepped forward – by her own prompting, Mothra’s, or Belvera’s, Masako couldn’t yet be sure – and crossed the distance to Masako. She turned, and spoke to the crowd as well.

“Humans exist in a world that ensures whoever gets power will use it against others, whether out of hatred and greed, out of hurt and retaliation, or just out of fear… and Mothra can’t protect you anymore. She can’t be your divine retribution. All are equal before her, and she can’t choose sides. The only way forward is to listen, because respect for all life, all other species, starts with respect for the members of your own species you consistently fail to love.”

She turned around, stepping only a little past Masako to look up at Mallory and Minette.

“Let them go. There’s no vengeance to be had here.”

Antonio let out a breath. The Empress fumed, but seemed relieved at having the confidence to do so. Mallory and Minette, faces showing rage on the verge of sadness, weren’t so agreeable, and the scorpion’s claws shifted toward tightening, immediately sending the two rulers back into panic.

Mallory and Minette looked at Masako. Then the Empress, Antonio, Belvera, and Naoko did too.

“I disagree, but—”

“Please!” Antonio shouted, putting his hands together and nearly whimpering. “Your mercy, herald of Battra! Great Destroyer, Terror of the City! Praise be to—”

Masako stepped toward him. He tried to cower away, but the scorpion moved its claw closer, putting him in point-blank range of her steady glare.

She had some choice words boiling, anger flaring through her veins, her fingers curling. She swallowed them down and steadied herself, from an inferno to a fine razor’s edge.

“You ask me to change in a way I can’t. You and your people. Every last guilty or innocent one of them. So count yourself lucky I’m not the only one calling the shots today.” She looked back at Naoko, then nodded up to the twins. “Let them go.”

Reluctantly, Minette and Mallory gave slow nods, and the claws opened, dropping Antonio into a stumbling, shaky kneel and the Empress into a pretzel half-sit leaning on an elbow. Masako turned away from the former and gave the latter a look over her shoulder as she turned to leave.

“There are still people here who care about you, and to whom no pride nor standing you’ve ever lost matters, or needs avenging. So maybe give a bit more thought to what you need to prove, and to who has to suffer for it.”

In turning away, she almost collided with Piranha, their suits of armor brushing at the shoulder as the copper-armored agent sped past and immediately dropped to a concerned kneel at the Empress’s side. Masako glanced back once, to find the beginnings of a scared and vulnerable acceptance in the eyes with which the Empress tracked the movements of the soldier who soothed her gently with no fear or hesitation.

The scorpions had gone passive, showing enough stillness that they would let the crowd disperse but remaining as sentries over the proceedings. For the words said, it was impossible to tell if anyone had listened, aside from a few Nebulans who Masako had noticed nodding along almost the entire time. The Seatopians, in particular, were basically finished already, with most of their robots destroyed. They could probably struggle on against the Muans, and might have tried, if not for the scorpions and the final nail they represented. With circumstances as they were, the soldiers didn’t seem quite so eager to continue this fight.

Of course, it was now becoming far too calm, so the moment after that, the entire cavern rumbled. Rocky debris began to fall out from far above, bouncing off the existing rubble scattered over the northern sector. On the part of the curve of the ceiling that was already broken away from the historic collapses, another of Spacegodzilla’s crystal towers broke out through the stone, piercing down at a diagonal angle.

The claw-like end opened, but instead of a red crystal, this one contained a prism that appeared mixed between deep purple-blue and deep red-orange. It launched, along with several secondary growths of either color from the stem, the projectiles raining down toward the city like a meteor shower. Rather than cause explosions, though, they themselves in red sand or pavement, leaving only small craters that caused even more shaking while the crystals took root.

Across the next few moments, the city sprouted with around a dozen total crystal spires, duplicates of the orange and purple surge crystals from McKay’s underground lab. The highest concentration was near where the mixed crystal had landed, two crystals of each color growing in and around the green space delineated by the ramps to the highway overpass at the city center.

Farther westward, backed by the scathing white-yellow light of the artificial sun, the ground just past the city broke, stone claws emerging as Obsidius dug itself upward. The volcanic berserker beat its chest three times before letting out a bellow, silhouetted dark by the sun as it lumbered slightly northeastward in pursuit of one of the orange crystals.

A pale purple carapace danced with harsh light as it emerged from the same burrow, Krystalak crawling up behind. The crystalline terror flexed the sharp fingers on each hand, then performed eager upward-diagonal swipes in a threat display before bringing down both fists alongside a hollow hunched roar that rumbled across the surface of the terrain.

“Aha!” Antonio cheered. “You’ll know defeat yet on this day! My great ally has not abandoned our great people…”

Masako rolled her eyes. “He knows you lied, idiot. He’s just cleaning house now.”

Even shaky hope drained from his gaze in an instant. It was almost amusing.

Koji and Yuzo were already running toward the city, the sand in the open plot sifting through the points of the Anguirus zord’s gold missile-spikes as it dug itself up out of the ground. The mountain near the largest statue rumbled as the Baragon zord dug its way through from where the Mu forces had arrived, leaping over the gathering at the stage and bounding down a southward street to catch up with Yuzo. Naoko passed Masako a nod, then spread her wings and soared up to the new mountain opening, the Mothra larva zords having followed the Baragon zord through.

Masako met the gazes of Mallory and Minette, smirks appearing on the twins’ faces. Masako smiled under her helmet too, and leapt up to spread her wings in the air just as the scorpion turned in place on the stage to face the city. She landed on the carapace behind the twins, finding far less ease in not stumbling on her feet as the creature moved under her, but she kept herself from falling as the largest scorpion led the rest of the swarm into battle.

Obsidius reared back a fist and punched the orange crystal, shattering it and absorbing the flamelike energy that traveled up its arm to coat its entire body. Krystalak had diverted southeast, bypassing the westernmost set of three cylindrical buildings to begin swiping at a purple crystal near a sort of parking-garage-like structure with two vertical marble slabs and multiple connecting levels between them. The crystal was chipped away by the attacks until the last one broke it apart completely, the magenta energy surge coating Krystalak head-to-tail in a sharply-defined glow.

Climbing up through the gap of a pair of cylinder buildings with a high base and a sky-bridge, the larger scorpion – whose name, Belvera conveyed, was Grandaddy for reasons Masako wasn’t going to ask about – brough Masako and the twins into view of Obsidius’s rampage. The Volcano beast was lumbering forth from a block and a half away, passing between two long rectangular buildings than ran in parallel on either side of a central street with a thin grassy border. The grass burned and singed with each step of the superheated golem, whose long arm was left to drag across the building to the right, fingers scraping through lines of windows and jarring loose chunks of marble.

Obsidius heaved its head back and swung its neck at the left building, about to belch lava into it, only for a canister to explode the air, a net wrapping up the kaiju’s head and left arm.

One of the Mothra larva zords had found its way down the mountain, two more canisters firing from its mouth and layering Obsidius with more nets. One tangled the rock monster’s legs, causing it to stumble forward, out into flat land where the rest of the Centruroides swarm was waiting.

From the nearer sides of the buildings, the scorpions lunged out after the stumbling Obsidius, reaching up to take hold of strands of the tangled nets with their pincers. Obsidius struggled against the extra friction of the attacking creatures, making several drag along the ground with heaves of its arms, but even the added radiating heat from the fire surge – while slowly melting the nets – did nothing to deter the scorpions.

As Grandaddy climbed down to the level of the street, the Mothra larva sent out two more nets, only for Obsidius to fire lava through the centers, creating a hole for his head even as the rest of his body was more-or-less restrained. The beam continued in a wide sweep, and Grandaddy put up his claws in an x-brace, shielding Mallory and Minette from the molten rock while Masako wrapped her wings around the two to divert the accompanying superheated air.

Obsidius finally dove forward, attempting to roll and managing to dislodge or lift a number of scorpions, only for the Baragon zord to lunge in from behind and take a bit of the nets, holding Obsidius in place.

A few blocks over, explosions rang out as the Anguirus zord’s missiles struck Krystalak, the attack only marginally wearing down the protective barrier gained from the crystal surge. The Anguirus zord lunged with its teeth, but Krystalak lowered, held his hands aside, and struck the zord with a crossing right kick, sending it falling carapace-first through the elevated curve of the southwest highway ramp. As the Anguirus zord rolled over to right itself, Krystalak marched backward to the three clustered buildings he'd passed earlier, leant down, and dug his crystal-tipped fingers under either side of the joint structural base.

Brushing aside pieces of broken roadway, the Anguirus zord charged again, only for Krystalak to turn back around accompanied by a cascade of falling sand and crumbling marble, the kaiju having lifted the building up off the ground to the best physics would allow. It was already structurally failing when he heaved and threw it at the bounding machine, the shapes of the individual towers half-lost by the time they rained down and nearly buried Koji in rubble.

Krystalak circled to the south, back toward the parking garage building, while the Anguirus zord slid itself out of the rubble and turned to engage. Koji leapt, and Krystalak stood fully upright and threw out his arms, the yellow heart-orb in his chest sending out a horizontal, planar shockwave that tore through the outer surfaces of the building and sent the Anguirus zord flying backward across the battlefield.

After skipping off the broken top of what looked like an air traffic control tower near the highway, Koji was struck by Krystalak’s crystal-infused beam, pushed even further until his zord slammed into Obsidius and toppled him to the ground. The spikes had torn through more of the netting, and the volcanic monster raised a muscled arm to brace and push itself to its feet.

But before it could rise fully, Yuzo leapt the Baragon zord onto its back, climbing among rock and digging in with metallic claws. An anchor cable from a Mothra larva zord pierced Obsidius in the left side, the zord wrapping its tail around a rock to secure the line. The flamelike aura condensed up to Obsidius’s maw for a final, empowered heat beam, but the Baragon zord bit down on the rock kaiju’s central horn, pulling roughly and throwing off its aim.

Masako happened to glance to the south, finding that Krystalak had knocked away the nearer half of the garage and was heading further east towards the next building. His progress appeared to be stalled by cleaving gusts of wind, which he had to cross his arms to block.

The source of the attacks was a small, bright-red-armored figure, swinging around a double-ended spade at street-level.

Shinji what the hell are you doing?

Receiving nods from Mallory and Minette, Masako departed, appearing in the air at a glade as she zeroed in on Shinji’s position. She landed just beside him, and fired a pair of prism beams directly into Krystalak’s crystal heart, causing him to reel back in pain and attempt to regain his bearings.

“What are you doing!?” She yelled. “You’re supposed to be getting your zord!”

Shinji turned around, just to yell back. “That’s the hospital!”

Masako glanced up, seeing that the structure that stood upon the plain red sand plot just south of the road they were on was in fact the long, half-cylinder-roofed building that ran through the base of two semi-triangles, the outer slopes rounded in the concave and the base structure’s roof having a distinct platinum-gold sheen in contrast to the white marble of the towers.

And Krystalak was heading towards it.

“Go get your zord!” Masako commanded, as she fired another burst of prism beams.

“You go get your zord,” Shinji shot back, swiping up another wind cleave with his weapon. “Battra can burrow, can’t he?”

“Battra larva can burrow! The zord is an imag—”

Masako paused.

She looked northward to the Obsidius battle, where both Mothra larvae now had grapple lines anchored and were trying to pull it to the ground.

“—oh.”

Hey, uh… Battra? Do we… have one of those?

Shinji shook his head, as the ground beneath them both started to rumble. “How did neither of you think of that?”

The shaking escalated to a jagged crack along the street, starting behind the two rangers and running between them as it rushed across the pavement toward Krystalak. The crystal kaiju narrowed its eyes, skeptical and wary until the pavement was finally split apart by a giant, yellow knife-blade piercing up from underneath.

The point of the blade lunged forth and struck Krystalak in the heart, shattering the last of the energetic crystal aura and causing the monster to reel backward with a scream as the weapon glanced upward. At the base of the knifelike crest was blocky, dark green head, winged gold accents fixed to the sides whose front edges hinged down into tusks and revealed glowing red eyes in the space that had been hidden.

“Get your zord…” Masako told Shinji, more gently this time and with a smile.

The Battra larva zord, dark green with decorative accents in gold and deep crimson red, rolled out of the ground on a large set of heavy-duty tank treads. The back five component wheels of each tread section were fixed with round, gold spikes, while the front two were covered by angular, gold tread-guards that mimicked the Battra larva’s larger pair of forward-facing hooked feet. Between those and the head, a pair of vertically-swiveling autocannons in railgun-like configurations each had twin rails that resembled the forward-facing limbs along the larva’s pseudo-neck. Attached to the back of the main body’s tank shape was a two-segmented tail, with more round leg spikes along the sides and a golden, three-pronged trident point fixed at the end.

“…I’ve got this.”

Masako lightning-jumped up to the canopy entrance, which was set behind the huge knife-blade that composed most of the top and front of the Battra zord’s upper head. The mouth speaker that acted as a raised guard on the blade’s edge emitted a deep, electronic chirp of challenge. A forward viewscreen appeared as Masako took the controls, joined by smaller video feeds connecting her to Naoko, Koji, and Yuzo.

“What?” Naoko asked, confused. “Are you in the other larva?”

“…in a manner of speaking.”

Masako fired the prism autocannons, bombarding Krystalak with rapid-fire purple energy bolts as the zord rolled forward. The blasts did little but provide distraction, until Masako was far enough away from the nearby building to raise the zord’s tail in the air behind her and fire off the spikes on the sides as missiles. Curving in the air and arcing back inward, eight missiles detonated along Krystalak’s flanks, followed by ten more that fired from the tread wheels and repeated the process.

As the missiles restocked, Krystalak reared up his own tail, firing off crystal darts that Masako intercepted with point defense fire from the autocannons. Krystalak crouched low and dodged around to the side, ready to fire more darts at the Battra zord’s right flank, but Masako swiveled the zord’s head and gun emplacement like a tank’s turret section, using the cannons to dispel the few darts the kaiju was able to fire before the five tread missiles launched out from beneath. Skimming over the sand and dipping down at the last moment, the explosives detonated in a line at Krystalak’s feet, launching him backward to sail over the highway and roll on the sand out past the far overpass ramp.

Masako redirected her fire to target all the nearby crystals, missiles arcing towards them and blasting them apart before the two kaiju could use them to replenish their power surges. Cyber-flies and cyberlon, presumably under McKay’s direct control, swarmed out of a few of the buildings in an attempt to defend the crystals, but Masako simply parked at an intersection and spun the head and gun mounts, autocannons sending out targeted purple prism bolts in all directions to shoot machines on the ground or out of the air.

With the crystals on the south side of the highway dealt with, Masako aimed a few more missiles toward the north, targeting all those she could see in her field of view. When one purple crystal twisted and fell over sideways, breaking apart on the ground, Mallory and Minette rushed Grandaddy into the pile of remaining fragments, the scorpion’s claws digging in and absorbing the surge over its body.

An orange crystal was left with a few chunks blown out and brittle cracks through the rest. Obsidius broke out of melted-through cables and rushed at it, desperate for an additional burst of strength, but scuttling scorpion legs got their first, and Grandaddy spun around to break the crystal fully with a swing of its tail. Through the remainder of the turn, the energy from the two surges intermingled, no longer showing on the surface but starting to emit from the seams between the scorpion’s exoskeletal plates in a bright, burning orange. Steps grew wider and the tail arced higher as the creature began to grow noticeably larger.

Uh… what’s happening?

MCKAY’S AIM WAS TO CREATE AN ENERGY THAT WOULD ALLOW OTHER CREATURES TO ABSORB IT AND INCREASE IN SIZE, IN THE SAME WAY A MUAN CREATION WOULD REACT TO ATOMIC ENERGY. THE INFLUX OF CRYSTAL SURGES SEEMS TO HAVE GIVEN THE SCORPION THE ABILITY TO PROCESS THIS ENERGY, IF ONLY TEMPORARILY. IT IS APPROACHING A STATE OF CRITIAL MASS.

Telepathically, Minette and Mallory’s emotions seemed to confirm it was intentional, and that they were both unhurt by its effects.

Grandaddy had now grown to a size comparable to the Baragon zord, its body lined with bright orange in a way that made it seem the softer innards had grown too big for the armor plates and made them look smaller by comparison. As Obsidius caught up to the position where it would’ve been able to take the fire surge for itself, it slammed a fist down upon the bug, only for now-larger scorpion claws to snatch it by the wrist and pull to the side, offsetting the volcano monster’s balance as it shifted on its many legs and struck back with a stinger that pierced into the magma-delta gullet of Obsidius’s neck. As lava bled out, the Baragon zord jumped in and bit down on Obsidius’s right arm as it tried to raise it, holding it in place for two Mothra larva cables to wrap around it and hold it back.

Masako lifted her zord’s tail and ran the treads in opposing directions, spinning the base while the upper part counter-spun to retain its angle. Putting herself on a northeast diagonal, she began the long curve around the overpass ramps, intending to roll across the highway in the east and join the fight. Sand sifted through crystal spines as Krystalak got up and shook himself off, already more-or-less in Masako’s way but now intending to directly intercept her approach.

Another window opened on the communication feed, and Masako had never been quite so happy to hear the opening notes of a trashy rap song.

“Hey, team! Did I miss anything?”

Taking long, leaping strides, the Titanozord approached from a mountain path in the south, passing close by a donut-ringed building with a central and perimeter tower before it hit flat ground and ran in parallel to a large stadium building and a single freestanding concave-slope tower that was dotted with numerous balconies and a landing pad near the second or third floor. It was approaching the overpass, but instead of running through it, Shinji leapt high into the air, sailing over the ramps, putting the Titanozord’s palms together with interlocked fingers and bringing the combined fist down on Krystalak’s head.

With the drums kicking in, Shinji kneed Krystalak sharply in the midsection and batted away a retaliatory swipe, forearm against forearm. Krystalak’s point-blank crystal-infused beam burned and battered the Titanozord’s upper chest, causing Shinji to recoil backward, but he braced a foot with toeclaws dragging through the sand, only faltered a moment, and primed a right arm that wheeled back around in a haymaker to Krystalak’s upper jaw. The Titanozord bounced forward on its feet, then pushed up with a weaker double-uppercut that just got Krystalak’s head out of the way for when Shinji dealt a pair of left hooks, then a pair of right hooks, then one more left hook as Krystalak recovered and prepared to fire another beam.

The Titanozord lunged with a dramatic, vertical clap that managed to hold Krystalak’s jaws closed before the second beam could fire. Krystalak struggled, attempting to pull back out of the grapple, and swiped with both his arm only for Shinji to weave his zord quickly out of the way of each strike, winding the finned tail back and forth all the while. The exact moment Krystalak managed to break free was the moment the Titanozord swing its tail forward, unleashing a torrent of air like a shotgun blast that sent Krystalak reeling off his feet.

Obsidius took the moment to throw itself into a charge, winding the Mothra cables across the spines of Krystalak’s soaring carapace and causing them to snap. The beast was barely a step further in its fury when Shinji leant out of the way of its reaching arm, the fist of an uppercut just touching Obsidius’ chest in a slowed moment of realization before the Titanozord leveraged the rock creature’s momentum to send it flying upside down past its target.

Obsidius crashed on the ground, lying still for a moment before punching the sand in frustration and moving to stand. When it turned around, there was already a stream of lava spewing from its maw. Shinji ducked to the side, then underneath, then rushed Obsidius and bashed its head to the side. Obsidius backhanded the zord through a turn that ended with its back fin cutting into the northeast overpass ramp, but when the second fist rounded for a punch, Shinji ducked forward beneath it, planted a palm on the ground, and kicked out to the side, sending Obsidius sprawling while the Titanozord got back up with pumping fists, ready to keep going.

While Shinji entered a new grapple with a recovered Krystalak, Masako focused on Obsidius, who was struggling back to its feet near where the Battra zord had just crossed the highway. She fired all eighteen leg missiles and had them arc upward into the air.

A lot more than eighteen missiles came back down, battering Obsidius in a rainstorm of explosions. Masako turned around to find Koji’s Anguirus zord finally back on its feet, missiles reloading up through the holes in its carapace.

“Koji!” Shinji shouted through comms. “Hit Krystalak with a shatter!”

“Alright!” Koji called, a little hesitant, as he moved his zord into position. “Hey, wait! That’s sonic! Are you… are you sure?”

“Hurry up already!” Shinji yelled back, pressed for time as the lyrics built toward the chorus. “Don’t worry about me! I’m lost in the beat already! Show ‘em up… now!”

The Anguirus zord sent the distortions of a sonic roar out in a cone that encompassed both the Titanozord and Krystalak, and Masako finally had some idea of the problem when the waves started to distort the window of Shinji’s video feed and a running analysis of positioning data suddenly lost all reception with his zord in particular.

But despite the interference, Shinji kept on delivering punches, able to keep time by the pace of the music still resounding from external speakers as the chorus broke in. Two hits to the shoulder and ribcage that left cracks in and chips falling out of Krystalak’s tough hide, then one to the crystal heart that immediately had the kaiju trying to pull backward out of the grapple. Shinji refused to release the right arm’s hold, however, and Krystalak retaliated by curving his tail up over his head, ready to fire. But the Titanozord’s tail, having been winding up back and forth with the combat, swung forward at the same time, delivering a gust of wind that struck the tip of Krystalak’s dart launcher just after it fired. The tip of the expelled dart was wrenched upward by the blow, spinning out such that it collided with some of the surrounding barbs and caused the whole end of Krystalak’s tail to explode in a spray of broken crystal fragments. The Titanozord’s left arm took the opportune moment to launch into an uppercut, striking Krystalak in the chin with enough force to shatter the bases of a few of the crystals making up the kaiju’s pseudo-beard, the points sent spinning end-over-end high in the air above.

Running even through missiles, a flamethrower from Yuzo, and a couple nets from Naoko, all while bleeding lava from several breaks in its rocky skin, Obsidius leapt and curled into a ball, intending to knock down the Titanozord like a bowling pin only for Shinji to plant sparking hands on the spinning surface and dig his feet into the sand. The lowest part of one of the non-curving overpass ramps broke across the Titanozord’s heels as it was pushed westward, further toward the remaining lower floors of the air traffic control tower. With fierceness in its mechanical teeth, the Titanozord let loose an elephantine screech, and brought a fist down at just the right moment to hit Obsidius in the head and lay the rock creature out flat.

Krystalak lunged in a desperate tackle, but Shinji weaved to the side and grabbed onto the crystalline terror, swinging him around and face-first into the remains of the tower. Krystalak rolled around and swiped with a set of claws, but Shinji punched him against the rubble again, the impact breaking off pieces of carapace crystals that had become brittle from Koji’s sonic roar. With another punch, Krystalak became embedded even farther into the half-demolished building, struggling to free himself while a pair of large, orange-lined pincers reached up from the other side and grasped onto the kaiju’s biceps.

Critical Mass Grandaddy climbed up onto the loosely-flat top of the building’s remnant, claws holding Krystalak in place while its stinger arced up and plunged downward into one of the cracked sections of hide where Shinji had punched him in the shoulder joint. Krystalak’s eyes dimmed as the venom took effect, his struggling movements slowing.

The Titanozord stared blankly at Mallory and Minnette, still riding atop the scorpion. “Umm… do we have to deal with this one too?”

“Nah, the giant scorpions are on our side now!” Yuzo chimed in happily.

“Ah.” Shinji paused. “Yuzo… I’m gonna need you to start saying sentences like that more often.”

“We ready?” asked Naoko, with purpose.

“As we’ll ever be,” Koji confirmed with a nod.

Masako blinked. “Uh, what are we—oh.”

The Titanozord stood straight up on a patch of sand west of the city, its knees and feet shifting position while its upper torso split in half and raised higher, head and tail folding into the gaps while the arms curled up flush to the sides. The Anguirus zord leapt with a running start, changing midair and attaching as the left arm, while the Baragon zord did the same from the right. The two Mothra larva zords backed up with most of their tail length raised in the air, becoming armored boots the megazord stepped into just as its head rose up from inside the torso.

The Battra larva zord’s tusks hinged back up to cover its eyes, followed by the while head and gun section hinging down forward into the gap between the front tread covers. The armor sections on the tail detached from a jointed internal structure and, instead, magnetized to one another and to the back of the tank’s main body section, which then detached itself and lifted off into air, treads and all, leaving behind only the head and gun section at the end of a gold-plated, straightened-out section of bars and joints that ended with the tail’s trident point. That too raised into the air, both sections flying toward the megazord.

The Anguirus zord reached out to take the joined armor sections in its hand as a tower shield, while the Baragon hand received Masako’s section as a type of spear or naginata, with Battra’s head crest as the main blade and the trident point at the other end of the staff. The canopy suddenly went white, and Masako found herself instantaneously teleported into a larger room, standing on top of a raised, square pad on the floor that had a small control tower at the front right corner.

She was at the left end of a line of five, the other rangers also standing at similar stations with Shinji atop the one in the middle. There was a viewscreen taking up the whole front wall, a larger version of what was in the zords, and the back wall behind them had a large, gold, diamond-shaped panel mounted just above standing height, detailed with a stylized emblem of Titanosaurus’s head.

“Megazord Titano: Baraguir-othra-attra formation!” Shinji announced with fervor.

“You just made that up!” Yuzo teased defiantly from his right.

On the battlefield, Obsidius was getting slowly back to its feet, bleeding lava out of several wounds on its body. Krystalak stumbled out of the side of the building, wavering tiredly for balance. The megazord took a step back to get into a battle pose, holding the shield in front and twirling the naginata until the blade pointed forward.

Masako couldn’t even tell if she and the Rangers were in the head or the torso or some pocket universe with just this room in it. She had to laugh at how ridiculous it all was, but rested her hand on the slanted, electronic pad at the top of the control station. “Fuck it, go go Power Rangers.”

“And don’t you ever stop!” Shinji added, slotting his folded-up spade down into an opening on his station and keeping hold of it from higher up. “Combination Thunder Missile Strike!”

The megazord raised up the Battra shield and slammed the base into the ground, the missiles beginning to fire in order from the ones at the end of the tail up to the ones on the wider tread section. The shield’s missiles arced out to either side, joined by a barrage of Anguirus missiles that launched from the forearm holding it, those ones going up at a diagonal to arc down from higher in the air. The arcs from the sides struck the two kaiju, starting them recoiling, only for the subsequent rain from above to obscure the whole area in explosions and smoke.

Krystalak lunged out, apparently having recovered somewhat from the toxin. He leapt across the last two roads and the patch of grass between them to tackle the megazord further into the desert beneath the artificial sun.

Treads rolling on the Mothra larva zord feet, the megazord managed to stay upright, but sparked from the impact. The shield had taken most of it, and after only a few attempted swipes from the crystalline terror, the Rangers warded him back with a heavy shield bash.

“Battra Naginata Slash!”

Twirling the weapon, the megazord brought it down diagonally, the prism autocannons rotating around to act like thrusters and propel the strike with enough force to cut a groove into Krystalak’s hide from the shoulder towards the chest. Krystalak roared and leapt back, the slash having only missed his crystal heart by a few meters.

Obsidius bellowed and planted its feet from further off to the north, also having crossed into the desert. Its body glowed with a red-orange aura from one last fire surge it had managed to find. It reared back and sent a stream of crystal-energized lava out towards the megazord.

“Battra Tower Shield!”

The shield seemed immune even to the flame-charged lava beam, holding it back effortlessly even as Obsidius walked forward, trying to give the attack more force. Krystalak bounded in from the unshielded side, only for the megazord to turn its head and bring around the trident-pommel of the staff to jab the kaiju in the midsection. Missiles fired from the edge of the shield, striking Obsidius on either flank just as the surge glow diminished. With a choke, the lava attack ended, and an angered Obsidius leapt and curled up into a roll.

“Mothra Jet Boost!”

The megazord leaned back, bursts of green energy from the Mothra boots propelling it out of the way so that Obsidius slammed into Krystalak and knocked him over. Off-balance, the megazord had to plant the trident pommel into the ground to anchor itself and stay standing. Obsidius was the first back up, digging claws into the desert ground looking for something to throw, only to give up in frustration and run at the megazord.

“Battra Naginata Pierce!”

The prism autocannons rotated around to face back down the staff handle, adding their thrust as the megazord lunged the weapon into a stab. The blade-end embedded itself in the volcanic berserker’s chest, magma leaking out around it, and the megazord’s shield-holding hand needed to lend a few fingers to approximate a two-handed grip on the naginata to stop Obsidius from powering through on sheer mass and momentum.

Obsidius swiped once with its left arm, once with its right, the megazord leaning back enough to dodge. When a lava barrage followed, the shield came up to block it point-blank while soundly bashing Obsidius in the head. The megazord put a foot to the rock monster’s chest, just aside the embedded spear-point, and acted as leverage while the weapon was extracted. Then the Mothra boot fired, launching Obsidius backward to transfer its momentum to Krystalak, who’d just righted himself only to be sent stumbling in line behind his ally.

The megazord took another battle stance, and Shinji pulled his staff out of the control station, holding it high over his head for a throw. “Two birds, one—wait wait, lemme start that over. Two STONES, one… Moth.” He shrugged. “Okay, it works. Double Spear Throw Final Strike!”

He mimed throwing the staff at the same time the megazord performed the same move with the Battra naginata, the autocannons adding thrust as it launched forward like a rocket. The weapon rotated like a drill as it gained speed, the slowed as if pulling time itself with it as it struck Obsidius still, the kaiju absorbed into the same matter-transfer vortex Masako had seen overtake Megaguirus and Dagahra. Unlike with those two, the spear continued past the event horizon, hitting Krystalak next and causing the same rupture. It disappeared with this one, reappearing in the megazord’s hand to be planted vertically in the ground with finality, as the two miniscule spots of reflected light signaled the coins falling to the sand below.

The viewscreens zoomed in, locating each coin’s position. The Krystalak coin had an even, spiky frame with a round pale purple gemstone, and the Obsidius coin was shaped like the creature’s open maw, with three spikes at the top edge of the ring and a yellow-orange gemstone. Masako was just realizing she had witnessed coins being created for the first time, proving that ranger technology was to at least some extent self-replicating, when both coins flashed over with light surges of green energy and were suddenly pulled left-upward out of the zoomed-in views.

“Follow those coins!” Naoko shouted, and Shinji moved the viewscreen to show the northern side of the underground cavern, near the roof.

A zoom-in on the crystal tower revealed the Spacegodzilla ranger standing on one of the lower open prongs of the claw-head, hand outstretched with a green telekinetic surge over his forearm. The coins were sucked into his grasp, and he closed a fist around them, giving the rangers a cheeky salute before the prongs of the tower closed back up with him inside them. The cavern gently shook as the tower retreated back into the ceiling, and rubble fell to seal closed the tunnel behind him.

“Yeah, you better run, asshole,” Shinji muttered.

“Shit, that was his backup plan!” Naoko exclaimed at the same time, far less enthused. “Now he has a whole megazord!”

“Unless…” Shinji moved his fingers, searching for a counter. “… he got really unlucky and ended up with two torsos and a limb or something?”

“Yeah, well…” Yuzo kicked his foot, then perked up. “You know what we have, that he doesn’t?”

Koji rolled his eyes inside his helmet, conveyed with a dramatic head and shoulder movement. “I swear, if you say teamwork…”

“Teamwork!”

“Yeah-ha!” Shinji high-fived Yuzo. “Five rangers ready to kick his ass next time he shows his face!”

“Think your count’s a little off,” Masako grumbled, but Naoko leaned forward to meet her gaze from the other end of the lineup. She didn’t say anything, but Koji did.

“You still need an attitude adjustment, and all this Moth god stuff goes over my head, but I have to admit, you did good today. Wouldn’t entirely object to ya helping out every once in a while. Or at least more often than we have to fight. I’d appreciate it.”

Really that easy, huh? Masako sighed, and looked back out at the viewscreen, over the city. Some of the damaged buildings were putting off smoke, but most were still standing. Atop one, Grandaddy lost its magmatic lines and returned to its usual, still-very-big size. Father away, the hovering Mu vehicles settled on the ground, the fight ended.

“…Maybe.”

Seatopia was calm. A number of buildings still stood half-or-mostly demolished, but Mu agents were combing through the rubble, searching for anyone missed on the first pass. Owing to Antonio’s restrictions, the city proper hadn’t been occupied during the zord battle, so most of the work had been finished once the several-tiered hillside settlement had been cleared and searched. 106’s parents had been among the survivors, until they hadn’t been.

Belvera had commandeered a hoverbus to bring back Mallory and Minette once they’d taken Grandaddy and the Centruroides swarm somewhere far away from Seatopia. At the moment, they were still out in the wild caves, but the Elias was keeping in regular telepathic contact. Masako had tried to talk to Shannon about the scorpions’ attack on the settlement, because that felt like something she should take at least partial responsibility for, but Shannon was more concerned with having found the last three members of the KIT group safe and… well, mostly sound. Marcia still seemed to be spending more time in her own head than with the people around her, but it wasn’t a trauma response as far as anyone could tell, and her friends had finally gotten her talking again.

The Empress was back in command now, technically. It was understood that wouldn’t be the case for long, and a successor would need to be chosen to properly clean the slate. Masako was betting on Piranha – what happened in the next half hour may prove a better option was still on the table, but she didn’t want to get her hopes up just yet. She also wasn’t entirely sure what had been done with Antonio, but it was probably a moot point. By begging for mercy, showing weakness, Antonio had assured for himself a far more permanent kind of death in the eyes of his followers than any literal one Masako could have hoped to inflict, even with the full powers of the Battra ranger.

Mallory and Minette hadn’t given either of the crowns back.

As a first priority, Nebulan engineers led by Agent 72 had meticulously swept and cleared the hospital building floor by floor, leading up to Masako’s present circumstances – standing before a line of windows on the twenty-eighth level, looking down over the city from an exterior hallway adjoining a fairly popular-as-of-late waiting room. At some point, Naoko had walked up beside her.

“How…” Masako sighed. “How you holding up?”

Naoko was quiet, shaking her head. “It’s not… it’s not a big deal, I mean… people die all the time. Every time we fight in the city, I’m sure—”

“Don’t,” Masako let slip out, then sighed again. “Don’t… make yourself numb to all the things I am. That’s the opposite of how this should work.”

“Huh?”

“You stuck around through all my feelings and pain you couldn’t understand, I… I just want to return the favor, if I can. If you need anything.”

Naoko stared blankly, her shoulders dropping. “Because this… is something you can’t understand?”

She’d tried a little to keep judgement out of her words, but not too hard. It stung, and Masako looked back out the window. “I wanted to tell Antonio that… that I didn’t care. That every last human being who believes in faith in family by his terms, by those like him, could burn and I wouldn’t shed a tear. And I wish I would’ve been wrong. I wish I still had tears left over for tragedies that everyone else would be sad about, that you’d be sad about, that have a hundred million people lining up to mourn, but I don’t. I’m too broken to have that in me. Maybe it’ll hit me, sooner or later, but it doesn’t always. And that’s not something I can change.”

Naoko nodded, reflected in the glass. “I think I knew some of that already.” It was somber. “Look, Mothra… Mothra wants us to stick with you and Battra now, when we can. For whatever your plan is. And not because she wants to fix you, but because she wants to help you. She knows… Battra has a point… but… s’also not so good being alone.”

Masako expected an urgent response for elsewhere in her skull, but had to almost snicker at the silence. She took a moment to watch the people maneuvering about on the ground far below, recognizing a still-standing, still-one-armed Agent 44 as part of a team clearing rubble. “Good.” She said at a whisper. “I… I think I need someone to tell me I’m wrong.”

It was quiet for a while, until footsteps resounded on the white, black, and sand red tile, a few meters down the hall to their right where the waiting room entrance was. Masako’s helmet turned instantly, both hoping and dreading news, but Professor Ando looked casual and thoughtful as he turned to face her. Probably not carrying any new information.

“So, you two are getting along well, I take it? That’s faster than I would’ve expected.”

“So rumors don’t spread in here, good to know,” Masako deadpanned back. The professor arched an eyebrow, but said nothing, so Masako continued. “You were right. Desghidorah’s seal is gone. And Belvera confirmed the ranger coins are Elias technology, at least in part. That’s all we’ve been able to find out, considering the two Elias most likely involved in their creation are still missing.”

“I was wondering if that was what she was. I see you’ve been busy.”

Naoko was looking between the two with apparent confusion, so Masako held out a hand in gesture toward the KIT group leader. “This is Professor Ando. He’s sort of a confidant. Off the record.”

The professor walked casually toward the pair, hands playing the air-piano as he brushed down the statement. “Nothing so dramatic, I just know more than most, about the events leading up to the day the monsters disappeared. I expected a ranger to come calling eventually. I’d only ask that you do keep my students out of it.”

Naoko nodded in acceptance of the plainly-put terms. “I’m Naoko, by the way. Mothra ranger, but you can probably see that…”

“Not as well as I’m used to,” Ando joked, holding up his glasses with the former cracked lens now missing from its empty frame. He slipped them back into his pocket, and held out his hand, which Naoko shakily clasped and weakly shook. “It’s certainly an honor, though. I hope we’ll have occasion to talk more on the subject in the future.”

“Oh! Professor Ando!” Lucy called out from the doorway, Kristina on one arm, both apparently surprised to see him and being a little awkward about it.

“Ah, yes, I should be getting back,” the professor covered quickly, looking like he didn’t quite notice their duplicity in the midst of upkeeping his own. He gave a nod as he passed them on the way back into the waiting room.

Lucy and Kristina let out quiet sighs, and headed over. Whatever was on both of their minds, they gave the smallest of wary glances to Naoko, before shaking themselves out of it and dropping the rest of their guard.

“So… you saw that, right?” Lucy whispered at Masako.

“Saw what?” asked Naoko, making Lucy more nervous.

“The… thing.”

“When you went all floaty and made that cannon go red spiral ray?” Masako whisper-deadpanned, a little teasingly. “Or did you mean a different thing?”

Lucy managed to laugh a little. “I, um…”

“Do you think anyone else saw it?” asked Kristina, eyes narrowed.

“Shinji was there at the end,” Masako remembered. “But that depends on if he even noticed, so… fifty-fifty.”

Lucy nodded, gulping. “It’s like it’s gone. I can’t… I don’t think I can do it anymore, but then again, I didn’t know I could do it in the first place, but now it’s like… Maybe it was a one-time thing?”

Kristina was trying not to show her skepticism at that.

“Is there something I should do?” Lucy decided on, then, reluctantly, but a glance toward Kristina showed her worry. “If it could… if it could be dangerous. Could I find out for sure if I have it?”

Masako looked away and took a long sigh, breathing it out. “In an ideal world, yes. In this one?” She looked back and shook her head. “What’s most important now is you don’t let it get on any records. I’ll be looking into this myself once I get Minette and Mallory settled in Desolation, and I’ll keep you updated. Maybe Belvera can help.”

Lucy nodded, eyes squeezed shut in fear, but Kristina looped an arm fully around her, one Lucy had to maneuver just her forearm to reach up and touch. “You won’t hurt me,” Kristina assured, with complete, unshaken confidence. “Cause if you do have superpowers, and that was them today? Then I reeeeeeeeally don’t think that’s what their whole deal is. Looked a heck of a lot more like the opposite to me.”

They moved the conversation back into the room after that, if only so Lucy had somewhere to sit down and all but fall asleep leaning into and clinging to Kristina. That much, evidently, wasn’t at-all out of place or suspicious for the two of them. Conversation was light, but present, at the moment mostly consisting of Marcia reassuring Shannon and Jeremy on either side of her while avoiding directly meeting Masako’s eyes. Kyle and Shawn were looking over something that, by their comments, had something to do with the search-and-rescue operation. Shinji was, like the other rangers, in full armor, but he was currently in the total silence Masako would’ve been thankful for at any other time, as he stared anxiously at a door along the far wall.

Eventually, that door opened, and the day was saved, at least in this small room within a city that had seen its fair share of devastation, itself resting many miles beneath a world that hadn’t yet approached anything close to the calm that had now settled.

Masako still felt like an outsider in whatever was going on between Shinji and 106. She’d half expected to have to sit through some drama where he would try to stay down here, to be with a girl several years younger than him, but as they joked and laughed and Shinji played the suave-yet-silly hero one more time, it became clearer and clearer his intentions had never been any more than to give the girl the encouragement she needed to keep going. He definitely still needed to learn how to talk to women without swallowing his leg up to the hip, and his belief system was little reductive for Masako’s tastes, but nonetheless she was inexplicably finding even herself becoming a little more hopeful, knowing a coin had chosen someone like him.

IF BATTRA’S SUSPICION ABOUT RESONANCE IS CORRECT, THEN TITANOSAURUS MOST LIKELY HAS THE SAME INTENTION, TO A DEGREE THAT IT CAN BE NONE OTHER THAN A CORE MOTIVATIONAL PREMISE. BATTRA FINDS THIS DIFFICULT TO FATHOM, BUT… IT DEFIES EXPLANATION OTHERWISE. TO BATTRA’S KNOWLEDGE, WE HAVE NOT YET ENCOUNTERED A RANGER-KAIJU PAIR, NOT EVEN OURSELVES, THAT HAS DISPLAYED SUCH RAW POWER AND SYNCHRONY AS SHINJI AND TITANOSAURUS WERE ABLE TO ACHIEVE TODAY.

Masako looked at the Titanosaurus ranger with suspicious eyes. Are you saying Shinji could beat me in a fight?

I THINK WE BOTH KNOW HE COULD NOT ACHIEVE THE SAME RESONANCE WHILE FIGHTING YOU.

Ha! Win!

WE ALSO BOTH KNOW YOU HAVE THE SAME FAILING SHINJI DOES, IT JUST WOULD NOT COME INTO PLAY DURING THIS PARTICULAR SCENARIO.

Still a win!

Masako sat back, thinking about everything and nothing until she heard the waterfall rushing in the back of her head and calmed the claws digging into her chair’s armrests. Seatopia really was a bubble – a microcosm, just one little now-mostly-happy piece of a larger world whose fate couldn’t be settled with one decisive battle. She’d need a much bigger plan. She had to admit she had no idea how to go about with the resources currently at her disposal, but… but she needed to try. For a future that might look a little bit like the life and joy in this room.

She had to roll her eyes, and then sink into herself, feeling distantly guilty.

How can you even put up with me at all?

Silence, for a long time.

…That was for me, wasn’t it? That felt like it was for me.

Masako huffed a laugh, just to herself. Yeah, you. You told me exactly what I should’ve done about this, and I didn’t listen. Despite the fact that I’m basically you with less experience.

Belvera was quiet for an even longer time. You’re not like me. You’re like… Lora, if she actually listened to my advice for once.

Masako could imagine her stopping for a moment to look forlorn, wherever she was in the maze of underground caverns. She wished they could be having this conversation in person, not that Belvera had become any more receptive to the idea of physical comfort just yet.

The Elias Triangle had three aspects – more or less a precursor to the ranger coins, they looked almost the same. They came in an ancient box that opened with a key, and there was an aspect that corresponded to each of the three of us – Wisdom, Courage, and Love.

Oh, yeah, totally. And there’s an alternate dimension with frogs—

I’m serious. That’s what it is. And you’re the first person I’m admitting this to, I… I guessed wrong.

She could feel Mallory and Minette on the telepathic connection now. Concern, for Belvera. Concern she brushed off quickly.

I thought everything I’d done, up until then… I stood on the glyph for Love, on the activation ring. Let my sisters take the two other spots. And when I kept one coin, let Moll and Lora have the others… you can guess which one I took. I thought I was the one who cared. The one who did what I did to ease the world of its pain, but then, suddenly, I had to contend with the fact that my ancestors wouldn’t have seen it that way. I think I always knew they made the Triangle for us… and if I didn’t do what I did out of love, then what? When I destroyed Mu, did I really care? Did I want to end all those people’s suffering for their own sakes, or did I just not want to have to think about the fact it was happening anymore?

…I shouldn’t have to point out the fallacy in thinking your whole existence is defined by just one word. And how do you know I don’t have the—

My point right now is, we’re not the same, Belvera cut her off. At least not the exact same. Love DID choose you, Masako. Battra did. Your hate and anger are an extension of that. You’re going to come up with ideas that I wouldn’t have, and… maybe, just maybe, you can succeed where I failed all these centuries. And if it doesn’t work, at least I’m not waiting around talking to myself the entire time…

Belvera…

Just… not, right now, alright? I’ll let Piranha know the kid’s okay, since I know that was the next thing you were gonna ask. We’ll talk later.

Chapter Text

She met Meru’s eyes at the same time Meru’s met hers.

There was a wrongness in the air, they could both feel it – as steady as the whirr from the helicopter’s rotors and the nighttime wind against the hull. They’d been sensing it all year, beginning with the atmospheric phenomenon during the January invasion and reaching its peak with the smog that had taken Hokkaido during Desghidorah’s brief reign over the region. As if some intangible wound had been opened by the summation of the two events. An injury to the Earth itself, on some level far beyond its physical state.

It could have worsened. Miki had felt it, during the second disaster, and quickly discovered the same nightmares had plagued Meru in visions, only for the sense of illness to crawl, for the moment, back from the edge. The Elias, they’d heard it reported, had played a role in mitigating, partially reversing the damage, appearing in the chaos alongside a vaguely-understood third member of their kind. But Moll and Lora hadn’t contacted Miki then, like they had the time before Spacegodzilla’s arrival.

Miki had assumed the reason to be the fading of her powers, but even that was now becoming uncertain. Her powers were lessened compared to what they had once been, that was true, but after Destoroyah, it had been almost a full year without any noticeable decline. Combining her powers with Meru’s could still let them accomplish more together than Meru could alone, something that had resulted in their partnership becoming a permanent fixture at what remained of G-force – at least as long as the state of Miki’s powers remained stagnant.

The two psychics parted their gazes and resumed their focus. Dreams of a shadowy swarm falling over Japan, and of creatures rising one after the other, around the world, on a pattern of weeks rather than years, were beyond the scope of what G-force could deal with right now.

At the moment, it was the tangible, potential threat of Junior that had brought their response team to the darkened skies of Osaka, in an attempt to head off the creature before the military could take drastic measures.

And it appeared they were already too late.

Godzilla Junior, with charcoal skin and jagged, twisted, purple spines, was wading his way though a building blocking his path, up to his neck in it but pushing on through as if it were a thicket of plants in a jungle and he was a tank. Even still on a wide approach toward the river, Miki could see soldiers rushing across the Dojima Bridge, carrying huge boxes of equipment and what looked like shoulder-mounted RPGs.

“Get them to back away!” Meru commanded of the helicopter’s radio operator, but the man in the front seat shook his head, irritated at whatever was coming through his headset.

“They’re telling us to back off. I swear, the jurisdiction matters get worse every day.”

To Miki’s frustration and sadness, G-force didn’t have the standing and say it once did. Now, it was simply one among many competing agencies, all proposing their own solutions to the problem of Godzilla and other giant monsters. The SDF once again seemed to believe it was better off acting alone – even if all it could apparently come up with was rocket-carrying infantry. From the explosions that rang out at ground level at Junior’s feet, it was clear they hadn’t even found a new source of Anti-Nuclear Energy Bacteria, they were just using regular rockets!

Junior roared defiantly and turned towards the alley, bashing his head against the buildings on either side as he made to pursue the retreating soldiers. Another group near the opposite side of the street fired a volley into his upper back, seeming to confuse him for a moment before he turned and steadily marched away from the scene of the ambush.

Had they warded him off, or had he merely decided his concerns laid elsewhere?

More rockets attempted to take Junior down, the soldiers constantly needing to move ahead and regroup to keep up with his immense strides through the city. Meru ordered the pilot forward, the G-force helicopter lowering to a fly on a parallel course with the nuclear titan.

Junior’s claws raked through the corner of a building, dropping more rubble on top of a line of soldiers racing below. A few blocks onward, he wound back his tail and slammed it across the opening into another alley, smashing dents in the buildings to either side. Then there was a lull in the SDF’s attack pattern, and Miki and Meru exchanged a nod.

That was their window.

The helicopter closed the gap, still flying alongside and lagging slightly behind Junior. Miki and Meru clasped hands, closing their eyes and focusing their telepathic energies. They reached for a mind familiar to them both, searched for the gentle soul within…

They found recognition returned, but in it was only anger.

Betrayal.

They both opened their eyes at once, just in time to observe the craggy, charcoal grey scales of Godzilla’s tail as it slammed into the side of the helicopter.

What happened next, perhaps it was only so because their minds were linked.

Because their thoughts were one, feeding information across a connection many times faster that the spoken word. By some senses, time may have even slowed around the two of them, sparks lingering in the air as the helicopter’s electronics burst from feedback. Rotor blades whirring past the windows, one by one, as the view of the city below slowly tilted.

First, was the realization, the flash of guilt – from both of them, but from Meru the most. They had done this to Junior, made him vengeful, but it had been Meru’s idea to use him as bait, to lure him toward Destoroyah in hopes that his father would arrive and be slaughtered. A hate for humanity they must have instilled, Meru its author, but in her mind the greatest regret was that now, she’d gotten Miki killed for it.

The helicopter had completed a one-hundred-eighty degree roll, upside-down in the air, when Miki’s firm insistence dropped like a hammer. She didn’t blame Meru, and they both knew immediately there wasn’t any logic in it. Nothing of the duty they’d both had to protect the world from Godzilla’s meltdown, nothing of the many times she’d assured Meru that no one was to blame for not understanding that Godzilla’s kind were thinking, feeling beings too. All that comprised the idea’s weight was that Meru was Meru, and that she was someone Miki refused to allow herself to hold anger for. Especially not now – she would not die blaming Meru.

What that meant slowly, but surely became an indisputable admission – the helicopter had rolled three and a half times and been thrown across four city blocks. First, was Meru’s horror and refusal, the insistence that she’d never wanted any of this, only to be a normal girl with a normal life, love and marriage and children in the normal way.

That held up for a quarter-turn of the helicopter. It hadn’t even been long enough to separate their hands – still clasped despite their backs being thrown against opposite sides of the cabin – before the realization, obvious across the whole of their connection, that Meru had been afraid of those things all along. Had never felt right about the life she was supposed to want, had carried a deep unease that tortured her so, and had simply hoped for her future to happen as soon as possible so that she could be reassured, in the end, that her fears of it had always been unfounded. She’d hated her powers, her service with G-force, because they had meant a prolonging of that unease, but she couldn’t pretend anymore that what she’d wished for instead would have brought her peace. It would have brought her only suffering, pain, regret. A short life or a long death.

She would find more peace dying with Miki in this helicopter.

But Miki was there, in both their thoughts, shocked by her own feelings as much as Meru but never letting go. Wavering in doubt for almost less than a perceivable moment, understanding that love for a woman must surely be no stranger than love for Godzilla. Scared, but still holding on, and promising herself and her love until the end – be it centuries or seconds away.

It was such warmth, such earnestness, from a woman Meru had loved for exactly those things without ever realizing it, that she couldn’t find it in herself to refuse. Should she damn her soul in her final moments, she had no regrets. It felt more like she’d saved it.

The helicopter made its last full turn before gravity overpowered the force of the tail swipe, sending the vessel falling back to Earth. The nearest window was quickly filled with the edge of a lower rooftop, on fast approach. Only moments from impact.

The change began in Miki’s and Meru’s thoughts, the interfering presence first registering there before they both noticed the helicopter’s control panel light up in all the colors of the rainbow. Moving on its own, the control yoke wrenched itself out of the pilot’s stunned hands, and the helicopter twisted away from the building and out of its previous path of movement, leveling out only a meter above the roadway with a suddenness that had all its occupants reeling from a second bout of whiplash.

A tiny voice graced the two telepaths’ stunned minds – one that Miki recognized as similar to Moll’s and Lora’s, yet also very different.

You get this one for free, but DON’T expect me to make a habit out of it, humans!

Miki breathed, with a slight shiver, overcome with shyness now that the moment was passed and the consequences still lingered. Meru’s eyes were wide, her lips parted, but her thoughts held on to Miki’s with the assurance of steadying arms, the delicate touch of fingers.

Junior was lost to them, at least for now, consumed in a destructive mission they knew not of. There existed a third Elias, merciful now but departing with a seeming promise to be less than friendly in the future. And somewhere in the city, a wounded soul swore vengeance, a heart turning dark in synchrony with that of its object of hatred.

But by morning, Miki and Meru would fall into each other’s arms, and know for the first time that they were home at last.

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

Deep beneath the sea, neither sinking nor ascending, the Titanozord floated in the endless blue. A mechanical, aquatic dinosaur. A machine of red and gold, color faded to a bruiselike purple as the light struggled to reach its motionless form.

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

Far above, the surface calmed and settled, the last traces of a rogue wave vanishing into the steady pace of the ocean’s current. The give-and-take, the to-and-fro, the vorpal gates of Neptune and Poseidon.

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

In time, the inert machine was eased of its solitude by a gentle rain, the glint of faint light off descending metal and the eerie glow cast upon such surfaces that were strangers to this domain. Refuse and shrapnel, twisted shapes. The vain constructs of hubris, shorn apart.

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

From the zord’s canopy, Shinji watched in silent vigil, as the remnants of the incoming Rolisican dictator’s celebratory flotilla were at last claimed by the sea. He made himself wait until he saw the bodies too, falling in steady position with arms still reaching upward. Hand still closed around the crumpled paper in his palm, he cursed the pain in his gaze upon the dead eyes that drifted past.

It was supposed to change you, or so he’d heard. It was supposed to kill you, in a way. But quite enough people had already died today…

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

…so what was one more?

The thought hit him in the chest with a heavy sigh. “Sorry,” he voiced quietly, toward the note in his hand. “But I mean, Masako does this sort of thing all the time, and she’s still pretty cool. Maybe you would’ve liked her.” Shinji laughed. “Or maybe not…”

It was unsaid, but it was done. Shinji veered the zord away toward clearer waters, with the gentle churr of Titanosaurus easing his thoughts at the back of his mind. His conscience was heavy, but far, far lighter than his grief.

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

Shinji had always thought he’d like to consider himself a pacifist.

One thousand, four hundred, and ninety-seven.

The ocean was peaceful.

Something sharp struck Masako in the cheek and deflected off her face, waking her immediately.

After checking the sore spot for blood, she ran her hand past the twisted white sheet and to the surface of the mattress, finding the offending object and holding it up to her eyes. It was a candy cane, sharpened at the end.

“What… the fuck?”

She sighed, sly eyes turning to the door of her room and spotting Belvera and Garu-Garu at a steady hover – the tiny, grinning fairy apparently having thrown it like a spear from her tiny, grinning dragon mount.

“Wake up and eat something, you sleepy-headed fool!” Belvera spat combatively, trying her damnedest to keep the almost-motherly concern out of her voice. “There’s still leftovers from Yuzo’s one-man pity potluck. And at some point, you need to tell them both the stories of how you actually know the other—wait.” Belvera paused in uncertain thought. “They already knew that. From the underground. Don’t know why I got confused there…”

Masako groaned, and rolled over. “It’s too early for whatever this shit is…”

“It’s not early,” Belvera countered, the sounds from Garu-Garu’s engines suggesting she’d flown higher and closer to continue the wake-up call. “It’s practically dinner already – hey, maybe there’s still time for a nice date-night with Naoko! It’s been too many hours since I’ve tormented Battra by pushing you two—” Belvera went quiet again. “Wait, no, now Battra’s on my side, against your depressive ass. Can’t believe I forgot that!”

Masako sighed again. “As if we needed more proof we’re in the bad timeline…”

She finally heaved up and slid out of bed, standing near her desk and window and looking out over Desolation. Snow dusted the streets far below, and crowned the skyscrapers both at the frames of many windows and at the outlines of missing, broken-away portions – snowdrifts having occasionally accumulated in the exposed interior floors.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a cranky ancient moth god grumbled uncertainly, unwilling to admit agreement with Belvera but unable to deny that he had, in fact, urged Masako toward a relationship with his ancient arch-rival’s acolyte in a moment of crisis.

Belvera’s reflection resolved in the glass of the window as she drifted closer near Masako’s shoulder. “You’re running out of time,” she said seriously, voice devoid of teasing. “No one knows how much time they really have. You know I’ve seen that.”

Except the tendency to rush into things too quickly, often for those exact kinds of reasons, could and often did lead to their own kinds of heartbreak and pain. Belvera had been around long enough that she should know that already, just as well.

Of course, maybe that wasn’t really the relevant issue here. But still.

“You’re not being the good influence you think you are.”

It was the wrong thing to say – by the way Belvera’s reflected face grew sour, hurt, visible for less than a second before she darted out of range of the window and settled Garu-Garu at a hover farther back in the room.

“I didn’t mean it like that—” Masako pleaded gently, turning.

Belvera laughed, sounding suddenly exhausted. “Maybe you should’ve. I am the one who thinks the suffering should all die, rather than be able to choose for themselves, just so I don’t have to think about what’s happening to them.”

Masako let her shoulders fall and breathed. “I know you think I’m somehow better than all that, but honestly, that probably describes my own line of thinking more than I’d care to admit.” She feigned a yawn and pouted. “So why do you have to call us both out this early in the morning?”

“It’s not morning,” Belvera weakly batted back, managing a smirk. “And need I remind you I’m just the messenger here, anyhow. If you skip too many more meals, you know who you’ll end up answering to.”

Half on her way to flop back down on her mattress again, Masako froze in place, eyes wide. “Shit, you right,” she mumbled, and turned on her heel toward the door.

Spared a lecture, for the time being, from Desolation’s rather insistent head chef and accompanying communications officer, Masako found herself wandering through the halls of the main building as the sun set. Unconsciously, her feet carried her once again to the memorial wall, where even now, more photos and records were being added. Masako let her heart be swallowed up by the void as she passed by, then stopped and stared, the usual empty spot still empty.

The place where a photo, a drawing, even just a name – where some evidence of her existence would be, if there had been any. Instead, she was defined by the absence.

I kinda know what you’d probably say. I still can’t… it would be letting go, and I can’t do that. Not without hearing you tell me for sure, and…

…and ghosts can’t say anything.

Ghosts… don’t come back.

She turned away, hiding her face from the others in hopes they wouldn’t notice her quiet sobbing.

Just barely threading the maze of skyscrapers, and only for seconds as it did every day, the angled light of sunset found the window at one end of the hall, brightening everything clear to the other. As Masako’s eyes adjusted, her gaze fell upon the sunlit figures of Minette and Mallory, surprised at having been caught in the event for probably the first time.

They didn’t leave their preferred solitude much, making their presence here quite odd. Masako put the question in her eyes.

The twins, wearing soft, dark-colored clothes that faintly sparkled with sequined stars, walked up to Masako until they stood astride her, Minette taking her right hand and Mallory her left. Suddenly, Masako was no longer standing in the hallway, but staring up a sheer cliff face in a blizzard. She was knelt, in the dark and moonlight, tracing stone carvings that sparked and fizzled. She was in the sunlight, with grass and trees and graves as a coffin was buried.

She felt loss – not only her own, but multiplied. Felt it bringing her to tears as the twins stood with glowing white eyes. These were things they had seen – not all permanent, or guaranteed, she understood, but enough to give truth to some of the tragedy already playing out in her mind. Overwhelming anger and uncertainty and simple, exhausted deadness with a new flood of emotion that pushed her over the edge.

But it was only the first of what they intended to show her.

Masako found herself back in the hallway, having collapsed to the bench behind her on the wall opposite the memorial. The twins were in front of her now, but still holding her hands, still in her mind – or, maybe more accurately, she was in theirs.

A conduit, for the telepathic embrace of their shared consciousness – which became a current passing through her, lighting up her nerves. She had, at once, an understanding of why the twins had no desire to telepathically unentangle what had once been their individual selves. Minette and Mallory, joined as they were, wanted nothing more than for their essences to be entwined, inseparable, for all eternity. To belong to no one but one another, to become a single entity in the eyes of the universe, to never lose the spark of togetherness that made them whole.

At it helped.

It helped Masako to see that spark was alive in her daughters, different as it may be to the one whose loss she grieved in herself and feared forsaking. Because at its purest sense, it was the same: a bond that understood loss, understood the conscious and unconscious slant of the world toward making tragedy, and stood in defiance of it. They sent her memories of themselves huddled together under warm blankets, trading whispers of thought in the quiet of night, knowing all too well it was exactly the right way to remind her there was still beauty in the world.

Beauty she had made possible, had protected, had not let down, they didn’t have to say.

Masako pulled them close and held them for a long time, until the sun was below the horizon and only the dim, generator-powered interior lights illuminated the space. In the end, it was Mallory and Minette that pulled away, after a long and perhaps precisely measured stay of complete contentedness, seemingly doing so only so that one of them could slip a folded piece of paper into Masako’s hand and the other could give her a conspicuous wink as they held hands and departed.

The White Heron was an establishment set exactly on the edge of Desolation’s borders – sort of in-and-out in the sense that it was public-facing, but the alleys leading to the entrances were definitively in protected territory. The building’s illuminated logo featured two identical birds-in-flight shining just above it, placed as if they were carrying the letters like cargo, and whose distinct silhouettes matched exactly the pencil sketch on the unfolded piece of paper in Masako’s hands.

Mallory and Minette could occasionally see the future, so Masako wasn’t in the habit of ignoring their suggestions, but she definitely wouldn’t put it past the two of them to have taken advantage of said basis of trust in order to give her some… snide encouragement, one might say.

Still, it wasn’t entirely unlikely Masako would have ended up here tonight anyway, simply to bask in the atmosphere and hope it proved of the healing sort. It was, after all, one of those nights where she would rather be with her people.

As she entered, she gave a nod each to the club bouncers – a tall and lean, scruffily ginger-haired man with a left ear overloaded with piercings, and an equally fierce petite blonde woman with a side-eyed gaze and hair shaved to a backswept mohawk – both ex-AMF and now wearing worn leather with Battra-themed insignia patches.

She’d been seated, mostly undisturbed at the bar for about fifteen minutes when a chorus of whistles, mmms, and other suggestive cheers of encouragement rolled through the crowd, the nightlife’s way of welcoming a newcomer of either particular attractiveness or particular shyness, usually both. Masako glanced up automatically, about to pass off the motion with a simple nod and get back to her brooding.

That was, until her eyes caught the shape of a familiar, lively bob of lightish, gold-brown hair that flared into especially defined points around the girl's ears and nape.

…Marcia?

No. No, that couldn’t be her. Not with that much eyeliner. Not wearing that.

But as the slight-bodied, wide-eyed girl weaved through the crowd, attention-grabbling lashes fluttering at her various admirers not so much as an invitation but, rather, in bewildered surprise as she scurried out of the way of elbows, Masako couldn’t deny the unmistakable resemblance – save for a drastic wardrobe change.

Because Marcia, the shy, modest, good-girl of the Kaiju Investigators, was wearing a velvety, deep green top that was more-or-less two loops of ribbon that were really only fastened at her tightly-cinched belt, and just so happened to cover all the required parts of her breasts as they crossed in front and back to hook over her opposite shoulders. It looked seconds from falling off every time she turned her body, and without really trying to, Masako got a few nice eyefuls of close friend sideboob before she even realized she was staring.

Masako looked away, focusing on the empty glass in front of her and wondering if it was more awkward to say hello or to pretend not to notice. What’s she even doing here? No, scratch that, it may as well have been obvious. Marcia was apparently into girls, or at least thought she might be into girls, and was looking to mingle. Although, if that was the case, why weren’t Lucy and Kristina here supporting her? Unless she hadn’t wanted to tell them…

A few more enthusiastic noises down at the other end of the bar made Masako start getting overtly nervous, and she couldn’t help looking again, just to confirm her fears.

Marcia had made it to the left side of the bar, though she’d stopped to stare in wonder at the rainbow strip-light dancing above the counter. The light reflected the utter fascination in her soft features, and, damn, okay, might as well add a third – fourth? – girl to Masako’s conflicted state of thought, because there was no denying the craving in her thighs as her gaze dropped to Marcia’s tight black pencil skirt over floral-patterned fishnets and four-inch stiletto heels.

With what seemed to be a little awkwardness and unfamiliarity in that skirt, Marcia sat down on the bar stool, protectiveness in the way she kept a small, black-scale purse shouldered close to her side. Other than that, though, she radiated complete, deadly confidence – but just the confidence. She clearly had no idea what she was actually doing, just that she was confident as hell while completely winging it. She didn’t seem in a hurry, though, waving off the bartender a few times just to exist in the moment and take it all in.

And as part of that ‘existing in the moment,’ Marcia glanced up and down the bar, locking teasing eyes with a stunned Masako. Okay, so, by the lack of surprise, she’d clearly noticed Masako while Masako was trying not to be noticed. Marcia smiled with a bit of a laugh in it, and gave a little wave.

Masako gave a little wave back.

Alright, so, that was all it had to be, Masako thought as she looked back to stare another hole in her glass. People who knew each other went out and ran into each other all the time! She wasn’t going to interrupt Marcia from whatever she was here for, it wouldn’t—

Someone sat down in the stool next to her.

A pair of hands settled on the table, smooth polished nails just slightly pinker than the fair Caucasian tone of the girl’s skin. There was a bracelet on her right wrist, gold charms in the shapes of roses. Masako’s magnetized gaze trailed up from that wrist to a bared upper arm, its outer face dusted with a patch of freckles that stretched almost from shoulder to elbow, a match for the similar patch across the bridge of Marcia’s nose.

Marcia giggled a bit, Masako’s arched eyebrow apparently not as suave or expectant as she’d tried to make it appear. But something like softness and an unsaid joke passed between them in their silence, the tension in the air already breaking.

“So, uh…” Masako searched for words. “First time here?”

Marcia giggled again, with a quick, emphatic shrug of you caught me that seriously threatened to pop her nipples out of that outfit. “First time…” she glanced around the bar, still with that awestruck, half-tragic glint in her eye. “First time doing anything like this, really. Never had the chance before. I never even thought about… well, this. It was so…”

She trailed off with a frown, and Masako nodded in understanding. “So you, um… how do you define yourself? If you want to say…”

Marcia scoffed, throwing back a hand. “Like I know? I just… you know, I’ve never tried it like this. I figure, why the hell not? You only live once…”

Masako hid the small shakiness in her lips behind a conspiratorial smirk. Now she understood what Lucy had meant about Marcia’s change in attitude. She couldn’t help the creeping worry, however.

It wasn’t that Marcia looked like she could be hurt easily – in fact, she looked quite invincible – but if whatever girl she took to bed was all in, and it turned out Marcia wasn’t… well, that was potential for feelings to be hurt on all sides. Especially if there was any trace of Marcia’s old, concerning sense of worthlessness still lying beneath the surface – and Masako didn’t doubt for a second that there was, even if she couldn’t see it.

Masako really, really didn’t like the idea of Marcia getting hurt. It was almost the entire reason she made the decision she did.

That, and… well, Marcia had sought her out, after all. She might already have thought of some of the same worries Masako had, and was jumping at the chance to cling to familiarity, trust, and safety in her first experience. And if she was grasping at a lifeline, Masako wasn’t going to leave her adrift, no matter how that made her feel about where she stood with anyone else, alive or just in memory.

“Well…” Masako began, a little awkwardly, “if you were looking for someone to, uh, show you around… if that’s not too weird, I mean. If that’s what you came over her for, not… like, unless we were just talking, which we totally could’ve been, I’m just… if I was reading it right, or not, or… uh…”

Marcia giggled once more, and brought up a hand almost casually, a little tease in it as she brushed the backs of her fingers on Masako’s cheek. “We don’t have to be… just talking…”

“Oh,” Masako half-whispered, startled. “I, uh… I don’t mean to say I’d be the best for this, for… like, having a fun time…” she gestured with a hand toward the rest of the bar, including several women dancing and several that were doing things that could only in a thin veneer be called dancing. “Just that if you wanted, like… no pressure, for anything at all. I wasn’t even looking for anyone tonight, err, not that I’d say no…”

She gulped, and slowly enough to broadcast the action clearly, put a hand over one of Marcia’s, gently easing her thumb across skin in what she hoped was a reassuring gesture. She mentally patted herself on the back at the speed her gaze bypassed whatever state Marcia’s top was in and shot right up to meet her big, blue eyes. She offered a nervous, but forward smirk.

“I could take care of you.”

Marcia smirked back, with a dangerous, almost predatory glint in her eye but a soft, vulnerable warmth, as well. “So, did you want to stay for more of the party, or…?”

“Do you?” Masako asked honestly. “Not going to rush this, but whenever you want us to be, uh, alone, there’s rooms upstairs. I kinda have one on reserve.”

Marcia paused, seeming confused as she looked Masako up and down. “Do you… work here?”

Masako shook her head. “Nah, just… this place wouldn’t be standing a few times over if it wasn’t for me. And it’s not too unusual I do this sort of thing.”

Marcia nodded, taking that in a little strangely. “Yeah, if you’d… give me a moment…”

She twisted on the stool and leant back against the counter, close enough it was an invitation for Masako to do the same and brush elbows. She kept shifting, squirming, adjusting her posture, not uncomfortable in her skin but perhaps the exact opposite. For a long time, she seemed to be taking in the sights, the sounds, the people. Never seeming to grow tired of absorbing it all.

“It’s a whole different world,” she whispered from delicate lips.

In another good while, Masako felt a high-heeled shoe hook around her ankle, a little sneaky grin on the face she looked back up to meet. Where their forearms rested in parallel, Marcia’s hand slipped over Masako’s, fingers intertwining like vines. Silently, the two got up from their seats, and disappeared around the corner.

A hazy amber glow and fading music filtered up the first flight of the stairwell, replaced soon by dimly-lit long hallways and distant laughter. They would have been a strange sight had anyone spotted them, Masako in her tough-girl street clothes and Marcia rocking high-femme-fatale.

Soon enough, on one of the higher floors, a door creaked open and shut and a lamp clicked on. A red plush couch lined the wall opposite a restroom with a vanity, and past that, a bed with gold sheets that glowed in the lamplight.

“Your move,” Masako assured, letting the pace slow to a standstill as she settled on the couch and beckoned Marcia to sit beside her. Marcia did just that, a bit awkward on her legs, and they both took some time to grow acquainted with the silence. “I’ll go at whatever pace you want, and anytime you need me to stop, just say so. My next hour, couple hours, all night, is about making this special for you. And if it turns out it’s not the right fit, no harm, no foul. And nobody else has to know, unless you wanna tell them. It’s just us here.”

She held out a hand, palm up, and Marcia reached out to trace her fingers over it with an experimental touch. There was hesitance, a little nervousness, in the way she held herself, but she seemed relaxed, or quickly getting there.

“I also… don’t know how you’d like it, maybe you have some idea?” Masako asked, casually except for the caveat she approached. “I usually, uh, go slow, and… well, to be honest, there can be a lot of crying involved. From all the… existential stuff about being alive and getting to understand this kind of love and how it feels. But if you want fast or rough I can try to work with that too.”

Marcia had a strange expression, wrought with a mixture of intense emotion, her eyes glinting in the light from wetness. “Actually… existential sounds pretty perfect.”

Masako made a bleak smile back, and brought in her other hand to take Marcia’s in both of hers. “So, on a scale of one to ten, where do you want the affection? Are we strangers passing in the night, or am I worshipping at your altar?”

Marcia rolled her eyes a little, despite the echo of an ego-filled smile making itself known for only a fleeting moment. “Not sure I like the idea of worship unless it’s mutual.”

Masako gulped. “Uh that… that can be on the table.” She nodded with a shrug. “Is kissing too much of a personal thing for you, or is it like, part of general affection?”

“I… don’t know.” Marcia blinked, like she’d just realized she hadn’t actually thought of that, then seemed to brighten with hope, but with pause as she tempered it. “Can we… try?”

The moment took on a strict silence as Masako nodded, a sense of waiting as they both accepted their faces probably had to move closer at some point but only made small, bordering-on-imperceptible movements toward that end.

Masako brought her hand up to caress Marcia’s cheek and jawline, thumbing at her soft skin.

Marcia leant into the contact and allowed herself to be drawn closer.

Masako closed her eyes and pressed her lips to Marcia’s, many of Belvera’s words flashing back through her mind as she kissed the girl in front of her the same way she wanted to kiss a million chained hearts and lonely ghosts. Lips caressing lips, softness to softness, chaste in its physicality but positively obscene in its emotion.

She pulled back, less so for the need of breath, but to make sure this was still something Marcia wanted. It was in the rush of air that she felt the tears having flowed from her eyes, and opened them to find blue ones staring back at her with concern.

“…Are you okay?”

Masako nodded. “That’s just… the existential stuff kicking in. Sorry…”

She’d tried to look away, but Marcia’s fingertips, delicate on her face, brought their gazes back together. Asking permission with her eyes and receiving small nods from Masako, Marcia brushed away the tears, then walked her hands tenderly into a caress as much as an exploration. The press of a thumb sought out her eyebrow, fingertips kneading through the close shave around her left ear, while the fingers of her other hand slid under the tips of dark, hanging strands to settle around the back of her skull. Marcia went in for the next kiss, a little hungrily. And the next, and the next, while Masako gave willingly.

She let Masako’s lips go untouched long enough to get her to open her eyes, just to say with welling tears of her own, “I think… this means the world to me…”

Their lips crashed together again, Masako leaning back a little just from the intensity, and she felt Marcia’s hands wander a little bit down her neck. She was suddenly self-conscious, trying to recall if Marcia would have seen her scars before. Really, she struggled to find a memory where Marcia had even seen her out of armor before, but… well, she must have, if she recognized Masako at the bar. That, or Lucy or Kristina or someone had given her a very vivid description.

When Marcia’s hands slowed around the collar of Masako’s jacket, again asking permission, Masako took a moment away from hungry lips to shrug herself out of it, pushing it back against the couch’s armrest while she faced Marcia nervously in her sleeveless white undershirt. “I uh… I know it’s…”

Marcia’s eyes held only a cryptic empathy. “We’ve all been through the fire.” Her fingers were gentle, hovering more than touching, as a hand examined the rough scarring on Masako’s upper arm. “Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore. It’s just there.”

Marcia’s hand laid down on it with a soothing motion, her other finding Masako’s left shoulder for another moment’s hesitation. Pressing Masako to the armrest, she slid her hands with warm pressure down to Masako’s chest, feeling her through a few layers of fabric. Masako exhaled pleasure and smiled, then sat up to shrug off her shirt, bra, and the ranger coin beneath in one movement, adding to her pile of clothes to lay down on while Marcia got back to fondling her breasts. She was leaning over enough to give Masako a good view down her neckline, and at noticing this, gave a grin of fondness and a little spice that said just you wait.

With a little bit of showy flair, Marcia leaned back up on her knees and crossed her arms inside the front of her top. She shrank her shoulders in enough that, with a little shaking, the straps started to fall off them and to the sides, then bloomed herself out of the neckline. Marcia’s bare breasts wouldn’t have been considered overly massive by most standards, but they had enough plumpness to hang to full, pale globes as she leaned down again, which was still bigger than Masako was used to and made her get just a little bit jealous.

She started her hands at Marcia’s sides, and slid them up and around to softly knead into those globes, filling her palms with them as Marcia leaned down for another kiss. Eventually Marcia was just on top of her, chest to chest and giggling a little as they both implicitly decided to take a long moment to exist like this.

They’d adjusted their legs to be stretched out on the couch, Masako’s leatherlike street pants resting under the far-sexier skirt and fishnets. She was very aware of how close her heat was to Marcia’s, and couldn’t help herself feeling a little inferior.

THAT OFFER ALSO STILL STANDS.

Masako popped one eye wide open, where Marcia thankfully couldn’t see it with her head resting quietly, nuzzled into her shoulder. This was one of those situations where Battra usually avoided commentary.

AS ALWAYS, WHAT HUMANS DO WITH OTHER HUMANS IS OF NO SIGNIFICANCE TO BATTRA, EXCEPT FOR HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT.

Masako sighed. This isn’t about me tonight. I’m not even asking her to go there.

YOU COULD BE AS FUNCTIONAL AS SHE IS IN ABOUT FIVE SECONDS.

Look… not tonight, Battra.

Battra relented, and disappeared from her thoughts as concerned fingers once again swept her cheeks for tears. Marcia was up and looking at her, gently worried yet again, but this time with a bleak smile. “Existential stuff?”

Masako sighed a little laugh. “Actually that one was just me being sad for me. Quite the honor, really. It’s pretty rare for it to be about that and not about how I just wish the world was different…”

Marcia let loose a shuddering breath, closing her eyes solemnly. “Changing the world… doesn’t always work out, does it?” Her half-lidded eyes were distant, and Masako was left to wonder what exactly Marcia’s deepest failure was, because she could be thinking of nothing less.

Still saddened, seemingly burdened, Marcia rolled off Masako and stood up.

For a moment, the mood hung in the air, as if it might have shifted irrevocably, until in tracking her movements, Masako noted Marcia was walking toward the bed, sliding all her clothes down her lovely body as she did so. As a bare knee began the climb, as pale legs slid temptingly past one another, half-under the sheets, Marcia glanced back over her shoulder, her stone-faced look becoming a beckoning smile in short order.

After Masako had taken the time to stand up and ease out of the rest of her own clothes, her eyes caught a hand retreating from setting aside the rose bracelet on the nightstand, Marcia subconsciously bringing it to her own throat and caressing the skin there. Taking a chance as she followed the girl into bed, Masako lowered her own lips to the same spot, kissing up and down Marcia’s neck. She was rewarded as Marcia pressed up into her, arching her neck back in pleasure and to give Masako’s lips as much room as she could stretch to provide.

It seemed the right move was one Masako was intimately familiar with, though why it would resonate so strongly with Marcia could only be left a mystery. But it was a practiced talent to make the girl under her feel and be aware of every inch of her own skin, every curve of her own body. Masako hid the tears in her eyes as she played the familiar swan’s song through her fingers, melded herself to the universe’s own farewell caress, performing as if she were the last act on the stage of time as the curtain fell.

Eventually, want brought Marcia’s hand to capture one of Masako’s, drawing it lower, and Masako obliged, tracing past a ticklish belly to the brush of hair along her heat. As a gasp sounded, as legs closed tight around her fingers, Masako leaned close along Marcia’s side, one arm around her shoulders, and moved with her in a slow dance of pleasure.

In time, exhaustion took over Marcia, a heartbeat pounding in the silence and her height of desire becoming simply to lay still and breathe. Only minutes later did she perk up in realization, attentive eyes falling on Masako. “That was… should I be, um…”

She’d turned on her side, an uncertain hand brushing down Masako’s front, but Masako gently guided her wrist away, shaking her head. “That’s a conversation I’d rather skip tonight.”

Marcia looked confused, but didn’t push.

Pulling the covers a bit farther up her hip as she rolled to face away, Masako sighed. “I trust you. Not that I need to, but I do. Just… not tonight.”

There was movement behind her. Slow. Marcia’s breath on her neck, hand hovering over her shoulder, fingertips brushing her scars. “Okay, but… could I…”

Masako let the hand settle on her, Marcia’s touch static, intending to rest. “You want to stay?”

A breath. “Not too long.” Marcia sounded regretful. “A little sleep might not hurt, though…”

Masako smiled as she felt arms begin to snake around her. “Goodnight, M—”

A bout of inner laughter shook her thoughts, as she idly remembered the ongoing name game spawned from a casual complaint. Unseen, she rolled her eyes, well knowing Marcia’s opinions on the matter, but decided once again to play along.

“So, uh… what should I call you?”

She’d put a little humor in it, but Marcia almost didn’t seem to notice. “Oh…” she voiced softly, her limbs growing still for a moment.

Maybe that was a bad call. “Sorry,” Masako backtracked. “It was silly—”

Touch hurried warm again as Masako sensed Marcia shaking her head. “No, it’s… it’s just been such a long time…”

A persistent pause held in the air, and when the voice returned, it was small, almost disbelieving.

“Could you call me… Erika?”

Masako swore she was halfway to figuring out exactly how Lucy or one of the others must have gotten a nickname like Erika out of Marcia when a particularly loud and obnoxious, Battra-shaped alarm bell went off like a plasma grenade inside her skull. She felt her head bump into something hard as she reeled back in shock.

A soft grunt of pain announced she’d somehow managed to headbutt her bed companion.

“Battra, what the actual FUCK?”

There was a gruff voice in her mind trying to feed her exposition, but it was quickly drowned out by a very confused, startled voice that quickly approached fearful as it spoke one single word.

“…Battra?”

Masako’s eyes went wide, thoughts reeling as she quickly turned around, propped up by an elbow, not quite properly computing as she took in the very mortified look that had settled on Erika’s face. Her words almost completely failed her, but she managed a hasty, urgent, “Shit! Did Lucy and Kristina not tell you?”

“You know them?” Erika nearly screamed, then “Wait—you know…” She pointed to her own face, then at Masako. “Wait, you’re—”

Her eyes had gone wider and wider, more panicked with each successive statement. In moments, she was backing away off the bed, frantically searching about the room for something.

“Wait!” shouted Masako, an arm outstretched. “Don’t go! Please don’t—” Shit! “I mean, you can go! You can absolutely go if you need to, just—”

Erika had her black-scaled purse in hand, swiftly opening the zipper and pulling out… a ring of silver, the metal in waves sort of like petals, a spiral-ridged crystal of neon pink at the center – a ranger coin? She had a ranger coin?

Masako had little time to process that, as the moment the coin filled Erika’s palm, her entire body glowed a bright yellow and dissolved into hundreds of tiny motes of light, a swarm of unblinking fireflies filling the room and flying past Masako as if on a breeze. The curtains flew open, but the particles were able to phase through the glass of the window, leaving Masako to undo the latch and heave it upward once the last of them had vanished out into the night.

The air was frigid, and Masako felt the Battra coin materialize in her hand, her armor generating quickly to keep out the cold. She leapt from the window, gliding on Battra’s wings, rising up and searching in every direction she could, but there was no sign of the golden particles, only the white haze of snow, blowing harshly on the wind and obscuring sight in every direction…

She didn’t usually directly register the presence of the lenses on her ranger helmet.

She did this time, as she opened her eyes, because the right lens was blocked by packed snow, and the left was hitting her with the glare of early morning light reflecting off the surface of said snow.

Huh? What… happened?

YOU EXPERIENCED SEVERE EMOTIONAL DISTRESS AND PASSED OUT ON THE ROOF. IT SNOWED AGAIN.

Helpful as always, Battra…

When Masako tried, she could remember… the bar. Marcia sitting down beside her. Going upstairs, having a bit of a time… a power coin? Marcia was a ranger, too? So which—

“So, uh… what should I call you?”

“Could you call me… Erika?”

AS I WAS ATTEMPTING TO RELAY, YOUR FRIEND MARCIA IS IN POSSESSION OF THE BIOLLANTE COIN. AND LIKELY DUE TO THE UNIQUE NATURE OF BIOLLANTE’S SPIRIT, THE EFFECT OF THIS PARTICULAR RANGER COIN ON A HUMAN MIND HAS PROVED… ANOMALOUS.

Huh? What ‘unique nature?’ Her spirit? Anomalous how?

BIOLLANTE WAS ONCE HUMAN – THE DAUGHTER OF THE GENETICIST THAT CREATED HER. I AM SUSPECTING NOW, THAT BECAUSE OF THIS, HER CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT RELEGATED ONLY TO AN ADVISING PRESENCE WITHIN HER HOST, BUT THAT SHE IS CAPABLE OF ASSUMING FULL CONTROL.

Masako frowned. Battra was making sense, just not the kind of sense he was probably trying to make. An explanation of the night’s events snapped into place in her head all at once – nothing less than a miracle on the darkest day… Biollante – Erika – was once human.

And now she was, again.

So, where’s Marcia?

THAT, I DO NOT KNOW. I DOUBT HER MIND COULD HAVE BEEN SUBSUMED COMPLETELY, BUT THIS IS NEW TERRITORY AND—

But Masako had the answer, after only seconds of thought. This has been happening for a while. What Lucy said about her behavior, it going back and forth… they’ve been switching. And the Seatopian guards. Marcia didn’t kill them, Erika did.

YOU… ARE NOT THINKING HER INTENTIONS ARE MALICIOUS?

Are you? She felt Battra’s presence, the buzz of anger. It briefly halting. You don’t seem to have a high opinion of Biollante.

Battra was quiet for a short while. PERHAPS IT IS UNWISE TO ALLOW THAT TO INFLUENCE YOUR DISCRETION.

The words made Masako arch a brow. Battra sighed.

WHEN HUMANS TOUCH THE SOULS OF THE DEAD, IT IS SIMPLY ANOTHER WAY OF TAMPERING WITH UNIVERSAL ENERGY. BY DOING SO, THEY HAVE CREATED BEINGS OF DIVINE STATUS IN THEIR STANDING WITH THE EARTH. BIOLLANTE IS NO EXCEPTION, HER SOUL IMMORTAL AND HER FORM ALWAYS CAPABLE OF REGENERATING ITSELF MUCH LIKE MY OWN. MY RESENTMENT HAS ALWAYS STEMMED FROM THE FACT SHE IS A HUMAN BEING, ELEVATED TO THE SAME STANDING AS A GUARDIAN MOTH. I REGRET THAT I HAVE NOT FORMED MUCH OF A USEFUL ASSESSMENT OF HER TRUSTWORTHINESS BEYOND THAT.

She didn’t recognize me as Masako or the Battra ranger. She thought I was just a random stranger. I seriously doubt she has any agenda beyond exactly what Lucy says she’s been doing – getting the most out of life, while she has a second chance at it. And I think maybe I screwed that up…

It was getting brighter, the sun fully rising in the morning sky. Still half-buried in snow, Masako resolved to stay there, perhaps forever, all strength leaving her as she remembered the fear in Erika’s eyes.

YOU HAD NO INTENTION OF HARMING HER.

I made her scared…

IT WAS A MISUNDERSTANDING ON BOTH YOUR PARTS.

It still shouldn’t have happened! That’s… Masako closed her eyes around tears.

YOU ARE NOT THAT SORT OF PERSON. I CAN TELL EVEN NOW THAT WHETHER SHE WAS MARCIA OR ERIKA DURING YOUR ACTIONS IS OF LITTLE CONCERN TO YOU. SHE FLED, BECAUSE SHE NOW FEARS WORD OF HER PRESENCE IN MARCIA’S MIND WILL REACH LUCY AND THE OTHERS, THROUGH YOU.

Masako still lay there for what felt like an hour, thinking not just of Erika but of all the things steadily bringing her mind to the brink. Battra quieted his voice, attempting to soothe away her jagged rage and despair with the sounds of rushing waterfalls and chirping birds.

She was distracted away from her thoughts by the fact it was snowing yet again – except it wasn’t. Tiny motes of golden light drifted down just in view of her eye lens, dusting the snow’s frosted surface before collating in a brief, overwhelming glow.

Fuzzy grey boots had created a rift in the packed snow, and a figure knelt down, wearing jeans and a sky-blue winter coat. Dark teal scarf, pink mittens. From under a grey winter hat and fuzzy cyan earmuffs, either Marcia or Erika was looking at Masako with surprised, nervous eyes – even a measure desperate.

“You’re… still here?”

It was a question as much as a confused statement.

“Yeah,” Masako spoke lightly, the sound carrying through her helmet’s voice filter. She still didn’t move. “I’m not gonna say anything. Just talk to m—”

“Look, I need your help.”

The other girl had turned away, hiding shame. She backed up and sat down along the wall near the roof’s edge, where less snow had accumulated due to the angle. She put her arms around her knees and ducked her head low, her left side to Masako as she curled in on herself.

“We’ve been—”

“Switching.”

She looked up, surprised at Masako’s guess. “Marcia… found the coin on one of the team’s site surveys, and I realized I could… so I… I mean, she didn’t even know I was there until Seatopia. But after that, she…” There were the beginnings of tears in Erika’s eyes. “She kept letting me.”

Her helmet didn’t move, for fear of disrupting something that felt delicate, but Masako was nodding along in her heart. She knew right away she would’ve done the same thing – had she been in either of their positions, most likely, but the gratitude she felt toward Marcia was becoming something truly indescribable.

Erika was becoming increasingly distressed as she continued, though, and Masako received a dark portent that she already had some idea of what she would hear next.

“We had a system,” Erika insisted. “We were supposed to always check in, but… when I got back, last night, this morning, I… I couldn’t find her.”

Oh.

“I don’t know what happened! Or where she went, or—”

“I do.”

Silence hung in the air, as Erika turned to once again lock eyes with the one visible lens of Masako’s.

“If I can guess, if I know Marcia… she found some way to shut herself off permanently. Because she thinks you deserve her life more than she does. That giving it all to you is at least something she can do that’s worthwhile. If all the progress she was making was really you all along, then… yeah. I believe you. You’re not at fault for this, this was all her.”

The heartbroken look on Erika’s face didn’t seem at all reassured. “I could’ve noticed that. I probably did, I just… I was so caught up in…”

“I couldn’t blame you,” Masako silenced the approaching spiral. “I’d say I can’t even imagine what this must all mean to you, except I can. I’ve been there too. Marcia’s my friend but you’re my family. I’m here for both of you now.”

Erika breathed softly. “If there’s any way to get her back…”

“We will. I know some people who might be able to help.”

Calmed at the sense of hope, the resolve of action toward easing the guilt she was still putting on her own shoulders, a more collected, gently nodding Erika finally returned to her initial confusion as to the nature of the setting of their conversation. “Can I ask… why you’re buried in the snow?”

“Because m’sorry,” Masako whimpered in a dry deadpan, her voice quickly breaking to a creaky murmur. “I made you… scared’me.”

Erika dropped her shoulders, moved closer on a knee as if trying to hear better. In a moment, she shook her head. “You thought I was Marcia. I… I wasn’t honest.”

Masako would’ve laughed if that didn’t sort of hurt. “Honesty’s got nothing to do with it.”

When Erika looked confused again, Masako sighed, and finally heaved herself a little out of the snow, resting a little higher on her elbow.

“It was a one night stand. At a place specifically for that. Nobody needs to know each other’s life story, sometimes that’s the whole point. You don’t have to tell people you’re a ghost possessing someone else’s body. If you’d picked anyone but the one person there who happened to know that face, it literally would not have mattered. It still doesn’t matter to me.”

Looking at her strangely, Erika dropped her gaze, clinging to her guilt. “No, that… it was always dishonest. I just didn’t expect to face consequences.”

“Erika,” Masako said seriously, enough to get her looking up again. “There’s stuff I didn’t tell you about me either. Stuff a lot of people would disagree about me keeping to myself and getting intimate, but nah. Hell no. The people who would have a problem with it are the assholes, and I stand by that. All I wanted out of last night was to help out the girl in front of me, who was looking for a safe experience with no pressure. And I’m pretty sure all those things were still true, no matter whether you’re Erika or Marcia.”

Erika balked at that, stiffened and looked away for a moment, still struck by the instinct to attach shame to the acknowledgement, but she regained her confidence enough to minutely nod.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Masako insisted. “And I don’t regret it. It’s actually um… kinda more than my honor to uh… I mean considering however long ago in the past you’re from…”

“…Forty years,” Erika said, a little nervously. A little solemnly.

“That’s really special.” Masako sat up, arms resting idly on her knees. “I… stopped believing in miracles a little while ago. Last straw, I guess. Not gonna lie, Erika, you picked a real shitty time in the world to come back to life, but I’m glad you’re here. I’m not sure anything I do means anything anymore, but maybe this does. I did… I did really think you already knew about me being me, and the Battra stuff. Probably could’ve… reiterated that, at least once…”

Erika shook her head, a little wistful, maybe even amused. “Neither one of us ever saw you out of armor before.”

“I know, and that occurred to me, but I kinda just brushed it off…”

Erika laughed. Maybe Masako’s nervous, stuttered expressions while still in her ranger suit were what did it. But it eased Masako just a little, and one of her hovering hands went up to scratch her head in embarrassment.

“We should, probably, uh… get back and…”

Everything bright and relaxed left Erika’s face, in a way that made Masako yearn to have it back, despite the circumstances. “Yes,” she agreed curtly, even trying to hide away her sadness. “As… as soon as possible. We need to figure this out…”

“Okay.”

Masako stood, and made to finally dismiss her armor before remembering better of it.

“…I should, probably get some clothes first.”

An ambush was waiting for them back at Desolation.

“Have either of you had breakfast?”

A girl with faintly olive skin, more prominent freckles than even Marcia, and black hair flaring loose at her bangs and neck with the rest in a topknot, stood near the entrance of the main building with a hand on her hip and a fiery, scolding warmth in her eyes.

Building a snowman with the ostensible help of a toaster-sized, one-wheeled robot, a short, darker-skinned boy looked up from the courtyard off the side of the entryway stairs, fixing Masako and Erika with an oh no you didn’t look that was clear even through his large, round-framed glasses.

“We’re… we’re sort of in the middle of something import—”

Masako reached over and took firm hold of Erika’s wrist, shooting her an urgent, pleading look that told her, in no uncertain terms, that she was not about to suggest there was something more important than breakfast. Masako had learned that lesson well enough, as had Akemi, who put the finishing touches on the snowman before hopping out of the snow, miraculously navigating the icy sidewalk on his rollerskates, and stopping just beside Robbie with an identical hand-on-hip pose.

The smallest flicker of doubt in Robbie’s eyes and smile gave Masako the room to contradict her if there actually was an emergency, but Masako shook her head, allowing the continued enforcement of Breakfast Rule despite Erika’s clear impatience. Over the several minutes it had taken them to arrive, she’d come to the understanding there was a conversation they needed to have, preferably before they began seriously working toward their goal.

Erika was unsettled, approaching agitated as they were led inside, but Masako slid her grip down to the girl’s hand, squeezing reassurance and hoping the glances she offered would carry her through the bout of uncertainty.

When they were both practically shoved into the corner of the first floor that had been converted into a makeshift library, Masako took Erika’s other hand as well and faced her, her look serious. “We’re going to get her back,” she insisted, “but don’t make her choice in vain either. She gave you this. So just… relax, okay?”

“Relax?”

Erika looked like she wanted to scream, then like she wanted to burst into tears, her distress a quiet wail as Masako’s eyes pleaded with her.

“Just… just be here.” Masako wasn’t sure if she was demanding it for Erika’s sake, or her own. As she felt Erika get unsteady on her feet, she moved her arms up to catch her in a hug, holding on as frantic and unaccustomed breathing began to fall back into a steady rhythm. “You’re alive, Erika. You’re you—or, well, close enough, maybe. Marcia knew what that meant. Just be here.”

As the minutes passed and they parted, Erika finally took in the space around her. Bookshelves had been fit in wherever there was room, creating several hideaways along the walls while the main space was populated with mismatched tables and chairs – some of it repurposed office cubicle furniture while other pieces had been salvaged from board rooms or lounges. At once, she seemed to realize that the recent moment of affection was in no way considered an uncommon occurrence, as the other breakfast delinquents continued to go about their business, even paying more attention to the slight commotion at the other end of the room – Number 13 was giving Akane W verbal instructions for fixing the coffee machine, but was herself standing back and waving her gloved hands in the air, refusing to touch the machine itself.

Masako felt a shiver of discomforted worry, again aware of Erika being from the nineteen-eighties as the two of them chose a table with an army-green, upholstered couch along one side and sat down. “This is… all probably pretty strange…”

“It is,” Erika nodded, crossing her arms and settling into the armrest, seeming to grapple with a nervous sense of wonder. “But… I’ve been stranger.”

Robbie broke the moment by walking in with their plates, setting the scrambled, leftover-packed omelettes down in front of them. Masako eyed up the concoction with interest, a creative and balanced platter always well within Robbie’s wheelhouse even when ingredients were scarce. A hesitant mental calculation occurred only once she and Akemi had wandered off, however.

“Not to uh… but… is it weird that there’s vegetables in this?”

“Why would it be—oh. Alright.”

“Sorry, just…” Masako cringed. “Just making sure…”

Erika didn’t quite giggle, her reaction was still too dry for that, but the corner of her mouth was somewhat upturned in amusement – at Masako’s expense, if nothing else. “I also eat fruit, in case you suspect that might be an issue at some point as well.”

“Mhm,” Masako mumbled nervously. “Yeah, there’s, uh… I hear they’re opening a Delic around here. Be easier to get it fresh…”

“So who’s—” Erika took a breath, finished taking another bite, and put her fork down. “Who’s here that you think could help?”

Masako eased up, reassuringly, already well into the series of mental nudges that was arranging the forthcoming meeting. “I don’t know if you met Belvera or Mallory or Minette, they were down in Seatopia with us. And, uh… they’re not… as scary as you might have seen or heard. They’re cool now, as long as they’re here.”

Erika didn’t seem too disturbed. “Belvera’s an Elias, right?”

“You know them?”

“I know… of them.” Erika paused, wistful. “I felt connected to so many things… most of them were beyond me, but, at the same time, it felt like I was one of them. One of the… I guess, the highest powers in the universe. It was a lot to take in, and I’m still not sure I completely understand it, or want to. But Mothra and Battra, I could always sense them. And some others, too…”

“But you can’t now?”

Erika shook her head. “It’s tougher. The coin still limits what I’m capable of, even though I feel like it’s not completely able to contain me.”

She pulled the coin out to hold in her hand, and Masako watched as the roselike gem at the center glowed bright pink until all its details were obscured. Small green tendrils emerged from the glow, as if creeping through a portal, circling back around through the gaps in Erika’s fingers to secure the coin to her palm. Another, larger vine grew from the center, opening up a venus-flytrap mouth the size of a human hand. It lunged and grabbed the last of the food on Erika’s plate, then retreated back into the coin, the rest of the securing tendrils vanishing along with it.

THAT IS… IRREGULAR.

“The dead vines in Antonio’s museum,” Masako realized aloud.

Erika nodded. “I haven’t been able to summon my ranger armor yet. I think… I think that needs both of us to work. Down in Seatopia was the first time I was speaking to her, but then I was… I wasn’t really all there, right after…”

Masako tried to think back, and remembered Marcia’s scream. “The explosion?”

“It was like… it was like how I died. Back then. I’d just walked up to the lab, and then…”

Masako decided not to press, letting the silence ease. “You ready?”

Erika nodded, and leant back further into the couch.

Any sense of fear or recognition, when Belvera and the twins entered the library, seemed to have been supplanted by her noticing Masako’s own reaction. She knew it was obvious, nearly being brought to tears just at seeing them face-to-face. Minette’s and Mallory’s thoughts brushing against her own was beginning to feel like the only thing that could keep her mind from running a million miles a minute. Belvera tended to stay back and let the twins do their thing, feigning disinterest as usual, but it was obvious that even she was deeply concerned.

More than she needed to be. Than any of them needed to be. She was fine.

MASAKO…

Stop.

She must have flinched visibly, but she did her best to shake it off as the twins sat down in the opposite, red-upholstered chair that was large enough to accommodate them both. Belvera hovered in the space between, as Minette and Mallory linked hands and their eyes began glowing.

After around a minute of the twins’ expressions shifting, minute frustration and soft curiosity, they leant back and appeared to sigh in defeat. Erika looked worried, but Belvera hovered quickly into her space, catching her attention.

“She’s still in there. She’s just not budging. She sunk herself pretty deep down, seems comfortable there. She won’t respond to any of us, that’s for sure.”

Disappointed, Erika still seemed somewhat more calmed, more relieved at the partial reassurance. Masako hoped it would at least further quell the urgency that had seemed to keep Erika on a self-imposed timetable.

Before departing, Belvera shot Masako a meaningful look, her telepathic thoughts carrying the rest of the sentiment. They’d tried almost everyone Masako knew that had shown signs of ESP. There was technically one more option, but that wasn’t for Masako to reveal, even if it felt like their most obvious, best chance.

But that was up to Lucy, and for that, Lucy would need to know about Erika…

Masako’s previous hopes seemed for nought, as Erika was now staring worriedly at the pastel pink phone in her hand. Marcia’s phone. “They’re wondering where she is.”

“I… I think we need to tell them.”

Erika looked shocked, fearful as she met Masako’s eyes, but seemed already to be acknowledging the eventuality. “You’re right,” she breathed out, quickly. “They deserve to know.” She looked back down at the phone screen, appearing doubtful. “I just…”

“I’ll be with you,” Masako assured, resting a supportive hand on her forearm, fingers curled into her inner elbow. “Just… say there’s something you want to tell them, and you’d rather do it in person. They’ll show up.”

The assurance seemed to make Erika even sadder, but she also calmed, taking a deep breath and nodding.

Minette and Mallory had lingered in the library, and approached quietly after Masako had given Erika the details of one of her meeting spots. Soon, Masako found another folded piece of paper slipped into her hand.

Erika looked up to eye the exchange with curiosity, seeming intrigued by Masako’s reverence for the gesture. Slowly, Masako unfolded the note in her fingers, finding a detailed pencil drawing of… Santa Claus with a gun? And… an x-ray machine. Placed over his heart, like in the Grinch cartoon.

“…Okay, now they’re just fucking with me.”

Minette and Mallory grinned, catlike with mischief.

Turn it up…

The beat from Kiyo’s portable radio continued to ramp up as hidden holoemitters around the ancient, water-carved cavern gradually built staticky, faintly red-and-blue-tinted images of the silver, vein-covered, oyster-headed Xilien base forms that were the footsoldiers in the Xilien Commander’s army.

Standing in the middle of the lowest, finely gravel-floored area of the cavern, known as ‘the pit,’ Naoko glanced through her blue helmet lenses toward the black visor beneath the orange, stylistic ‘beak’ that cast Kiyo’s faceplate in shadow. A pair of helmets bobbed together in a shared nod, and they refocused on the incoming wave of enemies, fists up in identical readied stances.

The Xiliens took up funny, overacted stances of their own, some shuffling from side to side and using the large boulders in the pit as cover. Finally, a detachment of five began a sprint toward the rangers with fists primed to swing, the rest urged on by the example to join in close behind.

…cause you don’t even know.

Naoko and Kiyo lunged forward at the two nearest Xiliens, ducking under thrown punches and using footwork to slip around behind their opponents and snare them by the waists. Ranger strength lifted both enemies high off the ground and gravity brought them hard into the floor, where they vanished into dissipating static.

Exploding into a firework of tiny orange energy moths, Naoko left her prone position and resolidified onto her feet faster than she could have otherwise stood up, an elbow already knocking back the next Xilien as she extended her other arm toward the ground so Kiyo could grasp it gauntlet-to-gauntlet. The auburn-colored Rodan ranger extended her other arm’s heat beam emitter and attached orange gliding wing, allowing her to catch air and kick the last two Xiliens in the head with a foot each as Naoko swung her in a full circle.

Dropping Kiyo off in a battle stance of her own, Naoko rounded and cleared the three disoriented Xiliens with an extended heel strike, the enemies vanishing as they toppled over and revealing the rest of the swarm quickly catching up to where they’d stood, shoving into each other as the whole crowd tried to thread the needle between two large, freestanding rocks.

With another nod, Naoko and Kiyo charged as one, backhanding fists knocking a few Xiliens directly into said rocks while kicks had several falling down at a time like so many bowling pins. Many panicked as they fell, waving their arms around, distracted, as the still-composed troops found their numbers insufficient to prevent the Mothra and Rodan rangers from targeting them with takedown attacks that ended their programs.

Xiliens were sent flying, compiled data splattering against the tops of rocky spires and the horizontal grooves that scored the water-carved walls around them, until every last hologram had had a chance to get back to its feet and run hopelessly into the fray.

The next wave of training dummies lit up the cavern with red laser beams, the charged batteries glowing bright on the otherwise silver, stylish Xilien pistols they’d been generated holding.

Naoko and Kiyo held out behind cover of a boulder, both wary of Daisuke’s informal contest with the scoreboard and hoping to get through this round without taking any unnecessary hits. After some deliberation, Naoko turned to face Kiyo, her arms open and outstretched.

Kiyo debated for a moment. Then a loud row of laser bolts from close by grazed the top of their cover boulder. She relented and dove into Naoko’s arms, carried along with the Mothra ranger’s teleportation as the firework of moths dispersed along the floor of the cavern and reconvened up near the ceiling.

Pushing off each other’s shoulders high in the air, each ranger fired a pair of beams down into the fray of enemies, coral orange and hot magenta sweeping from center outward as the rangers fell diagonally to the walls of the cavern and ran several steps forward along the vertical. Kiyo kicked off into a cavern-crossing, arms-out glide that had her walking with harsh kicks across the heads of a firing line of Xiliens below her, while Naoko soared even higher on Mothra’s wings, raining down orange lightning on the holograms outside Kiyo’s path of attack.

They both touched down as the last holograms fizzled, the cavern clear and the sensors recalculating for round three. In moments, the walls were aglow with a complete ring of surrounding enemies, some with pistols and others raising fists for an all-out brawl.

Alright… now?

NO, NOT JUST YET.

Naoko nodded faintly at Mothra’s instruction. Instead, she backed up to Kiyo, the two trading a glance over their shoulders before Kiyo spread fists out to wings, gauntlets extending once more, and flapped both arms ahead of her, wind building around her beam emitters and launching forward in a conical wind tunnel.

As Xiliens toppled over on Kiyo’s side of the cavern, Naoko aimed her left gauntlet, the outer armor panel popping up to reveal her stinger flechette launcher. A shotgun blast of tiny darts shredded through a few holograms and her right gauntlet’s curved stinger carved through another pair that ran in close. She spun and kicked out at another Xilien attacking from her right side, then used antenna beams to clear a group to her left while Kiyo leapt high to lure a volley of red laser fire up toward the ceiling.

HERE IT IS! NOW SET THE STAGE!

Alright, here goes nothing…

Naoko ducked low and ran along the ground, going invisible to weave past more Xiliens and keep up with Kiyo’s descending glide, the Rodan ranger’s flight-powered knee impacting one hologram’s sternum and turning the Xilien into a projectile that took out two more behind it. Kiyo skidded to a halt, spinning, her heat beams aimed to neck level and cutting down swaths of enemies all around her while Naoko became visible, crouched beside her heel.

They’d made it near one side of the pit, the Xiliens from the rest of the perimeter assembling into a horde that hastened to bear down on their position. Kiyo readied to engage, but at that moment, Naoko rose up to a knee, crossing her forearms in front of her like a pair of blades. A blue glow traced along the edges, and she began sending off rapid-fire, X-shaped energy projectiles, pivoting like a turret to aim the onslaught from one end of the wave of enemies to the other.

One by one, the holograms fizzled out as they were shredded apart, until the cavern was brought to stillness, Naoko still holding in place with her arms crossed.

“…that’s a new one.”

Naoko turned to find a surprised Kiyo giving her a curious, leering look. She stood up and flexed her fingers. “Mothra still has a few tricks up her sleeves.”

“From what I’m hearing, she usually does.”

Up on a slight level from the pit, Kiyo switched off her radio and picked it up to carry, as they made their way the short distance back through the caves. In the metal-roofed clearing, the ramp was waiting for them, and they headed back up into the Gotengo – which must have had its drill running when it crashed into the mountainside back in 2004, burying itself deep until its rediscovery by four not-quite-friends-at-the-time some twenty years later.

Today was the first day since the underground that Naoko was alone with Kiyo at the Ranger base. So far, she’d planted a seed that might get Kiyo and Rodan suspecting the right things – that Mothra was up to something, and that something might be worth listening to when the time came. That was the easy part. The hard part would be suggesting they should include Battra in their plans, nevermind that the plan itself was pretty much to let Battra run the show, even if held back on somewhat of a leash.

CONJURING QUITE THE IMAGE?

Naoko’s mind had wandered just slightly at her own thoughts’ wording, but Mothra’s interjection was a bit late to have any impact. I don’t actually find that idea super appealing…

Inside the coolly lit metallic hallways of the submarine airship, Kiyo dismissed her ranger armor into creeping veins of silver nanometal that seeped back down into her lush, warm-brown-toned skin – and there was quite a bit of it on display, since she was wearing little more than a black sports bra and gym shorts once the armor had fully receded. Long, dark hair spilled across her toned back and shoulder muscles – not that Naoko was looking…

YOU DID LOOK. AND THAT’S NOT NECESSARILY A BAD THING.

Kiyo’s a friend!

AND IS MASAKO NOT YOUR FRIEND? I FEEL LIKE SHE WOULD BE HURT TO HEAR THAT…

“You really don’t have to do that,” Naoko said out loud to quiet the moth in her head. “It doesn’t matter what we wear under the armor, it disappears anyway and doesn’t come back until we dismiss our armor completely.”

Kiyo nodded, but didn’t seem perturbed. “But now you’re stuck morphed until you cool down enough to not overheat in all those layers.”

Naoko froze with her armored hands up in front of her, having run out of explanation. She had been waiting a bit longer to ease up from the workout…

Kiyo’s raised eyebrows shot her a silent counter, as she lingered briefly at a doorway before heading into an old service bunk that was now mainly used as Kiyo’s designated area for random object storage. Like the radio she was putting away on an otherwise empty shelf.

ALRIGHT, TIME TO GET TALKING. NOW… START WITH SOMETHING LESS HEAVY THAN THE LINGERING FATE OF THE ENTIRE PLANET.

Naoko took a deep breath, searching her brain for whatever else might be on her mind – and she didn’t have to look far. By now, feeling less riled, she dismissed her armor and leaned nervously against the door frame, peeking further into Kiyo’s space.

“Hey, so… theoretically what would you do if… you were interested in someone, but they weren’t really ready to commit, but also this would be happening around now, so everything’s fucked up and there’s probably not ever going to be exactly a right time…”

Kiyo had been slipping fingers through another one of her usual fiery orange, reflective scale tank-tops, about to take it from a hangar, but she paused, leaving it be as she turned around and brought her hand to the locket chain running down her neck. “You’re asking me for romantic advice?”

The words sent a chill through Naoko, one that didn’t even escape Mothra.

I SAID LESS HEAVY!

“Shit, sorry!” Naoko exclaimed, her hands up, taking a step back. “I wasn’t thinking, I…”

Kiyo rolled her eyes, and put her hands up too. “Alright, stop apologizing! Just get it over with, what’s the deal with this guy you like?”

“She’s not a guy!” Naoko snapped, surprised at her vigor when she was panicking moments before.

Kiyo’s wide eyes blinked. Naoko’s blinked too.

Naoko let out a long sigh. “Fine, alright, get the gloating out now. Not only was I the biggest, most callous hypocrite imaginable, but all that religious stuff I was throwing out at you was just repressing me, and setting me up for a life of suffering the whole time too…”

She waited, but Kiyo was quiet, her eyes serious and considering. “I’m not going to gloat about that.”

Naoko shivered, hugging herself even in her warm sweater, but inched another step closer to the doorway when Kiyo seemed to be gently, if not overtly, encouraging her.

“So… this girl you like?” Kiyo smirked, but it wasn’t teasing – at least not too harshly.

Naoko thought a moment, then rolled her eyes. “Well, apparently I like the bad girls…”

That brought Kiyo’s eyebrows near her hairline. “Do tell…”

“Well not… bad, exactly… I mean she’s all edgy and crap, but I don’t think she’s ever done a single thing in her life for any evil or selfish reason. That’s kind of the main problem, actually…” Naoko sighed, and met Kiyo’s eyes sadly. “She does everything for everybody else, and if the people she cares about are in danger, she will stop at nothing. But… she won’t let anybody fill that spot in her life. There was someone she lost a long time ago, and she keeps saying she’ll never—"

“Wait, wait, wait…” Kiyo looked alarmed, eyes wide and a measure fearful, which immediately made Naoko freeze.

Does she… how could she guess about Masako already?

…NAOKO, I DON’T THINK THAT’S WHAT SHE’S GUESSING.

Naoko worked her brain in overdrive, because Mothra had decided that was the right time to stop being helpful. Then her eyes were drawn to Kiyo’s hand, again clutching at what Naoko knew was a heart-shaped locket hidden in the front of her top.

“Oh.” Naoko blinked. “No, no no no no! Not—” She had her hands up, head stuttering back and forth in frantic denial. “I don’t mean—it’s not you! I swear!”

Kiyo breathed out relief. “Okay, because…” She looked Naoko up and down. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t, just out of curiosity, but there wouldn’t be any feelings there.”

Naoko tried not to let her face turn beet-red at that.

Kiyo’s face softened, and her eyes scanned back through the room, settling on one of the bunk beds. She eased towards it, sitting down on the nearest end, and patted an open spot next to her as she eyed up Naoko again. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”

Making a slow, cautious approach all the way into the room, Naoko took the other end of the makeshift bench, keeping her arms folded across herself nervously.

Kiyo smiled encouragement. “So, what’s the matter?”

“She’s just… she’s not ready, I guess. Maybe she won’t ever be, and I’ll have to respect that.”

Kiyo frowned. “But how did you get to this point with her? What’s your relationship like now?”

Naoko looked up shakily, nerves redoubled in her eyes.

Fuck, how exactly do I explain Enemies to Lovers?

NOT LIKE THAT. JUST MAKE IT SOUND… NOT RANGER-EY.

‘Not ranger-ey?’ I am terrible at lying!

THE EASIEST LIE IS THE TRUTH.

“So I met her at a… volunteer event,” Naoko stuttered a bit, but her voice was suddenly softer, even fond in memory. “Properly, you know. I hadn’t seen her face to face before that, and we’d uh… we’d gotten off on the wrong foot, but that day we showed up for the same cause. And I, uh…” She laughed a little. “Wanted to show her up a little, but… didn’t know my own limits, got carried away… she helped me get home.”

Kiyo was grinning. “And then things got… intimate?”

Naoko blushed. “Eventually, yeah.”

“So, is she good?”

It took a second to interpret Kiyo’s leering eyes. “Oh, no, not sex intimate. Just intimate intimate.”

Kiyo’s face turned neutral, a little confused. “So you haven’t had sex?”

“No,” Naoko shrugged it off, trying not to feel stung because it… really didn’t bother her. Not that much, anyway…

Kiyo apparently saw through her before Mothra had a chance to. “Wait…” she seemed to mentally slap herself on the head. “Religious family… are you still a virgin?”

“Is that a big deal?” Naoko snapped back, incredulous to the point of being kind of amused.

“No, it’s not,” Kiyo admitted, surrendering at least that point, “unless it’s a big deal to you. Cause then you’d also be making this about your first time… would it be hers, too?”

“Oh, definitely not,” Naoko almost laughed. “She might be having sex right now.”

Kiyo narrowed one eye, suspiciously. “You’re waiting for her, but she’s not waiting for you?”

“I’m not waiting for her. I just… and, I mean, it’s not like she’s out there getting around, it’s… it means something different. It’s like a cultural, even charity thing. Not like she’s not enjoying herself, I’m sure she is, but I know her well enough I can trust her when she says it’s not really about her.” Naoko rolled her eyes. “If it was, it would be the only thing that was about her. I don’t think she’d stop doing it if she was in a serious relationship, either.”

“And does that bother you?”

“It doesn’t,” Naoko said honestly, even if there was something in the mix that was getting her a little bristly. She internally scolded herself. “I mean why would it? I could literally just ask her to get on with it, totally casual, and she’d probably say yes.”

“But you want your first time to be special?” Kiyo seemed solemnly convinced she’d gotten to the heart of it, and Naoko wasn’t immediately sure she was wrong.

“I guess s—”

HMM… WHO WAS IT THAT SAID, AND I QUOTE, “I WOULD’VE SETTLED FOR, UH, GOING BEHIND AN ALLEYANDLETTINGHERTAKEME?”

Naoko winced with a tense breath and chattering teeth, but she supposed Mothra had gotten the point across well enough. “Actually no,” she said honestly, and Kiyo’s eyes popped a measure open, her expression unreadable.

…HOW DOES ONE GO ‘BEHIND AN ALLEY,’ ANYWAY?

“It’s more that…” Naoko stood up, and began pacing along the far wall. “If I asked that of her, it would just be her doing something for me again, like she does for everybody else, and that’s not what I want. What I want is… to be there for her, like, for everything, and I wouldn’t be getting any closer to being able to do that.”

In a moment, Kiyo took a long sigh, and got up from the bed. “Naoko… you know you’re like, my bestie, right?”

That made Naoko pause stiffly in her pacing, shock in her eyes as she turned to face a strictly serious-looking Kiyo. “I’m… pretty sure I’ve done some things that rule out bestie status.”

Kiyo scoffed and rolled her eyes, as if to say, with finality, stop it with that. “When you were reading from that script they gave you? Yes. Yes, you hurt me. But when you’re not reading from it, you do things like save my life. More times than I gave you credit for. Ever since we became part of this team together… you’ve been treating me like someone you’ve known since forever, someone who matters to you. It wasn’t just guilt. I’ve taken too long to acknowledge that.” Kiyo smiled softly and fondly, a little sadly. “I think you already know how to take care of people.”

Naoko felt her lips part in a stunned breath, but before she could react, Kiyo took mercy either on her, on herself, or both, breaking back into a slightly teasing, scolding look as she crossed her arms.

“Alright then,” she cut through the silence. “So it sounds to me, Naoko, like you’re dealing with two separate problems here. One, the girl you like isn’t ready to get serious, and two, you’re a baby, repressed lesbian who’s never been with a girl before. Are you with me so far?”

“Okay, hey, let’s not say problem,” Naoko cut in. “It’s not like it’s a basic need or anythin—”

“Are you with me.” Kiyo’s eyes were piercing. “So far.”

Naoko gulped, but rolled her eyes. “I’m with you so far,” she half-mocked.

“Okay,” Kiyo’s face went blank, and she nodded to herself. “Because I’m sorry to report that one of those is a problem I can’t solve right now in this room with you.”

“Well yeah, I didn’t actually expect you to—wait, what do you mean one of?”

OH. THIS IS NOT WHERE I THOUGHT THIS WAS GOING AT ALL…

Distracted for a moment, Naoko looked up to find Kiyo standing very close to her.

“Um… Kiyo?” Naoko stuttered out nervously, trying to keep her eyes anywhere but her friend’s cleavage or shoulders or wild smile. “What are you doing?”

Looking directly into Kiyo’s eyes and nowhere else proved not a single measure more innocent. Those eyes knew Naoko liked what she saw. Kiyo laughed heartily and Naoko shivered. “If I’d have known it was this easy to make you squirm…”

“Oh,” Naoko laughed nervously, “ha, ha. Guess you got me…”

She made to step aside, brush off the joke, but Kiyo’s arm blocked her, palm against the wall. Her eyes were serious, and soft. “You want this, right?”

There was no pressure in the question, but no teasing, either. Not even anything that could be reasonably rationalized as teasing. Naoko was well aware of herself heating up, enough that even Mothra slipped away into the back of her mind and left her to her own encouragement.

As she took her time to answer, though, Kiyo surprised her by breaking her gaze, looking suddenly more vulnerable. “Or does it bother you…”

“Bother me?” Naoko was taken aback, glancing down at Kiyo’s locket chain that definitely had a picture of her dead boyfriend inside. Her very heterosexual, dead boyfriend. “I feel like I should be more worried if it would bother you. What would bother me?”

Kiyo shrugged a little, mumbling. “That I haven’t been with only girls…”

“Is that something that should bother me?” She breathed relief when that made Kiyo look back up at her, a little more her old self. Naoko shook her head, face once again sporting an immense blush. “Kiyo, I’m really not that picky.”

“Good.” Kiyo grinned, pulling back her arm from the wall and instead using both hands to gently grab Naoko’s shoulders, massaging and kneading them through her sweater and, even just at that, turning Naoko into impatient, willing putty in her hands. “Cause it looks like you’re… in need of something good right now.”

Naoko very pointedly rolled her eyes, but laughed. “Next time, I pick the workout music.”

Kiyo’s hands uncurled and slid down Naoko’s front, too-briefly passing over the small hill of her breasts and settling over her belly. Kiyo held them there a moment, then slid her fingertips below the hanging sides of Naoko’s sweater, moving her hands underneath it and then down to her hips. She crept up under Naoko’s coral-orange undershirt, first with her fingertips and then with her thumbs, the first skin-to-skin contact happening around the line of her waist—

A shocked gasp and a shiver as Kiyo ducked down under her line of sight, and Naoko brought her knees together with a chill, realizing Kiyo had relieved her of her skirt, leggings, and underwear all at once. Her lower half exposed to the elements above her ankles, Naoko’s eyes were wide as Kiyo stood back up, intensity in her gaze as she rested a gentle, comforting hand on Naoko’s cheek.

“Well? You ready?”

Seeing Kiyo’s other hand raise into her vision, the first two fingers extended together, Naoko gulped in trepidation but nodded eagerly. Pleased and purring at her response, Kiyo leaned in.

Their lips crashed together, and Naoko barely had time to bask in the sensation before Kiyo’s fingers slipped inside her.

She was barely coherent by the time Kiyo was carrying her, bridal-style, to the lower bunk, laying her out and slowly relieving her of the rest of her clothes. Kiyo straddled her, pausing briefly to brush hair out of Naoko’s eyes, leaning over her with a smile as she finished coming down from her disoriented bliss.

Naoko breathed, smiling back, feeling the warmth between their eyes. She still couldn’t really believe this was happening. She should’ve really thought it was weird, but… Kiyo didn’t seem to. Kiyo’s dark hair spilled over her shoulders, and she smiled like they were just two friends having fun together. Maybe that was because it was true.

Kiyo’s hands traced over Naoko’s upper body – her bare shoulders, her bare breasts, her bare stomach. With each touch, Kiyo’s easy smile said See? Feels good, right? and Naoko eagerly nodded, encouraging her for more.

Her own hands were just kind of hovering awkwardly, though. She still wasn’t sure if Kiyo actually wanted anything from this. It hadn’t occurred to her before now that she would even go for girls, even if this pretty obviously wasn’t her first time doing it, and she wasn’t making any move to undress herself. “Should I um…” she moved her hands to hover around Kiyo’s thighs. “Should I touch you too?”

Kiyo let her hover for a moment, a considering lilt to her smirk. “How would you do it?”

Trying to read the tone of the statement, Naoko eased her hands down until they were on Kiyo’s skin, hoping that was what she meant and sighing relief when she received the go-ahead from Kiyo’s eyes. Still reeling in the fact she was touching Kiyo, she spent a while moving her hands up and down her thighs before crossing the barrier of the hem of her shorts, very quickly feeling the outline of her front before retreating to her hips. Kiyo didn’t resist or react to the soft probing, but she seemed a little comforted that Naoko hadn’t ventured under her clothing, so Naoko resolved she wouldn’t, squeezing Kiyo’s ass just once before moving up to her toned abs.

When she got up past Kiyo’s ribs, over the border of her bra and to her breasts, Naoko cupped them very gently through the fabric, careful not to make contact with or jostle the locket Kiyo still had tucked in there. Maybe Kiyo wasn’t keeping everything to herself, and to the memory of her lover, but there were some things she still seemed intent on. There was a brief sort of tearfulness in her eyes as Naoko respected her unspoken boundaries.

Kiyo exhaled a little and arched her back, visibly indulging in Naoko’s chest-touching, then glanced back down with an arched-brow stare. “Not bad,” she said with approval as she leaned back out of reach and knee-walked backward down the bed. Naoko instinctively arched her legs up to give Kiyo room to sit down.

With a satisfied grin, Kiyo set her hands on Naoko’s knees, supporting herself on them. “Ready for round two?”

Suddenly aware again of the aching want still in her heat, Naoko blushed heavily and nodded.

Her smirk turning dangerous, Kiyo put pressure on her hands and turned them back-to-back, so they neatly slid down between Naoko’s arched legs. Further aroused by the palms breaching the territory of her inner thighs, Naoko was compliant as Kiyo pushed outward, parting Naoko’s legs and rendering her spreadeagled on the bed.

Locking gazes, Kiyo performatively licked her lips, then dove forward.

Naoko was sure she screamed out Kiyo’s name, shock turning to laughter and then, finally, to another bout of incoherent bliss as her body played host to Kiyo’s skillful, dexterous tongue.

“I’m guessing you want to know what it was like. Being… Biollante.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Snow melted into water that flowed into storm drains, but still covered most of the sidewalks save for trails of footprints. People were sparse, but the city streets sounded of running heaters and distant car traffic, the world slowly coming back to life.

Masako felt a little chilly in her usual light jacket compared to Erika’s whole seasonal ensemble, but she was used to going without such luxuries. She even suspected the harshness of the weather was affecting her less, simply by virtue of her being a ranger, even unarmored. Theoretically, the same should be true of Erika, but then again, such states of overcomplicated winter dress usually had aesthetic intentions in addition to any practical ones.

She frowned, as she imagined a frantic Erika putting it all on earlier that morning, in hopes of luring her other headmate out into the open with comfort and familiarity.

“But you were thinking it, right?”

Currently, Erika was frowning too, eyeing Masako with a doubtful expression.

“Not really.” Masako shrugged, sympathetically uncomfortable. “I have no interest in hearing you relive something that was that painful.” She let a moment pass, thinking. “If you want to talk, you can, I’m here, but I’m not pushing.”

Erika was quiet for a long minute, her expression curious in glances. “I wasn’t the monster all the time. Mostly I was… a spirit. Particles, in space. It was peaceful. Before that, though, at first, it was…”

She held herself and shivered, and Masako stopped to let her collect herself, a hand on her shoulder.

“I was… what I was, and I had to watch… people, that I knew… move on without me. It hurt enough that I… shut myself off for a while, like Marcia’s doing now. They thought I was gone, then, that all that was left was the beast, but the beast was always me, too. Biollante is… rage, power, but not a kind I ever really knew how to use. My dream was to create, not destroy. I used cactus cells to make wheat grow in the desert. I wanted to solve world hunger. As Biollante, all I could do was… fight Godzilla. And I wish I could say I was trying to save everyone, but I really only cared about…”

She grew quiet, so Masako had a feeling she wasn’t getting that answer for a while.

“What about you?” Erika asked, as they kept walking in the snow. “I don’t know you that well, but whenever Lucy and Kristina talk about you now, it’s like you’re a really close friend.”

“I mean…” Masako blinked. “I feel like it can be argued that in at least some ways you know me better than they do…”

Erika’s face turned rose-red. “Yeah, I guess so…”

“What do you think about me?” Masako asked, shelving any kind of self-aggrandization in favor of something she thought maybe she needed to hear. “You’ve been around me long enough.”

Recovering, Erika looked thoughtful. “I know you’re… a dark, and violent person. But I also know you showed up to save Marcia. I know that was in your heart. I guess I know a lot about your heart that I wouldn’t have guessed, that Marcia wouldn’t have. You run a refugee shelter.”

“And maybe this is a good time to say…” Masako looked at Erika seriously. “I know we have a plan, I know we’re not giving up, but worse comes to worse, you’d have a place with me, with us.” She shrugged tiredly. “I mean, Desolation could use a community garden. I bet Robbie’d come up with some great recipes with cactus wheat. Yuzo too, when he visits.”

Erika nearly scoffed at the notion. “You’d accept my work so easily?”

Masako looked at her, a little surprised. “I don’t hate GMOs.”

At Erika’s moment of confusion, she half-rolled her eyes.

“Genetically Modified Organisms. It’s what we call your field of study now. And yeah, some people still freak out about them, but a lot of us know they have the potential to do a lot of good, too. The companies that patent them are usually huge assholes, though, so I guess it all kinda did end up being evil, just not in the way anyone was afraid of. Just don’t do anything fucked up like using lawyers to keep people from replanting seeds so you can squeeze more money out of us for new ones every crop season, and you’re good.”

Staring for a long, stunned moment, Erika sighed. “Of course that would happen…” She turned away to quietly grieve, and Masako let her.

“I’m pretty sure the world has enough food to go around,” Masako guessed, after a minute. “It’s the ‘giving it to people who need it for free instead of throwing it away out of spite’ part that we’re stuck on. Turns out, you can’t solve world hunger just by creating stuff.”

She lightly slapped a fist into a hand, smirking a little in bleakness as the two of them kept walking.

“You have to break some stuff, too.”

M PIZZA HOUSE, read the maroon-colored, English lettering scrawled across the long, yellowed-grey placard that spanned the width of the building – the M being spaced way too far off to one side while the letters in HOUSE had been drawn thinner and more squished-together than those in PIZZA, despite there being plenty of clearance on either side of the wording.

It was a red-brick building, tucked away into a cozy, walkable city square, the signage running above the decorative facing on the lower floors and cutting it off from the plainer, windowless and more lightly-colored red-brick section above. Its special features included: an exterior stairwell in the front that led from the sidewalk up to the arch-glass entryway on the left side, two larger arched windows that shone in on both a lower interior floor and a higher balcony level, and a franchise name that was slightly less conspicuous than Garoga Real Estate across the street.

Since returning from the underground, Masako had been quick to curry favor with the owners of both establishments, but had been disappointed to learn that each group of aliens-disguised-as-humans was genuinely retired from the world-conquering business, and possessed little in the way of any leftover military resources she could make use of in her plans – the still-unknown whereabouts of the terror-beast Shipdraw notwithstanding.

They were, however, discreet around Masako’s dealings, and, in her opinion, excellent at their chosen civilian businesses.

Masako led Erika to the upstairs lounge, already set up with a 10-seat table near the balcony as well as the usual sectional couches along the wall. The decorative tone was wood-brown and maroon-red, the lighting was a pleasant yellow ambiance with enough distribution to make shadows non-obvious, and the television set at the end of the room opposite the door featured a film library that contained, among other things, Ratatouille.

“We’re early,” Erika said, phone out as she sat down on one of the couches, near a corner far from the door. She kept staring at the phone, though, almost resembling someone from the modern age in how she didn’t even seem to be looking at anything on the screen. “Hey, could you… is there a way to… look up a number?”

Masako sat down on the couch beside her, debating how much space to leave in between but finally opting for closeness because screw it. “Wh—”

“Nevermind,” Erika snapped instead before Masako could get a word out. She put the phone pointedly deep in a pocket and looked guilty as she crossed her arms. “…I’ve called out to her from beyond the grave enough times.”

“I think…” Masako frowned, unsure. “I mean, I know this is a weird situation, but if she meant that much to you—”

“It’s been forty years.” Erika shook her head, still shrinking into herself. “Even if she’s still alive… I saw her move on. Maybe it’s better if she never knew…”

Erika didn’t finish the sentence aloud, but given the events of last night, Masako was pretty sure she could guess the ending. She took a long breath. “Maybe this will sound strange coming from me, but I think there are things that count for more than what the exact nature of your relationship was, wasn’t, or could or couldn’t have been. This is… you… you should be with the people that matter to you, if you can. Whether something would work out perfectly, and give us everything we want in the long term… isn’t something I think we should be worrying about anymore.”

Erika appeared thoughtful, but her eyes seemed to put away whatever ideas she’d been building for herself, the longer she looked at Masako. “What about you? We never finished talking, did we?”

With a sigh, Masako internally cursed her words. “Look, don’t—”

“I’ve been getting… conflicting reports about you and a certain Mothra ranger…”

It wasn’t exactly a light enough statement to be teasing, but Masako bristled at the jarring nature of the subject change anyway.

IT IS NOT AN IRRELEVANT TANGENT.

I really miss when you were on the other side of this.

“Wait.” Erika was suddenly wide-eyed. “Shit, did I-? We? Last night—”

Masako eased her down from panic with a dismissive wave. “She and I aren’t together. And that’s… separate, anyway…”

“Okay but why aren’t you?”

Masako blinked. “…aren’t what?”

“Together.”

With a long, blank, suspicious stare, Masako decided that Erika’s concern about being a potential homewrecker had probably been genuine, and not a complete setup. But she’d been perfectly happy to capitalize on it anyway, given her current lilt toward smugness.

Alright, you know what? Why the hell not?

“It’s… complicated, okay? There’s… the reason I don’t do this, relationships… I lost someone.” She breathed as Erika finally gave her the space of silence. “A while ago, and… and I don’t even think that’s what’s stopping me, not really. I mean, the fact I am currently talking to a real, actual ghost returned from the dead may not exactly be helping the argument for moving on, but I’m pretty sure she’d still want me to. I just… and maybe you won’t quite understand this part, but she never got the chance to exist, as anything tangible. She was never in any pictures, I never got to see her face, she never even figured out a name…”

“So you’ve given yourself the burden of remembering her.”

“I’m the only one who can.”

Maybe she shouldn’t have been surprised, after all, at the gentleness on Erika’s face. A bridge had been crossed, a connection established, some form of understanding finally taking root.

Too little, too late.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Masako laughed darkly, “when none of us are going to be remembered at all. I told you it was a bad time…”

Erika seemed to figure it out. “You’ve been talking like the world’s ending.”

“That’s because it is.”

To her credit, and probably to the credit of Lucy and the others, Erika didn’t immediately refute the statement. “The world might be frightening, but it was frightening forty years ago, too. Even scarier, then. People still—”

“Don’t.” Masako’s fists clenched. “There’s been indifference. Ignorance. But there’s never been hate like this. Cruelty like this. Not on this scale.”

“I’m sure that’s not true—"

“Yeah, well you know what?” Masako glared into Erika’s eyes. “You missed a pretty big part in the middle where things actually looked like they were getting better.”

“So you’re giving up?” Erika glared right back. “We have to stay strong, we’ve done it before. There will always be good people to take up the fight, and one day—”

“One day.”

Masako’s whisper, her downcast look, eventually brought Erika to a silence of understanding.

“Tell that to the people we lost yesterday. Tell it to the people we lost the day before that. Tell it to the people we lost this morning.” Masako looked up, face broken into a shattered smile, and leant back on the couch to face the ceiling. “When you… find… the words you think will reassure me, go and read them before the graves. You can start right now. Not everyone is strong enough, willing enough to suffer forever to make it to be a shell on the other side, and not everyone who is will get the chance. Hope is dead, Erika. All that remains, is to see what will become of the ashes…”

Masako felt a soft weight on her shoulder, cold fingers threading into her own and attempting to pry them away from their stint as curled talons. It was a decent effort, but misdirected.

“I’m not the one who needs anything you can give.”

Because Masako, the immortal, ever-present lucky one, was fine.

Minutes, and more cyclical, deadened thoughts later, Erika’s attention was drawn to a message on Marcia’s phone, and they both silently headed to the table in anticipation of the others’ arrival. Masako moved the end-chair on the inner long side to the corner near the single-chaired short side, anticipating that whichever of the two ended up sitting there would need backup. Erika idly distracted herself in examining the contents of the table, from the pizza boxes to the plates and utensils, and finally the seasonings.

“What the fuck?” she exclaimed, offended, closely examining the nutrient information on the back of the salt shaker.

Surprised by her tone, Masako arched an eyebrow.

“Non… GMO… salt? It’s not even an organism…”

Masako shook her head with a smile. “Welcome to the shitty, shitty future.”

The door opened, and immediately things started feeling… not entirely terrible, as a familiar group of friends shook off the last of their faint shivers, faces filled with warmth as they came in from the cold. The other seven members of Professor Ando’s Kaiju Investigation Team were dressed in winter coats, some with hats and gloves as well, but they’d kept mostly to their usual colors, which was probably going to be helpful later.

Noticing the professor himself lingering outside the door, Masako cut a swath through the crowd forming near the coat rack and waved him in at the threshold. He seemed moderately surprised at the invitation, and even more at the insistence with which Masako directed him to the head of the table opposite where Erika was… currently in need of help.

Just as quickly, Masako dashed back and placed herself as a barrier between Erika and the small group of Lucy, Shannon, and Kyle, who had managed to crowd the poor girl in the few seconds Masako had left her side. “Okay, everyone, give her space! Just… sit down and be patient, alright?”

Lucy immediately nodded an emphatic of course while Kristina reeled her backward by an elbow. Erika gave Masako a guilty look, taking it difficultly that even the brief statement was a deception. That seemed to propel her to a decision.

“I’m not… I’m not Marcia,” she said plainly, collecting herself as she took the single seat on the short edge and left Masako the corner.

“Alright,” Kristina nodded simple encouragement, intently showing no other reaction as she and Lucy took the closest seats on the balcony side. “Then who are you?”

A deep, fearful breath. “I’m Erika.”

“Cool,” said Shawn.

Jason gave a thumbs-up.

“Okay, but… why?” Jeremy asked, already helping himself to a slice of pizza. Shannon elbowed him.

“It’s a great name,” contributed Kyle with an approving nod.

Confusion slowly crossed Erika’s features, her wide eyes pleading Masako’s for help. Masako sighed.

“They’re not getting it.”

Lucy and Jason had their phones out, probably already changing Marcia’s contact info. Masako took a heavy, obvious breath, and waved her hands above her head.

“Ghosts!” she said particularly loudly, getting everyone to look up at her absurd gesturing. “Boo! You know, possession?” At blank stares, she gestured her hands at Erika. “Just show them the coin.”

Erika held up the Biollante coin, metallic petals framing the spiraled pink gem. She looked directly at the professor. “Are you familiar with the work of the late Dr. Shiragami?”

At once, the professor stilled, in recognition of the truth. He adjusted his rectangle-framed glasses, and chose his words carefully.

“…Am I to presume I am speaking with his daughter?”

Erika nodded, her eyes turning half-lidded. “His daughter, who became Biollante.”

Finally, there was shocked consensus around the room – awe, at being in the presence of another kaiju, mixed with stunned disbelief-turned-horror at the revelation that said kaiju had once been human, followed up with the wary uncertainty of what it meant for Marcia that someone else was speaking through her. The members of the group experienced the chain of emotions at different speeds, but all reached the same, expectant apprehension in the end.

Masako put a hand over Erika’s wrist, offering with her eyes. Erika sadly nodded, and gave the floor.

“They’ve been switching,” Masako began with, because it seemed the quickest way to catch everyone onto the truth of the matter. The results were immediate, the worst possibilities eased away, even if a few at the table – Lucy and Kyle in particular – seemed struck with guilt that such a thing happening had escaped their notice. “Something about the coin, Erika’s spirit being human, made it so they can do that, instead of just, ‘kaiju advises ranger’ all the time. Their consciousnesses were taking turns at the wheel, back and forth… until this morning.”

“I should have known she would do it,” Erika had her head in her hands. “I should have noticed…”

“She’s still there,” Masako assured. “She just… found a way to go to sleep, and not wake up. Even… found a way to feel like she was doing something good by it.” She put an arm around Erika’s shoulders, letting the sobbing girl retreat into her while she matched the others’ immense worry and heartbreak head on. “I had Belvera and the twins make sure. They found Marcia with their telepathy, but she didn’t respond well to any of them.”

A brief look Lucy’s way communicated – without the others being any the wiser, save for Kristina – exactly what Masako suspected their last hope to be. Lucy seemed to understand right away, although clearly wasn’t expecting to be able to promise anything – the few times they’d met up in secret since the underground had yielded little further evidence of Lucy’s ESP-sensitivity. Saving Kristina appeared almost to have been a one-off, and the idea Lucy’s powers could manifest for anything else… well, they would just have to try.

Try later, it seemed, as something urgent had apparently come up.

“Yes? We’ll be there, right away,” Professor Ando agreed, clearly reluctant, into the cell phone he was holding to his ear. “It’s Dr. Mancini,” he announced to the group, as he hung up. “There’s trouble with the readings at the site, he says it’s urgent.”

The rest of the group, even Erika, seemed to know what that meant. The professor spent a long moment looking at Masako before reaching a decision. “Best to come along. If something’s out of the ordinary concerning the specimen, we shouldn’t chance it… assuming you’d be agreeable?”

…Off to another adventure, huh? Guess that’s one way to leave the curtain hanging.

Masako took one look at Erika, another toward the team, and nodded. “You can tell me what kind of giant monster bullshit you’re involved in this time on the way.”

Chapter Text

The bus was of a good size to comfortably fit ten people, not that Masako knew all that much about buses. She shared the back window bench with Erika, and spent the first leg of the long trip up the snowy mountain roads with an eager Shawn giving her a rundown of the team’s current consulting job. His tablet, held over the back seat for her to view, showed a detailed diagram of a quadrupedal, ratlike creature with an armored, dunkleosteus-like head and prominent lower jaw. It had a scaled carapace on the dorsal half of its body, but fur on its ventral half and limbs, and fish fins flared around its neck and down its back.

Masako figured that Shawn showing her that was probably against the rules. Then she remembered she was the avatar of a god and decided it was probably okay.

“We’re calling it Deuterios, its body was discovered in a mining collapse. It’s dead, but subsurface scans have been showing activity at two mirrored spots around one node of the spinal column, we think it might be undergoing some type of regeneration.”

Erika seemed to be either already aware of this, or simply uninterested, staring at the Biollante coin in her hand as if it would give her answers. She avoided the others’ gazes, clearly feeling responsible for the hole in the group that even Masako herself was feeling much more strongly, being in the presence of the others. She kept an arm around Erika’s shoulders, her continued support obvious to at least one of the girls inhabiting a tired body, all while hoping it could in some way count for them both.

Lucy spent that first part of the trip deep in thought, clearly pressuring herself to try to find answers within by concentrating really, really hard. Kristina seemed pretty convinced it was all for nought, but held her supportively anyways – until they had an intense conversation with their eyes, which became Kristina clearly urging Lucy toward something she seemed to have a lot less faith in than Kristina apparently had in percussive thinking.

“Hey, um…” Lucy was nervous, a bit embarrassed, as she left her seat and joined the other two on the back bench. “I… could I try? I know you’re not, I just… if it could help…”

Her hovering arms made her intentions obvious. Erika breathed out a guilt that made it clear she considered herself to be in the way of the gesture, but nodded anyways, and allowed Lucy to ensnare her. Masako was reminded of an apologetic, determinedly attentive hug that felt so long ago now, under the uncertainty of a stormy island’s mercy.

At the top of a mountain ridge, the bus passed a checkpoint consisting of a single gate and a small, boxy building that seemed to be uninhabited. Beyond was a large, bowl-shaped valley with one larger mountain peak intruding partway into the circle. Masako could see some of the inner hillside on that peak had fallen away, leaving an open, hollow cavern. Only the upper ceiling was visible, the rest of the site encompassing a large portion of the base of the mountain having been walled off with hundred-meter-high, tarp-covered fencing. The ring was interrupted only by the mountain itself taking up most of the far side, and a large complex of buildings in the middle of the nearer side. Cleared of the fallen snow that dusted the valley, a single, winding road led from the checkpoint down to the main complex.

Upon reaching the long, paved parking strip in front of the main entrance, Jason eased the bus around to the left, bringing them to a stop beneath an overhang that marked a service entrance on the side of the building at that end of the long, connected chain. They were close enough to the tarp-covered fencing that Masako could probably find somewhere to take a peek inside the site, but she figured she’d see it all for herself soon enough anyways.

The security door opened up to a long, interior hallway, the doors to every room on either the right or left being solid and sealed – along with the one at the end, which Masako assumed led into a probably-very-similar setup inside the next building in the chain. The space was brightened only by yellow, artificial lights on the ceiling, never more apparent than when they all flickered out at once and left the entire group in pitch darkness.

Masako was alert immediately, but a few moments later, the blackout ended, the lights flickering back to full brightness.

“Power failures,” Jason announced, shaking his head. “Been happening up here for weeks, seems like they’re only growing more frequent.”

Masako stopped a moment, narrow-eyeing the ceiling. “Alright, first order of business… figure out what’s wrong with this picture.”

Erika stopped next to her, looking worried. “You think something suspicious is going on?”

“…I think it doesn’t make much of a difference if there is or not,” Masako said, after thinking a moment and dropping her shoulders. She didn’t have to look back up to catch her own words, though, wincing and giving Erika a blank, apologetic smile. “I guess it would matter for you.”

Her eyes also found Kristina, who’d wandered close, not even needing to display open concern to make her intentions known. Masako rolled her eyes.

“The status update is: I’m the worst I’ve ever been, and I’m probably going to get even worse on purpose.” She lowered her voice, though, shrinking just a bit into herself. “It helps that… you’re still here, though.”

Kristina had a flash of sad acceptance in her eyes, nodding solemnly as she moved to keep walking.

“If you need anything,” Masako whispered even lower, with determination, walking in step with Kristina toward the other end of the hall, “anything at all, let me know. I’ll get it for you.”

They passed through the next door, and through a short junction in the walls, marking an advance to the next building. Something glinted in the light as a bright sparkle on the floor. And Masako looked down to note that it was – with no evidence of any other machinery it might belong to – a single, polished silver gear.

Several buildings, a flight of stairs, and a left turn later, they arrived at the inevitable overlook room, once again a space filled with computers, screens, and one very large window facing into the walled-off excavation site. In Masako’s view now was a field of snow-covered earth, tilled into dunes by the various bulldozers scattered about, a wide and partly-covered walkway proceeding out from a few floors below the window until the uncovered last several dozen meters ran right up to the edge of a sinkhole crater wide enough to include the part of the mountain previously established as having been hollowed by a collapse.

At the center of said sinkhole, Masako saw exactly what she expected – the body of a rat-fish creature, around a hundred meters between the tip of a snout off to the left and the last bit of tail that was visible on the right before it became hidden or buried by uneven ground and snow cover. Deuterios looked dried, aged, emaciated, but not otherwise decomposed, its mammalian features as resistant to the weathering of time as King Caesar’s were while the guardian hibernated. Maybe mummified was the most accurate descriptor. That the creature could come back to life seemed improbable, and certainly not a painless process in any case, but not completely impossible.

“Hang in there, you can do it…” Lucy voiced in quiet encouragement, her hands on the glass as she looked out over the scene.

“These hotspots here,” Shawn pointed out on a monitor at the room-center station, directing Masako’s attention to a three-dimensional, orange-blue-scale thermal diagram where the hottest points looked like a pair of small teardrops clinging desperately to either side of a vertebra near the shoulder blades. “They’ve been growing, little by little, producing heat as the radiation in the creature’s dead cells is re-metabolized.”

“There’s been very little change over the last few months,” Professor Ando said, as he looked over the data himself, comparing the current model to a series of snapshots from previous scans. He hummed faintly, a hand curled before his chin. “Dr. Mancini said he’d found inconsistencies, but I’m not seeing anything that appears out of order…”

Shawn brushed past Masako as he traded places with her earlier stance at the window. Kyle arched an eyebrow as he glanced about the room. Jason seemed to pick up on his slight impatience and confusion, the oddity spreading as an unspoken question throughout the group. Then the door to the hallway opened again, and another person stepped inside.

But it wasn’t this mysteriously missing Dr. Mancini.

Because from a head of long, spilling, boldly sea-foam green hair, dark skin and gentle brown eyes, Masako knew exactly who that was.

Oh, shit…

YOU KNOW HER?

Yeah, long time ago. Before I met you.

Masako attempted to hide herself along the side of the computer station – and somehow, it worked, at least for the moment, as there was a certain panic and haste in the new arrival’s spot check of the ten-person gathering scattered out before her. “Professor Ando?”

“Kiki?” Kristina greeted, only a little confused. “Where’s Dr. Mancini?”

“It was a false alarm, you all really don’t need to be h—” any attempt at brushing off the situation, and its attached concern, was brought to a sudden halt when she re-spot-checked the room and shivered still with her eyes wide. “Masako?”

The rest of the group turned curious eyes on Masako, all silently asking the same question Battra had – well, all except Shawn, who was still staring out the window. Masako put up a waving hand.

“Yes, we know each other,” she looked at Kiki, intending to offer the other girl the first stab at controlling the narrative, but continued when she found her opponent too stunned to speak. “Back in the day, we both ran in similar circles in the environmental movement. Then we had a bit of a falling out. Don’t worry, as you can probably guess, she was the reasonable, ethical one.”

“I… didn’t know you were here…” was the only thing Kiki had to say. Her eyes were narrowed now, like she was expecting to have known this.

Masako sighed, dropped her shoulders, smiled a bit with a broken laugh and put her hands up. If Kiki wanted a fight, she wasn’t getting one. “I guess nothing either of us did mattered, in the end. Maybe we should’ve spent that time being friends.”

The eyes on her – even, maybe especially Kiki’s – softened and lost most of their edge, if they’d had any in the first place. Kiki was still difficult to read, though, but then again, Masako hadn’t seen her in a long time. But she’d said all she needed to, considering an in hindsight, I probably should’ve paid more attention to your stories about Mothra and Battra would’ve been telling a bit too much.

“Look, I’m with them.” Masako gestured toward the professor and his team. “No secret plans, I’m not here to blow anything up—”

“Nobody said that!” Kiki startled, though Masako’s attention was on Erika’s quiet shiver in her peripheral. Masako briefly tasted foot in her mouth, wincing in apology.

“It snowed,” Shawn said quietly from the window, still in his own world.

Something about the tone of his words, however, had several members of the gathering turning toward him expectantly, brows raised.

“You really need to leave.” Kiki was being more insistent this time.

“What about the snow?” Shannon spoke gently, ignoring Kiki and approaching a very focused Shawn from the side.

“It snowed…” Shawn repeated, with just enough puzzle-solving-mode inherent in his voice to keep his words from sounding haunted, “…so why isn’t there any snow on Deuterios?”

Though Shawn was oblivious to it, the haunting nature of the uncertainty struck Masako. She tried to shake it off. “You said it was generating heat, right?”

“Only in a small area,” Shawn corrected, rushing back over to the projected diagram. “The rest of Deuterios’s body should still be too cold to affect the snow cover.”

“It’s probably nothing,” Kiki tried again, in vain, to wave off.

Jeremy crossed his arms in challenge. “If Shawn says it’s important, then it’s important.”

“Hey! You can’t do that!”

Kiki’s protests were in vain as Shawn accessed the terminal, the professor watching with interest and implicit approval. After a little bit of maneuvering in the system, the thermal display flickered – the two tiny hotspots having instantly become a large, vaguely peanut shaped mass that encompassed nearly all of the space inside Deuterios’s torso.

“It looks like outdated snapshots were being fed to the user interface, while the system was actually recording a far more accelerated growth, and sending the real data offsite.”

Alarm spread through the group. “Did someone hack in?” Lucy suggested.

Shawn shook his head. “This was done locally, by someone with access to this terminal.” Another thought seemed to strike him, and he started meddling with the system again. “Someone also disabled the exterior cameras on the south side of the building, hold on…”

A monitor started displaying a large grid of camera views from outside, a number of them blacked out. At Shawn’s input, the disabled views returned, showing… at least a dozen vans and SUVs, arranged haphazardly on the parking strip. Many had their sliding, side doors open, and while they were out of focus, Masako immediately spotted several humanoid figures standing guard, brandishing military-style rifles.

“Oh,” Shawn said, stepping back from the console. “That’s bad.”

Masako recalled, in that second, that she was really not, in fact, here to blow up the building.

The building blew up, all the same.

There was a scream as the ceiling was immediately lower, the room filling up with dust and the monitors sparking. Chunks of debris rolled into view as Masako got her bearings, the Battra wings having spread out from her back and formed a shroud over whoever had, in the moment, been standing closest to her.

She looked up and saw… vines – a tangle of green, but sturdy branches having sprouted through the room in a seeming instant.

The professor was still by the base of the sparking monitor, reaching over one to retrieve his glasses, while Kyle urgently fought the verdant limbs looped around him like a cage – he wasn’t snared in them, just too eager to find a way around the obstruction, his eyes searching for a vantage to scan the room for the others.

Masako could hear gasps, coughing voices – a lot of them. She picked out Kristina’s pink hair first, one sturdy vine cresting over her like an archway and then doubling back to shield Lucy on the ground. Jason switched a flashlight on from the other side of the room, a hand on one of the branches as he ducked beneath it to approach a clearing in the middle of the group – a clearing which existed, Masako noted, only because of several vines threading overhead and catching debris from the ceiling. Shawn, Jeremy, and Shannon crept out from under the tarp of Masako’s Battra wings, which left only…

Following the vines to their source, Masako located Erika, prone on her side with her left arm thrown out. Once again, the coin was bound to her palm, a vine lancing out from the center before this time digging an anchoring trench in the concrete floor and sprouting back up in multitudes, including one that looped several times around herself in a coil. Her other arm was clutching the side of her head as she whimpered softly.

Masako retracted her wings and the field of armor that had grown across her back, and approached the gap in the coiling vine, kneeling slowly and reaching out a hand. “Erika…”

She was lost in memories, Masako’s voice unheard.

The others were getting their bearings behind her, with whispered voices, mostly Jason. Masako could sense a few crowding her, but something made her wave them back.

Her extended hand reached closer to the one Erika was using to shield her face. Fingers made delicate contact with the skin of her wrist, and, somehow knowing what might happen, Masako recoiled instantly as the ground in front of her split, a pointed shoot of green vine spearing upward and leaving its point only centimeters from Masako’s wary, but not stunned eyes.

The others behind her were shocked still, but Masako simply nodded, and generated her armor up to her neck, sans her wings, gauntlets, and gloves. She reached out again. “We’re alright. Thanks to you…”

“Aww, fuck this shit!”

The sharp, echoing voice, followed by what sounded like some debris being knocked away harshly, put an even deeper chill upon the moment.

“Yoooo? Is anyone home?”

The second, darkly humorous voice seemed to imply that anyone who was ‘home’ would not be left alive much longer.

On the ground, Erika shifted. Breathed heavily. The short vines binding the coin to her hand now threaded up her arm, and across the rest of her body, small outward-facing thorns sprouting like barbed wire. She silently put her right palm on the ground and pushed herself up. There were more vines growing onto the left side of her face.

A rose bloomed over her eye.

A side door in the room, hidden away on the wall facing the direction they’d entered the building from, was knocked open, and two men with rifles swept green laser-sights through the settling dust and smoke. They seemed momentarily shocked to find so many people, but it took them only seconds to level their weapons, ready to fire.

Across those seconds, the floor cracked and split apart in clear, outlined paths towards them. Vines surged out of the walls, wrapping in spinning loops around the gunmen and spiraling them away toward either side of the entrance they’d made. There were sprays of blood as sharp vine-ends impaled the bound bodies, and they fell still.

Masako’s eyes were back on Erika in an instant – the vine extending into the ground had snapped off, but the ones on her body remained as she got to her feet, her one visible eye appearing distant and glassy. Masako faced her, hands hovering. “You still in there?” She whispered with a nervous, but encouraging smile.

Gulping, expecting to be impaled and bracing for the pain, she reached a slow hand toward Erika’s upper arm. Erika’s eye flickered a bit, then at once, seemed soft and aware. The thorny vines on her shoulder retreated to make way for Masako’s settling hand, the rest soon following suit and creeping back down into the coin.

Masako put a hand on Erika’s other shoulder, and dismissed her armor as Erika fell, exhausted, into her arms. In silence, she soothed up and down a faintly-trembling spine.

“Did I hurt anyone?” Erika whispered.

“No,” Masako reassured immediately, then blinked as her eyes returned to the two bodies bound up by the door. “I mean, not us. Just the people trying to hurt us.”

“Who are those guys?” Kyle spoke up, scorn in his voice, and a faster round of breathing from Erika seemed to echo his attitude – those men had clearly had something to do with the explosion, after all, if they were sweeping the building, intent on gunning down survivors.

The gunman on the right side of the door had been turned to almost be facing the wall, and in the faint light from a window that was mostly blocked and collapsed in on itself, Masako still thought she saw familiarity in the two-tone, black-and-blue jacket he was wearing.

First making sure Erika was steady, she received a nod, and made her way through the vine jungle, now noticing that the branches, no longer linked to the coin, were already drying toward the woodlike appearance of the ones she’d assumed were roots back in Seatopia. As she reached the gunman’s body, she pulled one thinner, dry vine away from those binding him.

On the back of his jacket, printed in white, was the image of a canine-or-feline-looking skull with boxily-rendered ears. A vertical line ran downward between the eye sockets and through the nasal cavity, parsing the symbol into two unconnected halves.

“Hyenas,” Masako hissed, echoed in her thoughts by a low, angered rumble from Battra. “Alan Jonah’s crew.”

“This one’s different,” Jeremy announced, examining the other body. He’d pried from the man’s black tactical vest a circular pin-on button, its surface divided into four like a checkerboard with two quarter-circles printed in black and the other two in yellow.

“That’s Sawyer Smith’s logo…” Masako hissed again, but this time more taken aback. “Why are they working together?”

“Aren’t they… both radical environmentalists?” Lucy asked, sounding unsure. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you sound kind of angrier than I expected you to be.”

Masako laughed. “They’re egotists, who surround themselves with vulnerable people and bleed them dry for their own ends, selling them on the lie that they’ll actually be accomplishing anything toward saving the Earth.”

There was guilt, approaching shame in her eyes, as she looked back at Erika. Looked back and found a knowing sadness, an internal struggle with the contradictory impulses toward the sorts of things Erika suspected she was now about to hear.

“I once thought they’d be good allies, even… ran with some of Jonah’s crew for a few jobs. I had hope because of them. I put my faith in them, and I’m sorry I ever did. Smith’s just in it for the money, the adoration, trying to secure a spot for himself in the coming chaos, and Jonah…” Masako worried another frown, cut even deeper. “I think he just wants to see humanity end. Not for the sake of the planet, but because he thinks we deserve it.”

She sighed and stepped back, shaking off the discomfort, then chuckled another, mirthless laugh.

“Both of these assholes are probably taking in recruits by the truckload at this point. They have the whole, desperate world at their feet. Maybe it’s not surprising they decided to pull their jackpot winnings and step up their game.”

“Hey,” Shawn said a little worriedly, which meant he was probably a lot worried. “Where’s Kiki?”

Alarmed, Masako scanned the area, as did everyone else. “Not here,” Jason announced, and indeed there was no sign of the brightly green-haired girl among the debris in the dull, concrete room.

“We have to find her!” Shannon rasped, coughing in the dust at the strained effort.

“We need to get out of here!” Jeremy countered, then pre-emptively put up his hands. “Not for me! I mean look at you! Look at this building! It’s gonna fall down on us any second!”

“Jeremy’s right,” urged the professor. “We need to take care of ourselves first.”

“I’ll go back for her,” Masako promised, already fearing the worst. “For now, I’ll…” she briefly looked back at Erika, and decided to let the girl have her space. “I’ll take the lead. Get behind me.”

The door the two men had entered through led only to a supply closet, but the back wall had been opened up in the collapse, creating new a path through to the next room. Masako saw a glint of metal and pulled a hanging key off a rack, in case it might be useful at any point, and stepped out onto another debris-strewn floor. A few steps later, she put up a sudden hand to halt the group behind her, and leapt back herself to dodge a slab of concrete that chose that moment to drop from above, right onto where she’d been standing. She gave the ceiling an irritated scowl.

This room also seemed blocked off enough that there was nowhere to move but along the same two-dimensional axis. Luckily, she found a lock on the floor that she was able to snap with her ranger strength, opening up a trapdoor and extending a ladder that led down to a lower level. There she found a locked, between-buildings maintenance door that the key opened up, moving the group one more room further in the direction of their intended exit.

“I’m taking you down!”

Advancing slowly towards her was a man in a two-tone black and grey Hyenas jacket and a black neck-mask pulled up to cover the lower half of his face. His fingers curled a steady grip around a metal baseball bat, but he missed a slight step and his whole stance faltered.

“Masako? Showing up late to the party, huh?”

She felt the unsaid question in the multiple eyes digging into her back. “Yeah, I think a lot of these people are gonna know me.”

Several shadowed silhouettes followed the bat-wielding man out of the dust-clouded air, taking positions around the room. Sliding a foot backward into a ready stance, Masako retrieved her collapsed batons from her jacket pockets, snapping them out to her sides.

“I don’t want to fight you,” she snarled.

“Then don’t.” The grey-jacketed man twirled his bat, then pointed it one-handed past Masako and toward the group behind her. “Let us do what we came here to do and you can join us.”

Confusion crossed Masako’s face. “What do they have to do with any of this?”

“They didn’t save us,” spoke the cool, sharp voice of woman with a burgundy facemask, her black Hyena jacket hanging open over a black halter top and blood-red leggings. She brandished a machete, the sharp blade glinting with lethality.

A man wearing all black under his black-and-blue jacket and grey beanie cap pulled a pistol on her, gesturing her out of the way with the barrel. “You with us, or you with them?”

“There’s no—” Masako rolled her whole head with her eyes. “We’re all in this fuckin’ shit together!”

“Except they didn’t lift a finger!” bat guy accused.

“And neither did we,” machete woman spoke mournfully, before her eyes hardened and she gripped her blade tighter. “But we’re fixing that now.”

Masako took a long, bleak, defeated sigh. “And Alan Jonah and Sawyer Smith told you this was how.”

Erika was at Masako’s shoulder, coin in hand, but Masako moved up one of her arms to ward her back. When their eyes met, Masako expected more anger, but in Erika, there was now a determined sense of peace, of serenity, if still not understanding.

“This is my responsibility,” Masako told her, and she nodded sadly.

“Then I guess there’s nothing more to say.”

Bat guy followed up his taunt with a lunge, his swings making loud metallic clangs each time they struck Masako’s batons. All the while, Masako kept her eye on the blue-jacketed man’s pistol aiming past her head and ready to fire. Leaning back and twirling almost to a corkscrew, Masako kicked the bat from the closer man’s hand and sent it spinning, until it knocked the pistol from the other man’s hand. With an elbow to the gut, she sent grey jacket a step back, then kicked him into blue jacket, both men knocked over sprawling.

A machete crossed the air in front of her face as she instinctively leant back, hearing the weapon cut the air as she dodged back through three more swipes and then brought her batons up in an x-crossing to catch the weapon and hold it steady. Her ranger strength overpowered the woman’s attempt to dislodge it, a long second bought as she tried to find some connection with the pair of eyes meeting hers past the snare of metal. But grey jacket had his bat again, and Masako used a heel-strike in the side to clear the woman from the path of potential friendly fire.

Bat guy was swinging down at her, but Masako lunged too far into his space and past him, making him stumble and whiff around as they exchanged stances. He made for another overhead bash, but Masako stepped back, letting the weapon strike the ground – which chose that moment to give way.

The bat’s impact marked the dividing split between the new outline of the one large slab of concrete its owner now stood upon, and the spread of shattering cracks that claimed the space underneath Masako. By the shout, blue jacket had been caught in range on Masako’s side, and as the ground gave way beneath them both, Masako watched the slab fall from vertical but stop at a slight incline, both the bat and machete wielders rolling down after her. Four bodies hit the floor on the level below, and Masako had only half a second to breath before that floor gave as well, a secondary collapse sending them down yet another floor and into what looked to be a darkened sub-basement, lit by flickering lights.

Grey jacket and blue jacket let out groans, alive but clearly not getting up. Masako shakily rose to her feet, blinking in the dust and raising an arm to shield her eyes as some nearby wires hanging from the ceiling flashed blue with surging electricity. In a moment, they switched off again, and Masako cleared her vision only to find a green laser sight tracking her movements. She leant to dodge, wincing at the sting of tiny projectiles grazing the skin on her face.

“Wait, that’s Masako!”

A man wearing reflective black riot gear over a matte yellow jacket had spoken suddenly, the solid metal rod of his heavy baton pushing aside the barrel of a shotgun held by a man wearing identical riot gear over a blue jacket.

“She is against us!” came a shout in machete woman’s voice, and Masako had only a moment to twist and block the bladed strike with her left baton.

“Only because you tried to drop a building on my friends!”

The woman drew back and made another slash, sparks flying as Masako’s batons deflected the blade upward. She ducked and twirled under another shotgun blast, exiting the spin just as yellow riot guy charged at her with a riot shield he’d pulled off his back. Kicking high on the shield to stagger him, Masako angled her wrist as far back as it could go, blocking his heavy baton swipe with both her own baton and her left forearm.

“And because you went to work for two assholes who aren’t gonna save you or the planet!”

As a shotgun-cock echoed through the sub-basement, and as machete woman twirled her weapon, preparing to rush in, Masako flipped her right baton to reverse grip, jamming and twisting it into the hilt of her left to form her double-ended staff. With one powerful spin, she deflected the machete and knocked off yellow riot guy’s helmet, using her free hand to grab the riot shield for herself. She put it up as a wall to protect all three of them from the next shotgun blast, then lunged and used it to bash the shotgun right out of blue riot guy’s hands. Twisting around, she used the shield to stop machete woman’s blade, then leant fully out of the way as yellow riot guy, his head still covered by a black robber mask with a hole cut around the eyes, tried to rush her with his baton. He stumbled past, and Masako instantly dropped the shield, reaching out instead to snag him by the black hood of his riot vest.

For a moment, he waved his arms in the air, held back only centimeters from the group of live wires hanging from the ceiling, surging with electric current.

Masako yanked back on his hood, throwing him into machete woman and causing the two to sprawl out on top of a large, cube-shaped crate. Finally knocked out of the woman’s grip, the machete fell hilt-first into Masako’s open hand, and with distaste, she hurled it point-first into the opposite wall.

“It’s just you and me!”

Blue riot guy pumped his fists, and ran in, throwing a punch that went wide as Masako dodged. It was really a feint so he could grab onto Masako’s staff and try to wrestle it away from her, but he obviously didn’t know about her ranger strength, staring stunned as the weapon refused to budge until Masako powered it upward so the middle hilt struck him in the face and sent him into a daze. She grabbed him by the ankle and threw him one-handed onto the same crate as the other two, all three choking out pained grunts before falling unconscious.

A wooden door began to splinter at the back end of the room, but when Masako turned to look, it was only Jeremy, battering the boards away with a length of pipe.

As the rest of the group filtered out, having worked their way down by an alternate route, Masako sighed, heaved grey jacket and blue jacket on top of the crate as well, and began to push it towards the other end of the long room. There was light filtering down through a large hole in the ceiling that was flush with the wall, and Masako left the crate there as an intermediate step, heaving the five Hyenas up to the ground floor before helping the others traverse the ledge.

Several rooms later, Masako morphed one glove and punched out a window, stepping out toward the bus on the other side. “Check it,” she reminded Jason and Shawn, but Erika dissolved into a cloud of spores that swarmed around and inside the bus, reforming with a seeming satisfaction that the vehicle hadn’t been sabotaged.

“Alright, now get out of here,” Masako urged, nodding at Erika as well when she seemed unsure whether to stay or go.

Erika understood the responsibility. “They’re her friends,” she said with a nod, then took a moment to herself, seeming to realize something. “They’re my friends too. I’ll protect them.”

Thinking back to the moments of the explosion, of what Biollante’s vines had done even while Erika seemed to have lost herself, Masako nodded. “I know you will.”

Erika paused, just for another quick moment of deliberation, then cupped Masako’s face and kissed her. “Come back,” she pleaded, a quiet and distant fear in her eyes.

Startled and confused, Masako smirked in reassurance. “’course I will.”

Somehow, Erika didn’t seem so confident in that, as she stepped away, the last to board the bus before it sped quickly away from the complex.

Just as Masako turned around, she heard a buzz of static from the pile of Hyenas on the road, and located a radio clipped to blue riot guy’s vest. She knelt down and picked it up.

“It’s almost time,” Alan Jonah’s cool, English-accented voice warned through the channel. “Make sure that building is clear, we need to get Kiki and Asher into position.”

…What?

PERHAPS THIS IS WHY SHE FLED THE ROOM. AND ALSO WHY SHE KEPT INSISTING THAT WE LEAVE.

No, no, it’s gotta just… be a different Kiki. It’s not THAT uncommon a name…

She could feel the mental sensation of Battra’s non-physiologically-possible rolling eyes.

The radio buzzed again. “Vehicle leaving from west entrance, I’m tracking it,” a different voice stated with urgency.

Shit!

Masako looked up the sheer wall of the building, and caught the end of a long rifle barrel swaying horizontally just past the edge of the roof. In a bolt of red lightning, she jumped through space and kicked the weapon high with a re-materializing foot, catching the roof’s ledge as gravity resumed and flipping into a double-kick to the man’s chest. She grabbed the sniper rifle, snapped it in half, and kicked the groaning man with a Sawyer Smith button until he rolled on his side.

Listen, okay? Kiki was the non-violent one. She didn’t even approve of MY methods. There’s no way she’s working with those assholes!

DID YOU NOT JUST RECENTLY CLAIM THAT MORE AND MORE DESPERATE PEOPLE WOULD FLOCK TO SMITH’S AND JONAH’S ARMIES AND BOLSTER THEM? THIS IS NOT A MERE ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS, MASAKO, IT IS THE END TIMES. THE CONDITIONS THAT CREATED BATTRA. IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE SUCH A CREATION WOULD OCCUR AGAIN?

Running along the occasionally-slanted slabs of caved-in roof, Masako jumped and swung with a baton, knocking down another sniper in riot gear before diverting left towards the edge that overlooked the dig site.

Not her, okay? She’d never go that—

Masako skidded to a halt at the edge, her thoughts reaching much the same end as she looked out past the covered portion of the walkway leading to the dig site’s edge. Two figures walked along the assembled metal tiles, both dressed in black tactical gear and one with unmistakable, long locks of sea-foam green hair – spilling down past the military-style assault rifle strapped to her back.

No…

Kiki and the man beside her, presumably Asher, stopped at the very edge, looking out over Deuterios, which… had started moving, the side of its body rising and falling in odd undulations as if the creature were struggling to breathe as it awoke from its slumber. Masako’s eyes dropped back to Kiki and Asher, and they were now holding up small, identical, metallic objects, as if in offering to the monster. From a distance, each looked like a thin, hollow, silver ring, with prongs extending inward to hold a smaller, oblong and blood-red object at the very center.

Masako sighed.

Great. Now there’s fucking synthetic ranger coins…

GIVEN CONTEXT, THAT IS ALSO BATTRA’S GUESS – AT LEAST, AS THEIR INTENDED FUNCTION. WHETHER THEY ARE LIKELY TO EFFECTIVELY SERVE THAT FUNCTION IS ANOTHER MATTER ENTIRELY.

The idea that Kiki was a recruit of either Sawyer or Jonah – and she didn’t dare let herself guess which – was now compounded with the fact she was holding a likely experimental piece of tech that could backfire on her in any number of horrible ways. Masako was off the rooftop before she could finish the thought.

One jump through lightning had her footsteps rattling loudly on the walkway’s partial roof, possibly still too far back for the pair to hear her. The second jump carried her onto the boom of a crane off to the right, the vehicle parked near to the edge and with the construction arm lowered so it was only several meters off the ground. Bracing for a footing, Masako drew back and threw her right baton spinning through the air, its path striking both Kiki’s and Asher’s outstretched hands.

The baton dropped and skidded to a spinning stop on the left side of the walkway’s ledge.

The synthetic coins, if that was what they were, fell a few dozen meters or more into the snow-dusted, uneven sinkhole crater below.

Masako leapt from the crane, landing with heavy feet on tile a few meters to Kiki’s right, and snapped out her remaining baton.

“If you wanted to go over to the dark side, there are better ways to—”

Masako’s voice died on her lips as she fell under Kiki’s intense, surprised, then intense-again glare.

The simple fact was, if Kiki’s tactical gear had been marked out in Hyena stamps like Asher’s was, a part of Masako could have understood that. Accepted it. Like she’d told Shannon once, there was a give and take to the idea of mourning the loss of innocence, while at the same time welcoming a kindred spirit, even a misguided one.

But Kiki wore no Hyena emblems. Instead, a Sawyer Smith button was pinned near her shoulder.

Across the crucial seconds, Asher had slung the rifle off his back and shouldered it in a left-handed grip, shooting off a series of rounds that made Masako duck and roll underneath the line of fire, past a surprised Kiki. Planting a foot, she batted the end of the rifle aside with her baton, then twisted above her stance to close her hand around the barrel of Kiki’s rifle, angling both weapons outward across the space of several more fired shots before pulling her arms inward to regain balance and kicking Asher hard in the chest. He flew back several meters and had the wind knocked out of him on landing, surprise written across his mostly generic, slightly scruffy features.

Turning past her shoulder, she deflected Kiki’s rifle upward again with her baton, using the slightly-wider, capped end to hook the weapon in opposition to Kiki’s efforts to move it.

“I know how you feel, you think I don’t?” She shouted, pleading. “But those assholes are only out for themselves! Neither one of them gives a damn about the Earth!”

“But nobody else is… doing anything!” Kiki finally wrestled her rifle way from Masako’s admittedly tenuous grip, but chose to simply step back, continuing to aim the barrel at Masako’s chest. “Nothing that has any chance of working! I was wrong, there wasn’t time! You were right!”

“People keep telling me that.” Masako moved her arms, one still holding a baton, in a faint what can you do? gesture. “Still doesn’t stop me wishing I wasn’t.”

Kiki let out a vile laugh, her brown eyes sinking to the ground and back again. “I’m not gonna ask why you aren’t with us.”

“Well, if you did, I’d tell you it’s because I happen to work for a… pretty big name in the environmental game myself. Someone who actually gives a shit, someone who actually wants to make it right. I’ll tell you everything if you’d just come with me.”

Kiki smiled, but something about it was wrong. Masako couldn’t take her eyes off the pin buttoned to her shoulder.

“Seriously,” she pressed, worry overtaking her. “Trust me. You don’t want to stay and find out what kind of man Sawyer Smith is.”

Kiki shook her head, an unattended tear falling from her eye. “I know exactly what kind of man Sawyer Smith is,” She said as she shivered, her eyes flinching closed. When she opened them, they were cold. “But I’m doing what I have to.”

Masako’s smile disappeared as the stock of a rifle came swinging for her face.

She didn’t dodge, didn’t phase, didn’t morph. The hard edge struck her in the temple, and her world turned sideways.

There were feet, several dozen pairs, walking toward her as she blinked her eyes open. As she tapped fingers to her wound, and pulled away blood. Asher, still clutching his stomach, retreated behind the tall, imposing figure of Alan Jonah – an aged face with white hair and beard, but dressed in contrasting black. Kiki, more shyly, moved to stand behind Sawyer Smith – middle-aged, ginger hair and moustache, wearing a green sweater with one of his own yellow and black buttons pinned at his shoulder, next to a red one with a heart. Performative.

“Masako,” Jonah’s cool, faux-affable voice clicked around. “No known family or title. Named, if I recall, for one of the key figures in Japan’s environmental movement in the nineteen-nineties. Real shame that didn’t work out. I’ve been hearing of you and your exploits often enough, frankly I’m surprised you’re not here acting on our side of this.”

“S’cause I don’t work for frauds,” Masako sneered, sliding a bit on the cold metal as she scrambled to her feet, baton still in her left hand. On her bloodied face, her smile was taunting, her eyes defiant. “I don’t know what the world took from you, Jonah, but wiping out the entire human race isn’t gonna bring it back, and it ain’t gonna do shit for the planet either.”

Sorry about that.

BATTRA KNOWS IT IS NOT I THAT YOU INTENDED TO OFFEND.

Yeah. Just me.

ONLY WHO YOU USED TO BE.

Jonah had let his mask slip for only a moment, but it was enough for Masako to know she’d somehow gotten under his skin. He crunched at a fist held tight in his tensing palm, but he quickly repurposed the gesture into a casual clasping of his hands, alternating it with a spreading of his arms, an ostensible show of welcome or surrender. “I’m sorry to hear you have such a low opinion of our work. Many of us once admired you, after all. But oh…” He pretended to just now remember something. “…oh, I think the time’s well past to be so critical, don’t you think? We’re here because humanity had its chance and blew it. The Earth demands a change, a do-over. We are simply the ones who will provide it… and you’re the one standing in our way.”

“Yes, the Earth demands…” Sawyer Smith echoed, “It demands fire! Fire and blood!”

“Fire and blood!” parroted a number of supporters in his half of the crowd – Jonah’s face noticeably twitched in irritation, especially when a few Hyenas parroted the chant as well.

It was funny, in a terrible way. Their fervor, their mad madness and mob loyalty, nearly resembled that of the Seatopians – yet another thing that made Masako a hypocrite, if she cared so much about saving these people now. On paper, deprogramming an army that looked up to the likes of Sawyer Smith shouldn’t have even been worth trying.

THEY ARE NOT SAWYER SMITH’S ARMY, AND THEY ARE NOT ALAN JONAH’S. THEY ARE YOURS, MASAKO. CLAIM THEM.

Come on, do you really think that will work?

There were a million ways she could screw it up; it was why she hadn’t tried. Jonah and Smith were masters at manipulation – lanterns burning bright in the darkness of the end times. Masako had raw power, she had a symbol, but Naoko had all those things too, and in a situation like this, Masako had watched her fail.

A nudge from Battra’s thoughts directed her eyes a little farther back in Jonah’s crowd, where a few familiar faces and/or masks were hobbling in, supported on each other’s shoulders. The five Hyenas she’d fought in the building, straining to get a better view past those in front of them.

THEY KNOW YOU. THEY ARE LOOKING FOR AN ALTERNATIVE. SHOW THEM YOU CAN GIVE THEM ONE.

…guess it’s worth a shot.

Jonah and Smith were looking impatient anyway. Masako faked an even wider grin, and glared at both their eyes. “Alright, you wanna finish this?”

She made a point to reach too-quickly toward the collar of her jacket as her hand slipped beneath her shirt. Sure enough, a minute gesture from Jonah caused Asher to immediately shoulder his rifle southpaw, a passing moment of regret in his eyes before he dutifully pulled the trigger.

Masako spent a fraction of a second in her bright red phase state, some crimson volts of electricity running over her skin and clothes as she re-materialized, the bullet continuing its path far behind her. With an arched brow, she guided her hand more slowly to the chain hanging around her neck, the shock throughout the crowd allowing her the movement.

“Considering the fake ones you had earlier, I’m guessing you probably understand what this is, maybe more so than most.”

At the sight of the power coin Masako held in her hand, several sets of eyes displayed even more wariness – Jonah’s included, even though he tried to hide it.

“Pretty big name,” Masako said without a smile, her eyes finding Kiki’s and offering only apology. She turned back to Jonah and Smith with a sneer. “I didn’t join you, because I’m already working for someone else. Someone who knows a lot more about what the Earth demands than either of you do. He’s listening right now, actually. He hates you, if you were wondering.”

Battra supplied an encouraging mental growl, and Masako had to keep herself from grinning.

She flickered a few times to lightning and back as she put away her coin, retrieved her spare baton from where it had landed, and pointedly telescoped both closed between her palms as the noise that marked a demand for silence.

“So.” Masako casually pocketed the collapsed batons and cast her gaze over the crowd, moving from one end to the other. “If you’re all really okay with feeding these two losers’ egos, with being nice little puppets and selling yourselves out to their every whim because they have you convinced they’re the planet’s only hope for salvation, then by all means, put up a fight you know you can’t win. But if you’re tired of their bullshit, and if you’re ready to put your faith in someone who’s first priority isn’t petty vengeance or squeezing adoring fans for all they’re worth… if you’re ready to follow someone who actually fucking cares about saving the world…”

With dramatic flair, Masako spread her arms, nanometal forming into her spiked gauntlets and clawed gloves. Red lightning cackled between her fingertips as dark, gunmetal green armor formed over the rest of her body, her head leant back as if in a sigh while her three-horned helmet built itself from the edges inward. She flipped her head forward as the red lenses closed over her eyes, and held the pose as Battra’s wings spread out from her back, more lightning traveling along the patterns of red and gold.

“…then all hail Battra.”

Sawyer Smith dropped to a knee immediately, his head bowed. “Yes, yes, Battra is the way! All hail Battra! All hail Battra!”

The rest of the crowd, especially Smith’s, looked warily at each other, unsure of what to do.

Okay, I was not counting on THAT. At least happening so fast. Smith has even less spine than Antonio…

Alan Jonah, calculating eyes flitting between Smith and Masako, spent a humorous amount of time deciding whether the best move in his situation was to kneel as well. When Masako looked right at him, just to see what would happen, he actually fucking did, which was almost funnier than Smith’s instantaneous sycophancy.

There was one actual laugh – from Jonah’s crowd. A bald woman with snakebite piercings on her lower lip, a butterfly knife twirling idly in her hand. There was a wildness to her eyes, a complete and total lack of fear, and she seemed to very much like what Masako was selling.

The next sound was the click of an adjusting rifle.

“All hail Battra,” Kiki voiced firmly, but shakily, clearly as a means of urging herself on and yet, one that still wasn’t entirely working. Even Masako held still, with her hands up, the whole world frozen around Kiki’s rifle held level with the back of Sawyer Smith’s head.

“You don’t have to do that,” Masako spoke plainly – to the temporary, hopeful relief of one wide-eyed Sawyer Smith. “I’ll do it.”

Alan Jonah’s expression was unreadable, but his eyes were locked on the exchange, some silent contemplation taking place while Kiki fought a war with her better angels for control of the trigger.

Finally, Kiki let out a breath, and dropped her arms, the weapon falling slack in her grip.

And far behind Masako, Deuterios let out a sound like a snarl, composed of an otherworldly chittering that proceeded mechanically, like a cricket.

“Whether under our control, or otherwise,” a still-kneeling Jonah mused quietly, his voice toeing the edge between faithful and condescending, “let this be our first gift in your service…”

Slowly, Masako turned to look over her shoulder, noticing that the fish-rat kaiju was still lying on its side. The next thing she noticed was the creature’s exposed flank splitting open as a long, black, segmented hook-arm burst its way out, reaching skyward before dropping down to the snow. The final two short segments of the fingerlike hook remained curled inward as the limb made impact, its position of contact with the ground resembling a knuckle-walking stance.

“…the return of humanity to the stone age.”

Another leg squeezed up to the side of the first, the shifting limbs prying Deuterios’s aged flesh even further apart. The two bulky appendages stamped their knuckle-claws on the ground, sending shockwaves through the earth, until another pair of slightly more slender limbs were able to free themselves and rise up in the space between. They hit the ground alongside the other pair, and all four braced hard, Deuterios’s body rocking wildly back and forth until the whole of the parasitic creature within was ready to emerge.

All of its skin was smooth and black, its movements fluid and calculated. The two bulkier limbs were attached near the side points of a central, flat-topped, downward-sloping diamond shape, the rear point supporting an almost finlike structure down the creature’s back and the forward point forming the upper jaw of a mouth that looked at first like a hooked beak – before the lower jaw demonstrated it could split open to form a more boxy shape, with sharp fangs at the corners and many more needlelike teeth nested within. As the creature let out a strange cacophony that mixed whale cries with more chirping, the red, glowing, narrow slit-eyes just under the edge of the diamond point head crest flickered in a way parts of biological organisms tended not to do. The second pair of limbs were attached behind the first, but were hinged forward on joints so that their long third segments struck the ground in much the same range the other pair did, four giraffe-like limbs moving forward at a lumberingly slow gallop. Under the head was another, much smaller pair of similarly-hooked limbs that must only have been used for grasping, and behind all six, there was a somewhat humanoid lower torso and pair of hindlimbs – though the comparison was only relative to the more-or-less insectoid appearance of the rest of the creature.

…any clue?

BATTRA HAS NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT.

Whatever it was… it was heading straight towards them.

Masako scanned the clouds – hearing, not seeing, the distant lightning strike that materialized the imago Battra zord high in the air. As the various adherents of Smith and Jonah scattered in the chaos, Masako watched its silhouette take shape, then burst from the clouds into the open air – green, red, and gold on gleaming metallic wings.

Before she was a lighting bolt, heading for her zord’s cockpit, she made one last observation.

Alan Jonah, apparently, was at least the type of man who would silently draw a sidearm from his hip and shoot Sawyer Smith between the eyes.

At the Battra zord’s controls, Masako took aim at the creature from on high, red eyes charging with purple energy and lancing a pair of prism beams at the most obvious of multiple shoulders on the kaiju’s left side. It screamed, turning its head and flexing the diamond head crest in a way a hard exoskeleton certainly wouldn’t manage. To Masako’s relief, it had paused with a leg in the air, about to bring it down on the partly-covered walkway still crowded with stragglers, but by its inaction from that point on, it didn’t seem to possess any ranged weaponry with which to attack the zord.

Masako completed her strafing run, passing over the creature’s head.

Her targeting computer glitched, parts of her viewscreen dissolving into static.

…What?

POWER FAILURES. ELECTRONIC INTERFERENCE.

She banked, luckily still having control of flight, and only once she was significantly past the creature did her screen return to normal.

Battra, what just happened?

IT DOES NOT APPEAR THAT THE CREATURE CAN COMPLETELY NEUTRALIZE RANGER TECHNOLOGY, BUT ITS PRESENCE APPEARS TO HAVE A DETRIMENTAL EFFECT ON ANYTHING ELECTRONIC, EXTENDING TO SOME OF THE ZORD’S SYSTEMS. WHILE WE WERE WITHIN ITS RANGE, ALL ENERGY WEAPONS WERE RENDERED INERT, IN ADDITION TO THE INTERFERENCE AFFECTING THE HEADS-UP DISPLAY. THE CREATURE MAY ALSO BE THE CAUSE FOR THE INTERMITTENT POWER FAILURES EXPERIENCED AT THE MONITORING COMPLEX.

“Jonah was right,” Masako muttered, near a whisper. “Back to sticks, back to stones…”

As if emboldened by the revelation, the creature turned away from the complex, and began a slow march in the direction of the Battra zord’s hovering position.

BATTRA SUGGESTS WE STAY OUT OF RANGE.

Right. Easy enough…

Masako tilted the zord backward and powered away, the upturned wings surging with red lightning that struck out in many bolts to pelt the creature’s head and forelimbs. Staggered momentarily by the assault, the creature ducked its head low and brought up its largest limbs as a sort of shield, but its vocalizations only increased in volume and complexity.

Another set of vocalizations answered.

Only then, Masako registered that Deuterios’s corpse was still moving, just not as violently as it had been before the first creature burst free. In moments, a second, smaller creature forced its way out of the tear in flesh, appearing at an initial glance to be an around half-scaled copy of the other.

But this one was different – the attachment points for its limbs weren’t nearly as wide and bulky, in fact it was overall a more thin and spindly creature with lankier proportions. It only used one pair of its forward limbs to walk on, making it a quadruped – the smaller grasping limbs still didn’t touch the ground, and the upper-shoulder forelimbs… simply hung backward and out to the sides, attached to large sheaths of leathery…

…Oh crap, it has wings.

The creature took to the air, gliding over the valley on a course to intercept Masako and the other parasite. Its wings were narrow and wedge-shaped, almost like those of a pterodactyl, and its limbs trailed behind it as it soared, flowing with the undulations of its body. Squid, stingray, and stealth bomber all at once, the monster made one dramatic flap and then lashed its forelegs forward, chirp-screeching with another hook-incisored, split-jawed mouth.

Masako veered upward as the creature closed in, noting that her screen didn’t flicker in its presence like it had for the larger, ground-based parasite. Her confusion was answered when she spotted the air parasite twirling up in the sky beside her, having rounded and followed her escape vector.

There was a red-orange glow on its forelimbs, flashing from bright to dull, on the back-facing sides of the long third segments just before the smaller finger joints. Midair, the creature bashed them together, and Masako’s entire screen went dark.

She was tumbling, falling, only regaining visibility when she was meters away from impact with the ground. The Battra zord’s legs kicked up a spray of snow as she pulled up just in time, making haste now to gain distance from both creatures.

The two kaiju clicked and droned, calling out to each other. Suddenly, the flying one took off southward, gliding over the mountain range that bordered the valley and toward the distant silhouettes of city towers in the distance.

What? Where’s it going?

The ground parasite remained in place, casting a short glance toward the complex and then staring at the hovering Battra zord as if taunting Masako to choose. Perhaps it was just curious to see what its enemy would do – whether, or in what shape, their plan was going to pay off.

In a moment, however, it seemed more concerned with stabilizing its stance, its head angling low to cautiously regard the valley floor. Masako heard the rumbling, then, watching snow roll off a few mountain peaks in minor avalanches. A metallic cry echoed and reverberated throughout the valley and beyond – a cry the parasite tried to mimic with its own vocalizations, but in the end, it lurched backward and lowered to the ground, attempting to hide behind its forelegs.

Just a few hundred meters away from the checkpoint building the bus had passed on the way in, the ground exploded, a robotic alligator head chomping up toward the sky. Then the massive shape of the what could only be the Biollante zord rolled up over the edge of the tunnel on heavy treads.

It was medium green, with a wide, square base and four thick tread pontoons that had vaguely right-triangle-shaped profiles – the slanted sides facing forward on the front treads, backward on the back treads. Other than generally rising up to more or less the highest height reached by the tread housings, the main body had a steep back angle and around a forty-five-degree slope on the front angle, leading up to a hinging neck section a little backward from the middle that connected to the gatorlike head. Four thick, segmented tentacles wavered in the air around the machine, each attached to the lower point of the sloped upper housing on each tread pontoon, their ends snapping at the air with large, heavy-duty machine clamps that each looked large enough to carry one of the smaller, limb-style zords such as Baragon or Varan.

A request popped up on Masako’s screen, and she opened the zord-to-zord communication channel.

Erika was sitting inside a brightly-lit, green-walled zord interior, still out of armor – and she wasn’t alone. The entire rest of the Kaiju Investigation Team was with her, the space inside the canopy being truly more reminiscent, size-wise, of the megazord control center Masako had only recently experienced. There didn’t seem to be any individual standing pads on the floor, but there was a diamond-shaped logo on the back wall, with the pattern of a rose.

“You go after the flying one,” Erika called over the video feed, grinning wildly, “I’ll take the big one!”

“Oh, heck yeah!” Masako cheered, then sobered. “But watch out, they interfere with—”