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Silence.
A profound, unnatural silence fell over the ravaged forest, broken only by the crackle of distant fires and the sharp, terrified gasps of the soldiers on the ground. The world had been turned on its head twice in as many minutes. First, the traitor was revealed. Then, the hero is reborn.
Two colossal figures stood amidst the splintered remains of giant trees, their very presence warping the reality around them. One was a monster of nightmare, a sixty-meter-tall beast of armored plates and jagged horns, its brutish eyes glowing with mindless hunger. The other... the other was their friend, their comrade, their hero, now transformed into something terrifying and new.
Gone was the sleek, heroic form they knew. In its place stood a sixty-meter titan of war. His body was a canvas of crimson red and stark white, a declaration of raw power. Jagged, demonic-looking armor of black and gold encased his shoulders and left arm, and his eyes burned with a furious, brilliant cyan light. This was not the Titan of Light. This was a titan of pure, unadulterated strength. This was Ultraman Power Type.
On the ground, the minds of the elite Scout Regiment struggled to comprehend the impossible scale of what they were witnessing.
Levi, humanity's strongest soldier, felt a cold knot of dread in his stomach. All his skill, all his speed, all his years of fighting and killing... they were meaningless here. He was an ant watching two mountains go to war. His blades were toothpicks. His strategies, dust in the wind. "What the hell are we supposed to do with... that?" he muttered to himself, his voice a low, gravelly whisper.
Commander Erwin's face was a mask of stone, but behind his eyes, a storm of calculations raged. He was a man who planned for every contingency, who saw the world as a complex chessboard. But this... this was not a piece he had ever anticipated. A Kaiju. An Ultraman who could change types and grow to match it. The rules of their world, of their entire war, had just been rewritten in fire and blood.
Mikasa stared, her heart a wild drum against her ribs. That was Akira. It had to be. But the sheer, overwhelming power radiating from him, the furious cyan light in his eyes... it frightened her. This wasn't the controlled, almost gentle protector she knew. This was something primal. Something dangerous. She felt a tremor of fear not just for him, but of him.
Jean and Connie, huddled together behind a fallen tree, could only stare, their mouths agape, their minds completely shattered. The boastful arguments of the mess hall felt like a lifetime ago. They weren't soldiers in a war; they were spectators at the end of the world.
And hidden deep within the shadows of the forest, two warriors felt a terror that eclipsed all others.
"Reiner... what... what is that?" Bertholdt whispered, his voice trembling. "His energy... it's even greater than the monster's."
Reiner didn't answer. He couldn't. He just watched as their mission, their entire plan, crumbled into dust. Annie was exposed. And now this. A second being of immense power had entered the field. Their war was lost before it had even truly begun.
The silence was broken by a roar.
---
The Kaiju, a creature of pure, mindless instinct, saw only one true threat. It lowered its horned head and charged, its massive footsteps shaking the very foundations of the earth, each step leaving a crater the size of a house.
Akira met the charge head-on. There was no finesse. There was no strategy. This was a battle of pure, irresistible force against an immovable object.
He roared back, a sound that was half-human, half-monster, and met the charging Kaiju with a straight right punch.
BOOM!
The sound was not a punch. It was an explosion. A shockwave of unimaginable force erupted from the point of impact, a visible ring of distorted air that flattened every remaining tree for a mile in every direction. The ground cracked and split beneath them. The soldiers on the ground were thrown from their feet, tumbling through the air like dolls.
The Kaiju, a sixty-meter-tall mountain of armored bone, was brought to a dead stop, its head snapping back from the force of the blow.
But Akira wasn't done. He followed through with a brutal left hook from his armored arm, a blow landing with the force of a meteor strike on the Kaiju's jaw. Bone splintered. The monster staggered back, roaring in pain and surprise. It swung a massive, club-like arm, an attack that could level a city block. Akira didn't dodge. He caught it. His crimson form strained for a moment before, with a guttural yell, he twisted his body and flipped the entire monster over his shoulder, slamming it into the ground with a ground-shattering impact that sent fissures racing across the landscape.
This was the new fighting style of his Power Type. No more speed. No more elegant chops. This was a brawl. Raw, brutal, and overwhelming.
Caught between the two warring giants, the fifteen-meter Female Titan seemed almost small, a forgotten player in a game that had suddenly escalated beyond her comprehension. Annie, inside her Titan's nape, watched with wide, terrified eyes. The Kaiju was a nightmare, but this new, terrifying version of Akira... he was something else. She had to make a choice.
Her warrior instincts took over. The Kaiju was the immediate, mindless threat. She burst into action, a blur of blonde hair and hardened skin. She didn't attack the monster's head. She was smarter than that. She dashed towards its massive legs, her crystal-hardened fists and feet becoming living weapons. She slammed into its ankle, trying to break its stance, to create an opening for the crimson giant.
It was a pragmatic choice. The Kaiju was a threat to her, too.
But as she fought, her desperation and her conflict bled through. As she dodged a clumsy stomp from the Kaiju, she used the momentum to launch a spinning kick, not at the monster, but at Akira's back. It was a cheap shot, a desperate attempt to weaken him, to remind him that she was still a factor, still his enemy.
---
The kick landed with the force of a cannonball. Akira grunted, his massive form stumbling forward a step. The blow was a sharp sting of betrayal, but as he felt it, he also felt the Ki behind it. It wasn't filled with malice. It was filled with fear. With desperation.
He was in his Power Type, a state fueled by a burning, protective rage. But underneath that fire, his mind was surprisingly clear. He could feel everything. The terror of his friends on the ground. The mindless hunger of the Kaiju. And the raging, chaotic storm of conflict within Annie.
He understood.
In that single, clarifying moment, his secret mission, the one he had barely dared to admit to himself, became his absolute truth. He couldn't just kill his enemies. That was the old way, the way of this cruel world. He had to be better. He had to find a way to save them from the curse that had twisted them into monsters. He had to save her.
But first, he had to take out the trash.
He turned his full, furious attention back to the Kaiju. He ducked under a wild swing from its club-like arm, drove his armored shoulder into its midsection, and with a mighty heave, ripped one of the massive bone plates from its chest. The monster shrieked as green blood poured from the wound. Akira didn't hesitate. He used the jagged, fifty-foot plate as a makeshift axe, swinging it in a brutal arc and burying it deep in the Kaiju's shoulder.
The monster roared and thrashed, but Akira was relentless. He drove a knee into its gut, grabbed its massive horns, and with a primal roar that shook the heavens, he began to lift.
The ground beneath his feet shattered under the strain. The muscles in his crimson body bulged with impossible power. The Kaiju, a beast that weighed tens of thousands of tons, was lifted off its feet.
The sight was so unbelievable it defied all logic. The soldiers on the ground could only stare, their minds unable to process the feat of impossible strength they were witnessing.
Akira spun, once, twice, building momentum like a discus thrower from an ancient myth. And then, he let go. The Kaiju was hurled into the sky, tumbling end over end, a helpless mountain against the vast, open canvas of the sky.
As it fell, Akira brought his armored fists together in front of his chest. A swirling, chaotic sphere of crimson and black energy began to form, pulling in the very light around it. The air crackled with raw, untamed power. He pulled his hands back, the sphere growing to an immense size, and then thrust them forward.
"GIGA... BREAKER!!!"
A colossal beam of pure, destructive energy, wider than a castle wall, erupted from his hands. It shot across the sky and engulfed the falling Kaiju. There was no explosion. No sound. The monster was simply... erased. The beam consumed it, and when the light faded, there was nothing left. Not a trace of dust. Not a fading echo. Only the stunned, deafening silence of a world that had just witnessed a power beyond comprehension.
---
Silence fell over the battlefield. The only sounds were the crackling of fires and the sharp, ragged gasps of the soldiers. Akira, his crimson armor steaming with residual power, slowly lowered his arms. His massive form stood silhouetted against the sky, a terrifying monument to absolute victory.
Then, he turned.
His glowing cyan eyes, filled with an unreadable emotion, settled on the much smaller, damaged Female Titan.
On the ground, Levi found his voice first. The shock was gone, replaced by the cold, hard focus of a commander. The god-like monster was gone. The traitor remained.
"NOW!" he roared, his voice cutting through the stunned silence. "ALL SQUADS! ATTACK! CAPTURE THE FEMALE TITAN! SHE IS EXPOSED AND DAMAGED! USE EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT! DO NOT LET HER ESCAPE!"
With a unified, vengeful cry, the Scouts roared back to life. Their fear was burned away by a surge of adrenaline and a thirst for justice. They fired their ODM gear, a swarm of angry hornets launching into the air, blades drawn, ready to bring down the monster who had betrayed them.
But before a single one of them could reach her, Akira did something that shattered their reality for the second time that day.
He took a single, massive step. The ground cracked and split under his foot. And he stood directly between the charging Scout Regiment and the Female Titan.
He raised a massive, armored hand, not in a threat, but as an undeniable, absolute shield. A clear, silent command that needed no words:
"Stop."
The chapter ends there. Mikasa, Levi, and everyone else skidded to a halt in mid-air, their faces twisted into a mask of confusion, disbelief, and dawning horror. Annie, in her battered Titan form, looked up at the crimson giant who was now protecting her from his own friends. The ultimate conflict was set: Akira versus the entire Scout Regiment, all to save the girl who had broken his heart.
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•To Be Continue•
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