The ATU long-range transport cut through the night sky, a sleek, black arrowhead racing towards a storm. Inside, the mood was a somber cocktail of grim determination and barely concealed dread. Hoshina, Kikoru, and the three other ATU veterans sat in silence, watching the tactical display. A single, colossal red icon, labeled DAITETSU, was crawling slowly but inexorably across the map of the Japanese mainland. It had already left the Hakone mountains, its path a trail of seismic tremors and flattened forests.
"First and Second Divisions are forming a defensive line at the Ashigara plains," Hoshina announced, breaking the silence. "Tanks, artillery, Maser cannons. The works. They're planning to throw a wall of steel at a walking mountain."
"It won't work," Kenji, the heavy weapons specialist, grunted. "You saw the intel. Its hide is composed of a diamond-lattice carbon fused with tungsten and Kaiju-biological matter. We could hit it with a meteor and it would probably just scratch the paint."
"The point isn't to destroy it," Hoshina countered, his eyes glinting. "The point is to annoy it. To wound it. To find a chink in its ancient armor. And that… is our job." He looked around at his team. "We are the scalpel. They are the hammer. We go in first, pinpoint a weakness, and radio the coordinates back to the big guns. We are not to engage in prolonged combat. Am I clear?"
"Sir," they replied in unison.
Kikoru remained silent, her gaze fixed on the empty seat at the back of the transport. The seat that should have been Kafka's. Her gamble, their gamble, felt heavier and more reckless with every kilometer that passed. Had he understood her message? Did he have the courage, or the foolishness, to follow?
A new alert suddenly blared on the pilot's console. "Vice-Commander! We have an unauthorized craft approaching from our six! It's a Defense Force transport, but it's not responding to hails! It's… it's one of ours!"
Hoshina allowed a small, almost imperceptible smile to touch his lips. "Is it now? How peculiar." He turned to Kikoru, who was trying, and failing, to hide her own relieved grin. "Patch me through to Commander Ashiro," Hoshina commanded.
Mina Ashiro's furious face appeared on the main screen. "Hoshina! What is going on?! I have a stolen transport flying directly into a national disaster zone! Report!"
"Apologies, Commander," Hoshina said, his voice a perfect picture of calm professionalism. "It appears Special Operative Hibino has… taken it upon himself to break quarantine and join the operation. A shocking and deeply insubordinate act, of course."
"Arrest him!" Mina roared. "Force him down!"
"Negative, Commander," Hoshina replied smoothly. "We are thirty seconds from the engagement zone. And, regrettably, our rogue asset is flying a faster, more experimental craft than ours. By the time we could intercept, he would already be… engaged. My tactical recommendation is to… observe the outcome."
Mina's eyes blazed with a fury that could have melted steel, but she was trapped. Her weapon had taken itself off the rack and was now in play. To try and stop him now would be to create even more chaos. She grit her teeth, her knuckles white. "Fine," she bit out. "But you are on the hook for this, Hoshina. Every last bit of it." The screen went blank.
Hoshina turned to the rest of the shocked ATU team. "Well, it seems we have some unexpected, and highly insubordinate, support. Let's not let the boy have all the fun, shall we? Prepare for insertion."
Kafka flew the experimental stealth transport with a manic, desperate focus. Blackwing, his sentient power, seemed to interface with the advanced controls, allowing him to push the craft past its known limits. The lessons of the Monarch were not just about combat; they were about efficiency, focus, and a perfect synergy of will and tool.
He could see it now. The battlefield. The Ashigara plains, lit up by the incandescent glare of military floodlights, a line of tanks and cannons stretching for miles. And moving towards them, a silhouette of darkness against the artificial daylight, was the Daitetsu. It was a walking eclipse.
He didn't fly towards the defensive line. He flew towards the monster.
He arrived just as the first barrage was fired. A hundred tank shells, a dozen maser beams, and a volley of missiles all converged on the stony Kaiju in a brilliant, deafening display of human firepower.
The explosions washed over the Daitetsu's body like harmless fireflies. It didn't even slow down. It just raised a colossal arm to shield its face, more out of annoyance than pain, and kept walking.
"Firepower ineffective, as predicted," Kafka heard Hoshina's voice say in his comms. He was now on the official ATU channel. "Alright, kids. Our turn. Find me a crack."
He saw the ATU transport drop its operatives, five tiny figures rappelling down into the chaos at the Daitetsu's feet, immediately swallowed by the shadows and swirling dust. They were gnats, preparing to sting a giant.
This was his moment. He couldn't just join them. He had to make an entrance. He had to re-establish his value in a way no one could deny.
He flew his transport high, directly over the Daitetsu's head.
And then he jumped.
He didn't use a rope. He just leaped from the transport, a thousand meters in the air. As he fell, Blackwing erupted, forming not just his armor, but two massive, dark-green, bat-like wings that caught the air, steering his descent. It was a form he had only practiced in the Monarch's dreamscape, a new evolution of his power.
He was a falling demon, a Kaiju paratrooper, descending from the heavens.
Down below, the Daitetsu, having ignored the artillery, finally seemed to notice a new, more potent threat. It looked up, its magma-eyes locking onto the descending, winged figure. It remembered this creature. The irritating insect from its tomb.
Kafka didn't steer away. He folded his wings and fell faster, turning his body into a living projectile. His right arm formed the heavy, piledriver fist he had used in the server room, now glowing with an even greater intensity.
He wasn't aiming for a weak point. He wasn't aiming to kill.
He was aiming to make a statement.
He slammed directly into the Daitetsu's face.
*KRAK-A-BOOM!*
The sound was a sonic boom that echoed across the entire plains. The impact, on the most sensitive part of the Golem's head, did what an entire army's barrage could not.
The Daitetsu, for the first time, stumbled. It took a single, staggering step back, its colossal head knocked to the side. A huge, spiderweb crack appeared on its obsidian face, from its jaw to its temple, leaking a slow trickle of bright orange magma.
Kafka used the force of the blow to launch himself backward, his wings catching the air again, allowing him to land with a ground-shaking three-point landing a hundred meters away, directly between the monster and the stunned Defense Force line.
He stood up to his full, monstrous height, his new wings flared out for dramatic effect, and let out a defiant roar that challenged the very heavens.
He had arrived. The uninvited, uncontrollable weapon. The monster who had come to fight a god.
In the Third Division command center, every operator and officer, including Mina Ashiro, stared at their screens, their faces a mixture of pure, undiluted shock and a tiny, terrified flicker of hope.
On the ground, Hoshina, dodging a swipe from the now-enraged Golem, just laughed. A wild, joyful, insane laugh.
"Well," he cackled into his comms, a manic glee in his voice. "I guess he's off grounding."