Kafka's theatrical entrance had achieved its intended effect: he now had the undivided, furious attention of a walking mountain.
The Daitetsu, its face cracked and leaking magma, let out a low, tectonic growl of pure indignation. The gnats at its feet were forgotten. The noisy fireworks from the humans were irrelevant. This winged, arrogant insect was the source of its renewed pain, and it needed to be crushed.
It brought its colossal, stone fist down, a monolithic hammer seeking to swat a fly.
But Kafka was no longer a brawler who would try to meet force with force. He was a student of Igris, a survivor of Beru. He was a whisper, a phantom.
His new wings, which had been for show, were now for speed. With a single powerful downbeat, he launched himself sideways, a blur of black and green, easily evading the descending fist. The ground where he'd been standing shattered, a crater a hundred meters wide erupting in a shower of earth and rock.
"Analysis!" Hoshina's voice, sharp and urgent, cut through the comms. "Its movements are slow but overwhelmingly powerful! It can't track fast-moving, close-range targets! Hibino! You're the matador! Keep its attention! ATU, we are the picadors! Find those cracks!"
Kafka understood. This wasn't a fight; it was a dance. He was the dazzling, distracting cape, and his team were the blades that would bleed the great beast.
He shot through the air, his wings carrying him in erratic, impossible-to-track patterns. He flew under the Daitetsu's legs, zipped past its head, forcing the giant to lumber and turn, its movements shaking the very earth but always a fraction of a second too late.
Every time the Daitetsu swung and missed, it exposed a part of itself. And every time, the ATU was there to strike.
Kikoru, a golden comet of fury, used the opening from a missed stomp to get close. Her axe, now at full power, didn't strike the hard, obsidian hide. She aimed for the magma-filled crack on its face that Kafka had just created. She swung, not to cleave, but to jam the axe-head into the wound, and then discharged a full-power kinetic blast.
BOOM! The explosion widened the crack, sending a shower of molten rock spraying out. The Daitetsu roared in pain, one of its magma-eyes flickering.
On its other side, Haruta and Kenji, the sniper team, had abandoned their ineffective long-range positions. They were on the ground now, moving with the main team, their massive rifles firing not AP rounds, but specialized, cryo-ordnance. They aimed for the Golem's joints—its ankles, its knees—where the stone plating had to be thinner to allow for movement.
The cryo-rounds exploded, not with force, but with an intense, endothermic reaction. They wouldn't shatter the rock, but the extreme cold was causing thermal shock, creating microscopic fractures, weakening the structural integrity with every successful hit.
And through it all, Hoshina was a silver ghost, running on the monster itself. He used the chaos, the creature's flailing limbs, as a new kind of terrain. He scaled its leg, his blades finding purchase in the cryo-induced fractures, and with a burst of inhuman speed, he raced up its torso towards its back, looking for a weakness, a power conduit, anything.
They were a symphony of specialists, working in perfect, deadly harmony, all orchestrated around the central, distracting dance of their pet monster.
From the command center, Mina watched, her heart a frantic drum. "He's… he's leading them," she breathed, watching the tactical display. Kafka wasn't just a distraction; he was dictating the flow of the entire battle, creating openings that his far more fragile, human comrades could exploit. The synergy was breathtaking.
But the Daitetsu was a primeval god. And it was learning.
It realized its physical strikes were too slow. So it stopped swinging. It planted its feet, stood its ground, and the glowing, magma-filled glyphs on its body began to pulse with a furious, incandescent light.
"What is it doing?!" Kikoru yelled, retreating to a safe distance.
"It's changing tactics!" Hoshina shouted from his perch on the Golem's shoulder. "It's building up energy for a wide-area attack!"
The air around the Daitetsu began to superheat. Rocks and dirt at its feet melted into glass. It was turning itself into a living sun.
[The Golem is preparing to vent its core energy. An omnidirectional thermal pulse. Your fragile comrades will be incinerated. Your armor can withstand the heat, but they cannot,] the Monarch's voice was a calm, grim assessment in Kafka's mind. [You cannot allow it to complete the charge.]
He had to get its attention back. He had to interrupt the process.
He stopped flying, hovering in the air a few hundred meters in front of the Golem's glowing face. All the evasive maneuvers, all the distraction, was over.
He let Blackwing flow, his body becoming a conduit for all the raw, untamed power of Kaiju No. 8. He opened the floodgates, letting the rage he'd learned to control in the Cauldron surge through him, but this time he held the reins, aiming it. His two main arms, and the second pair that erupted from his back, all began to glow with a furious, almost white-hot, emerald-green light. He was charging his own ultimate attack, mirroring his colossal opponent.
"Hibino, what are you doing?!" Hoshina screamed. "You can't go head-to-head with that thing! Get out of there!"
Kafka ignored him. This was the only way. A king must face a king.
The Daitetsu, seeing his direct challenge, seemed to focus its own energy build-up, its magma-eyes narrowing, accepting the duel. The area-of-effect pulse was forgotten, its entire being now focused on annihilating this arrogant insect in a single, overwhelming blast.
The world seemed to go silent. The two titans, one of magma and stone, the other of monstrous flesh and shadow, faced each other, charging their devastating attacks.
And in the silence, a new player entered the field.
A single, silver streak, moving faster than anything Kafka had ever seen, shot between them. It was a person. A woman, clad in a breathtakingly advanced, silver-and-white combat suit that looked more like something from a sci-fi epic than military hardware. A helmet with a wrap-around visor concealed her face, but there was no mistaking the raw, overwhelming power radiating from her.
She carried no visible weapons.
"Both of you," a calm, feminine, and utterly commanding voice said, amplified by her suit's external speakers. "Stand down."
She raised a single hand towards the Daitetsu. The air in front of her palm seemed to ripple, to compress, to fold.
And the Daitetsu's titanic, world-ending energy blast, which it had just unleashed in a beam of pure, molten fury, simply… vanished. It was sucked into the tiny, shimmering distortion in front of the woman's hand, disappearing from reality without a sound or a trace.
She had not blocked it. She had absorbed it.
She then turned her other hand toward Kafka, who was just about to unleash his own full-power punch. She made a simple, dismissive flicking gesture.
The world shattered.
Kafka was hit, not by an energy beam, but by a wave of pure, kinetic force, as if the air itself had solidified and struck him. His charged-up energy was dispersed, his concentration broken. He was sent tumbling through the air like a discarded doll, his Blackwing armor screaming with a thousand damage alerts. The blow was so powerful, so perfectly applied, that it didn't just knock him back; it stunned his very nervous system, causing his Kaiju form to flicker and recede against his will.
The mysterious woman floated in the air between the two stunned combatants, a being of absolute, effortless superiority.
From his position on the Golem's shoulder, Hoshina could only stare, his tactical mind completely broken. "Who… what…?"
In the command center, Mina's jaw was on the floor. "Run a profile on that suit!" she roared. "Now!"
An operator, his fingers flying, his face pale, answered a moment later. "Commander… I have it. But… it can't be right. It's a prototype. Sealed. It's not even supposed to be… activated."
He brought the file up on the main screen.
Designation: Numbers Weapon 10.
Codename: AETHEREA.
Pilot: Commander of the First Division… Captain Mina Ashiro's Superior Officer... a legend of the Defense Force and childhood hero to Mina Ashiro herself...
Kafka, shaking his head to clear it as he tried to reform his armor, heard the name crackle over the ATU comms as Hoshina got the update.
And he recognized her. Not her face, but the absolute, crushing pressure of her power. It was the presence of a true titan, a worthy rival to a Monarch. He finally knew the identity of the mysterious stranger he met in his past, in a very familiar forest, with a certain Kaiju corpse...