The town lay in ruin nothing left but smoke, splintered wood and steaming heaps of rubbish. Bodies were strewn between collapsed stalls and broken signposts; the air tasted of ash and iron. In the middle of that wreckage a single figure sat unmoving. Gelspawn said nothing for a long moment, eyes fixed on the ruined square.
"There are dead people everywhere," Scarlet said. She kept her voice low, steady. "Looks like Davis Glorious was told to stand by and keep watch."
Gelspawn's mouth tightened. "And he's making the most of it. Hunting the survivors like animals killing time while he plays at sport."
Scarlet's jaw set. The wind lifted ash into their faces and their cloaks fluttered like wounded wings. "As long as he doesn't come this way to confront us, it's not the worst thing. He won't move until he's done with his stupid hunt. We need those people to survive to delay him and keep him busy until we're ready."
"I create a plan to go after that bastard," Scarlet said, voice hard as a blade.
"Huh?" Gelspawn blinked.
"You heard me." Scarlet pivoted, eyes flashing. "Today is the day we carve our names into history. Today the humans strike back. We bring Davis Glorious down."
Mikel and his men flung their heads back and roared. The sound cracked across the square not a polite cheer but the raw, animal noise of men who had stared down death and decided to laugh in its face. Roars echoed from the alleys and across half-fallen roofs. For a second the ruined town seemed to remember how to be alive.
"All right, so you have come but it is a little late now," Davis Glorious said. His voice rolled like distant thunder, every syllable wet with contempt. They could see him far beyond the wreck, a hulking silhouette framed by falling ash and the shattered moon. He watched the Kaiju hunters rush in with a lazy interest, like a lord watching peasants scramble.
"I welcome you," he said, mock politeness sliding into scorn. "I send my greetings to all of you. But you must go back and come later until I am done."
Scarlet stepped forward, shoulders squared. "We are Kaiju hunters," she said, "and what a nice day to hunt an evil, stupid Kaiju who has done a lot of vile things."
The creature bristled. "You are just pathetic," Davis Glorious sneered. "Told to stand here and watch while I do what I must."
"You stupid " Scarlet began, cutting him off.
"What are you even saying? What do you know of me? Who dares speak against my line? Who is this lowly human who has the gall to spout rubbish about my bloodline?"
Scarlet's face did not change. "We call him Davis Glorious because he likes the sound of it," she said. "We call him a predator because that's what he is. You can rage at us all you like. But assaulting people and slaughtering innocents that is what will be remembered, not the name you call yourself."
Davis Glorious's eyes glowed with a cold, terrible light. "To start, are you even able to comprehend my greatness? I will forgive your earlier insult but insulting my bloodline will not be forgiven. Anyone who insults our bloodline must die. Die! Die! Die!"
A ripple of fear ran through the hunters. They had trained for days with the new weapons — sharpened iron tipped with strange alloys, nets that hummed like trapped storms, bolts dipped in sleeping draughts and burning acids. They had practiced standing firm against the tide of terror that Davis Glorious brought with him. They had tried to steady their nerves until they were as cold and hard inside as the metals they carried.
"Something isn't right," Mi said softly, glancing at the monster. She had been the first to speak up; a practical woman with eyes that always measured distance. "We trained, yes but that thing is too big."
"It's massive," someone else muttered. No one argued. The creature was massive, enough to blot out the sky when it stepped forward. It had scales like hammered bronze and a maw that dripped a gloss like oil. Its armor plates overlapped like the ancient, unreadable language of mountains. Even now, with them hidden behind ruined stalls and broken beams, the hunters could feel its weight pressing on the town.
"Where did I get the belief," Mi continued, voice hollow, "that second-rate Kaiju hunters like me and my men could kill something like this?"
Mikel's grin spread wide and bare-toothed. "Don't lose heart, boys!" he shouted, stamping a heavy boot on the cracked cobblestone. "We've got this in the bag. Let's hunt that Kaiju down!"
His bravado was a mask a necessary one. Scarlet could see the tremor in his hand as he gripped his spear. She knew that every man there wore similar masks, each stitched from fear and hope in different patterns. But a mask could be the difference between a tremble and a steady aim.
Scarlet stepped onto a fractured fountain lip, letting the hunters' attention fall to her. She drew a breath, full and bright as steel.
"We don't win by charging blindly," she told them. "We win by making him bleed where it hurts. We win by taking away what he values: certainty, hunger, the luxury of picking his next meal. We will split into three teams."
Gelspawn moved to her side, fingers already mapping the plan in the air. "Team One: Mikel, you and your hunters draw his gaze. Use the nets and noise-screams. Make him think the hunt goes on as usual."
Mikel barked, "Piece of cake."
"Team Two: Mi and I will flank from the west. We've got the acid bolts. If we can sink those into the joints of his armor, perhaps" Gelspawn's voice hitched at the possibility.
"Perhaps he'll slow." Scarlet finished the sentence. "Perhaps he'll stagger. And while he's staggered"
"Team Three?" someone asked.
"Team Three," Scarlet said. Her voice softened when she named them. "Will be our final strike. A small band of the swiftest and the bravest the ones who can get close enough to plant the charge. I will lead them."
Mikel barked a laugh that hid a sob. "You? Lead? You're the one who talks about history now."
"I'm the one who still gets angry," Scarlet said. "And I don't want anyone else to die for my anger."
Her words folded around them like a shield. Silence fell, not the silence of fear but of resolve. The hunters readied themselves. Someone took the last of the smoke-bombs from a satchel, testing the cord. A child no older than fourteen gripped a cord of thin wire like a lifeline. Scarlet watched him, saw his knuckles go white, and something in her chest ached with fierce, hot protectiveness.
Davis Glorious laughed then, deep and nearly amused. "You make plans, you sing your speeches. How quaint. Do you think your little stratagems matter in the face of my lineage?"
Scarlet looked at the creature and met that arrogant gaze with something rawer. "We don't think. We know," she said. "We know what it is to lose, and we know what it is to fight because we must. We will be the ones who decide how this ends."
The square filled with the sound of feet finding purchase. The hunters checked their weapons once more the click of mechanisms, the whisper of cloth, the soft hiss of oil. A boy wiped his face with the back of his hand and grinned at Mikel.
"Let's make them remember us," the boy said.
Mikel's grin went feral. "Then let us be bloody and brilliant in their memory."
Scarlet felt the roar rise in her own throat, half prayer, half promise. She signaled, and the three groups melted into the ruin like predators finding their marks. Smoke and ash swallowed their shapes. The town that broken thing of cobbles and corpses became a stage for something larger than grief: the stubborn insistence of living things refusing to be eaten without a fight.
As they moved, Scarlet's mind held only one steady image: Davis Glorious staggering, a great plume of flame blooming from a shattered joint, and human faces lifting, not in fear, but in triumph. She had no delusions about victory being easy. But she had one certainty: if they died, they would die having chosen their fate.
They would remember the name of the day. They would remember the sound of men and women who had laughed at death and then shown it their teeth.
And if the world itself wished to forget them, Scarlet thought, then let the world try.