TPC Far East Headquarters – Maritime Base
The air in the GUTS command room was thick enough to choke on. Usually, this place hummed with the high-tech efficiency of a team ready to take on the world, but today, it felt like a funeral parlor.
The whole crew was there. Captain Meg Kijima sat at the head of the table, her expression unreadable, while Director Sullivan and Director York stood off to the side like two sides of a very stressed-out coin. Rachel, the head of the Science Bureau, was leaning over a console with Justin, the team's resident tech whiz. Even Mark, the Vice-Captain, looked like he'd aged five years since breakfast.
On the massive main screen, the nightmare was playing on a loop. Two ancient, towering freaks of nature—Golza and Melba—had just finished doing the unthinkable.
"We missed it," Reiko muttered, her voice barely a whisper as she glanced toward Mark. "The time machine... the message from thirty million years ago... it all meant nothing."
Justin nodded, his fingers flying across the keys as he brought up the high-res footage captured by the Wing 1. "I've tried everything to clean up the audio from the Yuzare hologram, but the noise floor is too high. We couldn't figure out how to wake the statues up in time."
On the screen, everyone watched in agonizing detail as the giant stone statues—humanity's supposed protectors—were smashed into a million pieces. They weren't just defeated; they were pulverized.
"All three of them," Harry said, his voice flat. "They're just... gravel now."
The silence that followed was heavy. Without the "Titans" the time machine promised, they were basically bringing a knife to a nuclear explosion. The GUTS team had been forced to hover in their unarmed scouts, watching helplessly as the monsters stomped their only hope into the dirt. David had nearly died trying to distract them with signal flares, and if he hadn't ejected from the Wing 1 at the literal last second, they'd be mourning a teammate right now.
"Look, things were different thirty million years ago," Mark said, standing up and trying to inject some life into the room. As the Vice-Captain, he couldn't let them spiral. "Maybe we don't have giants. Fine. But we still have us. We can take these things down on our own if we have to."
He looked toward the Directors, trying to show them that GUTS wasn't ready to roll over and play dead.
"The Vice-Captain's right," Meg added. She could see the morale bottoming out. The time machine had been a nice dream, but protecting the planet was their actual job description. "The machine was a bonus, not a crutch. We're still the ones standing between these things and the rest of the world."
But the reality was a bitter pill. Shane looked over at Director Sullivan, his jaw tight. "With what, Captain? We're flying around in glorified weather balloons."
Before the TPC disarmament in 2006, their predecessors had teeth—machine guns, missiles, the works. But after the pacifists pushed for a "peaceful skies" initiative, the GUTS aircraft had been stripped down to sensors and flares. This morning, David had tried to scare off a mountain-sized lizard with a firework. It was embarrassing.
"I've been saying it since day one: disarming the TPC was a death sentence!"
The electric doors hissed open and Director York marched in, snapping his fingers sharply. He looked at the screen and then at the team with a "told-you-so" sneer. "What are you going to do next time? Throw rocks at them? You watched those statues get shattered today, and tonight you'll be watching cities burn if we don't change something."
York paced the room like a caged tiger. "Sullivan, stop playing politics. Order the combat refit for the GUTS Wings right now. Unless you want us to just be a police force that shows up to tape off the craters."
Sullivan and Meg both frowned. The TPC was supposed to be about a new era of peace. If they started bolting missiles back onto the planes, that dream was officially over.
"York, you know the police department isn't supposed to—"
"Actually," Sullivan interrupted, his voice quiet but carrying the weight of a sledgehammer. "Arming GUTS is no longer a debate. If we're going to fight monsters, we need to put weapons in the hands of the people who actually face them. Captain Kijima, Rachel—get the modifications started. Immediately."
"Understood," Rachel said, already pulling up the schematics.
As the meeting broke up, the team scattered. David walked down the long, metallic corridor of the base, staring out the window at a sunset that looked like blood spilled across the horizon.
"Light..." he whispered.
He hadn't turned into light. He hadn't saved anyone. The statue was gone, and he was just a guy who got lucky. It felt like a cruel joke.
Meanwhile, miles away on the coast of the Boso Peninsula, a guy named Reg was having a very different kind of evening. He shoved a strange, ornate object—the Spark Lens—into his pocket and rubbed his stomach.
"Man, I am starving," he muttered to himself.
Reg wasn't from around here. He'd been dropped into this mess just a few hours ago, and while he was technically flat broke, he'd found that people could be surprisingly "generous" when you knew how to pull a few heartstrings—or just look like you belonged. You can't save the world on an empty stomach; that was just basic physics.
He stood on the rooftop of a nondescript building, watching the sky change colors.
"That year, I also became light," he said, the words feeling weird on his tongue.
He pulled the Spark Lens back out. It wasn't some cheap plastic toy you'd find at a comic-con or an "authentic" replica from an online shop. It had literally appeared in a swirl of golden light in his hand the moment he'd crossed over.
In the story he knew, David was supposed to be the one. But David had failed. The statues were dust. The timeline was officially a mess.
Reg looked at the device, then toward the darkening horizon where he knew the monsters were lurking. He felt a weird sense of gratitude toward the people who'd helped him find a meal tonight—it was their "contribution" to the cause of not letting the world get stomped flat.
Having just polished off two helpings of Thai takeout, Reg suddenly turned his head to look at the deep, distant sky.
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