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Chapter Text

28th of April, 1986
Kiev, Kyiv Oblast, United Slavic SSR

The Verkhovna Rada, in Yurij Eduardovych’s opinion, was too much of a building for what was left of his homeland.

After the Great Rebuilding’s dismantling of the Ukranian SSR it had gone from being the building within which the will of the Ukranan people made itself heard to just being the administrative and core of a single oblast amongst many. A grand building that now hosted congresses and meetings, not his people’s parliament. Sometimes, when he felt particularly patriotic, it filled him with vitriol for what General Secretary Kirillovich and his clique had done… But most of the time he just felt apathetic. Why should he care? He had good enough pay to take good care of his sisters, and his day to day duties were fulfilling enough. What else could a man want?

Today, however, the day to day job was nothing but a mirage, a shadow from the past, chaos permeated the very walls of the old parliament, he could hear shouting and heated arguments coming from the insides of every office. Clerks and secretaries like himself ran all over trying to appease and attend to their superiors. 

Unlike him, who was trying to make his way to his superior in order to appease his superior’s superior . Totally different... Totally.

Finally, after shoving his way through a particularly congested area, a feat considering his frail constitution and short stature, he reached his objective.

Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina, Chairman of the Edino-Slavjanskaja’s Sovet Ministrov, and most importantly, the man in charge of dealing with the insanity currently going on in Chernobyl. The man who, for the time being, had the weight of the entire Union’s future on his back. 

“Ah, Yurij…” The taller man greeted him with a tired sigh and a long draw from his cigarette. “I hope you bring me better news than all those parasitic paper-pushers.” 

“Sir, I’m afraid that, while I’m not sure, the fact that I got this .” Yurij passed a large and bloated manilla envelope to the vice-chairman. “From the MAKD… It won’t be good.”

Boris went as pale as a corpse, it was understandable, getting any kind of communication or contact from the Ministerstvo Protivo-chudovishnoj Oborony, the Ministry of Anti-Kaiju Defense, was for a politician akin to getting a call from a doctor when an aging relative is hospitalized. Yurij could empathise, he’d received one such call regarding his mama 6 months before.

He stood there, almost like an awkward teenager, not knowing what to do with his arms and hands, or whether it was ok for him to sit down on one of the chairs lining the left wall, so he just stood rigidly as his boss opened the envelope and started skimming over the first few pages of one of the documents in the envelope. The sounds of the chaos going on outside were only somewhat muted by the large office’s doors.

It was hard to tell, but he may have stood there for almost half an hour, just trying not to make any sound which would bother Mr. Shcherbina. The man was so engrossed with his reading, he could have been mistaken for a statue had it not been for his constant, clockwork-like drags from his cigars (He was on his fifth, Yurij had counted them in an attempt to distract himself) or his sporadic grimaces. Sometimes his eyes would go as wide as plates or he’d blink in confusion, but most of the time he simply seemed to gather even more stress, more than the younger bureaucrat thought possible.

“Yurij!” The man suddenly shouted, throwing the entire stack of reports and paperwork on his already overcrowded desk. “Head up to Prípyat, immediately, and alone. Don’t tell anyone anything and go directly to Tarakov. Tell him to put his men on high alert and that I’ll be there as soon as I can get away from the blood-suckers here.”

“Sir, wha-”

“GO!” The man’s shout and the subsequent hand strike to his desk not only quickstart Yurij’s fight or flight response, but also noticeably silenced the cacophony outside.

“Ye-yes sir.” He stammered. 

But as he turned around and started walking as fast as he could towards the door, Shcherbina’s parting statement gave him pause.

“Eduardovych… You are a good kid… Make sure you forget everything that you have seen and heard and which you will see and hear today… Will you?”

Yurij didn’t even waste time to turn around, he merely nodded as he opened the door and headed out. That hadn’t been the steel-cold voice of one of the USSR’s strong men, it was the voice of the ex-rail worker who had always taken note whenever Yurij had brought a new photo of his sisters to decorate his modest desk.

28th of April, 1986
Príyat, Kyiv Oblast, United Slavic SSR

It was late, well into the night, and still, there probably wasn’t a single soul resting. Chernobyl couldn’t afford anyone resting, Europe couldn’t.

Boris Shcherbina had nothing but respect for Nikolai Tarakanov. And while the General, unlike Boris, had been too young to serve in the Great Patriotic War, he more than made up for the lack of experience in Boris’ eyes. Not only had he obtained a doctorate (a much higher level of education than what he could boast) but he had also gained  enough experience in both dealing with Kaiju and man while posted as a guard to the Aktau-Altay Rail project. 

Because of that, when they both made sure that they were truly, truly , alone in Nikolai's office, he was completely honest.

“We are going to die.” He started as he lit himself a cigar. He offered to light Tarakanov’s and the man accepted.

“Yes,” The general agreed. “If the radiation doesn’t kill us, it’ll be the trial for failing to contain the leaks, or the trial for not containing them fast enough, or…” The stout military man looked pointedly at him.

“Or the MAKD will.” He finished.

The two stood in silence, they had both received very similar envelopes containing very similar documents.

But after what felt like an eternity, the general broke the silence.

“General Yakovich called me an hour before you arrived.”

“Another surprise .” Boris thought, probably just another one on an endless parade.

General Yakovich, probably the first man in the history of the USSR to deserve every single one of his condecorations and medals, “Siberia’s Shield” and the man who had almost single-handedly propelled General Secretary Kirillovich to the highest authority in the Soviet Union. 

And most importantly to their conundrum, the co-founder and military attache to the MAKD. 

“And…?” Boris goaded Nikolai on.

“He said ‘If there’s the slightest chance of the tunnel being ready in time, burn the documents, If there isn’t..’ He said that if we couldn’t do it, to call him back.”

Boris said nothing at first, just deeply inhaled another smoke-filled breath, futilely hoping that it would help him calm his nerves.

“How is the tunnel go-?” The general started asking.

“Like shit,” Boris confessed. “The miners are dropping like flies, they are digging a tunnel under two reactor’s worth of radioactive material, which is currently trying its hardest to melt itself into the FUCKING DNIEPER, with only a few metres of dirt to contain the radiation, they are literally dying almost as fast as we are recruiting them, and progress is as slow as swimming through tar!!” Boris exploded.

They had tried their best to deal with the two reactor’s meltdowns, but that had still meant thousands evacuated and hundreds dead or dying. 

Boris had pulled every string, called in every favour and made all the promises to get the scientists, the soldiers and miners the best tools and all resources possible to contain and clean Chernobyl. But even that wasn’t enough.

And the worst was still to come, how many would die if the material reached the water table? Half of old Ukraine? There were millions of people on the Black Sea’s coasts, millions more along the Mediterranean, how many lives destroyed would that amount to? 

And that was without considering the Kaiju. How many of those demons would be born from the radiation? How many it would attract like light to a moth…

Attract…

They looked at each other, Boris knew what the General was thinking about as much as the General knew he was. Even if they somehow contained the material, how many men would Nikolai have to sacrifice to remove the equally poisonous debri? 

And with the resolve of a man looking into the muzzles of a firing squad, the Chairman of the Edino-Slavjanskaja, the man who had as his only true duty the protection and wellness of all of those he called his people, he crossed the room and grabbed the phone on General Yakovich’s desk.

“So this is what shaking the Devil’s hand feels like.” The younger man muttered.

1st of May, 1986
Chernobyl, Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Zone of Alienation , United Slavic SSR

Yurij didn’t know what to think of Dr. Zura Geladze. The bizarre MAKD official had arrived in Kiev the very same day Yurij’s superior had received the envelope to oversee “Operatsiya Prazdnik.” The exact same day.

The man seemed to always simultaneously be completely focused and distracted at the same time. And he had not seen the biologist-turned-official drink, eat or smoke even once in the last few days, not even a single cup of coffee.

But, if he was being honest, he couldn’t care less about the scientist even at that moment, his attention was solely focused on the sight before him.

The main road heading into Chernobyl from the Northeast, which he had been assured they were observing from a secure distance, was currently hosting the strangest of parades.

Some kinds of tanks, which to Yurij’s limited experience looked like heavily modified T-34, were marching in a convoy.

The convoy at the center of which was the first, and hopefully last, Kaiju he had ever seen.

The monster had big enough mouths that it could probably hold one of the tanks inside it with only the cannon sticking out, and had a long and low to the ground body which vaguely reminded him of the lizards he and his sisters had used to hunt for in between rocks when they were kids during their summer vacations. Now, with the reptilian monster before him slowly lumbering towards the city, those memories were forever tainted.

Of course, the size wasn’t what really stole his breath, and neither were the enormous claws, or the black-and-yellow scale armour covering its body.

It was the fact that the beast didn’t have a maw, it had maws , three enormous heads branching out of its torso and constantly surveying the area from their vantage points on top of the beast’s snake-like necks. 

Radioactive red eyes staring into his soul.

“He’s Zmei Gorynich you know.” The scientist commented, the words didn’t even register with the astonished clerk. “He’s the one from the tales. Did your mother tell them to you? Mine did.”

“We found him sleeping in a cavern near Kursk, it took a lot of explosives to wake him up,” The man laughed at his own comment.

“He eats radiation, or at least we think that’s what he does. The fact that he started walking here the moment he woke up is proof enough I think, sometimes I think he doesn't even notice us.”

Finally, Yurij found his words.

“Are you insane?!”

“Me? Not really. Us as a whole? Probably.” Dr. Geladze answered nonchalantly.

A day later, when the beast finally reached the installations, it simply dug into what remained of the 3rd and 4th reactors until the multiple tons of material of the molten cores were open to the sky, so radioactive that no human could ever survive seconds of exposure to them...

And it bit down .

It didn’t tear off chunks, or swallow, it merely bit down and held , unmoving, like a monstrous statue.

A week later, the ambiental radiation had lowered so much than one could walk up to the gaping remains of the reactor with no protective equipment. Zmey did not move, but his six eyes kept track of those daring enough to come close.

A month later, repairs to reactors 1 & 2 would be given green light to commence. Zmey did not move.

Two months later, the inhabitants of Prípyat were allowed to return to their homes.

By six months, Boris Shcherbina, the Union's new and louded minister for atomic energy, would order the construction of reactors 5 and 6 to be restarted. Zmey did not move. 

His eyes kept track of the workers at all times.

They always will.

Chapter Text

24th of January, 1999
Scranton, Wyoming Valley Commune, Appalachian Workers' Union

“I don’t like this.” Dale mutters as he dangles over the rail from one of the steel beams which hold up the train station’s canopy, holding himself with one arm and with only his left foot’s toes -his work boot’s tip, to be specific- touching the station’s platform. 

“And why is that?” Elmer, his fellow coal miner, questions.

“I don't like that we have to depend on the Lakers and New Englanders for this kind of bullshit, kinda defeats the point of the fucking Union…” Dale shares his thoughts.

“Would you rather we have to ask the Communists for help?” Elmer Atkinson offers as a counterargument.

“... Nah, fuck those statists…” Dale begrudgingly acquiesces.

A few minutes pass, the sounds of the extremely busy station behind them melding with that of the water hitting the glass panels above them, both complimenting their silent waiting. 

“You're getting your hair wet…” Half-heartedly chides the sour looking Elmer. Who clearly much prefers the protection offered by the metallic structure.

“With this weather I’d rather get it wet than waste energy trying to keep it dry.” Jokes Dale as he keeps himself entertained by stretching his neck, trying to look for the next passenger train arriving into the station.

The old train yard, first built almost a hundred years ago and turned into a museum decades ago, had been reopened and expanded over the last five years to fit the growing needs of the expanding commune. And it shows, the structure is old in the way things are old in Appalachia, sadly but with dignity. While most of  those needs had been and continue to be those of industry and mine -moving in coal from the mines, ore into the ironworks and steel mills, exporting the surplus coal and metals out west to Eire and Cleveland…- It also serves the people as one of the last major stations in the Union’s northeasternmost communes. 

Managed by the Brotherhood of Rail Workers, one cooperative of many,  the vascular system that is the ever-expanding rail network snakes its way up and down and all across the Appalacians like a ribcage. Practically the only reliable system of long-distance travel in the region, it moved thousands of Appalachians every day.

Five passenger trains and nine freight trains had arrived at the yards just in the last half hour of the two men waiting. Compared to what that old corpse, amtrak, had managed? It’s a glorious thing.

But none of those trains had been what the two men are waiting for. That was a special one. A passenger train, yes. But the “Eire Bus” is still the sole connection for civilians between the northern communes and the Great Lakes Republic. Doing her half-a-day trip only once a week, it’s extremely relevant. Specially to them, as she is currently bringing to Scranton the woman the two miners are waiting for.

Any minute now.

Any minute now…

“You heard the news?” Elmer Atkinson resigns himself to making small talk.

“Not really, the kids kept me busy all morning, it’s really fucking tiring without Pearl being around to take half the work load.” Dale explains while he is still hanging like an ape.

“She’s out in the lumber yards? Thought they wouldn’t have gotten started this season so soon.”

“They haven’t, she’s just staying a few weeks extra to help her sister refit the requisitioned house she won in the lottery.” Dale finally pulls himself in, taking a cigarette out of his the pack in his jeans’ back pocket and lighting it up. He doesn’t offer one to Elmer, knowing the man had quit the vice last year, but he does grunt in a way that could be interpreted as continuing the conversation with a “What are the news anyways?”

“The Nationals, they’ve finally cracked.” He says with a pleased laugh.That is, after all, very good news for the workers of Appalachia.

“No shit, for real?” An incredulous Holt reacts.

“Yeah, apparently the Snafus got fed up enough with the Feds’ bullshit that they've cut ties.” 

“So?” He questions. “Are they murdering each other? Can’t imagine the paper-pusher in Washington can do much against the Army of Virginia.” He laughs at his own argument, imagining a literal battle between “senators,” “congressmen” and troopers.

“Surprisingly, they apparently can. Between the capitol guard, the beefed up pigs and a bunch of Snafus who had defected to their side, the feds are holding on. Apparently the Snafus don’t have the balls to just shell the ‘capital’ into a fine paste.” He explains.

“Really? Man, that’s crazy… Wait, does that mean the fucking military authoritarians have joined us in the what-you-call-it list?” He asks, so busy laughing that he almost doesn’t notice that he is letting his cig burn up.

“Yeah, now the ‘Army of the Potomac’ or ‘Richmond Junta’ or whatever the fuck they are calling themselves now have joined the the ranks of the ‘Separatist American Axis.’” The mocking tone with which Atkinson says the official name of the infamous “List” is palpable.

“Crazy, you’d think that not even the fucking Feds would be stupid enough to argue that us, the Slavers, the New Spanish and everyone fucking else were somehow on the same side!” Dale exclaimed.

“I mean, they are already stupid - or insane - enough to think the US of A is still a thing, or that can be a thing again… Lumping us all into one big shit-filled bag isn’t much of a development.” He shruggs.

“Fair enough... “ Dale nods as he put out his cig’s butt against his jeans. “Wait.. is that it?” He pointed towards an incoming train.

“Let me see…” This time it iss Atkinson who instinctively anchors himself on the beam and stretches to gain visibility. “Yeah it is, time to finally deal with this nightmare.”

The Eire Bus, a larger and blocky internal combustion locomotive -neither miner know enough on the subject to name the model- painted in the national reds and blacks pulls into the station with all her coach cars.

As soon as the machine crawls to a stop and her doors open, a veritable avalanche of people exit the old and sardine can-packed passenger carriages. Who knoww who all those faces might be? Disgruntled workers from the industrial cities looking for a better life? Diplomats and representatives from the Lakes looking to establish contracts? Representatives of local cooperatives and unions returning from doing the same thing in Detroit or Cleveland? Maybe just random people looking to spend the winter with rural relatives. Who knows? Who cares? The two of them certainly don’t. As long as they don’t mean harm, or trouble, they are as welcome as a fireplace in winter.

And if you are willing to work hard, work honestly, or put an ax through a tycoon’s skull? The Union doesn’t care either. 

But amongst the masses a young lass does stand out. She stands out for two reasons: Her appearance, and her demeanor.

Demeanor-wise, it is clear that she was visibly uncomfortable and nervous. Not uncommon, the Appalachian was a strange land, inhabited by strange people with strange beliefs and customs. Or at least that was what the Lakers and the Plainsmen tell each other.

Appearance wise, there is no way around it, the young woman -she can’t be more than twenty five- is dark-skinned, probably of mixed race. African Americans aren’t rare in the communes per se, but most -southern refugees, that is- tend to either stay on the southern communes or are simply passers by on their way to the Great Lakes through the communes. A much safer escape route than trying to cross the Ohio River, that’s for sure. If her race had been the only factor, neither of the miners would have paid much attention to her though. What really draws them to the chubby, glass-wearing and dreadlocked young woman was her attire, an incongruent mix of a bureaucrat's formal code-following wear and a scientist’s field-working clothes. The sideways hourglass emblazoned on her gray raincoat combined with the duffel bag she carries -decorated with the same symbol- are, however, the clear clues which offer all the confirmation they need. 

They quickly start making their way towards the young woman, pushing through the mass of people walking into the station. Easy work considering their large and stocky builds, one of the few physical perks to their profession.

Said size also means that the woman easily sees them approaching, greeting them once they finish pushing their way through.

“River Slope Mine?” She asks, meaning to ask whether they are representatives from the aforementioned worksite.

They both responds in their own ways, Dale snaps his fingers and offers a thumbs up, while Elmer grunts affirmatively. She hesitantly offers her hand after that, visibly relaxing as each man shakes it in turns, firmly but amicably, and introduce themselves.

“Dale Holt, hurrier.”

“Elmer Atkinson, brakesman.”

“Pleasure meeting you, I’m Doctor Madison Bridges, Junior field researcher at Monarch-North American Division.” Madison can deal well enough with any kind of people as long as they are respectful. It really is what her work hinges on as an investigator, people’s willingness to collaborate.

“Pleasure meeting you too, hope the ride was comfortable?” Politely asks Dale as Elmer grabs the woman’s luggage and they escort her out of the station as easily as they made their way to her.

“Actually, it was! People really aren’t joking when they talk about how good Appalachian trains are!” That gets both men to smile. After all, the quickest way to any Appalachian’s heart is by complimenting hard work.

“Although… I hope I do not come off as disrespectful but… I was made to understand that officials would be greeting me.” She asks after the three of them exit the station, each with their own umbrella to protect from the morning’s intermittent rains. Both men look at each other in confusion for a few seconds, until a look of amused recognition is finally shared.  

“Well, we both officially work in River Slope if that’s what you are asking!” Dale jokes. For which he receives a groan from Elmer.

“Ignore him, he’s an idiot. Whoever debriefed you probably just forgot to explain how we do things in detail.” Elmer offers.

“If you are talking about the communes and the cooperatives, I know how those work. Why does that matter?” The woman defends herself.

“I’m not doubting that miss, but what I mean is that, even a cooperative here and over there maybe doesn’t work the same.” The machinist starts explaining.

“How so?”

“Well… A cooperative over there means that everyone in the business owns the same chunk, but there’s still a boss, he-or she- is just not as much of a bastard as an actual business man. Here, there’s no boss, just us workers. Sure there’s secretaries and bureaucrats and people who keep tabs on the money and the numbers. But we work the mine just like we work the commune and the rail and the construction. By council and vote.”

“Oh, I was under the impression that you elected your representatives.” She responds.

This time Holt is the one to explain. “We do elect a council every year, like every mine. And all the mines in the Commune get to send a guy from their council to the Commune’s Miner’s Council. And they elect one guy every year to the Union’s Miner’s Congress. But they are there to keep everyone on the same page and working together. They don’t make laws or stuff like that.”

“Oh, so people really don’t joke when they say Appalachians vote on everything huh?” She responds in amusement as they take to the Electric City’s streets.

“We figured it’s the best way to keep everyone honest and doing their part.” Acknowledges Elmer.

“So the reason why you two are here is because you won a vote?” She continues to make small talk.

“Not really, more like we offered and everyone was ok with it, so no vote needed.” Atkinson shruggs.

Madison is intrigued; she knows from the news and lectures and her own preparations for this trip that the Appalachian Workers’ Union had been established on the basis of syndicalism and council communism. But there was a great deal of difference between hearing about it and learning about it from people who are part of it. Just as how there is a great difference between reading theory and seeing it being applied experimentally.

In any case, the young Gigabiologist continues to make small talk with her two escorts as they lead her to her accommodations. They amicably share their somber experiences from the collapse with her -both had been part of the initial uprisings in the region, they tell her proudly- but also more lighthearted anecdotes from their family lives. Similarly, both men happily listen as the young woman speaks of her experiences growing up during Detroit’s Renaissance or her field work for the KDF’s scientific branch. Surprisingly, they even are able to have a short friendly debate on the differences between their nations.

But like all good things, their short bull session has to end. And end it does once they arrive at the Lackawanna Station Hotel, originally the city’s train station. The french-renaissance style building had been converted into a hotel decades ago. When the revolution had arrived, it was deemed more practical to expand the train yards than to reconvert the historical building into a station once more. As such, the Scranton Commune had appropriated it from whatever company had owned it before and converted it into free lodging from travelers of all kinds.

“It was a pleasure meeting you two gentlemen.” She tells them.

“Likewise professor, we’ll be back tomorrow morning at seven to take you down to the mine, the engineers and our geologist will be there to talk things out with you. The Army Congress and all sorts of other councils have already told us they want to talk things out with you once you have looked the site over, so get ready for a busy day tomorrow. And over the rest of your stay. “

“Understandably so. Hopefully, I won’t have much to tell them.” She answers.

“Anything you need, we can get it to you by tonight.” Atkinson finishes explaining. “Either work-related or anything else, we are on call.”

“Oh, I just remembered!” Holt exclaims as he bumpes his fist together. “You’ll probably want to meet Randi. We should try to hit him up so he’ll go down there with you tomorrow:” His proposal receivesan agreeing nod from Elmer.

“Randi?” The biologist inquires.

“Randi Casto, he’s the kid - the driller - who found Satan down there, he was the one to sound the alarms.” Elmer offers the information.

“Satan?” Bridges apprehensively grimaces.

“It’s the nickname we gave it . Until you give it an official name of course.” Holt tilts his head. The mention of what had brought her to the mountains finally breaches the unspoken tension between the three of them. Something is down there in that mine. And she is no longer staring at a man casually talking shop about his workplace’s strange finding.

Instead, the worry of a father for his children shins through. Like a lamp in the depths of a mine. 

25th of January, 1999
River Slope Mine, Wyoming Valley Commune, Appalachian Workers' Union

The next morning goesas had been planned, Atkinson and Holt pick her up on time. And soon enough she iss in the nearby town -or commune, she supposes- of Jenkins. And soon enough she stands at the entrance of the Knox Mine’s hoist house. Surrounded by… Well, not much. Sure, the machinery is still there, but there is no one manning it. No miners coming to and fro from the bunkhouses, no ore carts being pulled out of the depths. If it didn’t all look so recently used, she would have assumed the place to be abandoned.

The few people who are there, however, all seem to be there for her. 

Mainly, Mr.Casto.

She now understands why Dale had corrected himself when he had called the blonde man a kid. He probably isn’t even her age, twentyfour at the most. Her two guides introduce them to each other He is polite to a fault in that way everyone else had been to her until now. But also visibly nervous.

Probably due to having to return to the mine after what he’s seen.

Still, he becomes willing to share his recollections with her soon after she places a comforting hand on his shoulder.

‘Still got it’ She thinks to herself, pleased.

“Well, I-I was working the drill on the new west tunnel down at the 150 meter level. So that, you know, so that the other guys could load the boreholes with dynamite to keep going forward - we were going to go like 50 meters more, guess not anymore.” He rubs his hands nervously, the gauze bandaging both hands clearly freshy changed that morning. “And… Well the rock didn’t look like it always did in that level, but I figured that if the guys who had cleared the section I was standing on hadn't said anything, it meant that it was just some ore we didn’t care about, so I got to drilling and…” He takes a shuddering breath. “At first I thought I’d need to call the engineers because it was so tough . Honestly? It was looking like the drill bit might just fucking break. Sparks were flying everywhere. But then… It was like trying to punch through cardboard. Like a tension and then the thing just gives up. The drill bit just stabbed in and… And…” As he explains, he becomes more agitated, trying to repress his reaction but only making himself more jittery.

“Hey, it's ok. You got out of there right? If that didn't wake it up. Nothing will.” She imdeiatly clocked it on what was bothering the miner.

He is scared, that much is obvious. It must have been a shocking and bizarre experience. Only made worse by the following fear of having caused a wound to a sleeping kaiju . He’d probably grown up just like her, hearing of some monstrosity being awakened by a military drill or an oil well only to go on to destroy a third of a nation every few months. She had done something similar in her first trip to the menagerie. The first time she locked eyes with one of the specimens there, it had taken a week for her fellows to convince her that she hadn’t been somehow evil-eyed for her entire life. She can’t imagine how such an experience might have felt to someone not in a controlled environment.

A few minutes later, Randi reigns himself some confidence in, enough to finish his story, even giving her a shy and thankful smile for patiently waiting for him to do so.

“Once the drill broke through it’s… It’s skin … Blood. Blood just started flowing out. For the first few seconds it was like a fire hydrant. And it was so sudden that I just dropped the drill. I though I had hit a petroleum pocket but that made no sense. And a few seconds later… I guess the wound started closing? Because it went from fire hydrant to the consistency of syrup in a few minutes.”

“The ‘blood,’ what was it like? Smell? Color?” She questions.

“It was scalding, I’m lucky that I was wearing my overalls and I scrambled, what got onto me scalded me pretty badly but the doc says it is no worse than a messy kitchen accident. By the time I sounded the alarms and left? The entire tunnel was misty with vapors of that blood constantly bubbling. And the ground was murky with it, congealed blood made islands in the pools like milk skin… It was… It was dark, like those expensive wines, almost black but you could see the red if the light hit it right… And I guess it just smelled like blood? Very strong, much more metallic than normal blood that’s for sure, but still blood.”

Madison’s notebook is filled with scribbled lines by the time he is done talking. And soon enough maps of the mine, of the region, geological surveys, water-tables, all of that follows as other people arrive for her battery of interviews… Anything that might be useful, she will spend days and weeks compiling. But there’s no doubt in her mind Casto’s testimony will hold the bulk of the most valuable data once she can sit down to parse and analyze through it.

“Well, I guess there’s only one thing left to do…” She looks at her escorts hours later, who get to work gathering the team and necessary resources immediately, understanding her tone. 

Then she looks at Randi, whose eyes widden like platters.

“Mind showing me where you drilled, Randi?” She asks.

His only response is a nervous nod and loudly swallowing.

Madison know enough about speleology and how mines are operated -comes with the Monarch job- that not many explanations are needed safety-wise to get her ready to go into the coal mine. And all of the miners she’s met so far had been respectful enough to accept this reality and not infantilize her for being a woman. So unneeded explanations have been entirely removed. 

With the mine closed -and surrounding community evacuated- out of precaution due to the recent discovery, only her, the blonde Randi and only a couple other essential miners had been allowed to take the cage down the shaft to the lowest level of the River Slope -colloquially known as the Knox- Mine.

The place, despite the many yellow electric lights anchored into the walls and the top of the elevator cage, feels dark, and while the air is not stale -that could have spelled disaster- it does carry an unfamiliar smell to it that she can only assume does not come from stone or ore or simply with the underground conditions.

The cage itself, a study construction of steel, lowers itself smoothly but slowly into the depths. Conjuring unwelcome images of ritual sacrifices into the scientist’s mind.

Images she seeks to eradicate with small-talk that is no less macabre. “Mrs. Ayers, forgive me for asking but… Isn’t it a bit risky to mine coal at such a scale this close to the Susquehanna River? Couldn’t it…?”

“Flood?” The woman, her main guide for the trip, finishes for her. “It sure could if you don’t respect the land, if you get greedy. It almost happened when a bunch of workers were ordered to dig under it back in 59’. Only God knows why it didn’t collapse… That’s the kind of reasons why we revolted you know? We got tired of company men and industry barons using us like replaceable work animals.” The woman scratches a scar on her chin.  “But that’s not how things are done anymore.” She continues. “We are in charge now. And we know better than anyone else where and how to dig.”

“We’re arriving!” One of the miners, a redheaded fellow operating the machine who hadn’t spoken until that moment, shouts.

He is correct, the cage slows its descent, a gallery coming into view as it settles into the level’s anchoring with a metallic shuddering. It doesn’t look very different from the ones they had already passed by. A set of metallic arches kept it stable, and a mesh kept any pebbles from falling into it. Sturdy, dug out and built by people who indeed knew what they were doing and cared for their fellow men. The only thing that clues the eye in on the tunnel’s nature is how humid and new every surface looks. A fine layer of condensation covering the not-long-ago installed structure and light fixtures.

A voice at the back of Madison’s mind reminds her of how little such a newly minted and secure structure would mean against the kind of creature resting at the other end of the gallery.

They all stand there for a few minutes. Unsure of who should be the first one to step out of the cage and into the 150N tunnel.

It ends up being Randi himself, who considering his prior experiences, could have been forgiven for not even agreeing to being down there with them. But he is.

He is. And so he takes the first step of the platform and into the unfinished gallery.

But in time, and cautiously, they all make their way to the point of interest. It indeed just looks like a clay-red wall of jagged rock. But the smell of the (now mostly dried up) brown substance that covers the ground gives its true nature away. The mentioned drill is also still there, on the ground and visibly damaged by the often corrosive properties of Kaiju blood. 

Bridges takes samples of everything and anything that she could. Which would be sent out back to Monarch’s research facilities in the Lakes for testing. She even manags to convince the miners to break a sampling of one of the “scales” with a pickaxe, which takes them 5 five minute turns. All for a piece the side of a pebble.

And at no point do they register any seismic movement, any signal of any kind, nothing… And yet, the presence of it can be felt. Like a warship just beyond the fog.

“Well…” She sighs, letting out the stress which had built up for days and days since she had been chosen and debriefed for this mission. “I think I need to make some calls.”

18th of July, 1999
Monarch Outpost #125 “Knox”, Wyoming Valley Commune, Appalachian Workers' Union

Appalachians, Doctor Bridges had learned over the last six months, are some of the friendliest people as long as you are willing to work hard and toast with them whenever they drunkenly shout “death to the barons!” As such, her stay at Scranton has been a wonderful one so far.

Her job evolves into a simple one all things considered, keeping the outpost running, keeping tabs on everyone else’s research on “Argoth” and keeping relations with local authorities -if they can be be called that- running smoothly. A more managerial role borne from her being first there than anything else, practicality and little else really.

Today was just going to be an average day, deal with some paperwork, head down into the 150N with Randi -who had stuck around as her main aide- for a routinary security inspection on the new secondary tunnel around the arm…

Of course, she and everyone else on the outpost being huddled around one single screen on Lab 1.1 is a clear sign that today is no longer going to be routine. A shame, today could have been the day when Randi gathered the guts to ask her out.

Still, she remains silent, like everyone else, as Dr. Brooks explains why he’d gathered them all together.

“As you know, I was brought in to use my research in seismology to aid your efforts to non-invasively map out Daikaiju #070’s anatomy. And all I can say is…” The man moves to the side, giving them a clear view of the image on the screen. “Here are the results.”

The image iss, to say the least, striking. On a green, static-filled background that is meant to symbolize the surrounding rock matrix, laid  the red-coloured silhouette of an unnervingly humanoid silhouette. Like a body in a casket.

Unnerving, because the only human trait it possesses is its silhouette. They had already known its skin to be covered in red scales, what they hadn’t known was that the almost 15 meter tall Kaiju had also possessed large spikes and protuberances of the same material all over its body, jutting out of joints particularly often. Eight limbs in total could be counted attached to an anatomy far from an arachnid’s. While it possessed one set of arms and another one of legs similarly proportioned to those of human’s, it also has a secondary set of arms under the larger pair, and while they remain mostly obscured by the rest of the body, it also seemingly has a set of atrophied wings sprouting from its back. 

Draped around its legs, a robust and thickly ridged tail tipped with a spade-shaped mace rests. But its head becomes the main attraction soon enough. It looks, for a lack of a better word, demonic. Its mouth la bare human jawbone, and from the front of it jutting a set of nail-like teeth. It has a flat nose, like that of an ape or a pig, and surrounding its four eyes a set of six-sideways pointed horns. 

Most stand silent. They had spent months joining in on the local’s jokes about Argoth being some kind of demon. The more geeky ones had even compared it to a Balrog. But no one, not even Madison herself who had named him a purposefully demonic sounding name, had expected him to so unnervingly fit their in-jokes.

“It’s been there, laying down… Since when? The early fucking Permian?” One of the researchers mutters. “Why would it look like that, then?”

“Almighty Allah it’s been here all this time, sleeping with its eyes open?” Another one whispers.

“Well,” Madison is the first and only to speak out-loud. “The Congress is going to want to see this, and so will the rest of Monarch, so let’s get to work.” She takes a deep breath. “As fucked up as this looks… It means nothing.” She asserts. No one believes her.

“Or at least I hope it won’t.” She keeps to herself.

24th of January, 2000
Monarch Outpost #125 “Knox”, Wyoming Valley Commune, Appalachian Workers' Union

It is not lost to anyone involved that Argoth had awoken on the 22nd of January, exactly one year after Randi Casto wounded it the day of its discovery. 

It is not lost to Randi, who blames himself to the point that his fiance, Madison Bridges, has him interned into a psychiatric institution out of fear that the man will kill himself due to his vivid nightmares about the creature.

It is not lost to Dale Holt, Elmer Atkinson, Patty Ayers or any of the many other ex-miners of the River Slope mine, who had, in time, found themselves jobs in other mines, new positions on the Outpost or other professions altogether. For them, it had been bound to happen. A miner’s sixth sense if you will. The ability to sense future tragedies even if they could not stop them.

It is not lost on Monarch scientists, especially not to Doctor Bridges, who finds herself going to church the day after its awakening. For the first time since she’d been a child.

Most of Appalachia, all in all, is spared, starting with Scranton itself, which is evacuated via the Union’s beloved train lines as soon as the seismographs start sounding the alarms. For it turned out that Argoth is one of those Kaiju who have no interest in humans, meaning that the victims to his march southward arr counted in the dozens of accident, and not the thousands of sought-after victims.

Many do note how, despite this initial assessment, Argoth seemingly increases the speed and carelessness of his march down Appalachia as time goes on. As if restless. As if the Daikaiju cannot wait to arrive wherever it is trying to go.

Little has been seen of Argoth since he finally left the foothills of the southern Appalachians. But if the satellite footage of burning polities and the thousands of refugees flooding the Ohio River are anything to go by…

It seems like not even Hell Itself can stand the Confederacy.

Chapter Text

24th of February, 1955
Somewhere in the Far East, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

They starve, the cold has been biting at their flesh for many moons. There is no fat left in them, the bones of their last hunts before winter are clean, long ribs spearing the sky like pale dead trees, the rest of the bones, many as large as herself, dot the valley they have their dens in.

The dens, she had entered hers with her sisters, had eaten one half-a-moon ago, but she was already as thin as her by then all shinnew. Some part of her hunger-addled brain recognized that wasn’t normal, that wasn’t what mother had raised them to do.

But they had eaten mother two winters ago, as soon as they had reached her size.

She scratches her side with one of her back legs, her claws rake across her visible ribs.

She is hungry, so hungry, but the bones are all clean, and the rest are no more weak than herself.

She growls in pain, her stomach burns itself trying to find anything to eat. Some part of her brains, a leftover from before she was turned into what she is inside her mother’s womb, some small part of her tells her that this isn’t normal, that the after-winter hungers should never be this bad. That something, or everything, is wrong.

But the hunger pains and the bellows and roars of the rest of her kin in the carcass valley silence that dying voice.

Many have already left, pushing themselves into the expanses of thawing snow, de-icing rivers and mossy plains. She has not, she is too weak. Too hungry to do more than sleep and amble about smelling for rotting flesh that isn’t there anymore.

Then the wind blows, she feels it on her matted fur. It runs into the valley in a direction slightly different from usual.

Her wet, blood-splattered, nostrils take in a great gust of hair.

And she breaks into a run, climbing over boulder-sized vertebra and getting snapped at by the others.

It smells like something, it doesn’t smell like anything she ate last year. It doesn’t smell like the animals-who-are-too-fast or the animals-who-remind-her-of-mother. It smells like something that she doesn't know, everything else is gone, they hunted it all last year.

So she runs all the way up the ridge of the valley, her claws digging into the moss-covered rocks, and then she crests and launches herself downwards, her lanky, oversized limbs lose coordination and she almost loses control and almost tumbles down, but she runs faster and faster.

She doesn’t recognize the smell, but it smells like flesh.

Whatever it is, she can eat it.

25th of February, 1955
Verkhoyansk, Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

“I told you already I don’t give a single fuck about Yacovich.” Growled Major Nikiforenko, silencing one of his lieutenants’, Timofeyevich. “It is not my fault he was such a coward that he ran for some basement the moment we saw that thing, it’s bad enough I had to get the lot of you back in order and now you want me to pity him? To return for that insubordinate bastard?” He shouted over the gloomy atmosphere of the train car.

He had been forced to order a few of the rail workers to get him and his two companies out of Verkhoyansk at gunpoint over their reluctance to abandon the rest of their comrades, but the railcars, meant to transport construction equipment more than men, couldn’t have carried his soldiers, the workers and the locals out. 

And he… And his men of course, had priority over a pack of illiterate Siberians and meat-head Koreans. So he had gotten a hold of the train machinist and a few more and gotten the hell out.

“Bears and tigers.” He had been told. Some kind of rare concentration of man eaters due to an unusually harsh winter. Nothing a few hundred rifle men and patrols couldn’t have handled. They were there to guard workers as they laid steel rails and built wooden sheds and two stations. Not to die.

That thing had bitten through Tarasovich’s head, helmet included. He was not going to risk a second more out there.

“What the fuck was that?” One of the soldiers on the unlit wagon muttered, it was low, but since they were all as silent as corpses it was perfectly audible nonetheless.

“A demon, a fucking demon.” Another one shuddered.

“Don’t be stupid, demons aren’t real.” Another one, Commissar Tsitnikov, chastised. In any other situation the mayor would have been worried about a party commissar seeing him so bluntly high tail it. But Tsitnikov had been second just after him to board the train, so he wasn’t worrying about that for now.

Then the arguing started, the soldiers using it to release the tension.

“Then what the fuck was it? A bear?”

“Bears don’t get that big.”

“In Siberia yes they do.”

“No you fucking idiot, I’m from Chita, they don’t get that big.”

“My grandma was Siberian, she used to tell me about Baabgai-khun, they are bear men.”

“Are you trying to say that three of my fucking best friends just got gored by a fairy tail you son of a bitch.”

The arguing continued to escalate, Major Nikiforenko allowed it, too tired and shocked to do anything. He could feel Lieutenant Timofeyevich’s stare on him. Timofeyevich was one of the lieutenants on Captain Yacovich’s company. He still did not get why that coward’s men had liked him so much. It was beyond him how a coward who had fled for some hiding spot in the village at the first sight of that bear- thing could command so much respect.

But that didn’t matter anymore, the army would return, although hopefully not him, and would deal with those things properly.

The German army had not approached Stalingrad like some silent stalking predator. Obviously an entire army couldn’t achieve “stealth.” But Stalingrad has still been encircled, that was how wars worked. Knowing you were being attacked didn’t magically make you a better defender.

Similarly, the monsters had stalked the land around Verkhoyansk for weeks before the first proper attack that day. Both the disappearances of locals and missing patrols confirmed that. But that had not meant the riflemen had been able to deal with it when that skeletal monstrosity had smashed against a truck.

Anton’s father had been in Stalingrad that August of 43’. His father had sneaked out of the city, predicting what would go on to happen like a dog fleeing just before a natural disaster. He even managed to make up a story about an ambush convincing enough to avoid getting executed for desertion.

Anton ran the hell away the moment he got over the shock of a bear the size of a tank eating his comrades. Shouting for his men to scatter and find a hiding place.

“When the monster bares his teeth, boy, you run.” His father had told him, there was no glory in a losing fight, no matter how much the government spoke of glory.

Anton Yacovich wasn’t a coward, or a fool, so while his men had fled at the behest of that bastard Nikiforenko, he had run for one of the sheds in which the rail workers stored their equipment.

The entire city had turned into a silent graveyard by then. The train long gone and all the locals hiding in their homes. The silence was punctuated every now and then by short spans of the following cacophony:

Wooden walls splintered like twigs.

Screaming, crying and pleading.

Grunting and roaring.

And eating.

Then a few minutes later again, the sounds coming from all over the town around him, carried by the wind. No man should ever grow capable of recognizing the sounds of small bodies being bitten into, but there he was.

There were multiples of the things, a pack or simply separate animals attracted to a single food source. Anton did not care.

He had found his way to the right warehouse of the two. Sadly he was forced to scatter the people hiding inside at gunpoint, but the two warehouses were connected by a small door, so he was not forced to fully kick them out to their deaths.

Someone, at some point, had made the baffling decision to store the fuel, the train, and the two companies needed for their equipment and vehicles in the same warehouse. 

He took a pickaxe that he found there laying in the floor to each and every drum and canisters, even to the oil cans.  Sometimes when one would get stuck on the pick he would simply launch it backwards. At a pile of sawdust, or wooden planks for construction, or just at the walls. By the time he was done the ground was sloppy with the yellowish and dark liquid.

That someone, probably that idiot Timofeyevich, in charge of logistics had for some reason also put something else in the same warehouse.

The pantry.

A lot of it was dried and canned, sure, but the cans didn’t stop his pick, and the dried stuff was easy to mix with the fresh fish and meat.

That was when he heard the large sliding wooden doors into the warehouse being torn from their hinges and rails.

He also grabbed a bottle of vodka for himself. 

And ran. Climbing out of a window he was thankful to god existed and scampered into the roof.

They were under him, he could hear them, even see them entering, running into the walls with their disproportionate limbs. From the sound they were also biting at each other to find what smelled so good in the cramped space. Who knew doctor’s sausage was as appetizing as human flesh? 

He was sad to use his mom’s cotton scarf for this, but at least her departing gift would do him the greatest of services.

The molotov cocktail was ready, so he simply climbed down the side of the warehouse that seemed to have the least horrible sounds emanating from it, located a window, and employed his grenade throwing training from years ago.

He didn’t wait for it to land, simply turning around and booking it.

He was no arsonist, but the burning building was quite the fetching sight. Accentuated by the sounds of bear-like demons burning alive. One crashed out of the building, only to smash into an abandoned truck and get its burning body entangled with the canvas covering the truck’s bed, a fiery burial shroud wrapped around a crying body the size of a van.

“When the monster bares his teeth, you run.” His father had said. “Because if it wants to fight you, you don’t want to fight it, don’t allow it the advantage.”

Anton’s father was there, with the 21st Army, on the 19th of November thirteen years before. His father was there, healthy and well armed, to kill nazis by the thousands on the slopes around Stalingrad.

And when the only monster that hadn’t gotten trapped in the burning warehouse found him, Anton was there, baring his teeth. With a second cocktail on one hand and his Kalashnikov on the other, harnessed against his side.

It was a parody of a bear, enormous and gaunt. With lanky legs and overgrown and curling claws. It looked like a walking corpse with so little fat the skin of its chest wrapping around its ribs. Eyes sunken into a slobbering and drooling skull. What it had for fur was matted and maggot infested, dirty with grime and gore.

Anton greeted it with a bottle of contraband vodka to the head and a full cartridge of lead to the chest. It reared up and let out a furious roar, enough time for a second cartridge to the sternum. It was easy to be accurate when your target was that big.

Then it started galloping at him, and the shovel he had grabbed before leaving the (still smoldering) warehouse came out from behind his back.

“Bare your teeth, and don’t give them a chance to run.” He whispered to the cold win, like his father had in 43’.

31st of January, 1971
Vladivostok Naval Base, Primorsky Krai, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

“Comrade general, Chairman Kostyantyn Kirillovich is here to see you.” Saluted one of his aides. He waved for him to come in without looking up from the Sea of Okhotsk map he had been inspecting.

The steps weren’t very loud, barely perceptible on his office’s carpeted floor.

“General Yacovich, I’m honored you were able to make time for me.” Saluted the man in Ukrainian-accented Russian.

“Well,” Anton Yacovich’s eye looked up from the map and fully took in his visitor. “It is not every day the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR crosses the entire country to talk with me.” He commented.

“Ah, very true, I hope the privacy I spoke of in my original missive has not been much trouble?” The Ukrainian asked.

Yacovich got up and walked towards his desk, pointing at the phone in it. “The KGB has plenty ears here, but sadly they are mostly deaf, if you get what I mean, want some?” He pointed with his hand, the one that still had all five fingers, at the cabinet where his vodka and glasses were stored.

“Thank you, comrade, but I’ll have to decline.” Kostyantyn apologized.

That gave Anton pause.

“Ok, now you actually have my attention, what is it that you want little Russian?” Anton sat and pointed at another one of his chairs.

Once he had comfortably sat down, the chairman cleared his throat and asked. “How many men have you lost to Kaiju attacks this year General, I know this is one of our most active fronts.”

“Too many, next question.” Anton answered, he did not like that kind of sentimentalism, the soldiers under his command didn’t die for party chumps to use them as kicked puppies.

“What do you need to make them die less?” Kostyantyn changed his approach, quickly realized that he was talking with a rare kind of man.

A competent one.

“...” The Red Army officer looked at him. “What game are you playing at comrade chairman?”

“The party congress this year, that’s what I am playing at.” He answered

“Assuming I just heard right and I’m reading you correctly, what makes you think I can, or want to get you into the presidium?”

“Not the presidium.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to get myself a position in the Presidium, I don’t want to sit on the council of ministers I want to-”

“ARE YOU INSANE?! What you are about to say could get the both of us fucking killed!” Shouted Anton. “And maybe Ukraine can do without you but I’m sure as hell my replacement, who would be chosen by some cunt with a leather office chair in Moscow, would fucking destroy what I’m building!”

“That is exactly what I am talking about!” Spat Kostyantyn back. “It is insane, insane , that you, the only man who actually fucking knows how to deal with Kaiju and look at what you have to deal with, constantly scared more of some bureocrat than of things like that .” Kostyantyn pointed at the only trophy he kept in his quaint office.

The massive skull of his first (salvageable) Irkuiem , cracked and split on its crown, resembled that of a bear in the way that any mutated Kaiju’s skull resembled that of their natural counterparts, grotesquely.

“You killed that fucking thing by hand . They have written goddamn songs about you but what do I hear about? The Americans this, the Americans that! A turtle crawled out of the Black Sea and ate the Sevastopol port last year and they think the fucking Americans still matter, meanwhile don’t you think I have seen an army in a more ragged state than yours!”

“Whatever the fuck you want, need, to actually deal with those fucking monstrorisies, who are the actual biggest theat to the revolution, not the fucking yankees, I will give it to you, but in order to do that I need to have the power to change the Union for the better, and I need the help of people like you for it. You could point at a poisoned well and the entire Red Army would drink from it, and I need that kind of support if I want to come out of the party congress as Premier!” He was red in the face, meanwhile the general was silent. 

“I need trains.” He started. “And I need rail lines to move them through the Union, all over the union like a fucking cobweb, I need men who actually care about the people and places they are defending, I need actual researchers and not just the scraps I already get from the ministries and universities, I need actual specialized equipment, I need real collaboration with our allies… And I’ll need a lot of all those things, can you give them to me?”

“If in a few months I am who I want to be, you will be the firt Marshall of the Soviet Union to be in charge of everything surrounding his war.”

Anton nodded, went to his desk and started writing on a piece of paper. A few minutes later he gave it to the Ukrainian.

It was a list of locations and names.

“Go to these places, talk with these people… And when the congress starts, there will be a few extra armored trains in Komsomolskaya Square.”

“Thank you comrade general, believe me your great aid to the revolution will be paid back in full.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the revolution.” Said Anton as they shook hands. “But very much care for the USSR, and the people who are the Union, and if you are going to be helping my family tradition of keeping them safe… Well then we really do need to get you that comfortable chair don’t we?” He jested.

27th of February, 1955
Verkhoyansk, Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

When Major Nikiforenko returned to Verkhoyansk as the reluctant spearhead of a much larger force, the first thing that struck him was the fact that the Siberian town was still alive, albeit with a visibly reduced population.

The second was the set of burned buildings.

The third was the rotting bear carcass, the size of a tank, dead in the middle of the town square with a shovel embedded in its cranium.

The fourth was a punch to his face so hard that he felt multiple teeth dislodge from his jaw.

“Call me a fucking coward again and I’ll use you as bait for the next batch of those things that come here.” Spat a voice from on top of him, with a bandaged head and an even more heavily bandaged hand and arm.

“The rest of you, I’m your Major now. Now let’s get you trained, I’m done fucking running.”

Chapter Text

Daidō-807年4月9日
Somewhere in Musashi Province, State of Japan

Yoneda Osamu is a man used to walking. In fact, he would daresay that walking is something he is more dedicated to than even the Kami themselves. Maybe that speaks badly of his upkeep of his duties as a Shinto priest -well, an onshi really, little more than an acolyte- but Yoneda doesn’t have anyone to lie to as he continues walking along the beaten-earth path that crosses the particularly thick section of oak-and-beech forest he finds himself in.

And then he keeps thinking to himself, thinking in that almost self-speaking way that makes him mumble a word out every other phrase. Should he even call himself an onshi? He’s no-one’s -certainly no temple’s - acolyte, after all. In practice he’s as close to an unemployed homeless man as a member of the priesthood can be.

Does he bear some of the responsibility for his situation? He can suppose so. The fisherman might be casting the net… But it’s the fish who fails to avoid it, after all.

…

“Why am I calling myself a fish?” He grunts out loud, rubbing his own face to try and fight off his tiredness. He really should have stopped at the previous inn instead of trying to get ahead of his own schedule.

He really should have. 

Instead here he is, philosophizing to himself with the chilly winds of an april night as his only companion. Commiserating about the fact that he can’t force himself to actually settle down. It’s not like he is lacking in opportunity, shrines aren’t rare, not even in this tumultuous era of in-pouring foreign beliefs and thoughts. Every village, every ward and neighborhood, every mountain-strinp, hill forest and crossroad has a shrine. And any and all of those could benefit from a care-taking priest. A caretaker who would in turn live a comfortable and tranquil life by way of the offerings given to said shrine

But no, things can’t be that simple for poor old Yoneda Omasu.

They really will not be.

And it’s not as if he hasn’t tried! At his age of twenty-six, he’s visited and worked at more shrines and temples than he can remember -he used to keep track, he gave up three years ago- all up and down Honshū. To no avail. He can’t be accused of laziness either. As shaky as his faith has been for a few years now, that’s not made him skirt on whatever duties the gūji or kannushi he’s had served under assigned to him. Yoneda might be an expert at losing focus on his own thoughts, and a professional at failing to carry a conversation or study. But he can hyperfixate on menial tasks like you wouldn’t believe.

A useful quirk, but not one that will help him tonight.

Yoneda keeps walking, trying to use what little light his lamp gives off to discern the distance to the next inn as depicted in his worn-down and long-used map. Of course, it’s that moment when  a gust of wind choses to make itself apparent. And the map goes flying from the young man’s limp grip, fluttering in the wind and disappearing between the trunks of trees.

He follows, of course, hurriedly leaving the trail as he lets out a grunt of frustration. He trots with irate tiredness, his sandals crunching on the dew-moistened leaf-litter as he enters the forest.

There we go.

He barely manages to keep an eye on the piece of cheap fluttering paper as he winds between trunks and under branches, disturbing the small animals inhabiting the forest as he does so.

But he does catch up. Luckily, the map gets stuck on a standing rock between a couple of beeches, fluttering as the -now weaker-wind keeps it somewhat pinned.

“Thank Fūjin, he could have made this so much harder.”

And he goes and prays to one of his man-gods. What insolence.

Yoneda kneels down to grab the map and start folding it, doing so with the help of a few rays of moonlight piercing through the canopy and into the forest. By doing so, he removes the map from the stone, giving himself a clear view of it .

Pain.

Pain, a deep pain.

A pain that rattles bones and scrambles brains, a pain that makes intestines and stomachs both let loose, a pain that makes the senses become unbearable and every muscle both tense and strengthless.

He-

The rock-

It looks like-

I would deign to tell you my name, or perhaps one of my epithets. But I don’t think your soul could handle that.

And the world explodes. It explodes around   Yoneda, contorting in unnatural ways, with hills rolling over themselves and trees tiring inside out to gain canopies of roots. The world twists and squishes like a piece of raw dough until whatever is reshaping it is satisfied. That satisfactory relocation leaves the Shinto “priest” by the trail-side once more.

But not the trail he had been walking, no.

Too easy, any spirit can do that.

The road stretching before him is well-wider than any avenue he has ever seen and long enough to go from horizon to horizon. The flat surface of the road is marked with bone-white streaks, which contrast with rough blackness of the strange seamless stone which makes it up. All details made easily visible thanks to the ribcage of iron rods flanking the road, each and everyone tipped with flameless lights of an eerily cold blue.

Behold the Yami no Kami, mortal.

Before Yoneda can process anything else, he hears a sound like a cauldron boiling over, so loud it makes his bones rattle and his ears hurt enough to wince about. So loud that he can’t help but look at its source.

There, on a southern horizon where there shouldn’t be an ocean, the world boils. Roiling waves of blood-tinged water bubble and froth with geysers as talls as the tallest pagoda.

And then, the first demon emerges.

The three-horned head spears out of the oceanic broth with a deep and resonating roar streaming from its fanged, raw and lipless maw as even more flameless light streams out in rays between the inward-curving teeth. Of the horns, two bull-like brow-horns drip with water while the one on the nose -brutally shaped like a thick and curved speartip- drains gutter’s worth of salty seaspray. The monster doesn’t as much swim as it wades, for despite its reptilian appearance it moves like a heavyset man in a bath, pawing as it moves forward with arms a mix of gray and limb-covering plates and pulsating ropes of skinless muscle, more of the body becomes revealed as the monster reveals itself to be as tall as a mountain, with a lower body as armored-rawed as the upper, and a solid tail drags, spikes like those of a kanabō mace. As it keeps walking through the road -somehow not cracking it- the shifting perspective reveals two massive spikes growing from its back, each decorated with a dozen boils full of honey-colored liquid which shines like a bonfire.

It looks down on Yoneda, his left eye bleeding.

Then the water explodes, this time with the trashing of a mass bigger than any whale beaching itself. The creature, of four legs yet with a head like that of a fish, glints with the shine of a fish squad as the fins growing from its back limply flap. The sea-beast tries to stand up and fails multiple times, only managing to support the weight of its massive and neckless fish-face on the fourth attempt. The thing takes desperate gulps of hair as its gills quiver, but it manages to follow along as tendrils of formless flesh drag behind it. 

It looks down on Yoneda, there’s no intelligence behind its yellowish and cloudy eyes as it collapses on the opposing ditch to him, clearing the road.

When the ocean explodes next, what exists it spears the sky like a lance meant to kill Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto. But then the spear distends like a parasol, becoming an eight-tipped star of talons. From a six-limbed arthropod body grow segmented legs ending in three-taloned hands, each limb connected to the rest by a thin pink membrane acting like a facsimile wing as the limbs wave in quick succession. A long serpentine neck ends in a mix of a bat and a barracuda’s head, long fox ears fluttering as much as the sails and rudder-tail behind the animal. With unexplainable grace the thing glides the length of the road.

It doesn’t see him as it continues to move, following the first demon.

If Yoneda has thought the sea tinged with spilt blood, what happens then probes him a fool for daring to even think anything under such conditions. The dark ocean goes from tinged with blood to resembling a butcher-shop’s gutters. Frothing blood-waves make clots the side of barges break and reform, trying to cling to each other as a thin horn of onyx darkness -one unstained by the blood- pierces it. Soon after two more horns emerge, curving and back-swept. And then the rest of the body of the hunch-backed monster. This one -like the first of all- walks on two long legs, but with a short tail making it much more man-like. An oni whose sleek black wings cling to its broad arms and whose tail is atrophied marches as flayed skin bleeds under the moonlight’s gaze. As it moves along the path, waterfalls of blood cascade between its chitinous and disconnected pieces of armor. Puddles of it land on the road and soak into it until it is so saturated that streams begin forming, the blood makes the bases of the metallic and light-giving spikes sizzle.

A puddle of blood splatters before Yoneda, sprinkling him. His nose becomes only capable of smelling the iron tanginess of it. The drops that land on him burn cloth and skin away, seeping into him.

By comparison, what emerges next is almost tame. It clearly shares parentage with it fellow Demon s by-

DEMON.

Demon by way of once more sporting three horns and walking in the way a bear, a man or an oni would. But it is smaller. Its skin is neither flayed nor made of uncovered muscle, instead pieces of red and black armor leave no seams as to make it possible to see what may lie beneath. Its tail swings with neither armor nor spikes, instead being tipped in a cow-like tuft of blonde hair. The shapes protruding from its back are far less than wings, far less than even the honey-bulbed shapes on the first form’s back. Smaller, yes but it is indeed bulbed, much moreso, enough that the wound-less boils run down much of the length of its back.

It looks down on the acolyte with eyes burning like the heart of a forge, the hair in his frail human body sizzling away.

The sounds of the world become unknowable to Yoneda Osamu as a clarioning trumpet heralds the end of the world. A trumpet made of flesh, a snake-like neck of ringed flesh growing out of a lumbering animal's face. Its skin is lightly haired like that of a pig, but gray with the exception of a mane of pure-white hair which ruins down its back and lines its ears. Massive and wide ears that curl around the head like a shroud, making it as if the beast has no neck. The trumpeting, headless snake moves around with a mind of its own, grabbing at empty hair with concentric rings of teeth quivering at its tip and underside. The latter run down its entire length until they become the fangs of an over-bitting upper jaw from which two massive tusks of unblemished marble jut out. 

Diminutive eyes of emerald green stare down at him as a massive bear-paw comes up to swat away the snake-nose when it tries to swallow him whole. It trumpets away and breaks his ears once more, this time so much so that his brains feel as if they are beginning to dribble out. 

Bagan the Many-Faced Monster, Art by Connor Ricks.

Again a spear breaches the ocean, this time one of a pale and yellowish complexion, unfurling itself into the form of a strange bat-winged dragon with a head resembling a chimera of a hound and a reptile’s. It snarls as it flies higher and higher in a desperate race against itself, propelled by clawed wings. Like that of the fish-demon, tentacles and tendrils of formless flesh limply hang from its hindquarters and tail, the weight of them all dragging it down until it loses all momentum and stops gaining altitude. Seconds later it collapses into a heap of broken bones and twisted limbs by the side of the choking legged fish. Somehow, there is no blood.

It doesn’t look at Yoneda, it is dead. But he does spy deflated yellow eyes like those of the fish among the mangled shape of yellowed fur.

Once more -and for the final time- three horns wound the water’s surface to allow their wilder a way into the unbreakable road. This time the creature is so hunchbacked that the hunch makes up the practical totality of its torso. A torso -and body- of white chitin seaming with ropes of pulsating and light-irradiating green flesh. The tip of its tail madly whips about, tipped as it is with a glaive-like blade, as it moves. Where more green flesh should be some areas instead grown frazzled blonde fur -at its wrists, neck, ankles the sheath of the weapon-like tail tip it grows- like weeds between the cracks in a stone. All three horns twist and convulse -this time one at the nose but two at the base of the lower jaw- due to the twisting of the verdant musculature which roots them.

If he weren’t busy losing his mind, the human man may have been able to tell the strangely backwards and disarrayed metamorphosis of the three horned oni. Instead, all he sees is the mirth of ruby-red eyes.

For the last time -again- a monster takes to the skies. One with a spider’s legs for wings and web-like membranes connecting the claw-tipped limbs. A skeletal body -literally, the demon's skeleton is the outside of its body- reveals guts and internal connective tissue made up of honeycomb-like pockets of black and orange flesh. The face of a featherless owl opens incredibly wide as flames spew from a beaked-fanged jaw and tongue-like hears tasty the night sky.

The more he stares into the honey-combed meat, the more bile rises from his throat until the vomit simply spews forth.

Finally, trampling its way out of the water like a charging bull, breaches out the demon’s last form. Its movement is uncoordinated and stumbling as its upper half by far outsizes the lower. The ape -for it can be nothing else- is almost all chest.  A hairless chest of protruding ribs, ribs all the way up and down. Including the six which horizontally break out of the head like horns. The ape roars, showing off yellowed teeth in a flat and indescribably angry face.

The ape suddenly veers off course, slamming itself into the roadside cadaver ward that is the “dragon’s” landing site and the “fish’s” deadbed. As it does so, it turns away from the mortal man.

Revealing a back covered in meat and boneless tendrils. 

What is worse? The roars of agony or the sight of melting meat and integument?

The bodies contort into each other, melting and cracking as tendrils wrap around each other, skins melt and heads crack each other. The dead dragon remains dead, yet its head spasms and cries out. The fish’s gills let forth black blood. The ape’s legs eat themselves away.

A massive shape rises, one full of roaring mouths and with the head of a lion bull. And then it collapses under its own weight. The bodies trying to pull away from each other and pulling each other in like crabs trying to escape a boiling pot.

Always a hassle, this form.

For the first time, Yoneda Osamu gathers enough willpower to look away from the monstrosity that birthed itself in front of him. He makes the mistake of looking in the direction the sea-born road had led to.

How had he missed a city made out of glass and steel?

A city of spires so tall they stan the night sky. A burning city shrouded in plumes of fire and smoke so tall and voluminous that they even hide the outlines of the many demon brutalizing it.

LOOK AT ME.

His eyes -the one that still works, in any case- twists within his skull to look back at the demon while his head and neck remain locked in place. It does so with such force that his optic nerve starts building out of the eyesocket’s opposite corner. Its haunches are the body of the legged fish, its massive and unemotive face looking down at him from the groin. Its chest and arms are those of the bald ape, its face roaring at him with a sternum that is a maw. Wings unfurl and neck vertebra unbreak themselves as the long draconic neck clack-clack-clacks itself back into a “natural” position.

Six eyes look down on him, three maws speak.

I AM BAGAN, I AM DEMON BEAST. I AM PHANTOM. I AM GOD OF DARKNESS.

I AM BAKAN, I AM DEMON BEAST. I AM PHANTOM. I AM GOD OF DARKNESS.

I AM VAGAN, I AM DEMON BEAST. I AM PHANTOM. I AM GOD OF DARKNESS.

Finally -blessedly- the man’s remaining eye implodes.

I AM THE MANY-FACED. 

AND YOU WILL BRING ME INTO YOUR WORLD.

SMASH THE STONE.

I AM THE MANY-FACED. 

AND YOU WILL BRING ME INTO YOUR WORLD.

SMASH THE STONE.

I AM THE MANY-FACED. 

AND YOU WILL BRING ME INTO YOUR WORLD.

SMASH THE STONE.

Reiwa-4年7月20日
Ryūsenji Buddhist Temple, Meguro City, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan

“I hope you have some reason better than praying to bring us here, brother.” The man in the army uniform -a general- groans as men in irregular uniforms secure the perimeter around the temple. Its keepers already dealt with.

“When have I ever disappointed you?” Another man -one that looks almost identical to the first with the exception of a navy uniform- ruefully smiles.

“Constantly.”

The naval brother laughs. Behind the both of them, crews begin the demolition of one of Buddhist Japan’s most treasured sights.

“Did I miss anything?” A third -similar- voice asks. The others are unsurprised by the arrival of the man in an air general. They heard his helicopter land on the complex’s outskirts minutes ago.

“No, we still have a while to wait. Any news from Otōto?”

“You know the mech-heads, can’t do anything without their little marshal.”

“Any indication that intelligence is onto him?”

“None. If they did, I assume they would have given him a convenient way to come here to get all of us.”

“So we are in the clear?”

“Yes.”

Second time’s the chance, ey?

The three men are soon walking into the half-deconstructed main structure of the Ryūsenji Buddhist Temple. They all know of its history. And considering what they are here for, they all know of its real history.

According to every last history book on the topic, the site had been constructed at the orders of Jikaku Daishi, a priest of the Tendai school of Buddhism and father of much of Japan’s -both esoteric and layman’s- Buddhism.

The temple, in theory and appearance, had been consecrated to Fudō-myōō. A wrathful deity, one of the great protectors of the Dharma and primus inter pares of the “deities” of japanese buddhism. 

“Homage to all Tathāgatas, the omnipresent doors, who are in all directions! traṭ. O violent one of great wrath! khaṃ. Root out, root out every obstacle! hūm traṭ hām mām.” Read the discarded mantras. The army-man spits over a discarded effigy of the deity as if it were trash.

Wrath, perhaps of them all the best suited to try and contain me.

But these three men know the truth. They have read it.

They have read it from the withered pages of the last tome in existence of Master Osamu’s masterwork

“Parade of the Thousand-Faced Demon.”  

A text forgotten by history as little more than a buddhist-hating esoteric shintoist. A vagrant who had obsessed over breaking into the guarded perimeter of the Ryūsen-Ji over his entire life until one such failed attempt had left him wounded for death.

Not a text hidden or censured. Simply one forgotten due to a rarity born of a book’s worst enemy: Disinterest. Any who could have read its contents would have found little more than a curiosity within. A -supposed- biographical narration of the blind and mad monk’s encounter with a stone binding a great demon. And the promised might one could harness from releasing it.

But one which had found itself one last safe haven in the entirety of earth in the form of a small officer’s personal library of antiquities.

The office of one general Kirishima. Father of General Kirishima, General Kirishima, Admiral Kirishima and the missing Marshal Kirishima.

One might have raised concerns about little boys reading books on esoteric demonology for much of their childhood and then jumping straight into officer’s academies. But their father certainly hadn’t.

“So… Do we just blow it up?”

“We could. But I feel we should introduce ourselves first.”

Three of them? And good mannered? I am being spoiled rotten tonight…

“Well then, let's get on with it.” General Kirishima states as the three walk around to form a triangle around a piece of tarp  laid on top of a very specifically exploded borehole in the middle of the desecrated temple.

“One…”

“...Two…”

…

“...Three!”

Let’s hope you three are made of sterner stuff than the last one, shall we?

From the temple’s outside, the militias hear the unsettling noise of three men crying out in a pain that is of the body, of the mind and of the s-

I think I will be keeping that last one, actually…

Chapter Text

30th of March, 2003
Casto-Bridges Household, Scranton, Wyoming Valley Commune, Appalachian Workers' Union

Doctor Madison Bridges should be at work. She feels that -now of all times- her insight into Argoth’s biogeological nature would be key to unraveling what may be actually going on.

But no, she is “compromised” and that apparently means paid leave for the time being. She’s not blind, she’s seen the apprehensive stares of all of her fellows at the Outpost for the last few days. She understands the logic of it but…

Pearl walks out of Madison’s own kitchen, a coffee mug in each hand.

“Here you go hon.” She offers one.

“Thanks.” She takes a sip.

“You know,” Pearl settles down. “Dale got a call from one of his cousins yesterday.”

“Yeah, she moved to New York… I wanna say five years ago, but it might have been less. She’s thinking about moving back home. Work has just kept drying up over there since the Panama fiasco and Dale and I heard on a radio show that the shipping companies are thinking of switching routes over to Canada to minimize time at sea.”

“She’s a dockworker?” Madison asks absentmindedly.

“Forklift operator, yeah. A couple of her flatmates are also moving up somewhere on the Saint Lawrence, and she can’t trust that someone else will move in fast enough to cover that chunk of rent.”

“Seems pretty obvious that she will be moving back up then, why did she call Dale? Looking for work?”

“Not really, no, although it’d be easy, what’s hurting her business is really helping her, with the dependence on landlocked trade and all that… No, she wants to spend a few weeks with us while she gets her affairs in order. Breaking the news to her parents too, she didn’t leave on the best terms with them…”

“Yeah, I know how that feels…” Madison answers. almost on instinct.

…

“Oh honey I’m so-” Pearl goes to correct her words.

“It’s ok.” Madison rubs her temple. “I… God, as if the last few years hadn’t been enough.”

“I just… I hope he is ok…” She tries to make herself smaller on her seat, her brain going over the really ugly argument they had had after their “conversation” with the KIA official.

“He will be, Randall is made from strong stuff.”

“You know that’s not true. He was a nervous wreck when I met him and he’s been inside and outside of the psych ward twice since we got married.”

“Maddy I don’t think-”

“I love him. Randall has made living here worth it. But let's not kid ourselves. I married a broken man and no fixing has happened.”

“I-”

“You have it so easy, you know? I get it, Appalachia of the people, for the people, all cool and nice in your worker communes. Except that all breaks down when your issues are a grain of sand more complicated than ‘I need to find a job’. And you know it.”

“We try our best to take care of eachother.”

“No, you don’t, you try your best to keep things running. I get it, this place was a shitshow before the revolution to the point that your kids getting childcare for free at the local library feels like this amazing breakthrough. But that’s the bare minimum Pearl. That’s what we should have had from the start if the USA hadn’t been such a bloated corpse. You know we have to pay for Randi’s meds out of pocket? Cause we do. Wanna know why?  Because for all your fancy realnetworks and modernized mines, not a single place that even makes meds outside of those compounding pharmacies.”

“My cousin Pete works in one of those.”

“And would you trust him -week after week for three years- to keep Dale’s mental stability on check?”

“Not really… No.”

“Fuck…” Madison leaves her mug on the coffee table. “It’s just… He’s tried too hard, been so open about it for so long that… We thought it was just trauma, that keeping him with all his family and friends and the only work he’s even done would help ground us. Not like my pay didn’t help, obviously but… It’s been hard… Hard enough that… He looked hopeful . They told him that the images he sees every time he closes his eyes are real and that made him hope .”

“My pop said, from back when everything collapsed, that people fleeing north looked amazed by the fact that he didn’t charge them for gas at his place. Poisoned fish swimming into clean water, he called it. Randi’s been dealing with so much shit that maybe an answer, even if it fixes nothing, will be enough.”

“Yeah… I think I’m going to church tomorrow.” Madison tries to shift gears, the local Baptist church had been great to her. Who could have told her that she’d rekindle her spirituality in a country made up of syndicalist communes of all places.

“Hope not to share and tell. People with demons in their heads don’t have a good track record in the church.”

Madison gives out an ugly laugh, the kind people let out when they use meanness to release tension. “You are such a bitch.”

“I’m a lumberjack, what’s your excuse?”

…

“Are they… Letting you call him?”

“They gave me a number but…”

“Yeah…”

31st of March, 2003
Fort Defiance, South-Illinois Province, Great Lakes Republic

“Yeah so,” The relaxed driver speaks. “Place used to be called Camp Defiance during the 1st Civil War,once we get there you’ll see that the Mississippi and the Ohio actually meet here, a really nice view. Obviously strategically useful if you want to control either rivers with it being so to the south and so low on a river fork.”

“You are taking me to an… Eighteenth century fort?”

“We will be staying at the mobile camp we have built on the area, but yes, the irony of the situation isn’t lost to us.” A second voice speaks from the copilot’s seat. “We will try to make your stay here with us as comfortable as possible, Mister Casto.”

The voice belongs to a gaunt man, the very same canadian accent-having skeleton figure on a KDF officer’s uniform -no national distinctives of any kind- who had introduced himself as “Agent Ashmedai.”

The KIA -Kaiju Intelligence Agency- it seemed, was extremely fond of their secrecy even by Kaiju Defense Force standard.

“Is there any particular reason why we are here, then?”

“We are directly on the Great Laker border with the Confederacy, but… I will admit it is most likely that the specific location might have been chosen by someone with a rather morbid sense of humor.”

“I… Am not exactly comfortable with that.”

“I apologize for that, but this truly is a location appropriate for our tests to be carried out in. Especially considering how lightly populated the area is, in case anything goes wrong.”

“And that test is…”

“I think,” The truck begins slowing down. “We are about to show you, Mr.Casto.”

1st of April, 2003
Atlanta, Godly State of Georgia, The Golden Confederation of American States

The massive digitigrade foot slams down into the semi-trailer’s roof, instantly crushing it like a crumpled can under a footballer’s cleats, massive recurved claws acting like spikes. The man inside the truck’s cabin goes to exit it, screaming as he opens the door, before even more violent movement shakes him back inside as the door swings closed. The foot rises to take another step, with the large vehicle still stuck to it, dragging it forward just enough that when the next footfall happens, the can is also trapped underneath.

The truck is far from the first victim of the massive shape moving down the city, following the tarmac causeway created by what once had been called the Interstate 75. This piece of engineering had once been a long highway connecting American cities from Michigan to Florida. Now it’s been appropriate by men of ill report to move their goods -which, sadly, include human beings-  from Tennessee to Georgia and back again. 

Well, with all accuracy, right this very moment serves as little more than a footpath for a twenty-four meter tall monster of boiling blood and searing skin.

Argoth, colloquially known as Dixie-scourge in these misbegotten parts of the world, moves along the arterial road at his own leisurely pace. Every now and then one of the Kaiju’s four arms will rise, grabbing hold of some building’s cornice and pulverizing it into a handle. Or his spaded tail, swishing absentmindedly only to slam into some face and killing everyone three rooms deep on some unlucky medium-height  floor.

His wings, thankfully, do little more than flap in a tick-like way, stoking flames and wiping up clods of smog and debris, making his own upper body into this reddish and enshrouded bulk of spines and teeth.

The Kaiju continues to cross the city, underneath his three-clawed feet rocks are torn to shreds and fleeing pedestrian mobs are forced to avoid both his inexorable movement and the cars of those trying to flee. The local police have not managed to evacuate the city in time, that much is obvious. Willful ignorance, incompetence or an earnest breakdown, it does not matter, the people of the city will die, will be wounded and will be displaced by the thousands upon thousands.

And so Argoth, ever silent and ever stoic, moves along the city. A few attempts, by way of the plentiful arms owned by the local population, are made to distract or wound him. They all fail, there’s little a rifle can do against something that, once, had taken an industrial drill to prick.

Yet, something does assail the great daemon. It’s not something from the outside, as yet another highway bridge makes him stumble by offensively daring to collapse under his weight. It is not something from outside, as another oversized and under-useful pickup truck carrying men with more shells than brain cells veers away after failing to hurt Argoth by way of surplus grenades older than their sons.

What assails Argoth in this -for him- peaceful and average springtime night, is something from within.

A nagging, little, foreign thing it is. A thing that has not existed for long in his mind, barely a blip in an existence so long that it barely bothers to take time into account when it ponders existence.

But for how much of a short blip it has been so far, it has certainly been a loud one. An incessant mangle of thoughts, ideas, emotions and biological signals, all of which make no sense to a being such as Argoth. But as unexplainable as they are, they do have an effect. They are rocks rippling a pond, a starling instigating his murmuration to change shape, the first raindrop of a downpour. 

It’s a little presence, one that feels an undulating anguish but which weakens when Argoth sunders the blue cross. One that becomes muted during the day and when the trains are breached and factories cracked. One that, deep below the earth that is the human mind, holds a core of hate for that which Argoth tramples.

Not tonight.

Tonight… Tonight the mess of messages and concepts is focused. Only as focused as a human mind can be when compared to something like Argoth’s. But it is grating. It is…

The kaiju comes to a stop near a large building dommed with gold, and begins to climb it. The structure mostly collapses under him, but the pile of rubble proves sufficient.

Because, as that focused little intelligence marks one final and exhausting effort…

Argoth goes from staring with his four burning eyes into the thing he doesn’t know is called the I-75, to pivot slightly just enough to stare into a nothingness in the southeastern horizon.

A name in a language his brain isn’t meant to comprehend is shouted out in a weak but endless echo.

The name of a city.

The name of a target.

When Argoth begins walking again, his trajectory changes so slightly that none of the humans around him -mostly occupied with dying and fleeing- don’t notice.

2nd of April, 2003
Fort Defiance, South-Illinois Province, Great Lakes Republic

Randi wakes up with a startled gasp and into the sight of half a dozen people huddling around his bed. It’s not been a comfortable sleep, and he’s not even thinking about the small, metal tubing-framed bed that was made available for him in the prefabricated building’s observation room.

Observation of him, that is, something about tracking his neural activity during sleep and tracking it to… Whatever kind of connection he’s long refused to admit he has with that demon .

But then, as he tries to incorporate himself and is stopped by hurried hands from doing so, he catches onto a novelty completely disconnected from the alien and sterile room. The voices of the people around him are muffled, he barely reacts as they shine lights into his eyes and try to make him answer trivial questions.

He’s… Alone.

For the first time in years, he feels alone in his body.

That… Is not something that would make sense to anyone else. Believe him, he spent years trying to get psychologists and psychiatrists to understand. Humans are just not equipped for the concept of “There’s something massive and boiling in my head that thinks everyone that exists around me is insignificant, no, I am not bipolar or psychotic.”

For once he wakes up and his eyes aren’t blurry with the afterimages of places and actions he wasn’t there for. All his ears hear are the sounds of what is actually happening in the room. His body feels hot, but only as hot as a feverish human body is supposed to be.

It’s… It feels great .

Eventually, he begins to respond to the orbiting medics and doctors, giving them the confirmation they wanted that actually trying to interact with Argoth -as opposed to trying by way of every drug legally available to shut him out- has borne some kind of result. Among those results he does make ecstatic mention of the fact that he is -for now- not feeling like something horrible is trying to shed and shred him on its way out. But he is pretty sure that they are much more excited about the other side of the experiment.

It takes a few hours before they leave him alone, but only so his new “friend” can escort him into a separate room, an office, well past midnight. It is one illuminated with yellow and flickering fluorescents and homing dozens of mobile and wall-mounted cork boards. Said cork boards are covered with papers which make perfect sense in context, yet are fully unsettling.

Maps, from as wide as the entirety of southeastern North America to as small and detailed as towns. Photographs of… Of the long-gone River Slope mine and many others across his commune of origin. Of Outpost #24…

Of himself, from an old album from trade school to MRIs of the inside of his skull.

“Mr.Casto, if you may?” the skeletal agent gestures for one of the maps, one laid out in a metal table instead of tacked to the walls. It’s one of those “general” maps with a bit of everything, roads, little city names, rivers and conservation areas, internal borders.

A map of Dixieland, one detailed enough to include the jagged and constantly shifting  “borders” on all sides of the ethnostate. The map is chock full of little black squares, which seem to not coincide with any of the other symbols for population centers, military bases, airports and others…

Before he can ask about it, Agent Ashmedai points at one other thing. On the large map rest three items. A little chess piece-like piece of black plastic and two photographs. The little toy, likely from some game or children’s show he is not familiar with, is four armed, leaving no doubt as to what it represents. It is placed so that it almost fully covers the name “Atlanta” on the map, and from its base a dotted arrow point southeast.

The two images…

“Aerial photographs from a spy plane, he’s changed trajectory, but our experts think… Not enough.”

The photographs indeed show a “small” shape -a bipedal Kaiju isn’t much to look at from a zenithal angle- followed by a trail of landmarking gouges and plumes of smoke.

“I…” Randi goes to speak as he tries to swallow the irrefutable proof.

“We may need further sessions to influence him enough to truly follow the planted suggestions, but…”

“I think… I tried to make him think of Savannah. But he doesn’t understand what a Savannah -what a city- is, I think I need to be less abstract.”

“Does that mean that you are willing to go under again? We will still need to wait a few days to collect data and analyze it.”

“I… I can do it.” He says, speaking not of how today is the first time in months he feels rested from sleep.

6th of May, 2003
Savannah, Godly State of Georgia, The Golden Confederation of American States

Argoth does not reach the city of Savannah on his lonesome. But he certainly doesn’t do so at the head of an army either. 

No, what the coal-hearted Kaiju encounters when he tramples the edges of the city’s suburbs is that he has been outspeed. 

Scylla, as humans had baptized her, is not a Kaiju new to the terrified eyes of the local humans. She is single-handedly -in fact- responsible for a years-long exodus of thousands of confederates -and their slaves- inland.

But those same people had been the ones to flee back to the coast after hearing of Argoth’s march to the sea. Leaving them trapped after the spider-like Kaiju’s sudden appearance off the coast of Ossabaw Island.

And so, thousands upon thousands of refugees had piled up into the already sizable city of Savannah’s urban sprawl. Escape routes still exist, that much is obvious, as while the inland roads would have sent them back into Argoth’s path, and the routes across the Savannah River had had all their bridges toppled by Scylla…

There were still the roads heading down towards southernmost coastal Georgia. And those roads?

They, this very moment, are clogged into a logistical nightmare.

Because they are the very same roads the Confederate military had been using to enter the city and give battle to the two Kaiju. 

Luckily for them, both creatures had seen each other across the vast landscape of Dixieland’s coastal plains. The two Kaiju could not have been any more different as they had approached each other. One, a humanoid straight out of some renaissance artits’s painting of the hells. The other, a chimeric mix of nautiloid and arachnid. The latter towered far above the former by way of massive spindly legs.

There had not been a long ot tense standoff, Scylla had not even stopped using her tentacles to snatch up fleeing humans into her many-beaked mouth. And Argoth had barely even slowed his stride.

But eventually… They do clash.

Among the shaking and wavering husks of unrecognizable buildings, arms grapple tentacles. As debris flies off like gunshot pellets, staking legs tangle with a brazing tail. A lipless face full of needle-like teeth snarls as it fails to pierce a shell of gargantuan chitin. Beaks breach bloodstone skin, only to be doused in blood so hot it explodes into boiling clouds as soon as it leaves the arteries.

The two monsters grapple each other into a stalemate as the suffering of those below heightens.

Each wound on Argoth’s body brings forth clouds of searing and metallic fog.

Each roar from Scylla brings forth clouds of a different virulence, green mists which settle with an acidic touch on anything made of flesh, the remnants of microscopic predators long gone from anywhere but the symbiotic chambers of gigantic predators.

Red and green, boil and pestilence, engulf the city of Savannah as if they were the plumes of some flameless fire.

Eventually, however, it will become clear to both monsters that neither is strong enough. 

Argoth lacks the size to topple Scylla.

Scylla lacks the strength to tear Argoth down.

By the time the day ends, both Kaiju, wounded but alive, will retreat.

Scylla will retreat downriver and up north, Charleston in her sights.

Argoth will once more follow that naggin voice.

Straight into the confederate armies and refugee columns.

8th of April, 2003
Fort Defiance, South-Illinois Province, Great Lakes Republic

News had been streaming in for days, news and footage. Including that of reactions. Randi had heard that very morning a rerun of some Detroit comedian’s late night show, cracking jokes about Old Sherman’s ghost “going for a second serving.”

It had made him sick.

“What is… Going to happen from now on?” Randi stares into the mirror decorating the side of one of the cabinets in his room. Seeing a pale but fully human face staring back somewhat reassures him.

“Well, we do need to carry out further tests to prove exactly how this connection works, and how much fidelity and accuracy there is to it. But that will take years, and this is not the kind of outpost set up to operate for years.”

“Then?”

“Outpost #24 is on the waiting list for some renovations, it will be easy to slot some expansion plans into those, a new wing to the main building, nothing showy. That is, if you are willing to further collaborate.”

“What do you mean?”

“ We are not the ones in the business of indentured service, Mr.Casto. We will not be forcing you to deal with and interact with Argoth anymore than your inherent connection already does. But if you agree to collaborate with us, we can do great work together.”

“You want to make a weapon outta me.”

“That depends on whether you consider tank drivers or artillery spotters weapons…”

“There’s children in those cities, people powerless to act on what the confeds are doing, the hundreds of thousands of people they keep leased. Argoth will not make distinctions, I will have their blood on my hands.”

“Mhhh, can I ask you a personal question?”

“You might as well.” Randi fails to joke.

“What do you think of your homeland?”

“I… I am not patriotic, not really, but I think we have the right idea about how people should deal with each other.”

“I think you don’t, frankly.” Agent Ashmodai speaks. “I think your mode of government is extremely cumbersome and inefficient by way of overcorrecting the old inefficiencies. And that your revolutionary fervor is only skin deep, judging by how little effort you’ve made to help the destitute beyond your southernmost borders.”

“Hey!”

“However!” The man continues to speak. “I do agree that you Appalachians share in a universal trait of humankind.”

“What?”

“Basic. Decency.”

“Uh?”

“Humans, as much as it hurts us to accept, are inherently social and amicable things. Put me in a room with anyone from across the Iron Curtain and we will find at least one thing to have an amicable chat over. In fact, I think it takes active work to make a person not-decent.”

“Where are you heading with this?”

“You are not being asked to kill children and prisoners, Mr.Casto. You are being asked to test whether it is possible to turn something inherently monstrous against something that has made itself monstrous.”

“I will have blood on my hands.”

“I’m sure my superiors will love to hear your ideas for the carrying out of a bloodless capitulation of the confederation.” The agent gets up from his stool. and goes to leave.

“Wait.”

“Yes, Mr.Casto?”

“When you were planning this whole thing, you showed me a map. It was full of black squares, but none were in the route you tried to have me make Argoth follow..”

“Oh, that’s a map drawn with intelligence gathered by our allies in New Afrika. As you saw it shows most confederate infrastructure. Those black squares denoted places where at least 200 slaves are kept or made to work.”

The map had been choke full of them.

“My… My wife is black, some of her family comes from Tennessee.”

“We know that, Mr. Casto, we would know even if she didn’t have a Monarch file.”

“I… I will need to talk with her.”

“You are free to do so.”

“She… Are there any outposts in the Great Lakes.”

“There are, but…” Agent Ashmodai smiles, it’s an excited smile. “For you, we would build one from scratch.”

Chapter Text

29th of February, 1996
Sarajevo, De facto Republika Srpska // De jure Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

A single gunshot rings out of the dilapidated ground-level store, silencing pleading sobs. As Relja Burusajević stumbles out of the shoe store, clumsily holstering his Zastava pistol into its holster as he spit a wad of the clotting blood that had gathered in his gums, using his other arm’s sleeve to attempt to wipe off what’s been dribbling down his lip all the way to his chin, cringing and stopping himself as the damaged wool graces his busted lip.

The bitch had had the guts to attempt to bite his tongue off while doing the deed when he had tried to kiss her. Then again, he’s not exactly sure what must have overtaken him, what kind of sex-addled instinct could ever make him kiss a bosniak pig. He’d never done that before, not even at Kamaran’s House back when his unit had been on leave at Foča, a place where much more desirable ones had been kept.

‘Must be the nerves getting to me.’ He wonders to himself, pulling a cigarette out of the half-crushed box in one of his back pockets as he realizes that the rest of his comrades have indeed left him behind. ‘Fuckers really did mean it when they said they’d leave me behind if I didn’t finish up fast enough.’

That’s certainly a pain in the ass. With Sarajevo fully broken less than a week ago, the amount of boobytraps and hidden sharpshooters across the city has greatly diminished, yes, nothing as wonderful for getting rid of such issues than calling an artillery strike on a whole building to avoid having to comb it. But that doesn’t mean the city is truly safe, it may not ever be until they get rid of every last Paša of the thousands still being rounded up within and around the city. 

It had already been a stroke of luck that they had found the girl, hiding in the basement of the storefront adjacent to the shoe shop, the heavy wooden plank making up the compartment’s door itself hidden under a rug crumpled and dusted by powdered concrete. She’d been too thin and weak to make any resistance as they had hauled her out, dazed and leaning against a hole-peppered wall as they had played a game of rock-paper-scissors to decide who got to have her.

He’d won, obviously. Even if it means now having to navigate the maze of ruins and listing apartment buildings of what had once been Sarajevo, which honestly is worse than any of the remaining Bosniaks he’s making up in his tired mind. There obviously aren’t any. He’s helped kill them all.

As such, the wrecks have become his main source of worry. They block off streets and entire squares, forcing him to either climb over the piles of rubble, risking collapse or getting snagged by something nasty, or moving through the ground floors of buildings that aren’t there and disturbing unexploded ordnance.

Or worse, coming across the bodies. Their stench isn’t as bad as it had been days prior, with rats and dogs taking care of the bulk of them, but they are still nasty and off putting to see. Most aren’t even fully recognizable. Siege warfare doesn’t create beautiful casket-dwellers, and these ones aren’t even getting put away. 

Relja assumes that they will have to be dealt with, at some point, and so will the thousands of tons of ruins around him, if the city is really going to be rebuilt for Bosnian Serbs -soon to just be simply serbs- to reuse and resettle. Besides, there’s probably tons of copper to scavenge all across the city. Copper, and all shorts of other things, especially from the not-as-damaged sections of the city, like the ones taken early on.

It certainly looks far from what his childhood memories would have pointed at, having visited the city at least a couple times as a boy, long before the death of Comrade Tito or the young man’s self-enlistment Army of Republika Srpska. The city had been bustling in his memories, full of people and seemingly-immense buildings. Now… Well, he’s well aware of the why and how to both’s disappearance.

He walks around yet another obstacle, a crater left by some missile or barrage, the bottom of it filled with brownish water leaking out of a ruptured sewer pipe, it stenches something fierce. As he does so, he kicks some shards from a shattered brick into the water, one of them bounces off the back of a mostly-obscured body laying within it.

That excites him, his unit has been using this one as a wayfinding marker for a few days now, since very few street names and throughways are still recognizable. This one is less than half an hour from camp.

The next marker is a breached palisade, a roadblock made up of sandbags and rubble pulled by the Bosniak’s from some other part of the city back when this area had still had something worth defending inside it. This one is especially memorable because of the charred-black chassis of some kind of tracked armored vehicle that lays upturned across a hole in the roadblock. Relja has to walk like a crab around it to get through the gap, which always leads to getting unwelcome whiffs of the kinds of smells that have cooked up inside it. He and his unit still wonder which of their fellows might have been the ones to pull the fatal stunt, or at least which larger battalion they might have been from, but asking around has yielded no results so far.

Next, he has to climb another pile of rubble, one of the last obstacles before he can take a nap in his cot. Which is why fate’s fucked-up sense of humor decides to make his next step a false one, as some of the loose trash and debris he plants one of his boots on gives away, and sends him back down. Luckily, he’d been climbing with hands and feet, so the fall is annoying, but not dangerous, especially since the wreckage hill is heavy enough that his weight is far from capable of making it collapse.

What it does do, however, is leave him eye-level with a hole within the debris. A whole with something inside it. Relja’s curiosity is immediately piqued. He’s, after all, the one who had been curious and nosey enough to notice that hidden basement earlier on.

There’s some shape inside the hole. An animal, that much is obvious. Each wreckage’s insides were more like a collage than some homogeneous pile of  construction material. After all, they were all made up of collapsed buildings. Buildings are full of rooms, and rooms are full of all sorts of things.

The equipment of the clinic, the furniture of living rooms, the amalgamated foodstuffs of pantries…

The kind of thing vermin could make cities out of. Or that a cat or a stoat could turn into a fiefdom. Relja loves cats, he often feels like one. He’s also great at hunting vermin.

“Hey there, lil guy~” He calls to it, even in the darkness he can tell it’s certainly too large to be a rat, but too small to be an adult cat. Separated from its siblings while exploring Sarajevo. Once again, just like him…

The little black shape turns in place in the hole, staying tight against the bottom of the little crevice. Perhaps it is stuck? It is probably scared of everything going on and his sudden intrusion, hopefully he can help it out without getting scratched too badly. As he tries to snake his arm in, it moves even further back, and turns to look at him.

Baleful milky-white eyes, shining with a faint mist-like light that obscures the bloodshot veins around the orbit’s edges.

The pile of rubble explodes towards him as, in his surprise, Relja jumps back and begins to lose his balance, starting what should be a painful or even deadly tumble down the rubble hill. But it does not matter, as the shape that erupts from the rubble grabs onto his tactical vest and stops him in place, two of its three claws affixed to finger bones so long that, as the “palm” stays on his abdomen, the tips puncture his sides, just above the kidneys. The third and last claw rests, almost flat, parallel to his sternum, giving him a good -if short- look at how the claw melts into blue flesh than is then swallowed by fur as dark as tar.

The man instantly goes for his pistol, once more, instincts doing their job even as he screams and his bloodstream is flooded by fear-response hormones.

Then, the too-long limb cracks itself into a straight shape, pushing him back until he is dangling a good distance away and off the ground. His breathing is restricted, his eyes blurry, but he still manages to realize that, somehow, the snagging limb’s circumference is exactly that of the hole.

Then, before he can actually get his first shot in, the arm pulls back .

And slams his body directly into the face of the debris pile. His sight goes white from the impact, everything hurts. His head hurts, his neck hurts, there’s something -something bent and rusty- poking his face so hard that it punctures his cheek. His chest hurts and his breathing goes from impaired to wheezing and misted with blood. His belly hurts, hips hurt, one of his limbs is fully twisted out of its socket.

Moments later, the pressure relents, the arm relaxes and pushes out once more, the entire pile bulges as if there was something growing within it. Relja is a limp and bleeding puppet in its arms.

And the thing pulls again . 

The pain is unbearable, but he can’t even scream, everything that a body needs to carry out such an action is either broken or bent out of place.

And the thing pulls again . 

And again.

And again.

And again .

Until Relja’s body is nothing more than a punctured bag of wool, skin and tactical equipment somewhat holding together a destroyed body. A mangled corpse that, with a final pull, like toothpaste being squeezed in reverse, the destroyed body squelches and further breaks as it is pulled into the hole, leaving behind nothing but a half-collapsed pile of rubble and a crevice rimmed with gore.

3rd of May, 1996
Sarajevo, De facto Republika Srpska // De jure Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

“We shouldn’t have left Relja behind.” Đorđe speaks up, uncomfortably twisting in place as the squad wastes time in their perimeter outpost. “It all started with him, if we hadn’t…”

“Shut up.” Jovan chastises from deeper within the corner apartment building they have turned into their watchtower, the man is seated with his legs crossed on the ground, playing cards with Vuk. “If we’d been with him, that thing would have eaten us all.”

Vuk agrees with a snort as he inspects his hand, they all remember the photo passed around by higher staff, of their comrade’s torn-apart arm. Solely an arm.

Before their comrade’s disappearance, most of the Bosnian Serb army units still posted at Sarajevo for cleanup had just blamed the last few week’s casualties on some sturdy scrap resistance. Getting picked off by snipers is not a rarity in their profession.

But then, they had started finding them. Parts of bodies, chunks of gore and bloodied clothes in cellars and among the ruins. The Bosniaks might be -have been- subhumans, but they certainly didn’t maul bodies and gnaw on corpses the way bears would.

The realization hadn’t taken much longer to dawn on command. Strange animalistic attacks? Kaiju, obviously Kaiju. Painfully so.

There was a monster roaming the streets of Sarajevo. And most likely, with the local citizenry removed, it had been forced to start hunting the next most common source of proteins.

Serbian soldiers. 

And so, they have gone from a victorious besieging army, to a series of holdouts in the less-damaged sections of the city. Whatever it was that the eastern radioactive winds have created, it clearly has a liking for ruins.

“You know,” Another comrade, Nikola, on the older side of things, pipes up, even as his rifle remains trained on the streets below. “Heard of this kind of stuff from the Russians, the Siberians, nasty bears up in the arctic circle, contaminated by fallout, could be the same thing…”

“Maybe, are there bears in this area?” Đorđe wonders.

“There’s populations all the way up and down the Balkans. Including here, yes.”

“Bear or not,” Jovan decides to speak again. “Doesn’t change our job. Now focus, if this thing has gone unfound for two months, loudness isn’t exactly going to make it pop up. Remain alert, it could be any-”

Crack.

The sound freezes them all in place. They’ve all had enough experience in urban combat to recognize it.

“Lav.” Jovan icily speaks up, referring to their engineer. “You told me this building looked stable .”

“I said.” The man defends himself, not moving a muscle. “That its the one that looked most stable of the quadrant we had been assigned, I made no promises as to-”

“Okay, okay!” Their leader starts getting up as his friends hurriedly gather their playing cards. “Everyone, grab your stuff, out of here ASAP, I don’t want this place collapsing on our heads, but if running down the stairs were going to be the thing to bring it down, we’d already be dead.”

The men do so, quickly and with an efficiency born out of fear more than out of the professionalism they very much don’t have. In fact, they all rush clumsily enough that they end up bottle-necking each other as they reach the entrance to the flat they have been using as their temporary outpost.

Đorđe, by chance, ends up being the first to reach for the door’s knob. When he turns it, he is surprised by how fast it opens, almost as if something were pushing it from the other-

Teeth, massive and as white as ivory a village boy like him has never seen before. Splayed forwards and outwards as if welcoming with open arms, all set up like a crown in a massive and wide maw, wide enough that its edges are more apart than the doorway’s sides. They lay, arranged in three rings, each more delicate than the previous one, creating a bent saw blade of a mouth.

They are attached on the outside to jet darkness , a darkness greater than that of the semi-abandoned building and its myriad little cracks and bullet holes that only leave a timid darkness behind. Not this… Not this thing, the darkness of its fur seems to sap what ambient light there is away, only leaving behind the glinting of its teeth, the parlor glow of hungry eyes, and the unnatural blue produced by what flesh and gums are visible among the beast’s pelt and teeth. A faint glow that illuminates the men’s faces, washing them in ghostly light.

They all fall and flee backwards, that much is obvious, into an arc around the room. No order needs be uttered, as they all scream and swear, they also all reach for rifles and handguns. 

Within seconds, the creature’s unblemished fur becomes a night sky where glinting bullets are stars and specks of blue blood become comets. And it simply moves forwards, towards them, across the threshold.

Its body should be too wide and too tall to fit through, and yet, it does, its silhouette made apparent as it pulls itself into a space of broken and uncovered windows, movement seemingly making the blue light of its flesh ever so stronger. There’s rubble sticking to its fur, red of brick, gray of concrete, black of rebar, and yet there’s not a single speck of dust on its vaguely mammalian body, as if it had been brushed from the tip of its short face, to the ends of its gangly limbs.

Titanus Bauk

Pop they go, as limbs longer than the entire body pop out of their sockets in contorting motions. One, two, three, four, five… Five times they each pop, each a different articulation, entirely too many for something meant to have a common ancestor with human beings.

Everything about the beast is hard-edged, from the sharply angled limbs to the jutting teeth. With one singular exception. Something, wet like a dog’s nose, slightly juts upwards from the tip of its snout, where a nose should be. And indeed, a nose it is, the fleshy snorkel wobbles with every popping motion the beast makes and with every shot that lands against it, taking deep breaths that make sense of the massive yet eerily silent maw before them.

It does not growl in anger as they keep firing, nor does its wide-open maw salivate with its azure alien light, the creature almost acts as if it were somewhere else. Then, with a series of pops, its neck cracks until it has turned ninety degrees. Somehow, Đorđe can tell its blind eyes are looking at him.

The last thing he sees are three claws flying like a whip, grasping around his neck.

Crack

All in all, he’ll be getting the swiftest death of them all.

20th of May, 1996
Užice, Zlatibor District, Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

The footage is grainy, blurry and shaky -and yes, there is a difference between the last two- enough that General Brnabić realizes long before they reach the halfway mark of it, he’s already quite sure that the rest of the video will give him nothing of use.

To be fair, and he’s like to think that he is, his staff has debriefed him with the context that the video had been taken with the handheld camera of a soldier who had at the time been aboard a helicopter, as much of the actual combat had happened bellow, amongst the greyish clouds generated by collapsing buildings.

“What is the causality list so far?” He speaks up, the rest of his command post -little more than the center of a tent camp in an industrial camp in Užice’s outskirts.

“Seventy three casualties, sir. Fifty two men missing in action. Civilians are being harder to track down. So far a hundred and fifteen bodies have been recovered, we don’t think the full number will be known for weeks. Rescue efforts are focused on…” His aide shallows his own saliva. “The school, Bauk’s rampage started near the local school while classes were on.”

“God almighty…” Brnabić realizes. “Pull as many units from the south-bosnian front as you can, start with the reserves and off-duty ones. I want anyone that isn’t busy gathering Bosniaks or fighting Croats to come here, we’ll use tanks to clear it all out, if we must.”

“Understood, sir.”

“How are the reports coming along, still consistent?” The man moves over to a map of the local area, the damaged blocks of the city are marked with red crosses. There’s a lot of red in the man.

“Indeed, sir. The police had been alerted about pets going missing in a local village near Stari Grad , and there were a couple disappearances that were reported even closer to the frontline. But not a single trace to how it got from there to the inside of the Užican Gymnasium that way. No railway tunnels nearby, we are sure of that.”

“Maybe it burrowed, like that red hound-lizard in China.”

“If it did, sir, we haven’t found the exit hole yet. And there's… There’s something that has stayed consistently inconsistent, sir.”

“The size.”

“The size.” They both nod. “The helicopter pilot claims that it was as tall as two stories. But we have testimony on the ground of an armored fighting vehicle almost managing to run it over, so it can’t have been more than three meters tall. Until…”

“What?”

“The men inside didn’t make it. But their attached infantry described it… It Disappeared as the vehicle’s nose slammed into it, and reappeared out the other side as its rear doors exploded. There’s… There’s also reports of it climbing roofs and caving them in, but also escaping gunfire by squirming into windows. It…”

“It changes sizes.”

“Yes, it seems to do so, sir.”

“But how . Mutants are freaks of nature. They don’t just break the laws of physics. How can something go from the size of a mole, to a bear’s, to a Kaiju’s in a blink?”

“I don’t think it cares much for those, mutants or otherwise.”

“Mhhh,” The general looks down at the table once more, spilled out from a disemboweled dossier are dozens of photographs of the attacked area. Half a city, leveled in hours by something that had left no trail but mangled half-eaten corpses. It’s… It’s as bad as the warzone the last few years, and yet the speed of it, the fact that it has occurred within his homeland, is…

Terrifying.

“Put me through to the General Staff, I want anything they could give us to catch this thing.”

“And if not, sir?”

“We’ll have to start considering whether we grovel to Paris or to Moscow. Or we’ll get used to a lot of our people dying very often,”

…

“Sranje.”