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"I made some modifications to it. Safety took a hit, but the speed doubled."
"Three hours and we'll reach Outpost 56 in Mexico."
After a quick change, Old De threw a black leather jacket over his white t-shirt and led Natsuki and Jared out the tea shop's back door to a large warehouse. He hauled up the rolling shutter as he talked.
"An Osprey. Can't believe you actually got your hands on one."
Jared had changed into clean clothes too, same black leather jacket as Old De draped over his shoulders. The resemblance stopped there. He didn't have Old De's build, and with that unshaved scruff and tangled long hair, he still looked like he'd been sleeping under a bridge.
The shutter rolled up. Jared spotted the black-and-white helicopter inside and grinned.
He recognized it. The Osprey was standard issue in Monarch , used to move personnel all the time.
"Take it!"
Old De walked into the warehouse, bent down, and hauled a machine gun out of a wooden crate in the corner. He threw it to Jared.
"The hell — did you build an armory in here?" Jared caught it, felt the weight settle into his hands, and raised an eyebrow. The amount of hardware stacked around the warehouse was not small.
What exactly has this old Russian been doing all these years?
"I don't need it." Natsuki caught the machine gun Old De threw his way, turned it over once, and tossed it back. Weapons like these were genuinely useless to him.
"Right, almost forgot." Old De looked at him and remembered , this guy's real form was the giant from yesterday. With that kind of destructive output, yeah, a rifle wasn't going to add much.
They loaded the necessary gear and weapons onto the helicopter and got moving.
Old De dropped into the pilot's seat and started flipping switches on the panel, a wide grin on his face.
"I've been waiting for this day for a long time."
Years of it. He'd spent years planning how to get a real shot at the Titans , not for any grand reason, just to settle something. Back then, their whole group had been swallowed up in a battle between Titans. Monarch's support had been worthless. They'd run through that battlefield helpless, watching too many people die. Five years later, he could still close his eyes and see it.
"Who isn't?"
"If I miss this chance, I'll regret it for the rest of my life." Jared sat in the cabin, running a cloth over his firearm, his expression set.
Natsuki listened to them and nodded.
"I understand."
"That's why I'm going with you." He'd lived nearly twenty thousand years. He'd seen more than either of them, and the tragedies had run deeper. Compared to the lifespan of the Ultra Race, a human life was brief, sometimes painfully so. Some people carried the weight of the past until the very end and never put it down.
He could see what was underneath, in both of them. The flaws were obvious. But underneath those, there was something , a small, stubborn light. And they held onto it.
Natsuki was glad to help that light burn a little brighter. Whatever he could do to make sure they didn't leave this life with regrets.
Jared, past forty and not getting any younger, laughed despite himself. "You really are the strangest person I've ever met."
"You know what — I've actually started to feel something about the universe. Like curiosity. Me."
He'd always been a realist. Practical to the point of dull, he'd have said. But since meeting Natsuki, something had shifted. Aliens weren't what he'd imagined , all aggression and invasion. This one was just... decent. It made him wonder what else was out there. What other kinds of people the universe had produced.
"It's a big place," Natsuki said. "Strange races everywhere. Plenty of wonders. And yeah, plenty of things that want to conquer everything in sight."
"If you ever want to step out into it, go in with your eyes open."
He said it lightly, but he meant it. The universe was vast, and beyond it, other universes. Nearly twenty thousand years of living, and the stories still weren't close to finished.
"For now, though — let's deal with the ones trying to blow this world up first."
That was the priority. Get this settled. Then see what came next.
Old De nodded from the pilot's seat.
At his command, the warehouse roof split down the middle and slid open on both sides. Through the gap, you could see the rooftops of the other warehouses stretching out around them.
"Alright, gentlemen." Old De laughed as the engine caught and the rotors began to spin. "Let us old men go do something worth remembering."
Three veterans, ready to show the young ones what real conviction looked like.
---
Mexico. Monarch Outpost 56.
The outpost sat inside a volcanic crater , steel plating over the whole mouth of it, Monarch's facilities built into the rock below. And deep in the volcano's belly, a Titan slept.
Rodan.
Normally, the staff here spent their shifts eating donuts and watching the big bird's vitals on a monitor. Today was different.
"They're pushing toward sub-level two!"
"Guards are in contact!" On sub-level four, a technician pressed himself against the comms panel, shouting into the microphone as alarms blared through the walls.
They were under attack. Mercenaries , a whole organized unit of them.
"Reinforcements are on their way to you now."
"Hold your position!"
Dr. Serizawa's voice came through the line. The moment the attack was reported, he'd already dispatched support. He was at the Bermuda Triangle facility, watching the situation unfold through the feeds.
These people were fanatics. They believed humanity was a disease on the planet, and they intended to use the Titans as the cure , wake them, unleash them, let them do what they did.
He'd expected them to move on Outpost 32 in Antarctica. He'd been wrong. They'd gone for Rodan first.
"You're too late."
The door to the monitoring room blew open. A man in black body armor walked through it, and when he heard Serizawa's voice promising reinforcements, he smiled.
He was past sixty, with hair gone half-white and a beard to match. Sharp eyes. The kind of eyes that had been planning something for a long time and were now watching it finally happen. He moved through the room like he owned it, his mercenaries fanning out behind him.
Alan Jonah. Former British Army Colonel. Current eco-terrorist. He'd been operating across the globe for years with one objective: wake the Titans, let them cleanse the earth.
"It's you." Serizawa recognized him immediately through the video feed. The man who had taken Emma.
"Where is Dr. Emma? What have you done with her?"
He was still working through it , how to negotiate, how to get her back, how to protect the ORCA system she'd built.
Then Jonah spoke, and Serizawa went still.
"Done with her?" Jonah tilted his head, almost amused. He raised his weapon, glancing at Serizawa's image on the screen. "She didn't need rescuing. We didn't take her anywhere."
His tone was pure contempt.
"Our goals are perfectly aligned."
➤ Next: Rodan
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