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"Yahoo!"
"That hit was solid!" Jared pumped his fist inside the helicopter, shouting.
Then he grabbed the rocket launcher and moved to the cabin door.
Their helicopter had pulled close to the volcano. Rodan was right there, not far off, already spreading its wings to charge back into the city.
His rocket launcher was aimed at its body.
"Taste this!"
Whoosh!
Jared's black leather jacket whipped in the wind, his messy hair flying in every direction. A shell erupted from the launcher and streaked straight down toward the Titan below.
BOOM!
The shell flew fast, and Rodan's body was simply too massive to miss , even from a kilometer up, the shot hit dead center. A burst of fire bloomed across its hide.
"SCREECH!!"
It wasn't enough to hurt Rodan. The thing had lived inside a volcano. It could shrug off most conventional weapons without blinking, and this hit was no different from a scratch. What it did do was make Rodan notice the helicopter.
"Shit!"
"Target acquired — turn around, now!" Jared locked eyes with Rodan, saw it take the bait, flipped it the bird, and spun toward the cockpit. "Go around the other side of the volcano! Bypass the city!" He choked on a mouthful of wind mid-sentence.
Their goal was simple: draw this thing away.
The strongest of their three-man crew was already keeping that big fat lizard busy. The other two had their own jobs to handle.
Old De didn't need to be told twice. He maxed the throttle. Two thruster exhaust ports on the back of the Osprey cracked open , ports that had absolutely no business being there , and the helicopter launched forward like a rocket.
"Shit!"
"How much did you even modify this thing?!" Jared lunged for a railing and grabbed on. The whole airframe was shaking itself apart. This was illegal. This was completely, flagrantly illegal, with zero regard for anyone's safety.
He'd almost been thrown out the door.
And speaking of the door , the wind screaming through the broken cabin entrance was getting worse by the second. That was the door the Ultraman old-timer had kicked in.
A whole helicopter full of lunatics. Not one normal person on board.
"Shut up!"
"It works, doesn't it!"
"It won't work for long — that big bird is going to catch us!" Old De's voice came roaring from the cockpit. He was watching the Titan climb into the sky, sweat already running down his forehead. This modified death trap was a nightmare to fly.
"Use the liquid nitrogen — it's in the box!" He'd known before they ever left for Mexico that Rodan was probably going to be part of this. He'd planned ahead.
"What would I do without you!" Jared dug through the weapons crate, found several cryo-rounds, and grinned.
He loaded them onto the launcher fast.
One hand on the railing. Rocket launcher on the other shoulder. He turned and aimed at whatever was behind them.
Aiming in a howling sky wasn't easy.
But Rodan was close enough now that it didn't matter much.
The massive crimson bird blotted out the horizon behind them, less than two kilometers back. Its sheer size hit like a wall just looking at it. If it caught their little helicopter, one bite would do it.
"SCREECH!!"
Rodan opened its beak wide. It was almost on them.
Whoosh!
A cryo-round shot out from the cabin door, arced across the open sky, and reached Rodan in seconds. The Titan didn't even flinch at a human attack , it just opened its mouth and swallowed the thing whole.
Bang!
The round detonated inside Rodan's mouth. Extreme cold slammed against the furnace heat inside its body. The sudden wrongness made it jerk its head, and its speed dropped.
"It worked!" Jared screamed.
---
"ROAR!!"
On the other side of the city, Godzilla was back on its feet.
It took the hits, weathered them, and swung its massive tail in a wide arc , trying to knock the giant off its feet.
The giant was already gone. One leap and it was high in the air, the sonic boom from the jump shoving Godzilla back a step.
Hmmm , Hmmm ,
The giant's speed was maddening. Godzilla watched it pull away, and something shifted inside its body. The stored energy came rushing up. Its dorsal fins lit one by one. Blue light pulsed in its throat.
The air warped around it as it locked onto the giant above.
[2:03]
"ROAR!!"
Its jaws opened wide. The Atomic Breath erupted , a solid column of blue, crossing the distance between them in an instant, punching straight up through the clouds toward the giant.
The giant didn't reach for the ray it had used against the MUTOs. That wasn't the priority here. The priority was the people still in the city below.
Instead, it brushed its left hand across the bracelet on its right wrist. The diamond-shaped crystal caught the light.
A silver shield trimmed in red snapped into existence in front of it.
Hum!
The Atomic Breath hit the shield. The beam that had scattered the clouds in a perfect ring , the full, unobstructed force of it , was absorbed completely. Every joule of it. The giant behind the shield didn't move.
Its bright eyes reflected the blue light back, calm and still.
Godzilla's greatest weapon had just hit a wall.
As his Ultra Psychic level continued to recover, more of the bracelet's functions were coming back online.
"That move... had no effect at all?"
"That beam killed two MUTOs." Serizawa Ichiro stood inside the Argo, his mind reeling. The Atomic Breath. Nothing. Not a scratch.
What was that shield?
What material could absorb that much raw energy?
He had been there five years ago in San Francisco. He had watched Godzilla use the Atomic Breath to finish two MUTOs , and that was with the MUTOs actively interfering, dampening the beam's power. This time there was nothing in the way. Full strength. And it still couldn't touch the giant's defense.
This giant... was something else entirely.
That kind of power , and it was using it to protect people. Ordinary, insignificant people. The whole thing felt like something out of a story. If he hadn't watched it happen with his own eyes, he never would have believed it.
The giant that had stepped out of the light. Ultraman.
What else could it do?
Was it possible... that it had come to this planet to save it?
He couldn't make himself believe that. But he was running out of other explanations.
➤ Next: Antarctica
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