~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
"Target is still moving!"
"Stop him!"
"No good — he's too fast!"
BOOM!
By the time Jared and Old De reached the battlefield, Natsuki was already tearing an armored vehicle apart with his bare hands.
The sniper at the high ground had his barrel smoking and still couldn't land a hit. Dense volleys of bullets veered off course the moment they got close, burying themselves harmlessly in the dirt. Grenades thrown at him were caught mid-air, detonated against his palm with a muffled crump, and the shrapnel was shaken off his hand like loose change.
He moved to the next armored vehicle. Ripped the tracks off in one pull. Yanked out the cannon barrel. Tossed the driver clear, then folded the whole thing into scrap metal.
"Holy shit."
"I don't think he needs us at all." Jared walked up to the edge of the defensive line, machine gun cradled in his arms, and just stared as soldiers went sailing through the air one after another.
"What is this guy made of?" Old De watched the carnage with his mouth slightly open.
"No idea. Definitely not carbon-based, though." Jared shrugged.
Then ,
"Halt!"
"Who are you!?" Soldiers crouched behind an outer armored vehicle swung their rifles toward the two men in black leather jackets.
No uniforms. Armed. Extremely suspicious.
"Uh... concerned citizens?" Jared raised an eyebrow. "Just passing through."
"Saw you were having some trouble." Old De waved his machine gun helpfully. "Thought we'd lend a hand."
Soldier: ??
This is how concerned citizens in Mexico lend a hand?
"Step back! Weapons down!" They didn't have time for this. Drop the guns, get lost, end of conversation.
"Wow."
"Very intimidating." Jared's tone was pure sarcasm.
Credit where it's due , the kid actually pulled off the authoritative soldier act pretty convincingly.
"Fine, we'll leave. But before we do..."
"Maybe take a look behind you?" Jared spread his hands.
"What?" The soldier's patience snapped. He figured it was a trick. He raised his weapon and barked, "Last warning. Leave. Now."
The words had barely left his mouth.
A sound rose from behind him. Commotion. Scrambling.
BOOM!
The armored vehicle at his back launched into the sky. A figure dropped from above and landed in the middle of their defensive line, shattering it completely.
"Oh... shit..."
The soldier turned. He saw his mission target. His first instinct wasn't to fire.
It was to understand that he was finished.
A fist the size of a sandbag filled his entire field of vision.
Then nothing.
"I have a question," Jared said.
"How did they ever think provoking you was a good idea?" He looked at Natsuki in his Defense Force Suit, genuinely puzzled.
Did these guys seriously not know what they were dealing with?
"The world's never short of fools," Natsuki said, dusting off his hands. "Especially the ones power goes straight to the head of." He glanced at the other two. "And someone in the military's upper ranks has information on me. That's almost certainly how this started."
The military moving this aggressively , a transmigrator had to have worked their way into the chain of command. That was the obvious read.
Though, to be fair... plenty of Ultra Warrior case files showed that humans didn't need outside help to produce high-ranking idiots. Ultramen operating on Earth always had restrictions placed on them, and those restrictions always attracted exactly the wrong kind of attention.
Nobody had apparently anticipated that this particular Ultraman old-timer would be quite this underhanded about it.
On the other end, watching the capture operation collapse in real time, the man who'd orchestrated the whole thing was starting to sweat.
"All units fall back. Prepare the Oxygen Destroyer."
Rivers, sitting in a separate Monarch outpost far from the action, could not wrap his head around what he was seeing. Why does an Ultraman who's already de-transformed still hit like this?
If this operation failed, his standing with the military was going to take a serious hit.
But the order had barely left his mouth when a call came in from above.
"Zeno Rivers." The man on the screen had white-streaked hair and eyes sharp enough to cut glass. "How exactly do you plan to pay for this?"
For this operation, Rivers had requisitioned equipment from the military, pulled in armored vehicles from local Mexican forces, and considered it airtight. He hadn't planned for this.
Why was this happening? Ultramen without their transformed state were supposed to be manageable. Tiga couldn't do much without transforming. Dyna could practically be handled by ordinary people. Half of them couldn't even transform if you took their device away. So why was this one built like a damn superhero even out of form?
"I..." Rivers opened his mouth. Nothing useful came out.
"Our firearms. Our artillery. Our bombs." The general's voice was flat and precise. "None of it touched him. And now you want to deploy the Oxygen Destroyer and level a Mexican town in the process?"
If the operation had shown even a sliver of effectiveness, he might have absorbed the pressure and signed off on it. But this? This entire mission had been a joke from start to finish.
The intelligence Rivers provided was garbage. Capturing an Ultraman wasn't a mission. It was a punchline.
"Actually —" Rivers still wanted to argue. He hadn't watched much Ultraman growing up, but even he'd heard the famous bit about the Specium Ray facial treatment. With the right approach, capturing one was theoretically possible ,
"You're dismissed. Prepare for a court-martial."
The screen went dark.
Rivers stared at it. The blood rushed to his head all at once. His fists clenched.
Then the battlefield channel crackled back to life.
"Sir. The target..." A squad leader's voice, tense, clearly rattled. "He left a message. Said to pass it along to you."
Rivers' eyes narrowed. "Go ahead."
Static. The sound of a headset changing hands.
Then a voice came through, calm, low, unhurried.
"Don't second-guess it. I'm here for you. And now you've added to the tab."
"Wherever you run. Whatever corner you crawl into. Whoever you find to watch your back. I will find you."
"No rush. Once I've handled what's in front of me, I'll make sure you spend the rest of your life in a Cosmic Prison."
Static.
"Sir... th-that's... that's everything he said." The squad leader's voice was barely holding together.
Rivers stood very still. He breathed. Once. Twice. Heavy, deliberate breaths.
He tried to find words.
Another surge hit him, blood rushing hard, straight to his skull. His body locked up.
He fell backward, stiff as a board.
"Mr. Rivers!"
"Get emergency medical over here — now!"
The technicians in the Monarch outpost scrambled toward him, shouting.
➤ Next: Heading to Antarctica
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
Read up to (50+ ) advanced chapters on Patre\on
Visit us here: patreon.com/DarkGolds
Happy reading, everyone!