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"Chirp-roar,—"
Even at a distance, Mothra could feel the killing force radiating from that colossal ring of light blazing across the chaotic night sky.
That was... a power King Ghidorah couldn't face head-on. A power that had no place on Earth.
No Titan alive could channel energy to this degree. Even as an ancient Titan herself, she had to admit it: that giant's existence operated on a level far above anything the Titans could claim.
"ROAR!!"
King Ghidorah beat its massive wings, lashing the sky with storm winds, but the needle-beams pouring from the bracelet didn't care. They punched through the gale like it wasn't there, hammering its body in a relentless storm of their own, inescapable.
Then the giant's hands began to gather that ring of light , the one that radiated death , and something inside King Ghidorah broke. The dignity of a king evaporated in an instant.
It had to run.
"Whoosh,, Whoosh,—"
Golden wings hammered the air. It didn't look back. Full speed, away from the South Pole, crossing the glaciers in seconds, breaking out over the dark open sea.
The needle-beams finally stopped. For a moment it thought it had opened enough distance.
Then green light lit up the churning water below, rising up into the storm that surrounded its body.
"ROAR!!" King Ghidorah hadn't even processed what was happening before the rings closed around it , layer after layer, looping tight around its injured body, folding its wings in, dragging it down out of the night sky.
Its sheer mass made the impact catastrophic. The sea surged upward before it even hit the surface. It crashed into the waves still thrashing, still fighting.
Given a few more seconds, it could break free.
But in those few seconds, the sea around it turned white.
Not dawn. Not lightning. Every photon came from one source: the figure above, diving straight down, luminous ring in hand.
Divine punishment had arrived.
"ROAR!!" King Ghidorah tore through the rings, its massive body writhing in the churning water, but it was already too late.
Those vertical pupils, ancient and regal, went wide.
The ring descended like a second sun. The energy it displaced was already tearing the sea apart, spinning walls of water up toward the night sky.
"HUM!!"
The ring left the giant's hands , a hundred meters across , and cleaved straight down. The energy didn't even need to touch King Ghidorah first. It split the ocean open ahead of it, a fissure tearing outward in every direction. Satellites in orbit registered the anomaly on their maps.
King Ghidorah had nowhere to go. It threw its wings up as a shield.
The ring swept through them. Both wings went dead in an instant. A fissure split across its entire body.
The energy tore into every cell trying to regenerate. Flesh shredded. Bone shattered. Consciousness and life bled out together into nothing.
The king that had dominated Titans across the ancient world met its end in the light of that ring, body tissue that could no longer heal, drifting apart in the dark water.
The giant didn't relax.
It watched the ring continue sinking toward the seafloor, extended both hands, and used telekinesis to unravel the energy from the inside out, letting it bleed away slowly into nothing.
Only then did the split ocean begin to close, the two walls of water grinding back toward the central fissure. The apocalyptic tableau softened. The sea settled.
"Chirp-roar..."
Mothra watched from a distance, her cry carrying something close to awe. Three minutes. The giant had ended King Ghidorah in three minutes.
The glowing body faded from the night sky. The storm died. Stars emerged over the South Pole, and the aurora stretched quietly across the dark.
"HISS-ROAR!!"
Godzilla bellowed toward the spot where King Ghidorah had been destroyed. Part of it was victory. Part of it , Mothra suspected , was mockery. Flying things always fall eventually. This was exactly what King Ghidorah deserved.
Mothra, naturally, was a different matter entirely.
"This is... the power of Ultraman."
Dr. Serizawa had watched every second from the sky carrier. His eyes had gone distant. He stared at the cleared night sky and said nothing else for a long moment.
Power like that existing in reality. The shock of it was almost too large to hold.
If the battles between Titans were the fear of enormous things, then what Ultraman had just demonstrated was something else: a higher civilization delivering a strike from a plane of existence this planet had never touched.
He thought about Mexico. He understood now , truly understood , how much the giant had been holding back to avoid casualties. The constraints it had accepted to protect people who, by any measure, it had no obligation to protect.
If this giant wanted Earth gone, human civilization would disappear from the universe in three minutes. No , if it even had that thought, the whole planet would become dust.
But it wasn't that. It was something else entirely.
It was light.
"Possessing that kind of power... and still wanting to save lives as small as ours." Dr. Emma watched the last motes of light fade where the giant had dissolved, and felt the strength go out of her completely. "For that to be possible... is it because the civilization behind them has already surpassed anything we could imagine..."
She understood now. She understood exactly how wrong she had been.
She had still been thinking of the civilization Ultraman represented as something comparable to humanity , just more advanced. But they had no reason to invade Earth. No reason to want anything from it.
Ruling over lesser civilizations , that kind of thing probably looked primitive to them. Beneath consideration.
Her plan to awaken the Titans, wipe out humanity, restore the planet's ecology , in that giant's eyes, it was probably nothing more than children playing house.
"Ultra... man."
Madison stood beside her mother, staring up at the empty sky.
Appearing from light when they were in danger. Vanishing back into light when the enemy was gone.
That kind of existence , full of hope, impossible and real at once , was going to leave a mark on this girl that nothing would ever erase.
Years from now, when she hit something she couldn't get through, when she was ready to quit , she would remember this. The figure that saved everyone. And something in her chest would lift again.
...
Of course, Natsuki looked very different depending on who was doing the looking.
"Crunch... crunch..."
Jared and Old De pushed through the wind and snow, boots grinding into the ice with every step. When they finally found Natsuki, their experience was nothing like the people watching from the sky carrier.
He was lying spread-eagled in the snow, staring up at nothing, looking completely wrecked.
"Oh." He heard the footsteps and lifted his eyelids just enough to confirm it was them. "You made it."
His eyes landed on the whiskey in Jared's hand and immediately sharpened.
"Quick, give me some of that." He was already reaching. "Also — did you bring food?"
➤ Next: Cooperation Reached — The Conversation
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