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A flash of light greeted Akane Yashiro and wind rushed past her as she exited a Japanese aircraft. As her eyes adjusted to the new landscape, foreign features gradually materialized. The runway she currently stood upon led to an aging yet still running installation with troops running drills in every direction. Foreign troops marched in unison, their attire far different than that of any Japanese Soldier until a familiar figure walked past the running masses with a smile. His white hair and slightly wrinkled face did not hide his identity, but it did cause Akane’s memories to spike as she delved into their once close past.
“Greetings Akane, it is so very nice to see you again,” Tokumitsu Yuhara stated with a large grin on his face as he approached her. “Apologies for the short notice…and the flight…and probably a lot of things I am forgetting to say.”
Akane returned his warm greeting with a smile of her own. “It is nice to see you too. Were you ordered here as well?”
“No, but I am the one overseeing this joint operation between Japan and the United States,” Tokumitsu explained after signaling her to follow. “Have to pay for Sara’s education bills somehow.”
After passing multiple security officers as well as a large group of engineers, Akane followed Tokumitsu into the structure. Curiosity overcoming her senses to stay quiet as they maneuvered farther into the industrial complex, Akane asked, “What is this place, and why…why was I ordered here?”
Tokumitsu turned around as he walked and explained, “It’s an old construction site we created in the nineties for a previous project, and for your second question; you were always the closest to our ghost in the shell.”
Akane’s eyes widened as she realized the true meaning of the sentence. The sense of trust in her friend vanished instantly and look of frustration formed. Akane fell silent and Tokumitsu, seeing the anger in his friend’s eyes, remained so as well until a light appeared at the end of their hallway. As they ventured forth into the new area, the massive form of Kiryu greeted the pair as they stepped onto a maintenance walkway.
“All it wanted was to be left in peace and you resurrected it again,” Akane whispered just loud enough for Tokumitsu to hear. Her fists clenched with fury as she thought of the situation further. “I thought you of all people would understand that this is wrong, especially because of your daughter,” Akane noted only to look into Tokumitsu’s eyes to see no regret, grief or anger for what he had done. The scientist merely looked onward at Kiryu, contemplating his next words carefully.
“I did this for my daughter Akane. I would do anything to protect her future,” Tokumitsu countered in an uncharacteristically sad tone before he looked at Akane directly. “As much as I want to remain the bright optimist of years prior, recent events have made it clear we need every ally we can acquire. Though I nor our country forced Kiryu to return. It wanted to.”
Confused and bewildered by her friend’s statement, Akane asked, “What do you mean?”
Tokumitsu slowly recovered his face’s composition before he slouched on the walkway’s railing and stated, “Kiryu was found about three years ago on a remote island’s coast. The Prime Minister himself ordered it to be returned to the trench from whence it came but then we found some startling information. Engineers entered to ensure it could not move, but they found their work already accomplished. Wires essential for the ghost in Kiryu to control itself were burned away due to an internal overcharge. The engineers concluded it was self-inflicted, but then they found something else… A message which read, ‘Japan. I am you shield. I am your sword.’ Then a few other messages appeared and the Prime Minster, after a long meeting with the Cabinet of Japan, rescinded his previous order and demanded Kiryu be brought back for repairs. The action was codenamed Project: REVANANT to confuse Chinese vessels in the area which brings us to today. It’s undergoing final repairs to its new Absolute Zero Canon. After the repairs are complete he will be sent on a mission to Northern Canada. We were hoping you would pilot Kiryu again but from the inside. We might have it back in our control, and ensured its connection severed, but the Shirasagi’s have proven unreliable in extreme situations unlike yourself which is why I am asking you, will you please return?”
Akane’s fists slowly unclenched and her gaze shifted toward the machine. “Why does it want to fight? Did it not want peace?”
“Probably got bored of lying at the bottom of the sea,” Tokumitsu laughed, back in his usual character.
With a little resentment in her voice, Akane looked back at Tokumitsu and said, “Alright, I will pilot Kiryu.”
Tokumitsu smiled before an engineer ran toward the pair. “The canon is online sir!” remarked the American as he panted from the long run.
“Good,” Tokumitsu responded, “Tell everyone launch will be occurring in the next few hours.”
“Roger!” the man yelled before he ran back out the door he came in.
Akane looked at Tokumitsu with disbelief only for Tokumitsu to say in defense with a smile, “You said you were ready and besides, your friend is eager to return as well.”
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The snow filled winds of the Canadian mountains pounded the two Shirasagi’s that carried Kiryu through the hills. Akane, from Kiryu’s cockpit, stayed focused on the scanners for the apparent monster that was supposedly hiding in the winter wasteland.
“See anything yet Akane?” Susumu Hayama questioned from his Shirasagi’s control seat. “I may be stuck with you again, but that doesn’t mean I am going to be risking my neck this time around for some half assed strategy.”
“If I recall correctly you created that strategy,” Akane retorted as she ignored his usual brashness. “But nothing as of yet though this creature, do you know its identity?”
“Oh, that’s right you weren’t at the briefing,” Susumu snipped. “Well, a mineral company ignored some type of shrine and busted open a monster’s tomb. The monster, which is still yet to be confirmed, killed most of the excavators except a few witnesses. They describe it as a massive dragon but considering they were in shock, I would not take the accounts seriously. They also said it had a dozen heads.”
“Sounds like I didn’t miss much then,” Akane responded.
“Ha, well… We weren’t even supposed to be here but some fiasco is occurring in the pacific and the team that usually handles this shit isn’t available. Probably some political cover-up if you ask me.”
“Well at least it’s not Godzilla,” the other Shirasagi pilot countered over the radio. A silence then followed between Susumu in addition to Akane before Susumu’s voice could be heard whispering so low that the radio barely picked it up, “Unfortunately…”
With a hint of annoyance in his voice Susumu continued, “Well we are stuck with this problem now. Though whatever it is couldn’t have gotten far in this type of weather, and… we just arrived.”
As the two Shirasagis as well as Kiryu passed over the top of a mountain’s peak, the storm around them dispersed slightly revealing a large valley in addition to a massive almost vertically flat wall of ice that stood perpendicular to the valley. At its bottom a relatively small hole to the rest of the feature reflected to the world the monster’s tomb.
“This is it,” Susumu stated before he peered at the valley below. “Any signs of this thing?”
“Nothing on the normal scanners,” Akane stated over the radio as Kiryu’s sensors finished their examination of the valley. “Nothing but snow and ice at least. Running thermals scans now.”
“Well let’s hope this thing shows up soon. I will admit, I did miss…”
“MOVEMENT!” Akane yelled over the radio only to hear a scream and then an explosion.
The Shirasagi holding Kiryu’s abdomen suddenly burst into flames as a massive blur flew past the two remaining machines.
“What the hell was that?!” Susumu screamed before he felt his Shirasagi slam downward.
The pilot’s head snapped backward, and the sound of metal screeching echoed from his vessel. Susumu grimaced as he struggled for control. “Damn that thing! Too much weight for me to hold!”
The two cables holding Kiryu suddenly snapped and the cyborg activated its own thrusters. The massive machine glided toward the ground as Susumu leveled out. As he looked around his cockpit to find the beast in the blurry skies, Susumu proclaimed, “Where the hell are you dammit!”
A powerful series of shrieks then filled the air and Susumu focused on its source to find out what had attacked them. A large, black, three headed dragon with demonic features as well as red eyes appeared out of the white void he floated in. With little time to do anything, Susumu could only watch as the dragon prepared to ram the Shirasagi.
As the beast was about to impact the flying transport, Kiryu suddenly reappeared and slammed into the dragon. Susumu stunned by the action remained motionless as he watched Kiryu slow to a hover in front of him as the flying demon plummeted toward the ground.
“Susumu snap out of it!” Akane cried before she shouted, “It’s called Desghidorah! I will get it grounded and you assist with covering fire.”
“Roger,” Susumu angrily replied as he snapped out of his trance and flew the Shirasagi out of sight.
Akane refocused on Desghidorah who easily recovered and now angrily flew toward Kiryu. Her mind raced with facts. 100 Meters Long. 75,000 Tons. A three headed flamethrower with a bark as worse as its bite. Know your enemy. In battle it was a necessary key, and something she only wished she had possessed so many years prior.
Kiryu jettisoned toward the dragon as all three of its heads illuminated with red power. Energy blasts exploded across Kiryu but the cyborg’s armor withstood the barrage. Then as the two passed within meters distance of each other, Kiryu unveiled one of its hidden blades to the fiery dragon as it sliced off a chunk of its left wing. The three headed beast bellowed in agony, but the wound was not enough to take Desghidorah out of the harsh skies.
With the element of surprise lost, Akane piloted Kiryu to the valley below. As the machine touched down sending a cloud of snow around it, Desghidorah re-engaged with its mechanical foe. Blasts of energy strafed the machine, encompassing Kiryu in explosive fire. As Desghidorah started regaining altitude for another assault, Akane targeted its damaged wing with Kiryu’s heat seeking missiles.
“This is for the pilot you killed,” Akane remarked as she launched the explosive arsenal. Sixteen missiles fired out of Kiryu’s shoulder pack and into the cold sky before impacting Desghidorah damaged wing. The explosions caused the weakened wing to fracture and permanently ended the dragon’s flight.
The three headed beast cried in anguish as it fell from the sky like a rock before impacting the ground at the edge of the high cliff side. The hard ice fractured but stayed firm until the cyborg unleashed its arm canons impact site. The ice fractured under the dragon’s weight causing the fiend to slip over the edge. Desghidorah continued its fall, impacting the half a mile long wall a few times, before finally crashing at the foot of the massive feature.
Akane smiled in satisfaction from her foe’s trip just as it turned toward her.
“Kiryu, it’s time to end this,” Akane affirmed as she activated the Absolute Zero Canon. Kiryu’s chest cavity opened up and a massive swelling of blue energy started forming. Desghidorah, still recovering from the fall and confused, starred at it with wonder. Then as Akane readied to press the firing button, warning sirens lit up the cock pit. The pilot scrambled for a solution only for the Absolute Zero Canon to shut down. Desghidorah’s three heads snapped out of their trance, and the beast started charging.
“What’s going on?!” Akane exclaimed before she realized Desghidorah was closing in on Kiryu.
The dragon readied to grasp the machine only for red lasers to blindside the beast.
“Pay back!” Susumu yelled over the radio as he unleashed concentrated fury on the dragon. With a new foe to deal with, Desghidorah unleashed its triple gout energy blasts into the air which the Shirasagi dodged with ease even as high winds crippled its maneuverability.
“What’s going on Akane?” Susumu questioned as he engaged the beast. “Why haven’t you fired Absolute Zero? I have this thing pretty distracted and I am not even in its mouth!”
“Some type of malfunction,” Akane responded as she meticulously scanned every system for errors. “The engineers must have installed Absolute Zero incorrectly.”
“This is why you don’t see things with made in the U.S.A.!” Susumu angrily exclaimed before an energy blast impacted his Shirasagi’s wing. Fire vented from the machine’s ports and a large smoke trail followed the aircraft.
“Dammit, well that is all I can do. You will have to finish the fight without the canon,” Susumu declared as he left the area. “By the way, try not to die. Rather not have my last mission be me getting my ass kicked.”
Akane smiled as she overheard the final statement.
“I won’t,” Akane affirmed as she prepared Kiryu to fight Desghidorah.
With his newest foe gone, the dragon remembered his old foe and turned to face it. He had achieved freedom by random chance and nothing was going to take that away from him. No longer would he be imprisoned in an icy tomb. It would rather die than go back and nothing would ever cage it again!
In a demonstration of its true power, Desghidorah lifted itself while roaring into the heavens, before slamming its front two legs down on the ground. The ground in front of the beast cracked and a massive blaze erupted turning the icy wasteland into an inferno.
Kiryu’s side thrusters suddenly ignited and the cyborg blasted right as he dodged the attack. As the robot skidded to a stop, Kiryu’s shoulders erupted with rockets as well as missiles and its arm canons unleashed a powerful barrage of energy bursts.
Desghidorah shrieked in pain and backed away from the powerful assault before charging through the attack at full speed. The missiles, rockets and lasers were nothing compared to what it suffered for a millennia or the suffering it would unleash upon Kiryu.
Over encumbered with equipment, Kiryu braced itself as Desghidorah grabbed onto its two arms and neck. A minor explosion detonated on the machine’s left arm as its canon detonated, yet the small explosion did little to loosen the dragon’s grip. A move infinitely worsened as energy began to discharge from Desghidorah’s maws.
Sirens wailed and buzzed from the robot’s cockpit as Kiryu’s structure took immense harm. Akane knew if she did not get out of the hold soon then Kiryu would surely lose. The pilot activated the thrusters to blast Kiryu away from Desghidorah only for the boosters to not respond. The pilot raced to activate other systems yet they too failed to activate. As Akane checked the maser canon, Desghidorah’s middle head released its grip of Kiryu’s neck and summoned hellish fire to its jaws. Flames that would turn rock into liquid past over Kiryu’s head bringing a confident smile to Akane.
Yellow light glowed under the surge of hellish fire causing Desghidorah’s center head to cease his attack. As the flames ended Desghidorah discovered not a melted corpse, but a foe with nothing more than singed armor.
“We’ve taken far worse,” Akane commented before the pilot activated the twin maser canon in Kiryu’s jaws.
Pain surged through the dragon’s entire body causing the other two heads to release their grips. Desghidorah stumbled back but not before looking back at its foe to witness the unveiling of the blade that had cut off its wing. Remembering the pain the weapon had brought, the dragon started firing its lava gout blasts at Kiryu only for the cyborg to charge through the attack and uppercut the blade through Desghidorah’s right head.
The other two heads bellowed in extreme agony as the right head instantly died from impalement though Kiryu proved far from finished as the blade glowed yellow. Electricity surged through the beast causing Desghidorah to feel an un-paralleled anguish, until the middle head discharged an energy gout blast at the electricity’s source. The blade snapped but remained in the dead dragon’s head as it fell dead to the ground.
Kiryu, continuing it’s up close assault, delivered multiple devastating jabs to the dragon only for the beast’s left head to latch onto Kiryu’s lower right arm. The dragon discharged energy but its attack did not last long as the robot grabbed hold of the head with its free left arm. Kiryu, without use of its thrusters and on strength alone, spun around before releasing the beast from its grasp. The momentum was too much and Desghidorah’s head released its grip. Desghidorah skidded across the icy ground until it rammed into the glacier wall at a high speed, creating a massive crack in the mountain side.
Slowly but surely, the three headed dragon made its way out of the debris cloud. It was growing tired but the beast’s will was still pushing it to fight. Desghidorah, in a last ditch attempt to defeat his foe, slammed the ground again and caused another fiery rupture in the earth that was larger than the last. The full force of the attack struck Kiryu as fires erupted from around it. As the machine disappeared in the flames, Desghidorah screeched in victory until a louder, almost ancient roar canceled his false hope. The flames dispersed to reveal Kiryu, with a large portion of its armor melted, but far from defeated.
Akane breathed forcefully and sweat fell from her forehead. Even with the cooling system’s failure, the pilot ignored the intense heat as it compared little to her last engagement.
“You may be able to control fire… but… I’ve fought an atomic dragon… and he was far more challenging than you.”
Kiryu unleashed a massive barrage of rockets into the air and Desghidorah prepared for their impact only to hear the sound of distant explosions above him. The two heads of the dragon looked up to see the missiles fly into the mountain wall, followed by the loud sound of ice cracking.
Realizing what the machine was doing, Desghidorah launched forward merely to discover the machine’s shoulder pack flying directly at him. Kiryu’s pack slammed into the dragon and caused Desghidorah to skid across the ice covered ground and back into the wall. A final twin maser by Kiryu finally caused the ice wall to shatter and fall in mass.
Its mission accomplished, Kiryu turned around and walked away while Desghidorah screamed in utter rage. The dragon’s voice echoed for miles until Kiryu’s pack detonated and the avalanche of ice reburied the ancient dragon in an icy tomb.
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Akane watched as engineers and small machines maneuvered across the metal giant to repair its fresh wounds. Metal sections were meticulously sliced off, repaired and replaced within minutes. Nearly a week with modern equipment accomplished what Japan failed to do so in a year.
“Guess they are good at something,” Akane chuckled before the sound of footsteps snapped her out of her gaze.
“You know, you don’t have to watch its repairs,” Tokumitsu stated comically as he rested on the same railing Akane was leaning on.
“Can’t let them screw it up again can I,” Akane commented with some humor in her voice. “But why does this place even exist. I don’t recall international support when the project was created.”
“Funny enough it was for the original Mechagodzilla,” Tokumitsu noted. “It was to benefit the state of Michigan and establish a secondary repair station for foreign missions. In fact a secondary diamond shell was created here for replacements which we…
Sirens rang, red lights began to flash and the installations personnel moved with a new passion. Akane as well as Tokumitsu glanced around for any sign of this panic only for the speakers to buzz to life.
An officer somewhat calmly directed the station’s men, explaining the dire situation. The words invasion, and war echoed most prominently until a word echoed across the base. A word which caused Tokumitsu to immobilize in terror as a dark memory resurged from the darkest corner of his mind.
Xilien.
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