The X-35 swoops around the square Bank of America building, its lines of windows looking like oversized pinstripes...at least, the ones that haven’t been punched through yet. The Tsuchi pays the plane no heed, that is, until a chain gun emerges from its underbelly and opens fire.
As the line of bright orange tracer rounds stretch toward the monster, I cringe, hoping Obsidian, who I’m sure is behind the gun controls, knows to avoid hitting the bright orange membranes. Luckily, most of the Tsuchi’s membranes are on its underside, but there is one on either side of its neck. Its eight eyes look like they could be made of the same explosive stuff, or they’re at least covered by a protective layer of it.
My worry, it turns out, is misplaced. The thousands of rounds being spewed by the X-35 don’t come close to any of the membranes. But they do hit the layers of impenetrable armor, ricocheting away into the city. I duck down as a window one floor down explodes from a burst of deflected chain gun fire.
The buzzing gun falls silent a moment later. In the brief pause that follows, the sound of falling glass rings out around the city. Hundreds of shattered windows. I peek up over the wall. The chain gun decimated the facades of several skyscrapers, but it also did its job. The Tsuchi is now focused solely on the X-35, which is hovering at five hundred feet, back out over the path of destruction where the Tsuchi can’t do much more damage than it’s already done. It also puts the monster’s back to us, which is what we’ve been waiting for.
“Let’s go,” I say, putting my hands on the wall, prepping to jump up and over.
A vibration rattling up through the building, and then through my body, stops me. I grab hold of Lilly’s leg. She’s already perched on the edge, about to leap. “Hold on!”
“What?” Her talons dig into the wall, rooting her in place.
The vibration rattles through us again. Through the whole city. And it doesn’t coincide with anything the Tsuchi is doing.
No, I think, turning west. Not now. I run around the building’s rooftop, stopping when I reach the western side.
In the far distance, through a curtain of light brown haze, visible only because I’m atop a thousand-foot-tall building, is a line of blue ocean. But the view is marred by the rising, black figure of Nemesis. She’s huge, but moving fast, built for power and speed. It will only be a few minutes before she arrives, and there’s no doubting why she’s here. The Tsuchi. The fiery injustice Nemesis feels when mankind commits crimes against itself must pale in comparison to what the Tsuchi did to Nemesis. She’s not interested in the city or the people in it. She’s making a beeline toward downtown, flattening block after congested block, and she won’t stop until she gets here.
“What should we do?” Lilly asks. “Let them fight?”
My face twists like I’ve bitten into a lemon grown in hell. “That’s a horrible idea. This is a U.S. city with millions of people in it, not a Kaiju battleground. We’re going to do what we came here to do, hopefully in time to turn Nemesis around, before any real damage is done.” I climb up onto the wall and leap off. Lilly bounds over the wall after me.
28
As my fall rapidly approaches both terminal velocity and a terminal meeting with the ground, I slap my chest, and the wingsuit fabric snaps out. While my fall isn’t exactly arrested, it is redirected and slowed, allowing me to pull away from the U.S. Bank building. A snap of fabric pulls my eyes to the right. Lilly glides beside me, a smile on her face.
Her confidence, while potentially misplaced, bolsters my own. After all, even if we die, what cooler way could there be to die than to wingsuit jump onto the back of a Kaiju-spider in defense of mankind. History books, here we come.
The wind rushing all around me blocks out all other sound, until the Tsuchi roars. The high pitched wail strikes me like a shockwave. Had I been standing on the ground, it might have stumbled me, but here, moving through the air, I punch right through it and continue on my downward trajectory, a human missile with a bomb strapped to his waist.