Chapter 48: Bonus Chapter – Ryker – Part Two

Ryker - Part Two

Ryker was going to die. There was no surviving being this close to something like that. This was a Rank S Kaiju. A city killer. God’s Perfect Sword and the Blade of the East.

The Kaiju folded in on itself, as if it didn’t even have a passing care about the physics that ruled the world. The being became a massive sixteen-sided hexadecahedron which ended in points thinner than the tip of a needle. Then one of those long pointed sides opened up. Ryker watched, almost detached, as a section of the side, a perfect-edge line was ripped apart.

The Kaiju didn’t even have the good grace to make a noise as it warped natural laws and tore apart ten thousand lives.

Ryker glanced back.

The portal was closing.

He was going to die.

He was going to die if he stayed where he was.

Ryker wasn’t sure what part of his fight or flight response demanded that he move at that very moment, but he found himself suddenly running towards the portal and jumping just as the edges of the rip in reality started to close in on each other.

Within the portal, Ryker was working hard to keep his lunch, and he didn’t just mean his groceries. He hugged his bag of groceries tight and squeezed his eyes shut. He was falling.

Below him was the city. Ahead was more of it. And above, the garden-topped skyscrapers of his home reached down like the blunt claws of some godly beast. It was as if the entire world was a puzzle, smashed apart and put back together by a god who had no concept of what space in three dimensions was meant to look like.

Ryker didn’t scream. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t. By all means, if there was ever a time where screaming would be appropriate, he thought that right then and there would be it.

The city collapsed in on itself, and Ryker realized that he was moving less towards the ground... any of the many grounds around him... and more in a vaguely forward direction.

Buildings closed in on their mirrored copies and phased through each other while they spun in on themselves. He was at the head of a cone that was pressing close from both ends, and every fleeting glimpse he took sent a fresh wave of vertigo racing through him.

He was a denizen of the Flatlands, shoved bodily into a world with a whole new dimension and he was not enjoying the experience.

And then, out ahead of him, Ryker saw the bud in the centre of the flower. A pillar that led out into infinity and at its end a complex array of perfectly poised crystals, laid out like the petals of a smaller flower. He recognized the crystals. They were the same as Tamiel’s.

It clicked.

The crystalline flower was hovering over the warping cityscape, mirroring the real Tamiel’s position over the same. That made it so much easier to understand everything.

What didn’t help was the fact that he wasn’t slowing down and the central flower was growing closer and he realized that it wasn’t just crystal but there was a growth atop it and he was going to--

Ryker spun himself around with a wild kick, some old reflex sending him in a spin that let him crash onto the Tamiel-flower back-first instead of meeting it with his skull.

The landing was made softer by the Kaiju gripping onto the crystalline surface. He landed on the organic blob instead of the hard crystal.

The fleshy Kaiju didn’t appreciate the intrusion though. Tentacles ripped themselves off of the crystalline flower and waved through the air, each of them tipped with mouths that had too many teeth.

Ryker wheezed for a moment, then rolled to his feet.

His groceries tumbled around him, some merely floating off, other bits staying close or acting as if they were under the influence of some unseen gravity.

Still wheezing, Ryker tossed himself to the side and narrowly avoided having his face tentacled.

In passing, he grabbed the first weapon he found: a large can of diced mangos in light sauce.

The Kaiju wasn’t one he’d seen before. That wasn’t too unusual. New ones appeared frequently enough.

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The general rule of thumb when fighting a Kaiju was don’t. And if one couldn’t not fight one, then the second option was focus on its brain.

Ryker gulped in a lungful of air, pretended that he couldn’t see the twisting world around him, then he charged ahead with his can gripped as if his life depended on it.

Ryker ducked under the swing of one tentacle, then smacked another aside with his large can of diced mangos. The blow almost sent him reeling back, but he managed to keep his feet under him and after stumbling a step back--while standing on the kaiju’s body, no less--he twisted his waist forwards and tripped back towards the monster’s centre.

He had the impression, after half a minute of tangling with the monster, that it wasn’t very good at fighting.

Those existed. There were some kaiju whose combat abilities were basically laughable, at least when it came to direct confrontations. Some were designed more for stealth. Others had far more insidious powers. Mind-control and powerful abilities that could warp an entire area into a nightmare didn’t require the monster in their centre to be dangerous.

He wasn’t sure what was up with this kaiju in particular, and he didn’t care at that moment.

Ryker was a therapist. He worked in an office. Sure, he took frequent walks and played badminton once a month or so, but he wasn’t exactly in the same sort of shape he’d once been in. It didn’t take long before he was panting, legs working hard to both keep himself stable and push forwards across the Kaiju’s body.

That’s when he noticed it. The monster wasn’t wrapped around just crystal. There was a person there. A young woman, curled in a fetal position, in a cocoon of crystalline glass. He... had no idea what that could possibly mean, but he imagined it wasn’t good.

He continued to climb, even if it was like walking across a heap of beanbag chairs, while fleshy pool noodles tried to smack him away. Others lunged towards time, gaping mouths open to bite, but they floundered and bumped into each other, throwing their aim off.

Finally, he reached the middle and stared down.

The Kaiju had a single large eye which was staring balefully up at him. He didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t know where he was. What he did know was that he was frustrated and that frustration and stress could be let out using physical exercise.

The mango can came rocking down and thumped into the eye with a dull thwack.

The Kaiju writhed, tentacles flicking around wildly. One of them whipped Ryker across the shoulders and he fell down onto the monster. The eye was broken, fluids oozing out of it.

He raised the can and brought it down again, this time next to the eye.

Something cracked on the third blow and the Kaiju’s skin split open.

On the fifth, something shifted and he suspected he’d broken the Kaiju’s equivalent of a face bone. Tossing his can aside, he reached into the wound he’d open, following some almost caveman-esque instinct, then he ripped the flaxen, rubbery skin of the monster apart.

It was like calamari, he noted.

Every Kaiju’s parts were valuable. He was ripping through the meat of a species he was pretty sure no one had seen before. Ryker didn’t think of himself as too materialistic, but he still felt a pang as he tore apart the Kaiju to get to its innards.

It was incredible, the amount of wild shit a human would do if they thought they had no choice and would die if they didn’t.

He found the Kaiju’s brain, raised his fist, then punched it.

The world, of course, exploded.

Ryker was twisted around, flipped head over heels, and then, finally, he crashed hard onto something that had just enough give that he didn’t break any bones. Groaning, he waited for the world to right itself and stop spinning, then he opened his eyes.

Earth. He was back on Earth, in the city of Hope, even. He turned and groggily climbed to his feet. The city was a mess, buildings toppled, fires spreading around and screams in the distance.

It wasn’t the devastation that caught his eyes the most though. No, what stole his breath was the massive rank-S Kaiju towering above him, canted at an angle so that it rested against a skyscraper. It was unmoving; its insides didn’t glow. It was dead.

“Holy shit,” he murmured. Had he just killed the God Sword? He looked back and at the slice across the ground where the portal he’d jumped through had been a moment before. He was... feeling a lot of things at the moment, but one thing flashed to his mind. What had happened to that girl he’d seen?

***

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