Chapter 4: Gimme the City!

-New Fukuoka PRT Scientist POV-

It really was incredible just how quickly things could change. Nicholas had spent years studying engineering, went to Harvard University to spend years of gruelling study pouring over papers and spare parts before finally applying to the PRT’s research division.

Why? Because he had wanted to be the first to reverse engineer those blasted tinker inventions. Years of bitter disappointment had dulled those dreams to a weak cinder. Tinkertech just didn’t make sense at any level, they were full of gaps where the laws of physics went to die. Electricity somehow being conducted through thin air, energy coming from nowhere, spontaneous magnetic fields. It was enough to drive lesser men to tears.

Nicholas had simply grown glumly resigned to it. He still subscribed to every noteworthy scientific article and still published any findings he deemed relevant, but the spark from his earlier days was just gone.

Or so he had thought.

Since coming to New Fukuoka he had been awash in new possibilities.

“Pretty crazy, eh?”

Nicholas looked over to his co-worker Matt as he swirled the coffee in his cup with a spoon.

“What? You mean the island rising back to the surface? The city? The technology present? The fact that nobody knows who did it?”

“Yes” the man grinned at him.

Nicholas snorted at that.

“True enough, though the world has seen crazier” Nicholas said, his eyes still deep in his coffee cup as he debated adding more sugar.

“Yeah, but none of those have been so wholly positive” the man argued, leaning his body across the table.

Matt was young, he had only recently joined his team and still held that bright-eyed optimism that Nicholas had once possessed.

He said nothing to the man, content to dwell in his own thoughts. It was true that so far the appearance of New Fukuoka had only brought new discoveries and hope, hell just recently one of their probes had found some futuristic filter off the coast that seemed to encourage the growth of plant and animal life in the vicinity while clearing up the dust and detritus that surrounded the Japanese waters.

But if there was one flaw Matt had it was that he was incurious about topics that didn’t interest him, such as politics and the world news. So he wasn’t yet aware of the forces mounting across the seas wishing to take this island. He wasn’t aware of the many back room deals being discussed around the world in regards to this city.

Nicholas would let him keep his optimism.

Besides, his eyes trailed towards the city once more, this place was amazing in spite of the numerous headaches it had caused. The balcony they were sitting at gave them a direct view of the northern half of the city. White towers reached towards the sky, their frames dotted with plant life. The local nature seemed to blend into the city, making it hard to discern where one ended and the other began.

Below he could see his colleagues working, their voices faint from the height of the building. Geologists were arguing about the new stratigraphy of the island, the numerous aquifers that would likely provide as much water as this city could possibly want. Engineers and Material scientists crowded around a building, their instruments cataloguing every alloy present. Across the city and near the bay he could only barely make out the white dots that were the hydrologists and environmentalists still taking readings from the enormous filter present off the coast.

The city alone would make for hundreds of scientific papers, he would have already sent out a couple if it wasn’t for all the NDA’s he had to sign.

This certainly wasn’t how he thought his dream would come true, but it had and he could only take this opportunity and grip it with both hands.

He grinned lightly as he chugged the rest of his coffee.

Time to start working again.

-Shuten-Douji POV-

Good things come to those that wait.

She grinned as she waved towards the crowd.

The capital city of the Ehime prefecture was not a location she usually went to herself, often preferring to send subordinates to rule in her stead. Her main area of operations was near Takamatsu, the last holdout of the weak and ineffectual laughingstock on Shikoku island.

Seriously, get a clue morons!

But much like everyone else in Japan her plans had been overturned by the sudden reappearance of Kyushu as well as the interference of those boorish westerners. So she had altered her plans and chose to come here, the nearest city to Kyushu in her territory.

Her sister could deal with shoring up the borders, this was an opportunity she had to jump on!

“Fellow children of the rising sun! I come to you with fury beating in breast and a thirst to balance the scales!” She roared out. “The ones who abandoned you dare to sell something that they hold no ownership of, for it belongs to you! You and every other poor soul forced to flee from their homes!”

The crowd murmured at that, the choler of the mob rising at the mention of their loss, of their abandonment to shanty towns and poorly equipped refugee camps.

“Worse yet, they sell it to Americans! Betrayers! Thieves, come to take what is rightfully ours!” She hollered, her voice alight with true fury. Because how dare they! How dare they come back now! Only once they had something to gain from picking at their corpse, like carrion birds!

The black mood of the crowd only heightened at her words, there was no love lost to their once ally.

“I come to you now to say: no more! No more will we be treated like we’re disposable, like we’re less than an afterthought! This is our home! This is our nation!”

The crowd roared back at that, a wordless thing of bile and hatred.

She smiled as she looked around, noting who had been cheering and those who had not.

“Our honour will once more shine when we feed it with the blood of the cowardly and the profane! The Chinese stalk at our borders and the Americans whisper poison into our ears! Who here has the wisdom to see this?” She yelled, her voice reaching a crescendo of hate.

The crowd screamed back, once more any individual voice lost amidst the baying mob.

“Much of us have lost much” She toned her voice back down, almost to a deep murmur “We have, all of us, lost family and friends to the beast Leviathan”

The crowd stilled at that.

“We have, all of us, lost yet more to the negligence that followed” her voice rose. “But I promise those that fled will be returned to their homes, we will drive out the invaders and filth that dare to tread our soil and it shall be ours forevermore!” She finished triumphantly.

Screams and applause met her as she stepped of the impromptu podium.

Her smile grew as she walked towards her car, the driver obediently opening the door for her. She looked back at the many faces of her people, she looked at the bloody hope fill their gaunt dirty faces as she left.

The soft leather of her seat met the back of her head as she slumped backwards.

“Uuuuggghhhhh!” She groaned.

Why did she have to repeat that speech across the city five more times!

Oh right, because communications were spotty out here in the boonies. Fuck.

“Well I think you did alright!” chirped a voice to her right.

She turned to face her long time friend Mayuko Omi. In the aftermath of her trigger event the woman had been of great aid to her and her sister. Her former job as a news anchor had made her an able advisor in the matters of public relations and interpersonal relations. Something that her sister Ibaraki was still struggling with.

“Of course I did well, I’m me” she waved the compliment off “I just wish I had more time to speak to these people.”

Her friend smiled at that.

“It’s already going to be a busy day and your schedule is packed. If you had to give a speech as long as the one you first made, we wouldn’t be able to get to the war meeting.”

Shuten pouted slightly at that, the document she had prepared wasn’t that long! Besides wasn’t it important for her subjects to know what she expected of them, what their role was?

“I’m aware” she sighed “The meeting comes first. No pretty words should come before action.” She wouldn’t be like them. She wouldn’t let the ones she was responsible for die simply because it was more convenient to look pretty instead of wading through the mud and blood.

Matsuyama was one of the many cities that refugees from Kyushu had fled to after the loss of their homes. They had hoped to find aid and succour her, a place to stave of the horror they had come from.

A collapsing economy, the retreat of their allies, and an overstressed system never meant for as many people as there were quickly snuffed those hopes out. Shanty towns had cropped up around nearly every city in Japan. Roving warlords had shattered what remained of law and order in several parts of Japan.

The promise of tomorrow had once more been stolen from them, revealed to be a lie once more.

But now a gift from the heavens had presented itself. She was best positioned to take advantage of New Fukuoka, a city that had the means and resources to house the least fortunate of her territory. She would claim it, and use it to elevate herself above her rivals, above the bickering warlords and soulless officials.

Yes, it was true. Good things come to those who wait, but those who want to keep it must take action.

-PRT Guard POV-

Here’s a little tip that most grunts don’t get after joining up: if you want to live a long healthy life as a member of the PRT you should choose to be assigned to the most out of the way places imaginable. It was a method that had kept him away from the crazies for the last ten years, all while getting a sizeable pay check for essentially patrolling and looking intimidating.

Unfortunately his stint at Christmas Island- yes it’s real, look it up-had come to an abrupt end when a fucking island decided to pull a Lazarus and returned with a shiny new paint job.

Bullshit, but then he had long given up trying to make sense of anything.

He had been reassigned startlingly quickly and was now expected to patrol a mystery high tech city.

As a man with common sense he had promptly decided: fuck that, and chose a patrol route on the outskirts of New Fukuoka which was also conveniently decently close to a temporary airbase the PRT had set up.

So when the incredibly sketchy city inevitably started spewing out monsters or worse, he would be ready to hightail it out of there. After all it’s not like the PRT expected a single grunt to stick around and deal with a high level threat. Protocol demanded he link up with other PRT elements in such an event.

Protocol was honestly such a godsend, he had gotten out of so much trouble simply by understanding the dysfunctional rules better than his superiors.

Thus you can imagine his incredulous panic when the sound of explosions screams and gunfire start coming from the airbase.

His hand immediately reached down to his radio, and pushed down on the PTT button before barking into it.

“Delta Base, this is Hawk 4, I’m hearing sounds of combat coming from Beta Base. Acknowledge.”

The crackle of his radio was his only answer.

“Fucking bullshit” he cursed quietly.

Okay, so he was either being jammed or Delta Base was also being attacked, neither of those were good. There were numerous (and conflicting) rules he was supposed to take when in a situation like this, but he had never been that good of a soldier so he was going to trust his gut and make up a bunch of bullshit after the fact to justify his actions.

First he should try to identify who is attacking Beta Base…from a safe distance.

Ignoring the sound of screams and the tortured scream of air being ripped through by hundreds of bullets, he ducked low and looked around for a vantage point.

He spotted a hill a hundred or so meters away, from what he could see it would give him a decent view at the base. Keeping low he started to jog towards the hill, his breath feeling heavier than it should and his heart beating itself into a frenzy.

Every step seemed heavier than usual, and he was never more aware of every sound he made wading through bushes and tall grass. He winced at every snapped branch, hoping whatever enemy was out there wouldn’t find him.

This sucked!

Why the fuck did this have to happen to him!

Eventually he made it to the hill and shimmied his way to the vantage point on his belly.

It did not look good. Smoke was curling lazily up into the air from the numerous fires that blazed across the compound. Dead soldiers seemed to litter the floor as what could only be described as monsters crawled towards the last holdouts of men firing desperately into the oncoming horde.

Wow. He was really glad he hadn’t followed protocol this time.

He studied the attackers carefully, as much as he wanted to inwardly crow at being right about the island being some secret monster factory that thought didn’t line up with what he was seeing.

He had studied Nilbog and his creations. All PRT members who gain the clearance necessary inevitably tend to dip their toes into the horrors that dot the planet. It was practically a rite of passage. So he was familiar with the green rotted looking horrors, as well as a hundred other flavours of self-replicating monsters.

One thing you tended to notice after spending so much time researching them, is that they tend to stick with a theme. Oh sure Nilbog had variety to his creations but they were all still recognisably his. That same was true for all the others too.

These things however were all unique, every single one of them. Not a single one could be mistaken for another.

A pale tentacled thing stood besides an emaciated long armed yeti bearing down on the soldiers, and a single swipe of one of it’s many appendages left the group bisected at the waist.

He winced and pulled out his binoculars. Their tactics didn’t resemble swam tactics either, if anything it was reminding him of a group of drunken men in the middle of a bar brawl. Powerful, chaotic and not at all coordinated.

He narrowed his eyes, looking over each and every one of the eight parahumans who had assaulted Beta Base before he saw confirmation. An omega symbol. These were all Case-53’s, and it was with a sudden chill up his spine that he finally remembered them. This group had been a part of the briefing regarding villainous elements present in Japan.

“Ah fuck” he bit down on his impulse to stay and continue observing, the last remaining PRT soldiers were now starting to thin out rapidly and the sound of gunfire was starting to be drowned out by the discordant laughter of the rotund eyeless member of the attackers.

He pushed back, getting out of sight before sprinting towards the city. His best chance of survival rested with the heroes stationed there. If comms were being jammed then they needed to be warned.

The Hyakki Yagyō were here.

AN:

Shuten Douji: Alright! We're going to take this city and drive the American pigs out!

Nurahiyon: Yo, tweaking the PRT's nose would be funny as fuck. lets gather up some boys and go wild LMAO.

So yeah the series of skirmishes for New Fukuoka have begun. It's not quite a war yet, but the Chinese will fix that.