The planet felt too still. As if the world itself was watching.
Mist curled lazily across the shattered canyon while two silhouettes stood atop a ridge — one in a rugged half-suit of armor, the other in a grease-stained jacket, hunched over a humming frequency emitter.
Kael squinted into the fog. His newly reforged mecha stood tall behind him, casting a long shadow across the cracked plateau.
It wasn't the Ravager he had once known.
But it was still Ravager.
Or rather, Ravager Mk III.
A beast reborn from wreckage, its plating stitched from the husks of Freya's, Kira's, and Lisette's mechas. Oris had worked tirelessly — welding, adapting, splicing every ounce of tech they could find into one combat monster. The result was crude but vicious. Its spine was reinforced with tungsten layering. Its engine whirred with a triple-coil reactor. And at its core? The original combat core of Kael's old Ravager — the last fragment that still remembered blood.
Kael touched its armor briefly, the vibrations familiar. Still his.
Still angry.
"Power pulse ready," Oris said, tightening a knob. "You sure you want to do this without Tyren?"
Kael nodded. "He's prepping the launch path. This one's ours."
The emitter began pulsing low-frequency tremors, mimicking the territorial vibrations of a rival Kaiju.
Thirty seconds.
Nothing.
Sixty.
Still silence.
Then — the ground erupted.
A geyser of soil and rock launched into the air as something massive forced its way out of the canyon floor. The sound was otherworldly — half scream, half rumble.
It was the centipede Kaiju, finally drawn from its subterranean nest.
It uncoiled segment after segment from the earth, like a hellish serpent dragged from a dream. Each plated segment dripped with acidic slime, and steam vents hissed with scalding pressure. Its face — wide, flat, insectile — bore rows of glittering black eyes and a rotating circular maw of bone teeth.
"Target acquired," Oris whispered, almost reverently.
Kael's helmet sealed shut.
"Ravager Mk III — engage."
---
The first clash was fast and brutal.
Kael charged.
The mecha sprinted with a thundering gait, boosters igniting across its legs as it darted beneath a rain of acidic venom. With a precision honed by instinct and hatred, Ravager Mk III leapt, plunging twin energy glaives into the creature's 8th and 9th segments.
The Kaiju shrieked — a sharp, teeth-grinding screech — and whipped its tail in retaliation.
Kael braced.
The mecha slammed into the ridge wall, metal groaning but holding.
"Left stabilizer buckling!" Oris warned over comms.
"I see it!" Kael growled, pushing forward.
The centipede hissed again, diving head-first at Ravager.
But Kael was ready.
He ducked low, rotated the core thrusters, and activated the Grapple Spines — thick mechanical tendrils that shot from Ravager's forearms, stabbing into the Kaiju's armored carapace. Then came the voltage pulse.
10,000 volts of electricity surged into the creature's nervous system.
It spasmed.
Screeched.
And then tried to retreat — digging into the ground.
"No you don't," Kael spat.
He overcharged the boosters and rode the Kaiju's back, twin plasma blades igniting along Ravager's arms. With a savage roar, Kael carved down the creature's spine, exposing bone and burning muscle.
The Kaiju thrashed violently — but the damage was done.
Oris launched two sonic grenades near the beast's head. A pulsewave exploded, stunning the creature as Kael leapt forward and delivered the final blow — a rising arc of both blades across the base of the neck.
The centipede collapsed, twitched once…
And then lay still.
Kael's breathing was ragged. Warning signs blinked across his HUD.
"Minor internal damage. Stabilizer offline. Arm pressure's low," Oris reported. "But she's still running."
Kael smiled faintly beneath the helmet.
"Ravager's still got bite."
---
But the fight wasn't the end.
As dust settled and Oris approached on foot, he noticed something — a collapsed sinkhole, half-exposed in the crater left by the Kaiju.
They climbed down cautiously.
What they found was not just a tunnel.
It was a tomb.
Or maybe a storage pit.
Four massive Kaiju corpses, each strangely intact, rested beneath layers of humid soil and thick webbing.
A towering reptilian one with glassy twin jaws. A crystalline serpent with twisted metallic scales. A bloated, trunk-limbed behemoth. And one so alien its design defied classification — thin limbs, webbed arms, and a long, flower-like face frozen in a death scream.
"They're... preserved," Oris said, kneeling by the serpent.
Kael crouched, brushing moss from the scales. "Why?"
Oris hesitated. "Maybe the centipede was feeding. Or nesting. But these… they're untouched."
"Fuel?" Kael asked.
Oris scanned the carcasses.
"Fuel. Alloys. Organic binding cores. You name it. This isn't a kill zone. This is a goddamn treasure vault."
Kael looked around the pit. His voice was cold.
"Then we mine it. Before something else does."
---
Back at the cave, Freya was the first to hear the rumble.
Not a quake.
Not a Kaiju.
A returning hunter.
She ran to the entrance, heart hammering — and froze.
Kael's mecha stood at the edge of the cliff.
Half scorched. Armored blackened. Blades still hissing.
And dragging behind it…
The centipede Kaiju's corpse.
Behind him, Oris emerged with a bloody grin and raised a thumb.
"We found a goldmine."
No one cheered.
But something burned behind their eyes.
Hope.
---