Disclaimer: Properties referenced in this chapter include the Guyver Live Action movies. Any resemblance of persons in this work to real individuals is entirely coincidental.

[Act 1]

[Prologue]

The Advent were a race that advanced far earlier than their counterparts and walked among the stars. So powerful were they that if not for the debate such an action must inevitably entail, they could casually mass scatter entire planets and bend the very forces to their will. For them however, this was not enough.

Eventually, in their hubris, they did something in any other mind they would have recognized as the height of foolishness. Their pride was such they believed they could control it. They afterall were the Advent, the ones that had existed since the dawn of time, the ones that were on a completely different level from anyone else. And so they awakened a Dark One.

Most took the offer of power, failing to even question it properly. Those that did not were hunted down by the monsters that had been created from what were once the highest of the high and now were little more than beasts bereft of the wisdom that had been their true power.

This is not however their story, but the story of a man touched by both what they were and what they became.

***

My name is Sean Barker. When I graduated from high school I enlisted in the United States Navy as a Hospital Corpsman. Those were the best years of my life. During Operation Desert Storm, the entire Marine squad I was assigned to was wiped out by a stupid mistake, somehow leaving me alive.

Intellectually I understood my limitations, but that didn't change the fact I was only able to ease the passing of the men I had lived and fought with. Didn't change the fact their families would be accepting a nice flag and a casket, instead of being able to welcome them back. Never wanting to have to deal with that again I served out my tour and left with the intention of using my GI bill to pay for a medical degree in some sort of general practitioner form.

During my pre-med studies I met Mizky Segawa and her father. God it seems was not done with me, as Dr. Segawa worked for a secret organization investigating alien technology. The man died a hero, trying to prevent something that would have been a catastrophe, as did so many others.

Instead it fell into my hands, and changed my life forever. It had been known simply as the Guyver, "Out of Control" in the language of the creatures who had named it so, because the simple piece of equipment had freed humanity from their control and made them a threat they could not ignore.

The Guyver is not an easy thing to describe. It is both alive and intelligent, but its mind is almost completely alien to me. The aspect I first really learned to respect was its drive to kill. A drive it had means of insuring I complied with. Its form is that of a suit of armor that bonds to and transforms the host in obvious and not so obvious ways.

A year passed after I destroyed Chronos LA where in the crime rate significantly dropped because the violent criminals were thoroughly exterminated, by It. Looking back I can appreciate It was simply following a barbaric kind of morality. Mizky broke up with me, and I followed the visions the Unit caused to invade my dreams. It led me to a dig in Utah, where I met Cori Edwards, and learned just how big of a problem I had actually gotten myself into.

A year after that something happened I'm at a loss to describe. There was like a pulse of energy that passed over. The vast majority of people were turned into things that could only be called demons. The few survivors were hunted down with extreme prejudice. Eventually a group formed around me as the Guyver could fight the demons, and wouldn't allow me to sit this out even if I wanted to.

That was four years ago. I expect my group is all that remains by now. Even it dwindles as members are lost due to natural factors and the occasional raids that get through. The old skills have came in use to save some of them, but just as many couldn't be whether due to inadequate skill on his part, or their simply being too injured that anything could be done with the equipment on hand.

Now the problem is one of simply trying to survive.

***

Barker didn't so much turn, as reorient, slide, and race off on another vector through the woods. The once-humans straining to break away as he inevitably caught up to them and sliced the pair in half with extended laser bursts, before Barker skidded and took off in another direction never allowing the tempo to slow down.

The time he could maintain full output like this was limited, but as he didn't need to really use anything too high powered the problem was more one of toxin build up then other factors. A problem evidenced by the increasingly nasty discharges from the Guyver's face vents in addition to symptoms very similar to normal muscle fatigue. There was however no other way to insure there would be no survivors to draw another pack to them. The once-men were fast enough in that bestial demonic forms, and loved to scatter enough there was simply not another way.

Barker sliced another one, only activating the vibroblade long enough for the actual cut. Skidding he raced after the last one, the trees conspiring to continuously block a clean shot. Still Barker tried to take the shot, managing to open its stomach despite the encroaching darkness around his field of view.

Barker missed a step and went down skidding a long distance through the underbrush as his considerable momentum bled off. Fighting to remain conscious despite the toxin build up, Barker cursed himself. Another thousandth of a second and he would have wiped them all out.

When the event happened there had been over 5 billion people on Earth. From what Barker had understood from others they were offered a deal. They could accept power, and twisted into once-men or they could refuse and be hunted down by the rest. The overwhelming majority favored being transformed into something else. That made for ridiculously huge hunting parties that could throw away thousands without the proverbial bat of an eye.

The darkness overwhelmed him and the Guyver took over.

***

When Barker regained awareness the sun had moved a significant degree. The relatively calm attitude of the Unit told him there had been no sign of a counter attack while he was out. If anything It was more protective of his charges then he was.

The regular blasts of toxins out of the face vent had taken a much more healthy shade, but were still nasty. It would have to do.

Barker smashed a nearby tree into splinters despite himself. The raiding parties while large were nothing compared to the swarms the once-men could amass once aroused. They needed to evade the inevitable counterattack, or at least control it enough to be able to make them retreat.

The problem was that the terrain around here was relatively flat with dense forests, ideal for them, not him. Especially as they were smart enough to use multipronged attacks normally, and thus be able to outflank him if forced on the defensive. Ideally the best solution would be to counterattack, hit them first, with multiple tries if necessary. The problem was there were other raiding parties, and they had sufficient numbers to overwhelm and slaughter the rest of the group as a matter of course.

They needed some place that was defensible. Opening up the scanning range, discretion was redundant at this point, Barker detected a city within a days travel. It would have to do.

***

"Barker!"

Barker turned to the source of the voice half paying attention while continuing his scanning of the surrounding environment with the Guyver's sensors in passive mode. Brown was waving around a box of what were technically not MREs, no doubt salvaged from the local Surplus store.

Barker directed him to store it in the room they were using to store all the useful food that was scavenged. Something he was sure he had made clear earlier.

The only food worth trying to salvage from stores by this point was canned goods and things like MREs. Everything else had went bad, by now. Between some inventive use of trees and properly preserved fruit, the threat of scurvy had yet to loom over them. Barker hoped it would continue to be so, given finding viable fruit otherwise was far from a given.

The biggest treasure in most of the groups' minds was ironically enough, toilet paper. Water was easy enough to obtain and purify, if with nothing else the ridiculous amount of bleach that would never be used to clean a load of clothes. Food wasn't that scarce, because the demons left most of the food alone being sustained by something else. It was funny how the little things one normally took for granted suddenly became extremely valuable when faced with the threat of dealing without.

Barker idly contemplated whether that had further implications, when applied to how people were viewed.

***

As night fell the group fell back to the apartment complex that had been previously chosen for the purpose. Barker had opted to concentrate the group as much as possible, because too few of them were really up to doing guard duty properly. It meant that if the demons ever got through the defense they would be able to slaughter everyone easier, but it was the best option under the circumstances. The other option would be only to create penny packets which would be easily taken out under the circumstances.

As much as Barker might like to be able to constantly stay awake and be everywhere at once, that simply wasn't possible.

Lavoie woke him up some time around midnight, quietly directing him to the window with a night vision scope. In the projected grainy green image a human figure was visible in the distance walking around openly in the dark. Barker could feel the Unit start straining to be released in pulses. It was not human.

Barker debated going out. The once-men were an odd bunch often turning on each other as much as working together, something that had served to drastically reduce their numbers over the years and helped increase their chances. Not that they didn't still have overwhelming numbers regardless. This could be a loner or part of a larger group, which would congregate having found a target. Barker doubted the pack he was expecting had arrived so soon.

The safest bet was simply to lay low. They didn't know he was here, and they could likely be avoided later. If this was the harbinger of a large group they would however be trapped, and as morning came it would become increasingly more difficult to escape their notice, with this group. If he acted now however he could decoy them away, although it would mean leaving them largely exposed during the process. In the case it was a small group he could destroy it, removing the potential threat.

Praying he wouldn't leave the group exposed to some force effectively lying in wait to exploit his absence, Barker decided the best option was to deal with them now. With a more disciplined group the option of trying to be discrete would have been the most viable, but that just wasn't the case.

Activating the Unit Barker rolled out of the window and using gravity control assist discreetly traveled across roof tops, and used other cover until he was in a position where they would not be able to track back to the group through him. Barker didn't know for sure they could pick up when he used the Guyver's sensors but there had been a few indications they could in recent years, and Barker didn't want to take the chance.

The walker had a large number of friends lying in wait in the buildings surrounding the park. Barker shifted scanning to other sectors, but there was no evidence of another group. That didn't however insure there wasn't one. If he took this group out quickly it would not however matter.

Throwing discretion to the wind he jumped off the old office building he had selected as his perch and hit the ground running, damaging the paved surface in the process. Charging the chest cannon to full power, Barker cut loose with the left and used his hip to drag the beam through the various buildings blowing away masonry and vaporizing their contents before it shut down. He started the right up on the right of the walker, cutting a clean path through several more buildings.

That still left a respectable group in the center who were now beginning to emerge. Barker was just about to strike down the walker and get to business of engaging the rest, when he recognized her.

"Cori?!"

She stood there with an evil smile on her face. They had last parted ways soon after the dig. Conflicted Barker left himself open for a second, and felt something being driven into his stomach, between the armor plates. Looking down he saw it was her arm turned into a demonic claw, just before the Guyver sliced it off.

Author's Notes:

A writer, unlike an animator, derives no benefit from the use of techniques designed to take advantage of stock footage. Thus you will not find fixed attack patterns in the use of weapons systems in this series.

This and my choosing terminology appropriate to the Barker character as I conceived him may result in some issues for those used to the standardized terminology. I believe things however have been made clear enough there should not be any issues with understanding.

The eldritch horrors are to my design, not taken from elsewhere.