"Bastards!" Toshi cursed and looked around at the mess. Debris were scattered everywhere and shattered glass littered the ground. "Careful!" he called to some children, who were playing in the wreckage.
"Do we know it is this time?" Nakamara-san asked him with a resigned tone to her voice. She was in her sixties and clearly remembered a better time.
"Some rival martial arts clan that specializes in bugs or something," he informed her with a shrug. It wasn't as if it mattered after all. Every year for the last 31 years, there had been some alien, magical, ninja, underground, or whatever kind of army trying to take over the world and for some reason they all chose to begin their invasion by attacking Tokyo.
At first people had moved out of town, trying to find another place to live, away from giant robots, giant monsters, weird foot soldiers or whatever else they had to contend with. Eventually though, they just learned to deal with it. It was just part and parcel of living in Tokyo.
A trio of brightly garbed young folk with unlikely looking weapons in hand dashed past and Toshi sighed again.
"Do your best!" he shouted after them, but it was rather half-hearted by this time. Sure there was always a team of people dedicated to protecting them, and so far they had always managed to defeat the invasions, but they just kept coming every year at the same time.
"Only three this time?" Nakamara-san asked with curiosity. She wielded her broom with deft skill, sweeping the debris off of her stoop. She was bent and withered, but her black eyes were bright and inquisitive. She knew the gossip for the whole area and was happy to ell you all about the neighbors.
"Ah, you know more will show up eventually. We always end up with at least five, one way or another." He assured her. He wasn't sure why it worked that way, it just always did. Five was the minimum that was just how it was.
He picked up a couple of pieces of what looked like roasted chicken and tossed it into the garbage. Damn monsters, they always exploded and left bits everywhere. Robots were better, since you could always take those to the junkyard and get some yen for them.
"Motorcycles or sky craft of some sort, do you think?" she asked next and he shrugged. It was too early in the year for new vehicles and he was bad at guessing which it would be.
She finished her sweeping and then, with a polite bow, went back inside. Her grandson lived with her and she was probably going in to tell him that it was all clear. It was important to keep children inside during monster battles, or they could be grabbed to be used as bait against the people fighting them.
Children weren't allowed to talk to strangers in Tokyo. It wasn't about perverts or anything either, it was about all the shape-shifting enemies, who always seemed to lure children off and into danger.
He looked up as the Monster Attack Cleaning Force arrived. Dressed in grey jumpsuits, with their helmets and special gloves, they always arrived quickly after an attack. He waved at some of them, familiar to him after years of chatting after battles.
"Toshi-san!" called one. "How are you?"
"Fine, fine!" he shouted back. "I got into my shelter the minute the radio gave the alarm!" Having a Monster Attack Shelter was another one of the things one just got used to. People moving here from the country were often uneasy about monster attacks, but the natives were pretty blasé about it at this point.
"So, who is the new team?" one of the children asked, getting out of the way of the clean-up crew and they scooped up wreckage and hosed down the street.
"Gookiranger, or something like that," shrugged the crewman, completely uninterested in the subject. They just cleaned up after it all, year after year, any curiosity long since burned away by the continual aggravation of the job. It was hard to clean up the same streets month after month, rebuilding houses and office towers, only to have them crashed into by yet another monster.
"I heard it was Gekoranger," another crewman put in with a frown.
"Who knows, who cares," the first one grumbled and they all went back to cleaning.
Toshio stretched and groaned and watched the horizon. Somewhere out there was yet another force of evil doers bent on destroying the city and then taking over the world. He didn't know how a sign got put over Tokyo saying "Start your planetary invasion here!", but he had grown philosophical about it all.
A distant explosion made him sigh and he headed indoors to get back into his shelter.
It was just another day in Tokyo.