A/N: Graçias for the reviews/favorites/follows/etc! It's nice to know that people like the Precursors enough to at least watch them fail spectacularly.
Two – Conflict Resolution
"You're absolutely sure that it's safe this time."
"YES."
"Absolutely, completely, irrevocably sure."
"...MORE OR LESS."
It had taken the Precursors six months to rebuild the portal with a bio-organic airlock system, amidst the grumblings of the alien higher-ups about the amount of resources it was taking for such an insignificant planet. Overlord assured Bishop that that was what they always said, but the Precursor wasn't so sure anymore. The giant eyeball seemed fixated on the tiny human planet – rumor was its parental unit had worked on the failed Triassic colonization, and Overlord was trying to regain its family's respect.
The Incident with the Pacific Ocean had certainly not been a good start to that, Bishop thought. They were going to have to have some spectacular successes in the near future if they still wanted to depend on Cardinal funding.
Bishop had not failed to realize that the Incident with the Pacific Ocean also looked very bad for it. Granted, it hadn't been the main orchestrater of the mishap, and it had voiced its doubts about the safety of an unenclosed Rift, but flooding an entire Precursor city was bad press, any way you put it, and Bishop had been there, co-directing the operation, which made him completely at fault in the public's eyes.
"Overlord, I know we've been over this before, but tell me again how all the safety measures on the new Rift work." Which was why it was taking no chances. The invasion had to go perfectly from now on – better than perfect – or the ruling Precursor Cardinals would cut their funding and it and Overlord would be thrown out onto the streets and end up selling modified Kaiju as sex toys. Despite its drawbacks (working with Overlord), Bishop quite liked its job and didn't especially want to be kicked out into the Kaiju slums.
"AH. THE RIFT...THE RIFT SYSTEM WORKS THE SAME AS BEFORE, WITH THE ADDITION OF MEASURES THAT BLOCK SEAWATER AND NATIVE LIFE-FORMS."
"And there's no way either of those things could get through? Ever? In any possible way?"
"SALT WATER IS COMPLETELY BLOCKED. AND UNLESS ONE OF THEIR CREATURES KILLED A KAIJU AND SWAM WITH IT INTO THE PORTAL, WE ARE ENTIRELY SAFE HERE."
"Okay..." Bishop couldn't see a problem with that. Their Kaiju dwarfed the Earthling fish by at least fifty times. "You still have that thing set up where anything can pass through the portal from this side, right?"
"YES. AS I SAID, TO GIVE OURSELVES MORE OPTIONS FOR AN ARSENAL –"
"And other things can pass through the portal if Kaiju are holding them." Something about the setup was nagging at the back of Bishop's mind, but it couldn't think what. It shrugged it aside for the time being. "And the airlock? Can anything burn through that? Acid, fire, explosions? What's the worst-case scenario?"
Overlord pondered this, spinning its eyeball contemplatively. "IF THE AIRLOCK FAILS TO CLOSE AND A KAIJU SWEEPS A CREATURE THROUGH, IT WILL FALL INTO THE ANTEVERSE. OR IF THE KAIJU FALLS THROUGH ITSELF, WE MIGHT BE CRUSHED AND DIE. OR IF THE KAIJU TURNS ROGUE, WE MIGHT BE TORN APART AND DIE, OR –"
"Alright, that's enough." Something was going to go wrong with this, Bishop just knew it. Overlord's airlock biomechanism was going to start malfunctioning and spraying goo everywhere, or the portal was going to spin out of control and spit the whole planet into the Anteverse. But it couldn't justify any of its concerns without some kind of proof. The Precursor crossed two of its skeletal fingers behind its back and prayed to the Dread Lord Uhluhtc with all its might. "Al-alright, o-open the portal."
The layers of the biomech airlock opened like the petals of an enormous flower, and somewhere far above the duo familiar blue lightning started to flicker. The Breach began to force itself open, and Bishop dove down and covered its head in its hands, bracing itself for a fireball, a tidal wave, something was going to go terribly wrong –
"...BISHOP, THE PORTAL IS OPEN."
"Huh?" The alien raised one of its hands to peek out at the giant eye. "And...it didn't explode, or eat us, or cause a feedback loop or anything?"
"NO, IT WORKED PERFECTLY."
"...Oh." Bishop drew itself back up to its full fourteen-foot height. "I knew it was going to work. After all those fail-safes we added, the thing couldn't do much else. It's completely harmless now – AAGH!"
The portal hiccuped, and lightning blasted down from the sky and sheared a slab of rock off the cliff above the Precursor.
Overlord chuckled dryly. "ROCK ON THE OCEAN FLOOR WAS DISPLACED WHEN I OPENED THE BREACH. THE PORTAL HAD TO READJUST. IT IS PERFECTLY SAFE NOW, BISHOP."
"Ye-wait, you built the portal in the same place? At the bottom of the ocean floor?"
"OF COURSE." The eye looked down in confusion. "WHYEVER NOT?"
"Alright. Never mind." The Breach thrummed far above their heads, a gently glowing aurora borealis. "Wow. In my opinion, we'll have this world cleaned up in no time."
(Bishop's opinion had actually been This is suicidal, what the ▢ ▢ ▢ ▢ was I thinking, why did I ever sign up for this? but he wasn't about to tell Overlord that.)
"IT IS A START."
"So, what's Phase Two?"
Overlord closed its eye. "I ACCESS OUR SCOUT'S MEMORIES AND EVALUATE THIS WORLD." Bishop felt the giant eyeball send out thought tendrils to it and linked with it and the Trespasser's memories, stored in the other side of the Breach, to form one of the hive-minds that the Precursors used to control the Kaiju or, in cases of civil war, each other.
The pair watched as the brute panicked while the Breach backfired, but not for long; Kaiju weren't bred with intelligence in mind. Its more intelligent overseers would analyze its discoveries.
(Well, that rules out Overlord, thought Bishop, but said nothing.)
The portal closed, and the creature dragged itself out of the ocean trench with much overly-dramatic scraping of its claws. Bishop struggled to make out anything discernible as Trespasser swam up through murky waters, then
The beast crashed out of the water into a seaside city, grabbed a bridge and ripped it to shreds, then proceeded to stomp on the downtown.
"What the ?" muttered Bishop. "Overlord, did you tell it to do this?"
"YES," said the giant eyeball absentmindedly, fully concentrated on Trespasser's memories.
"Whaaat?"
"IN THE EVENT THAT IT DID ACTUALLY FIND AN INHABITED AREA, I GAVE IT ORDERS TO DESTROY AS MUCH OF IT AS IT –"
"Whaaaaat?!"
Small flying things were already buzzing around Trespasser, and the beast roared and swatted at them. "IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG?"
Bishop's tripartite tongue flailed futilely in its mouth for a moment as it tried to speak. "BISHOP, WHAT IS IT?"
"Gaaaaaaaahhhhh WHY?! Asdfgh – Overlord, they KNOW WE'RE HERE NOW! You just gave them six ▢ ▢ ▢ MONTHS TO PREPARE! Why? Dread Lord Uhluhtc, why? The thing was supposed to HIDE, and SCOUT, and then we'd send in OTHER, BIGGER Kaiju to actually DESTROY the things, not –" In the memory stream, the Kaiju had grabbed hold of one of the buzzing flying things and was smashing it against a building. "Look! Look! They all know we're attacking them now! Every last one! If you had listened to me we would have crushed them easily, but no, you had to go blow stuff up –"
"HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME? I WHO CONQUERED DUNE AND EQUESTRIA? THEY WILL SUSPECT NOTHING, BUT YOU QUESTION, QUESTION –"
"What do you mean they won't suspect? You just 'sploded their city hall with a giant lizard! Look at! What, you told it to climb the skyscraper? Every last creature on this planet's going to figure out where the Breach is in a day, and in a week they'll all be dropping poop on our heads –"
"THE BREACH IS INVINCIBLE! NOTHING CAN GET THROUGH! HOW DARE YOU –"
"It was a ▢ ▢ ▢ figure of speech! Okay, I take it back. They'll drop things on the Breach, and it'll explode and take out the Anteverse!"
"BISHOP, I HAVE EXPERIENCE AND YOU DO NOT! THIS IS A VALID BATTLE PLAN!"
"Oh, and I suppose dropping a sperm whale on your head was a valid battle plan too?"
"DO NOT QUESTION ME! EVERYTHING WILL GO ACCORDING TO –"
Orange fire billowed in the memory stream. "OH. OH, MY. THAT IS A BIG EXPLOSION."
Trespasser staggered out of the crater, blackened and roaring. Tiny moving metal blocks on the ground were shooting pebbles at it. "THIS GOES ON FOR QUITE SOME TIME," muttered Overlord. "MAY I SKIP OVER IT?"
"Go ahead."
The metal blocks swarmed over the hills at breakneck speed, and the sun flew through the sky. The orange fire blossomed twice more before Trespasser finally staggered and collapsed.
"IT IS DEAD," Overlord announced redundantly.
Bishop counted to ten in its head. "Okay. That has to be the worst opening move I have ever seen."
Overlord nodded, or at least Bishop thought it did, rocking its gigantic eye back and forth. "I AGREE. THE USE OF SUCH EXCESSIVE WEAPONRY LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THAT THAT IS PROBABLY THE MOST FORMIDABLE DEVICE THEY HAVE. ALTHOUGH –"
"I meant our opening move, Overlord. With all due respect, that was really, really stupid."
"FINE. FINE." A cage popped open somewhere below and another Kaiju swam through the portal, fast enough that Bishop couldn't get a good look at it. "THERE. I AM SENDING ANOTHER SCOUT. ARE YOU HAPPY?"
"Will it –"
"JUST A MINUTE. BRIGHT COLORS MEAN A CREATURE IS DANGEROUS, RIGHT?"
"Huh? Yeah, normally. I think that's the rule. Overlord, promise that you won't send this scout to attack another city."
The great red eye looked down at the Precursor innocently. "I PROMISE THAT THIS KAIJU WILL NOT ATTACK THAT CITY AGAIN."
"Okay, good." Bishop turned away, and Overlord failed to stifle an evil chuckle.
"Hey wait a minute –"
Overlord colored every one of the Kaiju in glowing phosphorescent colors to make them as impressive and menacing as possible. It also based each one off an Earthling creature, to take what the humans knew and twist it, use it against them. The more claws – or at least pointy bits – the better.
In Overlord's opinion, this one had been perfect.
Manila Bay seethed, and swimmers ran every which way, screaming, as an enormous demonic flamingo-like monster heaved itself out of the ocean, blazing with hot pink phosphorecence. Raising its half-metre-long wings, the skyscraping creature let out a cry akin to a wounded elephant.
Police did not, at first, respond to panicked civilian calls, and the monster left a trail of destruction in its glowing rosy wake.
A/N: Yes, I wrote "whyever." Shoot me.
Sadly, I don't believe this fic will be updated again for about three weeks (but at that point, however, I hope to have several more chapters ready.)
Is there any canon description of the Manila Kaiju? I can't find any, so I made this one up, but I'm trying to avoid AU as much as possible. If anyone has a proper description of the monster, please let me know.
