Stumbling outside the building, Alex Mercer was slowly recovering. His form had mostly stabilized but he still felt weak, as if a part of himself had been torn off from his body. His memories were in shamble.
Why was he back in New York? What was going on? Why was there a second outbreak? His memories slowly came back; after the events of New York, after the defeat of the Supreme Hunter, he had gone into hiding. That's when they revealed themselves; Chronos. During X-Day, Alex simply watched as the Zoanoids took over. At the time, he was in hiding, wondering what to do next, being a walking, sentient mass of the Blacklight Virus. Then there had been a new outbreak in New-York. An outbreak of Blacklight, now named the 'Mercer Virus'.
Hearing a roar, Alex looked up. Leaping down the building was a pack of large infected creatures. Hunters. Still feeling weakened, Mercer didn't feel up to fight these creatures, however, given their speed, he knew he couldn't outrun them. Attempting to shapeshift his body was met with failure. Not even claws would pop out. "Damn it." he said to himself, deadpan, understating the whole situation. Jumping, he narrowly avoided a pounce.
Suddenly, the whole scene became illuminated by a bright light. Choppers. "Alex Mercer is on the move. Repeat, Alex Mercer is on the move. Deploy Hyper-Zoanoids squads and engage." Mercer didn't like the sound of that, not while he felt weakened. Jumping from the two choppers were zoanoids, eight in total and of various breeds, none familiar to Mercer. Covered in thick plates or scales, often adorned with vicious spikes, most clawed they all looked monstrous. Charging Mercer, one of them did short work of a Hunter in the way, trampling the creature.
"So that's the dreaded Alex Mercer?" asked the Hyper-Zoanoid, amused at how easily they cornered the man who once wreaked havoc on the ranks of Blackwatch. Grabbing Mercer with it's pincer, it pulled it toward itself, dangling the blacklight creature mere inches away from it's hideous face. "I heard Chronos command is very interested in you. Thing is, I'm not impressed, you're either rather weak or clearly you can't keep up with new and improved Zoanoids!"
"Hmpf." Mercer kept a calm face. "I thought it was Blackwatch who had a bone to pick with me." His arms twitched and deformed briefly but return to normal, his shapeshifting still not properly functioning. "We all work for Chronos now, does it matter?"
With nothing left to lose, Mercer's tried one last trick. His body melting into a reddish goo, red tendrils erupted from his body, wrapping themselves around the Zoanoid who reeled back in shock. Rolling around, the creature was trying to shake off Mercer. "Get off it me!" It screamed before tossing Mercer aside who promptly reformed. "You're not very smart, aren't you?" snarked the hooded man before running off the side of a building, the Zoanoids chasing after him. He was too weak to 'eat' an hyper-zoanoid raw but that sure scared him briefly!
While unable to run at full speed, Mercer was still more agile than the creatures chasing him. That and he had plenty of experience navigating the city by jumping off buildings and gliding. He definitely had the home turf advantage, which he quickly used to lose his pursuers. "Hiding in here. What a joke." Mercer said to himself while trying once more to shapeshift. This time his attempt was meant with better results as his hands morphed into claws. "Huh. Much better."
Back in the abandoned Chronos facility, Heller was still on the floor, in pain and confused. Through his blurred vision, he saw Zoanoids surround him. The reinforcements Red Crown talked about, most likely. "Facility is secured but Mercer has escaped. Also; we have a...wounded, I guess." one of the untransformed Chronos soldier said, tapping Heller's body with his boot.
"He's infected, we're taking him back to base as a specimen." said another. "Hell...no." wheezed out Heller, still unable to move. "Get your...greasy hands...the fuck off me." Then everything went white. Then black.
Around him, people were talking. Heller could overhear them, vaguely. Talking about specimens, experiments, burning the place and how he was infected. "What...the…" James wheezed out, still confused, images of his wife and child flashing in his mind. "Heller is Chronos property now. You will run these experiments" A voice said, harsh. Likely military. Likely an asshole, too, thought James. "And you, give me status report on the chrysalis."
Elsewhere within the base, Chronos and Blackwatch scientists were busy studying the chrysalis, trying to understand it's nature and purpose. Inside it was Sho Fukamachi, Guyver I, in a semi-awake state. Within the pulsing cocoon, the Guyver was finishing his transformation when he picked up something. Or rather someone. Someone full of anger and rage toward Chronos and Blackwatch. While more volatile, that person still felt intimately familiar to Sho in a way. Just as Sho was fighting to protect Mizuki and Tetsuro, that person was fighting for someone, even if they were deceased. They anchored that person to humanity just as Mizuki and Tetsuro did for Sho. They gave him a reason and purpose.
"What kind of sick shit is this?" yelled James Heller out loud, as he got tossed into a large room with multiple hungry infected. They all shambled toward him, limping on their deformed legs and swaying their misshapen arms around. Faced with no other choice but to fight, Heller clenched his fist and threw a punch at one of the monster's face...which then promptly exploded into a shower of gore. "Whoa! What the hell?" He didn't question himself for long, since these creatures kept coming at him and his only way of surviving was punching and kicking them to the point of explosion. "Let me out of here!" roared the sargeant.
"You have what you need, Doctor Koenig?" James could overhear the military man talking to the scientist. "Colonel, please, we must learn all we can about the subject. He might be the key to Project Chimera."
"Project Chima-what?" James yelled out. "Hey, you fuckers know I can hear you, right? You're not turning me into some kind of lab rat! I'll kill you when I get out of here!" Angry and out for blood, Heller continued to repeatedly puddle infected civilians into jelly.
"He's too dangerous! Burn him down!" ordered the military from earlier, from behind a thick glass above in the room. "Rooks, you can't he's too valuable, that would be against the direct orders of Doctor Barcas, we NEED such a potent Blacklight specimen!" the scientist pleaded.
The man in charge certainly did not seem to care; "Burn him." James found himself engulfed in flames and collapsed to the ground, burned to a crisp, barely able to move. "Get cleanup and recovery in there."
"No signs of life, sir." said the Blackwatch trooper after getting in the room. There was no reaction, not even a twitch from the burnt and smoking corpse, faintly glowing as the insides were exposed; there wasn't really anything remotely human underneath Heller's flesh, just glowing, burned infected biomass. "Make sure. I don't need another Mercer running around."
"Yes sir." said the soldier, shooting the corpse. Again, no reaction. "Look at the bright side, Koenig, we still have his remains for st-." The commander didn't have the chance to finish his sentence as Heller rose from the ground with lightning-fast speed, grabbed one of the Blackwatch soldier by the throat and then slammed him at full force into the ground. Tendrils of reddish flesh extended from Heller's body, engulfing the poor bastard, who soon found himself absorbed into his attacker's body. Heller screamed, half from, half from triumph as his wounds began to heal, his flesh regenerating to a pristine state. "Oh my-" screamed the other soldier, who couldn't finish his sentence either as James grabbed his gun, crushed it with one hand and then used the other to grab the soldier's face. He met the same fate as his companion: consumption.
"Holy shit! What the fuck did he do to me?" Grabbing a pair of infected, one with each hand, James tossed them both at the window. However, this only caused them to explode like balloons. Since that didn't work so well, he turned his attention to table, the one he had been strapped to before being released to fight the infected. Screaming, he tossed it at the window, shattering it. With a way to escape, James lept. He didn't have time to consume Koenig or the other man, despite how much he wanted to. He needed to escape.
Running down the base at full speed while being fired at, Heller came across a large window. Down below, in a room similar to the one he was, there was a large yellow cocoon, something he remembered Mercer was interested in. In the back of his mind, Heller felt something. A pulse. Coming from the chrysalis. "What the…" Shattering the window, Heller dropped down, crushing some unlucky scientist beneath him as he land. "What the hell are you? What do you want?"
"The escaped test subject is near the chrysalis, get him!" Arriving from all directions were all manners of Zoanoids. "Well, shit. I guess this ain't my lucky day." Heller muttered to himself. Surrounded by Zoanoids, Heller tried to fight back but there was simply too many of them and they were overpowering him. "I'm not going to die here!" he shouted, as he grabbed one Zoanoid to whack another only for a third to tackle him to the ground and stab him with it's claw. Enraged, Heller grabbed the creature's head and squeezed it until it popped like an overripe fruit. One day, a dozen more to go.
"I ain't done yet! Because I ain't DYING HERE!" shouted Heller. "You hear me, you monsters? I'm not done yet! You ain't taking me down!" He punctuate his sentence by punching one of the zoanoid in the stomach. "I'm gonna fight to the fucking end!" A big, furred zoanoid, a Ramotith, met it's end as Heller elbowed it's face off before grabbing the arm and beating it to death with it.
'I can't die here.' thought Heller. 'Maya. Colette.' That's when the pulse happened. A powerful pulse, emanating from the chrysalis, which started glowing brightly. Slowly it began unfurling, piece by piece. There was something inside, vaguely visible behind all the glow. A massive figure, taller than James and the zoanoids emerged and stood up from the cocoon. "Now what?" grunted James, worried he'd have to fight his way past the giant creature.
The metal circle on it's forehead glowed. Eyes lighted up. And the vents on the side of it's face exhaled smoke. Guyver Gigantic had awakened.
