Someone once told me that you learn more when you're about to die than a year in schooling. But he was just some old army brass guy, never saw any action in his life. I never really believed it. Maybe one day I'd test that.

But plummeting from the sky, not a good time. I use my body to shift my direction in the air, I'm only aiming at one thing. I'm aiming for the aircraft carrier, Kitty Hawk. Pretty big target, so I'm not worried. I wait for the right time. This is the hardest part about no gear sky diving. Just waiting for the right time to pull the chute. The wait kills you. Just waiting, and waiting, and waiting...

I pull the chute. It catches the air rough and it feels like I just got drop kicked by my harness, but I'm gonna land safely. Or as safe as this chute allows. COIB (control and observation of irradiated beings) chutes are built for speed, so that means hitting the ground as harsh as you can without breaking something. So as the Kitty Hawk comes closer, I'm smiling at my luck. Which sucks, by the way, thanks for asking.

Touching down, I catch a roll on the pavement. I stand and look around. I see the crew scrambling about to get birds in the air. I see my lieutenant, Christie, giving orders to the rest of my team. They disperse when she dismisses them. She turns and sees me. She runs out to meet me.

"We getting artillery on the island?" I call before she reaches me.

"No. Trust me, we don't want anything small out there. Everything's getting stomped flat."

"GP's (Goliath-Prime) en route?"

"Two. Four Robo-48 units too."

"Let's get choppers. Take Wesley and I'll take Levine. Tell the rest they have to get the Hawk out of here. Togera's gonna take to the water soon." Christie chatters in her comm while we make our way towards the helicopters with COIB markings. I choose a special Pawnee attack helicopter and find Richard Levine already in the navigator's seat. I jump in the cockpit and start the flight check.

"Ready to die, Levine?" I ask the rookie.

"He's joking." Christie tells him from the chopper adjacent ours.

"No, sir. Not god damn dying today." Levine responds anyway with surprising tenacity.

"That's the spirit. Wha- rookie, turn your thermals off! I'm not planning on giving flak to fireballs." With that correction, we liftoff. We head off towards the island. The sight of the battle was spectacular, not a single monster actually visible yet. The rubble cloud that was all too familiar from a war they had just won, veiled everything. Occasionally, a viscous stab of red or green would illuminate the smoke with a sonic thunder cap. A hellish landscape, to say the least.

"All engaged birds, be advised. COIB officers on scene granted command of the combat theater." Tower broadcasts.

"COIB squadron engaging bogeys ETA two minutes." I input. "Air strikes will be frequent and will be loud. If your craft cannot handle danger close, fly your last sortie now. Kitty Hawk is leaving the bay and cannot resupply. Good luck."

My squadron engaged Kineticlops. It seemed like an easy target at the time, but his homing projectiles soon forced us to zoom around his head uselessly like flies. The macabre dance was starting to look bad for us.

"Wesley, the star bursts aren't working!" Christie yells.

"Missile lock is negative!" Wesley Snipes back. (See what I did there?)

"These aren't SAMs-!" Christie barely finishes when they're hit. I try to reach them through the radio, but their electronics are dead. Levine pings them on my radar, putting them somewhere on my left. I look and see the gut wrenching sight of COIB two plummeting towards the waiting cyclops below.

"NO!" A familiar shock wave blasts through me. Another visual check confirms my suspicion. The Goliath-Primes arrived, and one currently has a Kineticlops crushed under it's fist. The sentient lightning sparks, then goes out.

"Levine, get me a clearing. We're extracting COIB two." I command. I hear him grumble. I don't blame him. Chances were this was incredibly stupid and this was going to get us all killed. But I'm lucky, right?

Levine turns out to be pretty good at what he does. A good sized clearing comes up on my display. I put it down in regular COIB fashion; hard as I can without breaking stuff. Now we're on the ground, we can feel the perpetual earthquake that always accompanies monsters. I look around the clearing for a while, then shoulder my backpack and other gear and take off into the forest, Levine following closely behind me.

"Remember to pack your LRPG?" I ask him.

"And a couple sentry guns. See that? Over there." He pointed at the wreckage of the Pawnee Attack Chopper, COIB two, crashed about fifty feet away. We work our way through the dense rainforest, finding that the helicopter was hanging about twenty feet above the ground, tangled in the canopy, hanging from the the vines and branches.

The canopy ejected, and Christie and Wesley crawled out of their seats, sizing up the drop to the ground.

"Need a hand?" I hope Christie can see my smirk from up there. The air suddenly turns hostile and stinging. Static electricity stabs at us from all angles. I hear a faint electric crackling, sounding oddly like Kineticlops' roar, but much quieter. A whimper…?

"That Kineticlops is still alive somewhere, we…" A massive red laser slams into the ground near us, causing an explosion that shakes the trees violently and drop CIOB two. The chopper falls toward us quickly. Levine and I jump out of the way, and the helicopter hits the dirt hard.

I get up and run to the cockpit. Christie is rubbing her head, she probably has a concussion, but she'll live. If we get out of here, that is.

"Come on, on your feet." I say, reaching a hand into the mangled metal of CIOB two. I pull them both out, But Wesley clearly has a broken leg. Levine takes it in his stride, supporting him and already making towards CIOB one. We move as quickly as we can, but before we can make it, an arch of icy blue electricity grabs my helicopter, and it explodes, sending shrapnel our way.

"Down!" I can hear the fiery metal fly over our heads and feel the heat of the burning forest. I look up from my prone position, and see that our getaway is officially done for. The static in the air also increases noticeably, and it starts to hurt.

"To the beach!" I help Levine with Wesley, and we make towards the light shining through the trees. We just barely break the forest and make it to the dull yellow sand when we're all tossed in the air, and lanced at with lightning. I feel myself hit the ground, but I can't see or hear from the lightning and thunder. I struggle to stand, and force myself to focus. Nothing feels broken, but my arms are definitely burned, badly.

My vision starts returning, and one sound breaks the silence. Kineticlops gets back up, screaming defiantly. It steps over us, looking at the water. It tentatively reaches one claw into the ocean, and instantly turns into an electrical surge in the water, escaping the island before anyone can stop it.

I fumble for my comm. and weakly manage to tell our coordinates to anyone still left in the air. As I see a Chinook detach to retrieve us, I notice that the air is quiet. There's no way that, even with Zorgulon with us, the monsters were defeated. No, we were defeated. They escaped, and are now free again. They'll kill millions, they'll topple nations. And we've just lost the first battle of the Second Monster War.

NEXT: THE TRACKING OF TOGERA