Private Byung-Heun tried to avoid looking at the twisted mess of ashen flesh, warped metal, and melted rubber that sat at his knees, but it was kind of hard to avoid. It really was unpleasant to see. Human shaped, with the metal of its gauntlets fused together, locking it's arms in front of its face in an instinctive, but failed attempt to protect its eyes. The heat of the nuclear explosion had reacted strangely with its hair, seeming to crystallize it into long, cracked overlapping plates of bluish glass like substance that were somehow still intact, resembling a pair of long tails running down its back. Between its fingers, Byeung-Heun could just see its jaw locked open in what was no doubt a final, terrible scream of pain. This was made all the more disturbing by its burnt skin and childish appearance.
As unpleasant as it was, though, that wasn't why he didn't want to look at it. All around him he could tell his fellow soldiers felt the same way, pressed up against each other in the confines of their APC. They were seated in two rows across from each other, with the dead alien sat on the ground between them, all of them trying to avoid touching it as the heavy treads of the vehicle jostled them up and down. They didn't want to touch it or look at it, because it was almost certainly radioactive.
The alien had been right next to the nuclear blast when it had gone off. At the time it was airborne and flying under its own mysterious propulsion, so it had careened wildly away from the explosion and far into the remote regions of the country, eventually crashing to the earth and digging a long furrow into the soil. Luckily for the country, but unluckily for Byeung-Heun's platoon, by sheer coincidence they had been less than a minute away, and had been ordered to retrieve it with the assurances that their lead lined, ceramic composite APC's hull would protect them from the radiation just fine. That was likely true, but then the platoon commander had ordered Byeung-Heun's squadron to move the dead alien into the back of the vehicle with them.
Somehow, he doubted the APC's hull would protect them from that.
"Ten minutes until we arrive!" The Sergeant called from the rear of the vehicle, possibly in an attempt to reassure his men.
Am I even still going to be able to have children? Byeung Heun asked himself, his tail curling up nervously beneath him.
As terribly hot as the day was, Kenta Tsube couldn't help but smile to himself even as he sweated profusely beneath his long sleeved and buttoned up collared shirt. If he were a less disciplined man, he would undo the top row to let himself breath a bit, but doing so would be an obvious display of his discomfort, which was unacceptable. In front of him, six black belts from his dojo practiced kata's directly in the sunlight. He carefully positioned them in front of the large window at one end of his doujo, and he could see the sweat stains developing under their armpits and on their chests.
Kenta was supposed to have retired years ago, but somehow he could never quite bring himself to quit, even if officially he had hired other men to act as instructors. The truth was he just loved karate too much to leave. Even if Aika were to take over the doujo at eighteen, he couldn't imagine himself quietly watching from a distance and just leaving everything to her. He would miss the smell of sweat, the sounds of feet slipping on hardwood, the incredible satisfaction that came from improvement and just everything about it, really.
In front of him, one of the blackbelt's slipped up slightly, falling out of position for a fraction of a second, before recovering. Embarrassedly, he hurried to catch up to his friends, trying to ignore the long, hard look Kenta skewered him with.
Yes, to truly love this sport you had to learn to appreciate pain. Both giving it, and receiving it. Especially giving it. This was something he'd been careful to teach Aika. It's impossible to bring yourself to spend hours every day learning the perfect way to strike someone without the desire to do so.
Kenta still remembered the first day he met his granddaughter. It had been an early birth, and Aika was a small baby as a result, though she was healthy and strong despite it. When he first held her, her entire head had fit inside Kenta's palm while she clung to his thumb, and it was still one of his happiest memories. Another one of those memories was of Aika when she first started to walk, and almost immediately started to copy the strange motions her grandfather practiced each morning in his daily katas.
None of his other grandchildren, or even his own children, had been so eager to follow in his footsteps. Of course he would never say it aloud, it would be needlessly cruel to people he definitely cared about, but Aika was his favourite. His heart had been so soft toward her, that he hadn't even taught her the karate his doujo practiced, the kind that was for normal competitions. Instead he taught her the kind that he learned from his father after the war, the kind that included elbow strikes to the back of the neck, and palms strikes to break your enemies cheekbones. The kind of karate that could very definitely kill a man.
It had just seemed like such a waste to allow such talent, such passion, such sadism to be put into a watered downed starbucks karate that would only be useful for winning a regional competition.
Aika had come back from her trip recently, though strangely Kenta felt she was avoiding him. This was worrying, but whatever she was trying to hide he was sure she would reveal to him in due time. The thing that would upset him most would be to learn she was slacking off, but he knew she wouldn't do that if she had a choice. She enjoyed the art as much as he did.
From the corner of his eye, Kenta noticed a red haired young man walk through the Dojo doors. Souji stood at the entrance, waiting for permission to cross the floor. Something about his countenance was odd, though.
Yes, the boy was usually slightly nervous around him, as though he were afraid to be made to practice long hours against his will, but to Kenta's eye today he wasn't showing any of that. His shoulders hung low, and there were deep bags under each eye that seemed swollen with shed tears.
This appeared to be a serious matter. Leaving his students to practice, Kenta walked around the edge of the room towards the boy.
"Good morning, Souji." He greeted him calmly.
The boy looked up at him, before his eyes dropped to the floor. "I'm so sorry, Uncle Kenta."
A worried feeling wormed its way through Kentas chest, and towards his stomach. "Sorry about what, boy?"
"Aika's… she's missing." Then he shook his head. "And we think she's…" He trailed off miserably, as if afraid to voice his concern.
"...Dead?" Kenta asked, and despite his best efforts to remain calm there was a worried strain to his tone.
Souji nodded miserably.
With careful slowness, Kenta nodded, even as he breathed out and found his breath nearly hitching upwards into something emotional and inappropriate. Turning around, he strode across the dojo to his black belts and barked at them, loudly. "That's enough for today! Go home!"
"Master?" One of them asked him confused.
Kenta waved a dismissive hand at him. "Leave."
"But it's only been half an-"
"I'm tired of trying to teach useless vermin!" Kenta snapped at them, the blood rushing to his head with such force that he was growing dizzy. "All of you get out!"
"Uncle Kenta…" Souji looked on, shocked.
"And you, boy!" Kenta's lips pulled back, turning his normally placid face into a harsh snarl. "Come here and tell me everything that happened!"
The disgruntled black belts shouldered their way past Souji, who made his way to the front of the room despondently.
Still feeling dizzy, and breathing hard, Kenta forced himself to sit down on the floor, despite how he felt the need to pace about the room. "Tell me everything! From the start!"
Souji nodded, sinking to the ground next to Kenta. "This all started a year ago, when Aika and I were eating in the cafe..."
The spaceship still hung in orbit above Catyu and Twoearle remained inside it. Her lab coat was discarded, lying on the floor in the middle of the bridge, and her shoes and socks were somewhere around there too. Miserable bags hung under her eyes as she stared desperately at the screen in front of her and scanned endlessly through every strong twintail Elemera on Catyu. As impossible as it was, some part of her still hoped that Aika had merely flown off course with her flight module, and that she was really just in some market in China, or whatever the Catyu equivalent was, trying to find a way back to Nyapon.
Alas, nothing. Twoearle couldn't even find the signature of the blue suit, no matter where she looked. The suit had to be recovered, or even if it was damaged beyond recognition, the Elemera it was composed of needed to be found. As long as Twoearle could get those twintail attributes back, a new suit could be created and a new warrior recruited, though she hated thinking about things like that. She'd really like to curl up on her bed in the Mitsuka residence and cry for a good few nights, but there wasn't time to waste on something like that. Not to mention there was no way she could face Souji right now.
If Aika was alive, Twoearle had to find her as soon as possible, and even if she wasn't she still needed to be found before someone else put their hands on the suit.
"Come on!" Twoearle snapped, smacking her palm against the console after another failure. "Please, just be there." She begged, restarting the scan. "Come on, it has to have-"
The search returned zero results.
Slumping down in her seat, Twoearle covered her face and wondered what to do. There was no way she could go back to Earth empty handed, at the very least she needed to give the Tsube family a body to bury.
It really was the least she could do after getting their daughter killed. At the thought of having that conversation, Twoearle found herself once again burying her face in her hands and trying to get her emotions under control.
"Coffee. I just need coffee." She told herself, standing up. "A nice cup of joe and then back to work, feeling refreshed and energis-"
With a yell of surprise, Twoearle fell forward onto her face, having tripped over something. Looking back she saw her feet had somehow got tangled up in her own discarded lab coat. Back when they were on the spaceship together, Aika had always nagged at Twoearle, warning about what could happen if Twoearle didn't clean up after herself. Somehow Aika always ended up picking up the mess herself and doing the laundry too. Rubbing her now aching nose, Twoearle stood up and made for the kitchen, only to come up short as she looked through the door.
The sink was full of dirty dishes, mostly used coffee mugs, but the occasional plate with rice dried to its surface, as well as a few sets of chopsticks, and cooking utensils. The rotten smell was pretty strong, and Twoearle realised the dishes hadn't been done in several days.
Unbidden, tears welled in her eyes and she slammed the door shut, before rushing back to the pilot's chair. "No time for coffee." She told herself, and restarted the scanner. "Too busy."
Once again, it returned with zero results.
"Just one more." She repeated, and tried again.
And again after that.
The scientists, engineers, and surgeons had all watched together as the alien's body was taken from the APC and moved to a gurney. A team of tired, and frightened looking soldiers came out soon afterwards, nervously looking around at the faces of the observers, which included a number of higher ups from the party, and even a member of the Kim family, though not the supreme leader himself. The soldiers in their khaki's looked woefully underdressed compared to the gas masks and radiation suits everyone else wore. Apparently they'd taken the creature here from their base all the way in the mountains, a journey of nearly an entire day. Brave of them, given how dangerously radioactive it was.
"Take the sample to the decontamination immediately!" The order came from the head scientist, a man named Jin-sun.
The other's hurried to carry out his orders, rushing the blackened and charred cadaver away. It soon emerged from its chemical shower, looking much the same as it had entered but now only emitting low amounts of radiation. It was moved to a table in the hospital, though normally a body would be reserved for the slab in the morgue. In this case, the body was much too valuable to go to such a place. Who knew what incredible technologies could be recovered from this third alien invader?
Before they went to cut it open, Jin-sun had his team take many photos of it, and make many notes. He himself took the time to circle it, and sketch up hypotheses in his notebook as he did. This alien looked Catian, like the other two, but also like the others its ears were further down its head, just above and back from where the jaw bone connected to the cranium. This one had died intercepting a weapon aimed at the enemies of the People's Republic, implying some kind of alliance between it and the imperialist bastards. Maybe it wasn't an alien, just some kind of lab grown super soldier from Ameowrica? But then why the ears? Perhaps a more reasonable explanation was the aliens had used local DNA to create a creature capable of fighting under the conditions of Catyu, and the real aliens were some kind spineless invertebrate incapable of moving under gravity.
Other suggestions like this went into many different notebooks, before the go ahead was given to begin the dissection.
The operating room was cleared, and the surgeons went through many careful sterilisations before they even came close to a scalpel. The team of five emerged into the room, clad in surgery masks, elbow length gloves, and lime green scrubs. Unusually among the tools they had prepared was a welding torch, in case the armour plating was too difficult to remove otherwise.
"Scalpel." Jin-sun ordered, and when the tiny blade was handed to him he leaned forward over the alien to make his first incision, not on the flesh, but on the rubber of the alien's battle armour. It was agreed that if they could remove the creature's armour first the rest of the dissection would go much easier, and the most obviously vulnerable place on the armour was the rubber looking part that covered the subject's torso. Strangely, the blade didn't pierce the substance at all, even when Jin-sun tried to cut it open by pressing down more firmly. He was pressing so hard against the substance that his scalpel blade actually snapped down the middle.
Curious murmurs immediately broke out in the observation room.
After a moment's thought, Jin-sun ordered, "Circular saw." And held out his hand. The attendant handed him the device, and he flicked it on with the flip of a switch. He went to make an incision in the same place, only for the teeth of the saw to get caught on the rubbery substance again. When he pulled the saw back and turned it off, he saw that the teeth had warped out of shape and blunted.
"Fascinating." He murmured to himself, before looking to another attendant who was filming the whole process with a camera. "Did you get that?"
The man nodded and gave an 'ok' sign with his free hand.
Looking down at the alien, Jin-sun thought carefully for a moment. "Let's see if we can disengage the armour using these controls." He indicated the buttons on the body's wrist.
An attendant moved over, and said aloud. "First button, at twelve'oclock position relative to the creature's wrist." He pressed it, and nothing happened. "Second button at three'oclock position." Again, nothing. Slowly but surely, he worked his way across the entire control panel with no real result.
Unlucky. Jin-sun cursed to himself. "Alright, get the blow torch-"
"Sir!" The man holding the alien's arm yelled, looking up at him. "I found what seems like a battery port." He tapped the bottom of the creature's wrist. "Right here."
Jin-sun crouched down and found the place the man had indicated. "Screw driver." An attendant quickly handed it to him, and he used the tool to pry open what did look like a battery panel. The joints had warped from the heat, and he could feel them scraping against each other as he worked them, but with a firm press the panel came open. Inside was what honestly looked like a power port, though whatever strange batteries were inside it had clearly swollen and burst. After he dug them out, he found the connecting powerports seemed intact.
Jin-sun held out his hand again. "Double AA's." Immediately an attendant handed him the batteries, and the surgeon placed them into the device, and closed the panel again.
Immediately, there was a burst of light from the cadaver. A startled attendant tripped over backwards, dropping his notebook and pen as a blue energy started at the toe of the body and slowly, stutteringly ran up its legs and towards its head. The entire body was lit up by the glow for a moment, before bursting and disappearing.
When it was gone, in place of a blackened damaged body, wearing the ruins of alien battle armour, was a female, athletic looking teenager without a tail, and with small, fleshy, shriveled ears on the sides of her head. Naked, except for the blackened metal band around its wrist, but totally intact.
The entire room stared in disbelief.
While everyone else was frozen in shock, Jin-sun stepped forward to check her pulse. It took a long moment, but after a few seconds his sensitive hands definitely felt a full beat under his fingers. "It's alive!" He announced.
Excited murmurs broke out in the room.
Jin-sun thought for a moment, before turning to the attendants. "Manacles!" He ordered.
Massive, heavy, dark chains were brought forwards, and two different doctors moved to either side of the alien to secure it to the bed.
One of them was distracted for a brief second, as he looked at the nude alien's underdeveloped chest. "Some kind of delayed puberty, perhaps?" He speculated aloud. "Or maybe it was designed to be aerodynamic."
Jin-sun gave the man a glare. "MANACLES!" He repeated, loudly.
The man flinched and turned back to the alien, hurrying to affix the chains only to freeze when he found the creature awake, and looking directly at him.
"It's awake! It's awa-" A fist slammed into his jaw with enough force to break all his teeth and lift him a foot from the ground. He crashed to the floor and slid across it until his head banged into a wall. He didn't get back up.
The other attendant with the manacles screamed, and tried to back away only for the alien to reach across the other side of the table and grab him by the front of his shirt, before pulling him into a vicious headbutt. There was a loud crack, and he fell to the floor bonelessly, blood quickly pooling beneath his head.
"Security!" Jin-sun screamed, rushing for the exit. "It's hostile! It's awake and it's hostile!"
Two armed guards carrying assault rifles burst through the door to the surgery room, but before they could even spot the creature and raise their gun to fire, it was upon them, striking one in the throat. Even as he fell to the ground choking, and turning purple, the monster spun and lashed out with it's heal, catching the other soldier in the side of his helmet and launching him across the room.
Jin-sun didn't wait to see their fate, he just charged down the corridor and ignored the sounds of men screaming behind him. As he glanced over his shoulder, he just caught the site of a surgeon desperately swinging a saw at some unseen foe, until the alien's small form seized the man, lifted him bodily from the ground, and slammed his spine over its knee.
Hands shaking with fear, Jin-sin rushed to the elevator and pressed the up button repeatedly. His heart soared as the elevator doors finally opened. He rushed inside, jamming the switch marked ground floor again and again. Through the gap between the closing doors he could see the alien running towards him just as they closed in front of its face.
He breathed a sigh of relief, slumping against the wall and catching his breath. Suddenly, there was a bang and a shriek of metal, and a slim pairs of hands forced their way between the doors, forcing them out of shape. Pitiless crimson eyes locked onto his face, chilling his blood.
"No!" He screamed as the elevator doors where wrenched apart, and the monster grabbed the front of his lab coat. "Stay away! Stay away from me! Nooooooooo!" His cries fell on deaf ears as he was stripped of his clothes.
AN: Anyone else remember that scene from Spiderman 2 with Doc Oc in the surgery room? Man that was a weird scene. It was like something out of horror rather than a superhero movie. I always wondered what was up with that scene, and why it was filmed like that.
Oh, well.