Chapter 2
Well, Kittan certainly had imagined that the afterlife would look different.

Like he was no expert or something, but he'd say his death was a fairly good one. No painful agonizing mess, nope. He had only punched the big death thing and then had blinked out of life, saving all his comrades in the process, and making sure that Simon would be able to save the girl he was sweet for.

Man, he was no master of love - not that he'd ever admit that to literally anyone - but even to him the whole dance these two had going on was quite painful. He took this long just to pop the question, when he should have made a move right away. More than once he was going to force things along, but Kiyoh always stopped him, saying crap like they would take the plunge when they were ready.

Shame it had to happen right when aliens came knocking.

Still his death was a good one. Heroic self sacrifice, saving the human race et cetera, et cetera! He had even died a virgin! Yes it hurt a little to find out that Yoko had scored while she was away. Enough to have multiple kids even! And he had saved himself up for his one! Damn, the world was unjust!

So he had at least expected something nice as a reward after death! Hah, he knew! Maybe a harem of a hundred women? All with big boobs, nice round butts, some who could cook, some who he could tell stories to and some who could hug real nice, some to hold hands with and some who would admire him as a hero and grade one badass -!

The King Kittan's hull creaks rudely interrupted his melodramatic daydreams.

Sighing, his eyes glid over the systems of the gunman he had cared and flown for 7 years, with which he had archieved ace status mere days after getting it.

Yup, everything was red, which equaled bad, which meant he was probably screwed.

He poked around at the controls for a couple seconds, only to confirm his suspicious.

Yes, all dead.

On one hand, finding out that the bullshit he had been saying about the Space King Kittans armors being tough enough to survive busting that damn thing up was... strangely satisfying. He had been talking entirely out of his ass with that one!

On the other hand... dying in some drifting hulk in space also sucked. At least some giant explosion would have been quick!

Well, maybe he could get the outside camera's to work !?-

Kicking didn't work. His boot hit the panel again and again, nothing. He growled and tried again. It creaked.

"Okay…" percussive maintenance was his go to strategy, so what if…?

Kittan slapped the panel. Still dark.

"Fine, I'll take the hint."

Ripping open a panel, he grimaced at the wires. This part went there, but that part went over in this spot…

Kittan did not know what he did, but he still whooped in victory when it flickered to life. The display cleared up, letting him… observe…

There was a planet in his view, a gray and blue orb in the cosmos. He blinked, peering at the fuzz encompassing much of the world's surface, seeing that… it was moving. Zooming in, he saw shapes in the void, as well as fires littering the ground. Huge fires that burned across entire continents, swallowed by a tide of matter. Almost like a bug infestation.

"Oh shit…"

Then flashes caught his gaze. Far above the planet he spied burning chunks of ships littering the orbitals, lit by flashes of light that stabbed towards a cloud nearby, a cloud in space. Things that looked like massive beetles swarmed in the void, taking hits in place of a much larger squid thing, ensuring that its tentacles, each limb easily dozens of kilometers long, could envelop a ram shaped ship to drag it towards itself.

He hunted enough to recognize a predator when he saw one.

There were other rams in space, a lot less. Outnumbered at least a thousand to one, they were grouping up around a single big sucker, who was sending little craft in a constant stream towards the planet surface. Looking at how much of the planet was on fire, they were trying to stop a forest blaze with a garden hose. Whoever was down there was getting hammered.

"What the hell…"

Then Kittan noticed something else. That he was floating pretty close to the space bugs. In the kind of swarms that were impossible to ward off by slapping, if they were just small, annoying regular bugs, not these gigantic ones who could catch spaceships. And looking at the tentacled one tearing that ship apart, they could eat them too.

And one of the smaller ones was coming closer to his gunman, small being relative. He couldn't exactly tell how big it was without something to compare it to, but for it to be even visible at this distance it had to be Kilometers long at the very least.

Something he fancied he could take on easily enough in the Space King Kittan, but in the regular old King Kittan with most of its systems offline?

Hah, no chance! Only shot he got was trying to pretend to be space debri- what was that?

A squat brick of a ship was zipping its way nearby him, it sort of looked like the rams but it was way smaller, and he didn't see any weapons. There were others nearby, those were being swarmed by monsters like the one sizing up him. Or it was, that thing turned away from him towards the transport.

Wait, was that thing hunting those folks in that ugly ass ship? Seriously, it didn't even have a face!

His face scrunched up as he saw how the monster caught up more and more to the ship, the later being obviously damaged. Somewhat hard to miss, that later bit, it looked like something had taken a wholeass bite out of it. How was it still flying anyway?

Bah! BAH! Chances were the people inside there were ugly aliens anyway!

Hands shooting out he began to fiddle with his controls again. It wasn´t hard to imagine, the fear and panic on the minds of whatever gross bug people were trying to flee the destruction of their world by monsters as it closed in.

Kittan was a spiral warrior! A member of team Dai - Gurren! He wasn't gonna allow some stupid machine damage to take away his chance of being a Grade A badass!

Nothing happened, King Kittan for some reason betraying his intent for an heroic entry, only for him to kick it again out of frustration than anything else. A spark of something jumped and made him whelp as his lance shot out a beam of pure power.

It had the desired effect, the bug that was zipping towards the shuttle ate the beam. And lost about of a tenth of its body, charred into barbecue with a spray of gore flying into the void, the entire monster listing in what looked like terrible pain.

"Woohoo!" He jumped in place, only barely keeping from thumping his head on the roof. He did it! One bug down, the rest would…

His arms froze when he saw the giant roach correct itself, turning a really, really big mouth towards him. Kittan didn't know space bug body language very well, but he had the distinct impression that it was kind of, sorta, very pissed off. The crackles of lightning around its mouth were a sign.

And then he saw more movement, in every direction. Creatures like the one he just shot, slightly smaller ones, and a whole lot of bigger ones all changed course. The whole swarm moving at once looked almost like a star nebula, or a school of fish. It would have been pretty if they weren't all turning towards him. To him specifically, he could see how many mouths were aimed his way.

He did not scream like a little girl when it came within a couple hundred meters of him, it´s immense maw about to chump down on him and crush him into paste. No, he awaited his death like a man, with raised fists, ready to sock the thing!

Not that that stance kept him from being launched to the back of his cabin when a multi kilometer thick laser beam scraped past him by less than a singular meter, slamming into the monster and atomizing it entirely.
00000

"Got em!" The gesture to reset the entire laser battery Yoko used to blast the giant insectoid to molecules, was not strictly necessary, what with her using a computer to utilize one of the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann's literal millions of weapon systems, but it was a force of habit for her.

Not to mention that hitting a goddamn bullseye in the middle of space was still a pretty sweet sniper shot, all things considered, even if she had some computer help.

"Lifesignal detected in the King Kittan! He´s still alive!" Cybella was usually a rather stoic woman. If Yoko had to be mean, she´d say that she became something of a bitch what with her whole backing of Rossiu in his coup and all and wow, did she need to smack her for that at some point. As well as him for that matter!

But here, right now? Yoko did not care.

Kittan lived! He lived! He lived! He lived! HE LIVED!

She had wept when he had left knowing that his words had been a lie. That he was sacrificing himself to save him all.

Behind her Dayakka and Leeron were speaking to Lordgenome -the fact that his resurrected head was here still threw her for a loop- about what was happening, making sure before the former spoke louder.

"Alright everyone, we're facing a lot of foes. They're not Anti-Spirals but they're threatening the planet below. None of us know who these people are, we just know they need help pronto." He outlined with a grimace.

"I'm getting some weird readings from those ships, it's not spiral power or anything similar. I don't know what it is, yet. As for these creatures, you can see what they're up to. Don't let your guard down is my advice." Leeron added while his hands danced over the holographic display.

Lordgenome said nothing, his tank bubbled and that was all. The glow from his pedestal grew brighter, for a moment the comm line flicked on.

Yoko didn't recognize the words coming from the display, it sounded weird and kind of off, but she could tell how terrified the voice sounded. And then another overlaid it, then another, and another-

"Signal count is increasing. Individual transmissions are at one point three million and rising. The entire planet is under threat." Lordgenome sounded slightly angered.

She ordered the computer to track the swarms instead of trying to make sense of it, seeing the hundreds of thousands of creatures zipping their way originating from large ships that were waiting just above the planet. The radar was spitting out an accurate reading, but she didn't bother seeing the specifics. This was like when they challenged the Anti-Spiral's forces, at some point the number of enemies was just a counter.

Then again, even with that in mind, numerically and in terms of size, the enemy was nothing like the Anti-Spiral's fleets.

If she had to guess, the total amount of mass of these living ships in the system together didn't even come close to that of the Super Galaxy Gurren Lagann.

Then again, they didn't need to in order to be a threat.

Keeping an eye on Kittan, she noticed how one of the alien ships approached him, the one he had saved beforehand.

"Lordgenome." God, she hated talking directly to that thing. "Decode their language and send the ship that's picking Kittan up a message. If they do not treat the Pilot well, we'll make them wish they never were born!"

"We" in this case very much being an "I". A bit overboard, but it was hardly the first time Yoko used an overblown threat.

Either way, she took a new target: a thing shaped like a leech but as big as a skyscraper. Hitting with a low power beam cleaved it open, bleeding gore into space. Yet it was still moving, either too angry or too crazed to flee.

The entire planet-sized ship shook as more and more of its weapon systems began to engage.

AN:
And so the imperium makes first contact with team dai gurren. Over the skies of a burning imperial world.