Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo, Part 12 of 17

While the Ax Hand considers how to defeat a creature that best the greatest weapon the Empire of Japan ever crafted, Hercules and Fast Freddie follow Tusker Leatherfell’s lead and track down the elusive, deadly Toroka.

This is Part 11 of Hercules Chen, Zero Hunter: Toroka VS Mecha-Tsuyo. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, read Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 first.

Content warnings: violence, animal violence, gun volence, gore, death, mild swearing, creeps.

The Last Warrior.

SUNDAY MORNING, JULY 21, 1943
ABOARD KOKURYŪYARI
CAPE SŌYA

//Translated from Japanese.//

The first Ki34 pilot's collapsed chest, soft as uni, slurped when Takamoto removed his fist from it. Pulped organs and crimson splashed to the deck. The man wavered on his knees for a moment before crumpling into his own innards carnage. Warm blood stained the kaiken's bare arm to his elbow.

He stepped over the corpse. His bare feet left red footprints.

“Do you understand how valuable each of the Emperor's pilots is right now?” the Ax Hand asked his second prisoner.

The kneeling man nodded in silence. He knew how many pilots had been lost since the Americans had joined the war. The Empire required every man who could still fly.

“Yet your failure is so great that you must die for it,” Takamoto said.

The pilot's only response was to crane his head back and expose his bare neck. The most he could hope for was his death to be painless and quick. Takamoto studied the honorable failure for a long moment, then sighed.

“I could not kill one so righteous and dedicated,” he concluded. The Ki34 pilot lowered his chin and allowed his shoulders to slump in relief. Takamoto snarled to the shadows behind his prisoner: “Zuboshi.”

His ogre surged forward and gripped the pilot’s head between hands the size of plates. He gave the man's soft spine a dismissive twist. All it took was a pop and he was dead. The dead man’s head lolled on his rubbery neck before he sprawled across the deck next to his co-pilot.

“Cremate them, send their ashes to Tokyo. The Ministry of the Navy will want to do something to do with them. I would see these failures replaced with a mop.”

Zuboshi took the bodies, an ankle in each hand, and dragged them off the command deck. The man Takamoto had hollowed left a red trail like a bloody snail. Afternoon sunlight flooded the room when Zuboshi pushed the hatch open, illuminating the hard edges and venomous coils of Takamoto's body. The ocean air was brisk and raised goose pimples on his naked skin.

Umihara Shou trembled from where he sat in the corner. The captain was looking haggard since his encounter with the whites and half-breeds.

Takamoto strode to the shaking man, ignoring the biting chill oozing across every centimeter of his bare body. The blood on his hand, so hot seconds before, was drying, gummy and cold. He squatted before the dishonored captain and played with the coagulating red between his fingers, curling and splaying them to hear the squelching sound they made.

“Men are made of such soft materials,” he told the Navy man. A clot dripped from Takamoto's elbow, splatting against the deck near Umihara's knee. The Ax Hand smiled and asked him: “You are not so soft, are you, Shou?”

“I am a captain of the Imperial Navy, made from the same material as you,” the shaking man answered, his voice steady and defiant despite the tremors wracking his frame. Takamoto rocked on his heels and laughed, then asked:

“What happened to Takuma?” Takamoto asked. “Did Ayumu kill him?”

“Takuma?” Umihara croaked.

“Gushiken Takuma, the momentary Imperial Smith,” the Ax Hand said. “Tetsujin promised many things to his father.”

Umihara's jaw clenched, frozen. He was not so buried in the sand that he did not recognize the name of the heir of the steel-milling Gushiken Corporation. The late heir. He almost certainly realized what a favor to the richest man in Manchuria was worth and what Ayumu had squandered.

“Did the Speaker kill him?” Takamoto asked again.

“He killed himself: he spoke,” Umihara's managed.

Takamoto chuckled. The Speaker had seen through the farce of a Vow that Takuma had chosen and enabled its throat-opening blades. It was only a matter of tricking the petulant heir into opening his fat mouth.

“And what did the coward say?” Takamoto asked.

“He insisted that we did not know who he was,” Umihara.

“And who was he?” Takamoto asked.

“A failure,” the captain answered. He began shaking again, so Takamoto stood and paced to the hatch. He locked them in, and the cold out. He could not have the frail man die yet, not while Toroka roamed free and he remained the authority on Mecha-Tsuyo. The Ax Hand dropped to a knee and brought his lips close to Umihara's hearing aid.

“Did Ayumu orchestrate that failure?” he hissed.

“The Speaker spoke,” Umihara answered, quivering. With the frigid gusts gone, sweat was beading on his wrinkled skin. Takamoto slid away and studied the captain. They both knew that words were Ayumu’s blades.

“Did you approve of the Emperor’s appointee?” he asked.

“The Emperor made his choice using faulty advice,” Umihara replied through his quaking, so much rebelliousness a terrible strain on him.

“You clutch to this idea that the Emperor rules Nihon like it is your wet nurse's breast,” Takamoto laughed.

“The Emperor rules by the will of Heaven,” the captain objected.

“The Emperor is a man. Men die. Every day. The Empire lives on. So tell me, Captain Umihara Shou, the man who drowned and was reborn, what is more divine, Emperor or Empire?”

Umihara did not speak. The blasphemous claims hurt his throbbing head.

“Tetsujin and the Society are Nihon, captain. We are the Empire and the future. We are divine.”

Takamoto watched Umihara's hands grasp at the air. He sighed and relented. He knew these radical thoughts were torture to one so bound by tradition.

“You heard the Chinese general's proposition?” Takamoto asked. Umihara nodded slowly, as if his neck was rusted solid and he had to struggle to break apart its joints. The Ax Hand huffed and said: “It would not work.”

Umihara paused before speaking.

“I am not a physicist,” he replied.

“And neither is the Speaker,” Takamoto huffed. “He is master of only the one thing he does: talking. He would have us give away our weapons to the squealing Chinese general, the Russian she-bear, and their half-breed pets. The Speaker would give away the Mecha-Tsuyo to appease the white men.”

Umihara coughed at that, wracking his skeletal body.

“You build monsters, Shou. I kill them,” Takamoto declared. He held up his red hand. “If Toroka will not be mine, it will die.”

“How?” the captain croaked. The Ax Hand glared back at the old man who would question his ability. It was funny, that the man who could craft a weapon such as Mecha-Tsuyo would be so feeble and so lacking in martial vision. Takamoto chuckled before he answered.

“Practiced and focused, a single punch can cripple. It can kill,” Takamoto said. He twisted his red hand into a tight fist and admired the ridges of his knuckles. “What do know you of planes, old man?”

“Aeronautics is not my field,” Umihara replied.

“How about ballistics?”

“Given time, I could design a cannon...” the captain started.

“Mecha-Tsuyo carries the largest cannons in the Imperial Navy and they could not scratch the beast,” Takamoto interrupted. “I do not want a gun.”

“And the ion activation devices?” Umihara asked.

“We need not the weapons of Aryan savages or the plans of curs to defeat an animal,” Takamoto snapped. “The Society is a force unto itself. Toroka will crumble before us.”

“A force,” Umihara mused. He stopped shaking as plans and concepts whirled to life in his mind, considering: “Force is the product of an object's mass and its acceleration.”

“So?” Takamoto wondered.

“So that even a small object may impart great force if it is accelerating at a great enough rate,” Umihara said. He was lost in thought, sitting up straight on the cold deck. His sweat was gone, as were his tremors. Something dawned on the Ax Hand, and he stepped away from the thinking man.

“Did you know I thought you weak?” Takamoto asked. “I did not see what you are.”

Umihara did not reply. He swallowed dryly and stayed silent. The Ax Hand could see him in that instant. It was not fear that shook the old man: Umihara had seen the blackness, been swallowed by it. He had died and been broken. It was pain that defined the man, not fear. Pain was behind his ticks and twitches; within Umihara Shou there was humid and barbaric humanity barely constrained by sheer iron willpower.

Takamoto smiled, then continued:

“You are like me. We are men forged of tanned leather and folded steel. Our blood runs with oil and lava, hot from the heart of Fuji. Men like that,” he nodded to the arterial pool congealing in the center of the deck, “They are creatures, cowards and mongrels, men with pigs' hearts pumping red piss water.”

Takamoto studied the captain's disfigured face. Umihara Shou glared back, veins pulsing and muscles ticking in forehead and cheeks. His huge eyes were bloodshot to the iris and yellow around the edges. His jaw worked like he was chewing a cud.

“Mass and acceleration,” Umihara intoned, as if the words were the ancient mantra of some forgotten philosophy. Blueprints were drawing themselves behind his eyes. “I know a way. A silver arrow to slay the beast.”

“If you forge this arrow, I will loose the bowstring,” Takamoto pledged.

“There shall be no bow,” Umihara grated, his words cryptic.

“Tell me,” Takamoto hissed.

“I will need the use of the hangar. And a pilot. A dedicated, loyal man.”

“I have those, as many as are needed,” Takamoto responded.

“There will be sacrifice,” the captain warned.

“You are I are men who understand the value of sacrifice,” Takamoto replied. “I will cut their throats myself if that is what is necessary.”

“Not yet, no,” Umihara rasped. “But death is required.”

“You will have what you need. The Emperor has his Swordsmiths, but what is a sword in war such as this? You will be my Smith, Umihara, and you will build me the weapon to conquer this new world.”

Takamoto stalked to his table and knelt over parchment. He dipped his brush in the waiting water pot, then swirled it upon the ink tablet. Black seeped into the horse hair bristles and he spun the brush between his fingers. He'd been instructed in calligraphy in his youth, a traditional art to train alongside the sword and bow. The new war had made it the most useful skill of the three.

His brush flowed, tracing out his orders. A few words would give the captain unlimited access to any and all resources aboard the Kokuryūyari. His works would be backed by the whole of the Society.

And Toroka would die.

Takamoto sealed the order with black wax and gave it to Umihara. The captain's hand was trembling once again, though with anticipation.

“I will need many materials, some not available aboard this vessel,” Umihara told him.

“That letter will give you access to anything in the Empire,” Takamoto said.

“Toroka is beyond the Empire,” Umihara rasped. “So must our weapon be.”

“So be it,” the Ax Had snapped. “You will have an assistant. He will bring us everything we need, no matter how exotic.”

“Then you will have your arrow, kaiken,” Umihara swore. He lurched to his feet, orders in hand, and limped to the hatch. He wrenched it open, letting the salted air and afternoon sun back into the flight control room.

“Umihara,” Takamoto barked. The twisted man stopped in the hatch. “Send in Zuboshi.”

Takamoto's wingman was close enough to hear and dragged the captain out of the doorway.

“Yes, Onote?”

“Find the fool I crippled,” the Ax Hand ordered.

“Renga Eigami?” Zuboshi clarified.

“If he is the latest, then yes,” Takamoto snapped. “Send him to Captain Umihara. He is to be the captain's assistant, procuring whatever he needs for his weapon. He will be hands for the old man, and he will be eyes for me.”

“Yes, Onote,” Zuboshi said. He disappeared through the open hatch. The Ax Hand was alone. No one of the crew dared enter his domain, and his squadron stayed away unless summoned.

Takamoto stretched, loosening his taut muscles, rolling every joint, letting the vipers squirm across his skin. The silent screaming woman splayed across his back writhed with agonizing ecstasy. Long barbed fangs raked her pale neck, dripping green venom and red blood onto her constricted breasts. She was beating upon the great serpent with soft hands, only starting the fight in the last, most precious seconds of her life.

The Ax Hand chuckled to himself. Many found some meaning in the ink. Many more of his opponents did. Some sought to analyze him, others to learn lessons of life or combat unto themselves. These were fools, and thus the tattoos had served their purpose. They were horrifying and distracting and while an opponent was reacting, Takamoto would reach through their throats and separate their vertebrae. He had done it before.

Forms flowed through him easily. His muscles remembered every stance. He did not ascribe to a single style, rather learning and mastering every one he encountered then parsing the most powerful lessons from each.

His punches struck with the the force of practiced, perfected Okinawan karate, while he wielded the crushing chokes and locks of jūjutsu and the momentum-manipulating throws of judo. The Kuragarigirudo had taught him the first levels of ninjutsu, and he had even learned the ways of aikido from Ueshiba himself.

This pedigree had forged a philosophy all his own, the Ax Hand, a deadly technique that even Tetsujin would hesitate to pit his Viper Harpoon against.

Takamoto had no master.

His hands cut the very air with every punch. His strikes could fell trees and demolish living men. Fights were never less than definitive, so one-sided that observers from the impotent League of Nations had once labeled him a war criminal. Their shriveled heads still watched over the southern border of Manchukuo.

Takamoto threw punches and kicks, beheading imagined foes until his body was slick with sweat. He did not know how long he practiced. If he could, he would continue for days.

He had tried before, pushing the limits of his body and mind for over a week, only stopping to drink water and devour Pervitin.

The Western drug was invigorating, slowing time and increasing strength. Karl Adler, the Nazis' Black Baron, never flew without it. It was he who had given Takamoto his first taste of the Stuka-Tablets. Takamoto had progressed further and faster in his training that week than he had ever before, but the recovery nearly killed him.

Even his honed, perfect body was at the mercy of the German drug. He had learned to treat Pervitin like a weapon, and only took it when necessary.

The sweat grew cold on his skin and he stood still, balanced on one leg like a resting crane. He emptied his mind. In that state, only he existed, a titan in the void. One by one, enemies would materialize before him, only to be struck down. The Ax Hand could feel his breathing smooth itself and regulate, his heartbeat slowing to a crawl even as his dream self slaughtered enemies and dripped with scarlet gore.

Chinese soldiers charged him, swinging dao swords and emptied rifles like clubs. They fell in their numbers, their weapons bent and scattered. Russians came to die in their hordes, and British assassins, drawn from the shadows with stiletto knives in hand. There were Americans, too, over-confident raiders seeking glory and vengeance only to be broken like twigs.

A silhouette stepped through the slaughter, a lean man in a worn flight suit. His hair was slicked back, and the red numeral on his shoulder and the unblinking eye sigil marked him an Official. Below these, he wore the white sun and blue sky of the Chinese Kuomintang and the British Union Jack. It was the half-breed, the defiant cur.

The mutt growled something in foul English, then assumed the fighting stance of the self-righteous Shaolin monks. Chen's punches and kicks flowed like falling leaves. His attacks were as deadly as the geisha dances they reminded Takamoto of.

The Ax Hand's fist struck the half-breed like lightning. Chen broke, his flesh as fragile as that of any other man. The Zero Hunter died before him without a struggle. He was woven from nothing but stringy meat and thin blood and the congealed fear of cowards.

A knock on the door brought Takamoto back to the empty room. He could tell by the sound that it was Zuboshi, with his soft, clumsy fists.

“What?” the Ax Hand demanded. Zuboshi stepped through the hatch and waited. A trembling officer followed him in, limping on plaster-bound feet.

“Renga Eigami wishes to submit a report,” Zuboshi rumbled.

Eigami looked as if he had just chewed a swallowed a raw fushimikara pepper. He was sweating, and his mouth was working wordlessly like he wished to spit out something distasteful.

“Submit your report, renga,” Takamoto demanded. “I assume you have word from the captain.”

“Yes, kaiken,” Eigami stammered. “Captain Umihara has been working tirelessly. He is in a trance.”

“Tirelessly?” Takamoto wondered.

“Yes, kaiken, as if possessed by a spirit. He sweats, his hands shake, his eyes are dry and as wide as a bat's. Still, he works without rest,” Eigami reported.

“Why would he rest?” Takamoto wondered. “The work is great and necessary for the Empire and the Society.”

“It is morning, Onote,” Zuboshi answered.

Takamoto chuckled. He had trained through the whole night once again.

“He needs something,” Eigami whispered.

“He what?” Takamoto demanded. His raised voice almost knocked the weakling over as he backpedaled on his hobbled feet. Zuboshi caught him by the collar and steadied him while Takamoto glared into his bloodshot eyes.

“He says he has located the materials he needs to create your weapon,” Eigami sputtered, spitting the words in one panicked jumble.

“And where are they?” the Ax Hand wondered. He knew that if the captain needed something simple, it would have already been requisitioned from the Imperial Navy.

Eigami clamped his mouth shut. Zuboshi grabbed his shoulder and squeezed.

“In Germany,” Eigami yelped.

Takamoto considered re-breaking Eigami's foot at that very moment. He chose to wait; there were many stairs between flight control and the hangar in which the captain was sequestered.

“We do not need the Nazis,” Takamoto growled.

“I know, kaiken, but...” Eigami whimpered. The Ax Hand was sure this son of a rich man was about to fall to the deck.

Takamoto calmed himself. This was war, one must use any means to win.

“If the captain can forge the arrow, I must bring him the steel,” Takamoto mused. Eigami sighed and stood straighter.

“The Department Three liaison to the Society is in Shanghai,” Zuboshi told him. “He is facilitating the final equipment transfer to the Nordenstamm base before the Hōfuku-Sora fleet arrives.”

The Ax Hand growled audibly, shrinking Eigami back away. He knew the man Department Three left in Shanghai, and that German irritated him even more than the rest.

Their agent had killed nearly as many Chinese as Takamoto had. He gunned people down in the streets, laughing all the while. But he did not kill for honor, or power, or to conquer.

No, Many Guns Messner was truly a Western barbarian: he killed for money.

The Zero Hunter.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 28, 1943
ABOARD JOLLY GREEN
ABOVE THE SHELIKHOV GULF

“Don't get your knickers in a twist, Boxer,” Tusker's voice crackled over the radio. “This beastie might be cunning as a dunny rat, but we're on 'im, I feel it in my guts.”

Hercules leaned Jolly Green to watch Pushy Penguin cruising below him. The fat seaplane was chugging along with Saltchuck and Plumber behind the stick. Tusker and Hye were in the cargo bay, poring over intel assembled from every corner of the Office. Hercules yawned then pushed the stick to turn the lean into a lazy barrel roll.

“Calm down, mate,” Blue murmured, his hand over his mic. Hercules snorted, then covered his as well.

“The Black Dragons burned a city of refugees to the ground because we had to find Leatherfell,” he snarled. “I do not need that wanker’s guts to know a monster’s close.”

“You can rely on more than that,” Blue offered. He tapped on the canopy with a gloved finger. Hercules leaned over and looked at the silver line glittering as far as he could up the Russian coastline. It was millions of dead fish, all beached and rotting.

“Anyone with eyes could find that,” Hercules muttered.

“He knew where it would be and what it means,” Blue said. “I hate him, too. Baptist might have forgiven him for what happened, but that doesn't change what he did. The kid won't ever walk again.”

“And Macau,” Hercules grated. They could have been in and out of that city without ever alerting the Black Dragons if it hadn't been for Leatherfell's proclivities.

Blue was eager to change the subject. As the father of young children, his strategy was to always separate and distract in the case of a disagreement.

“Portugal declared war on Japan this morning,” Blue told him. Hercules snorted. Portugal was a small kingdom that had only survived the war so far because it had stayed neutral. He did not expect much from them. Blue continued: “There are riots in Brazil, protesters in their thousands demanding the expulsion of all Japanese from the country.”

Hercules knew that would not go over well. Brazil was home to the largest Japanese expat population outside the home islands. The yakuza were entrenched there and it was the capitol of Black Dragon Society operations in the western hemisphere. There were more yajirushi in Rio de Janeiro than in the whole of Europe.

“Protest is all they can do,” Hercules grunted. “They cannot afford to provoke Franco.”

“The Japanese know that, too,” Blue confirmed. “They didn't even ask the rest of the Axis to reciprocate. The Nazis and Italians haven't bothered to declare war yet.”

“That is strange.”

“Strange is normal,” Blue pointed out and Hercules could not disagree. The miles of silver rot spoke to that, as did the band of blood rising from the western horizon.

“The news from Germany is better, at least,” Hercules told said. Initial reports were that the western bureaus had enacted vengeance upon the men who had shattered Vesuvius.

“There are many dead officials,” Blue noted.

“It’s a war,” Hercules replied, though the dozens of his comrades who had fallen in the past few weeks on the other side of the world was unprecedented. Despite their strike back in the heart of the Axis, he could not help but feel like cracks were appearing in the Office’s foundations.

“How about this news from America?” Blue asked.

Hercules snorted. The Americans were brash latecomers, their best use was as an undisturbed bread basket. They’d built Jolly Green, tires to canopy, including every bullet in her magazines. They needed to be a larder and an armorer and to keep out of the rest. No offense to Oakley.

In Hercules’ experience, Americans tended to rush headlong when disturbed, overextended. They made a mess where ever they went.

Under the newly red sky, the Yankees had lost the thread. A new movement, nationalist, isolationist, regressive, had begun to influence the breadbox of the world. They called themselves Garrisonians after their aim to root out ‘foreign influence’ despite marching lockstep with every dribble of Department Three propaganda they could slurp up. Their debut newsletter exposed the Office to the world and kicked off their campaign to undermine it, they’d parroted the krauts’ claims that Vesuvius and all the resulting deaths had been the Office’s fault.

The cowardly nationalists would, at the very least, slow down American materiel coming to the Asian theater, all with a blasted printing press. Hercules had not feared for his direct safety until he found out about their pet traitor, an Office defector who liked chirping secrets. With him in their pocket, every official was in danger of violent reprisal.

The next itme he fell asleep in his bunk, he could wake up to find Bdenie Island crawling with a clan of Kuragarigirudo, ready to open his throat like they’d done to Fast Sugar.

“We rely too much on the Americans,” Hercules finally said.

“Ours are not enemies anyone can fight alone,” Blue replied.

“What is that?” Oakley wondered aloud. They had reached the far northern edge of the Shelikhov, winding up in a backwater narrows that Hercules couldn't hope to pronounce. The small lagoon, barely half-a-kilometer across, was ruddy, and a ragged mass bobbed just off the beach at the lagoon's seaward mouth.

It was the rear ten meters of a whale, sheared away from the head with tons of shredded fat, meat, and organs drifting with the undertow. Sharks fought over the scraps, nearly beaching themselves in the process. Two more rendered carcasses had been tossed up onto the rocks overlooking the water, their fibers and viscera draped over their exposed bones like silken scarves.

“Bring us lower,” Hye requested. Hercules scanned the horizon for bogeys once again.

“Dropping to one hundred meters,” he confirmed. He pushed forward on his stick, putting them on a shallow dive that would put them right over the carnage. Hercules thought he could smell the fetid air when he leveled off. He risked a peek over his shoulder: Lily Liver and Pushy Penguin were still tight on his tail.

“Eubalaena japonica,” Hye answered after having a second the study the corpses up close. “A mature female North Pacific right whale. She would have weighed over fifty thousand kilograms. The others could be from the same pod, I cannot tell conclusively due to the severe trauma.”

“A hell of a meal,” Blue said. Hercules glued his trap shut. Toroka could devour a whale and toss its remains aside to go for seconds?

“Undersea contact,” Oxford reported. Hercules peered into the water. The dead whale was floating in its own oily fluids, fouling a dark patch of open water. The area around the corpse was a bright blue, but below had the darkness of hidden depths.

“I don't see...” Hercules started, only to realize it was the darkness beneath the carcass that was moving.

Hercules' breath caught in his throat. He had read the reports, he had seen the blurry recon photos, he had felt the creature's skin, but the presence of Toroka was something a he could not have prepared for. The vast beast coiled and slithered beneath the waves, dwarfing the dead whale.

“Holy smokes,” Blue muttered.

The beast uncurled to its full length and rose, a reptilian submarine breaching the surface. It stretched out like a titanic, basking crocodile, the lagoon as wide to it as a watering hole would be to its diminutive cousins. Toroka's head was blunt like a turtle’s, but armored like a tank. Its scales flexed and reached upward, golden edges glimmering while their black surfaces drank in the sun. A set of tall bone slabs hinged opened on either side of the creature's neck and a tangle of fleshy pink tendrils slithered out. The alien organ inflated and writhed through the air, half octopus tentacles, half cock's comb.

“Those are some manner of hybrid gills,” Hye said over the radio. She'd finally settled herself enough to talk.

Toroka settled on the water's surface. Neither tide nor wind were enough to bother it. It breathed in the ocean air, content to digest its gory meal and ignore the small flight of planes above.

Hercules could not describe the animal properly.

He'd seen majesty before, as a young man, when he'd first crawled up the Ten Thousand Stairs and caught sight of the Distant Bells temple, lodged in the underside of Yĭ Jùrén Mountain's hanging cliff face.

He'd experienced mystery as he'd gazed upon the legendary lost cities of Thailand, choked by jungle and overrun by Vichy grave robbers seeking the secrets of the deadly arts.

He knew despair well, a feeling forged on the streets of Shanghai and honed by a Japanese firing squad.

He'd felt fear, when the tenth of the Eighteen Teachers had tasked him with retrieving the slimy blind fish from the sunless sea beneath the Well of Inexorable Depth.

And he'd experienced wonder, when he'd tasted the tea Master Yuan brewed from those fish and journeyed among the stars and the dead in the world behind his eyes.

Among those experiences, Toroka was all and more. It was too great to be a simple animal, but too tangible to be divine. Its movements created the tide, washing towering waves across the rocky beaches of the small lagoon. Its breath changed the very air. Plants downwind withered with its exhalations.

They were flying low over it, out of its reach but close enough to see every centimeter of its vastness. It was built like a salamander, long and lithe with half that length made up by its tall, narrow tail. Unlike its tiny cousins, Toroka's limbs were positioned on its underside instead of sticking out. The thick scales covering its body ran from the meat of its tail to its broad snout. Its head was built like a battleship. Scales large enough to roof a warehouse covered the beast's entire head, shaping into a beak powerful enough to shear rolled Japanese steel.

“Crickey, 'e's a big bloke,” Tusker muttered. Hercules blinked, snapping back to reality. Why had they given the old blowhard a radio?

“What now?” Blue asked him.

“We study it,” Hye answered. Hercules heard Tusker snort an objection.

“We put it down,” he grunted. “A bloody beast like that could kill thousands. For breakfast.”

“How do you think we could do that?” Hercules wondered aloud. The largest ordnance any of them carried was the nose-mounted twenty-mil cannons in the Lightnings, and those could hardly hope to annoy the animal.

“Even lions hate bees,” Tusker replied. “We find a soft spot and prick it.”

“Engagement is not our - !” Oxford huffed, but the sound of rushing air covered his objections. Tusker's mic was in the wind.

Hercules craned his neck to see Pushy Penguin followed behind them. Her side door was open, and Tusker was leaning his bulk out into empty sky, a mortar shell clutched in his hand.

“That loon,” was all Blue had time to say before Tusker let go of the bomb.

The shell fell, perfectly timed to hit Toroka where its pink writhing gills met soft white skin beneath its scales. The explosion looked pathetic on the beast, no larger than a bursting pimple, but it had the desired effect. In an instant the billowing fleshy gills deflated and slithered back inside. Its huge gold eyes were open, looking skyward toward the threat. A trickle of black fluid ran between the armor plates on its neck.

“That's the spot!” Tusker whooped. He pulled himself back into the plane and slammed the sliding door shut.

“Idiot,” Hercules grunted. The monster submerged, its movements disturbing the seafloor and kicking brown clouds into the water that obscured its mass.

“This is not going to be fun,” Blue said.

“Pull up, now!” Hercules shouted into his mic. Oxford had already yanked back hard on his yoke, pulling Lily Liver into a hard climb. Pushy Penguin was slower on the uptake. The clumsy flying boat couldn't maneuver like a Lightning and was battling against Saltchuck's control.

The water below roiled.

The beast reared up out of the sea like a coiled spring. It pushed with all of its might against the shallow seafloor, launching itself skyward with its legs and tail. An impossible volume of water rose with it. The sea rushed away from the shore to go airborne, a geyser that weighed hundreds of tons.

Pushy Penguin had no chance to pull up. Saltchuck knew the seaplane didn't have the climb. Instead he hauled the stick to the right, banking the plodding aircraft so hard that it must have thrown Hye and Tusker across the cabin. Toroka's head rose past them, his bony beak snapping shut so loud that it shook Jolly Green's canopy from point-five-kilometers away.

The beast stretched into the air, suspended by its momentum for a long moment. Hercules could see every one of the one-hundred-and-fifty meters that made up its body and tail. Scrapes and scars in the thick armor showed where it had fought the Mecha-Tsuyo. The damage was superficial: none of the Black Dragon's weapons had done more than scratch the surface.

Before Hercules could take any more of the monster in, gravity took its toll. The great beast careened over, splashing down into the bay with enough force to send waves rolling over the rocky shores. Beneath the surface, black and gold coiled up around itself again, kicking up gray and brown clouds that muddied the water. Toroka disappeared into the morass.

“Higher!” Hercules shouted into his radio. Blue winced from the feedback.

Saltchuck struggled with the Penguin, but managed to claw his way away from the agitated water and over the bluffs surrounding the lagoon.

A surge rose in the water, a ripple dozens of meters tall. Toroka was racing toward shore, chasing down the Penguin. Hercules could see the long, flat tail undulating behind the beast, pushing it forward at twenty knots at least.

“Saltchuck, it's on your six!” Blue called out. The seaplane clawed its way skyward, but it wasn't fast enough.

Toroka burst out the seawater, dragging half the lagoon behind it. It was moving torpedo-fast, and bounded up the beach on all fours.

The low bluff collapsed under Toroka's full weight, but not before the beast was able to catapult itself off the rocky shelf, Hercules could only watch in horror as the crocodilian monster arced twice its height into the air. Thousands of tons were airborne. Toroka's short neck stretched to its limit and its jaws opened wide enough to swallow a tugboat whole.

Pushy Penguin chugged along, unable to affect the death closing in behind her.

Toroka's jaws snapped shut only a dozen meters behind the seaplane's tail and the monster fell to earth. It landed heavily in a scrappy pine forest, flattening trees under its feet and body.

Hercules whipped around in Jolly Green, stitching machine gun rounds and cannon shells up the creature's rib cage. The beast did not so much as twitch and its eyes never left the Penguin. Blue let loose a salvo of mini-rockets as they passed, and Oxford followed in close, laying into his own triggers for the same, sad result.

“There is nothing we can do here,” Hercules reported. Their weapons were useless and the creature was too volatile to study closely. The monster twisted and coiled before stomping back over the ruined land and sliding into the water. It was flexible, more so than it should have been with that armor, and it was fast. On land, it could outpace anything they could throw at it, and it could swim circles around any navy.

“One more pass,” Hye insisted over the radio.

“It is too dangerous,” Hercules replied.

“Go higher, it cannot do anything to us above two hundred meters altitude,” she snapped. Before he could reply, her radio cut off. Hercules craned his next to see the specialist hanging out the side door of the Penguin up to her waist. Tusker's hand was wrapped around her belt, keeping her from getting sucked out into open sky. Hye had a large camera in her hands, the lens as long as a bazooka. She was taking photos of the lolling beast.

Below, Toroka was basking in the sunlight, its wary eye never leaving the circling plane. Disemboweled whales bobbed around it, with hundreds of thrashing sharks burrowing into the mammoth corpses.

“What do we do?” Blue asked.

“With that? Hercules asked. He stared at the goliath below. “We hope no one else makes it angry.”

“Aye, and that whales taste better than people,” Blue agreed. Hye's radio crackled back on.

“I think I have enough photographs,” she said. “I would like to collect physical samples...”

“No!” Hercules, Saltchuck, and Oxford all shouted at once. Hye sighed, then said:

“Then from the limited information I've been able to gather, I believe our earlier assessment was correct. It would be impossible to kill with conventional weaponry. Its armpits, its hindquarters, its belly, even the inside of its mouth is armored. Though flexible, it would be quite invulnerable to anything we could move fast enough to target it with.”

“So our best option is...” Blue started. He didn't want to hear her answer, as it was so dependent upon their enemy.

“If need be, we could neutralize it with a targeted I-A attack,” Hye confirmed. She was not pleased with the answer either.

“The armor is not too thick?” Hercules asked.

“Based on the sample we recovered from Nizki Island, if it hits the right spot, the armor would not be able to dampen the I-A effect enough to insulate the creature,” she replied, then added: “If the I-A works the way we think it does.”

Hercules snorted at that. These German weapons were enigmas, variables he was loathe to rely upon. The only person in the Office who claimed to truly understand their effect or power source had gone quisling. They’d be on their own.

Hercules could only hope that the monster stretched out beneath them was weaker than a volcano. The trio of planes lazed around in a wide circle, leaving Toroka to bask. The massive creature did not move again, save for its one eye, always watching, wary.

“We're leaving it there?” Tusker asked.

“We have coastal sentries lined up shoulder-to-shoulder between here and Singapore,” Saltchuck told him. “When it moves, we will know.”

For the moment it seemed that the monster was content to lay on its belly, gorged on whale.

“Have the Japanese responded to our request?” Oxford asked after they had settled into a southern vector, a wide path to bring them back home to Bdenie.

“No, not yet,” Saltchuck replied.

“Fat lot of good that does,” Tusker grunted.

“Our people already have something in the works,” Saltchuck assured him.

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Copyright © 2024 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.