Chapter 33: Chapter 33: A Signal of Fire
Deep beneath the granite bones of the eastern seaboard, buried under reinforced layers of concrete, hardened steel, and protocol-laced secrecy, the war room pulsed with cold fluorescent light and sterile urgency; rows of long consoles hummed with status reports and encrypted data streams as tired technicians and uniformed staff manned their stations like bones to a great technological skeleton, while the central command screen; spanning the entire northern wall, displayed the unmistakable crimson outline of a living impossibility moving inland through the South American coast.
Titanus Oodako, the cephalopodan nightmare born of genetics and vengeance, had just made landfall in Brazil.
General Moretti, shoulders stooped beneath the weight of decades of war and a thousand sleepless crises, adjusted his glasses as he leaned forward, his voice steady as gravel poured through wire mesh.
"Satellite confirms displacement across the north-western Amazon. That's him. That's Oodako. He made landfall precisely twenty-one minutes ago after traversing two thousand nautical miles without deviation."
His words landed like soft detonations, but it was the slow-spreading silence afterward that truly compressed the air in the chamber.
A younger general; sharp-cut and eyes burning from too many caffeine-fuelled nights of watching things mankind was never meant to measure, spoke with contained alarm as he tapped the corner of his screen, "He's not just heading inland blindly. These paths aren't random. We cross-referenced them against Monarch's last-known Titan holding facilities. One by one, every occupied sector fell silent. Oodako's wiping them out. He's removing every variable except one."
Across the room, a low snort of disbelief cut through the clinical tension.
"You're telling me he's planning this?" barked Rear Admiral Rourke, his tone carved from the same iron alloy as the warheads he once signed off on, "That thing was just eating our nuclear arsenal a week ago and now it's conducting strategic elimination of rival Titans? Give me a break. It's a mutant abomination, not a general."
"No, sir," said Colonel Daniels, his voice clipped but charged with urgency, "He's something else now. We've had time to analyse his last engagement through heat-map telemetry. We got something; Godzilla's signature, atomic radiation spikes, dorsal plate emissions, even the breath-based particle acceleration model. The one Godzilla used."
All heads turned at once.
Daniels didn't flinch, "We're not just looking at the creature that killed Godzilla. We're looking at the one that consumed him. Titanus Oodako has inherited the most dangerous ability we've ever documented on this planet. If he still carries that energy conversion organ, if he has even partial access to Godzilla's thermonuclear systems, then the threat index we've been using is obsolete."
There was a pause as the implications unfurled across the minds of everyone present.
Finally, the Admiral spoke again, though softer now, and with less certainty, "You're saying he's... stronger than Monster Zero?"
"Yes, sir," Daniels confirmed. "By every metric we have. Monster Zero is alien, but Oodako is unnatural, and he's evolving."
In the back, the rustle of paper and boots gave way to a quieter kind of storm. Eyes turned toward the man standing near the far wall, where the light from the central monitor painted shadows beneath the deep lines of his face.
The President had remained silent until now, watching the data stream without blinking, fingers curled beneath his chin as though listening not just to his advisors but to the quiet thunder of the world beyond the screen.
Then, slowly, almost gently, he spoke, "He's not doing this to conquer. Not like Ghidorah. He's not sending out calls to summon an army. He's not claiming territory, or cities, or trying to crown himself king. He's hunting. Methodically. Relentlessly. He wants no throne. Just... the corpse of every other Titan."
His voice had the sound of mourning in it, as though he were already reading the final chapter in the history books yet to be written.
The room fell to breathless stillness. No blinking lights, no murmured arguments, no bravado.
Only realization.
And then, like scripture spoken beneath a cathedral of dread, the President's voice echoed once more, harder now, with the finality of thunder slamming shut the gates of compromise.
"He's setting the stage for the final battle with Monster Zero."
He turned from the screen. And in the silence, he whispered the words that would soon become myth.
"Let them fight."
…
In the rain-drenched jungle of the Amazon, the trees parted with seismic force, birds scattered in desperate flocks that would never return, and the soil itself seemed to recoil from the god it could not bury.
Titanus Oodako had arrived.
Twelve eyes surveyed the viridescent canopy with a kind of ancient patience no longer belonging to a creature, but a force of nature that had forgotten time.
Then, from his massive frame, the blue lines across his armoured tentacles lit with a violent internal glow, and a deep, mechanical hum began building at the base of his skull, spreading through the conduction plates of his fused dorsal array.
With a snap that tore the air apart like flayed lightning, the twin beams of pure atomic energy burst forth from his eyes—not in rage, nor warning, but in declaration.
The jungle turned to fire. The clouds recoiled. The earth quaked.
And in the far reaches of the world, Monster Zero turned his heads toward the signal.
[AN: Sorry for publishing late. Also... LET THEM FIGHT!!!!!! HELLL YEAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!]