Evolving Monster in the Monsterverse

The ocean steamed beneath the blistering sun, stained black with oil and ichor, haunted by wreckage that floated like remnants of a broken civilisation. High above the churning waters, the only remaining Jaegers; Gipsy Danger and Striker Eureka, watched the leviathan that was Titanus Oodako in breathless silence.

Their pilots held their weapons at the ready, but neither machine moved to engage. They had seen what had just occurred with their own eyes. They had witnessed the effortless dismantling of twelve machines forged by the collective ingenuity of humanity, and they now stared at the creature responsible.

Mark did not strike immediately.

Instead, his massive form shifted slowly through the waves, his armoured tentacles carving elegant grooves into the sea, each movement laced with restrained menace. His eyes—thirty-six in total—scanned the two surviving Jaegers with clinical interest. He had already consumed ten others. He had already tasted the radiation stored in their reactor cores, had already drawn strength from their destruction. These last two were different.

For a moment, he paused. And then, he turned his head toward the ocean beyond. Two new Kaiju had emerged from the Breach. These were larger than the ones before. These were Category 4.

Their monstrous silhouettes cast long shadows across the waves, towering creatures of scale and fang and glowing hatred. One resembled a twisted crab, its claws lined with acidic resin and chitinous armour like forged obsidian. The other resembled a hulking crocodilian beast, its dorsal ridges lined with molten vents, every step boiling the water beneath.

Mark turned from the Jaegers without a second thought.

He launched himself forward, propelling his immense body like a torpedo beneath the surface, and met the first creature mid-lunge. His tentacles snapped outward, wrapping around its carapace and slamming it into the ocean floor. Chitin cracked. Steam burst. One of its claws attempted to pierce Mark's flesh, but the blow glanced off his hardened exterior. In retaliation, he thrust four limbs through its abdomen, injecting paralytic enzymes that quickly seized its organs. He tore the beast in two.

The crocodilian roared, charging with frenzied hunger, but Mark was already upon it. He dodged the first bite and coiled around its torso. It released a boiling spray of superheated water, but Mark's thermal shielding—the inherited gift of Shimo—rendered the attack meaningless. He tightened his grip until bones snapped, then punctured its skull with a single spike of hardened keratin.

As the corpses sank into the trench, Mark hovered above them, silent and still.

[Genetic Saturation: 91%]

Behind him, the two Jaegers remained still, sensors scanning the water, unsure whether the fight had truly ended. Mark turned his attention back to them. He was neither merciful nor cruel. He simply saw them as means to an end. They contained energy. That was all.

He surged forward again, smashing through a wall of water and clashing with Gipsy Danger. Striker Eureka attempted to intercept, firing a volley of missiles, but Mark whipped a limb upward and knocked the projectiles aside before slamming into Gipsy's chest.

The mech stumbled backward, sword deploying instinctively, but Mark had already found what he needed. He pierced the chest plate with surgical precision, tore open the casing, and pulled free the nuclear core with a wet, metallic shriek.

Gipsy's lights dimmed. The pilots inside screamed over the comms.

Mark ignored them.

He placed the core into his secondary mouth and watched as the radiation surged through him. His abilities trembled, the fusion cores inside his body humming with resonance as they fed on the unleashed power. Tendrils of atomic steam coiled from his eyes and vents as his form adapted again, shifting ever closer toward finalisation.

But he did not kill the Jaeger. Nor did he harm Striker Eureka. He let them drift. Not out of mercy; but simply because he no longer needed them. They were now beneath his concern.

Just as he turned, the ocean convulsed once more.

Two more titans emerged from the Rift. Both were larger still, Category 5!.

Their screeches echoed across the trench like the tolling of ancient bells, heralds of a dying dimension's final defenders. One of them resembled an enormous cephalopod, its body surrounded by a halo of bioluminescent spines that flashed like a pulse. The other was serpentine, a thing of twisting vertebrae and jagged teeth, with eyes that burned like stars.

Mark surged forward. He did not wait. He struck the cephalopod first, absorbing the creature's first attempt at neural disruption through his own psychic dampening field. He retaliated by crushing its skull between his limbs and draining it dry. The serpent lasted only moments longer, slashing across Mark's side but failing to pierce the dermal plating. Mark skewered it through the gills and bit off its head.

The ocean quieted again.

[Genetic Saturation: 95%]

Mark hovered beneath the waves, eyes half-lidded in satisfaction. Only five percent more.

He stared at the Rift. Time passed, but nothing came. A minute. Then ten. Then an hour.

Finally, Mark reached out with his senses. Not sight. Not hearing. But something deeper; an instinctual awareness, gifted to him through the sheer scope of his evolution. And what he sensed brought him dread.

The Rift was closing.

He scanned again. Yes. It was faint. Minute, barely perceptible. But the spatial tear that connected their worlds was folding in on itself. Not violently. Not in panic. But slowly, methodically, like a wound being stitched from the inside out.

He circled it again, measuring. Watching. Sensing the flux of energy through its membrane. And finally, he calculated.

'At this rate… the breach would be gone within fifty days.'

Mark recoiled from the discovery, a deep growl rumbling from his core.

Fifty days… fifty days until the gate was sealed. Fifty days before the path was lost. Fifty days before the other world; the one of endless Kaiju and infinite genetic diversity, was locked away forever.

Panic flared within his mind, cold and sharp.

'Am I to be denied everything… now? Now, when the end is so close?'

He floated above the Rift, unmoving.