1995年
Arctic Ocean
Heavy breathing.
Gasping breaths, echoing through an oxygen mask.
Eyes, wild with terror, concentration and terror.
Tinted visor, reflecting long, crimson beams of light that should be impossible outside of science-fiction.
Screaming in protest, the air bent to release the Su-87 fighter, the aircraft twisting in an unnatural angle as it relied on its supermanoeuvrability to escape the arcing, crimson beams. Spinning round and diving towards the sparkling blue sea, the pilot noticed another Su-87 slicing through the air just a few hundred metres away... And then was no more, one of the unnaturally-twisting arcs of light slamming through its body and slicing it clean in half. No chute.
An otherworldy screech echoed across the ocean, piercing the ears of all pilots in the air and the crews of the fleet down below, firing everything they had against the invader. Hanging in the air like a dark spectre, the unknown aircraft was shaped like a bulbous yet aerodynamic delta-wing aircraft and had wingspan of some hundred metres. Its black body was covered in a pattern of luminescent blue hexagons, with patches of red where its deadly laser fire originated from. There did not seem to be a form of propulsion, and it just... Flew. Another screech, mechanical yet organic at the same time, shattered the sky as the aircraft fired another spread of lasers.
This burst sliced across the ocean's surface, sending up great clouds of steam as they arced right through a frigate and one of the Kamikaze-class destroyers providing anti-aircraft support. Both ships exploded spectacularly, with the Kamikaze-class releasing one final surface-to-air missile before it went down. The missile arced upwards and exploded against the gargantuan aircraft's wing, causing it to burst into a shower of white crystals that rained down to the ocean. It screamed, as though in pain, but then doubled its attack. Lasers slammed directly into three frigates, and one sliced through the fleet's Heian-class cruiser centrepiece, leaving a raging deck fire on the aft.
The Su-87 twisted back around, the pilot glaring at the unknown aircraft with a mixture of horror and rage. The nightmarish thing's origin was unknown. It had suddenly appeared on radar, apparently having entered the atmosphere from orbit recently. Theories swam and mixed in the soup within his mind, ranging from some kind of secret stealth spaceplane by the Jeongmians to aliens. He could not settle on which one was more unrealistic. Banking left, the blue carrier-based fighter twisted away from a laser beam, then fell into a guided pattern banking back towards the unknown aircraft. He had two missiles left.
Four other fighters, one limping with a smoking wing, formed up beside him. The squadron leader was still alive. The cruiser was going to fire all of its remaining anti-ship missiles into the thing, and the fighters should do the same. It could be damaged. Now it had to be obliterated.
Plumes of black smoke from the fire blanketed the remains of the Heian-class cruiser, the heaviest non-carrier surface warship class in the world. Suddenly, angry white smoke trails joined in as powerful anti-ship missiles were loosed, along with all of its remaining surface-to-air missiles. Pinpricks of orange light propelled glinting metal tubes as they arced across the sky seconds before a second, third and fourth laser slammed their way straight through the cruiser's hull. No lifeboats.
All of the missiles found their massive mark, blowing gaping holes in its metallic, hexagon-marked skin and blowing white crystalline material all over the sky. It shrieked as chunks of its body were torn off, as though it were an animal. As the missiles dug deeper, black fluid too began spraying into the sky, though the aircraft did not seem to have any interior - it looked like the whole thing was just a solid block, a physical impossibility. Suddenly, panels were blown off and a crimson, multifaceted crystal about the size of a house became visible.
Video games were only just becoming popular in the world, but all of the pilots understood. Twelve remaining air-to-air missiles were fired at the crystal, glowing red-hot compared to the rest of the aircraft, which was impossibly cool to the point it barely showed up on thermal scans. It screeched yet again, so loud the pilots were disoriented for a few seconds. Then the remnants of its body, which still had been flying despite having lost most of its wings, exploded into large dark chunks accompanied by crystalline chaff and sprays of dark liquid that poured into the sea, leaving a black patch akin to an oil spill.
The pilot breathed a sigh of relief. It was gone. The threat to the Empire was gone. And...
A red glow surprised him for the last time. No chute.
From a bank of clouds emerged yet another identical aircraft, lasers firing at the remaining fighters. It was a very large bank of clouds, and another followed, dropping from the bottom of the clouds and moving forward with tremendous speed. And then a third emerged, and a fourth...
Hapcheon
Bursts of automatic fire.
Otherworldy screeches.
Screams.
A Jeongmian Army soldier in woodland camouflage squatted behind a makeshift barricade, grasping his M16A2 tightly. The screeches echoed through the burning streets. Half the city was on fire, and the other half no longer existed. The sky was filled with an endless battle between the massive alien aircraft and the Air Force's planes, and the aliens were winning up there. They were winning down here as well. Body armour could only do so much against what were literally laser weapons, and while rifle fire did take them out they were extremely durable. The worst of the enemies, however, were the smallest and weakest ones, because...
An M1 tank backed into view, firing its 120mm cannon down the street. The soldier peeked above his barricade, expecting to be killed at any moment. Even the aliens' ground forces were black with the hexagonal motif, and the woodland-camouflaged tank was a welcome sight for sore eyes. Its powerful gun shook the ground slightly as it fired, the commander atop the hatch firing his heavy machine gun with a seriousness that was admirable. The soldier pulled his helmet lower, gripped his rifle, and leapt over the barricade. The tank fired again.
He closed his eyes due to the sheer brightness, just barely saving his retinas from being fried through proximity. He was suddenly on his backside on the wet, hard ground, and when he removed the arm covering his face the tank was a melted pile of slag and parts in the middle of the street. Terror gripped him. He'd already been left behind by his unit's withdrawal. He was certainly doomed now that -
The five-storey building next to him crumbled as an angular, black monolith smashed through, driving itself into the ground just metres away from him with a massive crash. Crawling backwards, his eyes widened as the building fell away to reveal a three-story-tall walking nightmare. What made it even more frightening was not its already threatening visage. Rather, it was the jagged, irregular holes blasted through its body by the tank earlier, leaking viscous black fluid despite no source for this liquid being visible. The soldier decided not to move, lying on the ground in the silent hope that they would overlook him.
On the street came what had to be the aliens' basic troops. These were small, man-sized insectoid three-legged units with a C-shaped body that arced upwards and forwards like a hooded cobra, with two panels extending from the sides that held their laser weapons. They arrived in a swarm, trampling across the intersection and over the remains of the tank without noticing the single soldier. After some time the huge shadow was gone and the clacking sound of pointed, insectlike legs on the ground faded and he looked up.
He shakily rose to his feet, checking his rifle's ammunition. He caught his breath. Perhaps he could walk back. Perhaps there was a chance.
Then the tentacles got him. Black tentacles, tipped with three claws each, snaked across the ground rapidly, surprising him and coiling around his body in seconds, dragging him screaming to the ground and backwards, to the barricade he had been cowering behind recently. Except the barricade was no longer there, having been punched through by an unseen enemy. The origin of the cool, metallic tentacles raised him upside down, and he got a close look at the alien, the one that everyone had been warned to prioritise. Because of what they did to men.
It was low and similar to a crab, though only had four legs. The tentacles originated from below what could only be described as a squarish head marked with red hexagons in an irregular pattern, unlike the other aliens, the most organic aspect of these aliens observed so far. It even had a cavity resembling a jagged, angular 'mouth' that dripped black fluid, and it dragged him closer to this mouth. His helmet slipped down due to gravity, revealing his forehead. And from that mouth emerged something that could only be described as a sharp, bladed proboscis. It shot forward, into his cranium, and killed the last thought that went through his mind before darkness.
The worst of the enemies were the smallest and weakest ones, because...
Through sheer force of will, sheer stubbornness, sheer human ingenuity, sheer sacrifice... We won. The First Contact War with the aliens ended in 2000 with a devastated planet and people, though with a Tiandi more unified against a common external threat than ever before. All peoples, from Sinju to Miju to Yoju, had felt the pain of invasion. Some nations had been wiped entirely off the map, and others were left with barely a fraction of what they started out with. Pain, blood and tears had bought humanity it's freedom and very existence, but we knew that this could not buy time forever.
In 2000, the aliens abruptly stopped attacking, and those that were in orbit moved away from Tiandi. The trooper drones all fell dormant. It was discovered that they had no mothership, no staging area. Instead, like a flock of migratory birds, they arrived in our solar system and headed for Tiandi for some unknown reason. Their origin point was determined to be the closest star system from us, and it was theorised that this flock had been moving towards us since our first radio transmission towards that star. Physics and biology as we knew it did not apply to these beings, which flew through space and air with no problems, though gravity still applied to them. They were proven to be biomechanical in nature and silicon-based, but this information was only scratching the surface of an interstellar mystery.
We knew they would come back. The flock was still arriving in the Solar System, massing in Muxing's orbit beyond the asteroid belt. We could see them massing there, and their numbers were growing exponentially by the years. Occasionally a 'scout' would come to Tiandi, orbit, and then leave, though more than one such scout met their death by ground-to-space missile. The world's governments decided to take action. In 2008, the Overwatch Plan was approved by the Congress of Nations. A CoN special agency was formed to build a force of volunteers equipped with the highest technology the world's nations could offer in order to battle the aliens when they eventually returned. In addition to this, ground-to-space railguns and orbital weapons facing outwards were also deployed in preparation for what was believed to be the upcoming battle for humanity's very existence.
Thus the existence of Special Agency Geobukseon, named after both the Jeongmian turtle ships of old and their floating fortress headquarters, the Geobukseon, a breathtaking Akitsukuni-Jeongmi collaboration and a marvel of naval engineering. Special Agency Geobukseon's operatives were made up of people from all over the world with varying backgrounds and skillsets, each equipped with the best equipment their country had to offer against the alien threat, while more technology was still being developed all the time for the inevitable battle, ranging from humanoid combat drones to robotic mechanical exoskeletons. Every nation had their own approach to facing the oncoming danger.
But the danger from the swarm orbiting Muxing was not all Geobukseon dealt with. In the aftermath of the First Contact War, remnant alien artefacts and even now-dormant trooper drones soon made their way en masse into the world's black markets and criminal elements. While waiting for the final call to action, Geobukseon was thus tasked with dealing with these dangerous items and preventing them from falling in the wrong hands. It was proven time and again that some of these artefacts were far from truly deactivated, and numerous disasters from the misuse of alien technology occasionally ensued around the world.
And then, in the April of 2019, something changed. The flock remained orbiting Muxing, now several thousand strong. But the largest alien craft ever seen - the size of a small moon - was spotted entering Muxing's orbit, and no more followed it. Yet they did not come towards Tiandi in a massive force as predicted and feared. Everyone around the world gripped their proverbial rifles.
From the December of 2019, the amount of scout craft increased exponentially, reports of alien sightings around the world began to increase and once-dormant trooper drones in containment began exhibiting occasional activity.
Something had changed.
2020年
Old Taniyama Exclusion Zone
Taniyama
Southern Akitsukuni
A frog croaked, perched on the edge of a ditch. Suddenly, a combat boot stomped beside it, startling the creature so that it leapt into the ditch, chocked with vegetation and debris. Seven men in dark uniforms moved tactically through the cracked streets, hugging the crumbling walls. The dark night sky was overcast with storm clouds, though just enough of the moon's white light peeked through to dimly illuminate the dark streets. A constant, harsh wind whipped through the abandoned blocks, and hard raindrops drilled against the abandoned city. Lightning flashed, illuminating the soldiers and reflecting off shattered windows and rusting street signs.
Plants forced their way through every crack, and greenery had taken back the grimy remnants of what was once the southernmost port city of Akitsukuni. From vines where power lines once hung to creeping weeds stabbing through holes in the road, nature was back to reclaim what was theirs. The soldiers rounded a corner, ending up atop a downward-sloping road. In the distance, the bright lights of New Taniyama lit up the night sky, framed on the bottom by a brightly-lit, grey barrier. The boundary wall.
A deadly chemical spill was unleashed in the city in 2005, after an experiment involving an anti-alien weapon by the Imperial Army went awry. Thousands were killed, and the number soon climbed into the millions. Rather than aid, clean up and rebuild the area, the government walled it off, along with the people that refused or were unable to evacuate. A million people dead, another half million condemned - one of the early reasons why Task Force Geobukseon was brought in to regulate global use of alien artefacts.
After the chemicals dissipated, the area was reclaimed by criminal gangs and other subversive elements that found the Taniyama Exclusion Zone the perfect place to hide their activities, and it soon became a lawless wasteland. Nature also moved in, and the walls were maintained to keep this chaos away from clean, pristine Akitsukuni. The Empire's biggest failure, all easily contained in one package.
The commandos, belonging to the Imperial Navy's elite Umibozu force, halted at an intersection. A group of gangsters from Meisaan were rumoured to be in possession of alien artefacts and were trying to smuggle them into Akitsukuni through the Exclusion Zone. The Coast Guard picked them up but were unable to do anything about it before the boats entered the exclusion zone. An Umibozu team was thus sent in to investigate. The gangs in this area were extremely dangerous and well-equipped, and nobody knew what the alien artefact they had was capable of. They all had vastly different properties, and with recent alien activity alien artefacts were becoming more active than ever.
Creeping around the corner of the intersection, the men found themselves staring at a makeshift barricade made of old vehicles and spare materials. The squad leader dropped to a knee and signalled a halt. There was a hole torn straight through the barricade, the shattered remnants of a machine gun lying twisted on the ground amongst the scrap. Th winds were picking up, and the rain pouring down threatened to flood the streets. Narrowing his eyes, the squad leader led the way forward, keeping his rifle trained ahead of him.
Bullet casings and weapons lay everywhere, with the already damaged walls riddled with bullet holes, rainwater pouring over them. Bloodstains were visible across some surfaces, whatever had not been washed away by the rain.
"Gang war?" One of the commandos whispered hoarsely, scanning the rooftops. It was the most likely event. The three most powerful gangs and numerous smaller factions were constantly at war here, with only the lives of the civilians still condemned to a life in this hellhole affected. It was a good price to pay for New Taniyama's extremely low crime rate, the government believed.
"No," the commander looked at what looked like a technical, scorch marks all over what was left of its half-crushed body, "where are the bodies?"
The squad turned towards one of the streets that led off from the intersection, passing under a long-defunct traffic light that creaked in the strong winds and downpour. A red banner was hung from it to denote a gang's territory; the winds had shredded it to mere rags almost pulled taut by the gale. Down the street, crashed against the side of the cracked road, was an old truck. Still-apparent skidmarks suggested it had crashed recently. The soldiers approached cautiously, covering both sides of the road while one man and the commander went up to the rear of the vehicle. The doors were slightly ajar.
Holding his rifle with one hand, the commander placed his left hand on the door. He briefly considered what he would find inside, be it some sort of alien horror, human prisoners, mutilated gangster bodies... There was little the battle-hardened special forces commander would not be prepared for. He pulled the door open, the rusted creaking almost audible over the ambient thunderstorm.
He was not prepared for emptiness. There was nothing inside the truck. He stepped back. The gale prevented him from easily closing the door again, though there would be no need to. His comrade gestured to the ground. A trail of blood led from the open driver's door into what looked like what was once a downtown hotel. The commander raised a fist and the squad formed up. He turned on the flashlight on his rifle as he led the way into the dark building.
They passed shattered glass doors into the grimy ruins of a reception area. The potted plants in the corner had grown to take over half the room, joined by weeds from outside. A chair was lying forlornly in the middle of the place. The trail of blood led even further into the building, into an elevator lobby. As they crossed into the lobby, it became almost pitch dark. The sounds of the rain seemed to fade into the background, replaced by the odd ringing one hears in an enclosed, silent area. Once the lobby was passed, the trail led to a corridor flanked on both sides by doors - a typical hotel corridor. The corridor bent to the right up ahead, all shrouded in darkness.
Electrical wiring hung from where ceiling panels had fallen. Some of the rooms were missing doors and revealed weather-ravaged rooms within or decayed furniture. Some rooms had signs of recent human presence, such as bottles and chairs in odd positions. The commandos cleared the area professionally, moving towards the ninety degree bend in the corridor.
A moan. They all stopped moving.
The commander continued forward. Then the light came, a soft red glow from behind the corner, along with an unsteady thumping. Stopping again, the men raised their rifles as the glow came closer to the corner.
Then it stumbled out from behind the corner. The figure looked like... It must have once been human, but was not any more. The body - dressed in ripped clothing and a cheap ammunition bandolier - was greyish and appeared to have had the colour drained from the flesh, with a spreading blackness covering the forearms and lower legs. Black liquid dripped from the mouth and these extremities, and glowing red hexagons had appeared on the body with no apparent pattern. Worst of all was the face. The upper cranium was completely caved in, leaving a gaping hole into the now-empty brain cavity, a multifaceted crystal taking the place of what would be an exposed brain. Black liquid dripped down the ashen remnant of the face from this hole, and dried blood also marked the edges.
This was what troops feared the most during the First Contact War. Their comrades and people turned back against them as nightmarish... Zombies.
There was no question. The commander opened fire immediately, the rounds slamming into the zombie's body and throwing it back against the wall. It shrieked hoarsely with whatever vocal cords remained and dropped to a crawling position, seemingly intent on charging the squad when more soldiers opened fire, the bullets finally felling the poor creature after some seconds. Taking careful aim, the commander shattered the brain-crystal with a single shot.
Something was horribly wrong here. The alien artefact must have activated... But what had it activated?
The squad moved even more cautiously down the corridor, past the corpse - now draining an entire puddle of black fluid - and past the L bend. Welcome outside light shone through shattered windows and a missing pair of double doors as the corridor turned into the exit to what had once been the hotel's pool and courtyard. The hotel ringed three sides of the rectangular area, and the wall at the far end had a large hole in it. Whether the hole was new or not was up for debate, but there was no time to debate.
Because in the middle of the courtyard was some kind of alien artefact.
It was a black cube, and though he could not take precise measurements, the commander guessed that it was a perfect cube from the aliens' characteristics and seeming obsession with regularity. The top of the cube had a single red hexagon, which pulsed every few seconds silently. The squad moved out into the courtyard, training their rifles on the upper floors of the hotel which now surrounded them. They were in a perfect kill box. The commander moved forward and approached the alien device, bringing his body down to get a closer look. He looked over his shoulder at his squad.
"Yagokoro, call for extraction, we've-"
"Sir. We've found the bodies."
He looked up. Lining the balconies overlooking the courtyard on all three floors were dozens of zombies, silently standing in their soft red glow and dripping black fluid. The first floor rooms, windows all smashed, also began to emanate a red glow. Each one's broken skull glowed with the crimson of their brain-crystal, and they did not move despite the whipping rain and wind that dripped down the commandos' tactical glasses and goggles. The swimming pool to the right was overflowing.
Even commandos got scared sometimes.
"Yagokoro, call for a drone strike."
"Can't pick up anything in this storm, sir."
Only the endless rain and howling wind could be heard. The zombies made no sound. The men silently picked their targets. There were at least seventy 'staring' down at them, as much as creatures with no eyes could stare. Ten per man.
An ear-piercing screech suddenly echoed through the abandoned downtown area. The commandos winced, some ducked, and in that moment, seventy zombies leapt off their balconies at the squad, echoing the alien scream as best as they could. Rifle fire immediately began, firing outwards from the seven-man circle in the middle of the courtyard. The zombies fell immediately if the brain crystal was taken out, though severe body damage also did them in. The squad machine gunner fired from the hip, tearing the beings up as they approached. It was not enough, however, and he was the first man to be grabbed by the horde, from some that had fallen into the swimming pool and out of his line of fire. The creatures only desired to kill, pummelling him to death with their pitch-blackened fists. There was no saving him as fifteen zombies piled up and tore the soldier apart.
The commander yelled a retreat, and the squad steadily began to make their way to the hole in the back wall as their irrecoverable comrade screamed in his final moments. Seventy zombies became fifty, and then forty five, but they still kept coming, their red hexagons glowing bright in the dark environment. They crawled and ran forward like ravenous animals, some stumbling over each other as the squad finally made it through the hole in the wall. The last man was not so lucky, and too was grabbed by their cold, grasping hands, pulled into the horde and never seen again. The commander ordered the squad to strongpoint the hole in the wall to take out the zombies as they came with direct cranium shots.
A second screech echoed, this time much nearer. From atop the hotel's roof, a black, boxy shape like a squarish crab on four legs emerged into view. The Kidnapper's head glinted in its body's own red glow, rain dripping off it and tentacles waving menacingly in the air. It shrieked a third time, then the car-sized alien leapt of the hotel's roof, landing in the courtyard and crushing the tiles. It was not hidden by the wall for long as it burst through, tentacles snaking forward and grabbing one of the commandos. As they fell back again, the zombies began to emerge from both holes in the wall.
The grabbed commando was killed by the Kidnapper's proboscis, smashing through his helmet and his head, then roughly tossed to the side where, a few hours later, he would metamorphose into a zombie. The commander grimaced and directed fire on the Kidnapper. It's core crystal was located not in its head, but rather somewhere behind it, within its solid body. How these beings moved without joints was still a mystery; there were no joints and the legs and appendages seemed to simply slide along the body, all of which were essentially a single block of material. The alien screamed and fired a laser from one of the red patches on its back to slice one of the commandos in half.
"Retreat! Run, fuck!" The commander yelled, pushing his last two soldiers in the opposite direction of the alien. It began to advance in its four legs slowly, not using its frightening speed for some reason. It was toying with them.
The commander turned and fired his entire magazine into the creature, but they only left small scars and chips in its body as it continued advancing on him. It extended its seemingly infinitely-lone tentacles, snaking them across the ground at lightning speed to grab him, tearing straight through a rusted, fallen trash can by the side of the road. They came up on all four sides of the commander, who looked up in both terror and defiance.
Suddenly, a high-calibre round fired from the adjacent building and the Kidnapper's back exploded, blasting a large chunk off its body. It screeched and withdrew its tentacles immediately, walking backwards some distance and doing something that could be described as looking around in confusion. The commander and his remaining men looked up at the building where the shot had come from, a crumbling, traditional temple. The torii gate was still standing, though rotting and partially covered in vegetation.
Lightning flashed and illuminated a figure standing on top of the temple's roof, appearing to be a tall figure in traditional samurai armour. The eyes of a high-tech faceplate and lines across the armour - coloured in different shades of grey - glowed green. On his back was slung an Akitsukunese assault rifle, and on his waist hung what looked like a traditional katana. His left arm transformed mechanically, the pieces shifting themselves with a mechanic whirring as it changed into a shape that resembled a forearm once again.
He was Major Masamune, the Imperial Akitsukunese Army's first cybernetic infantry unit, veteran of the First Contact War and a hero of the world. One of the members of Special Agency Geobukseon's response unit, and Akitsukuni's second-most valuable contribution to the Agency. None of his limbs remained after the First Contact War. Given a new life on the battlefield where he belonged thanks to highly experimental and powerful cybernetic limbs and implants engineered through studying the alien technology.
The temple roof's tiles were crushed as he leapt from the roof with the help of pneumatic motors in his legs, throwing up a cloud of dust. Just before he landed on the ground, small jets fired to increase his speed and he hit the ground with a mighty blast in the middle of a group of zombies. Newly-developed kinetic repulsor technology fired the moment he landed, scattering the group of zombies in all directions and literally crushing the bodies of those closest to his landing zone with a concussive wave. He flipped over and grabbed a nearby zombie with his titanium hands, tearing its crystal out of the cranium and crushing it.
Then, motors whirring softly, he pulled out his katana, a black, titanium-carbon fibre alloy affair sharpened to extreme levels. Twirling it around a few times for flourish's sake, he soon went to work slicing zombies in half. The commandos took the cue and began firing as well, taking cover behind an overturned, wheelless car. Another group of zombies emerged from the hole in the wall, and the cyborg samurai raised his right hand, releasing a swarm of tiny glowing drones from ports in his upper arm. Without pausing, he bisected a zombie sneaking up to him on the right.
The swarm flew towards the group like insects, setting off a series of incendiary explosions upon impact and both directly blew up and set the group on fire, killing them. Revving up his leg motors, Masamune dashed forward, slamming hard into three zombies and throwing them some distance back before slicing through another two, grabbing a third by the neck and literally tearing the head off the body through his mechanically enhanced strength.
Suddenly, a second Kidnapper burst forth from the hotel building, moving surprisngly fast and tossing the overturned car where the commandos were taking cover behind with its tentacles. It grabbed one of the last three Umibozu operatives and killed him with brutal efficiency, throwing him away, then marching with rapidity on the commander, who lay splayed on the ground. Looming over him, black liquid dripping down on the commando's body, it slowly extended its proboscis as it snaked its tentacles around to grab him.
In a flash and explosion the Kidnapper's head was gone. An explosive round took out the entire head unit, followed by another blasting off the core section of the creature. The remnants of the crab-like alien fell to the ground, and the commander turned to see Masamune standing in the rain just metres away, left arm transformed into a 25mm cannon. He converted his cannon back into an arm, plates sliding over to conceal the cannon barrel as his forearm. He extended one hand to pull the commando leader to his feet. It was cold metal, made colder by the rain.
Suddenly, the hotel's roof erupted and three more Kidnappers emerged, along with the one farther down the street with its back blown off. The remaining zombies - and more coming out of the nearby buildings - also began to close in, shambling forward and casting their disturbing red glow across the dark streets. There were dozens of them. So this is what happened to all the gangsters and their bodies in this area.
"Thanks for the rescue, sir, but I don't see us getting out of this one alive," the commander remarked, ejecting his empty magazine and tossing it onto the slightly-flooding road.
"Don't worry, lieutenant," Masamune's faceplate broke apart and retreated into his helmet with a whir, revealing a prematurely-aged, hardened 35-year old with a pencil moustache and thick eyebrows, lit by soft green lighting from the inside of his futuristic kabuto.
"We're not alone," with that, he gestured back to the temple from which he appeared from.
Lightning flashed. More silhouettes were on the roof.
