Chapter 122 Kaiju.

Chapter 122: 122 Kaiju.

I couldn’t control them, but they were standing on a battlefield littered with things I could control.

"Psyren!" I yelled, rolling to my feet and retreating backward into the steam. "Keep them distracted! I need three seconds!"

"You got it, boss!" Psyren’s voice rang out, cheerful and terrifyingly eager. "Hey, Nibbles! Boys! See those shiny metal jerks trying to hurt my favorite manager? Tear them apart!"

The horde of throggs, who had been sitting docilely on the lawn staring at Psyren like a religious icon, suddenly snapped out of their trance.

Their yellow eyes dialed to slits, and with a unified, guttural roar, two dozen massive, mutated amphibians hurled themselves into the steam cloud.

It was absolute chaos. The throggs didn’t care about the plasma.

They dogpiled the androids, burying them under tons of wart-covered, muscular flesh.

The androids ruthlessly sliced the monsters apart, severing limbs and cauterizing wounds in the same brutal motion, but the sheer weight and ferocity of the mutant swarm pinned them to the ground.

I didn’t waste the distraction. I reached out with my mind, feeling for the heaviest, densest concentrations of conventional, earthly metal I could find.

My senses locked onto the twin engine blocks of the downed tilt-rotor aircraft. Thousands of pounds of solid titanium and steel.

With a roar of exertion, I clenched both my fists and ripped my arms upward.

The ruined aircraft groaned in protest as I violently tore the massive engines free from their mountings.

I levitated them high into the air above the steam cloud, the heavy machinery casting long, imposing shadows over the battlefield.

The androids had just finished slaughtering the last of the throggs that had pinned them.

They stood up, their pearlescent armor streaked with green mutant blood, their plasma blades burning brighter than ever as their optics locked back onto me.

"Let’s see how your alien alloy handles basic physics," I growled.

I brought my arms down like a conductor signaling the finale.

The two massive engine blocks plummeted from the sky. The androids looked up, their threat-assessment protocols finally realizing what was happening, but they were boxed in by the slaughtered throggs and the icy terrain.

CRUNCH.

The impact shook the foundation of the chalet. The engine blocks slammed down directly on top of the elite androids, crushing them into the earth with the weight of a falling freight train.

The alien alloy might have been immune to magnetism and resistant to ballistics, but it couldn’t survive being sandwiched between ten tons of falling steel and bedrock.

Sparks showered from beneath the engines as the plasma generators violently ruptured, shorting out in a brilliant flash of violet light before finally dying.

Silence descended on the lawn, broken only by the crackle of the burning aircraft and my own heavy, ragged breathing.

I stood up straight, rolling my shoulders, and turned my gaze toward the final piece of trash left on my property.

Delirium was staring at the crushed remains of his invincible bodyguards, his jaw hanging open in sheer disbelief. He took a staggering step backward, his eyes darting toward the treeline.

"Yeah, I don’t think so," I said, raising my hand.

He jerked violently as my magnetic powers grasped the heavy cybernetic plating woven through his spine and limbs. He wasn’t made of alien metal.

He was terrestrial, arrogant, and entirely at my mercy. I lifted him three feet off the ground and floated him effortlessly through the air, dragging him away from the crash site until he was hovering right in front of me.

Delirium writhed in the air, his black coat shredded and singed, looking at me wrathfully. His neon jaw was tight, the cybernetics threading his body vibrating audibly as I tightened my invisible grip on him.

"You... Look what you did!" he spat, blood flecking his lips.

"Yeah, I’m the asshole here," I said, my voice dripping with cold, exhausted sarcasm. "I wasn’t the one who sent monsters, assassins, and elite alien-alloy hit-squads after someone. And I sure as fuck didn’t try and storm somebody’s home while they were out working a goddamn movie. Which you almost nearly fucked up, by the way. So thanks for that."

I stepped closer, the heat of my anger pushing back the physical pain.

"But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you led this little invasion yourself. You couldn’t handle the fact that she outsmarted you. Had to get Rhea back at any cost, huh?"

Delirium quivered in my magnetic grip, his mechanical eye glowing a hot, radioactive green as he glared down at me.

"She is... wasted... with you!" he hissed, his voice warped by the vocal synthesizers in his throat.

"Well, that’s her decision," I said coldly. "Not yours."

"You can’t... beat... me!" he spat, teeth gritted, green light pulsing aggressively from his augmentics. "You’re... nothing! You’re just a glorified bouncer in a tin suit!"

"Yeah? Well, you’re the one currently dangling in the air after losing your entire army to me. So what’s that say about you?"

Delirium’s face contorted into a mask of pure, unhinged madness.

"Haven’t... lost... yet!"

His human hand suddenly twitched, the fingers opening. Something slipped from his grasp, tumbling through the air.

It hit the frozen grass with a light, hollow clinking sound.

I looked down.

Lying in the snow was a shattered, empty medical syringe. The plunger was fully depressed, and a few drops of a glowing, neon-green liquid sizzled against the ice.

Oh, fuck.

I whipped my head back toward Delirium in horror. His expression was changing. The frantic desperation was gone, replaced by a grin that was warping, stretching far beyond the limits of human anatomy. It grew wider, toothier, and terrifyingly sharper than before.

Mother fucker got me monologuing!

I didn’t hesitate. I clenched my fist, using my powers to grab the cybernetics infesting his body, and violently ripped them out.

Delirium let out a blood-curdling scream as thick cables, titanium plating, and neuraljacks were brutally torn from his flesh in a shower of gore. But even as the bloody metal clattered to the ground,

I watched in absolute horror as the gaping wounds instantly knitted themselves shut. The flesh bubbled, hissed, and swelled, regenerating with impossible, terrifying speed.

Without the heavy cybernetics anchoring him to my magnetic field, he dropped heavily to the ground. But he didn’t stay down.

He was still changing.

Thick, reptilian scales rippled violently across his skin, tearing through his expensive coat. His eyes bulged, growing larger and shifting to a blazing, poisonous green glow that lacked any trace of human intelligence.

His fingers cracked and stretched, the bones popping audibly as they elongated into massive, scythe-like claws.

And still, his body got bigger.

Bigger.

Bigger!

I backpedaled fast, my boots sliding on the icy grass as Delirium grew larger with every passing second, his spine arching as he let out a deafening, multi-tonal roar that shook the trees.

I stretched my magnetic powers behind me, desperately grabbing the hundreds of depleted uranium bullets his rotator gun had peppered into the lawn earlier, pulling them out of the dirt and into the air around me in a deadly, hovering swarm.

"Psyren!" I shouted over the monster’s roaring, keeping my eyes locked on the mutating behemoth. "Get him! Now!"

Psyren took a step forward, her eyes glowing a brilliant pink as she reached out with her mind. But almost instantly, she flinched. She let out a sharp cry of pain and staggered backward, clutching her temples, her aura flickering erratically.

"His brain is... it’s completely fucked up, boss!" she yelled, her voice laced with genuine panic. "It’s just rage and static! I can’t get a read on it!"