It was now time to return home, so I made my way south. I lived on the island where this impact took place. However, fortuitous circumstances and the mountainous geography shielded me from the thermal radiation.
By all rights, we all should have suffered superficial scourging. On my way back home, I got a glimpse of the sheer scale of what had just happened. When I looked at a map of the devastation on my phone, the burns, the fires, radiation poisoning, blast, and projected fallout zones were impossible to fathom. This was more than enough to collapse the nation.
Finally, I saw the face of the beast that did this to us. It wasn’t a faerie at all, but some form of life hitherto unknown, in the guise of an impossible animal.
I learned it had already come to light that the reason the United States military engaged the kaijū alongside the JSSDF was simply that it was immediately apparent that this thing presented a real existential threat.
I was unaware of U.S. Constitutional law, so the Just War Amendment was unknown to me. However, I knew that the United States justified the continued existence of military bases in Japan through a series of legal loopholes, to conform to their Just War policies.
The United States of America, Russian Federation, CANZUK, and Republic of India, had long since become global superpowers and aligned with each other in a cold war against the People’s Republic of China. The ruling party of which used artificial intelligence to turn itself into an honestly Huxleyan hellscape.
As a result, they freely shared information between each other. Therefore, when the Russians nuked this thing with a 100 MT warhead in the middle of the Pacific, they immediately alerted their allies about failing to kill this thing.
Now there was this GSSDO (世界戦略自衛隊)? To reassure a world uncertain of their purpose, their leader made a comprehensive introduction and statement of purpose to the world. I found him to have the demeanor of a killer, given his portrayal in the material I could watch, read, and listen to. He was someone confident in his own destructive capacity, as well as his mastery and control over said capacity.
Their manpower was also fascinating. I couldn’t figure out a common throughline which would explain why their ranks appeared the way they did. Not only did its members seem to be pulled from across the world arbitrarily, but also it integrated populations that appeared like entities out of a fantasy novel or anime.
If it weren’t for that impossible woman and all the other metahumans coming together, rescue efforts would still be ongoing. I could not fathom the power she had displayed. She seemed on par with an immortal or a deva.
Compared to a human being, I have phenomenal strength and speed, but compared to that woman and that beast? I was totally powerless. I thought about what I could do to help, but I understood that what I knew before was only a fraction of what I would need to know for the coming years, if I understood anything at all as I should have.
This was all quickly becoming too much for me, so I remembered what my father taught me: that when a problem seems overwhelming, you must take a step back and reframe yourself in relation to the problem. You can break it down into a series of manageable tasks, reassess your plans as necessary, reach out for help when needed, or you can understand that some situations are beyond your power to change.
I thought about how that “Lolita Princess” must have felt—the sadness and terror concealed behind her eyes, the powerlessness she must have felt as she exhumed the bodies of the dying, being unable to save them despite all the power she seemed to command.
I was of no use to anyone if I let an impossible desire overcome me, so I had to do what I could and be pragmatic about things. I must learn more about what is going on. After all, the essence of the Japanese hero is the dispelling of illusions, both intrapersonal and interpersonal.
Passing by a reflective shop window, I saw out of the periphery of sight a reflection that was clearly not mine, nor the guise I adopted. With a rapid snap to attention, I turned to see that the reflection was, in fact, my own. I thought the stress of yesterday and today might get to me, and I dismissed the thought.
Only ten minutes later, I felt that distinctive scopaesthetic feeling arise from the back of my head and overshadow my body, so I turned to see who it was that was looking at me. That’s when I saw the woman who was in the reflection. On the ledge of a forty-story skyscraper stood what appeared to be a girl, staring at me from a 2 km distance. She was apparently 16 years old, 163 cm tall, Dravidian girl, with straight, black, hip-length hair, and blue eyes. She dressed in cosplay, as a supervillain I did not recognize. An apparently bloodied sash floated in a slithering motion around her.
Our eyes made contact, and she pressed her index finger against her lips as if to tell me to remain silent, and with a blink of my eyes, she disappeared like the image of a ghost.
Now I was totally on edge. The hell was that? She made eye-contact with me from that distance. Is she following me? I felt I could not risk the possibility of being followed, not after seeing how totally even simple siddhis could overpower me. So, I took an unnecessarily convoluted path towards my home, even entering the sewers at one point. I wound about for a time until exiting out of a drainage port.
To avoid contamination, I quickly decomposed myself into superheated smoke and reformed under a new guise at a distance of 50 meters.
After nearly 50 minutes of diversionary maneuvering, I thought to myself, “there’s no way she could have followed me.” So, under another guise—the form in which everyone at school knew me—I ventured back home.
It took another two and a half hours to make it back home. During that time, I assuaged the worries of my parents, whose calls and texts I muted for safety reasons. I reassured them I was fine, and that I had not entered the poisoned zones.
Now, being able to see my house, I was horrified to discover that this woman was STANDING ON THE ROOF OF MY HOUSE! Bloody fucking hell, am I being stalked by the Lich? The girl gave an unnerving and toothy smile, her eyes communicated some sinister intent.
I ran towards her, and with a blink of my eyes, she was again gone. Despite being down wind, I couldn’t smell her, nor could I hear the rustling of her clothes or her rooftop footfalls. I didn’t hear an impact on the ground from her jumping off the roof. Even disappearing, as by teleporting, should have made some kind of sound, yet it was complete silence from her.
I needed to check on my mother and father and make sure they were safe. So secrecy be damned, I bolted with superhuman speed towards the house. When I made it to the door, I briefly fumbled with my keys and opened it in a panic.
“Mom? Dad?” I called out.
I heard them both call out to me, and they came to the door to make sure I was okay. They asked me the standard questions you might expect in this situation: if I was alright, where I was, etc. They recognized me in a news report as one of the superpowered individuals helping to extract the living and the dead from the rubble.
I struggled to ask them if there was anyone in the house, to which my mother told me, “Of course not. Why, what’s wrong?”
I informed her, “Someone was following me after I left the hotel where I just came from. When I got here, I saw them standing on the roof, and then they disappeared. They have some ability to negate sound…”
My father told us, “Stay here…”
He then left to grab his tantō so he could inspect the house, just in case someone broke into the house.
Thank heavens they’re fine. I stayed to protect my mother, but after a thorough sweep of the house, he found no evidence of either anyone being home or of a forced entrance. My mother and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, I took my parents to the living room where I explained to them all the details of what had happened.
My father asked me, “Do you trust these people?”
I told him, “I trust you, and you taught me to trust, but verify.”
My father then asked me, “So, what are your plans?”
I told him, “Same as always: protect the homeland. If it turns out they need my help, I will offer it, but I do not have any intention of killing a hanyō… It’s too close to killing a human… One of them will have to do it.”
My mother said, “I don’t understand what the difference is between killing evil yōkai and evil people.”
My father explained on my behalf. “She’s a warrior. She understands that lethal force is to be used justly and judiciously. There are very few situations where she would need to kill a human being, but Devils are too powerful and dangerous to be stopped without lethal force.”
I confirmed this, “Precisely.”
My father advised my mother, “My love, Momo looks tired. Let her get changed and take a bath.”
My mother agreed, and I thanked them for my dismissal.
I went into my room, and I froze when I saw her. The ghostly woman was now in my house and wearing my school uniform. My owl-like audition didn’t hear her, nor did my ursine sense of smell notice her, and I could feel no flow of ki (気) that I would expect the feel from any other living thing. My father completely missed her in his sweep. When I blinked, she was gone. I felt an electrical storm pulse throughout my body, from my brainstem into the outermost extremities, as I entered the room, looking for where she might have gone.
For a moment, I thought I might go crazy until I heard, barely audible, in the hallway behind me, “Hey!”
The last thing I heard were the footfalls of someone entering my room, and my mom asking me, with a panicked voice, “Sweetie, are you okay?”
I turned, and she wasn’t there. In fact, I couldn’t hear anyone.
“Hello.” I heard a voice whisper in the back of my brain.
I turned back to see the Dravidian woman, but suddenly, I was no longer in my house.
Transported to an expansive, ethereal dreamscape, I reached for my weapons, but found that my weapons, armor, and clothes were no longer on my person. I was totally naked, even stripped of my glamouring guise. Something was disrupting my powers completely. Terror rang through every cell of my body. I wanted to cry and run, but I rejected both impulses. So, my only option now was to stand my ground.
Posturing in an aggressive boxing stance, I asked her, “The hell are you, and what do you want with me?”
The woman’s smile, at the very edge of human possibility, showcased her immaculate teeth as she revealed, “Born in a future past, I come bearing a message from the Author about her beloved mother of infinities, who, along with all her children, are totally immune to the powers cultivated by Daoists, Buddhists, or even Angels.”
I asked her, “The hell do you mean ‘future past’?”
She twirled around in the air, frivolously, and said, “You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
I thought to myself, “is that the Supergod that Hallvarðr warned me about?”
I asked her, “Why have you brought me here?”
The magical girl revealed, “I need you for something, but I can’t tell you what it is.”
I interrogated, “Then why even show up?”
The witch explained, “To give you a geass.”
I inquired, “You mean the Celtic cursed blessing?”
The witch confirmed, “Correct!”
I told her, “I am not interested.”
The witch mocked me, “It’s cute you think you have a choice, but before that, I want to have some fun.”
She then quickly flew through me. To my horror, my intercepting punch passed through her like a bullet through a specter.
Behind me, she clung to my shoulders. Demonstrating an ability to touch me while I could not touch her.
She said, “Behold, the cascading mistakes which actualize fantasy.”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Suddenly, I witnessed a young Japanese girl, only 16 years old, as she tapped her fingers on a series of toys of American, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Indian superheroes, magical girls, wǔxiá, xiānxiá, and other such heroes, bringing them to life. Afterward, she moved onto human-sized and giant posable dolls made in the image of ancient idols.
Each of these dolls came to life in the image of what they represented: Athena, Heracles (金剛手菩薩), Gaṇeśa (歓喜天), Hermes, Mercurius, Óðinn, Papa Legba, Quetzalcōātl (羽蛇神), Śiva (大黒天), Sūn Wùkōng (孫悟空), Thṓth, Viṣṇu (毘紐天), and Þórr. This mistake blew up in her face, as entire pantheons exploded from these idols in a metaphysical maelstrom which would shake the world.
The witch told me, “Now look behind you!”
I did as instructed and saw another metahuman who allowed villainous ancient and modern gods of evil to make contracts with men, allowing them to enter the world in a manner they never could under their own power.
I heard the villain speak their names, which were translated to my ears, almost as if to conceal their identities from me. The first was Kokuanmen (黒暗面; lit. “face of absolute darkness”), an eight-foot nine-inch-tall, incredibly muscular humanoid, avatar of the malevolent spirit, and Platonic form of, tyranny, armed with a spell to break your heart, shatter your will, steal your liberty, and kill your soul.
He possessed an impressive physique, gray skin, red irises, wrinkled face. He possessed a dark blue helmet that concealed his mouth and wore a muscle cuirass designed to mimic a physique with muscular definition where you could not reasonably get them. A capitalized omega (Ω) decorated the center of his chestplate. A perfectly spherical, blood red, crystalline orb was at the center of the letter, and at the front of the mighty belt which affixed his microskirt.
He wore no thigh protectors, but sported armored combat boots, shin guards, forearm protectors, and gauntlets. This body projected something like light writing suspended in space, outlining the sketch of a wicked mechanical face without a nose and in the styling of an ancient magical array projected into three-dimensional space.
I felt a power in him that threatened far more than my world, but a cursed thought crossed my mind: That he had the power and will to drag all universes and their constituent lokas with him into a black hole in the basement of creation: a hell without exit or end. With him was a pantheon of mighty asuras—gods of military strategy, sadism, savage warfare, propaganda, assassination, and the hunt—alongside goddesses of child abuse, controlled opposition, sexual violence, and the life that is death. I sensed their avatars existed in countless universes and commanded hundreds of trillions of lesser asuras, demoniac super soldiers, and metaphysical artificial intelligences in each.
The next was Kōsei-donsei-sha (行星吞噬者; lit. “planet eater”), a horned god of genocide, whose unbranching antlers sprang from the sides of that almost mechanical Olmec face as a symmetrically modified jera rune (ᛃ), protected by an almost columnar helmet. Looking up towards the sky and seeing his expanse, I could guess that this muscular humanoid, clad in purple armor designed to evoke the musculature implicit underneath, must have towered over super-Jupiters. From this evil spirit, I felt an unquenchable and basal gluttony. Looking upon it was like looking upon the embodiment of a living dead universe, the life of which is prolonged only through human sacrifice.
Thence was, Uchū-taitei (宇宙大帝; lit. “cosmic emperor”), which appeared to be an impossibly close moon in the sky, that cleanly segmented, broke apart, and reassembled itself into a mechanical golem with horns, and membrane-lacking chiropteran wings. An asura of chaos, in eternal conflict with his brother, the deva of order. His goal was simple: the revocation of being and formation, which would return everything to the formless nonbeing of primal chaos. A planet sized work of femtotechnology, nanotechnology, megatechnology, and magitechnology conjoined into a demon that grew from a cannibalistic Gaia devouring planets and moons to consuming stars and eventually universes. I somehow knew that he could exist in multiple universes at once, with continuity preserved between his abominable avatars.
Next was Seikusha (星喰者; lit. “star-eater”), the god of the void, whose shadows extended from a source of golden light. Three serpentine tendrils laced with recurved spines extended from the shadow of the cultist who held the crystal gem of unknown composition.
As it crossed the shadows of men and fey alike, the mouths of its shadows bit off chunks of its victims’ shadows, which translated into that wound manifesting in the reality of their bodies. I saw it shred civilians, police, and self-defense forces before its actual body appeared.
Comprising three impossibly long serpentine necks that were composed of armored segments with recursive spines and tipped with dochilocephalic, recursively spined heads with tooth-filled mouths and multiple eyes in a vaguely draconic form—all wreathed in golden plasma as they sprang from a pitch-black, spherical hole in the sky formed by the curvature of spacetime through the manipulation of gravity.
These necks seemed endless as they extended 20 km with no clear signs of being at their limit. Its appearance heralded by a hypercane: a storm which was hitherto purely theoretical, with a diameter spanning well beyond 2220 km across, with 800 km/h winds, gusts of 970 km/h, rapid fire lightning bolts like those of Jovian rage, and rain more severe than the worst monsoons in all the Earth’s being.
Then, I was shown a strange, six-eyed, octopus-headed asura with leathery chiropteran wings. It congealed together from a repulsive gelatinous substance that manifested from a pink, bubbling mist. Among all these dark gods, he was the only one I recognized in this form—the Great Old One, Cthulhu (クトゥルフ). Cthulhu served as the herald of other powerful entities, such as Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, and Yog-Sothoth.
Behind these gods of evil, an uncountable mass of asuras, devil cultivators, supervillains, and monsters came into view.
A sense of total powerlessness overtook me, but something in my subconscious told me to look behind me.
So, I turned back and beheld the young woman placing within her enchanted hands those of an American sun god too humble to accept worship, to animate it with the prayer, “Chōjin (超人) can.”
The broad-shouldered, muscular, clean-shaven, 190.5 cm tall god of strength, who wore a skintight, wrist-length-sleeved suit in the styling of an American strong man of the 1930s, athletic boots that reached up to his knees, a cape affixed to his shoulders, and a magic ring on his right middle finger, came to life and glowed golden before I could see the emblem on his chest. A tulpa as luminous as the stars, descending into a golem animated to defend the innocent while simultaneously showing mercy to the villainous.
Behind him was something I could not adequately describe in human language. A “machine” whose movement involved the appearance, disappearance, and transformation of moving parts that did not seem interconnected, almost as if some impossible structure in hyperspace was passing through but not bound within our three-dimensional space.
That sun god noticed my confusion and granted me the power to see this “machine” through the power of his simply seeing me: it was an action figure in his image, nested within what I would later learn was called Hilbert space—the medium from which space and time themselves emerge. Relative to its perspective, there was no concept of scale. An android composed of Platonic forms and which could hold a multiverse in its hands: an archetype actualized.
It was an idea seeded into the minds of authors from a higher spiritual reality to be penned down into their fiction, pointing to a transcendent reality more real than its author’s reality. Its precise appearance obstructed by not only geometry but also by something obscuring my vision of the entity before me. It looked at me, and both the man and the machine smiled. Their face communicated uncompromising faith, hope, and charity that eluded me at that moment.
Besides this man of light, appeared an uncountable number of gods, demigods, angels, immortals, robots, and mortal heroes. Among them was a god of light whose hand crafted being from imagination. A warrior goddess of truth, whose snare dispels possession and deception, stood beside them. Faster than a speeding tachyon, I beheld gods of speed. Within their command structure was a battle-hardened yet compassionate, robotic god of leadership. Cloaked in a hooded cape, was the Solomonic and Herculean but childlike god of gods. With hammer in hand, the impossibly powerful god of thunder made a boisterous appearance. Among them was a short autistic goddess of the internet, who blurs the boundaries between reality and hyperreality.
Standing together, a prideful warrior god of destruction, both a friend and rival to a childlike god of martial cultivation. An elf-like goddess of wisdom and rulership stood alongside her knight-like tutelary god of courage, and together they cast down an asura of power. But the most impressive of them all was a loincloth and leather boot wearing, swashbuckling, hypermasculine god-prince of manliness, from whom radiated an invincible courage and overflowing compassion. Standing at his righthand side was his sister, the swashbuckling god-princess of animus-integrated-femininity.
The evil spirits stood in opposition to them, but these heroic spirits stood their ground against their impossible powers. More impressively, from the eyes of that sun god of strength extended a network through which his godlike power was freely given to others, unseen by his choosing.
One of those streams penetrated straight through my heart, but only left an inert seedling of power. I grabbed at my chest, shocked to find no sign of physical interaction with anything like what I saw. I could not feel a quantum of ki from this seedling.
Many, though not all, of his brothers-in-arms also had the power to share their power with others. Though in a more limited capacity.
He nodded toward me in approval. Afterward, the evil spirits engaged in a cosmic battle with these disciples of light. It was only then that I noticed something behind the forces of light. Something I could fathom even less than those things before me.
It had countless geisha white hands clasped in prayer. Countless heads, most of which with three faces, and bearing hooded green capes, singing songs of silence in a language I had never heard.
In its hands were unborn babies shredded in abortion, along with elderly men and women on their deathbeds, the corpses of people I recognized from the wreckage of the G² impact, and countless more. They weren’t just from my era; some appeared to be from ancient civilizations, and even from tribes as ancient as Homo Erectus, while others appeared to be human aliens from other planets or possibly from the future. Was it an angel, a Buddha, an immortal, an aeon, or God? Regardless, it was a singularity of compassion.
An incomprehensible power restrained these spirits, which I sensed to be the same evil power that kept the supernatural sequestered from the mundane and suppressed the siddhis of men until our present day for unknown purposes.
The Wicked Witch, floating upside down, whispered in my right ear. “Would you like to see how the world ends?”
My heart was racing, sweat pouring down my shaking hands. Before I could answer, I beheld a structure, emanating from and conjoining the physical, platonic, and dream worlds into a cascading spiraling complex. Along which all heroes, villains, and civilians were inexorably marched to some unknown endpoint.
I confessed, “No…”
This specific vision immediately dissipated, and she pulled away, righted her orientation, then said, “Boring.”
I challenged her, with a cracking voice, “What is the point of these visions?”
The wicked witch calmly told me, “The Author has deigned to provide mankind with the power to defictionalize their dreams, including their nightmares, be it their mythologies or fiction. But as you know, heroes don’t arise in a vacuum, and neither do villains. It is an encounter with suffering in times of need that creates heroes.
“After all, in the same way, John Rabe, a card-carrying National Socialist, stood up in compassion to protect innocents during the rape of Nánjīng; becoming the Living Buddha of Nánjīng (南京の活仏). So, too, did Sugihara Chiune (杉原 千畝) prove himself to be one of the Righteous Among the Nations (諸国民の中の正義の人), when he used his position as the Japanese ambassador to the Third Reich to save innocents during the Holocaust.
“In an era when an anthropophagic idea ensnared all nations, to differing degrees, good men arose to oppose this all-pervading degeneracy.”
I remember my father calling this time “The First Socialist Civil War”. He contended that even the United States and Empire of Japan were socialist nations during this period. There was only one nation, a microstate in the middle of the Italian peninsula, that he defended, with its king and high priest being declared among the Righteous of the Nations. Though I could let this correction slide for now.
I rebutted, “We, in Japan, have long since abandoned that anthropophagic idea. So have America and even Russia.”
The Witch came so close to my face that she almost kissed me.
She looked me square in the eye then said, “Ah, but the Japanese have not been freed of their human nature… a nature that I take part in, but you do not.”
She pulled back, lightly pressing my nose with her finger as we parted, and once again floated weightlessly.
I asked, “So, this author is the one who did this?”
She confirmed, “Yes. The Author cast a seal with thought alone. A spell so powerful that it orchestrated history itself to ensure the separation of the mundane and supernatural until this very day. To be signaled with one hell of a bang!”
I asked, “Why would they do this?”
She confessed, “I don’t have to tell you that.”
I inquired, “Is it because you know but do not want to say, because you know and can’t say, or because you simply do not know?”
The Witch responded, “Cheeky, but I gain nothing by telling you. Which brings me to my purpose being here.”
She snapped her fingers, pointed at me. I felt an invisible force inside me course through my heart and into and through my circulatory and nervous systems.
She promised, “I came here to deliver this message. You will not seek the Lolita Princess, for the day you do, you will surely die.”
I told her, “I do not believe you.”
The beautiful maid returned to me and caressed my face, then finally cursed me with a geass. “My lovely fairy. When it is time, well after this current life you’re living, it will be my sisters who end your reincarnation cycle through the power of our hand.”
I was too terrified to speak as she again slithered behind me.
She explained, “American, Germanic, or Chinese heroism can not win the ultimate test. To pass the test, all these heroic traditions must cultivate the one who the Author has promised to negotiate with the Author.”
I saw a vision of that Lolita Princess hanged and crucified, with a young woman of mixed Sinid and Bantuid appearance beneath her, and in the arms of that hitherto mentioned eldritch being. Someone hacked the young woman into pieces. Both corpses possessed the same seed of power that I received, and, in fact, they seemed to share the same instantiation superposed between two locations. But within them, that seedling shone brighter than the sun.
The various divine, enlightened, and mortal heroes who could share their powers with others stood around her body, and that seed of power within her resonated with those heroes then blossomed. But their faces were not those of mourning. Rather, they were joyful, like someone who had met an old friend after being separated for far too long and mistakenly thought them to be dead.
The Dravidian witch whispered in my ear, “And before she can do that, she must become a martyr and give her life for her principles. So, I ask you… Are you willing to die for your principles?”
I dodged the question and promised, “You’re no different from any other devil! I will defeat you!”
She giggled, removed a bloodied monkey’s paw from her pocket and placed it in my hand, saying, “Even Sūn Wùkōng, couldn’t oppose me any more than Pigsy could harm the Buddha himself.”
Befuddled, I rhetorically asked, “What?”
She threw the bloody sash at me, then pulled the hairpin from her ear. The hairpin expanded to a staff that she broke in her hands effortlessly. The shattered staff expanded into a crushed celestial column.
I remembered what I was told about the prophecies of the supergod.
“You have already seen the paw.” She revealed.
I looked at the paw and dropped it to the ground, saying, “I’m not an idiot. I know this is a psychic attack, and that this hand is not real.”
She smiled, “Really. Well, I’ll leave you with a reminder. Me and my sisters have slain gods, killed buddhas, stripped the life from immortals, cast down aeons, banished angels, and even felled hyperanthropes. Do not seek the Lolita Princess. This hand and sash should suffice for a warning. Now wake up!”
I woke up gasping for air and drenched in sweat.
My mother and father were besides asking me variations of, “Sweetie, what happened?” and “Are you alright?”
I told them, “I’m fine.”
My father passed me a glance that wordlessly asked if the woman I had told them about was responsible for what happened to me. I nodded to confirm his suspicions. With this information, he again began room clearing, this time with far more thoroughness than any normal man would think reasonable.
My mother refused to leave my side, which calmed me down just enough to notice something I hadn’t before. I felt blood in my pocket. Moving to check my pocket, I found within it a sanguine sash and a bloodied, petrified rhesus macaque paw. At the sight of it, my mother panicked.
Holy shit… that actually happened?