The world compressed into a single point as Ryker felt himself dragged along. He could feel himself moving, faster than anything he’d ever felt, but also not. He knew he was being crushed under the weight of his passage, but also felt as if there was nothing left of him to crush. He knew he was freezing, burning, ripping, tearing somehow. But then again was he? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. For a fraction of an instant and the length of eternity itself he was no where and everywhere all at once.

Then the world came back in a rush.

All of a sudden he felt real again. Like he finally had come back to his own body after the worst out of body experience of his life. He could feel himself coiled on himself his arms curled in front of him and his legs tucked in as his eyes opened to… water?

Where… Where am I? Ryker thought to himself in a stab of panic and fear before a lifetime of combat training and experience tempered his reaction.

I was in… Typhon that’s it. The ship- wait no. That’s not right, the colony. I was at my desk I think? There were the daily progress reports and the hydroponics department had come up short when-

Then it all came back.

The Kaiju.

The Machine.

Beck dying as his skin melted from his bones before the pain hit Ryker’s mind and-

With a jolt of movement Ryker surged and felt his arms and legs come into contact with something hard that cracked under the impact. Had the machine worked? Had he been sent back into his younger self’s body? He’d still have been living with his parents at the time the machine was supposed to had sent him back. Was he in bed? What had he hit that had cracked?

At the thought of his parents Ryker felt an unexpected wave of emotion roil through him. He’d lost them so early in the Kaiju’s first appearance on Earth. They hadn’t even been able to see him graduate from High School.

A need surged in Ryker, even overcoming the years of conditioning combat had taught him. I have to see them. Ryker thought fiercely. I have to see them!

He pressed against the the cocoon of blankets he’d no doubt wrapped himself up in as a teenager. He didn’t care what the sound of the cracking was. It could have been his bed, his headboard, even his wall. Ryker didn’t care in that moment. He’d break through anything that kept him from seeing his family again.

With a force of will and effort Ryker broke apart whatever had been holding him in place. Feeling liquid spill out along with him as he slid to the floor. Liquid? Ryker thought in confusion. Was I sleeping with water bottles? Wha…?

Blinking rapidly Ryker tried to wipe the liquid from his eyes with fingers that felt too thick and stubby. They didn’t feel right. He only felt three of his fingers moving on each hand, and his nails were wicked sharp for some reason. Sharpening into points at their ends. He hadn’t done that as a teenager had he? That couldn’t be right, it didn’t make any sense.

The trill of concern Ryker heard stopped him cold as he shifted his eyes to look up. Staring down at him was a row of sharp fangs attached to a predator's body. A body scientists had compared to velociraptors with their smaller arms and compact frame before they had been known by another name.

Kaiju.

Ryker’s mind blanked and adrenaline surged as he processed only the most essential of information in an instant.

Stage One Kaiju. Newborn Hatchling. No visible DNA evolutions or adaptations.

Ryker didn’t act in that instant. He’d long since learned that waiting to consciously act in combat situations could be the most dangerous thing a person could do. There were places for action certainly. But not in the middle of battle. So in the moment Ryker’s mind finished its assessment of its enemy Ryker did not act.

He reacted.

The same way he did whenever he was face to face with monsters.

Ryker lunged from the ground. Desperate to get at the monster’s vulnerable eyes before it could tear his throat out. He couldn’t spare any further thought for his family or situation. Every ounce of his focus was centered on the current moment.

With a cry of pain the Kaiju Hatchling reared back in pain as Ryker dug a thick finger into one of it’s eyes. Trying to get away from him even as Ryker rode up on it, tripping it to the ground as it fell over due to his weight throwing it off balance. It tried to lash out at him but Ryker pulled himself close to the beast’s head. Digging his sharp nails into its head as if they were claws.

It’s still young! Ryker thought as he had the beast down. No stronger than any animal! Kill it! Kill it now!

Holding the Kaiju’s struggling head down to the ground. Ryker instinctually reached for a rock to smash the hatchling’s brain in but his thick clumsy fingers fumbled the thing almost immediately. He couldn’t get a hold of it properly. Even as he tried to grip it again and again. His finger’s just weren’t working.

With a surge of strength the Kaiju underneath Ryker threw him off as it roared pitifully at him. But Ryker was merciless. Coming at the Kaiju again, desperate to end it before it got its bearings and bit into him with those teeth.

Ryker dodged a bite by ducking low and driving a hand under the Kaiju’s jaw, slamming its mouth shut as Ryker wrapped both of his apparently useless hands around the beast’s neck. His sharp fingernails digging into scales and flesh even as the hatchling struggled to fight back. In a moment of panic, as he was flooded with fury at the Kaiju in his home and fear for his family Ryker’s instincts drove him to do something he’d never done before. Even in his storied life as an Ace of the Archangels, the best Mechanized Combat Squad humanity had ever fielded.

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Ryker bit into the Kaiju. Hard.

In that moment, Ryker wasn’t sure what he was more shocked by. His own instincts driving him to bite the monster or just how far his own teeth sunk into the Kaiju’s throat. He felt his teeth cut deep through warm scales and muscles. Until the gush of hot blood spilled into his mouth. Blood that didn’t burn him from the inside out thankfully, since the Kaiju had no internal Bio-reactor heating it to boiling.

A wave of almost primal hunger drove Ryker further even as a portion of his mind grew more and more alarmed at his own actions. He bit harder and harder even as the hatchling struggled to get him off. The flailing of it’s limbs growing panicked as it tried to cry out in pain.

Roaring into the monster Ryker wrenched his head from side to side, and felt something give in the hatchling’s neck. A crunching crack that he could feel between his teeth as the hatchling fell limp to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.

For a split second Ryker had to struggle to force himself to drop the Kaiju from his mouth. Before he could even begin to understand why he’d felt that way or why he’d bit into the Kaiju the way that he had he got a good look at the environment around him and froze. Because lying on the ground around him in clumps of two or three were two dozen pulsating ovals. Each one roughly five feet in height filling the interior of the space he was in.

Eggs.

Two of the eggs lay broken open with their viscous embryonic fluid spilling across the floor. Mixing with the blood leaking from the hatchling’s corpse. With a startled realization Ryker realized that the room he’d woken up in wasn’t his old bedroom at his parent’s house, like it should have been if he’d been sent back into his younger body. The walls were old and chipped concrete, something that hadn’t seen use in years if not decades. It was the kind of place he couldn’t imagine his younger self, bull headed as he’d been back then to have ever gone to. Much less a place that would have housed Kaiju eggs. In the same moment Ryker stood shocked by his surrounding another egg cracked nearby. Its occupant stirring within as it tried breaking out of its shell.

Memories hit Ryker in rapid succession. From the days when Kaiju eggs had spawned in clusters on the Earth for the first time without rhyme or reason. The news reports of missing hikers and break ins attributed to bears or other wild animals. The rare sightings of hatchlings downplayed as crackpot conspiracies and the result of AI generated images. All the while giving those young and weak Kaiju the time to hunt and feed. To grow stronger and larger than any natural animal that had ever walked the Earth.

Then the news had grown more dire as the hatchlings grew bolder and attacked larger and larger gatherings of people. Then had come the National Guard once it had become clear that mundane police forces weren’t equipped enough to hold back the monsters. But by then it would already be too late.

Thriving towns and outlying suburbs were turned into battlegrounds as the hatchlings’ massacres continued. Death tolls rising to the triple digits as people in every part of the country fled to the safety of the more fortified major cities. Ryker remembered it all too clearly. Even more clearly than the faces of his friends and family in those days he’d been evacuated. The ravaged hospitals, the trampled remains of a farmer’s market…

The sounds of screams tearing through his school as he ran down the hall. Sneakers slipping in the red on the floor as he forced himself to look straight ahead. Not down. Not at the people lying on the ground who’d never move again.

In the space of a heartbeat every question at his situation had gone. The decades of experience and training that helped Ryker kill the hatchling mixed with something raw and volatile that banished all higher thought. The hatred that he’d carried with him for so long overflowing until the only thing he saw was red.

Before the nearby hatchling could begin to break out of its egg completely Ryker hurtled into it with a vengeance. His hands raking over the newborn again and again until he tore ribbons of flesh off its hide amid fresh spurts of blood. Before the ruined form of the hatchling had even stopped twitching Ryker was past it. Smashing into egg after egg after egg. Utterly merciless as he killed them one by one. Slashing. Stomping. Biting. Ripping. Tearing.

Every egg smashed and newborn hatchling slain meant one less monster in the world. One less family destroyed by the loss of loved ones taken by their insatiable hunger. One less city wiped off the map by an unfeeling monster. The lives that would be spared these hatchlings wrath as they matured could have been one or one thousand, it didn’t matter to Ryker. Only that these Kaiju died.

In his enraged state smashing eggs had caused some others to stir and crack open themselves, faster than Ryker could get to them. He turned towards five of the remaining newly hatched Kaiju, covered in blood and viscera as they recoiled in fear of the human in their midst. Almost too eager to move forward and tear into the monsters in front of them Ryker roared at them. The volume of his shout loud enough to surprise him and to drive them back. Running out of the large room they were in as Ryker huffed with exertion.

Half mad in his frenzy he chased after the fleeing Kaiju without even a single thought to do otherwise or a weapon in his hands. His blood was too hot, the memories too sharp in his mind. There was nothing else, only the kill.

Skidding around a corner, and moving through a hole in the wall Ryker came into a broken down bathroom. The monster was right there. Over the sink. Wretched looking and covered in gore. It stood just as tall as he was. Ryker charged at it the same time the Kaiju leapt for him, jumping in the air as he met the monster and-

The mirror shattered.

With a cry of alarm Ryker bounced back and fell on his side. Stunned for a second as his vision swam. He raised a hand to his head, worried he’d broken his nose but felt several sharp pricks as he tried to touch his face that made him wince. Trying to rise to his feet Ryker placed a hand on the ground to push himself up but froze as the sound of claws raked the concrete underneath him. Bewildered, Ryker looked down at the ground, at the scaled three fingered claws splayed out before him.

Adrenaline spiking again Ryker jumped back, away from the appendage that, to his shock, traveled with him as he hit the wall of a bathroom stall. In a panic Ryker reached out with his other arm to grab the thing and…

Covered in red blood spatter all the way up to the elbow, another arm, the dark green scales a perfect match for the other glimmered even in the faint light of the darkened room as Ryker stared. Stared and stared as dread filled his core and realization dawned.

No… Ryker thought numbly. His mind rejecting what his own eyes showed him. He moved his hands palms up, even though he couldn’t see them in the light. And the monster’s hands mirrored his. He moved his thick feeling fingers and the monster’s finger’s matched his every twitch.

No! Ryker wanted to scream. Tried to scream. But his mouth couldn’t form the words. His lips refused to move to make the right sounds as a groaning roar bellowed from his chest. With a desperate panic deeper than Ryker had ever known he clawed at his arms, at the scales on his chest, tearing angry red furrows into himself as if he could reveal his human self underneath the monster that had stolen his body.

Eyes rolling in his head looking for escape he saw a large shard of the mirror lying on the floor across from him reflecting back at him. Lying on the ground, staring right back into his eyes were the molten yellow irises with vertical slits for pupils of a Kaiju hatchling. Covered from head to toe in the gore of the other hatchlings Ryker had just killed, their blood staining its teeth as it’s mouth opened in horror.

Ryker screamed.

And the monster roared.