In the darkness of space a thousand miles above sea level, enhanced sensors and hacks into various satellites parsed through terabytes of data for patterns. Patterns of violence. Patterns of sudden large-scale change or movement. Patterns of energy not explainable by natural effects. Even outside the two incursion points in North America, thousands of such events were reported daily; the magical levels of Earth had been slowly rising for most of a year and were rapidly approaching another major milestone.

Experts from another world would say that "magical levels" were a misnomer. Magic was not energy, or a substance, or a force, but an idea, a pattern. The warning system had not been programmed with this knowledge and it would not matter if it had for it didn't really track magic, but its results. Said programming picked up and correlated indicators of the use of magic, and while magic itself could not have "levels", its spread and frequency of appearance did.

*Priority Alarm*

*Macro-scale arcane bioform detected*

*Threat level Bravo*

Disrupted tidal patterns, movement of heat sources and marine life forms, eldritch weather activity, seismic activity, data from planet-based military sensors were all put together, overlapping phenomena analyzed for correlation and causation before results were pooled and an initial evaluation was made.

*East Pacific Ocean, projecting vector...*

*Apparent destination: 35°41′23″N 139°41′32″E, ETA 2580 sec*

Initial evaluation made, the system followed the standard protocols for delegation of interception and emergency response. Hacked tactical and strategic networks would be tapped, far less capable systems directed at the potential threat through anonymous info drops, altered operating procedures, falsified communications or, if the threat algorithms calculated the necessity, outright hijacking of assets. Before actions were taken however, predictive algorithms calculated potential results on the available data and evaluated them according to the system's programmed directives.

*Designation: Tokyo. Strategic Value: Absolute*

*Evaluating Orbital Strike...*

*Accounting for target size, velocity, arcane intensity, atmospheric and oceanic cover...*

*Success chance per attempt 37%, Military casualties: 0, Civilian casualties: 455.000 - 508.000*

*Conclusion: results unacceptable. Orbital strike aborted*

Having judged use of the asset both unlikely to work and against its programmed directives, the system searched for further potential assets in engagement range.

*Evaluating DF-53 ICBM strike...*

*Accounting for target size, velocity, arcane intensity, atmospheric and oceanic cover...*

*Accounting for macro-scale bioform documented energy absorption...*

*Accounting for local weather patterns and evacuation protocols...*

*Success chance per attempt 14%, Military casualties: 0, Civilian casualties: 320.000 - 380.000*

*Conclusion: results unacceptable. ICBM strike aborted*

Long-range, first-strike interception having proven unacceptably costly, the system began searching for more conventional counters. However, conventional units had a much higher travel time. Given the target's recorded speed and estimated time of arrival, the list of units that could intercept before the macro-scale arcane bioform made landfall was short. For that theater of operations, it came down to a single major unit with a secondary list of minor ones.

*Evaluating interception, US 7th Fleet + special assets*

*Accounting for macro-scale bioform documented resilience, mobility, natural weapons*

*Estimating conventional ordnance effectiveness and accuracy*

*Estimating tactical ordnance effectiveness and accuracy*

*Accounting for US 7th Fleet combat effectiveness @73% due to prior MSB engagement*

*Success chance 43%, Military casualties: 29.432, Civilian casualties: 220.000-250.000*

*Warning: no repeat attempts possible + inconclusive outcome

*Conclusion: results unacceptable. Fleet interception aborted*

The evaluation of smaller units did not change the results beyond a few percentage points. None of the conventional assets had sufficient firepower to present more than a distraction and their inclusion only served to increase military casualties in the end. While unmanned conventional assets did not cause additional military or civilian casualties, they were also insufficient to guarantee a successful interception.

*Strategic and Conventional asset failure. Evaluating Special assets*

*Local Special assets negligible. Recommend international asset deployment*

*Threat level insufficient for full mobilization*

*Recommendation: maintain Sanctuary protocols*

*Analyzing orbital Valkyrie insertion effectiveness...*

*Success chance 31%, Special casualties: 10-15, Civilian casualties: 220.000-250.000*

*Amending simulation: adding Special asset Golden Knight*

*Success chance 85%, Special casualties: 8-10, Civilian casualties: 220.000-250.000*

*Analyzing causes of civilian casualties...*

*Amending simulation: adding Special asset Red Queen*

*Success chance 87%, Special casualties: 0, Civilian casualties: 0*

*Recommendation: deploy Special asset Golden Knight on primary target*

*Recommendation: deploy Special asset Red Queen on environmental disruption*

*Recommendation: deploy Special assets Valkyries on sheeple herding*

xxxx

As far as spaceships went, the Pachyderm blew everything else mankind had ever built out of the water. Easily a hundred times more massive than even the Saturn V rockets, the solid mass of enhanced alloy, automated turrets, capacitors both mundane and arcane, robotics and habitation models was also several orders of magnitude tougher and was usable more than once.

What it wasn't was fast. Despite all Jerry's technopathy and Amanda's sorcery could do when combined, accelerating a ship that had exceeded the size of most supertankers remained problematic, especially since the Pachyderm's power core was providing energy to far more major systems than just the engines. While normally this would not be an issue in day to day operations when the ship was just a base and launch platform for both people and long-range artillery, emergencies that required a direct deployment were another matter entirely.

"I still think I could take that thing," the gorgeous redhead standing next to Jerry's command chair complained. "If the previous three attacks were any proof, they're not nearly as tough as their magical footprint would indicate. The Americans took out one with their fleet, even!"

"And suffered considerable damages in the process. The monsters are improving," Jerry told his girlfriend - and wasn't that a surprise? A bit over half a year before he'd been just a nerd chugging along through high school. Now he was the world's number one expert in magitech and his better half was the most gorgeous redhead in the world. "Someone is building those things and their designs are upgraded with every subsequent attack."

"All the more reason for me to take point," she argued. "You would be taking a huge risk. What the damn machine proposed has never been tested and I don't like that eighty-seven percent success chance. It implies a thirteen percent chance of failure." Jerry knew that Amanda was right and if pressed would admit to being nervous about the whole thing. Despite his meteoric advancement, being cool in a fight had never become his strong point. On the other hand...

"What about the civilians, then? The attacker is throwing off enough uncontrolled magic to wreck the weather merely by moving. Engaging it in a fight will make it worse." He stared at the redhead sorceress that had somehow accepted him as a partner, doing his best to look and sound determined. "Both of us can beat that thing. Only one of us can do weather control and the first waves are already hitting the shores. You know what we have to do, Mandy."

"Well, I don't have to like it," she grumbled, arms crossed. The Pachyderm, a mass of over three hundred thousand tons as of the latest upgrade, immediately registered a four Kelvin temperature drop. An unearthly chill filled every corridor, every nook and cranny, a mere side-effect of Amanda's displeasure. "If you die, I'm bringing you back just so I can beat the stupid out of you, understand?"

"Yes ma'am!" Jerry mock saluted; the temperature dropped another two and a half Kelvin.

"Oh, get over here," the redhead demanded, pulling him out of the Captain's Chair with the level of superhuman strength Jerry doubted he'd ever develop. A split second later, impossibly-red lips locked on his own far more natural ones and a raging storm of sensation burst through his body. It was as if all of the energy drained from the massive spaceship had just shot through him. Or maybe that was just how being thoroughly kissed was supposed to feel. He would not know; he'd never kissed a girl other than Mandy.

"For luck," she whispered next to his ear then vanished in a flash of fire, leaving him alone on the bridge. Well, almost.

"We're not failing this," he told the mutated chicken that had become the Valkyries' mascot. On its perch next to the Captain's chair, the magical bird blinked then burped a small burst of fire. "Yeah, yeah, everyone's a critic." He sat on his chair and got to work. Unlike Amanda's instantaneous teleportation, there was a pretty involved procedure to go through before he could unveil his latest project.

*Reactor output increasing*

*Potentia coils engaged*

*Metacapacitors at 88%, temperature nominal*

*Energy bus supercooling activated, superconductivity state in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...*

*Radiator array disengaged.*

*Nullspace heat sink active. Operational time limit: 2200 seconds*

The entire spaceship rung like a gong then rapidly began to heat up as he redlined power core while simultaneously disconnecting from the bulky heat management modules that maintained the ship's heat balance during normal operations. The vastly lighter and more compact heat sink designed for combat operations would handle the load. It was a simple array of heat pumps integrated into a superconductive sphere built around a massive cooling spell. Amanda had used her magic to somehow create an area of negative heat that could absorb any excess theoretically indefinitely. Practically, the magic started to fluctuate after a bit over thirty-six minutes with the power core redlined. That was six minutes longer than Jerry would need.

*Habitation module disconnected*

*Primary life support disconnected*

*Main sensor array disconnected*

*Defensive systems module alpha disconnected*

*Orbital stabilizer disconnected*

*Deep space engines disconnected*

*Engineering module disconnected*

*Lab module disconnected*

*Training and gym module disconnected*

*Orbital dock module disconnected*

*Separation from Sanctuary Station complete*

Originally, Jerry had built the Pachyderm as an exclusively orbital craft. It could not land by itself, it could not maneuver quickly, its overall abilities in anything other than being a space base had been strictly limited. In exchange it could accomplish its purpose of a base and orbital support platform exceedingly well. But then the phenomenon many designers termed 'feature creep' had struck. As days, weeks and months passed and its crew expanded, Jerry found himself adding more and more of his inventions, the craft's configuration changing and being expanded practically every night.

Project Golden Knight was by far the largest and most ambitious addition, outmassing all the other modules combined. It had taken months of effort, tremendous amounts of magical enchantment and help not just from Mandy but every other member of the group to finally complete. If it worked though, the group would finally have a second heavy hitter, one not limited to orbital strikes and remotely taking over other people's technology.

The problem was that the original ship had not been designed for work inside a gravity well. It might be solid enough and its engines powerful enough to maneuver within the Earth's biosphere, but most of the first-generation modules were too bulky and unwieldy in anything approaching a combat situation under standard gravity. Jerry's powers allowed him to reconfigure technology in minutes, but as the ship had kept expanding it had eventually exceeded his ability to repurpose it not just during combat but even if given an entire day to work.

Thus the separation. By reconfiguring the various modules in two overall groups, one consisting of every space-only module and the other of those capable of terrestrial operation there was no longer need to adjust the whole ship. The half of the ship that would remain in space had become Sanctuary Station while the more combat-oriented parts could deploy by themselves.

*Engaging gyroscopic stabilization*

*Deploying pilot inertia equalizer*

*Aligning bow-wave plasma separator*

*Activating vibration nullifiers*

*Retracting secondary sensors*

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

*Polarizing observation windows*

*Engaging atmospheric impulse module*

*Calculating re-entry vector. ETA: 180 seconds*

Acceleration struck Jerry like a giant's hand, pinning him to the Captain's chair. Its suspension creaked under the weight of several tons but easily held; it had been designed with far greater stresses in mind. The detached craft assumed a re-entry angle that would make any NASA operator blanch before starting a meteor-worthy descent. The famous space shuttles had taken half an hour from the beginnings of their orbital descent to coming to a stop on the ground. More modern spaceships were, if anything, even slower on the descent to minimize the mechanical stresses and friction heat involved and increase the longevity of components and the safety of the crew. Inversely, the Golden Knight aimed to do the drop at a mere tenth of the time, increasing air friction and mechanical stress by two orders of magnitude. Even with all Jerry's powers could do to enhance both the materials and the craft's performance that would have been a lethal proposition without additional measures. The craft would survive with moderate damage, but Jerry would be reduced to a carbonized husk even if he somehow survived upwards of seventy gravities of acceleration.

To prevent instant barbecue, a series of safety measures had been built. The first to deploy was an egg-shaped shell around the Captain's chair that quickly filled up with a transparent, low-viscosity, non-Newtonian fluid. Matching the density of Jerry's body it effectively eliminated acceleration differentials and absorbed most of the mechanical shocks, leaving him comfortably weightless. There still was an odd sense of full-body vertigo caused by density differences between Jerry's own organs but the tidal stress was minuscule compared to what the acceleration would have caused and easily handled by his minor superhuman physique.

The second countermeasure was basically an energy cannon on the craft's nose. It fired upon the bow-wave of plasma generated by hypersonic travel, splitting it before it could affect the craft and generating the equivalent of a supercavitation bubble. The roaring plasma sheath of re-entry was repelled just enough that it did not touch the majority of the craft's outer surface, minimizing both turbulence and heat transference. It was a device that had been used in experimental spacecraft before the advent of powers, one Jerry had copied and enhanced in effectiveness many times over to make rapid insertion without frying the crew possible.

The third safety feature was a network of pipes carrying non-Newtonian fluid throughout the craft's hull. They were meant to absorb the tremendous vibrations generated by both atmospheric turbulence and the craft's own engines. Without them, Jerry's eardrums would have burst, his eyes would have cried bloody tears and moderate bruising would have formed in all his organs, while a normal human would have been torn apart. They also doubled as a secondary cooling system and increased the effectiveness of the craft's armor in a fight.

But for all the dangers, all the safety measures he'd had to build, nothing beat the awesomeness of coming down from the Heavens on a pillar of fire to do battle with the enemies of mankind...

xxxx

Japan had been one of the few places in the world to remain entirely untouched by superpowered violence, no matter how much some people had been obviously trying. There had been no plagues of monsters like in the Americas, no warlords like in Africa, no cults worshiping Eldritch beings similar to those proliferating in Europe, no unexplained mass disappearances barely hidden from public awareness by an increasingly paranoid government as was happening in China and India. For the time being the island country was at peace and Mandy was determined to keep it that way.

Following her argument with Jerry about the plan, the red-headed sorceress had appeared over the sea just outside the city of Tokyo in a crackle of red lightning. It wasn't that she did not understand the necessity of their respective roles, but hated that Jerry had to take such risks. The frustratingly brave boy refused to stay behind in emergencies despite being so very fragile compared to most other supers. It was a point of contention in their relationship that had led to many arguments in the past ever since he'd nearly died using an unarmored exoskeleton in monster-infested sewers because his main armor would not fit... but Mandy would not stop him from doing as he willed. As much as it often frustrated and sometimes scared her, Jerry could make his own decisions and had chosen to join her in being a hero. That she would never change, not in a thousand years.

But now she had a lot of frustration to work off, so she scowled at the cause of half a million future civilian casualties and readied her magic. The storm front rapidly approaching over the horizon was an unearthly purple and green, the result of chaotic, uncontrolled magic in enormous quantities. At the storm's heart the sea churned and boiled as a massive black shape as large as a hill and as hot as a wildfire leaked that magic as it tore its way through the ocean. Jerry had been right; the monster was larger than those in previous events. It was large enough that its moves created miniature tidal waves, waves that rapidly grew as they soaked in the wild magic leaking from it.

She snorted in contempt. However much magic someone had put into the monster, its enchantment was shoddy and barely functional, the work of an amateur... or perhaps many amateurs. One of the few explanations for what her magical awareness was picking up was a massive group working involving dozens, possibly hundreds of casters that only had a rough idea of what they were doing. Recruitment would also explain the rapid increase in the magic they were working with and would increase their threat priority. Collaboration could lead to powerful results as her own group knew well.

Unfortunately, she wasn't there for the monster. A near sixty-foot wave approached her at sixty, maybe seventy miles an hour. In response, she latched into its kinetic energy with her magic and pulled. The wave lost velocity rapidly and within the span of half a mile collapsed to nothing. It was far from a simple energy drain though. Instead of directly negating the wave's energy and momentum, her spell redirected it into a second energy tap and the sea began to freeze.

Where sorcery was the use of free-form magic through an application of will, wizardry was the use of existing forces and situations to bring about greater results. In that way it was similar to technology, but unlike technology it used magic to initiate phenomena instead of tools. Unlike sorcery it relied on knowing what you were doing but also unlike technology it used magic to bend or break natural laws just enough to guide results to the desired outcome. Magic transformed the kinetic energy of the wave into transfer of the thermal energy of the ocean with an efficiency no thermal pump could achieve, moving dozens of joules of heat for each joule of initial kinetic energy.

Amanda raised her arms to the sky and lightning thicker than the average skyscraper connected the ocean to the clouds above. The entire storm jolted like a movie missing several frames as she combined sorcery and wizardry to apply the energy of the sea upon the storm in exactly the right points that would start a chain reaction of rapid changes. Where sorcerers had massive power to bring what they willed to existence but relied on their own strength, wizards had little power of their own but could greatly multiply it through existing resources. Combining the two was the obvious next step and Mandy had been studying The Wizard's tricks for months now. Little by little, the magic within the storm was brought to heel even as the more mundane energies were dispersed.

A second wave came in, stumbling into the invisible network of enchantment she had erected. Instead of moving on to smash into the shore, level buildings and snuff out thousands of lives, it gave its energy to power mechanisms that would stop worse disasters to come. More lightning crackled upwards and the Eldritch weather weakened a little bit more. Even a mundane storm had the power output of an atomic bomb every second; one with magic could be far more destructive. All but the most powerful of supers would fail to affect it, either lacking the raw power or the sheer scope in their abilities to affect hundreds of square miles. With a combination of sorcery and wizardry that was not required; Amanda was beginning to turn the storm's own magic against it.

More energy taps formed over the course of the next couple of minutes, drawing upon the storm's own kinetic energy and momentum to form further energy taps that would draw even more power and multiply in turn. Even with the main threat still leaking energy like a hundred reactors the storm's advance had slowed and she calculated would abate entirely in another few minutes. A weather control spell of enormous magnitude reduced to less than ten minutes of fairly routine ritual work. Unfortunately, they did not have ten minutes.

The ocean swelled in something more than a wave and a vast shadow moved underneath. A four-fingered arm the size of a skyscraper broke through the surface, swinging claws the size of train cars faster than the speed of sound through the space the sorceress had been a split-second before. Mandy diverted as much power as she could to her flight without compromising her weather control, dodging the attack by a fair margin.

Then the rest of the giant monster rose from the depths. It had a head and torso like a titanic deep-sea worm, a gaping maw a city block across followed by a tubular frame covered in overlapping scales larger and thicker than main battle tanks. From that central core jutted two flexible, boneless arms akin to the tentacles of some mythical cephalopod, but ended in the aforementioned mostly reptilian claws. The supertanker-sized monstrosity was obviously neither the result of natural evolution nor the steady enhancement of innate magic but a carefully engineered collage of features from wildly divergent animal groups. More than that, its tremendous bulk was not flesh alone; lines of metal crisscrossed just beneath the translucent surface, forming a flexible beehive of inorganic conduits that somewhat resembled a stupendous, three-dimensional circuit board.

Realizing its initial attack had missed, the monster turned to track Amanda's flight with neither eyes nor ears and aimed repeated blows at the sorceress. With most of her power tied up to fighting the storm, she could not strike back at it with fire and lightning no matter how much she wanted to. They had cut their intervention too close; any delay now would allow the storm to make landfall, causing significant damage to the city.

But just because she couldn't use enough power to significantly threaten a real-life kaiju did not mean Amanda had no options. She diverted less than a hundredth of the magic she was using against the storm, then shaped it into a quarter of humanoid constructs tied to herself. In moments, said constructs appeared hundreds of feet away from her and from each other, all of them visually, electromagnetically, audibly and magically identical to herself, at least to surface observation. The monster was not particularly sophisticated; whatever base instincts, rudimentary intellect and limited programming it might have, it could not distinguish between Amanda herself and her four decoys. All it saw was additional threats and reacted accordingly.

For the following several minutes the dance of kaiju, decoys and magical girl took a meandering course through the sea as the ginormous attacker tried to claw, bite, blast and scream at perceived threats while she kept on her efforts against the storm above. Soon enough though, she found out that whatever she did, however distracting her efforts might be, the monster slowly moved towards the shore, all her attempts to divert it eventually failing.

That was fine. Handling the monster had not been her goal. As a tremendous roar one far louder than even the kaiju itself split the skies, the redhead sorceress smiled. Reinforcements had arrived.

A mass of metal and advanced alloys almost as large as the monster itself struct the shallows between it and Tokyo City like a meteor, causing its own tremendous splash and adding more energy to her weather control spell. Two hundred thousand tons of gleaming golden plates shifted and rearranged, reconfiguring into the shape of a futuristic knight the size of the Eiffel Tower...

xxxx

Jerry had just dropped from orbit in a spaceship of his own design, powered by magic and nuclear energy. Said spaceship was also a giant death robot with an array of supertech weapons he had also designed and built himself in violation of at least a dozen international treaties while co-leading a secret organization of superheroes that fought villains with powers and governmental corruption all around the world. The organization's second leader was one of the most beautiful women in the world, a powerful sorceress and his girlfriend and they were in the middle of fighting the bastard offspring of an alien space worm and Godzilla before it could stomp the city of Tokyo to the ground.

He promptly concluded that yes, God did exist, and His plan was as ineffable as it was awesome.

The worm-like kaiju roared threateningly, sending off shock waves powerful enough to shatter windows a dozen miles way. In response to that terrifying display of sheer power, Jerry pressed a red button. It had been intentionally made larger and flashier than it had to be, had been left unlabelled and the red paint on it was not quite dry; exactly according to plan. Also according to plan was the powering up whine of the energy weapon module built into the Golden Knight's right arm.

The monster was the size of a large skyscraper, with armor plates thick and tough enough to laugh at conventional missiles backed by flesh tougher than steel and enough superpowered muscle to crack a mountain side in one blow. All of that proved woefully insufficient against the white beam brighter than the noonday sun that blasted its way through a couple miles of air then curved a gaping, steaming trench through the monster's armor and flesh - one large enough for a bus to drive through. Ichor, viscera and molten metal exploded in the beam's passage, sending the monster reeling momentarily.

The kaiju responded immediately. Half a dozen teeth the size of locomotives crackled with black lightning inside its gaping maw, then shot out yard-thick beams of nothingness that annihilated all matter and energy in their path. They struck the Golden Knight's stupendous breastplate, cratering the reinforced alloy. Had Jerry's tech relied on matter and energy alone, the Null Lances would have pierced all the way through and into the Golden Knight's power core. The resulting explosion would have killed everyone in the Tokyo metropolitan area, the kaiju included. But his artifice had been reinforced by magical abilities many times above what mere physics indicated its resilience to be, stopping the attacks only a couple of meters deep. Non-Newtonian fluid dripped from the relatively tiny holes like so much blood but otherwise the Golden Knight remained intact.

Jerry aimed through the command seat's mind-machine interface, then pressed the button again. Another blindingly bright beam struck the monster in the side of its titanic maw, drilling through chitin, superpowered muscle and cybernetics all the way through. The weapon Jerry was currently using had been built to fight a far vaster, deadlier enemy compared to which the kaiju was barely a footnote. Where its original target had suffered only the equivalent of cigarette burns, the kaiju looked like a piece of meat someone had worked over with an industrial plasma cutter.

The problem was, whoever had designed and was probably directing the monster was by no means stupid. For one, the monster's gaping wounds were slowly closing, indicating a level of regeneration. For another, when faced with long-range firepower far greater than its own the monster dived underwater. Jerry fired again and again at its underwater shadow, but water was an excellent cooling medium and almost as good ablative armor; the majority of his beam's power was spent on the waves rather than wounding the rapidly advancing behemoth.

About a minute later, the monster burst out of the water, towering over the Golden Knight in the shallows. Its half-megaton mass slammed into Tokyo's defender like the mother of all battering rams. That proved to be a mistake. Having studied simulations of the fight as well as videos of previous kaiju attacks, Jerry was prepared for the ambush tactics. The same move had been used by a previous kaiju against US Navy ships. Unlike them the Golden Knight had arms, and each arm was armed with a piezoelectric-driven, noncrystalline blade eighty feet long. The kaiju's own momentum drove the diamondoid edges through its scales and deep into its own flesh.

In a move practiced over ten thousand times in various simulations, Jerry had the Golden Knight press its opponent back, raise its right leg and kick out. Magnetic actuators the size of small buildings whined, tens of thousands of miles of artificial muscle fiber strained, and the monster found itself being launched back.

At almost the same time, tiny gunports on the upper part of the Golden Knight's torso opened, in the span between its shoulders and neck. Barely noticeable compared to either the giant robot or its opponent, they spewed a torrent of tiny missiles in rapid-fire sequence. Barely the size of a backpack and massing only a hundred pounds each, the missiles struck the reeling kaiju with negligible force... then detonated as powerfully as a few thousand tons of TNT each. Modeled after man-portable nuclear demolition charges from the Cold War, the missiles had been specifically designed for giant, slow targets in mind and magically enhanced for penetration. The left the monster with gaping, horrendous wounds any one of which might have been lethal to a human of equivalent size.

But the giant monster had been designed for battle. Despite its mangled appearance it was still largely combat-capable. Worse, the multiple nuclear detonations had temporarily blinded the Golden Knight's sensors. While Jerry used his powers to repair them, the giant worm pounced. Its maw clamped down on the robot's right arm, seeking to disable its primary weapon. Its claws swung wildly but with tremendous force, repeatedly cracking against its armor plates and denting its frame in many places.

Jerry responded with a melee slugging match as well as firing all of the Golden Knight's close-in weapons. Smaller lasers and missile tubes embedded across its frame blasted crater after crater in the Kaiju's body, pitting superior firepower against its regeneration and coming slightly ahead. Chitinous plates were blasted off entirely, muscles were seared and torn, cybernetics were slagged and limbs were mangled. In turn the titanic, magically and genetically engineered monstrosity crushed the beam weapon, crippled the Knight's main arm and nearly ripped it off, bent its right knee into uselessness, dug holes and cuts into twenty percent of its armor plating, damaged the sensors in its head and partially compromised its overall structural integrity.

The slugging match continued in that vein for one minute, then two, then three, with Jerry's supernatural piloting skills sorely tested as more and more damage was piling up. He was continuously triggering his repair power, the magical ability that in any other situation had made his combat designs unfairly resilient. Had it been a smaller-scale fight or a less intense one against a less powerful opponent a victory by attrition would have been assured. But the kaiju had its own regeneration ability and had been empowered by either hundreds of supers working together, or a super as powerful as Jerry himself upgrading and empowering his work for months. Either way Jerry's magical reserves were running out and the battle's outcome was still uncertain.

That was when the monster surprised him with its tactics, doing something the simulations had not accounted for; it disengaged. Its guiding intellect had decided that the brutal slugging match had compromised enough of the Golden Knight's ranged weaponry that at long range its regeneration could outpace any wounds it would be dealt at range. Jerry crunched the numbers in his mind and cursed; his unknown adversary was right. Then he noticed the difference in their surroundings and smiled; the storm had stopped.

A titanic lightning bolt, as bright as his beam attack's earlier but a crackling purple-red fell from above and grounded itself through the kaiju's body. Monstrous muscles were locked by the current and as the lightning bolt kept going and going for an unnaturally long time, the kaiju fell into uncontrolled, near-helpless convulsions.

"Hey Jerry?" came Mandy's voice through a magical sending. "I looped its own leaky magic back into itself. Am I awesome or what?"

Yes. Yes she was. Grinning like a loon, the nerd-turned-superhero advanced with decisive steps, the blade in the Golden Knight's off-hand both lengthening and glowing a shiny gold. It was a new power he had developed lately, one that multiplied both the cutting power and the shininess of edged weapons. Maybe he could have eked out a few percentage points more efficiency if he had focused entirely on the former but often style was just as important as getting the job done.

With a thousand-foot-wide swing, the Golden Knight beheaded the incapacitated giant monster, then retrieved its head. He'd get Mandy to incinerate it and the body both; with regenerators it was the only way to be sure. Adrenaline fading as the battle was finally over, Jerry collapsed on his Captain's chair.

Tokyo was safe once more. They had won.