Lord Kao

The monster that emerged from the transport pod somehow spoke in words that Nicholas Sato could understand, at least while in his armored form. It asked if he could hear what it said.

“It seems that way,” Nick replied, startled.

“Good. Where did you find the Prototype? It belongs to us!”

“No, it belongs to me now,” Nicholas declared.

“Such arrogance. I am Regional Lord Kao. You are nothing. Return the Prototype or perish defending it!” The monster declared.

“I have a better idea,” Nicholas retorted: “you get back in your flattened egg of a ship and get off of our planet.”

“You have been lucky so far, child, but I am a veteran warrior.”

Nicholas noticed that there was green text in the corner of his vision and glanced at it: “New quest unlocked: Defeat Lord Kao to gain two levels.”

Lord Kao’s third eye suddenly turned bright red, and a beam shot out; Nicholas managed to drop below it by shutting off his flight and then reactivating it moments later. He still felt intense heat from the near miss. He figured that he would be unlikely to impale it on his spear, so instead pulled back and hurled it at Lord Kao. The massive creature easily dodged the strike, as the young man had expected, but now his arms were free. He clapped them together, then pulled them apart, feeling the familiar ‘click’ of his Turbolasers snapping into place.

However, instead of opening fire immediately, he leapt back, as if standing on solid ground and engaged in a complicated flip, then flew back out over the bay.

“Lord Cow, is it?”. Nichaolas finally said, as he “stood” on top of the water.

“Trying to taunt me? Are you a mere child?” The kaiju replied with an odd sound that might have been laughter. “You may prove amusing. Surrender and swear fealty to me, and I will let you have that city behind you to rule this region from - as long as you continue to amuse me.”

“Nice offer. Not interested, but nice offer,” Nick replied, slowly sliding back towards New San Francisco above the waves.

“Well, you have courage, but either you know you cannot beat me, or you lack aggression,” came the response.

The monster jumped up and began flapping its massive wings. The surface of the bay became seriously agitated by the wind produced by his wing beats. It took all of Nick’s limited flight skills and agility to remain standing, and he slid further away from the shore towards the city.

Then Lord Kao opened his lower mouth insanely wide - wide enough that the top of his head was now nearly perpendicular to his body, with a jagged ring facing forward. It then launched itself towards Nicholas at a very high speed.

Nick took a deep breath and turned off his flight, sliding beneath the water exactly at the moment when the kaiju would have impacted against him. His feet hit the ground of the bay, and his head and shoulders were still above the water, so he got to see the impact of his strategy - as Lord Kao roared past his former location, the monster came into range of several gun batteries on the floating city. A barrage of lasers, very high caliber bullets and even a few missiles slammed into the flying creature, causing minimal injuries but making it spiral out of control.

As it was knocked back to his location, Nick jumped out of the water, leading with his fists, and opened fire with a barrage from each of his Turbolasers.

Lord Kao felt something he had not experienced for a very long time - pain. Alone, none of the attacks would have been more than a distraction, but taken together, from his exposed position, he felt the damage, and his entire body shuddered; his instinct was to flee, but he knew that would only lead to his destruction at the High Lord’s hands - he had to win this fight or die trying.

Then he felt Nick’s body slam into him, felt bones inside his torso crack

“Thirty seconds of power remain,” Sensei warned.

“That should be exactly enough…” Nick replied. As his body impacted Lord Kao’s, he began striking blows with each fist, one at a time, in rapid succession. He did no damage to the monster, but kept it from regaining its balance. As they got higher, Nick finally stopped slugging his target and slammed into it again while expending most of his remaining power in a final burst from both guns.

Lord Kao exploded!

Nicholas returned immediately to human size and was informed “five seconds of power remain.”

“Just keep my armor up until I hit the roof where my jacket is,” he begged as he dove towards the city.

He crashed onto the rooftop as the countdown ended. The armor remained in place just barely long enough for him to avoid serious injury as he crash landed. He rose painfully to his feet, retrieved his jacket, and found a fire escape ladder that he used to get down from the roof. He decided to head back to Servo Shakes. He saw a few other people emerging from shelters and realized the alert had to be off, and that the sun was setting. As he approached the shop, Sandra spotted him first and rushed out: “Where were you, Nick? The giant showed up again!”

The others hurried out of the shop as well. “Alert’s off - the Skylances took out the Blastcrows and the flying giant somehow beat the big kaiju thing,” Dan announced. “That was AWESOME,” Peter said, “Couldn’t see a lot of details but it looked BRUTAL. Just a flat-out SAVAGE fight. That big monster just exploded at the end! The Ultimate Warrior wins again!”

“I think he would have to pay a fee to use that name,” Nick mused.

“What do you mean, Nick?” Peter asked.

“The people who make the comic still print it, right?”

“Yeah - latest issue came out in digital yesterday, print tomorrow, why?”

“Then they own the name, and he would either have to be an employee, advertising their book, or pay them to use it, I think. Dad would know better than me,” Nick replied

In his head, Nick heard Sensei's voice faintly say: “The project to train Candidates was called ‘Ultimate Warrior' but that was several hundred years ago.”

“So, we’ll have to come up with a new name for him, then,” Dan announced cheerily.  "What about 'Protector'?"

Sandra’s phone chimed suddenly.

She checked it and announced: “Ah! Mom will be here soon to pick us up, Nick. Let’s hope we’re done with giant monsters for the day!”

“Oooh - meeting the parents. Sounds serious,” Dan teased.