Marloes didn’t have time to get the pounding in her chest under control.

  Not with how fast the weirdly colored outworlder moved.

  Almost a blur.

  Even to her with her mahou shoujo enhanced stats.

  Not to mention how he wasn’t wearing any armor or a shirt for that matter.

  Split right down the center. Divided into bright and dark-colored halves. Right down to his close cropped hair.

  She thought of what Jayde would’ve said.

  Something about whether the line down his center went all the way down to his dick and balls and right up his asshole.

  She finally got clear of the crowd.

  Thrusters engaged.

  Rocketed her through the broken doorway and into the short tunnel connecting to the command center.

  It was the last place she wanted to be in.

  An enclosed space with a lightning bruiser stronger and faster than her was like putting regular soldiers in an enclosed space with her kind.

  A recipe for broken bones and pulped flesh.

  Battle raged in the command center amid rubble, a shallow layer of water on the entire floor and broken walls of ice where the display screens once stood.

  JSDF soldiers versus outworld invaders armored like the one she had killed earlier.

  She couldn’t tell who was winning at a glance.

  Only had eyes for one target really.

  An opponent at that power level wasn’t one she could do less than devote every bit of her focus.

  He pushed himself off the wall all the way on the other side of the chamber where her explosive shell had driven him to.

  She lined up another shot when a shinobi with a rainbow-colored mohawk blocked her eye-line.

  “Shadow Clone Technique: Zombie Mode.”

  Ugh…

  She knew the man.

  Was an annoying sort.

  The kind that held conversations with her chest most of the time rather than her face.

  Shadow clones popped into existence.

  Identical copies of the shinobi except for their pallor, torn uniforms, exposed bone and weeping wounds.

  The sudden horde swarmed the dual-colored invader.

  The man swam through easily dispatching a zombie shadow clone with each punch and kick.

  Less than a second and he had the shinobi by the neck.

  Marloes fired, burying the invader in a coffin of bullets at point-blank range.

  He shrugged it off and squeezed.

  The shinobi vanished in a puff of white smoke, replaced by a neatly cut log.

  The invader’s brows twisted, unimpressed.

  She understood the feeling.

  But that didn’t stop her from firing an armor-piercing tank shell right in his crotch.

  He tried to twist out of the way.

  She savored his expression as her shell hit.

  So… not completely invulnerable.

  She could make him feel pain.

  JSDF cyborg soldiers blurred after him, peppering him with automatic fire and slashing with hot molecular-edge mantis blades.

  Black-armored enemy soldiers disrupted the melee by swarming like a murder of crows.

  Marloes put a several bullets in each enemy and not a single one in her allies.

  Hard work and practice paid off.

  Not to mention the Skill that mostly eliminated friendly fire.

  She lost sight of her target.

  Thunder cracked.

  Sudden pain.

  Red lights flashing.

  A metallic clang.

  A handsome face peered curiously into her faceplate from up close.

  Human features.

  Just perfectly split down the center.

  One half bright. The other dark.

  Like day and night.

  “Surrender,” he said.

  His hands squeezed against the sides of her helmet, causing alerts to flash in her HUD.

  Her armor gathered valuable data about his strength.

  It painted a decent picture. If this was close to his maximum capability he wasn’t going to kill her with a single punch or tear the thicker Threnium plates open without a lot of time and effort.

  She noted with some interest that the inside of his mouth wasn’t weirdly split into bright and dark halves.

  Nope.

  Pink tongue and gums.

  Pearly white teeth.

  One row.

  She wasn’t going to count them.

  Didn’t care that much.

  “You’re stronger than the rest. If you surrender they will follow. You can end this before more lives are lost.” He forced her head to turn to the small, robed shape laying next to the wall a short distance away. “I will allow medical aid for your injured. And guarantee prisoner treatment according to standard protocols. There shall be no torture, rape or malice in any way.”

  It all sounded good, but she wasn’t going to just take some outworld invader’s word for anything.

  They might have very different ideas about what constituted all those things.

  Thus, she fired several bullets from inside his mouth, in all directions when he opened it to speak.

  She bought time and space as he released her and stumbled back gagging and coughing dark smoke.

  “How about you get out of our country!” she snarled, blasting!

  Tank shell to the chest threw him back to the center of the command center, scattering ice and plastic.

  Another shell from below, this time explosive, sent him shooting up through the gaping hole in the ceiling like, well, a shell.

  Time bought.

  Marloes aimed at the enemy soldiers trapped in the command center with her.

  Hiroki stood, tons of rubble sliding off his head and shoulders.

  The first thing he noticed was that he felt great.

  Magma rushing down his arteries and up his veins instead of blood, thundering out of and into the roaring engine in his chest.

  The second thing he noticed was the cold tile getting hot and squishy under his ten toes.

  He gazed down in wonder at his legs.

  Two!

  Sure, they were colored a burning red and his toenails looked more like thick black claws than—

  What?

  The word came out in a confused grunt like some kind of primordial primate.

  Dimly, he recalled the odd dream even as it slipped through his mental fingers like sand in water.

  It was getting harder to think by the second.

  The pounding in his chest rushed up into his brain. Made it hard to focus on anything but the raging magma river in his ears.

  A much smaller man climbed out of the rubble.

  What was the man’s name again?

  It didn’t matter.

  The man smelled of the ocean and weakness.

  Not worth the challenge.

  He smelled of another thing too.

  Fear.

  Mouth worked.

  Hands held out.

  Hiroki grunted, flexing arms, chest and legs. He savored the immense strength in immense muscles, like coiled steel cables writhing beneath think red skin.

  His mouth felt weird.

  He couldn’t close it completely without feeling thick tusks pressing against his lips.

  Steam clouded his vision.

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  The river of rain pouring on him was nothing.

  He was bone dry.

  Hiroki smelled something that reminded him of his ramen stand.

  Tantalizing.

  A maddened urge to run toward it overtook him, so he followed it.

  Right through the reinforced concrete wall and into the unnatural typhoon.

  Winds that made the skyscrapers sway like thin grass in a meadow bounced off him.

  Monsters crossed his path briefly, but he ran too fast or they were too weak and light to do more than be blown away like cherry blossoms.

  A gleaming skyscraper loomed.

  A voice screamed a warning from the deep recesses of his consciousness. Of people inside.

  Somehow, he listened.

  Hiroki leapt over the skyscraper in a single bound.

  He felt something past the edge of his sight.

  A bright, blinking light.

  Red.

  Or was it blue?

  It drew him like a moth to a flickering candle. Or a bull to a fluttering cape.

  He didn’t know what it was or why or how, but he knew he needed to reach it like a man in the desert needed to reach the shimmering oasis just on the horizon.

  And once he got there he needed to utterly destroy it.

  Power?

  There could be only one strongest power and that was him.

  A large building loomed in the distance. Shorter than the towers, but wider, thicker. Its walls and roof were riddled with charred holes.

  Lightning struck periodically, revealing what the suffocating storm clouds and torrential downpour hid.

  Monster and the dead.

  Hiroki dimly knew that he should’ve been horrified at the sight of many of his people, perhaps people he had served at his stand, scattered around the base of the building or the bits and pieces he caught quick glimpses of through the holes.

  He only had ears for that powerful noise rocketing from deep in the bowels of the building up through the massive hole in the center that opened up to the waterfall in the sky.

  Their impact silenced the thunder, scattered the rain and shattered every window in sight.

  A huge sphere of dry air lingered for a moment before the downpour rushed in to fill the space.

  Hiroki grabbed the strange-looking, half day, half night man by one puny arm as they tumbled and pulled him into another thunder-cracking punch.

  The blow sent the puny man into the roof, crashing through one corner in a spray of broken concrete and furniture.

  Lightning bolts struck like arrows, scorching Hiroki’s fiery red flesh, charring it black in places, but he healed quickly.

  New and whole by the time he landed on the street below.

  Massive fists pounded the ground, sending a wave of broken asphalt rippling out to buck the puny man into the air.

  Hiroki leapt with a roar, scattering chunks of the road in his wake.

  The puny man twisted, thrusting fingers into Hiroki’s eye like a spear.

  The pain only added fuel to the magma of rage flowing through him.

  He palmed the puny one’s head like a ball and slammed it into the ground.

  He plowed the road at speeds just shy of the average kamen rider’s.

  The sheets of rain fell harder.

  Steam shrouded the two.

  Hiroki began to feel the drops hit his burning skin.

  He slowed.

  The raging fire dimmed.

  Cold began to seep into his bulging muscles and ultra-dense bones.

  The puny man grasped his thick wrist in a vise-like grip, swinging his legs up and crossing them over his bulging biceps. The man straightened violently, pulling back with his upper body, pushing down with his legs and thrusting forward with his hips.

  The pop rang clearly in the typhoon’s howling winds.

  Hiroki grunted, losing control of his fingers momentarily.

  The puny man kicked free, rolling and jumping away.

  Rain fell on Hiroki in a deluge.

  The cold turned freezing.

  Ice formed all over him.

  The magma of rage coursing through him cooled, but not enough to burst violently out as it froze and expanded.

  The puny man spoke, somehow making his voice audible over the storm, as if the winds carried them directly into Hiroki’s ears.

  “It’s you. You were the one I sensed. Calm yourself. You’re not a mindless rage monster. Your heart rages, but it still beats like an Earth human.” The puny one prattled on, gesturing at the shattered windows in the buildings around them and the ruined road. “If we continue our fight we’ll do more damage and kill more of your people than my storm. I have seen such battle, participated in a few, firsthand. When those with our individual might clash in the middle of a populated area it is the common people that ultimately lose. So, calm yourself and surrender. Your power is valuable. You will be showered with whatever you desire. Favorable terms for your people is the least of what you can gain.”

  The words penetrated along with the freezing cold of the mound of ice forming around and over Hiroki like a hill.

  The rational warred with the irrational.

  Cold with heat.

  It started with what, to him, felt like a tub of cold water splashed over his head while sitting in a hot bath.

  Hiroki began to change once more.

  Orulon glanced at the short row of buildings to his left.

  Empty.

  Not a heartbeat in range of his hearing, nor the slightest flicker of movement behind the dark windows.

  The huge, red, raging Earth human had struck, thrown and treated him like a primitive farming implement for quite some distance.

  They had left the center of the city’s power amidst the trees of steel and glass behind.

  The storm had come to his aid, burying the transformed human in ice, forming faster than he could melt with the waves of heat emanating from his body.

  Orulon had given the standard recruitment pitch.

  It was up to the Earth human now.

  The ice hill cracked.

  Orulon rubbed his jaw and loosened his neck.

  That had hurt almost as much as the armored woman’s attacks to his groin.

  He shook his arms and legs out, trying to stay loose and ready for the explosion of sudden and quick violence that always happened in a fight between people with his level of physical might.

  His thoughts briefly touched on the gear in the tiny bags on his belt.

  Using them would end the fight quickly, but risked critical injury or death to the Earth human.

  Neither of which he really wanted.

  The Quest parameters scrolled through his head.

  He hadn’t gotten all of the nation’s leadership, but that didn’t matter much.

  The storm would last as long as he willed, which would make it difficult for them to flee. And where else could they go when he had so easily breached their most heavily defended center?

  Perhaps, they’d surrender once he presented this, their strongest fighter, to them battered, beaten and subjugated.

  Or better yet, their champion would see the sensible path, take the offer and deliver the rest.

  The sooner Orulon could secure territory the sooner they could prepare to defend it from the natives in other parts of the Terminus World.

  The ice broke and what emerged was unexpected.

  Not red and huge… well… still huge, but blue.

  Rain turned into snow as it neared the Earth human.

  Orulon could get a better look now that the human wasn’t punching him in the face or slamming him into buildings and such.

  The hulking figure had a stout, muscular build. A hard, rounded power belly. Thick neck and traps, shoulders like boulders, arms the same. Thighs and calves bulged with each ground-shaking step.

  He couldn’t miss the swinging appendage between the tree-trunk legs.

  What did they say?

  Ah, yes… like a baby’s arm holding an apple.

  Although, in this case he’d have to upgrade it to a child’s arm holding a giant apple.

  Orulon sighed.

  He hadn’t noticed the Earth human’s lack of clothing.

  Well, it didn’t matter he was an experienced professional.

  He had seen worse, had been forced to battle in the nude a few times as well.

  One could enchant one’s pants with all the durability spells in the world and use special cloth, but there was no guarantee of a spell or Skill or attack that could take it all away in an instant.

  The less said about the coin purse the better. Or perhaps coin sack was a more appropriate comparison?

  The Earth human cleared his throat.

  Surprising.

  It wasn’t an inarticulate bellow or grunt like it had been when he was red and spraying spittle all over Orulon.

  “These terms… I shall need time to read them.”

  The blue mountain of bulk and muscle’s voice was a deep rumble that suggested a mountain slide to Orulon.

  “If your offer is genuine then you should have no cause to refuse me the time.” He gingerly prodded the two black horns curving from just below his hairline of thick black hair.

  Well, those fearsome looking tusks jutting from upper and lower jaw didn’t hamper the Earth human’s diction as much as Orulon expected.

  “Do you have the authority to negotiate on behalf of this nation?”

  Orulon doubted it, but he had to ask.

  Nothing in the intelligence provided by their temporary allies had even hinted at the existence of such a physically powerful individual.

  “Irrelevant to the question before us.” The blue mountain shrugged. “Your offer of surrender and benefits was addressed to me as an individual. Unless I misheard. I must admit that my… other side… isn’t the best listener or one that listens much, if at all.”

  “The negotiation is as such… unconditional surrender. You will be provided with the terms. Benefits, expectations and so on. You may reject turns and resume hostilities at any stage of the process… though, I believe that would be to both our detriment.”

  “You will cease your attack? And this storm? Since it is your doing, isn’t it?”

  Orulon thought.

  He had orders to follow.

  He could accept surrender, but he couldn’t unilaterally end the entire operation.

  “If only you had the authority to speak for your nation.” He took a deep breath.

  “My strength in your service doesn’t outweigh the value of your Quest of conquest.” The blue mountain nodded to himself, as if receiving confirmation for a thought.

  “Not unless you’re willing to turn it on your own people to speed our completion. They would hate you as a traitor, but you would save lives and prevent suffering.”

  “Yes. I’ve done the calculations. The rational choice would be to do as you suggest and defeat you later. Short term suffering traded for ultimate victory.” The blue mountain scratched his wild mane of black hair. “I don’t have the information I need to make the optimal decision.”

  “Such is the fog of war.”

  “Is it? War, I mean? You attacked without announcement. We don’t even know what sort of human you are? What world you’re from? So many questions I’d rather ask and have answered. Instead, you kill my people and we fight to the death.”

  “We are all bound to the ways of the spires. That you live on a Terminus World…” Orulon could only shake his head. He truly did feel for the natives. They didn’t choose their birth world. “Bad luck for you and the people of this land of Japan.”

  “Interesting, you know of us more than we of you. I have questions.”

  “I would enjoy a conversation.” Orulon nodded. “After you surrender and we complete our Quest.”

  “Ah… and that signals the end of this brief, fruitless parlay.”

  The blue mountain moved just as fast as the red one, but under control.

  Where the latter struck with the ferocity of an enrage beast, the former moved like a clinical fighter.

  Orulon ducked underneath a tight hook as the blue mountain covered the distance quicker than one would think such a big thing could.

  Fortunately, Orulon knew what battle with the truly physically powerful was like.

  They weren’t slow.

  The strength to move ships and topple buildings packed into a package a fraction of the size made them extremely fast.

  Orulon slipped underneath a massive fist.

  The height differential meant that the blue mountain had to punch down and those massive arms meant a huge blind spot Orulon could easily slip into for a cracking punch of his own into where he assumed the Earth human kept their liver.

  He couldn’t take it for granted that he shared the same organs and placement, but aside from their skin color they did appear nearly identical from a visual standpoint.

  The blue mountain wheezed in that way a person did when getting punched in the liver.

  Orulon continued to the mountain’s back and aimed a punting kick right between those tree-trunk legs.

  They hadn’t agreed on any rules and there were no rules in war.

  His bare foot connected.

  He winced.

  Like kicking enchanted steel balls wrapped in a steel sack, also enchanted.

  A grunt and a surprising back kick caught Orulon in arms he barely got up in time.

  He shuffled back just enough to avoid taking the full force of the blow. It still sent him skidding across the water-logged road.

  Once again and always, the lightning answered his call.

  A bolt the size of an ancient tree split the black sky and made the storm’s wind look like a gentle breeze as it fell upon the blue mountain.

  He roared and Orulon saw something new.

  The lightning bolt froze.

  A jagged pillar of ice shot into the sky, vanishing into the black clouds.

  He expected it to crack and fall under its own weight and the strength of the winds, yet it remained. Somehow, it remained.

  He blinked right into a fist bigger than his head.

  Thunder cracked and the stars danced in his eyes.

  It cracked again and this time the entire world danced around him.

  Buildings, ground, dark sky.

  Round and round they went.

  When he fell he met a big, blue fist to start the voyage again.