To think that she was facing down a kaiju, a genuine actual kaiju, sent Cleo’s mind spinning. It’d certainly fit the bill for a hidden threat but it was one vastly beyond her paygrade. She was an accomplished esper in raw talent and power alone, no one could deny that, but kaijus were walking calamities that laid waste to entire cities in as much time as it took her to walk home from school and did so without even trying.

And now she was stuck with one in a timezone, unable to escape unless she got far away from the monster and subsequently left it to break free of the zone under its own power. 

But then again, was this really the level of monster before her?

Ryu was far from cutting an imposing figure compared to her 5’6 and even if he matched or surpassed that, kaiju were building-sized. Matt’s disguise had likely been a magical construct given how it had fallen apart with but one piece removed and while it was impressive that it made the goblin look passable as a human even to other paranormals, to hide a giant monster in the same kind of disguise was something else altogether. And then there was the fact that she still couldn’t sense an ounce of source energy coming off of the spikey-haired kid.

Cleveland’s scanners had never been wrong before so she assumed that the kid was just fibbing, maybe even covering for the real threat. She decided to call his bluff.

“Kaiju, huh? What, you get shrunk in the wash?” Cleo asked, Ryu dropping his smirk and gaining a confused expression. “Last I checked, kaiju are a bit bigger than a half-pint with an attitude. Whatever you are, I don’t care. You’ve got two seconds to give up before I really knock you down.”

Ryu looked up at the girl for a moment longer before snapping to attention and slamming a fist into the opposite palm, looking innocent as he responded, “Oh! The size part, yeah I can’t do that yet. I can do the other parts though easy enough if you really wanna go for round 2!”

Cleo clicked her tongue, the kid looking fight hungry but was way off his rocker if he thought that just because he could take a hit he could take her.

“The bluff was a good idea for a bit but last I heard, and I hear a lot, there isn’t such a thing as someone who can just turn into a kaiju. Big or small.”

Ryu’s grin went wider as did his stance, the teen’s sharp teeth glistening in the hallway light as he spread his arms out and his brown eyes turned a glowing green. He replied, “Well then your big ‘ol ears ain’t nearly as good at hearing as you think cause they clearly haven’t heard about me: Kid Kaiju, protector of the innocent!”

Thin forearms burst in size as grey scales overtook the ballooned limbs and the hands attached to them as nails turned to thick black claws. Cleo watched as his hands launched at his shoulders, gripping both sides of his blazer before tearing it off dramatically. Now revealed amongst the boy’s blue schoolshirt were his engorged arms and surprisingly dense physique that hadn’t been there moments ago. He gave off a new air, that of the most physical of fighters and the amount of source coming off of him had jumped threefold.

Not that Cleo was impressed, face burning as she moved to hide her ears with her hair and said with rolling eyes, “Oh wow, lizard arms. So what species of shapeshifter are ya then?”

“I’M NOT A SHAPESHIFTER, IMMA KAIJU!” Ryu yelled, shaking the walls of the timeless dimension. Good mood soured, the teen rolled his right shoulder and declared, “Fine then. If you want a demonstration, a demonstration's what you’ll get. Just don’t come crying to me if you break somethin’!”

Ryu rushed forward, his punch telegraphed so clearly that Cleo couldn’t help but roll her eyes again and think, ‘The only one who’s gonna break something here is you, kid. Shoulda just played dead and I wouldn’t have had to break a rib…’

Cleo dodged to the side as she swung her sheathed blade into Ryu’s abdomen and avoided his punch. However, instead of finding pudgy flesh her scabbard found a hard wall of muscle and scales, the girl looking down to see that her blow had been intercepted by the teen’s opposite forearm. She then looked up to find Ryu smiling at her, his fist already pulled back for another blow.

“Gotcha!” The boy declared and Cleo ducked hard out of instinct.

The air pressure of the punch was monumental, tearing the hallway apart, shattering glass, blowing doors off hinges and leaving the indent of a fist in the wall twenty feet behind the girl who’d fallen onto her rear. Ryu dropped to the ground a moment later, making some distance as he awaited her follow up attack and whistling before he said, “It’s a good thing this place gets fixed up when we leave. No way could I go all out and pay for the repairs if we were still in the real world!”

There was no immediate counterattack like the teen had expected, however. Instead he found his eyes falling down toward the telekinetic girl as she sat on her knees and used her sword to keep her torso up as she kept her face to the floor. At first glance it seemed like Cleo had been overwhelmed by Ryu’s blow and was in a state of shock or maybe even fear. It wasn’t every day that she’d found herself a hair’s breadth away from having her head blown off, after all.

Looking at Cleo, however, Ryu couldn’t shake the feeling that she was up to something.

“Okay then…” Cleo mumbled, a thin pink light emanating from her body. “I think I’ve got your power level about figured out.”

Cleo vanished and reappeared, Ryu never having let his stance drop for so much as a moment but found his defenses torn through regardless with three, pin-point jabs finding their way past his cross-guard and onto the middle and both sides of his ribs. Each stab of the sheath was twice as strong as the slam that had met his face earlier and their combined power sent the smaller teen rocketing across the opposite end of the hallway, duplicating the damage from Ryu’s punch sans the fist imprint in the wall. Instead, the wall Cleo was facing found itself with Ryu implanted into it with cracks spreading out from his splayed, spittle spitting body.

Cleo rose from her crouched stance and pulled her weapon back to her side, standing tall as she surveyed her work with some pride and said, “Your strength’s impressive but not what I’d consider worthy of a kaiju. Now, if you’re done wasting my time I need to go and find Matt and whoever’s behind that huge source signature.”

Cleo turned around, walking confidently toward the nearest staircase in hopes of reaching the school’s entrance. If Matt had rushed off in a hurry that’d be the first place the goblin would have run to. The esper found herself stopping, however, when a grunt echoed in from behind her.

“Geez, that’s smarts…”

Cleo spun around, gobsmacked as she saw Ryu start to peel himself off of the wall after being struck with three of her attacks, each capable of stopping an elephant dead in its tracks.

“You think I’m gonna go swinging full force from the get go? That’s a good way to tire yourself out! And wreck the whole building. Besides, against you…” The boy dropped to the floor, his arms back to normal as he hung his torso low and his hair covered all but his fanged smile. “A crapton of power doesn’t mean much. Not if I can’t hit ya. You’re just way too fast for me as is… ‘course, I can fix that in a jiffy.”

Like before, limbs exploded in size and claws appeared though this time it was Ryu’s legs that transformed. From the knees down the teen had himself a pair of monstrous calves, feet and clawed toes with pieces of leather and torn blue socks strewn about them. For a moment Cleo wondered if the kid was going to attempt a kick instead of a punch this time but found herself gasping when Ryu bent his legs as if getting ready for a jump.

Cleo took an Iai stance and Ryu kicked off, both combatants vanishing from sight for a moment before reappearing in the middle of the hallway. Ryu’s rock hard head met Cleo’s swinging scabbard and the resulting impact obliterated the building top to bottom as the combined force exploded outwards and left the pair surrounded by rubble and dust as they plummeted to the first floor.

Ryu backed off, cursing and nursing an aching head while Cleo panted and rubbed her wrist, feeling like it had come close to snapping in twain during their exchange. Worse yet she spied a crack in her sheath.

“So what… you can copy kaiju traits? A hard head and lots of strength is one thing but since when is speed something kaiju can do?” The esper asked, trying to buy some time for her wrist to heal and to think up a new strategy. Luckily, Ryu needed some time to recuperate as well.

“I’m not copying anything, I told ya twice already: I am a kaiju. These are my abilities. And kaiju are crazy fast, crossin’ entire city blocks in a second. They just look slow ‘cause they take one big step to do it. And my head’s plenty hard on its own, I don’t gotta use any powers to make it stronger!” The teen pointed his thumb at himself once more, seemingly proud of the latter statement.

Giving a flat expression in response to Ryu’s skull thickness, Cleo adjusted the grip on her hilt and warned, “Whatever powers you think you have, I’ll give you one last warning to quit while you’re ahead. Because if you are the source energy signature Cleveland picked up… I’ve been ordered to take you in and I’ll do it by whatever means necessary…”

The girl aimed her weapon at the teen and shot him a fierce look as Ryu transformed his arms once more and responded with a scoff, “Take me in? You’re better than most of the losers I’ve fought before but I’ve never lost a fight to any paranormal and I ain’t gonna start now to someone who doesn’t even know how to take a sword out of its sheath.”

“Ever consider that I keep it in there for a reason?” Cleo asked, letting the questioning hang in the air as she jetted forward, her opponent having made clear he wasn’t going to come quietly and so she had no reason to try negotiating any further.

Ryu, however, was ready for her attack, Cleo gasping as she saw the boy’s eyes track her sideways swing and bring up his arm and smirk as he said, “Ever consider that I could get used to your moves the more you use ‘em?”

CRASH!

The scabbard met rock hard scales and muscle once more at high speed. Pushed past its limit the protective cover shattered into a thousand pieces against Ryu’s defenses, the miniature menace grinning through his gross miscalculation.

“Ow!” Ryu stepped back for some much-needed space and came to a skidding stop amongst the rubble and some broken desks. The boy looked down at his transformed arm to find a trail of blood from a fresh, clean cut. This was something he’d never experienced on a transformed part of his body.

“The scabbard wasn’t for my protection, idiot,” Cleo declared and Ryu looked up from his wound. The girl stood with her silver blade in all its glory as a pink, violent shimmer danced around its edge and she continued, “It’s for yours. This sword can cut through anything. On top of that, it’s unbreakable. The scabbard is there so that I don’t cut people in two on accident… Tungsten can only stand up to so much abuse. But if you wanna keep playing with me…” The girl swung her blade upward, carving a thin but deep line in the ground from where she stood to just in front of Ryu. Brown locks fell from the boy’s bangs as Cleo stated, “Don’t blame me if you end up losing those arms you’re so proud of.”

Ryu gulped then grinned. The kid kaiju entered a boxer’s stance, fangs on full display.

“Unbreakable, huh? We’ll just have to see about that…”

Before the two could start their final showdown, however, the world around them started to flash and glitch randomly. One moment they were in the timezone, a copied, empty world of dark greens and bright yellows with rubble and destruction around them. The next they were in the normal world in a first floor classroom that was left wholly untouched by their brawl. Both worlds had the echo of giant footsteps and bassy laughter.

The pair’s eyes darted to the direction of the sound and then back to each other before giving a nod that put their fight on hold for the moment. Cleo approached the door first and stepped outside with Ryu not far behind, the pair now free of any enclosed spaces in both worlds and were thus able to make out chanting.

“Matt! Matt! Matt! Matt!”

THOOM THOOM

“HAHAHA! YES MORE! MORE!”

Ryu and Cleo dashed into the courtyard only to see a giant red hand crest the top of the school building before them. A moment later a giant head followed and though the creature’s face was still that of a goblin its body could no longer be considered as such. The giant pulled himself up to his full, three-story height and his augmented muscles shone in both the real world and the timezone. Most horrifying of all was the necklace of weakly cheering, mostly drained students Matt had tied around his neck by having them hold onto each other’s legs in a chain. More cheers echoed in the distance which Cleo surmised were likely coming from the football field. She also surmised something else.

“This is bad!” The girl said and Ryu sent an obvious look her way, the esper ignoring his sarcasm and explaining, “He’s gotten too big for The Line, it can’t spread the timezone’s area of effect! If he gets into the city proper with so many people to hide him from… it could destroy the fabric between realities!”

“MORE THAN THAT!” Matt boomed, the pair looking up to the giant as he loomed over them hungrily. “IT’LL LET ME USE MY POWERS AT FULL STRENGTH WITHOUT WORRY OF GETTING KICKED INTO A TIMEZONE! YOU THINK THIS IS BIG?! WAIT TILL I HAVE THE WHOLE COUNTRY CHEERING MY NAME ON TOP OF CHEERING YOUR DEATHS!”

The giant pulled back his enormous fist and sent it flying at Ryu and Cleo, intending to crush them where they stood and leaving them no place to escape.