Ryu’s yell echoed off the walls of the room, a surprise given that most interrogation rooms tended to be too small and confined for something like echoes to occur. With the yellow of a sinking sun pouring in through the clerestory above him and illuminating the two story, house-sized space, Ryu realized that his confines looked more like the backroom of a warehouse than it did a professional government holding facility.

And that’s because it was, in fact, the former.

Unmarked crates sat next to poorly painted walls, packing supplies littered the dirty floor, a leaky pipe dripped overhead and a ship horn echoed in the distance. Combined with the faint smell of salt water and the weak sounds of lapping waves Ryu surmised that he must have been taken to a storage facility near the docks. A mistake on his captor’s part given that he was a strong swimmer and would easily escape into the sea should he find an opening to do so. Unfortunately, that last part would prove hard as the teen’s captors hadn’t been so brazen as to leave him unguarded with the boy looking ahead to find two others occupying large the room.

Directly in front of him was a tall, broad-shouldered man with an eyepatch over his right eye, wearing a large duster coat and a cowboy hat. The scruffy-faced stranger was sitting on a chair backwards with a smug look on his face and the weak sunlight illuminating the orange-brown ponytail that had managed to escape the man’s hat. He gave off the impression of some kind of big game hunter or mercenary who was sizing up Ryu’s capabilities as he wrestled lightly with the ropes that tied him to the chair.

Surprisingly, the ropes refused to budge.

To Ryu’s right was a far taller, far broader, far hairier man who sat behind two computer screens hooked up to a computer that looked like it’d cost an arm, leg and everything in between. Of course, the greatest thing of note regarding the second man’s appearance was that he was a brown-furred sasquatch in glasses and a labcoat, the ape-man focused on the computer screens before him and seeming barely interested in their prisoner. The latter part might have ticked Ryu off most of all, sending a thin glare the way of the nine foot nerd as he got ready to give the pair an earful.

If they were going to kidnap and tie him up the least they could do was pay him some attention.

“Hey now, that’s no way to speak about a lady,” the mercenary look alike declared in response to Ryu’s callout, a thin smirk set on his face like stone.

“I’ll call her whatever I like after she screwed me over,” Ryu replied with a quickness, not intimidated by whatever song and dance the Paranormal Patrol were putting on. The teen even went so far as to openly fight against his bindings in front of his jailers but found that the ropes continued to fight back just as hard. Not even the wooden chair budged an inch.

“Don’t bother,” the gruff voice of the sasquatch boomed from across the room, the cryptid placing his hands together and speaking into them without looking up from his monitors. “The ropes are wound around a tungsten core and the chair has several repeating layers of metal and wood inside, making it both sturdy and lowering the number of possible stress points. No simple application of strength can break through them.”

Ryu blew a raspberry in response.

“Whoopty-doo! Figure I should warn ya though: I’m breakin’ them both so I hope you didn’t work too hard on ‘em. Honestly, if I were you I’d let me go now. Not only am I gonna break your stuff but I don’t know anything about other paranormals and even if I did, I wouldn’t talk. So yeah, either cart me off to the slammer or let me go now. Either way, you guys are gettin’ an ass kicking. Especially that esper.”

The scruffy man could only sigh in response to Ryu’s mouthful, scratching his face as he stood out of his chair and bemoaned, “See, this is why I wish she’d listen more. Bringing you in tied up was not part of the plan but she did say you’d be feisty… Anyways, let’s try and start over.” The man approached, smiling wider as he crouched before the supposedly titanic teen and declared, “Name’s Nick Steel, big guy over there’s Cleveland Summerset. We’re members of an elite team working to preserve The Line that separates the normal from the otherworldly: The Paranormal Patrol. We were just wondering what you were doing over by Hoshi High for the past few weeks, stompin’ around with enough source energy to flatten downtown. If you don’t mind letting us know, of course, and getting closer to a plea deal of some kind.”

Cleveland raised a brow at his ally but Ryu missed it, continuing to struggle against his bindings undeterred as he replied, “I was doing what I was always doing: Chasing down a monster that was trying to hurt innocent people. Usual M.O. of Kid Kaiju, ya know?” The boy glanced up to find the adults staring at him blankly. “Uh, hello?! Kid Kaiju?! That’s me! Duh! Geez, if you guys haven’t heard of me you can’t be all that well informed. Surprised you could even find the school.”

“Uh-huh… Let’s pretend for a sec that we’re a bit out of the loop on what all the kids are into these days and have you lay down what exactly it means to be… ‘Kid Kaiju’.”

“Oh, yeah for sure! There’s a note in my back pocket that’ll explain everything,” Ryu replied, pausing his escape attempt and nudging his neck toward his rear. Before Nick could get up to take a look, however, Cleveland spoke up in a gruff, bassy tone.

“Scans show no such note, Commander Steel. He is, however, extending the middle finger of his left hand in anticipation of your arrival,” the sasquatch relayed this as one of his scanners gave him an X-Ray view of Ryu and his shenanigans, the boy glaring at the scientist down before sighing.

This was getting old.

“I do things that kaiju do: Help people. Keep the world safe from monsters. I wasn’t interested in hurting anyone but Matt at that dumb school. Worst I did was fail a few tests and annoy some teachers, dunno how that makes it fair to tie me up.”

“Is that what kaiju do, huh? I’ve heard different. I’ve seen different also,” Nick declared, scratching his chin in deep thought.

“Well you’ve heard and seen wrong,” Ryu replied defiantly. “A kaiju’s job is to destroy all the bad parts of the world and leave it with only the good stuff. It’s why I beat up Matt, that centaur who was shoplifting the other week, all those vampires who were stealin’ blood and hypnotizin’ people, a couple kappa who were-”

Nick raised a hand and a brow, the latter at the length of Ryu’s list and the former there to get a word in edgewise.

“Okay… and how do you know they were bad and it wasn’t all a misunderstanding? You see someone paranormal walking around and decide they’re up to no good?”

Ryu shrugged and said, “Sometimes but most of the time I leave ‘em be if they’re not actin’ suspicious. Most of the time The Line tells me who’s up to no good.”

“Prepostorous!’ Cleveland yelled, his echo outpacing Ryu’s earlier one as the sasquatch to his feet in indignation with taut fists. “The Line is a barrier of pure, telepathic energy! A fundamental force brought on as a consequence of intelligent life! It’s not something that can talk or act, it’s an inanimate, uncaring structure of our world! What a foolish notion to even think it could do something like ‘talk’. Feh!”
The multi-syllabic words crashed into Ryu’s head hard enough to send his eyes spinning as steam poured out his ears while Nick chucked at the boy’s lack of comprehension but kept a look of slight surprise as he tipped his hat up and explained, “What my friend here is trying to say is that, well… we’ve just never heard about anyone talking to The Line. Heck, you don’t even seem to be that friendly with most paranormals so I’m wondering where you even heard that it was called The Line…”

Ryu shrugged again.

“Guess I’m just special. And easy, it told me. Dunno why you guys are making such a big deal out of this when tons of us have crazy powers. ‘Course, mine are the craziest.”

The teen shone with pride as Nick pulled his hat back down to hide a dangerous smile as he replied, “Kid, you have no idea.”

Rubbing his chin the man considered everything the boy had told him, weighing the supposed good and bad he’d done. Nick thought to himself, ‘Kid’s apparently gung-ho for helping people… but maybe a bit too trigger happy when it comes to beating people up based on what he thinks The Line is saying. Could probably let him off with a warning seeing as he was a big help with our oversized goblin but then he’s got some mighty good talent… First thing’s first.’

“Your folks, they the ones who instilled this great big feeling of justice in ya? They talk to The Line too?”

Ryu continued his struggle against the ropes, resorting to making the chair scoot back and fro annoyingly as he replied, “Never asked ‘em. Never got the chance to. They said they had somethin’ important to deal with and left me to protect the world in their place when I was real lil. No idea where they went but they said they’d be back and trusted me to look after the place while they were gone.”

“A pair of… kaiju had… you? And said that?” Cleveland inquired and Ryu rolled his eyes.

“Uh, yeah.”

“How long ago was that?” Nick asked as Ryu started chewing on his ropes.

“Dunno, not big on keeping track of the little things. But it was a while so they should be back soon and I have a lot of justice to doll out so if you don’t mind-”

“And this thing we peeled off of ya,” Nick interrupted, raising a necklace with a gold centerpiece, a green gem at its center. Ryu’s eyes went wide with shock with fury building behind them. “This a memento of theirs or you get it some place else?”

Ryu didn’t respond with words but instead with action, his eyes turning a violent green as his muscles bulged. The nigh-indestructible ropes burst apart or were bitten clean through with a horrific screech as Ryu was adorned with his kaiju arms, legs, tail and horns, the teen going full throttle as he dashed toward a smirking Nick who dangled the necklace in front of his face. The boy intended to retrieve his property and maul the man till he was a bloody pulp, in that order.

Before the miniature monster had the chance, however, he found himself halted by the appearance of an indestructible blade at his neck. The boy had been so engrossed in his captors and his bondage that he’d failed to notice Cleo hiding in the rafters the entire time, waiting for her cue to stop the boy dead in his tracks. The teen shot the girl a look and a snarl, Cleo dodging his gaze with some degree of guilt in her eyes.

“You need to calm down. Please,” the taller teen declared as Cleveland stood from his seat, half his attention on the developing situation and half of it on his supposedly unbreakable bindings that now lay in tatters.

Nick just kept smiling.

“Yeah, I was just looking for a simple yes or no. Only wanted to make sure it didn’t get squashed by the ropes. Here ya go, no harm done,” the man explained and extended the necklace toward Ryu. The boy took a moment to calm down but eventually dropped his transformation and extended an open palm in return, Nick dropping the necklace into it with Cleo removing her blade from the boy’s neck and letting it hang by her side. With no scabbard to put it in she had no choice but to leave her weapon out in the open along with all the increased tension having her weapon on display brought to the room.

“Incredible…” Cleveland mumbled as he inspected the pieces of tattered, reinforced rope behind the group as Nick placed his hands in his pockets and continued as if nothing had happened.

“Granted, I was also hoping to see if your strength was the real deal. Not to say only a kaiju could break out of those but it was impressive nonetheless. Now, given that you’re an unsupervised minor who interrupted an official investigation and threw around one of our officers, it’s within my power to get you sent off to an orphanage and put some nasty marks on your record. Maybe even get you tossed in juvie. Now, you can go on the lamb and all that but I imagine it’d get pretty annoying trying to ‘fight for justice’ and fight us and the whole government at the same time… So, I have a proposal that I think’ll make everyone happy…” Nick looked down at Ryu, his visible eye shining in the shadow beneath his hat. “Join up with the Paranormal Patrol and help fight some real bad guys.”