Storm Chasers Chapter One
Its finally done! Shout out to @mousey-sprouts for suggesting/inspiring this fic! Let me know what you think! Link to a03 here.
Trisha floored it down the street, veering dangerously around abandoned cars. Her pastel yellow van leaned over concerningly far after one sharp swerve, and Josh shouted at her from the back. Something about “reckless driving” and “delicate equipment”. His tirade was cut short with a yelp when she bumped her way up onto the kerb to avoid a cluster of sedans filling the street. People weren’t supposed to drive to emergency shelters, but often forgot that in the panic to get to safety. Taking the sidewalk therefore often became necessary. It wasn’t like there were any pedestrians around here anyway.
Nobody sane at least.
Another thunderous boom rang out, rattling all the windows and doors in the street, as though the tall buildings either side of them shivered in fear. A terrible howl filled the air. It was long and drawn out, loud enough it would have been painful if they didn’t have noise-cancelling headsets worked into their helmets. The sound twisted as it rang out, becoming more high-pitched, turning into a shrieking whine before it tapered off. It didn’t sound like any creature from this earth. A second boom shook the windows again, and Trisha could feel her steering wheel shake along with them.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Josh shouted at her over comms.
“Positive!” Trisha called back. “This footage will put your grandkids through college!”
“Isn’t this also very illegal?” the grey-haired man grumbled. He was sitting in a computer chair welded to the floor, working a large console that had been installed in the back of the van.
“You let me worry about that! You just make sure to keep the action in shot!”
They were within a few city blocks of it now. They could hear the tremendous crashes as it toppled whole buildings, and see vast clouds of concrete dust that raced down alleyways and blanketed the streets around them. A light pole sagged, toppling onto the street in front of them. Trisha had to jank hard to the right to dodge it.
Then she whipped around one last corner, and they finally had a clear view.
It was gigantic, well over fifty metres tall, and bulky. Its torso was covered by a spiked brown shell as thick as their van was long, with four thick reptilian limbs poking out. Its head looked more like a rooster’s, with a tall purple comb, a viciously curved beak and round, black eyes. It stood on its two back legs while its arms ended in serrated, mole-like claws.
It opened its beak and let out another deafening howl. Trisha whooped over the comms. “Alright Josh! It's time for the money shot! Start the stream!”
Josh tapped away behind her, lining up the camera affixed to the roof, then gave her a thumbs up. Trisha clicked the mic in her headset on and grinned. “Howdy everyone! How are we all doing today?”
She paused. A screen on her dashboard showed the scrolling text from the livestream chat, but she wasn’t stupid enough to actually try and read it while she was driving. There was a text-to-speech feature for people who made donations. She just liked knowing they were live.
“Welcome to Storm Chasers, back at it with another kaiju stream! Hope you’re all safe in your shelters if you’re in Districts 9 or 11. If not, the heck’s wrong with you? There’s a kaiju out here!” she smiled at her own self-deprecating joke, not having to look back at Josh to know he was rolling his eyes. “We’ve got a big fellow here today. Or lady, I suppose? These things don’t really tell us. Anyway, our large gender-ambiguous friend here seems to be over fifty metres, closer to sixty even, and as you can see they’ve got a thick shell and scales. That beak and claws look nasty too. We don’t know if it’s got any kind of distance abilities but it looks like it’ll be a tough one up close!”
Trisha rambled as she drove around the block, dodging brick rubble strewn about the street. She tried to keep the creature in view of the van. It was tricky, between the cluster of fallen buildings it stood in the middle of and the multiple dust clouds, their view was getting blocked a lot. But that just made it more cinematic, she supposed. It worked for the stream.
Another roar shook the street around them. “As always guys, mods will be setting up a poll for the name of this beast. Remember Kappa is already taken and we can’t use anything copyrighted!” she swerved again. “And I’ve got my regular cameraman Josh sitting on the console in the back. Say hi to Josh!”
Behind her, Josh cursed at her for mentioning him - he liked to pretend he wasn’t involved. They were fucking livestreaming it though, and its not like it would be hard for the government to figure out who it was. But the suits needed the footage too. Hell, they were usually the main buyers.
Josh’s swearing suddenly went up an octave. “TRISH!!” It sees us! It's pivoting!”
There was a thunderous boom, then a monstrous howl that felt a lot louder than before. She didn’t waste time checking the cams. She floored it.
“Well boys gals and nonbinary pals! It looks like this one is especially spirited! Or just bored enough to go after little-old us!” She spoke quickly without pausing for breath. The narration helped her stay calm, even as the earth rumbled under the van, becoming worse and more frequent. “Low chance of distance attacks, if it could fry us from over there it wouldn’t need to chase!”
Behind her, Josh was loudly alternating between swearing, praying to multiple gods, and promising himself he’d never do this again. Trisha risked a glance at her cams display..
It was gaining on them, stooped low. The beak yawned wide. It was large enough she could have driven the van up into it. The kaiju stumbled as it waddled towards them, catching itself on its claws when it fell and dragging itself forward. It demolished the buildings on either side of them as it went, crashing into them mindlessly.
It was barely bipedal anymore, and graceless to boot. It was still closing fast.
Nothing she was scared of.
Trisha kicked the van down two gears and swerved right, flying down a flight of stairs between two buildings. She took the corner too fast and scraped the brickwall on the left side with a shower of sparks and the sound of tortured metal. The van bounced and bounded as they raced down the alleyway, knocking over a trash can as they escaped to the street beyond. She turned right again, booking it down the street, parallel to the way they came.
A few seconds later there was a monumental crash. Concrete dust clouds swept over them and chunks of masonry began raining down all around. Trisha zig-zagged to avoid it. A vast howl thundered behind them, but the sound of footsteps stopped. It must have lost them in the debris.
“Its definitely a feisty one, chat!” Trisha continued, gripping her steering wheel and trying to keep her irrepressible grin somewhere Josh couldn’t see. “While the name poll is going, lets ask: which Protector do we think is going to be sent for the fight?”
“We’re on the borders of Districts 9 and 11. You know I’m a Pard fan, they’re my favourite demiboy-failure, but even I’ve got to admit they’re ten metres too small for this rumble. Enkidu is the Protector for 11 at the moment, but as far as we know he’s still hurt after dealing with that double-attack last week. Protectors heal fast, but not that fast.”
Trisha’s musings were interrupted by Josh. “I think it lost us! It’s moving away!”
A check of her screen confirmed Josh was right. It turned and wandered away from them, head swinging left and right. Did it have poor eyesight?
“Well, we’re out of danger for the moment, everyone! Might swing around and make another pass if a Protector doesn’t show up soon!” She ignored the whimpering sound from Josh. “Who knows, we might get lucky! We might get Jason today!” Trisha cruised down the street. There weren’t as many cars here. “He’s just about the only one bigger than this thing, apart from-”
The kaiju roared, long and loud, facing away from them. More booms, shaking the road. They were too fast and too frequent. Too many for something bipedal.
Trisha glanced at the camera just in time to see it pounce.
Leviathan, the Terror Protector, landed on top of the kaiju hard enough the monstrous creature toppled backwards onto the ground. The impact shattered the city around them and launched the van into the air. Almost eighty metres of sinuous nightmare pinned the beast down, burying razor fangs into the kaiju’s neck.
The turtle-monster fought back, raking massive claws across the Protector’s chest. Leviathan didn’t even flinch, ignoring the shallow score marks to clamp its own claws down on the creature's shoulders.
The kaiju let out another roar, different, higher-pitched. Scared. It writhed furiously, trying to push the Protector off.
Slowly, Leviathan began to stretch out, pushing down with its arms while pulling back with its neck. There was a terrible moment, the kaiju’s whine reaching a fever pitch.
Then the neck tore.The creature’s head ripped away at the spine. A volcano of gore erupted from under Leviathan, spraying in all directions. The head rolled away, beak slack, eyes glassy. Its struggles ceased, and its corpse lay still.
The “fight” had lasted seconds. Chat hadn’t even finished giving the kaiju a name.
Leviathan straightened from a crouch, its segmented tail lashing behind it.
It was far from unusual for a Protector to have animalistic features. Most of them had them, the only “purely human” one being Jason. Pard had their cat ears and tail, Enkidu had her wolf’s head and horns. Hell, Jabberwock had been part giraffe.
Leviathan’s extra parts did not resemble any creature native to this earth. It looked like something out of a scifi movie or a HR Giger painting. Clawed, digitigrade legs snaking up to a human-shaped torso, a long, segmented tail leading up to an equally segmented spine. External sinews on its legs and arms, stretched around sections of its thighs and biceps ridged like corrugated tubing. Hands that resembled a human’s but with pointed claws.
Its head turned to look at them, shrouded in a long mane of black hair. Red eyes with black sclera focused on their little yellow van. The most beautiful face Trisha had ever seen broke into a broad grin, kaiju-blood still dripping from its fangs.
“Trriiiishhhhaaaaaa…”
Trisha stamped the accelerator to the floor. Now she was scared.
“Thank you for watching guys!” she said quickly, keeping her eyes on the road. Behind her she could hear it shift back onto all fours, chasing after them. “We’re gonna have to end the stream early this time, sorry it was a short one! Like and subscribe!” Then she made the signal to Josh to cut things off.
“Triiisshhhaaaaa” Its voice echoed up the street, louder. She could hear it galloping towards them. Leviathan was closing fast. “I warned you about this Trisha. I warned you there would be consequences.”
Trisha tried the trick from before, spinning the van 90 degrees to spear though an open mechanic’s garage, gambling a Protector wouldn’t just crash through a building when there was no kaiju to justify the damage.
And it sounded like it worked. The rumbles of its footsteps stopped. There was no sound of pursuit.
Trisha had a few seconds of relief. Enough time to breathe.
Then Josh screamed “OH FUCK!”
Leviathan landed in front of them, cratering the tarmac beneath it. The van bounced up, hanging in the air for a long moment before slamming down on its side. The impact shook Trisha inside her crash harness and shattered her driver’s side window. They slid along the bitumen, trailing sparks, the rough surface of the road directly beside her head.
They came to a stop. It was silent for a moment. “Josh! Point the camera up!” she called back.
“What?”
“Just do it!”
Then the road fell away. The van creaked alarmingly as it rose into the air, lifting up and up. The world shifted around them. An enormous red iris filled the windshield, pupil shaped like a cat’s.
“Trissshhhaaaaaa…” Leviathan purred. This close, the sheer volume vibrated the air in her lungs.
Josh screamed as one of the van doors tore away. Two huge pointed claws forced their way into the van and ripped his chair clean out of the floor, pulling him out into open air.
“Come out, little Trisha.” Looking through the glass ahead of her, she could see her reflection in the black slice of its iris. “Come out, or I’ll reach in there and get you.”
“Alright! Alright!!” Trisha yelled, repeating herself after her voice broke the first time. She unclasped her harness and staggered away.
The van was barely holding together. When Leviathan grabbed Josh it had distorted the door frame, stretching and mangling that side of the van. Its claw tips had punctured the van’s console and torn them asunder. The metal chassis groaned around her.
Looking out the hole where the door had been, she watched as Leviathan’s massive hand approached her, palm-up. Josh was lying on his side in the center, still strapped into his chair.
Once it was close enough, Trisha slid down onto her butt, then pushed herself out into space. She fell for a second. It was a drop of less than three metres, but the impact still forced her onto her hands and knees. She’d likely be feeling it for days.
The great expanse of black flesh beneath them resembled a human’s but writ large. It was big enough you could have built a cottage on it with room to spare. The fingers were different, more alien, and they curled up around them like great obelisks as the hand began to move.
Trisha stumbled over to Josh. “Hey, Josh? Are you okay? Why are you still in the chair?”
“I’m not crazy like you!” he huffed “I’m not getting out of the safety gear ‘til we’re back on terra firma. Wobbling around in the center of a giant hand while it's moving sounds like a recipe for disaster!”
Leviathan chuckled, its face partially obscured by its own thumb. “My my, what a thoughtful, obedient little man. Thank you Josh.”
The knowledge that Leviathan, the Terror Protector, knew him personally by name seemed to bring Josh on the verge of tears. Trisha just gritted her teeth and glared up at it. It smirked at them as it lowered them to the ground.
When its palm reached the road, Josh unbuckled himself and got up. They both had to climb down the side of its palm. Leviathan was so huge that just the thickness of its palm was almost as great a drop as the one from the van. Josh hissed in pain as they landed.
“Now~” Leviathan hummed. “What to do with you two?”
It dropped the van further down the road, and straightened up, casting them into shadow. Trisha shivered.
There was nothing in the world quite as terrifying as being in the shadow of one of the giants. Protector or Kaiju, there was a primal part of the brain that screamed at you to run and hide, like you were a mouse that had been scavenging in the kitchen when the light had turned on. Like you were a cockroach suppressing the need to scurry for the safety under the fridge. Like you were vermin.
Leviathan stood almost eighty meters tall. It was so large most humans were less than an inch tall compared to it. Even from a dozen metres away, Trisha had to crane her neck back to meet its feral, red eyes and bloody smile, looking up past the underside of its carapace-clad breasts.
It weighed more than any man-made structure, ever. She wasn’t even taller than its toes. It could have slid one foot across the road, an effortless sweep, and both her and Josh would have been reduced to unrecognisable smears on the bitumen.
“Now Trisha. I know you’re an adrenaline junkie and professional pervert,” The mocking tone of its voice snapped her out of her trepidation. She tried to yell up, to deny it, but it just talked over her, booming volume drowning out her voice. “But you have to understand. Kaiju battles are dangerous.” It emphasised that last word, talking to them slowly, using the same tone you might use to explain things to a child. “If there are little things scurrying around underfoot like that, accidents could happen. Accidents like… this.” It said, lifting one building-sized foot into the air.
For a moment it hovered over them. A hundred tons of alien monster. A terrifying guillotine above their heads, waiting to drop. Then Leviathan shifted, and brought it down.
It stomped down on the van.
“What?!” Trisha yelled, aghast. “No! No no no no no!” She broke into a run. Wearing an expression like the cat who’d just eaten a canary, Leviathan lifted its foot slightly, revealing what was left of the van smashed flat into the sole, stuck to it by the sheer force that had been brought down upon it. Compared to Leviathan, the damn thing might as well have been made of tinfoil.
It lowered its foot again, grinding down this time. The road cracked underneath it.
Trisha ran up and started beating the side of its foot with her fists,snarling. It stopped still just as she reached it.
“You literal giant bitch!” she screamed up at it. “Do you have any idea how much that cost?”
“Hopefully enough that you won’t be pulling any more of these ridiculous shenanigans.” it hissed. It slid its foot a few meters away from her, then stepped back from the pair of them. All that was left of the van was a trail of shredded steel and torn rubber.
The sound of distant helicopters filled the air. “Ah, now I do believe that is my adoring public. And the authorities.” It said that last word the same way one might talk about dog vomit. “I must go and meet them. You two should probably scurry away, or else I’d imagine they’ll try to keep you overnight.”
It paused for a moment, red eyes glaring down at them “Don’t let me catch you again.”
Then it turned and walked down the street, tail flicking behind it.
Trisha let out a long breath she didn’t know she’d been holding in. She realised her hands were trembling.
“Oh god.” she heard Josh mutter. She scampered back over to him. His whole body was trembling, staring after Leviathan as it strolled away. The earth shook with its every step.
“Hey, Josh!”
He did not look at her. He just kept staring, the whites of his eyes prominent.
“Josh!” she yelled, grabbing him by the bicep. His head swung around and he stared at her dumbly, expression like a goldfish. “We need to get out of here now. Was the camera still recording?”
“What?”
“Was the camera still recording footage? We ended the stream, but was the camera still uploading footage to the server?”
“WHAT?!” he yelled, jerking away from her. “That’s what you’re asking about? That’s what you think of? We were almost fucking crushed to death!” he choked down a sob “It nearly killed us! It nearly fucking killed us, the van is gone, and you’re asking about god-damn footage?!” His gaze sharpened, honing in on her. “It was right! You are fucking crazy!”
Trisha gritted her teeth “Did. You. Turn. Off. Recording?”
“No!” Josh shouted, then stammered “I-I don’t think so! Why does it matter?”
“Because, dumbass, the camera was pointing up when Leviathan stomped on it. Point-of-view footage of being stepped on by a Protector? Particularly that Protector?” Trisha smiled at him “Those four seconds of footage are going to pay for another van on their own. Hell, maybe multiple vans!”
“You’re crazy.” he repeated “You’re actually fucking crazy. A Protector almost crushes us to death and you want to keep doing this? It tried to fucking kill us!”
Trisha sighed. “No. It tried to scare us. Protectors don’t kill humans, they protect us. Like in all those ads.” She stepped closer to Josh and rubbed his shoulder, adopting a soothing tone. “You’re safe. We were always safe. Leviathan likes to scare people, everyone knows that. It was just putting on a show because it was annoyed and wanted to frighten us off. That’s why I acted so upset when it squished the van. I knew we were fine if we had that footage. I was just doing that because it wanted to get a reaction. It would never actually hurt us. I wasn’t scared.”
Trisha’s heart was still pounding, even now Leviathan was gone.
But Josh was starting to calm down, taking big, slow breaths. “I don’t… I don’t wanna do this again. I quit. I fucking quit. I can’t do this again. Being chased by a kaiju was one thing. That- that was worse.”
Her grip on his shoulder tightened. “Jeff’s health problems go away, did they?”
His eyes snapped to hers, suddenly filled with hate.
“Your 401k magically get refilled too?” she continued.
“Fuck you.” he spat, venomous.
“Then I guess you don’t quit, do you?” she smirked “Now, come on. Those helicopters sound like they’re getting close. Let's get out of here before we get arrested, huh?”
