Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

But he only waited two seconds before the dot representing the Lightning Man on the radar screen suddenly underwent a strange change.

"They... merged?" Ralf saw the small dots of light surrounding the transport plane converge towards the β, turning into a massive mass. The transport plane seemed unharmed, but the β was blocked by the larger dot of light!

If he launches a rocket at it now, who knows if he'll hit Beta or that weird thing!

Ralf struggled to assess the situation, while Fujisawa Sosuke was far more courageous.

As the monster, whose mouth was large enough to fit an adult but emitted the sound of a child's laughter, approached, he pressed the missile launch button.

At the same time, Aiba Yuu suddenly dropped to a lower altitude, and the fighter jet accelerated in a dive. The electromagnetic pulse missiles never distinguished between friend and foe; they detonated on Gazort, barely grazing the top of the β.

"Hit!" Fujisawa Sousuke turned his head. The monster was still standing in the same spot, its childlike hiss revealing a hint of pain.

"Captain, let's go!" he shouted. They needed to get out of the enemy's territory first. Once they emerged from this dangerous cloud layer and reached the outside world, they could either hang them while waiting for support from the North American branch, or launch a counterattack and shower them with missiles and rockets—it didn't matter.

He remembered the "Air Force Handbook - Summary of Existing Aircraft Types for Responding to Sudden Thunderstorms" distributed by Aiba Yu, but he forgot what Aiba Yu told them after Golza and Melba appeared: "Don't judge the monsters' situation with the same mindset you use to deal with humans."

A painful hissing sound means injury to the average person, while a call from a "friend" is usually seen as a friendly signal.

But would Lightning Man do the same?

“Friends!” Gazot clapped its fin-like hands, its mouth wide open, lightning illuminating its teeth, tongue, and throat—perhaps only the act of eating was interconnected, and even the slow-witted Fujisawa Sousuke realized that this monster wanted to eat them.

Its speed could easily match that of a conventional fighter like the TPC-β, and probably only the Hyuga-1 could rival it in the air.

"If it spends a little more time with us, maybe the transport plane and Alpha can get away?" The moment Gazot's orange-red eyes reappeared in front of the cockpit, Fujisawa Sosuke had only one thought: to unleash all the weapons and let it feast to its heart's content!

He was determined to succeed or fail.

Just as Jin was about to press the button to express his idea, Aiba Yu suddenly called out to him.

"Sousuke." Aiba Yu stopped him. This call brought him back to his senses, and his rapidly working, even somewhat hot-blooded, mind slowed down—he realized that the monster was far too close, and if a missile were launched from here, even if the β's engine was accelerated to the point that it would be destroyed upon landing, it would still be affected.

"Look outside."

Fujisawa Sousuke looked outside as instructed, only to find that his captain had already taken his hands off the steering wheel and clasped them together in front of his chest.

He was completely captivated by the strange phenomena in the outside world.

rain.

The round, smooth raindrops arrived in formation like soldiers, as if an invisible hand were gathering them, and the raindrops converged in accordance with its will.

The clear clang of swords being drawn echoed through the clouds.

How can cold weapons be allowed to emerge on a battlefield dominated by firearms?

But those unknown hands actually did it; the raindrops were gathered into strands and then condensed into ice, standing like thousands of swords. The monster, with its childlike nature, was attracted by this strange sight. It wasn't hungry, so its playfulness took over, and its orange-red eyes immediately became fixed on those dangerous swords.

The swords were also "enthusiastic" towards it, shooting off their bows and tearing the mist to shreds as they relentlessly rained down on Gazot! Fujisawa Sousuke stared in disbelief as the swords rained down from the sky, striking the monster with a deafening roar, just like real metal clashing.

Compared to the monster's size, the knife is actually quite small, more like a wide, short needle.

Gazort thought it was playing a game, and it happily stretched out its short fins to catch the needles that were rushing towards it. TPC-β bypassed it, raised its pitch angle, and rushed out of the thunderstorm cloud in the opposite direction.

At this moment, the truly "deadly" weapon arrived—Ralph saw them break away and decisively pressed the continuous fire button. Aiba Yuya piloted the plane in a rollercoaster-like turn, going from climbing to diving. Fujisawa Sousuke understood and activated another electromagnetic pulse missile.

The thunderstorm cloud, large enough to swallow an entire fighter jet formation, was completely blasted away, replaced by a fog of smoke that hung high over the Bering Strait. A huge shadow fell from the fog and crashed heavily into the sea.

The call from TPC North America arrived late: "Hello colleagues at Far East Headquarters Base, this is your good friend North America Branch's Alaska dispatch station. This is the thirty-fourth call. You have encountered severe weather. Do you need assistance? We can provide small aircraft salvage services. We hope you make a successful emergency landing... Please respond if you hear us."

“Hoo…” Fujisawa Sousuke took a deep breath. He really wanted to yell at the lazy guy on the other end of the phone and scare him back down from his seat.

Before he could explode, Aiba Yu had already spoken up, his tone sounding very restrained: "If you had paid close attention to the radar, you would have found that this is a typical lightning artifact. Dr. Mizuno's investigation report was distributed to TPC bases around the world as an urgent document. I heard the background noise... You violated discipline by watching a movie during your shift, um, The Lion King."

Sousuke Fujisawa strained his ears to listen to the faint background noise on the channel, hoping to distinguish "Simba" and "Hakuna Matata" from it. Who knows where the captain got the Lion King from, but as soon as he said that, the buzzing background noise disappeared.

He heard rustling sounds on the other end, and after a while, the man on duty replied, "This is the control tower, providing guidance now..."

Fujisawa Sousuke had never encountered such a listless control tower. Even the control tower on the night shift, who spoke with a deathly tone, was more energetic than him. But he felt no sympathy at all, and even wanted to laugh out loud.

“Prolonged peace breeds complacency,” Aiba Yu concluded. “If the defense forces were still here, the garrison here would never dare to watch movies during their duty hours.”

The formation crossed the Bering Strait and continued flying toward its outpost in Alaska, where it would make a brief stop to unload one of the boxes of stone powder for backup storage, before transporting the remainder to its outpost in Calgary and its branch base in Florida.

Fujisawa Sousuke could have kept his mouth shut, but he still wanted to ask, "Captain... so do you miss the Defense Force?"

"No, I just feel that the discipline of the TPC, especially in some branches, needs to be stricter. The defense forces that fight their own battles will not come back. We only need a globally unified TPC, but if some things are lost, it will take lives to pick them up again."

Sōsuke Fujisawa wholeheartedly agreed: "Some of the 'goods' from the Life Science Research Center should be left here to see how things go... I'm worried that they might be sold off as flour one day."

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Vanished Target

North American Branch, Alaska Deployment Station.

After disembarking, the transfer of important items was handled by the transportation department and a group of researchers who were still reeling from the shock of the thunderstorm. The aviation team remained at the airport to assist ground crew in repairing the aircraft.

Fujisawa Sousuke stood on tiptoe and vigorously ruffled Ralf's hair, getting revenge for the earlier slapping of his head, while speaking in a friendly and soothing tone: "Big polar bear, I almost thought I'd never see you again!"

“Oh, my friend, it’s so nice to see you again!” Ralph grabbed his wrist and slammed his other “bear paw” onto the head of the man who was a head shorter than him.

When Aiba Yu returned after exchanging a few pleasantries with the station manager, he happened to see his two team members tearing each other's hair with ferocious expressions. To be precise, it was a polar bear unilaterally dominating a chick, which was barely managing to stretch out its short arms.

Reach the edge of the other person.

“They… seem to have a very good relationship,” the station manager exclaimed, “I’m going to accompany the Life Sciences Research Center. You can tell the ground crew anything you need.”

"Thank you." Aiba Yu watched the person in charge return to the office building, then turned back to look at the two team members who were staring at each other like black-eyed chickens.

Being energetic is a good thing, Aiba Yuu remained silent for a long time.

He'd been standing there for so long, and the two of them hadn't even noticed him. Aiba Yu comforted himself, thinking it meant his teammates had excellent concentration.

...But when they travel, they represent the image of TPC Far East headquarters! Their performance directly affects the honor of the headquarters and also influences how the outside world evaluates Director Sawai!

No one cares whether you're a newbie or a survivor; they'll just say, "Wow, Sawai's police department."

Rules! Appearance! Go back and find someone from the honor guard to teach them what image management is all about!

"Hey, Captain, you're back!" Fujisawa Sousuke's head was turned ninety degrees towards the exit of the office building leading to the airport, and he saw the captain staring at him expressionlessly—he didn't know how long the captain had been standing there, but Fujisawa Sousuke felt a chill run down his spine.

He had a sudden inspiration and decided to immediately divert the other person's attention. Ralf wasn't stupid either; he cleverly changed the arm that was grabbing his head into a friendly arm around the other person's shoulder. Seeing that Fujisawa Sousuke's hair had been ruffled into a doghouse that had been torn apart by ten huskies, he quickly reached out and smoothed it into a clean and neat slicked-back hairstyle.

His rough fingers snagged a few strands of hair, making Fujisawa Sousuke wince in pain. He secretly made a mental note of it, deciding to get revenge next time he launched a sneak attack.

“We’re talking, talking… about that ‘sage’ who chased away the monster!” Fujisawa Sousuke shouted. Ralf hadn’t heard him recount his earlier encounter, but he nodded repeatedly in agreement, as if he had already been told the story.

"An immortal?" Aiba Yu stepped forward, bent down to pick up the thing that had fallen to the ground. "You mean this?"

The teru teru bozu (a Japanese doll that brings sunshine to the sky) probably fell out when he refused to have his head rubbed. Fujisawa Sousuke thought to himself that he was doomed, but still tried to sound tough: "It...it can't protect me, it's just an ordinary doll. I mean, the one that made the sky rain knives down, 'bang bang bang,' smashing me all over the place, that was pretty cool!"

"Hmm." Aiba Yu nodded, wanting to hear what else he was going to make up.

“Ralph, you have no idea! I thought I was about to die, and I was even planning to take it down with me! That monster’s mouth could have swallowed us whole!” Fujisawa Sosuke exaggeratedly gestured with his hand to indicate the size of a circle: “Its throat was taller than a person’s! And its voice was like a child’s. Maybe when it grew up, it could swallow a mountain in one gulp!”

“Then it was a miracle,” he said. “Or, to be more scientific, according to Dr. Mizuno’s report, perhaps the ‘good elves’ of the Lightning People’s tribe stopped the ‘bad elves’ and let us go!”

"At first, I thought Dr. Mizuno's investigation was too embellished and nonsense, but now I think that no group can be generalized. Captain, you said that aliens are both good and bad, and I remember that very clearly! The Lightning People are probably the same. Maybe it was the friendly Lightning People who protected us... Captain..."

He rambled on for a while, and Ralf kept playing along, making exaggerated exclamations like "Oh," "What," and "Is that so?" But Aiba Yu didn't react at all, and his gaze went down from his mouth to his throat.

Deja vu.

The captain looked just like that when he accidentally gave the wrong data to the control tower.

"Gulp," Fujisawa Sousuke swallowed hard and whispered, "That monster fell into the sea. Should we wait for the marine survey team to issue a safety notice before we set off? What if... we run into them again on the way? I think even immortals can take a nap, and the 'good elves' in the lightning people can get beaten up by the 'bad elves'."

“Proceed according to plan,” Aiba Yu said. “How do you know they won’t come looking for you if you just wait here?”

Ralph nodded vigorously, "That's right! The most important thing is to get the things from the Life Science Research Center to a safe place!"

"In that case, hurry up and wipe the windshield. After the handover, we need to prepare to leave."

Fujisawa Sousuke felt he had escaped a disaster. Ralph pushed him toward the plane, and he kept glancing back every now and then, afraid that the captain might be plotting something under the cover of calm.

"Huh?" He saw the captain yawn with his head down.

……

Bering Strait.

The suspected crash site of the Lightning Man monster reported by the Alaskan station.

The search aircraft that had set off earlier had arrived overhead, deployed sonar, and activated the underwater robots.

"Very quiet," the thunderstorm clouds had been gone for a long time, the sea had returned to calm, and a thick, creamy blue hue painted the view outside the window. The person in charge of sonar said, "Are you sure there's a monster here that might be injured and going berserk?"

The sea where Gazort crashed wasn't particularly deep. Theoretically, their high-powered sonar sweep should have at least found traces of its movements—such as the remains of attacked fish or damaged seabed sediment. The submersible robot would sample the seawater, which would then be analyzed by professionals. If they were lucky enough to find blood, and unless it came from any fish in their database, it was most likely from the monster.

Based on the water flow information provided by the diving robot, they searched a distance to the southwest.

"Ah, a caravan of migrating bowhead whales, a harmonious family." (The advance party)

The team gained nothing.

The plane circled for a while before deciding to return and wait for the main vessels of the marine survey team to arrive before conducting a more in-depth search.

"It couldn't be because they lived in the ionosphere and couldn't swim, so they drowned, could it?" someone came up with an absurd idea: "And then they were eaten to bits by a school of fish?"

Chapter Twenty-Four: Return Gift

All the backup materials from the Life Sciences Research Center were delivered, and several researchers immediately rushed back to headquarters, bursting into the inspection team's office.

"I want to sue certain branches for being weak-willed, lacking understanding, lax in discipline, and negligent in their duties!" The researcher rushed in and didn't come out for two hours.

Even Fujisawa Sosuke felt worried about handing over the stone powder to the North American branch, so how could the researchers be so carefree as to think there was no problem? But compared to the plan already drafted by headquarters, they were just executors, so they could only complain to the inspection team after returning.

The inspection team was furious. They demanded that the North American branch immediately conduct a self-examination and rectification, and the criticism also reached other departments of TPC. Everyone cursed the North American branch for being too reckless, while simultaneously carrying out chaotic self-examinations before the inspection team even arrived.