Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

The fighter jet was flying at an altitude of 12000 meters. It was the first time a new recruit had taken to the skies, so the captain chose a clear and safe day.

Four planes, each piloted by an experienced pilot in the front row while newcomers observed from the back. They soared into the blue sky on steel wings, and death descended from the heavens—a beam of light shone down, dazzlingly bright yet bringing a bone-chilling cold.

It was sharp. No one would use the word "sharp" to describe a beam of light, but that's what Fujisawa Sousuke thought at the time. It sliced ​​through his fighter jet without any resistance, like using a kitchen knife on a fish that wouldn't struggle.

Silence.

Everything was silent; he didn't even hear the sound of the steel plate being cut, but he remembered the captain saying something to him at that moment.

"Is he dreaming again?" Fujisawa Sousuke thought. "Let's get out of here. I've only written half of my self-criticism."

But sometimes, even when you perceive the absurdity of the world in a dream, the decision of whether to wake up immediately is not in your own hands; it depends on the urgent need for rest.

The body that breathes.

The scene then continues.

Fujisawa Sousuke remembers opening his parachute. At the time, he was thinking about how long he could survive in the sub-zero water of the Bering Sea in winter, with the surface frozen. He wondered if people would actually smile when they froze to death. He wanted to find an ice floe to land on, but the cute ice floes were too far away. Only the cold seawater embraced him.

In the dream, it was much simpler and more brutal. His parachute was gone, and he plunged headfirst into the sea, with countless tiny bubbles rising to the surface.

Thanks to having dreamt of it so many times, and without the suffocating feeling he had experienced before, Fujisawa Sosuke even had the leisure to slowly count the bubbles. Strings of bubbles resembled a flock of white butterflies, which were broken halfway through their flight by the turbulent water.

“You’ve come.” He knew the time had come, so he turned around—at that moment he suddenly stopped sinking, not because of his superior swimming skills, but because the stream of water that had churned up the bubbles caught him. When he turned back, he saw a pair of molten gold eyes staring at him, their owner like a sea monster rising from the deep sea, clad in armor, with eyes as bright as the sun and moon.

"Hello, big brother, I salute you," Fujisawa Sousuke, a seasoned veteran, said with a grin, "Aren't you tired of eating fish? I'll treat you to something from the ground another day, if we ever meet again."

The sea monster didn't speak, but its long, thin tail coiled up and suddenly strangled Fujisawa Sousuke's neck in his terrified gaze!

"Wake up!" The sea monster spoke for the first time in his dream, but it was the captain's voice! Fujisawa Sousuke, covered in goosebumps, ran away from home, every cell in his body screaming, "Nightmare! This is a nightmare!"

He jerked his eyes open and saw that the captain was indeed standing beside him. Ralph was shaking him awake by pressing his shoulders.

"Captain, I'm writing a self-criticism!" Fujisawa Sousuke sprang up, a blank sheet of paper stuck to his sleepy face.

Ralph let out a wail, and Fujisawa Sousuke peeled off the white paper, revealing the words "Letter of Apology" at the top, and large smears of saliva on the bottom half of the paper, which blurred the writing.

"Write a serious self-criticism?" Aiba Yu handed him a napkin: "You were talking in your sleep."

Sousuke Fujisawa felt that he was already dead, that he was dead.

Yota Watanabe imitated, "'Hello, big brother, I salute you, big brother,' Captain, he was probably scared yesterday and didn't sleep much last night. I saw that he didn't eat much this morning, and he's both sleepy and hungry."

"Thank you to my good teammate who spoke up for me!" Fujisawa Sousuke mentally noted, a sheepish smile on his face.

“I’m not here to collect apologies,” Aiba Yu said. “Here, take this, the new badge.”

Two shiny objects were placed on the table. Aiba Yu walked straight away without saying anything like "write 2000 more words".

Sōsuke Fujisawa shouted, "Captain, my badge is fine! It's Yōta's that's cracked!"

"Keep them for yourself; the logistics department gave us two."

……

Police station interrogation room.

The alien brought by the "friendly Earth monster" is being heavily guarded and imprisoned in a dangerous alien isolation room. The interrogator talks to her through a screen, with a general language translator borrowed from the GUTS team next to her.

Indeed, Horii once again doubted whether he had created an unimaginable device. This machine, which could only translate languages ​​that had existed on Earth, could actually translate the language of the Mujin aliens!

Daigo gave him an idea: "Perhaps the race of the Mokujin aliens once lived on Earth for a period of time, for example... like the ancient humans."

“That makes sense!” Horii took the collected data to find a paleontologist he knew, while Daigo squatted on pins and needles in the GUTS team.

The place they went to investigate was an abandoned factory, where residents reported frequently hearing cries that sounded like ghosts. The Victory Team went to investigate but returned empty-handed.

Others thought that someone might be having a bad day and had secretly come to this deserted place to cry, which led to a misunderstanding among the residents. However, Daigo felt a very uncomfortable atmosphere, as if the air was full of dust. Others were unaware of it, but he tried several times to sweep away the "dust".

But he couldn't say it, and he had no reason to go back there to investigate again. Was he supposed to just say, "I feel something's not right"? That wouldn't be like a scientifically rigorous team member! Besides, he didn't have the means to sneak over there!

After noting down the location of the abandoned factory, Daigo sighed and opened "Ancient Creatures Illustrated Handbook".

Like Daigo, the people in the interrogation room were also on pins and needles.

Because the woman on the other side of the screen was a complete madwoman—a Muzhen alien—who, despite the crackling electricity, transformed herself into a beautiful Earthling and asked the person who asked, "Am I pretty?"

"Be serious, Muzhen aliens! We are conducting an interrogation!" the guard replied. "Besides the people with iron rings who were witnessed being chased by you, which other Earthlings have been forced to participate in your so-called 'hunting game'?"

"How could I possibly remember that! I just invite people over to play when I'm in a good mood?" The Wood-Pure Alien laughed at the screen. "Hey, where's the guy who captured me? He's wearing your uniform. Shouldn't you do an internal screening to see if any monsters have infiltrated the team or something..."

A buzzing sound filled the interrogation room.

A middle-aged man turned to the clerk and said, "Make a note of it. The Muzhen Star people like to sow discord and try to disrupt our internal organization."

The clerk nodded: "The director already said it was a 'friendly Earth monster,' and she even said it was someone from TPC. Only a fool would believe that."

The person in charge of questioning slapped him.

He slammed his fist on the table, making it tremble: "Wooden Starman! If it weren't for the rule against laying a hand on prisoners before trial, I would have killed you on the spot! Don't change the subject, how many Earthlings have you hunted down? I don't care which ones you remember, just tell me one!"

"You don't believe me when I tell the truth!" The Wood-Pure Starman raised his eyebrows: "Fine, kill me then? Come on, try and see if your crappy steel-core bullets can even hurt a hair on my head!"

The middle-aged man whispered again, "Write this down. It's for the Life Science Research Center. Research Project Two: Superior Skin Defense."

The interrogator and the wooden alien were arguing through the screen. When they got emotional, they would inadvertently reveal something. The middle-aged man would mutter a few key points, while the clerk wrote with lightning speed.

Chapter Sixty: The Search

"The faces described by the air force have been drawn."

Victory Team, Nori received a picture from the Information Department: a sketch of a man wearing a sleeveless shirt with iron armbands on his arms was displayed on the screen.

"These are the 'prey' being hunted by the Muzhen aliens? Their style of dress doesn't seem to be typical of this city," Lina said, her eyes immediately drawn to their clothes. "The police report says the Muzhen alien had a companion, and there was more than one being hunted. Is there any description of the other one?"

Ye Rui shook his head: "Not yet. I can only screen out suspicious individuals first, then trace their movements to determine which one is an alien... The only clue is that the two aliens being hunted are prisoners from the same planet, so their clothing might be similar."

Just from his description, you could feel the terrifying workload, but it was also part of the Victory Team's job, so everyone could only grit their teeth and wait for Ye Rui to continue integrating the information he had received.

Daigo seemed somewhat absent-minded, still thinking about the factory he had investigated the day before. Perhaps it was intuition? He had a feeling that something terrible was brewing there, like seeing a dusty, unremarkable, rough, and dilapidated cabinet, but before opening it, some absurd imaginations would always run through his mind—an ancient corpse, a ghost afraid of light, a group of large hairy spiders, or simply a nest of cockroaches and rats.

Ye Rui's voice continued. He extracted a very short segment of surveillance video, and the fleeting shadow on the screen gradually became clearer after he processed it.

"In terms of timing, this is the surveillance footage of him escaping after meeting with the air force members. We obtained the surveillance footage of the air force members entering the shopping street. The two are five minutes and twenty-four seconds apart, but this alien being chased has already run from Chiyoda Ward to Itabashi Ward..." Nori said, "Just looking at the straight-line distance, his speed is faster than that of an ordinary car."

"Is this the last surveillance camera in Banqiao Ward?" Horii asked.

"Yes, no surveillance footage from later times has been found so far."

With so little information, everyone lowered their heads in deep thought, unable to find a solution. Suddenly, Daigo said, "That... the 'friendly Earth monster' the director mentioned, since he captured one of the Mujin aliens, didn't he leave any clues?"

"It captured that Muzhen alien in the Nerima district," Ye Rui replied. "This clue can be used to trace back to the Muzhen alien's activity range, and within this range, we should be able to find clues about the alien being hunted."

“Then let’s do it this way,” Megumi concluded. “The most urgent task is to find them first, the ‘prey’. They are very likely to not understand Earth’s language, let alone live there. They are very dangerous, both for them and for us.”

"Ye Rui, you conduct a large-scale search along the direction of the Mu Zhen aliens' movements, find the movement trajectory of the aliens being hunted, and after delineating their activity area, we will conduct a grid search."

Megumi's words determined the GUTS team's next course of action... and the enormous workload. Horii felt a chill run down his spine at the thought of the work he had promised Dr. Mizuno: "A comprehensive search... should we contact the local police station for cooperation?"

“Making a big fuss will only scare them,” said Kei. “They have been living in fear for days. If a large number of people search all over the mountains and fields, it will cause an overreaction and be counterproductive.”

……

The air force, TPC-1, is embarking on another journey for Director Inoue.

"So why didn't the captain come and let me team up with you!" Fujisawa Sousuke glared at Watanabe Yota, who had been practically strutting around since receiving the order.

“Well,” Watanabe Yota dusted off non-existent dust from the captain’s seat, “I guess this is what ‘trust’ or ‘respect’ means. Good luck, my co-pilot. Don’t bite your tongue when you talk to the tower this time.”

Fujisawa Sousuke didn't want to see his smug face, so he took out a brand new embroidered, lace-trimmed, exquisitely crafted teru teru bozu (a Japanese doll) that was as delicate as a bride's dress, solemnly attached it to the side of his seat, and bowed three times: "Thank you, magnet god, thank you, teru teru bozu god."

“You know it’s effeminate of you to buy something like this…” Watanabe Yota thought of the awkward scene when he accompanied him to the base supermarket when he saw the heavy-duty doll.

Fujisawa Sousuke gestured excitedly to the shopkeeper, telling him he wanted to buy the most exquisite, best-looking, and most expensive item. The shopkeeper praised him for his good taste, saying it would be a great gift for a friend's child. Fujisawa Sousuke replied seriously, "No, this is something I'm going to keep for myself."

He heard the person paying behind him laugh. But Fujisawa Sousuke was so engrossed in the shopping that he couldn't hear anything. He grabbed him and dragged him to the shelves, saying things like, "Help me pick something," and "If you have bad taste, you can filter out the wrong answers." Yota wanted to say, "Screw you, it's your taste that's getting weirder and weirder!"

After buying it

He even took it to the dry cleaners... and finally solemnly delivered it to the team leader, promising: "I will never randomly stick up a bunch of teru teru bozu dolls again, I promise it will only be this one."

When Aiba Yu saw his teammate hand him a large, girly teru teru bozu doll, his expression was quite subtle. Watanabe Yota guessed that he probably also felt embarrassed by the thing but couldn't say it directly.

"The workmanship is quite... complicated," Aiba Yu replied after a moment of silence. "If there's only one, you can put it anywhere you like, but don't put it near the dashboard and don't let it obstruct people's movement."

"Oh, of course, of course!" Fujisawa Sousuke hugged the doll back, like he was hugging his girlfriend. Watanabe Yota even gently smoothed the lace trim when he saw it.

The reason why Captain TPC-1 paired up Yota and Sousuke this time might be because Yota didn't want to be the first to be shocked by the flight attendant looking at the doll and talking about aesthetics.

Little did he know that when Aiba Yu saw the doll's elaborate packaging, his mind was filled with thoughts like, "This thing is hard to open," "How do I take out the magnet, carve the protective layer, and put it back in intact?" "Does the library teach embroidery and lace making?" And most importantly... "I actually have to learn this!"

So even after the plane took off, Aiba Yu was unable to complete the modification of the heavy-duty doll. He could only hope that Fujisawa Sousuke wouldn't forget to wear the badge—that idiot only remembered his teru teru bozu!

"Sigh..." Aiba Yu sighed and crawled out of a cardboard box that was only sealed with tape.

TPC-1 has completed its climb and entered cruise mode; he is now standing in the cargo hold of this aircraft.

The cardboard box was brought in by Director Sawai under the guise of "critical materials." No one would bother to check the classified items he mentioned, which gave Aiba Yu the opportunity to sneak in. Although turning into a "friendly Earth monster" and chasing the plane wouldn't be a problem, that would be too blatant and would only scare the target away.

So he shrunk his size, crawled into an inconspicuous cardboard box, and waited for the arrival of another Wood-Dwelling Alien.

Chapter Sixty-One Contradictions

hours ago.

“Such a small cardboard box…” Director Sawai looked at the box, which was about the size of a regular backpack, and then glanced at the flight squadron leader standing in front of the desk: “Are you really going to do this?”

“Aliens have information sharing among themselves, so this is the simplest way to avoid alerting them,” Aiba Yu replied. “If I join the crew, it will hinder my movements.”