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The dinner conversation stretched on for hours, questions bleeding into speculation bleeding into wild theorizing about what came next. By the time people started drifting away from the table, the atmosphere in the Shatterdome had shifted noticeably. The crushing weight of imminent extinction had lifted—replaced by something almost like hope.
They'd turned the tide. Right when humanity was about to collapse, they'd found a lifeline.
But the real answers—the strategic decisions, the long-term plans—those wouldn't come until after the Security Council convened.
After goodbyes were exchanged, Pentecost led Aidan toward the helicopter pad.
"Where are we going?" Aidan asked, though he had a pretty good idea.
"Kyoto," Pentecost said. "Emergency session. Every major power, every key decision-maker. This isn't a PPDC briefing—this is the entire geopolitical infrastructure trying to figure out what the hell happens next."
The meeting had been called within hours of Magician's deployment. Four words had been included in the emergency summons, each one carrying enough weight to justify dropping everything and getting on a plane: Magic. Aliens. Colony. Space Fortress.
In the modern information age, news traveled at light speed. Every nation with satellite coverage had watched the battle off Hong Kong's coast in real-time. They'd seen the purple Jaeger appear from nowhere, seen it decapitate Category-5 Kaiju like they were made of cardboard, seen it vanish through portals that violated every known law of physics.
By dawn, representatives from every major nation were already en route to China. By the time Aidan and Pentecost's helicopter touched down in Kyoto, the conference hall was packed.
The venue was intimidating by design—a massive auditorium built to host international summits, with tiered seating rising in concentric semicircles around a central stage. Every seat was occupied. This wasn't just the PPDC leadership or the Wall of Life project managers. This was everyone. Presidents, prime ministers, generals, intelligence directors, the heads of every organization with skin in the game of human survival.
Cameras lined the walls, recording everything for posterity or liability—hard to say which.
When Aidan and Pentecost entered through the main doors, every head turned. The weight of hundreds of eyes landing simultaneously was almost physical. Some gazes burned with excitement, others with skepticism. Some looked hopeful. A few looked actively hostile.
Ever since the Kaiju first emerged, certain environmental extremist groups had been preaching that the monsters were divine punishment—God's wrath against humanity's ecological sins. Most people dismissed that as apocalyptic fearmongering. But a few representatives in this room probably believed it. And they were here, deciding humanity's future alongside everyone else.
Aidan and Pentecost took their designated seats near the front. A moment later, the session was called to order.
The man who took the stage was Patrick Hemitdon—Secretary-General of the PPDC Council, sixty-six years old, British by birth, career diplomat by trade. His black hair was going silver at the temples, combed back in immaculate style. Not tall—maybe five-foot-seven—but he carried himself with the kind of authority that made height irrelevant. High-bridged nose, tailored suit, every gesture controlled and deliberate.
He'd been an advisor to the UN Secretary-General before the Seoul Conference established the PPDC. Now he was the man responsible for coordinating humanity's response to existential threats.
No pressure.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Hemitdon began, his voice carrying easily across the auditorium. "January 26, 2025. At 20:40 hours, four Kaiju emerged from the breach in the Challenger Deep. At 02:37, those contacts made landfall near Hong Kong and engaged our defensive forces."
Holographic displays materialized above the stage, showing tactical data, satellite footage, Jaeger telemetry.
"This battle marked several historical firsts. The appearance of not one but two Category-5 Kaiju—unprecedented in size and destructive capacity. The near-loss of Crimson Typhoon, whose Conn-Pod was severed but whose pilots survived thanks to emergency intervention."
Footage played: the Wei Tang triplets being pulled from Slattern's jaws, still alive, still conscious.
"And the combat deployment of a new asset: the Magician-class Jaeger, piloted solo by Dr. Aidan Ryan."
More footage: Magician dropping through portals, decapitating Slattern, eliminating Leatherback, moving with impossible grace and speed.
The room was silent, everyone watching the playback with varying degrees of awe and disbelief.
"Dr. Ryan has agreed to brief us on both the nature of the Kaiju threat and the technology behind his work." Hemitdon gestured toward Aidan. "Doctor, the floor is yours."
Polite applause rippled through the assembly. Hundreds of eyes locked onto Aidan as he stood.
He didn't walk to the stage. Just activated the microphone embedded in his table and stayed seated—a subtle power move that said I don't need to perform for you.
"Before we discuss solutions," Aidan said, his voice amplified across the chamber, "let's establish what we're actually facing."
The holographic display shifted, showing the memory extraction footage from Scunner's brain. The audience watched in silence as the Precursor homeworld materialized above the stage—that toxic blue landscape, the organic architecture, the cultivation vats growing Kaiju from embryonic tissue.
"After linguistic analysis of their communication patterns," Aidan continued, "we've confirmed that the Kaiju invasion is exactly what it appears to be: an alien colonization effort. The hostile force is a species called the Precursors, originating from a dimension they call the Anteverse. Their homeworld is dying—environmental collapse, resource depletion, pick your poison. So they're expanding. Conquering habitable planets, terraforming them to suit Precursor biology, exterminating native populations."
He let that sink in for a beat.
"If we were facing their entire civilization—their full military capacity, their complete technological arsenal—humanity would already be extinct. We wouldn't stand a chance."
The room erupted. Dozens of overlapping conversations, voices rising in panic and outrage.
"However," Aidan said, voice cutting through the noise, "we're not facing their full civilization. We're facing a colony. An outpost. A relatively small force operating through a single dimensional breach. Which means we have options. We control the wormhole's stability. We can collapse it anytime we want. The initiative is ours."
The panic subsided into tense silence. People were listening now, calculating, thinking strategically instead of just reacting.
"So now that we understand the threat," Aidan said, "let me explain how we're going to respond."
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
"My research over the past three years has been into a subject most of you consider fictional. I'm talking about magic."
A ripple of confusion moved through the crowd. Some people looked skeptical. Others looked annoyed, like this was a waste of their time.
"I know how that sounds," Aidan continued. "But here's the truth: I have mastered magical principles. I can manipulate cosmic energy, reshape reality according to runic frameworks developed by—"
Someone laughed. Then another person. Then a whole section of the assembly was chuckling or shaking their heads.
"This is absurd," someone called out. "We're here to discuss military strategy, not fairy tales—"
"Magic isn't real, Dr. Ryan," another voice added, condescending and dismissive. "Advanced technology, perhaps, but let's not insult everyone's intelligence—"
The mockery was spreading, people's patience wearing thin. They'd flown here expecting hard science and tactical briefings, not fantasy fiction.
Aidan smiled.
Then reality broke.
The sound came first—like a thousand panes of glass shattering simultaneously, except the sound came from inside everyone's heads. No external source, just that crystalline fracture echoing in their minds.
"What—what was that?" someone stammered.
"Did anyone else hear—?"
"Oh my God—"
The space around them began to fragment.
Not metaphorically. The walls, the ceiling, the floor—everything started cracking like broken mirrors, geometric fault lines spreading across surfaces that had been solid seconds before. The cracks glowed faintly, pulsing with energy.
Then the pieces started moving.
The floor rippled like water, waves of distortion rolling across the surface. The ceiling began to fold, sections rotating on impossible axes. Half the assembly found themselves suddenly above the room, looking down at the other half still seated normally, gravity working in two different directions simultaneously.
The entire space became a kaleidoscope—rotating, fracturing, reorganizing according to rules that had nothing to do with physics. People grabbed their tables in panic, holding on as the world went insane around them. But there was no danger. No one fell, no one was hurt. They were just... suspended in impossible geometry, watching their reality get remixed like a Rubik's cube.
It was beautiful and terrifying in equal measure.
Aidan sat calmly at his table, the only fixed point in a universe of chaos. His hand moved in small gestures, conducting the madness like a maestro leading an orchestra. The Mirror Dimension responded to his will, bending space into configurations that shouldn't exist.
Shocked silence. Disbelief. Wonder. Terror.
Every face in the assembly showed some combination of those reactions, minds struggling to process what they were experiencing.
After thirty seconds—long enough to make the point, not so long it became traumatic—Aidan gestured again.
Reality snapped back.
The fragments reassembled. The distortions smoothed out. Gravity resumed normal operation. In an instant, everyone was back in their seats, the conference hall perfectly intact, like nothing had happened.
Except everyone's faces were pale, expressions frozen in various stages of shock.
"So," Aidan said into the stunned silence, his voice perfectly calm through the microphone. "Should I continue explaining, or do we need another demonstration?"
Secretary-General Hemitdon cleared his throat, recovering faster than most. "Please... please proceed, Dr. Ryan."
Some people were still staring at the walls, the ceiling, their own hands—trying to confirm that reality was stable again. A few were probably wondering if the whole thing had been some kind of holographic projection, some advanced simulation technology.
But the way it had felt—the visceral, impossible wrongness of space folding in directions that didn't exist—that couldn't be faked.
Magic was real.
And the man who controlled it was sitting ten meters away, waiting patiently to explain how he was going to use it to save the world.
300 , 500 , 1000 Each milestone will have 1 Bonus chapter.