Chapter Text
Captain Ashiro really did it this time, Masahide grit out, his internal monologue raging on as he scrubbed furiously at the bloodstains coating every inch of the surrounding area. The dark red blood was sticky and dark, and clung to his white coveralls like mud, and the stench that wafted through his nostrils reeked of decay and rot, despite the 2-inch-long nose plugs he currently had stuffed into his nose. He dug his hacksaw into another section of kaiju corpse, running it back and forth across the lustrous emerald-green material. He continued to cut around the hard shell until the entire scale popped loose, landing on the floor with a clunk. He bent down, bracing his arms against it, before hefting it up and onto a cart, along with four other large, glimmering scales.
"At this rate," He moaned, swiping at his forehead, "We're gonna be here 'til tomorrow morning!" He put the hacksaw aside and flopped beside a cleaner piece of kaiju meat. "Kinugasa!" He called over to the muscular blond a ways over, who was grinding away at bone with a chainsaw. "Kinugasa!" He called again, raising his voice to be heard over the noise.
"Eh?" The man responded, finally setting down the heavy power tool and lifting his blood-stained face shield up to send his neutral stare up at Masahide. "What's up?"
"How're the bone samples looking?" Masahide asked, popping his shield as well. "I've got scales."
Kinugasa rolled his broad shoulders, popping and cracking as he straightened up, a thick wad of semi-translucent cartilage in both arms. "This should be the last of it, before we start cleaning up the whole mess." His head nodded toward the rest of the Yoju's decaying corpse. "I'll get started on the tail".
Masahide let out another weary groan. "Gah, why do we even need samples of this Yoju, anyways?" He griped, as he picked up his saw. "We've already seen it so many times before-" being splattered all over the walls... and us having to clean up its intestines. AGAIN... "-so what's left to sample?" He sunk the teeth of the saw into soft underbelly, and began to hack away at the skin. He didn't expect Kinugasa to answer - the man was much more soft-spoken than his hulking stature would make him out to be - so it was mostly rhetorical. "Just can't wait 'til I can go home and get a drink."
"Mhm." Came Kinugasa's mild reply.
Masahide made a few more comments as he peeled back the thick layers of skin, making sure not to poke at the vessels that bulged with still-hot kaiju blood. A vague recollection of burning his entire left arm from a popped vessel came into his mind, and he cringed slightly at the thought. Better to let the others handle those, I'll just handle the skin. Pulling away the organ was still difficult, though, as smelly meat and tissue clung to the thick, leather-like material. He had to yank at some tougher parts to get them to come loose, and he had to cut away at more than one spot just to keep the process going smoothly. He didn't have to keep the corpse in good condition, after all - just clean out of the streets.
"Ichitaka is going to have a field day with scrubbing out the blood," Masahide chuckled, as he folded away the last bits of skin.
And he wasn't exactly exaggerating.
Every member of the Third Division could hold their own against a Yoju, but Captain Akira Ashiro tended to go a bit... overboard... with killing kaiju. She had a massive cannon that she used against Daikaiju, but for smaller Yoju, she had a smaller rifle - smaller, of course, being a relative term - to deal with them. Even then, the bullet holes that ripped through the Yoju left splatters of blood that could cover half a city block, and remains that were spread across a good few meters. Ichitaka loved to call her Captain "Fuck That General Direction", for how often he had to scrub away at the guts that Captain Ashiro left behind from her kills.
Did she keep the city safe? Sure. But did she make everything a shit-ton harder to clean? Absolutely.
He and Kinugasa put all their supplies back into the company van, and were preparing to leave, just as the sun was beginning to slip past underneath the treeline, when Masahide realized that he'd forgotten his hacksaw. It wasn't like he couldn't get it filed and replaced, but he'd rather avoid the reprimands he would inevitably get about "responsibility" and "keeping track of supplies".
"Kinugasa?" He asked, and the man poked his head out from the driver's seat. "I'm gonna go get my saw - think I forgot it back at the cleanup site. Wait a sec, yeah?" The man nodded, and Masahide gave him a thumbs up and a toothy smile. "Thanks!"
Since it was getting dark, he nabbed a flashlight as well, so he could find his way around the ruined city block. Chunks of cement, plaster, and glass crunched underneath his boots as he slowly made his way back to the skeletal corpse. Bits of meat still hung off the remaining bones, and its ebony-white material seemed to glow under the beam of his flashlight. He glanced around, surveying the area, and saw the saw, lying in a pool of kaiju blood, sizzling but not ruined.
"Ach..." He sighed, "Better than gone." He stepped forward, blood coating his boots, and reached for the saw.
CRUNCH!
He stiffened, glancing around. A series of cracks and scrapes echoed around him. It was nearby, though, so he quickly snatched up the hacksaw, and held it up in front of him. Kinugasa wouldn't have followed him here, which meant-
Something was here. With him.
The scuffling sounded again, and Masahide narrowed on the ribcage of the Yoju. It was still slightly covered in meat, and blood dripped from the elevated spine of the skeleton, like a cave. More scuffling. A wet sound. Soft squelches, as though someone was crushing a sponge. He carefully stepped forward, saw raised in anticipation.
He peeked through a gap between the bones, and saw a kaiju sitting inside of the cavity, blood dripping from its maw, and kaiju meat coating its clawed hands.
It was a horrifying sight, really. The kaiju wasn't that large, maybe the size of a large dog, but it was demonic, with a skeletal face and large, curling horns. Its body was covered in hard, plated armor, and its eyes were glowing cyan orbs. In fact, its entire body pulsed with cyan light, as though it was a radioactive lizard.
Its eyes met Masahide's. They stared at each other, the kaiju illuminated by a flashlight, and Masahide illuminated by it. The kaiju blinked, jaw slightly parted, and a small bit of meat fell out of its mouth, falling into kaiju blood with a wet plop.
Oh, fuck.