They moved like ghosts through the fog.
The moment the Kaiju-rhino vanished into the mist, Unit 404 returned to the cave with every thruster in low-burn, every scanner on passive mode, and every system muted to avoid detection.
Inside, no one spoke for several minutes.
Even the cave felt colder now. The still air held the echo of that beast's sheer presence — its armored bulk, its crushing footsteps, the weight of silence it left behind.
Kael paced in front of Ravager, one hand gripping his pulse blade hilt. "We need defenses," he said at last. "I'm not sleeping with that thing out there. Or anything worse."
Tyren slumped into Pulse Fang's repair scaffold, still dripping condensation. "We can't fight that head-on, Kael. It'd fold us into a pretzel before we could scream."
"Didn't say we'd fight it. I said we need defenses."
"Like what?" Tyren waved toward the open terrain outside the cave. "We've got three pulse beacons, two shock mines, and a mood-swinging atmosphere. That's it."
Oris, still at his data console, didn't look up. "Then we start improvising."
---
They spent the next few hours converting spare mech plating into barricade panels, angled in a crescent just outside the cave mouth. Tyren stripped part of Nox-4's outer hull and fused it into a motion-sensitive trip mine. Oris redirected the power core stabilizer to extend the pulse fence by another 20 meters.
Everything was tight. Crude. Temporary.
But it was a start.
Kael stood at the edge of the setup and watched the fog roll past the treeline.
"We need intel. On all Kaiju," he said. "Size, range, behavior. Weakness."
"Good luck getting that from observation," Tyren muttered. "Unless you want to become rhino lunch."
"No," Oris replied suddenly. "But I might have another way."
Both Kael and Tyren turned.
"What are you thinking?" Kael asked.
Oris pulled up a display, magnifying one of the leaves Kael had cut the day before. It rotated slowly on the holo-screen — jagged edges, metallic sheen, weight calibration highlighted.
"This leaf… it's metallic. But not just iron or steel. I ran spectral analysis. It has trace uranium signatures. And thorium. It's slightly radioactive."
Tyren blinked. "You serious?"
Oris nodded. "Barely enough to register on human exposure levels, but it's there. Which means the planet's natural flora is growing through heavy element deposits."
Kael stepped forward. "So you're saying—?"
"This planet may have natural radioactive fields beneath the surface. Entire veins of it. Probably explains how those Kaiju survive here. Their physiology may have evolved to process radiation as nutritional energy."
Tyren's eyes widened. "That's insane. It also means—"
"—we can harvest it," Oris finished.
---
The room fell quiet.
For the first time since the crash, there was a spark of possibility. Hope — not to escape — but to adapt.
"If we can locate a high-rad cluster," Oris said, "we might be able to siphon and redirect the material."
Kael's thoughts raced. "We could reforge Nox-4's power core."
"Boost the reactors in our mechs," Tyren added, "give them high-intensity plating, or even weaponize radiation pulses."
"Assuming we don't cook ourselves doing it," Kael said with a half-smile.
"Hazards aside, it might be the only way we survive," Oris said. "Normal energy sources won't cut it. We're not just under-equipped — we're underpowered. We're hunting Kaiju with sticks."
"And now we might have nuclear sticks," Tyren muttered.
---
The trio gathered around the central field table in silence.
Kael finally broke it.
"We find the radiation zones. We study the Kaiju. And we don't get killed doing it."
"Solid plan," Tyren said. "We could even lure a Kaiju toward a monitored zone and see what it interacts with."
"Not the rhino," Oris added. "That one's too passive. We need something more aggressive. Trackable."
Kael nodded. "Tomorrow, we scout deeper west. We move fast, we stay covered, and we gather everything we can — data, minerals, signatures."
"And if we find another one of those monsters?"
"We observe. And we keep running. For now."
---
Later that cycle, as the lights inside Ravager dimmed for rest mode, Kael stared out through the cockpit glass.
The fog moved like it was alive. Not fast — but purposeful.
Somewhere out there, a Kaiju bigger than a dreadnought grazed in the metal woods. Others lurked deeper. And buried beneath the skin of the planet, something strange and radioactive pulsed like a hidden heart.
Kael closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, they stopped reacting.
Tomorrow, Unit 404 started fighting back.
---