Unproving

While walking to the remains of the temple, Sano took the time to admire the surroundings once more. Dead zones were supposed to look like dead zones, but the damage seemed minimal in this place.

The shrines were untouched, the nearby buildings still seemed stable, the aragami clearly came for the people.

Maybe the aragami have lost their taste for wood over the years?

But, that would mean the beasts had gotten picky, and why would aragami bother to get picky?

As Sano ascended the rampway to the temple, he saw the holes in the roof and half-eaten statue on an altar.

"(So they'll eat people and statues, but everything else be damned? This place no makes sense. ...Neither here nor there.)" Sano thought sarcastically. As he prepared his god-arc, the gboro-gboro nibbling on some wooden debris turned around and snarled at him.

Kanon aimed her gun right at the beast and with killing intent pulled the trigger.

click

"..." Kanon pressed the mechanism again.

click click

"Awwww, I'm out of ammo! Man!" she whined, lowering her weapon.

"Let's fix that." Sano said as he leisurely walked to the gboro-gboro.

Dropping the wooden planks from its mouth, it took a few steps to the god-eater. Bearing its shark-like teeth, it reared back its ginormous head to inhale.

Before it could get the chance to do more, Sano had sliced its cheek making it flinch. As it tried to counter-attack he sliced its other cheek.

The killer croc shook its head and bobbed it towards Sano to headbutt him. Sano swiftly jumped above the gboro-gboro and sliced off its head fin.

RAAAAAAAACCCGGGHKK!

It grew angry and made for another charge, but Sano hit its jaw with his claymore's side. The creature's teeth broke and it became inert.

Sano followed up by cutting up its nose-horn. He then sliced its back and cut the coral-like appendages on its jaw. He jumped off its face landing next to Kanon with a final cut on the gboro-gboro's forehead.

"Will that do it?" Sano asked.

Kanon felt her gun emit new energy. A gen-1 god eater's blade was the fuel for another gen-1's gun. That was just how the system was designed.

"Yep, thanks a bunch!" Kanon said cheerfully. She immediately shot a bullet right through the gboro-gboro's smashed teeth.

Its eyes glowed red for a moment before its whole body imploded in red light, leaving it a husk, dead. You couldn't tell if the smoke was from the fire-bomb or the oracle emission.

Sano extended his god-arcs predator form and swallowed the gboro-gboro whole. It belched a clump of smoke as it reverted back to a blade.

The two then turned to the left corner of the temple with a shrug. Feasting on a wood chip was another gboro-gboro completely oblivious to their presence.

"Wow...not one reaction. HEY! YOUR FRIEND'S DEAD!" Kanon shouted, cocking her gun.

The amphibian made no reaction.

"Kanon you know Gboro-gboro's have bad hearing." Kota said, coming into the temple.

"And I told you to stay in LINE-OF-SIGHT!" Kota said firmly, pointing his finger right in Sano's face.

Suddenly Kota's sixth sense went off again. He and Sano looked up to the roof.

Another gboro-gboro poked in through one of the holes. Squeezing through it landed on the altar barely not finishing off the damaged statue.

As it found the god-eaters it screeched and bobbed its head charging right at them.

"Spread out!" Kota said as he jumped back to the entrance.

Kanon moved out the way, but as she prepared her gun she noticed Sano stayed in the same position.

"Sano?" she said.

Kota noticed the same and quickly took aim at the aragami.

The gboro-gboro leaped forward increasing its speed, and Sano stood his ground raising his god-arc.

In the blink of an eye, before Kanon or Kota could pull the trigger, the upper jaw of the gboro-gboro was lopped off and flipped in the air to Kota's face.

Kanon let out a sigh of relief seeing her partner was never in any danger.

With its upper body gone, the beast twitched and tilted down the ramp out the shrine.

From its body dropped an oval-shaped core.

Sano morphed his god-arc to predator-form once again, but as the tendrils formed it took a different shape.

The smaller strings of keloids, formed into a whip-like tendril.

Sano swung out the whip and like their partner, the unknowing gboro-gboro was bisected and it fell limp stripped of its core.

The tendril then took hold of the core outside, only to recede back into a basic predator-form eating one, and dropping the other in Sano's hand.

As his god-arc feasted Sano crushed it and let the dust breeze on his face.

"Wowwwww." Kanon whispered, awed once again by her partner.

"(What the hell!?)" Kota thought, trying to make sense of what just transpired.

Before he could vocalize it, his phone rang off, and with an aggravated sigh he answered.

"Captain, it's Erina." Erina's voice came in over radio buzz.

"Yeah, come in." Kota said in the speaker.

"The 3rd gboro-gboro woke up." Erina said.

"Do you have eyes on it? Where's it headed?" Kota asked, scanning both sides for signs of the amphibian.

"That's the thing. It's already dead, another aragami came along and killed it." Erina said.

Kota's eye's widened, and he motioned Sano and a gushing Kanon to him.

"What is it!? Is it coming to the temple!?" Kota asked frantically.

"Uuummmm...Ulkiovra? It's still eating the gboro-gboro. " Erina said.

"Ukonvasara!? Erina, stay in the bell tower, we'll be right over there. If the gboro-gboro's dead, then the missions finished." Kota got another beep.

"Hold on, I'm getting another call, jeez!" Kota said, pressing a button.

"Captain, wait I can get it from up here." Erina argued.

"NO. DO-NOT engage! The mission's over, we got what we came for, standby and we'll come to pull you out!" Kota commanded.

"I have the shot and it's sitting there eating!" Erina yelled.

"Stay-Put!" Kota commanded before hanging up on her to answer the other call.

"Kota, Come in!" a female voice came out of his phone.

"Yeah, I'm here Hibari!" Kota replied, descending the ramp of the temple.

"Finally! I've been trying to reach you, a new oracle response entered the temple ruins!" she said.

"An Ukonvasara." Kota said.

"Uh-Yes! Have you already engaged it?" Hibari asked frantically.

"No, Erina spotted it, but dumb kid wants to handle it alone. Our initial mission's done, we're pulling out after we get her!" Kota said, putting away his phone.

"Affirmative." Hibari said as the transmission cut.

At the bell tower, Erina watched impatiently from above as the crocodile devoured its prey. Its shiny skin covered in metal-like scales only served to enhance its pupilless white eyes.

It was just waiting there, its back turned to her, completely vulnerable. One ambush could render it unable to fight and she could kill it in a second.

As her impatience grew, she aimed her gun at the Ukon and pondered whether to take action or keep to this spot.

Erina wouldn't-couldn't wait anymore, she had a plan of action and could execute with no trouble. She positioned herself upon the railing and jumped down readying her shotgun.

The Ukon didn't get to react as Erina placed the barrel of her gun to its face and blasted a burst of frost bullets.

Its head went flying to the stone platform supporting the bell tower and wobbled in a daze.

ERINA WHAT WAS THAT!?

A shout echoed out of Erina's pocket.

She pulled out her phone as she charged her spear. "Engaging the aragami and finishing it off!" Erina said as she quickly tossed her phone.

"No Erina! You've never fought a Ukonvasara before! They don't fight like the gboro-gboro or most aragami! They fight using feints! ERINA!" Kota yelled, and quickly with Sano and Kanon rounding the turn to the bell tower.

Erina leaped and went full throttle, unleashing her spear's true form.

Right as she was close to the croc, it suddenly shuffled back. Erina missed by a nose as her spear stuck itself into the stone platform.

"Hey don't you run!" she shouted but found her spear firmly planted into the rock. Erina could only watch helplessly as the Ukon backed away farther from her.

She let out a sigh of aggravation as she picked up the footsteps of the older god-eaters.

"Captain! It ran away, I almost got it!" Erina yelled as she tried to remove her spear from the frosted platform.

Just as when it finally budged, a pair of jaws encompassed her.

From the girls' perception time to began move painfully slow.

As the jaws closed over Erina, panic began to take her. No matter how fast she tried to move, no matter where she looked to escape, the result would be the same.

This was happening, she was going to be eaten.

ERINA!!!!!!!

As the jaws clamped down, the last thing she heard was the desperate call of her name.