File 16
Monarch File 16
My trip to Kyoto in 2015 was paid for by Monarch. The city became Japan's capital once more after the fall of Tokyo in 1995, with a 1.54 million population after the reconstruction efforts that followed. Today the city is quite prosperous, and has been home to multiple conferences involving the subject of both kaiju and extra species, including the famous Kyoto conference in 2001. Kyoto was also the place where liminal's were first publicly revealed to the world, and in correlation to this, Kyoto also boasts one of the highest city dwelling Youkai populations. A great majority of these tend to be mammalian species like kitsunes and forked cats.
Today, the purpose of my travels is to visit the ESP Institute outside the city limits. I will be visiting Furude Rika, a former student and current senior Professor of the Institute. She is an accomplished psychic and one of the current leading experts on the rare "Projection" art of ESP.
Rika was born in the village of Hinamizawa, which was devastated during Baragon's* first attack in 1989. A then sixteen year old Rika witnessed and survived this incursion, during which she activated her latent psychic powers to save herself and some friends from an out of control truck. Rika was then taken under noted professor Miki Saegusa's wing afterwards at the Institute. In her time there over the decades, she was the first to develop the art of psychic projection, and she witnessed several incidents like the Controversial K-Contact experiments of the 1990's alongside multiple other kaiju attacks. Nowadays, Rika remains as a teacher to new students and psychics while also acting as a consultant for solid based abilities.
After some travel time and sightseeing, I reach her office for the interview. The office has multiple models of various mecha and kaiju on some shelves in the back, alongside a varied collection of books relating to psychics, ancient myths and legends from the Gifu Prefecture, a few volumes on subterranean wildlife, and a Totenkopf novel**. Newspaper clippings line the walls, depicting photos of events such as Red Ronin standing over a defeated Baragon and other kaiju, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult being arrested, and the official signing of the Interspecies Exchange Bill.
Dressed in a typical white lab coat like many of her colleagues, the middle-aged Professor Rika is waiting in her office. Greetings are exchanged between us, and the interview begins.
XXX
Q1: What is the experience of being an esper like?
A: "It's not easy to describe to those without it. It is like describing color to the blind or sound to the deaf. But I'd say that at it's simplest, ESP is like a seventh sense. It's something new, and something that one who unlocks it will have to get used to. Yes, there are times when one can use psychic powers immediately as in a life or death situation, but those first times are basically like injections of adrenaline in that they are temporary and draining afterwards. Sometimes it can be frightening. But if you have enough discipline, if you take the time to really learn your abilities, then...it's like a whole other world opening up, one that you can touch if you focus enough. Once that happens, the feeling is both one of wonder, relief, fear...and responsibility. That part is very important, and I feel that everyone in this building should acknowledge this. If you want another explanation, feel free to ask the other professors. Next?"
Q2: What are your thoughts on the contact experiments?
A: "Both failures and successes. While trying to influence another humanoid's mind is expressly forbidden by law depending on where you are, the experiments a few decades ago that involved reaching into the minds of wild animals has proved to be a worthwhile venture. Psychic volunteers have been able to see through the eye's of a Beluga in the Bering Sea and a pride of Lion's in Africa. The scientific potential is and has proved to be highly useful and informative. Of course, there have been hiccups. Mentally encountering a kaiju by accident or not rarely ends well. The ESP volunteers that accidentally summoned Sarcosteon towards the testing site near Fuyuki City in 1991 come to mind, even if disaster was narrowly averted. The few times kaiju contact experiments haven't ended in disaster involved captive kaiju such as the ones on Monster Island. Other instances that went well involved Rodan when it was hibernating in Mexico, and even so it went relatively well because the kaiju was in suspended animation essentially.
On the results of the actual experiments, very few have had any success in influencing a kaiju. The best that could be done was seeing the world from a kaiju's eyes for a few moments or seeing it's dreams, such as what happened with Rodan and the kaiju of the MI. That information alone has plenty of value to people from multiple fields. However, when a contact experiment goes wrong, it goes wrong.
The best result is simply being forced out of the kaiju's mind when it notices you are there, such as like what happened when Tamamo pushed out the volunteers on the Island or when Godzilla knocked Miki Saegusa unconscious when she tried to drive him away from the Persian Gulf. At worst, said kaiju will home in on the psychic minds that touched it's own like a beacon. Once nearly happened to me when I volunteered for an experiment. It's a good thing a nearby security team was there when that Meganulon drone stared breaking through it's cage to get at me.
Anyway, to put it simply, successfully looking into a kaiju's mind involves a multitude of factors, such as current environment, physical and mental state of the organism involved, and it's comfort level beforehand. This is key to the only successful contact experiment with Godzilla in 1995. That only worked due to a variety of factors involving both Godzilla himself and the people involved. That was before...Tokyo. Before it all went wrong.
Never mind, I didn't have much involvement in these experiments after the bug nearly tried to eat my face off. Still, I hope my answers are satisfying so far.
Personally, I feel that these experiments are very dangerous.
But trying is better then doing nothing at all."
Q3: How does it feel to be the creator of the first psychic projection?
A: "Oh, that? It was mostly sheer luck. I wasn't even trying to summon her when I did it, I was just trying to lift some stones. I was as surprised as everyone else when it happened, really. Overtime, I simply repeated what I felt had happened, and in this time I felt I've done quite well with my projection. She's almost like family now, that's how good I am at wielding her- Oh, you wish to know how I feel for founding that style of ESP? Personally, I just feel I learned something new like anyone else starting out as a psychic. Potentially any student could crate their own projection given enough training. At least that's how I feel, and for those who wish to learn my office is usually open. As for the projection itself, in a way I did have previous-"
A loud, drum like alarm interrupts us both.
After a brief jump, the look in Rika's eyes echoes my own thoughts.
"Kaiju." She calmly says, and with nary a nod we are both out the door, me grabbing my notes and Rika several of her books.
Outside, it is pandemonium as expected as students and teachers dash out of various classes, testing rooms, and restrooms. Some try to move together with discipline, while others run forward as fast as they can. Shouts are heard all around us as the alarm continues.
More then a few head in the opposite direction from us.
The KDF designed bunker lays a few floors below us, with the nearby stairs being slightly longer but ultimately safer to use in this situation compared to the elevators.
Alongside a good deal of students and few professors, we reach the entrance to the Kaiju Raid Bunker. The circular vault entrance is under a red light, with the continuing alarm doing little to calm anyone. As Rika approaches the vault entrance alongside a younger, scruffy looking teacher, I hear some useful tidbits from
some students with their phones out among the crowd's panic.
"It's near the 10 mile mark at the bay-"
"I hear their calling this one Gesura-"
"Like the squid?"
"No, it looks more like a shark-"
At the entrance, the young teacher frantically starts running a hand through his messy hair. "It's not opening! The switch, I think there's some sort of error with it-"
Before Pandemonium can erupt even further, Rika politely interrupts him. "Stand back." The man turns around, then opens and closes his mouth when he realizes who is talking. He does as she says, stepping back. Rika walks up to the vault door.
She calmly speaks.
"Hanyu."
There is no flash of light, and no dramatic gesture from Rika.
The projection is simply there when she says it's name.
While I can't see the front of the entity, from the back I can see two curved black horns on a head of long-light purple hair. The projection is dressed in what I later
identify as a red hakama and white haori. Standing in front of the heavily armored entrance, the projection grabs the side of the door and pulls to the left.
After half a minute of audible straining and groaning (From the door), it is fully pulled open. "Hanyu" then vanishes as suddenly as it arrived.
Slightly scratching her scalp, Rika is the first to enter the darkened, spacious shelter. "Agent," she begins as lights begin to turn on inside the circular arena, "I apologize for the interruption. It looks like we will have to talk again sometime later."
As the rest of us file into the shelter without (mostly) running over each other, I can only hope that there is a toilet available.
[REDACTED FOR BREVITY AND FOR THE SAKE OF MULTIPLE INDVIIDUALS DIGNITY]
-All in all, upon exiting the city on one of the remaining transports, it was an overall informative learning opportunity.
XXX
*Baragon is the name of a one horned Oni from obscure Hinamzawan lore, one said to eat fire and live beneath the Earth. Said name was appropriately enough chosen by the KDF as the designation for the burrowing kaiju.
**A Series of horror novels set in the Edo Period of Japan's history by Hojo Satoko, a fellow survivor of Baragon's first attac
My trip to Kyoto in 2015 was paid for by Monarch. The city became Japan's capital once more after the fall of Tokyo in 1995, with a 1.54 million population after the reconstruction efforts that followed. Today the city is quite prosperous, and has been home to multiple conferences involving the subject of both kaiju and extra species, including the famous Kyoto conference in 2001. Kyoto was also the place where liminal's were first publicly revealed to the world, and in correlation to this, Kyoto also boasts one of the highest city dwelling Youkai populations. A great majority of these tend to be mammalian species like kitsunes and forked cats.
Today, the purpose of my travels is to visit the ESP Institute outside the city limits. I will be visiting Furude Rika, a former student and current senior Professor of the Institute. She is an accomplished psychic and one of the current leading experts on the rare "Projection" art of ESP.
Rika was born in the village of Hinamizawa, which was devastated during Baragon's* first attack in 1989. A then sixteen year old Rika witnessed and survived this incursion, during which she activated her latent psychic powers to save herself and some friends from an out of control truck. Rika was then taken under noted professor Miki Saegusa's wing afterwards at the Institute. In her time there over the decades, she was the first to develop the art of psychic projection, and she witnessed several incidents like the Controversial K-Contact experiments of the 1990's alongside multiple other kaiju attacks. Nowadays, Rika remains as a teacher to new students and psychics while also acting as a consultant for solid based abilities.
After some travel time and sightseeing, I reach her office for the interview. The office has multiple models of various mecha and kaiju on some shelves in the back, alongside a varied collection of books relating to psychics, ancient myths and legends from the Gifu Prefecture, a few volumes on subterranean wildlife, and a Totenkopf novel**. Newspaper clippings line the walls, depicting photos of events such as Red Ronin standing over a defeated Baragon and other kaiju, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult being arrested, and the official signing of the Interspecies Exchange Bill.
Dressed in a typical white lab coat like many of her colleagues, the middle-aged Professor Rika is waiting in her office. Greetings are exchanged between us, and the interview begins.
XXX
Q1: What is the experience of being an esper like?
A: "It's not easy to describe to those without it. It is like describing color to the blind or sound to the deaf. But I'd say that at it's simplest, ESP is like a seventh sense. It's something new, and something that one who unlocks it will have to get used to. Yes, there are times when one can use psychic powers immediately as in a life or death situation, but those first times are basically like injections of adrenaline in that they are temporary and draining afterwards. Sometimes it can be frightening. But if you have enough discipline, if you take the time to really learn your abilities, then...it's like a whole other world opening up, one that you can touch if you focus enough. Once that happens, the feeling is both one of wonder, relief, fear...and responsibility. That part is very important, and I feel that everyone in this building should acknowledge this. If you want another explanation, feel free to ask the other professors. Next?"
Q2: What are your thoughts on the contact experiments?
A: "Both failures and successes. While trying to influence another humanoid's mind is expressly forbidden by law depending on where you are, the experiments a few decades ago that involved reaching into the minds of wild animals has proved to be a worthwhile venture. Psychic volunteers have been able to see through the eye's of a Beluga in the Bering Sea and a pride of Lion's in Africa. The scientific potential is and has proved to be highly useful and informative. Of course, there have been hiccups. Mentally encountering a kaiju by accident or not rarely ends well. The ESP volunteers that accidentally summoned Sarcosteon towards the testing site near Fuyuki City in 1991 come to mind, even if disaster was narrowly averted. The few times kaiju contact experiments haven't ended in disaster involved captive kaiju such as the ones on Monster Island. Other instances that went well involved Rodan when it was hibernating in Mexico, and even so it went relatively well because the kaiju was in suspended animation essentially.
On the results of the actual experiments, very few have had any success in influencing a kaiju. The best that could be done was seeing the world from a kaiju's eyes for a few moments or seeing it's dreams, such as what happened with Rodan and the kaiju of the MI. That information alone has plenty of value to people from multiple fields. However, when a contact experiment goes wrong, it goes wrong.
The best result is simply being forced out of the kaiju's mind when it notices you are there, such as like what happened when Tamamo pushed out the volunteers on the Island or when Godzilla knocked Miki Saegusa unconscious when she tried to drive him away from the Persian Gulf. At worst, said kaiju will home in on the psychic minds that touched it's own like a beacon. Once nearly happened to me when I volunteered for an experiment. It's a good thing a nearby security team was there when that Meganulon drone stared breaking through it's cage to get at me.
Anyway, to put it simply, successfully looking into a kaiju's mind involves a multitude of factors, such as current environment, physical and mental state of the organism involved, and it's comfort level beforehand. This is key to the only successful contact experiment with Godzilla in 1995. That only worked due to a variety of factors involving both Godzilla himself and the people involved. That was before...Tokyo. Before it all went wrong.
Never mind, I didn't have much involvement in these experiments after the bug nearly tried to eat my face off. Still, I hope my answers are satisfying so far.
Personally, I feel that these experiments are very dangerous.
But trying is better then doing nothing at all."
Q3: How does it feel to be the creator of the first psychic projection?
A: "Oh, that? It was mostly sheer luck. I wasn't even trying to summon her when I did it, I was just trying to lift some stones. I was as surprised as everyone else when it happened, really. Overtime, I simply repeated what I felt had happened, and in this time I felt I've done quite well with my projection. She's almost like family now, that's how good I am at wielding her- Oh, you wish to know how I feel for founding that style of ESP? Personally, I just feel I learned something new like anyone else starting out as a psychic. Potentially any student could crate their own projection given enough training. At least that's how I feel, and for those who wish to learn my office is usually open. As for the projection itself, in a way I did have previous-"
A loud, drum like alarm interrupts us both.
After a brief jump, the look in Rika's eyes echoes my own thoughts.
"Kaiju." She calmly says, and with nary a nod we are both out the door, me grabbing my notes and Rika several of her books.
Outside, it is pandemonium as expected as students and teachers dash out of various classes, testing rooms, and restrooms. Some try to move together with discipline, while others run forward as fast as they can. Shouts are heard all around us as the alarm continues.
More then a few head in the opposite direction from us.
The KDF designed bunker lays a few floors below us, with the nearby stairs being slightly longer but ultimately safer to use in this situation compared to the elevators.
Alongside a good deal of students and few professors, we reach the entrance to the Kaiju Raid Bunker. The circular vault entrance is under a red light, with the continuing alarm doing little to calm anyone. As Rika approaches the vault entrance alongside a younger, scruffy looking teacher, I hear some useful tidbits from
some students with their phones out among the crowd's panic.
"It's near the 10 mile mark at the bay-"
"I hear their calling this one Gesura-"
"Like the squid?"
"No, it looks more like a shark-"
At the entrance, the young teacher frantically starts running a hand through his messy hair. "It's not opening! The switch, I think there's some sort of error with it-"
Before Pandemonium can erupt even further, Rika politely interrupts him. "Stand back." The man turns around, then opens and closes his mouth when he realizes who is talking. He does as she says, stepping back. Rika walks up to the vault door.
She calmly speaks.
"Hanyu."
There is no flash of light, and no dramatic gesture from Rika.
The projection is simply there when she says it's name.
While I can't see the front of the entity, from the back I can see two curved black horns on a head of long-light purple hair. The projection is dressed in what I later
identify as a red hakama and white haori. Standing in front of the heavily armored entrance, the projection grabs the side of the door and pulls to the left.
After half a minute of audible straining and groaning (From the door), it is fully pulled open. "Hanyu" then vanishes as suddenly as it arrived.
Slightly scratching her scalp, Rika is the first to enter the darkened, spacious shelter. "Agent," she begins as lights begin to turn on inside the circular arena, "I apologize for the interruption. It looks like we will have to talk again sometime later."
As the rest of us file into the shelter without (mostly) running over each other, I can only hope that there is a toilet available.
[REDACTED FOR BREVITY AND FOR THE SAKE OF MULTIPLE INDVIIDUALS DIGNITY]
-All in all, upon exiting the city on one of the remaining transports, it was an overall informative learning opportunity.
XXX
*Baragon is the name of a one horned Oni from obscure Hinamzawan lore, one said to eat fire and live beneath the Earth. Said name was appropriately enough chosen by the KDF as the designation for the burrowing kaiju.
**A Series of horror novels set in the Edo Period of Japan's history by Hojo Satoko, a fellow survivor of Baragon's first attac
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