#the primal desire to shove large rounded objects into one's shirt and pretend you have an absolute pair of bazongas

[mechazushi]

More Monster than Man, More Metal than Monster. Parts and parts and parts of a whole, but still can't give less than his all.

So I was kind of joking about Kafka not being able to keep his legs, but that thought sort of spiraled into.... this.

(Look, I've made it clear drawing is not my foremost best talent, but Kaiju Number 8 is forcing my hand.)

So the idea is coming from a few places, namely, you guessed it, Chapter 117. (The grip it has on me, the grip I tell you! King Arthur couldn't pull it out of my mind even if he tried.)

With the recent chapters implying that Kafka needs to have a deeper connection with his inner Kaiju before he can defeat anything as well as there is something preventing some part of his hand from reverting back to normal, I've been enamored with the idea of more parts of Kafka succumbing to the Kaiju within and just have more and more of him turn into a tamer version of his base form. And then we get hit with what might just be the fourth time we see Kafka's legs get fucked up (Kaiju stepped on it when he was in the Sweepers, twice with Isao [once in dream sequence, the other during the fight] and now. Please let me know if there are others that I've forgotten.) And now I'm just like ". . .Well at this point, just replace the damn things.", which is so far up my alley, it's practically starring in the concert hall. Soooo... yeah. Kafka, stuck halfway through a transformation and now has his legs replaced.

I didn't mean to give him "Wattpad Body Guard Novel Cover" Energy with the hat and face mask, but I like to think he would start to wear something like that if his face did get stuck in the way it looks like in some of his cover art. I doubled down on the whole "He can't keep his legs on his person" by making it part of the AU that there's several steps needed to be done before he can take his legs off. There's a metal latch, a rotating locking pin, and f*cking fingerprint recognition on the inside of the leg. Part of me wanted to draw steam shooting out of it, and I might if I ever feel like drawing more of him like this. The leg itself is supposed to look like it's made out of Black Diamond Plate, a blue aerogel section around the knee section, and glowing panels. (The scientists that made the leg added that on as surprise.)

I think the reason I like this idea so much is because it plays into a specific characterization of Kafka that isn't really played upon much. (To be fair, it might not be obvious at first and you might have to dig for evidence for it.) People like to portray him as just a happy guy, no matter the circumstances. Others like to play up his potential depression. I like to view him as a man who can't stop sacrificing. By God, he spent every year that he could trying to get into the Defense Force, and by God he's going to make his last chance count. You could say "Even if it kills him", but it's not. It's not going to kill him: he's not going to die. If he dies, then that means that someone would have to take his place. And that scares him more than dying. He's going to wander around the Defense bases as a husk of what he once was, his fuel being an ever constant need to make sure no one else has to feel the same levels of fear everyone he loved once felt. Even if it means he becomes a fractured memory of an innocent man.

@narumi-gimmick-blog Because I really liked your comment on the last post I made. He will never lose that challenge again. 🤣

@sonicasura Idk, you seem to like AU shit, so here. I guess this is thanks for tagging me in some of your Crossover AU takes?