Getter Out Of Here: Tales from the Dark Star's Universe

"CHANGE GETTER-!"

I must have said those words hundreds of times since Dark Matter began invading Earth and...well...its victory over the Kobbers. Us included, I suppose. Oh, I should introduce myself.

My name is Yoshiko Tsushima. Along with my friends You Watanabe and Hanamaru Kunikida, I was a pilot for the fantastic super robot Getter Robo! With three forms powered by an incredible energy source from space and with us members of the Stratford Institute of Technology and Robotics piloting, it helped to defend the Earth against alien invaders and hostile would-be tyrants! For years, we scored victory after victory over Dark Matter's robot monsters that attacked us to steal Professor Stratford's fantastic Getter Ray technology!

In hindsight, it seems like we were merely a sideshow for the actual invasion, always seeming to get attacked by one or two...what did the Professor call them?...Mechasauruses, I think. Dark Matter's minions would always attack us in small groups every few days, sometimes as long as a month apart. We didn't know where they came from, but they were almost always formidable opponents, even for our magnificent Getter Robo, but through teamwork and perseverance, we always pulled through, triumphing over everything thrown at us!

As long as the great Getter Team of Yohane, Zura, and the Captain - oh, those were the nicknames me, Hanamaru, and You went by, really...kind of silly in hindsight but we were...naive. Anyway, as long as we were together, would couldn't ever lose, we told ourselves!

And then the murders began.

Well, murders is a dramatic way of saying it, but Dark Matter stopped taking us so lightly one day, about a month before...well...let's not get ahead of ourselves. As the years went by, we lost contact with more and more Kobbers. Some must have died, others were captured. We know this because the Mechasaurus stopped coming and in their place were the Kobbers. Big ones.

The first was Labrys, an android captured and reprogrammed by Dark Matter's pet scientists and fused with a powerful mech buried beneath Las Vegas. We called it Big O. That was the first time any of us Getter pilots had actually been injured ourselves; plenty of mechanical damage, but we'd always maintained an aura of personal invincibility. It was tougher than anything we'd faced and was armed to the teeth. It went down swinging, landing one last punch on Hanamura's Getter-3 before it died, almost crushing my friend.

Just days later, with Hanamura still in bandages as she piloted, we were challenged by God Neptune. From what we knew, Decepticon pirates had actually come to Earth to take advantage of the chaos caused by Dark Matter to harvest the world for Energon Cubes to take off-world. Dangerous work, but potentially valuable enough that they could retire. Well, Dark Matter caught wind of them and subsumed them as well, adding their powerful combined form to its forces. It might not have been as powerful as Big O, but with so many minds in one body, it was hard to actually kill and nearly killed You.

King J-Der...we had no idea where it came from or who was piloting it...if it even had one. All we knew was we were up against our most formidable opponent ever when it showed up, towering over our Getter Robo. We'd never faced anything so large and, until recently, heavily armed. Our energy attacks washed over its barrier like water and none of our projectiles were having much luck either. This enemy was big and strong, able to withstand anything we threw at it and able to match us move for move. We pulled out all the stops, flying at speeds that almost made us black out, reckless attacks that almost got us killed multiple times but were all we could do to land a decisive hit, and mustering all of the courage and teamwork we could to finally bring it down. By the end of the battle, I was the only one left conscious in Getter Robo; You was knocked unconscious when we took a missile hit and Hanamaru passed out from exhaustion trying to match King J-Der's strength.

We weren't done.

Whoever Dark Matter had put in charge of attacking us for so many years must have been feeling confident that morning. I awoke that day in the medical ward to find the Institute in chaos, an evacuation in-progress as staff and researching were emptying the building of equipment and documents and hauling them off in whatever vehicles they could find. The only person who didn't seem to be participating in the furious terror was Professor Stratford herself, who simply stood in the control room watching the monitor, where our last opponent had appeared that morning and stood patiently.

Godzilla.

God. Fucking. Zilla.

My blood turned to ice and my heart stopped as I stood next to the brilliant genius, amazed that even the most powerful lifeform on the planet had eventually succumbed to the machinations of Dark Matter. Our enemy was done playing around; we were no longer needed for the greater war effort so we were going to be stomped out of existence. Why just stand there though? Why not attack?

My shock and confusion must have been evident. Professor Stratford - Deb, as she always insisted we call her and never did - just looked at me with a sad smile.

"He's waiting for you," was all she said.

Our enemy had something to prove then. For a moment, I was unable to move. You and Hanamura - my Captain and Zura - were in no condition to pilot Getter Robo. It was more or less repaired, but we pilots weren't so easy to fix. The robot could be piloted by one person, sure, but nowhere near full strength. After a few tense moments, my heart was beating again, threatening to tear itself out of my chest as I began heading to the hangar.

"You're not going to fight though."

I turned and Professor Stratford was busy on a console, typing rapidly.

"You can't win, Yoshiko. We both know it. Captain and Zura were the first ones out. Everyone is leaving, you included."

I stopped. "But...Getter Robo..."

"Take Getter Robo and fly away, as far as you can," she ordered. "You'll find someone who can help you...somewhere."

Tears welled up in my eyes. "But what about you?" The ground began to tremble. Was Godzilla making a move now?

The professor...Deb...took a photograph out of her pocket. It was amazing how much she'd seemed to age in just a few years, but she looked at it once and then pocketed it. "Don't you worry. I'm going home to see my boys after this, I promise."

Her boys... She'd often talked about her two sons in the present tense, but we'd never met or seen them ourselves. Her closest aides had been tight-lipped on the subject and she'd always treated us pilots like her kids. She sounded confident though, a reassuring statement that was good enough for me at the time. Something about it still bothered me, but in the heat of the moment I couldn't remember why.

It wasn't until later that I realized what she'd really meant.

As I ran down the hall, it was amazing how the chaos managed to be almost orderly. Then again, there was currently only urgency and no danger yet. The enemy was at the door and waiting to be let in. The absurd politeness would've made me laugh if things weren't so dire. Nobody stopped me, nobody tried to guide me anywhere; too busy taking care of their own work, probably assumed I was going to do the same.

The hangar was empty. Getter Robo had been prepared for launch and then the entire crew had evacuated. Unlike everywhere else in the Institute, it was deathly quiet in there. I could hear my footsteps echoing through the massive room, designed to store, maintain, and deploy a 40-meter tall robot. It wasn't until I boarded that I realized with a pain in my heart that I was alone. Even when things had been at their worst, I'd had my friends and copilots to talk to, to joke with and be scared with. Now it was just me and-

"Yoshiko."

Professor Stratford's voice came through the speakers suddenly as her image appeared in the cockpit, getting a jump out of me.

"Yes, Professor?"

The ground trembled. I had a feeling what the problem was.

"I'm sorry. I was hoping to wait for everyone to leave, but the enemy is moving in. They must have known you were about to take off," she explained regretfully.

"I'll fight him!" I swore. "I can-!"

"No!" she cut in sharply. "You will do no such thing. I...I'm going to detonate the reactor."

A massive Getter Ray-powered reactor that provided the entire Institute with its energy, a huge self-sustaining energy source full of volatile power. There was no way anyone still in the Institute would survive.

"I know what you're thinking. I've made up my mind," Professor Stratford sighed. "You can make it though if you leave now."

The ground trembled again. Or maybe it was just me taking in what she was saying. Tears ran down my cheeks as I shook my head. "I won't leave you, Deb!"

 "Took you long enough to call me that." The older woman smiled. "I won't lose any more youngsters to the Dark Matter though."

I looked at the monitor, confused. As Deb continued to work though and the hangar doors began opening, it hit me: one of the first targets hit by Dark Matter when it started its war was Deb's hometown. Almost everyone killed in the fighting; Deb has survived by being here overseeing construction of the Institute.

It snapped into place as a timer to the reactor's detonation began to tick down. Sixty seconds until a small apocalypse occurred in front of me, whether the atomic dinosaur steadily stomping towards us or the devastating bomb that had been my home for a few years. One way or another though?

Deb was going home.

The next ten seconds were a life-changing blur. All I could see as Getter Robo began flying into the air was the explosion, expanding outward from the building, destroying everything in its path. Moments before it engulfed me, I could see it hitting the King of the Monsters, reducing it to dust. I don't know why, but the Getter explosion destroyed it in a strange, horrible way: melting the flesh from its bones and then reducing those bones to atoms. It roared defiantly until the end though as the light engulfed me as well.

I don't know how long I was unconscious following that explosion.

When I woke up, I was tired, hungry, and in pain. Everything was dark except for a few lights on the control panel, but nothing felt right. I felt...light? When the camera finally turned on, I found myself staring at a sea of stars: I wasn't on Earth anymore. I looked about in a panic only to find myself above...Jupiter?! The largest planet in the solar system sat beneath me, turning without a care in the world as I tried to get my bearings.

And that's where I am now, drifting through space, starving to death, and alone except for bad memories. Do I even WANT to return to Earth though? Better to die as myself than be subsumed by Dark Matter.

Wait...

Is that a ship?! It's...it's MASSIVE.

That's weird...

Why does it have a large face on it?