Godzilla 2000: New Era, PART 2 · 9:36pm Dec 24th, 2020
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July, 1999
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Seated in a desk chair in an ‘office’ that smelled of the fishery that the apartment was built into was a 30-something Japanese woman. Her attempt to look professional with a business suit and short, shoulder-length black hair clashed horribly with the grizzled fishermen she passed on the way here to the office. And with the office itself given it was blatantly a messy apartment despite the numerous computer and sound equipment laying around. Yuki Ichinose was her name and she was, frankly, extremely confused. When she signed up to join the GPN, or ‘Godzilla Prediction Network’ under an esteemed Dr. Yuji Shinoda, she was expecting something a little bit more …science-y? The exact terminology eluded her. Maybe some slightly overweight professor who had a radio dish set up on his van with the express intention of moving towards the gigantic kaiju that nobody had actually seen in almost half a decade aside from one rare sighting involving the current Mothra. Frankly she signed up expecting this to be some sort of bust and she could sell the footage and pictures to tabloids about some whacko of a professor who got let go from Kyoto Institute.
What she wasn’t expecting was for a little alien girl a third her age to give her a full dressing down on legal matters while chopping carrots on the desk.
“And as we are technically a subsidiary of the fishery, due to the potential impact of our subject on fish stocks we are entitled to their health and dental plan but you will need to pay extra for root canals. You are expected to pay into the pot for any damages or medical concerns we might need as well as share in any of the profits towards 501 non-for profit organizations-,” Io Shinoda deadpanned as she chopped carrots to add them to a mixing bowl.
Yuki just blinked at her. While aliens on the planet had become widely accepted as a fact of life and her generation had been brought up to be accepting, Mysterians and their hybrids were still a fairly rare sight. Other than seeing some on TV or a story Yuri Tachibana got her in on thanks to her father being a G-Force admiral, she hadn’t really interacted much with any of them. Well except for that one little girl with the pet dinosaur…
Yuki’s brow furrowed as she leaned in order to study Io’s face.
Io was wearing a hair net and a simple shirt and shorts, not the giant pigtails and school uniform Yuki remembered. And while she was colored in grayscale which made identification by the typical hair, skin, and eye color different; something was causing her to get an uncanny sense of déjà vu. She puzzled for a solid moment before noticing a disgruntled looking Io was staring right back at her.
“Ahem, I said; we also expect 50% of all profits you make off your pictures to the press.”
“What?! You’ve gotta be joking!” Yuki’s business sense caused her to snap back to reality and out of her stupor of being lectured by a little girl, “And don’t I know you from somewhere-… Wait…”
Io just blinked at her.
Yuki’s eyes widened as she remembered the all too uncanny shock of when she found a startled little girl and couch-sized dinosaur bumping into her at Kyoto Institute some years ago. She jolted up and pointed at Io.
“You’re the little girl who let the dinosaur out of his cage and was walking around with him, you made me trip over in the hallways!” she barked.
Io was unphased, “... And?”
Yuki scoffed and narrowed her eyes slightly with a pout, “You nearly busted my favorite camera!”
“… Imbecile,” Io grunted.
The girls blinked, her facial veins bulging, before abruptly vanishing from Yuki’s sight. Now the photographer blinked, hesitating as she looked about to make sure she wasn’t losing it.
“Imbecil-?!... Um… Hello? Little girl?.... Little Miss Business Woman?”
Another voice joining the conversation from the kitchen, “Io, that’s rude. She just wants to sign up with us. You know we need people.”
On cue Io returned into view, sitting in her chair with her little arms crossed and pouting slightly. Stepping out from the kitchen was… Yuki’s face felt a smidge warmer. Top class he was not, but Yuji Shinoda was not quite a sweaty, fat old professor in form just yet. The photographer glanced aside as Yuji took a seat next to his daughter.
“We charge a lot, but that’s because we’re a bit of a niche. So the payouts are good, but we only get paid every so often. Sorry if it seems like she was reading you the riot act, Io’s just very particular,” Yuji shrugged.
“You coach her to say all that?” Yuki muttered.
Yuji laughed, “Nah, my business sense wouldn’t even get me through a community college course. She’s the one who handles things with that… Listen, Miss Ichinose-“
“Yuki… Yuki’s fine,” she corrected, fiddling with her fingers and keeping her eyes trained on the paper.
Yuji paused but smiled and chuckled, “Yuki then, what we’re trying to do is very important. Who we’re studying is a special aberration that’s only appeared three times, and unlike the other two he’s hopefully quite docile. Well, docile unless you’re that Destroyah monster from a few years back. He’s been elusive recently, but we’ve gotten close, really close to spotting him.”
Yuji pulled out a photograph from years back to a place Yuki recognized, the Kyoto Biotechnics Institute. It was of a fairly small group, composed of himself, a few G-Force soldiers Yuki vaguely recognized, a technician or two, and the notable Dr. Azusa-then-Gojo-now-Aoki. And standing behind them was the very recognizable form of the immature third Godzilla, a little girl in a school uniform perched on his head. Yuki’s eyes subtly wandered to Io for a moment in recognition before realizing the little girl had her eyes extremely transfixed on the image. Comparing the then and now, Yuji didn’t look all that different; but Io was… Much less of what she was now. Even looked happy.
Yuji flipped through a few other pictures. A few Yuki recognized and a few she didn’t. A few were dating a year or two after 1993, someplace called Birth Island; and showed what she could presume was a juvenile stage of the same creature she’d just seen. At the sight, Yuki’s brow lifted and she stifled a small chuckle. For a kaiju, the thing was pretty cute with all the baby fat. A lot of that cuteness was gone by the next year, dated to a month and date of infamy. On the date Godzilla II died and the Destroyah attacked, some panicked photos by evacuating civilians recorded a hunched-over form appearing on the shore and later to Tokyo proper. Labeled “Teenager?” at that size and shape, Godzilla III far more resembled his father.
What happened the night in 1995 that Godzilla II, the scourge of Japan since 1984, perished was a matter of record more than visual. The massive amounts of radiation fried most CCTV cameras during the battle at the airport and many of the boots on the ground had better things to do than try and catch it all on film. Government and G-Force had video, but Yuki knew the blockades the media had on trying to get access to it. Godzilla II and III had perished, Destroyah meeting her demise alongside it, but then the radiation was absorbed away. A few sightings and footprints indicated a Godzilla appeared and moved off into the ocean, but no one was really sure of which one. With all the chaos the following years of Mothra Lea, DesGhidorah, Dagahra, and the mutant iguana attack on New York to show kaiju were going global again; the surviving Godzilla was elusive.
And yet, in her trembling hand, Yuki held something she’d never seen. A grainy, single photograph dated to 1998. It had been taken on a coastal shore, the label said “Odo Island”. Behind the seaspray, mist, rain, and surging tides, was a figure amidst the seas far in the distance. One illuminated by lightning with its outline visible, displaying a pointed snout and jagged dorsal plates. The text at the bottom was also far clearer. ‘Imprecise! Must. Get. Closer!’
“S-so... You want us to get up close with a Godzilla?” Yuki cleared her throat, “And you’re really willing to bet it was the third Godzilla that survived that night? I thought it was killed by the Destroyah?”
“Or just badly wounded,” Yuji muttered after glancing at Io, “We know whichever Godzilla it was, he’s been staying out at sea most of the time. Only came ashore during that big hurricane a year back.”
“Right, with the reports of it attacking that creature that looked like King Ghidorah at the same time the new Mothra went active as well,” Yuki muttered as she ran a finger over the picture, as if to feel at any texture within it. “So what convinced you that it’s the same Godzilla that was raised in Kyoto? I mean, they’ve all had a habit of appearing miraculously. It could be-”
“Because it’s him,” Io snapped with the punctuation in her voice that sounded like she was trying to stab with her tone. Some loose items on the table quivered from telekinesis run amok.
“Io, that’s enough,” Yuji grunted as he nodded towards the back tables, “How about you finish your schoolwork and I handle recruitment for tonight?”
Yuki glanced at Io’s face, seeing the swelling in her facial veins that clearly conveyed some level of stress despite her not audibly speaking of it. It instantly spurred the reporter to want to say something, if only because she could tell she had needlessly touched a nerve; but Io didn’t give her any chance. The girl abruptly got up from her seat and bowed to her father before scampering off to the other side of the office. She wasted little time in fetching up some pencil and paper and visibly burying herself in work.
“Excuse me one moment,” Yuji muttered as he paced over to the kitchen before retrieving a steaming bowl of dinner and returned to his daughter.
Yuki didn’t catch any whispers of conversation, only seeing Yuji pat Io’s shoulder and Io visibly wilt. They held hands briefly before she accepted the dinner and picked up a pair of headphones connected to a portable CD player to put on as she got back to work. Yuji shrugged and paced back to the desk with Yuki.
“Sorry about that,” he grunted while rubbing the back of his head.
“No, don’t apologize,” Yuki noted as she shook her head, “Kids are kids. I have some nieces and nephews.”
“Thanks,” Yuji sighed before he tapped at the photograph of the Godzilla captured at a distance from Odo island, “Truth be told, we’re not sure what this one is or how it behaves. Could be something totally new, could be one of the two from 1995 that we thought had died.”
“Young Miss Io seems very insistent it’s her not-so-little friend all grown up,” Yuki sighed as she glanced at the little girl who sat facing them but with her eyes hidden behind her bangs and her focus clearly on whatever music was coming through the headphones as well as the homework before her.
“That would certainly be the best outcome, assuming he still behaves the same way,” Yuji noted with pursed lips and downturned eyes.
Yuki tried to smile and shrugged her shoulders, “Seemed awful friendly before, even when I tripped over his tail.”
Yuji rubbed at the back of his head and nodded, “Extremely. But if he did survive he went through one heck of a traumatic experience, and he went from eating flowers to biting through whales even before he came ashore again in 95.”
He tapped his index finger upon the picture, “Bad as it is to say it, there’s no guarantee that Godzilla is the adult Junior. Or even if it is, there’s no guarantee he still behaves the same. I could look at how other predators might behave when they are babies versus when they are adults, could even look at how some traumatized people act before and after the fact; but there’s just no precedent for his species.”
“And your daughter is an optimist in this little multiple-choice, right?” Yuki muttered and Yuji nodded.
He sat back in his chair again, “It would certainly make research a lot easier and world safer for all of us if she is. Only problem is, she can’t ever get back what she had and I think she wants to. The radiation output on this new Godzilla is contained. He doesn’t irradiate the ocean he passes through. But that doesn’t change that he’s a hot reactor in the moment.”
Yuki glanced at the photo from Kyoto and shook her head, “No more riding on his head, even if you could probably fit a bus on top of there now.”
Yuji nodded, “Io has her wishes. Just like I want to study him and you want to photograph him. I can’t guarantee anything, much less of all of our wishes come true; but this research is important. I know it might seem like we’re trying to track Bigfoot, but what we have here is a golden opportunity to try and make headway into study that could help thousands. Not just in predicting his movements but also finding out more about him. He is quite a remarkable being.”
Yuki shivered as she remembered being surprised to see double rows of serrated teeth in her viewfinder with glowing red eyes staring at her perplexingly. And that was when he was not much bigger than a cow.
“If you’re concerned about dangers, I can promise you that we're going to be as safe as we can be. I was in Tokyo in 1984, I was also in Kyoto in 1993 so I was up close with the second Godzilla twice. Very-… uncomfortably close,” Yuji whispered slightly before clearing his throat upon realizing his voice was wavering slightly.
Yuki gave him a sympathetic nod, “I was at Fukuoka when Xenilla came calling. Not close, but… what is far enough away from a kaiju? Been in some other crazy places. You oughta ask Van Owen and Paladecki some time.”
Yuji raised an eyebrow, “Danger prone one, aren’t you?”
Yuki chuckled and raised her camera, “Makes for better pictures. I’m not much of an egghead, I’m mostly here because no one else has gotten a shot of this thing and with the Internet getting as big as it is these days, I want to be able to leave a little mark… Doesn’t mean I can’t further this cause of yours, though.”
“Well you’re certainly also helping pay for gas, I just promise you won’t have to pay for food,” Yuji snarked and smiled at the chuckle he got from Yuki.
Yuki let the laughter come as she checked over the paperwork and thought things through. Egghead she was not, but it didn’t take someone with a PhD to know the benefits of studying the only known living organism to thrive off of radiation. Between the bombs, the monster attacks, and the potential for nuclear plant meltdown, there probably wasn’t a single person in Japan who didn’t know someone affected. The very thing that crippled so many was fueling possibly the most powerful creature on the planet. One which was poorly documented and the subject of a rampant Internet message board debate.
Still, she was a career woman. On one hand, she could go back to working for the tabloids. Sensationalist, exaggerating, but relatively safe tabloids... On the other hand, mountain-sized dinosaurs, creepy alien girls, and forking over most of her profits. She was no scientist, she loved sensation. But she wasn’t going to turn her nose at doing something to help others and Mr. Shinoda-... Yuji, seemed pretty earnest about it. And... well... What could be more sensational than possibly being the woman known across Japan for running towards a kaiju armed with naught but a camera?
Yuki Ichinose smirked as she leaned in closer as Yuji did the same to listen, “Alright, where do I sign?”
Io watched as Ms. Ichinose and her dad continued talking amicably. The slight flush on both of their faces wasn’t lost on her and she wasn’t as much of an imbecile to not know some body language. It wasn’t overt, but there was some budding fondness no matter how different they were. Just the start of it, nothing significant. Would probably die off in a few days, especially when the superficial sot had to spend a few hours in the van with her and her father. Part of her knew her father had been lonely to some degree or another all the life she knew him for, and the thought that he would eventually find someone else wasn’t entirely upsetting. Everything she heard about her mother suggested Asuka wouldn’t want him to be alone forever if he wasn’t content, and if he found a good one, she didn’t mind him dating.
Fat chance he ever would. Not too rough on the eyes as he was, her father had the poise of a half-blind klutz and managed to be an absent-minded professor even if he didn’t teach anymore. At the time when he had to get a suit on, she had to tell him to do it over again because he had on backwards.
Io shrugged as she picked at her rice balls and went to the kitchen.
She wasn’t miserable anymore, just not nearly as active as she used to be. Maybe it was because she grew up too quick, or maybe it was her not having any friends but her father, and just getting along okay with some of the colleagues he maintained. Times like this she sometimes wished they hadn’t left Kyoto, only to be reminded why they did. In all their trucking across Japan they had never returned even when it was opportune.
But, maybe things would change…
Not with Miss Ichinose, Io had her pegged as a failure five minutes ago.
But, maybe with something else…
Io looked up to a picture pinned to the small refrigerator via an old magnet. One of a little girl with pigtails and a scaly body she was snoozing besides, a tail tip laid over her stomach. Next to it, a blurry, distant photograph taken on a stormy seashore, the island she was born on. While it mostly just showed raindrops and dark waves churning in the night, in the distance one could make out something standing up from the water. Not a ship, nor a lighthouse. But a living being with jagged spines and a bluish glow.
She knew her father thought she was in denial and trying to be an optimist, he was just too courteous to not say anything. But if hope was foolish she could let herself be the imbecile in this one situation.
Io’s perpetually stoic face risked a tiny smile.
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December, 1999
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Storming seas roiled as waves crashed against the bow of the C.C.I. research vessel Eiko-Ryu, a repurposed shipping vessel. Crisis Control Intelligence was ever vigilant in the quest for new ventures and information, the past decade and a half of monster attacks only proved threats to mankind’s supremacy could come from anywhere. Even if that anywhere entailed investigating even areas that just happened to be in the urban legendary ‘Devil’s Sea’, the Pacific counterpart to the Bermuda triangle. Capt. Reinhardt was all too aware that the infamy of the area was more than a little inflamed by recent popular fiction. The triangle-shaped area did have disappearances, but they were largely small fishing vessels that rarely had the best radios, and the weather was definitely not ideal. This was typhoon alley for the Pacific, complete with numerous undersea volcanoes.
Regardless they had reason to be in the area anyway, investigating potential volcanic vents the latest Godzilla might be camping out at. C.C.I was paying him and his crew very well for this, enough that superstitious worries regarding the area and the possible prospect of one of the few remaining kaiju on the planet didn’t deter them. In a few years they would all be destroyed. This new Godzilla, the rumored second individual of that lizard that attacked the United States, and the new Mothra. Such leviathans came crawling back from the dead in the 1980s and C.C.I. had been there the whole way providing weapons to put them back down throughout the 90s. A few stragglers wouldn’t be too long for this world that they had no business in.
His brow perked when the radio went off.
“Satsuma 2 to Eiko-Ryu, we found something while setting up the beacon.”
Captain Reinhardt put the intercom to his mouth as he eyed several sonar screens.
“Eiko-Ryu to Satsuma 2, how is the beacon deposition going?”
A small screen flickered showing the very narrow field of vision the Satsuma 2 submersible bore, one of the many subs deployed to put down the long range so our beacons and light some flares. Within the field of view lit up by the powerful floodlights were largely what the captain would have expected. A few startled deep-sea fishes, crabs, with a rocky and sandy bottom. One curiosity however were the large white objects coming into view, stuck into this sentiment.
“Whale bones,” the Captain noted passively, recognizing them from experience in his years mapping out the deep-sea.
Whenever the big creatures, big as proper animal should get, passed on out of the mortal coil their bodies would eventually sink. It was a smorgasbord for the scavengers and seeing bones on the bottom wasn’t anything unusual as those were the hardest breakdown for nature's cleanup crew. Judging from the size it was some kind of medium-scale baleen whale, possibly a humpback.
“Yes Captain, but… look.”
The camera panned aside and revealed something that made captain Reinhardt visibly double take. The skeleton was there, but past a certain point it looked…. Scrambled. Bones were twisted at odd angles, it almost look like it had three tails sprouting off the spine at strange positions, and there seem to be bony fins protruding from the dorsum.
The captain clicked the intercom back on, “Swing back around to the head.. And get closer, put more light on it.”
Satsuma 2’s crew obeyed, and Reinhardt was greeted to a sight not seen in any of his nautical books. The skull was still visibly that of a baleen whale, with a very long and pointed cranium. The hair-like plates of baleen which should have been there in life had probably long since rotted away, so its absence wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was the grizzly, anglerfish-like teeth protruding from the lower jaw that got revealed when the floodlights were firmly placed upon the skeleton. On closer inspection of the eye socket, the presence of another bony fin protruding from the head, and the strange warping of the bones made no sense. Whales and dolphins had flippers, but the two main ones were obviously modified arms if one had a passing glance at seeing the hands like bones within. The dorsal fin was entirely tissue, there shouldn’t be any trace of it on the skeleton; and the same can be said with the tail flukes. Whales don’t have bony fins like fish. And no humpback ever had fangs.
“Captain, we have movement!” Satsuma 2’s pilot yelped as the screen shook.
Reinhardt refocused his attention on the now shaking screen, the seafloor being vibrated violently as if there was a undersea earthquake or volcano. Sediment was being shaken away, revealing more mismatch skeletons buried in the sands as well more than a few broken ship hulls. Everything from dinghy-small fishing vessels to things that looked downright archaic.
“Ascend, ascend now! Drop the beacon and get out of there!” Captain Reinhardt barked as he started to put the ship in reverse, hopefully to get out of the way of any potential undersea volcanic vent that was opening up.
The view from Satsuma 2 shuddered as it started to comply, but the pilot kept the focus looking downward at the sundering seafloor. The mishmash whale skeleton split in two upon the bow of a previously buried sailing vessel, snapping the preserved mast and pushing the vessel aside. The actions scraped free the seafloor and revealed a large patch of something shiny previously buried in rocky concretion. The metal almost seemed to flash and pulse from the floodlights put upon it. Then something rammed into the Satsuma 2. Captain Reinhardt glimpsed a tooth before the feed.
Rain beat across the surface of the Eiko-Ryu, drenching anything the waves couldn’t reach. And yet even through the downpour Captain Reinhardt could hear the sonar pinging with excitement at the approach of a large object. Two of them, one far bigger than the other. The latter was several times the size of the ship. Reinhardt swore as he got on the intercom and did the nautical equivalent of flooring it with the engines. Satsuma 2, the smaller object, was still tethered to them and would have to put up with getting towed.
“Emergency, all hands brace. We are going all ahead full engines! Recovery crews on deck to reel in Satsuma 2. Get them back on board but don’t risk yourself!”
His crew scrambled, diligent and professional even in the light of this weather and situation. Even if he didn’t say it over the intercom, they all knew what might spur the ship to try and run away as fast as it could. Something the captain knew had big teeth and its kind had been destroying ships for almost half a century or more. The tether cables connected to the mini-sub were quickly reeled in by powerful winches as the research vessel powered forward. But if the awaiting crewmen expected to see the floodlights of the mini-sub starting to breach the surface, they were sorely disappointed when no such visage appeared. Instead all they got was a snapped cable.
Captain Reinhardt could see it from his deck as his brow furrowed. He glanced again at the sonar screen hoping against hope the larger object had been overtaken by the smaller one, the mini-sub, and that he wasn't going to have to send some flowers to family members for Satsuma 2’s crew. But instead the screen still registered two distinct objects. A much larger one that was heading straight up and a smaller but still significant sized mass approaching the deck. Approaching despite the fact there was no cable connecting it and they should’ve seen the subs floodlights by now. Approaching and not slowing down.
“Oh no… BRACE!-“
His yell over the intercom was cut short by the school bus sized mass breaching out of the water and crashing onto the deck. In doing so it knocked out multiple deck lights and the captain only could glimpse dark blue colored skin before all descended in a shower of sparks and shadows. There was shouting, inarticulate yelling in obvious alarm, and then there was nothing. Nothing but the beating of raindrops. Captain Reinhardt could feel his own pulse in his throat as he shakily brought the intercom to his face once more.
“A-all crew…” His voice was surprisingly quiet, “Stay below deck.. Repeat, stay… below deck.”
There were certain things expected of a captain. You were expected to know how to navigate the ship better than anyone. You were expected to know which men and women to put in which job. And you were expected to bring them all back home safely. That entailed a lot of responsibilities and Reinhardt was not new to them. He picked up a floodlight with one hand and a loaded pistol with another. With some apprehension, he opened the door to outside both to glimpse what had launched itself onto the ship and check in on the Satsuma recovery team.
Rain assailed his face the moment he exited cover, thick droplets that stung on impact. He pulled his hat down more to shield his eyes and swept the floodlight about. Aside from the storm the deck was eerily quiet, but certainly not unoccupied. A large mass wasn’t at all hard to spot, half emerged from the water and flopped onto the surface with several ruined light towers stuck under it. It definitely was a whale and to this sense of the extraordinary but normal did give Reinhardt a fleeting moment of calm. Whales would have been known to breach and accidentally fall on top of a vessel. The large mass could have startled it and collapsed on top of them in an attempt to get away. That still meant it might’ve crushed several crewmembers under its bulk, but it was something that should have been a possibility in this world. It didn’t entail nuclear leviathans rising from the depths to set cities on fire.
However, normality was killed the moment the whale fidgeted. Instead of the haggard breathing and panicked flopping a beached marine mammal might do in its death throes, the motion was controlled and steady. Sliding side to side with flippers braced against the edges of the ship almost like hands, it seemed to be searching. Reinhardt tasted bile when he noticed a body and at first thought the poor man had been crushed under the marine mammal’s jaw when it reached onto the vessel. Except instead of a pulverized or partially crushed body, it wasn’t separate from the whale’s mass. It was a part of it. A body partially stuck inside of it and being drawn in.
That’s when the whale seemed to notice him and homed in on the floodlight. It vibrated and fidgeted before its enormous mouth split open in three different directions. Eyes more like a big squid or deep-sea fish instead of the tiny pits of a marine mammal reflected back in the floodlight, as a cavernous maw was exposed and shown to be not filled with baleen, but writhing cephalopod tendrils and mismatched teeth that could’ve been anything from human to angler fish.
And unlike any deep-sea creature, it vocalized into the air.
“ArrrouuuuuuuooaaaaghaAAAAAAah!!”
Captain Reinhardt stumbled backwards after firing several shots from his pistol, blasting through a giant squid tentacle that lashed out towards him and blowing the tip off. He scrambled back into the enclosed captain’s deck and slammed the door shut, falling back on the back wall for a brief moment to catch his breath and realize how much he was heaving. Very little respite was offered when the crunching of shifting metal and the splattering of several cephalopod tendrils smacked against the glass, showing the bizarre chimera was trying to clamber its way onto the ship. Stumbling up to the controls, Captain Reinhardt threw the steering as hard as he could to one side while shutting off forward momentum as he put it in reverse. Maneuvering a big ship was not like steering a car, but some of the same laws of physics applied. After speeding up into the turn and then abruptly cutting off the engines to throw it in reverse, the chimera was yanked aside by its own inertia. The monstrosity gargled as it rolled off the deck and crashed back into the ocean, Capt. Reinhardt only waiting to hear the large splash before throwing the controls back into all ahead full.
Sweat was mixing with the raindrops spattered across him with the only noises Captain Reinhardt was able to hear being his own panting breath. At least until the door to his deck was opened.
He turned and would have fired immediately had he not seen it was just a man. But relief soon gave way to confusion when he saw the man’s attire and figure. It was not any crewman attire, nor any he immediately recognized. It looked downright ancient, with studded bits of metal and woven silks that curiously didn’t look wet. And the man wasn’t right. Captain Reinhardt was a pretty tall man at just under two meters, and yet this man ducked upon stepping inside. And his skin seemed… Perfect. Too perfect. No creases, no scars, no hair. It seemed more like a statue. It seemed…
Eyes blinked with horizontal lids and pure green orbs emerged from behind the eyelids. Silks turned into spines and a maw opened to reveal mishmashed teeth.
Capt. Reinhardt screamed as he emptied the clip into the figure that charged into them. In the storming seas outside, a gigantic mass burst out of the water and levitated into the storming skies.
After millennia dreaming, they had finally awakened…
Hundreds of kilometers away, the calmness of the night was shattered by a sudden eruption of living thunder. Staggering up from her bed, a Shinto temple priestess paced into the courtyards. Clearly in her advanced years with a hunched back and grayed hair, Hina nonetheless stood firm as she gazed upon the now silent ocean with a frown. She stood alone, having been alone since the passing of her husband, and before that the departure of her daughter-in-law on the island; which made returning there nigh-unbearable for her son. But even in such isolation, a presence was palpable.
One coming in with the tides, heralded by the seabound winds. Crying out with the same roar she’d heard in 1954 when a living mountain loomed over the hillside.
Skipper Takao Okawara ducked inside the control deck of the fishing vessel Lucky Dragon N.13, shrugging off the pouring droplets running down his now soaked shirt. One doesn’t go out at sea and be a fisherman while being afraid to get wet, and a bit of freshening rain was good to keep down the salt crust one might accumulate from sea spray. Despite the darkness which was otherwise only cut by the floodlights on the perimeter of the ship and the steady, but not significant, downpour; it had been a pretty good night for fishing and their haul had been prosperous. The seas were calm and quite giving, their stores practically filled to the brim already.
Which is why the grizzled skipper was all the more concerned at the signal they had picked up showing somebody was not having good fortune. He picked up the intercom linked to the radio after being handed some notes scrawled by the deckhand who had been manning it.
“This is Skipper Okawara of the Lucky Dragon N.13 fishing vessel, we have your distress beacon but it’s coming in choppy, switch to radio channel 44-1-4 to send a clearer message, over.”
The radio was empty static for a time before coming back to life with a fizzled voice.
“Captain Rein-…. Eiko-Ryu-… Research ves-… S.O.S-“
Okawara frowned and signaled with a wave of his hand for a subordinate to take the helm of the ship. He clicked the radio back on and tried to speak slower so the captain could hear him through the frequency disturbance.
“This is the Skipper Okawara of the Lucky Dragon N.13. We receive your S.O.S. Send your coordinates. What is your problem? O-VER.”
The radio fizzled before chiming back in.
“24.467151, 509.643918. In current flow- Engine-… Out-… Need-Help. O-“
Okawara checked his map coordinates on an old chart and sure enough the ping was roughly within the coordinates he knew to be on a northbound current heading towards the Honshu island of Japan. Still, paper could only be so exact and finding another boat at night in the rain would’ve been tricky 10 years ago. Much to his simultaneous relief and reluctance he had to pull up a much newer technology that a younger crewmember, the clean-shaven Hiroshi Abe, thankfully had more experience with. The younger man tapped away at the GPS and plotted a course on the position finder.
“They’re not far, about 10 kilometers north, northwest of us,” Abe chimed.
Okawara nodded to him before responding to the caller, “Stay calm Eiko-Ryu, we are on our way. Repeat, we are on our way. Continue to update us with your coordinates. Over.”
To his dismay it almost seemed as if the captain was either on loop or had taken his request to repeat their coordinates too seriously. For the next five minutes, the distressed caller just kept repeating the coordinates over and over again and seemed to almost ignore Okawara’s request to go into greater detail about what happened. He almost sounded hysterical, further unnerving the fishing skipper. Still, the GPS did its job and got them close to the exact same path, even hitching a ride on the current to follow it and catch back up. At last the deckhand called out with a whistle and pointed to the distant lights off the starboard bow. Given nobody else had responded to the distress signal and the Eiko-Ryu still clearly had its electronics working to send out the distress call, the pinpricks of light visible through the darkness and rain had to be them. The skipper was just about to try and hail him again when everything was cast into darkness. In an instant, the cabin lights and the floodlights across the bow clicked off. Blinking in sheer stupefaction for a moment or two, the skipper let his eyes adjust to the darkness and glimpsed Abe groping around for the flashlight they kept under the desk. Drawing out the audible click of its switch was perceivable even over the rain, and yet there was no ray of illumination to cut through the darkness.
Click, click, click. Off and on, but no change.
“You change the batteries?” Okawara grunted.
“Y-yes, this morning! Fresh ones we picked up at port!” Hiroshi piped.
“Main generator blowout and no luck with a new flashlight, the seas are giving us the bad with the good tonight apparently,” Okawara huffed as he drew out a match to light an old lantern he always kept in the corner of the control deck. The flickering light barely illuminated anything, but it was better than before.
Okawara poked his head down the hallway and called out to the other crew members across the boat in earshot, “Check the engine room! We have a blowout on a fuse?”
In the darkness he could perceive a shape poking out from said room before a voice familiar to him calling back down, “I was in there checking the motors on the winches, nothing! It all just clicked off and won’t come back on!”
Okawara’s brow furrowed, cursing both the happenstance that this occurred in the middle of a rescue operation and the puzzling nature of their predicament. He was just about to walk down to the engines himself to double-check or at least offer some light, when the sudden shift in the air caught his attention. It wasn’t a sight, but a sound. The absence of a sound. All of the rain suddenly cutting off, but not in any sense of normality. He had been on the sea for decades, he’d been in more storms than he ever could count, violent and calm. And unless it was windy as to throw the rain in a certain direction, showers just never suddenly stopped but rather petered out. This was almost like someone had been running a shower before abruptly cutting off the water.
Okawara looked back out the windows and let his eyes adjust to the darkness. It wasn’t a pitch-black night, though there was a loose overcast as to provide the drizzling downpour. The moon had been half-full, and he could see silvery beams of light coming down in the distances. Staring off into the horizon, he could just barely make out the telltale gray sheet of pouring rain. He could see it in front of them, but a glance behind them confirmed it was still coming down in that direction. A look to the east also revealed that, as did a glance to the west. In fact, in every direction the rain only seemed to be a few hundred meters out at most, enough that upon opening a door to the outside he could still pick up the faint, barely perceptible drumming of it on the ocean surface.
It was like the storm had a hole in it, or someone had put a giant umbrella on top of them. A look upwards only showed blackness. A look back out across the sea revealed the lights of the Eiko-Ryu still lit as the boat was getting closer. Neither of the vessels were moving, but the Lucky Dragon’s momentum left them at a greater speed with the engines cut out and they were drifting in the same direction with a closing distance. They were only a few hundred meters away now, and the flicker of the lights indicated some persons moving across the deck of the other ship, conscious of their closing distance. The Skipper grimaced while trying to figure out the puzzling situation, definitely not prepared to try and take on evacuating passengers and the boats were growing closer.
Closer in an exact trajectory.
Closer with no deviation from their path with the back of the Eiko-Ryu getting increasingly closer to the bow of the Lucky Dragon n.13.
“Drop the anchor! Drop it now!” he cried out at the top of his lungs, while scrambling out onto the deck with several crewmembers following alongside; Okawara holding the lantern aloft as a signal to rally them.
“Drop the anchor or we’re going to collide!” he barked while putting the lantern aside and scrambling onto the old, rusty analog mountings for the anchor. They had relied on an automated system to drop the heavy iron time and time again, leaving the analog controls to neglect much to his frustration.
Multiple crew members put their backs into trying to crank the winch and get the system of pulleys and chain going. All while the back of the Eiko-Ryu got larger with the decreasing distance. In the back of his mind, the Skipper registered that the crew aboard were not reacting to the threat of a coming collision. They were just standing there watching, expectantly. Okawara grimaced while clutching at the old wood and rusty metal, putting fears of tetanus aside as the horrific thought of the desperate crew of the other vessel being killed by their own rescuers in a freak shipping accident came upon him like the plague. They were in the middle of the ocean, the radio without for who knew how long along with, with their navigational and propulsion systems on the fritz. If they had a bad accident out here and didn’t get picked up by somebody in visual range, they were dead.
They were all dead.
A low humming became audible, but it wasn’t the creaking of the anchors starting to shift, that was drowned out. The low whirling was coming from high above and starting to grow in volume. Or closing distance. Somehow the impossibility that something was above them, suspended in the air, perked at the back of the old Skipper’s mind.
He started considering what was and wasn’t impossible when everything was suddenly illuminated. It didn’t come from the ships, nor from above; but from below. Off to the west and from below the surface came a light that briefly blinded the old man. A burning, crackling like a roaring flame or crack of thunder drowned out everything else as his eyes adjusted to what he could see through the fingers covering his face. Hundreds of meters away was a bright blue and white pillar that vaguely resembled fire, piercing through the evaporating mists of the ocean to sail well above the Lucky Dragon. On instinct the Skipper’s eyes tracked the motion and were quickly widened despite the brightness threatening to blind him again.
Chunks of debris were raining from the sky as the beam struck something that had indeed been levitating a few hundred meters above the shipping vessel. Large chunks of what look like a rock crashed down into the sea on the perimeter of where the massive object had been shading the Lucky Dragon from the rain. The whirring sound from earlier increased in volume as the levitating mass rocked to one side like the impact had a concussive force. It looked like something trying to keep stable despite the blow from below and to the side. It rocked violently to the east, glowing and smoking from where it was struck as the beam cut off. In the dying light of the ray that diminished into embers within the sky, the skipper thought he glimpsed the telltale glimmer of very shiny metal upon the object above them where the beam had struck it.
Everything seemed to happen at once. The unknown floating mass, or possibly some kind of craft, veered off to the northeast and floated away. No longer shading them, it left the Lucky Dragon n.13 to return to the drizzling downpour of before. A downpour the Skipper could now see because all the lights clicked back on and the whirl of the ship’s engines roared into the night. Conscious they were now barreling at the Eiko-Ryu even faster now, with the motors back to life, Skipper Okawara made a break for the controls.
“Turn us about! Turn us about!” he yelled out to the quicker form of Hiroshi Abe beating him to the helm.
The younger man gripped the wheel and spun it as hard as he could. Turning a ship wasn’t like steering a car, but thankfully the Lucky Dragon n.13 was not exactly a large vessel and there was just enough room for a sharp turn to narrowly avoid a bow-to-stern collision with the larger Eiko-Ryu. Letting out a sigh of relief as the research vessel passed alongside them while the fishing boat turned about, the hairs on the back of Skipper Okawara’s neck stood up on their own at what he didn’t see. He didn’t see desperate men and women crying out to them for rescue. He didn’t see someone trying to signal them to turn back around or indicate how close they had come to colliding. Nor did he glimpse a single soul trying to tell him what had befallen their ship. He saw no one, other than a single tall form standing on the bow looking at them.
Evidently Abe had seen them too and his own instincts spurred the younger man to cut the engines and leave the Lucky Dragon n.13 to float on the run momentum in a wide arc separating them from the Eiko-Ryu. It seemed the other crew also noticed the oddity, gathering on the deck to stare. It was almost impossible to describe. Perhaps if they had glimpsed it in a crowd they wouldn’t have thought anything about it. But seeing a solitary form stand on its own in the dim lights was causing instincts they didn’t even know they had to flare up. Instincts telling them something wasn’t right. Skipper Okawara was just about to point one of the floodlights at the… person, when the shifting roar of the ocean spurred his attention in both directions.
The whirling hum from high above came back in force, rapidly descending before a momentous splash crashed down in between the fishing boat and research vessel. Splashing waves rained down and nearly tilted the Lucky Dragon n.13 up on one side as its crew desperately hung onto the railing for stability. The seas churned off to the west but any sense of visual clarity was upended in the vertigo they were currently experiencing. It wasn’t until the waves from the impact splash passed them that the Skipper glimpsed what was causing the racket on the other side.
Piercing into the visibility of the floodlights were three tall spires ripping trails across the ocean surface. In the lights’ luminance, they could glimpse jagged shapes, ivory in color, sprouting out from the sea like the biggest shark fins imaginable. They were towering, mighty structures that would have dwarfed the height of the Lucky Dragon. Dwarfed them as it barreled towards them in the manner of three executing blades poised to chop them asunder. The Skipper would have been saying prayers to any gods that might exist if he hadn’t been so gobsmacked, staring wide-eyed as oblivion barreled forward on roaring tides.
Oblivion then shrunk. Through the pouring rain and deafening stirring of the sea, the Skipper blinked and contemplated what he saw.
The spires, fins, spines, whatever they were, shrunk in height as whatever mass they were connected to under the surface dove down deeper. They completely disappeared from view entirely, and it was only by the large but gradual rocking of the wake the entity they were connected to gave the fishing vessel, that Okawara could perceive it was passing underneath them. The Lucky Dragon n.13 rattled from deck to deck, bolt to bolt, with a reverberation that didn’t at all sound mechanical. Plenty of whales had passed underneath the vessel and a few times their echolocation or song would echo through the hull. This was like that but 100 times louder.
A deep, reverberating bellow.
It sounded angry.
The reverberation gradually passed as the large wake went off to the east. The dumbstruck crew looked likewise in the same direction, only to see the Eiko-Ryu had vanished from its last position. The only indication as to its whereabouts, the flickering lights upon the deck, showed it to be far off in the distance. It was heading northeast, and the wake was going in the same direction. The tall bony fins pierced out from the ocean surface once again, and it was only when they flickered with a familiar flash of blue did the skipper realize what it was.
It was then he fell to his knees and started praying.
============
Io sighed as she checked the monitoring equipment. She’d give Miss Ichinose one thing, she was persistent. Managed to survive months with them so far and not her dad’s less than stellar manners nor her attitude had driven her off. Reheating up some fried goodness in a small rice cooker, she dumped it into a bowl with cheap soy sauce before passing it forward.
“Thank you, Io,” Yuji called out after flashing a thumbs up as he fiddled with a radar monitor while in the front seat. He already had a chopstick pack opened up and ready to use.
Io made herself a bowl and started to fork it into her mouth, lacking the patience for chopsticks. She paused and waited a moment for the inevitable complaints coming from the front passenger seat. A full minute passed and none were heard, instead just the calm adjustments of a camera lens and filter. Yuki wasn’t as brainy as their colleagues, but she had proved dedicated.
Io looked at the rice cooker before shrugging to herself and making another bowl. She intentionally used another cheap soy sauce packet, if only to see what sort of reaction she got. Her gray hand held it out and waited for Miss Ichinose to notice it.
It took a hot minute but the photographer finally did. She turned back and flashed a so-white-it-hurt smile at her and nodded. Io wanted to groan. Teeth did not look naturally that pale, she should know because she brushed diligently. Ichinose probably had them bleached in the hope she could be some fancy news anchor one day.
“Thank you, young Miss Shinoda,” Ichinose quipped as she took it.
A moment later and she opened her trap again, only to say, “Got another fork?”
Io absentmindedly glanced about and offered up a cheap plastic spork complete in a wrapping. Ichinose took it and waved her fingers at her.
“Ah good, I like these more,” she quipped before diving in without complaint.
Io paused as she listened to Ichinose eating alongside her dad. No complaints about lack of teriyaki, griping over it being reheated food and then not getting takeout from somewhere fancy, nor any notation about lack of vegetables or fine cooked beef. Didn’t even use chopsticks… She looked at her own hand holding a fork.
Io shrugged and tried not to think about it waiting for some minutes to pass until a beeping sounded off from the front seat.
“Ish thmat it? That Godzilla?” Ichinose mumbled through a face stuffed with rice.
Yuji leaned in more and studied the radar monitor, carefully adjusting some settings to make sure it wasn’t a false signal or maybe just a boat. Sure enough however there was no vehicle transponder and the object in question was coming up as almost as tall as what the radar picked up for as length.
“Figure we got a bit before anyone else can tell he’s here. He’s never come this close to shore before except once,” Yuji gasped as he turned off all the lights in the van, “Back in 1998, so if we picked him up, others might too. Either he’s going to skim the coast or come ashore like he did then.”
Even with the best private equipment and studies, it didn't change the fact that theirs was a nation that had been under kaiju attack almost constantly for over a decade and a half. Tracking kaiju movements far out at sea was almost impossible, but there had been plenty of local sensors that might give a heads up when they surfaced. They were the only non-defense game in town when it came to tracking them, but Yuji was under no illusion that they were the only ones who noticed his arrival. And G-Force was always getting better and better about response time. Which made it all the more important they could get some data before anything chaotic happened. The van was parked at the edge of a tunnel, a pouring torrent of rain just beyond it. Carefully, Yuji set the van into drive and crept towards the end of the road, ignoring the pounding drizzle of the rain on the roof. The windshield wipers were having to work overtime to keep visibility.
Ichinose had her camera up to her face and was trying to adjust it, “Which way?”
Yuji glanced at the monitor again before pointing, “About 1000 meters, 3 o’clock.”
Ichinose bit her tongue and fiddled with the camera controls. In a show of lack of regard for her appearance when the situation called for it, she opened the window and stuck her head out into the rain to direct her thankfully waterproof camera into the storm. Lightning cracked and for the briefest moment she saw a towering form standing in the bay a kilometer away. She tried to snap a picture and the camera flashed, but upon diving back into the van she could see the preview showed barely anything but rain.
“Is it getting any closer?” she quipped while she dabbed her camera with a napkin.
“He,” Io corrected, insistent, from the back of the van.
Yuji ignored the snipe and checked the monitor, “Hmm… Sensor’s having a hard time picking him up. Maybe dove under again. Can’t pick him out from the waves. Lemme try something.”
Much to Yuki’s surprise and Io’s intrigue, Yuji set the high beam headlights on and off, flickering them back and forth every few second. He glanced to the radar monitor hooked up to the beacons they’d set up earlier.
The massive blob on the scanner paused and started to change direction before disappearing again. Yuji stopped flickering the headlights and after some contemplation, reached for his keys. Memories from 1984 encouraged him to shut the car off and hide in the darkness of the tunnel. Without being able to see exactly where the kaiju was coming from, he wasn’t taking any chances. After a few minutes, they all felt it. The only light was coming from the top of the tunnel and they were in the shadows, able to see the beams extend out into the bay past the guard rails. Yuji made sure all the major lights in the van were turned off. A deep, rattling rumble reverberated through the bottom of the van. Something very heavy had stepped onto the sea cliffs not far below. There was a low bellow that shuddered the air.
Through the edge of visible sight, as their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they could see that there was a blackness the rain was bouncing off. An audible breath was exhaled, and thick rolls of mist clogged the road ahead of them, expelled by two nostrils. As her eyes adjusted, Io Shinoda’s mouth dropped open at the sight.
Obscured by the darkness as it was, it was right there. Not 50 meters from the van, having snuck up on them. The other two people in the van didn’t see it and truthfully speaking she couldn’t either. But there was a drive to, perhaps one so strong it projected in her vision. Her old friend, now a titan that walked with thunder, he returned to her! Godzilla Junior. She could see it, the jagged teeth, the serrated scales, strong brow, and sharpened dorsal spines; he looked so gigantic and imposing and yet the eyes seemed so familiar! Her own eyes watered as she sniffled, feeling the years peel back until she was right back in Kyoto with Azusa.
Yuji couldn’t see any eyes, only the faintest glint of gigantic teeth. He was back in Tokyo, inside a train car a leviathan had picked up. Yuki saw no warmth and recognition, only a gargantuan mass looking towards the tunnel as if trying to find something in it. She knew better than most how good predators could see in the dark.
Io wanted to reach out in mind to him, but she was so overcome that she couldn’t focus. She tried, she earnestly tried but nothing was working. She had to do something else. She looked to the back of the van.
“It can see us,” Yuki whispered to Yuji as she touched his shoulder with one hand and started a hold of her camera with the other.
Yuji’s shaking hand was holding the ignition key and his other was contemplating the reverse on the shifter, “I shouldn’t have done that with the lights, I thought we could tell when it was coming…”
“Io can you-“ he started but he and Yuki’s awe and fright was cut short when they heard the back of the van open and shut, seeing a little blur of gray run past the van.
Yuki was gobsmacked and Yuji almost screamed in terror.
“IO!”
Io ran ahead of the van and into the storm, nearly falling over because of the whipping wind and torrents of hail-like rain. She’d splash through puddles over ankle deep and was soaked within seconds, but none of that distracted her from advancing forward as fast as her little legs could keep her going.
Somewhere along the way in her strides she became aware that the rain was no longer pelting her skin. Io paused, glancing at the ground to confirm the droplets were no longer hitting in any frequency. The wind was blowing in from the sea, throwing the rain at an angle. And while it was still far too dark to see, even with the lights on the top of the tunnel, she could still make out an outline from where the rain was being blocked. Moving a soaked piece of hair out of her face, Io Shinoda stood up and was beholden to the gigantic being who was so massive as to be standing at the base of the cliffs and yet still cast a long shadow over her.
A low rumble was audible over the pouring rain. Io sniffled as several tears began to well up in her eyes.
Yuji, soon followed by Yuki, stumbled as they stepped into the rainless patch void of precipitation. It was surreal seeing a patch of open ground with barely a drop falling from the sky; even as the wind whipped around. Yuki saw the sight of Io standing before the guard railing of the cliffside road gazing upwards and she followed it with her line of sight. There was no lightning to offer illumination and the spotlights from the tunnel exit didn’t reach far enough to offer clarity, but she could see the shape.
Glancing to Yuji and finding his expression to be completely unreadable, somewhere between awe and shock, she slowly started to reach for her camera while taking the flash off. Nice one or not, she didn’t ever want to take the risk of alerting a Godzilla to her presence. She did however notice something else. There were droplets of something on the edge of where the floodlights were illuminating. At first she took it to be torrents of rain but a smell the nature photographer was all too familiar with started to hang in the air despite the whipping wind. And she could see the liquid was red.
Yuji was petrified when he noticed a pinprick of light. It was far off in the distance and at first he took it to be maybe a lighthouse or a pair of very distant high beams from another car going down the hill side roads. That was until he could tell it was both moving but ignoring geography, assign a flight. His eyes widened with recognition when he glimpsed a dark mass inside the light and a split second of a loud roar before the missile crashed into the back of the Godzilla.
All sense of serenity was completely shattered in that instant. Several jets streamed overhead after launching several other air to surface missiles upon the titan. Airborne maser platforms followed along soon after, igniting the air with streaking light as their rays zigzagged across the kaiju’s body. Heaven and earth shook from both the onslaught as well as the enraged roar the Godzilla let out.
In the gasps of light, Yuji Shinoda was 16 years in the past. Back in Tokyo, back inside a train car that had been ripped off the tracks by a giant hand. He’d heard that roar before, up close. He’d seen those fangs, up close. And be it in the moment, he’d seen that roaring titan, a nightmare from decades past back come back from the dead to kill dozens upon dozens of people. In the year after he’d seen it kill his wife. In some ways it almost wouldn’t matter which one this individual was, a survivor from 1995 or a whole new creature. It was still an avatar of destruction from the legends of his homeland at Odo. It was still Godzilla.
And now his daughter was in harm’s way, shrieking at the jets with sobbing screams of rage.
“DON’T HURT HIM! STOP IT! STOP IT!” Io called out as she ran forward while waving her arms, drowned out by another salvo of explosions impacting Godzilla’s shoulder.
Yuji sprinted forward and grabbed Io, yanking her back and nearly falling over.
Yuki, rushing behind him, as something fell from the saurian’s mouth with brief flashes from the G-Force onslaught illuminating it as it fell. She lunged and grabbed Yuji by his shoulder and shirt to help wrench him and Io away from the edge of the road. While it didn’t fall on top of where they were, she did become aware of what had been dropped as it fell down within the range of the tunnel’s illumination. A large mass of an animal, to a degree it could only have once been a whale, all but exploded when it hit the road. Even at a distance the spatter was more than enough to shower them all in hot ichors and bile, exacerbating any current experience of dread from being in the middle of a shoot out between the military and a kaiju.
Yuji was pasty white with shock and horror, intermittently looking at his daughter and the road ahead of them. And Io was slack-jawed in fright as she kept looking up past her father’s shoulder. Yuki could barely even process all that was going on around her, just holding on to the others and pumping her legs to get to the tunnel and the GPN van. She was the one with the most faculties as to notice the falling debris raining down from the hillside when a stray maser and the thrashing of Godzilla dislodged several tons of boulders and substrate.
“LOOK OUT!” she screamed while yanking as hard as she could on Yuji, diverging them away from a large chunk of falling debris the size of a refrigerator that impacted the ground beside them.
The tunnels foundations were beginning to crack and the light shorted out. Yuji comprehended the gigantic hand bursting from the storm reaching out towards them just as they entered the tunnel. The titanic monster roared into the night, shouting out the thunder from nature as well as that from mankind’s vehicles as missile and maser fire exploded against its armored skin. Holding place for a moment, it turned and dove back into the waters of the Pacific.
Damn. That was powerful stuff! Outstanding work, Tarb!
Great work and merry Christmas
That was a good chapter. Love the dynamic between Io, Yuji, and Yuki as they work to get closer to investigating about Junior’s whereabouts and determine if it’s him or a new Godzilla. Io grew up into quite the sharp-tongued lady, though love that she still cares for Junior so much and wants her dad to be happy. The submarine scene was quite the scary scene, especially what happened to the captain. Can’t wait for the next chapter.
To reiterate, I'll do a full review later. But that was great work on the pathos of this part.
I am sad that Io became so cynical. The submarine and ship part was scary.
First, nice introduction to Io and Yuki. The sass
Second, I can now imagine the abomination whales in my brain. Thanks for the nightmare fuel ideas.
Third, an almost adorable reunion with Io and Junior, until G force screwed it up. Thank Guys!
5423942
Io Shinoda, sass queen. XD
And yep, used some dramatic irony as had G-Force, whom thought they were in the right, not acted one plot detail of Junior still being friendly would have been revealed far earlier.
And sweet dreams
I was using gifs of flowers blooming as a reference.
5421837
Yep, the ship attack was far more horror styled than I typically write, but it was great fun for that reason.
5421791
Most excellent, twas my focus.
5421710
Yep, I wanted to have some more comedic and character building fun as Yuki was joining on to the GPN in the story vs. in the movie where she'd already joined but recently. Tiny bits like both her and Io using forks for rice is a way of showing Io that Yuki isn't so 'unknown' or an outsider as she thought.
Yuki be right, I wouldn’t want to play Monopoly with Little Miss Business Woman.
First name basis already? Goddamn, it’s barely been 5 minutes & she’s already gunning to tap that.
I’ve been acknowledged by Canon-senpai!
I understood this reference.
The Io of the new Millenium felt that torpedo all the way back to 1999.
This was another great opener building off what worked for the first part. The dramatic irony the characters face with their uncertainty towards Godzilla has been the most fun part to read so far with this rewrite. Yes, we know how the cards fall down in the end, but I say reading these kind of stories is like reading history. And like reading history, it gives perspective for the present & future.
The real horror for Reinhardt is when he discovers it’s Evo in the suit & he starts yelling “Catchphrase! Catchphrase! Catchphrase!”
Overall, good horror scene with the Whale drone, and ominous entrance for Junior.
This was a great scene in showing what a typical Godzilla scene would be like for a normal guy who lives in it, and it’s fairly terrifying.
I’m such a hopeless nerd that I got this reference too.
This scene was such a gut puncher to end this part on. You just keep on hitting us in the feels over & over again, you son of a bitch.
Overall this was another fantastic part building off what came before. Pathos is still going strong.
Io's dynamic with her father and the reporter were really fun to read. While the snark comes from a bad place mentally, it is pretty fun to read said snark. So that was a plus. Her screaming at the jets to stop hurting Junior was heartbreaking.
As well as some terror with the mysterious creatures. Tarb, you honestly have a gift for horror. You have a tendency to evoke really creepy and horrifying scenarios and creatures. As a monster fan, it is great to see and makes you both want to see more and dread these monsters. Fantastic job there.
Overall a great addition.
I like the opening adaptation of the meeting in the movie that reflects the changes in the Amalgem'Verse...including the invisiblity joke.
Also like Yuki remembering a past meeting with Io.
Also like Io's reaction to seeing the picture of herself and Junior.
The running look over of the past was very much a neat little run through of the past.
Also like that GKG's appearance has a bit of a mystery to it.
Like that at this point it's reasonable they're not sure about Junior's personality or temperment.
I do like how the three come to see and react to one another as well.
I do like a few things with the CCI craft. First the idea that this is a very dangerous place.
Second that in the list of creatures CCI wants to kill is Mothra, showing that while they might claim to have humanity's best interests in mind, they are driven by hubris rather. In a way, they're like APEX from Godzilla vs Kong: offended by the existence of something bigger than humanity. Mothra's only ever threat to humanity was when the Shobijin were kidnapped. Otherwise, she's protected them from the likes of Battra, Giranbo, DesGhidorah, and Dagahra confirmed, but also as we know Grand King Ghidorah.
The slow build to the horror is well done and the mismatched skeleton do a good job highlight just how dangerous this place is and the horror sleeping at the sea floor.
The slow chase and growing threat is terrifying and has really good build up.
I also like that while Reinhardt is part of CCI's hubris, he's still a good captain and not necessarily a bad person.
And then they basically fight something akin to an aquatic version of the thing.
Of course, while he escaped the big monster, something else comes aboard and kills him...something almost human.
I do like this as it portrays are villains more as eldritch abominations than simple aliens, something present in the movie, but very much pronounced here.
Of course, while an ancient evil awakens, so too has a guardian. I love this scene because it contrasts with the nightmare fuel horror we just witnessed.
And once more we have the growing sense of something wrong and unusual happening.
Thankfully, this time Junior comes to the rescue.
I do also like Millenians becoming active far sooner than they did in canon so they can be more active as a threat.
Seeing the humanoid monster on the deck all and the whole thing just speaks of a horror movie.
Also do like that while they don't KNOW it, Junior most likely saved them from harm intentionally.
I like the banter and interaction between the group, adds a much needed breather.
And the build up to the first meeting with Junior. How everything leads up to Io possibly getting what she wanted...
Until the missiles hit and prevent it from possibly going further and Io maybe reconnecting with her friend if she could get her psychic abilities going.
I do like the small implication at the end that Junior held up the tunnel so they could live.
Overall, very good chapter. I'm liking where this is going.