Waking the Dragon

by DrNietzsche

1945. The world as we knew it was shaken and history forever altered. The Japanese, faced with defeat released a living weapon: the kaiju Orochi. One abhorrent act demanded another, and the US slew Orochi with their own secret weapon: the atom bomb. The veil was lifted, our myths made real. But as one died in a hell of nuclear fire, a dragon far more terrible would be woken by it.

1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This contains depictions of what large quantities of radiation do to a human body, including children. You have been warned.

Regarding characters: I am aware that Asuka, Misato and such proper do not themselves appear yet. But their ancestors have, and I am working towards it. You will also notice many more characters from other media as well as some serious Alternate History due to the events you are about to read. Godzilla/Evangelion was the option that I felt was most-apt, but it is much more than that.

With that said, please enjoy, all critique is welcomed.

Waking the Dragon

Excerpt from Ernst Pile's 1961 "The last days of the Pacific War".

In 1945, the Pacific War looked as if though it would only take one final push before the Americans would deal the death-blow to the Japanese Empire. Pushed back from one end of the Pacific to the Home Islands themselves, the Americans had landed in areas once though impregnable. Holy territory, Japan itself. Iwo Jima fell, though with terrible casualties. Okinawa was even worse. The Americans paid for each foot of ground with gallons of blood. The Empire was never going to surrender. Admiral Halsey famously quipped "When we're done, the Japanese language will only be spoken in Hell". The Japanese would oblige him.

The Americans had been getting reports of a secret weapon, something so terrible that only now, in the Japanese Empire's own Alamo would it be used. They weren't worried. Their own ace in the hole, the nuclear hellfire, was almost complete. Japan couldn't hit the North American continent, they had nothing to fear. They were wrong. It is not understood what exactly they did, or how they captured it centuries ago, but seals were broken, a blood-oath was made. Operation Ten-Go was set into motion. The Imperial Navy would either turn the tide or it would take as many American ships with it as it could. But the decisive weapon was not made of steel.

May 1st, 1945 the Yamata-no-Orochi was loosed. Great, terrible and silent it slipped into the sea of Japan. Its speed through the water was, and still is, unheard of. Its wake alone capsized eight American battleships, among them the USS Iowa & Missouri, along with twelve aircraft carriers including the pride of the fleet, the USS Essex and Enterprise. Countless smaller ships were also lost, and this caused an all-out route of the American fleet. This however, was only the beginning of the Orochi's reign of terror. In hours it was at San Francisco, and with it a mighty Tsunami.

Unaccustomed to tsunamis, the people of Sanfran did not know to flee. Many gathered around the harbour to see the now-beached ships, reporters appearing soon to document the strangeness. It was said that nearly thirty minutes later, a roar was heard. The people turned and panicked. A wall of water nearly 105ft high crashed into the coast going nearly 500 miles an hour. The only notable structure to survive was the Golden Gate Bridge. At the time of this writing(June 6th, 1966) the area has yet to recover.

The death toll was around 550,000. The Orochi itself, named after the eight-headed dragon of Shinto myth, would pop up further along the west coast. It was a massive octopus, though a body was never recovered. The American armed forces were mostly powerless, until they revealed their own super weapon. Codenamed Fatman, the first deployment of a nuclear weapon in anger was on June 10th, 1945. The Military claims the body was vaporized in the blast.

However, the fact remains. May 1st, 1945 was the beginning of a new era, and June 10th was its christening. Things began to happen quickly after that. Before the September 10th negotiated settlement was reached, America decided it needed to show the Japanese that their execution of the Orochi was not a one-off event, and so dropped Littleboy, carried appropriately enough by the B-29 "Necessary Evil" on Hiroshima on August 4th. Past that point, both sides realized the futility of continued conflict. So, September 10th, 'Peace with Honour' was signed in Tokyo harbour with the IJN and USN present.

The Treaty stated that Japan would, over the span of forty years, repay the United States and United Kingdom for the destruction of their ships, property and accepting responsibility for starting the war. In return, the United States and United Kingdom would recognize Japanese territorial gains in China, Indochina, and over the span of twenty years the Philippines and Indonesia will be allowed to slip into the Japanese sphere of influence.

Japan would also be granted a permanent seat on the Security Council of the Concert of Nations. This made it the seventh permanent member alongside Germany, the British Commonwealth, the United States, the French State, Turkey, and the Hashemite Caliphate.

…

The Dragon of Tokyo, Dawn of the Monster-Age (Gwynplaine de Orme)

May 1st. Since 1954, every year as it grows closer and closer to that day, the burns on my face and right side feel like they start heating up, until I swear the skin should be boiling. Doctors say it's psychosomatic, but that doesn't help the pain. In Tokyo, there was a sort of reserved celebration going on. Americans don't seem to understand it until they actually experience one. They weren't celebrating the deaths that the Orochi caused, the tsunami or kamikaze it flooded San Francisco with. They celebrate the lives saved by it ending the war. As terrible a thing it was, it cannot be denied that between it and the nuclear bomb there was no hope for the war to continue. Not when both sides, if they feared total defeat, could drag the other down into the pits of hell with them.

I always thought it was a lovely event, but that year it was marred somewhat. For reasons that are obvious now, about the 28th of April, fish and sea life acted as though they were fleeing the ocean itself. Beaching themselves. I saw sharks simply ignore the orgy of dying fish around them just to try and get further out of the water. I hope I never see anything like that ever again. And the smell. It wasn't just dying fish, there were dolphins and whales and crustaceans. It was horrible.

Initially, I freely admit, most of us thought it was rather odd, but also something of a treat. Free, fresh seafood right there. Just grab a few and go cook. The enthusiasm died about three days in. And by the tenth day they started trying to move it out of the city. They were hoping to turn it into fertilizer. On the 30th, apparently some crackpot took a Geiger Counter to the fish. Seri-something. Had an eye patch, looked like a super villain. Saved countless lives doing that. The individual fish weren't dangerously radioactive. But all of them, all of them, contained some amount of a highly radioactive metal. Isotopes of lithium, uranium and plutonium were all found in varying quantities and qualities in the fish.

People, surprisingly, didn't panic. Japanese stoicism I suppose. That, or they had some sixth sense tell them to give it a day and they'll have something to really panic about. I woke up on May 1st at around noon, and was hung over. I fixed that with more bourbon. Everyone likely says this after it becomes evident that the world has changed, hind-sight and all, but something about the day was all…wrong. I remember a friend of mine in Germany saying that she felt the same way on April 30th, '42.

I think we first figured out that something was very wrong when, during a rare moment of silence, it was well, silent. It was drawing close to dusk. No birds chirping. Dead quiet. I only noticed when I was on top of the just-completed Hotel Otani. Beautiful building for what it is. Was. At that point, I heard tsunami sirens. The water was retreating. There was still no panic. This is Japan. They named the damned things, why should they worry? Then I heard something that sounded like twisting metal and pain, perfect & pure hate. I was one of the first to see the bodies of schoolchildren who'd survived the bomb. I personally had to euthanize eight of them because there was simply nothing to be done when your flesh is at the same time necrotizing and forming tumors. I had to burn fifty different sets of protective clothing because of how utterly they were soaked in blood, shit, piss, pus and flesh from people too broken to just die.

That sound? That sound was worse. I thought I'd seen and heard and smelt and touched the most horrible things the world had to offer. I thought I knew how dark and horrifying the world could be. That sound was so much worse. For a few moments I thought about simply killing myself rather than seeing whatever hellspawn had made it. Some days I wish I had. Those of you who have heard it on recordings? There's something that just…it's like a recording device can't capture all of it. Those of you who have never heard it? I envy you. If you assume this is just the ramblings of a traumatized survivor, and that keeps you the hell away from that thing, I ask you to believe that. If you go looking for Satan, you might just find her.

Awestruck I looked towards the direction of the sound, into the harbor. The tide was coming back in, but there was something in it. What looked like a massive piece of craggy, spiny and bone-white slate broke the surface first. But then I noticed something. There was a light coming from somewhere in the wave, two faintly glowing white orbs. Soon enough the ocean finally vomited up its secret, and as the tsunami finally hit land you could see it. It was vaguely reminiscent of a bear, hunched over and snarling. This massive black shape was silhouetted against the reds and purples of the sky, but you could still make out detail.

The slate-looking things went up and down her back, staggered and reaching apex at around the upper-middle, and then growing progressively smaller as they got closer to the head as well as down the tail. It is hard to tell exactly what they are, because while they jut out of her back they look almost as if they were made of slate or some other brittle rock.

This is what would later be named the Wani. She looked like a massive crocodile, or dinosaur, but just…wrong. In a way I can't explain. Like whatever she was just shouldn't be. The face was covered in pebbled black scales, but in some areas you could see where white bone had pierced the flesh. Some areas also looked like they'd been charred and burned. It looked like the facial armor samurai would wear, the mempo, to frighten their foes. She opened her mouth to roar again, and I covered my ears. You could make out the forked tongue and jagged teeth. But the eyes. I've never seen anything like it. They were pure white, and they glowed, nor did she ever blink. Everyone who survived the attack and looked at her seems to agree on one thing, myself included: it felt like she was staring straight into our souls.

She began to wade ashore, ponderous but with a strange purpose. As she got closer, I could see her chest and thighs. They too had the bone protrusions, and some areas looked scorched. This seemed to be true of her entire body. Patches of burnt flesh, some of them open wounds, other areas where bone had come through. It gave the impression of a knight's or samurai's armor. It was as she finally stepped onto dry land, or at least, what had been dry before the Wani's watery herald flooded it, that I realized people were running and screaming. I turned to look around me, and in the distance I could see men and vehicles organizing. The Imperial Army was mobilizing. Then I could hear aircraft. And further, somewhere off the coast, I could see the lights of Imperial Navy vessels.

I believe it was at this moment where the people of Tokyo, myself included, felt some kind of relief. The IJN was the third largest in the world, the army, while it had manpower shortages was one of the best equipped on the planet. The air force even more so.

She continued to lumber forward, and eventually the end of her tail finally came out from the water. The tail was long, easily longer than she was tall. It was distinctly crocodilian, heavy and flattened laterally as it neared the tip. As the dorsal plates grew smaller and smaller down the tail, the last twenty five or thirty percent of it started changing. Like the breast area, the shoulders, the face and the like, the last bits of the tail had what appeared to be a covering of some sort, made up a mixture of the dorsal plates and bone protruding from the tail itself.

Explosions rocked her figure, but despite swaying she never faltered. I don't think she even felt it. She'd made it into the city proper now. The smell must have been horrendous. Gallons of putrid sea-water filled with the rotting remains of countless sea life, mixed with the musty, leady smell of hot uranium. People trampled, crushed beneath shops and houses or boats, all while this scaly juggernaut lumbered forwards in the face of artillery fire and structures.

As she stormed forwards, towards the Diet building, the rain of shells and rockets increased. It began to get hard to see her in the torrent of debris kicked up by the shelling. The sound of cannon fire, people yelling and metal twisting was then pierced by something even worse than her roar. It was ethereal, sharp, like millions of distant screams growing to crescendo. She started to light up. From the tip of her tail, up her craggy back, the plates began to glow.

First they were a dull blue, what I recognized as Cherenkov Radiation. The blue glow was then overtaken, the air around her spines was catching fire, and for a few moments it was orange and red. At the time, I was able to put together what I was seeing. I'd seen it before, many times in lab conditions when we were testing materials to see what would make for the best Bomb. The air around her back was ionizing. After the reds and oranges, which were only there for a split second, it started to glow blue and then quickly fading to purple, growing brighter and brighter until finally it was white at the center, fading back into purple as it grew further from her. Then the sound of thunder, lightning shooting off from her back, crowning her in a halo of fire and death. It all happened so fast.

She opened her mouth, her lower jaw unhinging. The papers and witnesses said she breathed fire. That's not quite right, but it's close enough. She was vomiting up some kind of super-heated spray, and it glowed just like her spines. It looked like a jet of steam, with what looked like more solid bits within. That's when I realized the parts of my face and body with a direct path to her were burning. I dropped after realizing that she was, in effect, releasing something not unlike a slow-motion nuclear detonation. I tried to get others down with me. The light from it, even at that distance, was hot enough to set clothing and hair and such on fire.

In the shade of the parapet, someone managed to put me out, and I did the same for a lady next to me. She was lucky, she'd turned around moments before it got hot enough to ignite clothes, so the burns were only on her back and obviously some of her hair. When the light ceased, we got back up. I wish I hadn't. The smell was revolting, I held the woman who'd just been on fire as she vomited. The heat had flash-boiled the putrid water and further, vaporized what was in it. Burning, rotten fish mixed with seared human flesh.

The city was now an inferno. Anything made of metal near her had started to glow and melt, while wood ignited and water-saturated concrete exploded. However, there was a strange glow that wasn't the burning pyre around her. I looked to where I assumed whatever she vomited up had landed, and there were specks of…something, glowing. The larger pieces were brighter, while the smallest bits were down to a dull orange or red. I studied pieces of it. It was a mixture of heavy metals, but with high concentrations of depleted uranium and plutonium.

Then I heard something else. A deafening howl, coming from all around us. The wind was picking up. It hit me then that she'd managed to start a firestorm. Those unaware, it's a fire massive enough and hot enough to be able to suck in air, feeding itself. It was incredibly bright, almost like daytime. Looking through the streets, you could see bodies, the dead & dying. Some were burnt to cinders, others were still on fire. People crawling on their bellies to escape.

She then started to sniff the air, or at least that's what it looked like. We'd find out later she had two small pits on her snout, like a pit viper, though we still don't know exactly what that organ senses. She turned to look north west, and I covered my ears as she let out something like a grunt. It was higher pitched, like she was pleased, like she'd found something. She started lumbering forwards, in that direction, but with a newfound urgency. It took me a minute, and my heart sank and blood ran cold. The only thing really in that direction was the Tamamura Nuclear power station.

I started rushing down the building. I had to get to my apartment. I had to ignore the dead and dying around me, stepping over the broken bodies of the victims. I think I've blocked out most of what I saw getting to my flat. I had a phone there, installed by the Japanese government, as an emergency line. In those early days of the nuclear age, I was one of the few in Japan who could be called an authority on the subject of radioactive materials, be it sickness, containment or weaponization.

Arrangements were made quickly. A Sikorsky H-34 helicopter was to land just outside the Imperial Palace in forty or fifty minutes. Putting the phone down, I went about preparing to leave. I stripped, the clothes I had on previously would have to be burned or buried. Red silk undershirt, crimson dress shirt, an early custom bullet-resistant black vest. On top of that, a reinforced apricot great coat. The whole ensemble weighed nearly twenty-five pounds. Such was the reality of early bullet-resistant materials.

I then went through my briefcase, filled with papers verifying who I am, along with radiation sensing equipment. I kept one of them out and strapped it to my waist beneath the coat. I closed the case, reset the rotary combination and cuffed it to my left hand. I opened a locked drawer and took out a pistol I'd been given as a gift by the Japanese government. A Dutch Luger P08, that I assume they captured after having taken former Dutch Indonesia.

Eight rounds in the magazine, nine counting the one in the chamber. Four extra magazines in my coat. I also grabbed a few bottles of bourbon. I took a long swig from one. I knew I was going to have to do some very bad things.

Walking out the door, I moved as quickly as I could. I made it to the landing zone, and looking at my watch I had thirty minutes to wait. Some residents from the hospital near here recognized me, and asked for my help. Begrudgingly, I told them I'd do what I could until my flight arrived. They lead me to a tent, filled with survivors. I was brought to a group of kids. I passed the wand of my geiger-counter over them. I pointed to four of them, and told the orderlies that I needed them moved.

When they asked where, I told them to follow me. On stretchers, they were picked up and moved. I needed them away from the crowd. I had them sit up, facing a wall. The orderlies began to go back to grab equipment. I told them to stop. I reached for my gun and before they could finish asking what the hell I was doing, I'd shot all four in the back of their heads. One of the orderlies tried to rush me, but I leveled at him and he stopped. I remember the look on their faces perfectly, and I remember exactly what I said.

"All four of them received a lethal dose of gamma radiation. They were already dead. Have you looked around? We've got more people than we can handle, and I will not waste resources on people who aren't going to make it. They were dead when they were exposed, their bodies just didn't know it yet. Do you want to tell the families of people who died that we could have saved, because we decided to waste medicine, food and water on people who were going to die regardless? The only thing I've done is save them the agony of their organs shutting down over the next fifteen to thirty days"

Their expressions changed then. Some of them closed their eyes and nodded, others started cursing or crying. But they understood. We walked back to the tents and I called an emergency meeting. They saw the gun, and I believe most of them understood before I even started talking. Many of them looked almost relieved. I think they knew what would have to be done before I even got here, but no one wanted to be the person who gave the orders to start killing the hopeless. So I pulled rank and told them what to do. If anyone asked, they could say they didn't have a choice in the matter.

The cut-off point was five-hundred Roentgens. At five-hundred, you're no longer a person. You're a breathing corpse. Those children had each received between six and seven hundred. People with a dose beyond five-hundred were to be put in another camp, out of sight of the main one. The ones who were lucid enough would be given the choice of being allowed to leave and return to their families so long as they knew that they would not be given supplies. Children were to be euthanized. I also ordered drinking alcohol to be stored. Drinking on the job is normally frowned upon. Today, and for however long it took, would be an exception.

I don't remember exactly how long it was, but eventually the helicopter arrived. On board was Admiral Saigo Ozawa, the adjutant to Fleet Admiral Osami Nagano. General Hideki Mori was also present. They told me that they'd codenamed the beast, but for simplicity I'll continue to refer to her with the name given to her later on, Wani. While I explained my belief she was heading towards the nuclear power station, the helicopter caught up with her, still marching forwards

They both then began issuing orders with radios. She was still within range of the Imperial Fleet's largest guns, but at her current speed she would pass the twenty-five miles within thirty minutes. Admiral Ozawa gave the order for all ships within range to fire at will, with disregard for potential civilian casualties. It didn't take long for the shells to start landing. The Army was also given the order to shell indiscriminately, aircraft going on bombing runs. I was told that the Americans were sending two squadrons of B-36s and B-47s that would also be taking part, some forty-eight aircraft in total.

It got to the point where you couldn't see Wani's massive frame for all the smoke, dust and dirt. However, her eyes continued to glow through the fire and haze. At one point, just as she started to leave the range of the heavy guns of the Imperial Fleet, I saw a twenty inch shell from the lead ship of the Kai-class battleships hit her dead on the face. Despite what seemed like a roar of frustration, the eyes remained visible. When the smoke cleared, however, we saw that she wasn't invincible. Arguably though, this was worse. The flesh had been peeled and seared away, the bone blackened , revealing the top-half of the bones of her snout and eye sockets.

She snorted and sneezed a little, but continued as if nothing had happened. We were close to the plant now, and given how she had been hardly slowed down, let alone stopped, the Admiral and General called off the attack. The thinking at the time was that we didn't know what she was going to do when she got to the plant, and that an errant shell or bomb would cause an even worse radiation leak. We were going to watch, while the armed forces further gathered weapons.

The plant was now in sight, and her pace quickened towards it. The area was devoid of civilians, so we pulled back some to give the dragon room. Towering over the facility she snorted again, and looked upon it greedily. She made quick work of the surrounding structure, guided by some organic sensor tuned for radiation, heading straight for the reactors and the pools for coolant or spent fuel. Having found two of the four, she began to back up some, and then one of the most strange things I've ever seen occurred.

The radioactive materials, including the gamma-saturated water, levitated towards her. A brilliant eruption of Cherenkov radiation followed, before settling to a very dim blue glow, as she fed on the materials. As they began to become inert, they seemed to collect into a crude lump of material. Her short arms grasped at it, and brought it up to her mouth, devouring the fuel itself. I'm not sure why she tore it up if she could do that to begin with, but it reminded me much of a bear breaking open a bee hive. I don't know when, but eventually I noticed that the flesh on her face had begun to regenerate. She was healing at an insane rate.

Having finished with the radioactive materials, she went to work on the remaining metals in the structure. She seemed to have no taste for concrete or plaster. As we would learn more about her, we realized this was part of how she fuels her breath weapon. Somewhere in her gut was a storage area for waste materials that would be super-heated and then vomited back up as a weapon. As if a jet of vaporized steel, iron, and untold heavy metals weren't already bad enough, it would also be made radioactive by simply existing within her.

She then began a trek towards the sea. She'd leveled one of the largest cities in the world, gorged on a power station and was now leaving. In the distance, you could see some of the Imperial Fleet. Their guns were trained on her, and were waiting for her to enter shelling distance of both the primary and secondary guns. Above us, American heavy bombers and Japanese ground-attack aircraft were circling. Unseen, but present, was something on the order of thirty percent of the Imperial Army's artillery. When she was in range of the navy's guns, they would open up. The idea was that, despite her apparent ability to shrug off such continued fire, if you could concentrate it enough there would be some opening somewhere that would do something beyond annoy her.

Honestly, I don't think anyone held any particularly high hope for it to succeed. This was simply to spite her. Six minutes passed and she was within range. For a few moments, the entire world was lit up by rockets, muzzle blasts and missiles. The impact was incredible, and to the credit of the military present, it did get her attention.

Her scream was muffled by explosions in her mouth, and she tumbled forwards. The fire didn't stop, however. Despite even this, though, she stood up once more, although shakily. The very ground she stood on was being turned into something that looked like it should be on the moon. But eventually she regained her footing, and she started glowing again. I told them to turn the helicopter around, so the glass wouldn't be facing it, but it was too late. The initial build up of the ethereal wail, reaching crescendo as the air ionized and shrieked. The flash-over, the searing heat, then lightning cracking the sky. That's the last that I remember before waking up in a hospital in Nagano.

I had been out for a day and a half. The helicopter had crashed. The flash from her nuclear weapon boiled the eyes of the pilots. Ozawa, Mori and myself were just far enough away to just be burned. Right femur had a hairline fracture, the right side of my face had been split open. I lost nearly ten percent of the facial muscle there. The pain was intense, but I had responsibilities. So, seeing as how I was technically a victim of radiation exposure, I was the person in charge of my own care. So I pulled rank. I had them take me to the storage areas, and got out two bottles of laudanum.

Not the best thing you can do, but at the time I had worked out in my head that I was very quickly approaching the danger area for roentgens. Like some cosmic joke, I'd learn eventually how pointless that was, but that comes later. I didn't know at the time. I was thinking about whatever I had to do to get through the next weeks. So I also grabbed some amphetamines and medicated eye drops. Tokyo had a massive population at the time, and I was, again, the only qualified person in East Asia to deal with it. I must confess, when I was setting up radiological units before '54, I didn't really have nuclear monsters on my mind.

Before anyone thinks I'm over-stating my importance, I wish I were. We were still in that quaint little era where the majority of people, especially military men, thought you could wash off radiation. The only reason, I'm willing to bet, the majority of you truly understand how bad this stuff can be is because you were taught so by people I taught. Forgive me if I come off as a braggart, for the only pride I take in what we did was aiding the hopeless get it over with.

Death was rapidly becoming the only thing I could give to people to stop their suffering. I don't recall the next few weeks very well, I was taking amphetamines to keep going and using laudanum to bring myself down and sleep for eighteen or so hours before being up for three or four days to start it over again. I met with the Emperor once, during this. I had wanted to know what happened after I and the commanders were knocked out. I was taken to the Palace and given an audience with the IJN General Staff. They showed me the footage that had been recovered. Wani's fire had passed over one of the Kai-class, I don't recall which at the moment, and it detonated. With all the munitions on board, I believe that makes it the tenth or so largest non-nuclear, artificial explosion ever witnessed.

I was then taken aside by the Emperor, alone with him. He looked like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders, which I suppose is true. He asked me if I thought this would be it, if I thought Wani would return. I think I said yes, I couldn't see how it would just stop. At that moment, he smiled. Like something had been decided.

I would find out later that he committed seppuku. I would also meet the…angel? Not how most in the West think of angels. The word originally meant 'Messenger'. I would meet the angel that spoke to him. When the Orochi was brought screaming into the world and finally smitten by nuclear fire, the world changed. The world, as it appears, was in a fragile state. However, this state is also only fragile when one considers the sheer size of the world. There was almost nothing we could do to alter that situation. Almost. The Orochi was a keystone, the smallest and weakest of all the monsters. And its sacrifice started this new era.

I'd never been religious; I come from a family of at-best agnostics and mostly atheists. But after this, it seems like there is a God, or rather, Gods. And while you can believe this is all some grand design, with a meaningful purpose meant for the betterment of humanity, I can't. Not after communing with our gods.

That was when I learned that there was something higher than us. And that anyone who wanted to get closer to it couldn't possibly be human. The Angel called itself Moll. It, or she, noticed my confusion at such a name and explained that it had 'as many names as there are lights in the sky'. Moll was apparently for simplicity's sake. She had a strange appearance. Not something I can specify, really. She looked human, but she glowed, and she moved…wrong. The movements were smooth & floaty, and whenever she smiled it was always the exact same picture-perfect grin. It was like she was wearing a person-suit. I asked why it was speaking to me. I got a reply that I'm still not comfortable with. I'm going to just put down exactly what she said, and let you draw your own conclusions-

"Only those who are dead, those who are dying may speak to the Aspects of Life, and only those who are alive or half-living may speak to the Aspects of Death.. Beings of Life do not radiate Life, they consume it, and as you would assume, the opposite is also true. Death permeates your being, and in that, you are shielded in My Presence"

I asked then, if she killed the Emperor. She denied it. The Emperor was of Divine Blood, and had the right to look upon and command her as the Heir to Amaterasu. He gave his life to defend his people. I then asked why she had approached me. Due to the circumstances, namely that they could speak to me without killing me or bringing my corpse back to life, and the sway I held with human governments, I was to act as their Herald. I asked then how they expected anyone to believe this. At that point, I began to get incredibly sick. I'd never felt so bad in my life, even after Wani's attack. I regained my composure, and beginning to clean up my vomit, she started talking again. She'd never moved or made a sound when I was retching up my insides. I'll just repeat what she said again;

"You have been granted the gift of Belief. When you speak of this to the world, they shall consider your words and they will find them true despite their outlandish sound. It is as much as We can do. They will know the truth of what you say, but their reactions will remain their own. We are only giving you warning. There are Twelve who are coming, and the Son of Amaterasu will be the First. Cloaked in the finery of Ryujin he shall defend his people. We shall now await developments"

And she was gone. I got on the phone, and arranged a meeting with to-be crowned Emperor Akihito and his cabinet. The Palace was still in deep mourning, and I dressed appropriately. When I arrived, Akihito was slumped on the throne, and his face was red. He'd been crying, although he seemed to have regained some of his calm. On his lap was a bloodied sword, the Kusanagi, which I believe Hirohito used in his suicide. I began to give a bow, but he told me to stop, saying that the traditions could wait. That single act told me I was going to like this new Emperor. His father was a wonderful man, but I saw in his son what would become the greatest Emperor that Japan had produced, and someone who's leadership would prove vital in this age.

Akihito, after spying my limp & cane, had a table set up in front of his throne, so the ministers and myself could sit and talk. He placed the Kusanagi on the table, lengthways. I began by stating that what I was about to say was going to sound insane, and that if they asked me to admit myself into a mental hospital, I would. I still wasn't sure if the conversation between myself and 'Moll' had occurred, or if the radiation was finally destroying my mind. The Emperor nodded and I continued. I explained what had been said to me, and despite the look of shock on their faces, I could tell they believed me.

The next few days were deathly still. I was still directing aid efforts when it happened. Sirens began to blare. Wani or something roughly that size was spotted a few miles from the coast. The wind began to pick up, to the point that the streets cleared. Gale-force winds were blowing towards the sea, and the sky was going black. The sound of distant thunder could be heard, but it was coming from above us. It kept on, growing louder and louder as Wani lumbered into view. She roared a challenge back at the sky, and I looked up. You could hardly see it, but there was something in the clouds, something massive & serpentine Weaving to and fro, before a massive bolt of lightning struck the sea before her.

The shape in the clouds had gone, descending from the heavens and now animating the very sea itself. A serpent of sea-water, with a raiment of lightning and mist. It had ice for eyes, piercing through the surf much like Wani's. I heard shouts of Manda and Ryujin from voices in the wind & water itself, as if to trumpet the return of their liege. But there was not joy or hope in them, just respect & awe, mixed with the fear and terror of mortal men & women at the sight of this new beast. I watched as Wani went for his throat, her jaws trying to clamp around the serpent's neck. But it passed through Manda's form like she was trying to fight water, and in a way I suppose she was.

Snarling, Wani then planted herself. Her tail as an anchor, her legs splayed and locked. The air distorted around her, and burst into flame rapidly, much more quickly than in previous uses. It was different from her normal discharge, which tended to maintain its shape. This was amorphous, but just as insanely hot causing Manda to wail and lose cohesion, seeming to boil away. Despair gripped me for a few moments, because it seemed as though Manda had been vanquished. But this was not the case, as when Wani seemed to be relishing in her victory, the Storm-Serpent reformed above her.

Manda commanded the waves, bringing to bear a massive tide which engulfed her, and then it began to freeze. It was strange to look at, as it seemed to freeze from the inside out, Wani's movements slowing as she was locked in place.I wondered how something as simple as frozen sea water could hold such a massive creature, but later I would find a shard of it, the ice. It was a searing cold, and it took off some of the skin of my hands when I first grabbed it. I picked it up later with a pair of tongs, even though it had been out in the sun during a summer's day on Japan's eastern coastline.

Despite the best efforts of Manda, Wani freed herself of the icy prison. The frozen fortress that had formed around the dinosaurian titan, shuddered and fissured, steam screaming from fractures in the structure. And with a great bellow, the prison shattered in all directions, shouting thunder & death to the world around her. Manda then recoiled, and watched as Wani shook the ice from her body. There had been damage done, damage that would remain. The ice had burned her, and the shattering had done a number on her hide. Blood seeped from the wounds, and upon her already scarred face there were more gashes and bruises.

Manda then shrieked, and the ocean began to stir. Manda coiled further and further into the sky, longer and longer, draining the sea itself, hundreds of miles of water-dragon filling the sky. Wani began to light up, opening her mouth. Manda struck.

The great serpent rushed in, with all the force of the ocean, into Wani's open maw. Millions of gallons of seawater rushed into Wani, and her movements became jerky. She was fighting to move. Manda was trying to control her from the inside. It worked. Relief flooded my being as Wani, like a deranged marionette, began to retreat. Manda fought for every step, but Wani was losing the struggle.

The Americans followed them, and over the span of a month or two Manda had forced Wani to the North Pole, and eventually encased her in a ziggurat of ice, with a massive kuji-kiri or 'nine symbolic cuts' as its crown, which I am told is a sort of magical seal found in the Shinto belief, to restrict power from that which is inside.

Every so often one would see the Jailer itself, a great serpent of haze & ice checking the tomb it had made and breathing water or ice upon it, sealing & resealing the inevitable failures as Wani writhed and struggled within. It would hold until the fall of '63, but the nine year interval of peace it granted to us was a vital reprieve, giving us time to prepare for what later generations would call the 'Titanomachy', or Titan War, but at the time we just called it the War of the Monsters.