Disclaimer - I don't own the Godzilla franchise, just this piece of fanfiction.
A/N - I love the Shin Godzilla movie and I hope they produce a sequel.
Please tell me what you think of this one-shot.
How many days before the monster returns?
The reconstruction of Tokyo was taking place with some international aid; a small apology considering how many countries were preparing to launch a thermonuclear assault on Tokyo just to destroy Godzilla, though they would definitely launch an attack if the creature started to move again if it came out of its deep freeze, so the apology was a little bit flat. The Japanese had no choice but to accept international aid with their economy in shambles and so many people dead and a large chunk of their capital city in ruins.
Kayoco Anne Patterson was standing in the middle of the reconstructive efforts, an outsider who just stared at the colossal dinosaur-like form of the creature that had continually evolved as it devastated Tokyo, surrounded by her aides and bodyguards; they were just a formality, and considering the fact the Japanese builders were more interested in rebuilding and repairing their city once they'd found out Godzilla's atomic fire only had a short half-life, it was doubtful they'd do anything. The area around the towering form of Godzilla had been fenced off by a mix of wood, metal and barbed wire to prevent anyone but scientists from entering.
From all over the Earth, scientists were arriving in Japan to help study the creature; they all wanted to know how nuclear energy could have caused the creature to evolve so rapidly while others wanted to get a good idea of its biology.
Somehow the builders, she noticed, were able to go out of their way to avoid even staring at the towering monster. Kayoco had come down to see the creature up close before she returned home to the US.
"Truly god incarnate," she whispered to herself, repeating something that she had said before when she had heard that Godzilla had shot some kind of atomic fire out of its mouth, and she had to crane her neck as she took in the creatures features while the scientists sent up specially constructed drones to study the creature. Kayoco hadn't sat in any of those meetings, but scientists from around the world had come in droves to help in the study of the creature, and it's remarkable ever-evolving nature.
It was impossible for Kayoco to muse on that particular subject and not think about Goro Maki, the scientist who'd predicted the existence of a creature like Godzilla. Idly the young Japanese-American woman wondered what had inspired Maki in investigating such a project even after being assigned to the study of radioactive waste just dumped on the seabed as casually as someone just throwing a pair of high heels on the floor after taking them from the boot cupboard. But since radioactivity was responsible for the loss of his wife, Kayoco could imagine that the scientist would have wanted to find another hazard to radiation when he'd been sent to investigate those canisters full of radioactive waste that had just been dumped on the seafloor.
He had been right, the whole time he had been right about his theories of a potential organism that would not only adapt to radiation, but would eventually use it as an energy source to help it evolve, and for years he had been disbelieved in scientific circles in both Japan and in America.
Disgraced and frustrated because he hadn't been taken seriously, Maki was gone and Tokyo was all but destroyed because no-one had the common sense to see if Maki's research was right.
There were so many questions surrounding Maki. His boat had been found in Tokyo Bay, but where he had he gone? His shoes had been left behind along with a purple origami bird, and an envelope with a note saying "Do as you please," but how had he escaped? How had he found the ancient marine creature that would eventually mutate and become the towering dinosaur-like monster towering above her after it had rampaged through Tokyo? Where was he now, and what was he doing now?
No-one could answer these questions at the moment, but one look around her made it clear answering them was not on the list of priorities.
There were many people to blame for this mess. The Japanese government had been slow to deal with this crisis, she knew it and the rest of the world knew it, and the excuse they had been completely unprepared for this mess could only take you so far.
Maki himself should have been easy to find, or he could have at least shown them the solution to his puzzles if he had shown himself up to the authorities when the Godzilla creature had made its first appearance. With his insight, they could have prevented the virtual destruction of so much of Japan, the death of the Prime Minister, and the threat of nuclear weapons dropped on the monster's head.
But the scientist was missing. No-one knew where he was, but truthfully Kayoco doubted they'd find him, though she had to wonder about the timing of his disappearance and the emergence of Godzilla for the first time before it evolved. Had Maki been watching out for the signs of the creature he had believed existed and would one day surface?
It would make a lot of sense if that was the case.
Now, all Kayoco wanted to know was how long, how many days before the monster returns? She knew the moment the coagulant wore off and Godzilla began to move, the plan to use a nuclear weapon would go forward no matter what the Japanese did. She looked around at the workers and was tempted to tell them to stop, but she didn't. It was none of her business anymore, the US government had recalled her and besides the Japanese already knew about the plan if Godzilla moved again.
As he was musing, Kayoco's phone rang and she took her phone out, guessing it was either her father wanting to know when she was coming home. She had spent the last 48 hours since Godzilla had been frozen thanks to the coagulant which had been pumped into its body, at great cost, getting her affairs in order before she boarded the plane that would take her home.
Kayoco loved Japan since she had roots here, but she wanted to get home, back to familiar surroundings-
She saw the UNKNOWN written on her mobile's screen. That meant it was not her parents, or her friends, or some of her co-workers but that didn't rule out someone important in the United States government. That alone made her answer her mobile. "Yes, Kayoco Patterson speaking?" she said in English in case the caller was American but if it was Japanese she could effortlessly switch languages and apologise and say she had been expecting a call from the US while maintaining a lie since she hadn't expected anyone to phone her, smiling and hoping that whoever was on the other end of the call didn't realise she was a little bit wary about the unexpected call.
"Hello, Miss Patterson," the voice of a man spoke on the other end in Japanese.
"Hello, who is this?" Kayoco asked, switching effortlessly over to Japanese herself to better speak to whomever was on the phone. At first she thought the voice on the other end of the line was one of the surviving Japanese officials who wished to discuss something with her at the last moment, but as she paid more attention to the ambient noise over the phone line she realised that she could hear overlapping sounds of traffic and conversation on the other end, like the caller was speaking in the middle of a street instead of a blessedly quiet building or office.
Her puzzlement was short lived.
"My name is Goro Maki."
Kayoco froze in shock but she got over it and he instantly clapped her free hand over the phone so the scientist couldn't hear her. "Trace this call, now. it's Maki," she hissed at her aides, knowing it was risky telling them who it was on the other end but she had no choice if she wanted the scientist traced before she went back to her phone.
"Goro Maki?" she repeated, hoping the scientist hadn't gotten suspicious of the moment she hadn't responded and had hung up out of paranoia. "The scientist who predicted the existence of Godzilla?"
"Yes, Miss Patterson. When I saw the badly corroded and damaged barrels of radioactive waste and learnt of the existence of ancient species who had evolved millions of years ago when the laws of nature on this planet were more malleable than they are now, I could see ways the creatures were evolving. It took me a long time, years of work and study and observation, but I definitely found my worst fears were confirmed," Maki said, but his voice was so low Kayoco had problems hearing it but she also had problems working out what the scientist was feeling as he spoke.
"Why are you calling me? Godzilla has just been frozen, why not call me when the creature was evolving and destroying Tokyo? Better yet, why not help with ending the threat?" Kayoco asked.
She thought that questions were justified just like so many others who knew about what Maki had discovered, she also thought it was a good idea to get some answers while she had the time available for him to be traced.
"I admit it was childish of me to not come forward with my work and give the Japanese and American governments the answers they wanted, but you have to see my problems, Miss Patterson."
"What problems?" Kayoco whispered.
"I spent years trying to convince people of the threat, Miss Patterson. I failed. Plus, there are many in your government and in the Japanese government who'd like to see me die for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom, though I guess it was to stop me embarrassing them. I wasn't going to commit suicide."
"So you couldn't help…..for personal reasons? You couldn't face the governments because they'd kill you?" Kayoco clarified.
"That and the fact I am dying of cancer; too many years of being exposed to the radioactive waste littered on the seafloor by our stupidity," Maki added almost offhandedly. "I'm currently dying, and I want to spend my last few days in peace without worrying about some stupid government getting ideas."
While it made sense to some degree, Kayoco had to wonder if the scientist was telling the truth since she had no way of knowing if her government had tried to kill him. That was the problem with governments - there were always so many secrets, loopholes you never had a clue if you were being told the whole truth, but she didn't plan on getting involved in that debate, but she had to keep him talking. She hadn't heard anything about Maki being on the list of people to keep quiet.
The cancer thing was also something that could be confirmed by others. At the moment, Maki was in a crowd somewhere so that cast some doubt over his secondary explanation, but Kayoco wasn't going to say anything that sounded disbelieving.
"Yes. I'm just pleased my work and my research on the creature has mitigated what could have been a truly terrible situation."
Kayoco became angrier than she had been in the last hour. She was taken aback by the sudden sheer arrogance in the scientist's voice like he had been the one responsible for the reprieve to Godzilla's threat. He had done NOTHING but hand over a load of riddles that had taken so much time for the group the Japanese government to solve, and by the time they had managed Tokyo had been devastated.
She herself had needed to tell the new Japanese Prime Minister the news that several other countries had been planning to take the creature off the hands of the American and Japanese governments.
Worse, she had heard and relayed the news a plan to drop of the nuclear bomb on the creature. It wasn't information she had been meant to hand over, but Kayoco had done it. She was half Japanese herself, she knew how terrible Hiroshima had been. Her grandmother had lived through the last two bombs.
"Although I am disappointed the Americans had taken it upon themselves to ignore the fact Gojira was basically a walking nuclear weapon and drop a bomb on it," Maki went on. "And when the creature moves again they'll drop it on Tokyo anyway, which means those rebuilding plans are a waste of time."
Kayoco had to admit Maki had a point there, though she didn't like the fact that a trained scientist, one who had spent years studying the creature and yet had turned his back on the city of Tokyo when they needed his expertise, and had basically told everyone to "do as they please."
Yaguchi had guessed Maki foreseen the threat of Godzilla as a simple test, and the longer she spoke to the man himself Kayoco believed he had a point. But she had the feeling that Maki had deliberately allowed this mess when he could have explained so much, done so much even with his worries hanging over his head, out of a sick desire for revenge.
It made sense. He had been disgraced, he had lost his wife because of radioactivity, why would he risk his life for others? It was selfish of him, but Kayoco had the feeling that as he had spent the latter years of his career being ridiculed for his theories and discoveries, Maki had learnt to simply not care.
"It would have destroyed Tokyo completely, killing anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the blast," she observed as she remembered the panic she had felt when she had learnt what her superiors had had in mind in order to bury what they had known about Godzilla, "but the creature itself….. it would have lived, right?"
"Yes. I saw that creature evolve over the last few years after I was humiliated for my efforts," Maki said, but his voice was so emotionless Kayoco guessed the scientist had long exhausted his anger over how he'd been dismissed. "I saw how it rapidly evolved from a creature the size of a small squid into a creature longer than a killer whale, absorbing radioactivity as though it was a mother's milk, growing stronger with each iteration, and its cellular structure became increasingly complex. It did all that while ingesting nuclear waste."
"Why are you calling me?" she asked, putting aside the implication she had just gotten in her mind Maki had been following the creature from the seabed to Tokyo harbour where it had first been seen. It made sense; after being disgraced, what else could he have done?
"I'm just calling to let you tell the US government that they are probably wasting their time; Godzilla is evolving into its next form. Surely you can see that by looking up at the tail?"
Kayoco swallowed quietly. The creature may have been frozen since the coagulant had done it's job, but that was not preventing Godzilla from evolving. The tip of the giant creature's tail was covered in a number of small, almost humanoid versions of Godzilla, and Kayoco genuinely did not want to see what they were like.
"Then why don't you come out and show yourself now? Speaking of which, were you following the creature as it evolved in the sea?" she asked.
"If I show myself then I could be arrested for not helping, I am probably seen as an embarrassment and besides I knew if I handed my research over, then a solution would have been found that didn't involve an enormous loss of life that in the long run would be for nothing. And yes, I did follow Gojira as it evolved in the sea," Maki's voice became quiet, almost reverent. "It was like watching the growth of a flower seed, Miss Patterson. I spent months following and studying it. And I've just told you, governments would try to have me killed. Not a great comfort."
"So self-preservation, that still doesn't explain why you're phoning me," Kayoco commented, "why phone me?"
"Because you were the US official involved with this mess, and besides I want you to take a message to both the Japanese government and to your own government."
"What message?" Kayoco asked, looking up at her aides to see if they'd had any luck tracking down the call, but it annoyed her that someone was making her into a messenger again.
"Tell them, it's too late."
With that, Maki cut the connection.
Kayoco glared at her aides. "Well?" she asked.
"Thailand. We've already alerted our embassy, but we're not sure if they're going to find him," one of the aides said apologetically.
Kayoco sighed, mentally relieved she didn't have to track him down from there. That was someone else's problem, right now she had no alternative but to make a report to her government and pass on Maki's little message. She didn't see any reason why she shouldn't, but she was also planning on telling the Japanese. No-one knew what was going to happen when those….things on Godzilla's tail came to life once they adapted and evolved to be immune to the coagulant, but they needed to know what Maki had said.
It's too late.
She looked up at the humanoid things on Godzilla's tail, and she wondered if the scientist was referring to them, or something else. With everything that had happened, the last thing she wanted was to see another of Maki's riddles be solved when it was almost too late. She just wondered if Maki was right, and some elements in both governments wanted him dead. But she didn't care.
She had enough on her mind as it was, but as she nodded to her aides and moved off while mentally composing her report of the conversation, she again wondered how long it would be before Godzilla, or what could be its next evolution woke up and walked again.
Until my next story.