Hello, peoples! This is a little oneshot I thought up while watching one of the Godzilla movies three days ago (Godzilla's fifty-third birthday, as it happens). Actually, I didn't really think it up at all; this is a novelization of one of the movie's scenes. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to write it in celebration of Godzilla Day, but I was in the process of updating another story, which I wanted to do by the end of the day, and it was 11:56 p.m. exactly when I did. After that, of course, I fell asleep, I wanted to get some other things done the next day, then the day after that was school, blah, blah, blah, so I didn't have enough time. Come to think of it, I really should have used Godzilla Day to actually write a Godzilla story, but whatever. I'm just stupid like that. Anyway, I have today off school, so here it is.

Disclaimer: I don't own Godzilla. In fact, I don't even own this story. But I guess I do own the way I wrote it down... so, yeah. At least I own something. Sorta. Not really.

Ironic

By GodzillaGuy

"But sir, you must leave your office! It's heading your way!"

Tobashi's voice was urgent over the phone, panicked, perhaps even a bit horrified. Shindo, on the other hand, felt completely opposite: calm, more calm, perhaps, than he had been in his whole life.

Shindo gave a mirthless chuckle in response to Tobashi's tone. He was sitting in his office chair, overlooking Tokyo through his window. He had always liked the view the large window gave him. It was the perfect place to sit down and just think.

He had been thinking a lot lately.

He was leaning back in his chair, the office phone held casually to his ear. To anyone looking at the scene from an outsider's point of view, they would have seen a calm businessman having a perfectly normal chat, just like they would have any day, with the city of Tokyo running perfectly normally in the background. Oddly, while this assumption would have been completely wrong, that was exactly how it felt to Shindo.

"Yes, I know that," he replied to Tobashi. His voice was entirely casual, in stark contrast to Tobashi's borderline hysteria. He turned his chair around to face the window on the other side of the room. "But this is the way that I want it. Let me have it my way."

Shindo paused. Part of what he was about to say had been building up inside him for a long time, nearly fifty years. The other, more recent part had also done the same, he realized now, simply hidden, not consciously recognized. The words flowed from him naturally, effortlessly.

"I nearly died on Lagos Island... along with my entire garrison."

A roar, muffled somewhat by distance and the office building's concrete walls, yet still piercing, filled the air inside the room like steam, spreading out and surrounding the lone occupant. The sound was deep, even as it changed pitches throughout to make that distinctive bellow, giving it partially an almost musical feel, while the other part may have struck fear into the heart of another man, any other man than Shindo. It overlapped with his words, merging into them.

"But the dinosaur saved us all." There was another pause as he rose from his chair to walk slowly over to the other window.

"And all of that prosperity I've built..." he paused once more, "is now being destroyed by the same dinosaur at this moment, and there's nothing I can do about it."

Another mirthless laugh escaped his lips, unbidden yet somehow welcome. "Very ironic, don't you think?" He chuckled a third time.

No answer came from the other end. It seemed that Tobashi had no reply to give to Shindo's monologue, which suited him just fine. It had, after all, been a rhetorical question. He slowly lowered the phone to his side, not wanting to be bothered by it now.

He was close enough to the window now, where he could see it: while Tokyo had looked peaceful enough through the window behind his desk, that had only been an illusion. Here was the real thing, the truth of what it had all come to: Tokyo was burning. Hungry flames creeped up over the piles of smashed rubble that had once been buildings, devouring whatever was left. Every now and then, through whatever causes, the flames would shoot upward in a massive explosion to add to the ever-growing destruction. Smoke, dyed orange by the fires beneath it, billowed over the scene, so much of it filling the sky that it looked like a blanket of dark clouds.

And all of it paled in comparison to the thing standing before it.

Dark, gnarled skin covered its massive, hundred meter tall body like a jumpsuit. Three rows of white, multi-branching spines ran down its back, wobbling from side to side with each move the creature made. Thick, muscular legs built to lug around its great bulk stepped forward steadily, rhythmically, crushing anything under them and making the earth tremble with each step. Two arms, bulging just as the legs did and tipped with four clawed fingers, were held up close to its sculpted chest, ready to tear apart the buildings in its way with terrible ease. A long tail with an end rounded like a club dragged behind it, swinging in a random direction every few seconds to batter whatever escaped its arms and feet.

Slowly, deliberately, the creature's head, so big and so close to the building by now that it nearly filled his view of the decimated city, turned to stare directly at Shindo. It looked clearly dinosaurian, but with a mammalian, almost feline look at the same time that made the overall effect more distorted, more unnatural. Yellowish fangs glistened against pink gums that lined the creature's vast maw. Atop the head were two small, pointed ears on either side, divided down the middle by the beginnings of the creature's dorsal plates. Under them were set a pair of monstrous eyes, reddish and feral, but not burning or merciless as some people who had survived encounters with their owner claimed.

Shindo stared straight into the eyes, filled not with fear, but somber curiosity. For some fathomless amount of time the two simply stood and looked at each other, neither making a move. Shindo continued to search the beast's eyes, finding all the while exactly what he predicted he would. He slowly moved his head down, then back up again in a respectful nod.

The creature reared back its head a bit, opening its mouth to unleash another roar. This time, with it so close, it was deafening, and Shindo was numbly surprised the window in front of him didn't break. But it could have been as quiet as a trickling stream and Shindo would be able to feel the anguish coming from it. The roar spoke volumes of unfiltered emotion, unhindered by the use of words, so intense that Shindo could feel the creature's pain as his own. A tortured scream that told a story all on its own of hurt, anger, and endless hate.

Time melted away, twisting and churning itself and its contents, as the years blended together and the order of the world's events dissolved. As clearly as if it was still 1944, he saw the dinosaur lying in the undergrowth of the forest on its side, wheezing softly, thick blood still oozing from its open wounds. Its eyes were full of begging, of incomprehension, not understanding why the men it had saved were just standing in front of it, making no effort to help it. And he saw himself, much younger then, saluting the fallen hero while trying unsuccessfully to keep the tears from spilling out of his eyes.

That same dinosaur that Shindo had left there on that island was now regarding him from outside the window. The gashes on its face and chest had healed, but the wounds inflicted on its soul shone from its eyes more clearly than the atomic explosion that had turned it into what it was now.

Ironic, indeed. Yes, it was ironic, but it made sense. This creature, intentionally or not, had put its life on the line to save Shindo and his men, and it had very nearly lost that life. If they had been real soldiers, they would have helped it as it was dying, they would have stood by it and tended it. They would have fed it from their own rations, cleaned its wounds with their own uniforms if they had to, stayed by its side until death took them all.

But instead they had done the exact opposite. They left it there, cold and afraid, while they went to their ship back to the mainland to take the credit. All of them saw that poor creature lying there, needing help, pleading for it desperately, and they turned around and left it. They had had the nerve to say that they would march home with honor as they turned their backs on the one reason why they were able to march home at all and abandoned it.

How exactly was that dinosaur was supposed to know what they were saying, what their salutes and ridiculous military signals were supposed to mean? Those petty little human ideals meant nothing to that creature. What it needed was help, and instead it received absolutely nothing. It had no way of knowing that they had at least wanted to help, nor even that they were different from the humans that had injured it so severely. What concept would an animal have of countries or nations? They were all people, and they all shared the blame. Not America, not Japan, but everybody.

So whose fault was it that half of Tokyo was burning, destroyed, while the other half waited for its turn? It was not the fault of the dinosaur; it only gave the human race what was coming to it already, through its own ignorance. Mankind had brought this doom upon itself. It had left this creature, its former savior, alone to die slowly and painfully, and now it was merely an instrument to make mankind pay for these repeated atrocities from which they never learned. Man was the real monster. What Shindo was staring at through his window was nothing more and nothing less than a tragic victim. It had been ripped to pieces, rolled up, and tossed aside, frightened and with nothing but its own pain. Now it was back, burning Tokyo and all the world that had left it, and they still asked why?

The creature slowly dipped its head in a wide, downwards arc, instantly recognizable as its own nod. When it returned to its previous position, eyes still locked with Shindo's, the face contorted in pain as much as it could manage without a complex set of facial muscles. Yes, it must have been painful for the creature to be repeatedly struck by it's opponent's searing lightning attacks, for it to be jumped on until its ribs cracked and its internal organs bruized, for it to be nearly strangled to death, but it was clear that this pain was greater in every way. The heavy eyelids inched downward, concealing more and more of those hurt eyes, until they eventually shut altogether in the creature's equivalent of what a man's face looks like just before he finally breaks down and cries.

The eyes stayed shut for several seconds before the lids began to climb gradually upward again. As they did so, something else became visible, collected in the twitching corners of the still opening eyes.

Tears.

Shining, thick, heart-wrenching tears.

Shindo knew what any biologist would say if told of this situation. They would say that reptiles lacked the body chemistry to produce tears, that even if they could then their brains weren't capable of feeling enough emotion to trigger them, that it was clearly just condensed water from the air that had concentrated around the eyes just as it had also concentrated on many other places clearly visible on its head and body, but Shindo didn't care about any of that. What was possible or not didn't matter anymore.

Shindo felt his own eyes sting at that same moment, but he didn't blink or wipe them. He continued to stare into those of the one who had saved his life, and the one he had let down. Through the blur of his tears, he saw the salty puddles that were the creature's tears grow. There was enough of them to fill a bathtub, but they refused to fall.

And so the two both stood, staring into each other's tear-filled eyes, crying silently for all that had happened. For the evils of man, and the price he would have to pay for those sins. For the innocent victims of those sins, the most obvious in the world of which was one of the two sobbing over it, the pain of it all ripping through its soul like a jagged knife. For those who inflicted those wounds, over and over again, whether they wanted to or not, until they would finally learn from their mistakes and just stop.

For the last time, reading the intent clearly in the creature's eyes, Shindo calmly nodded.

Godzilla, King of the Monsters, ravager of cities, child of the bomb, living fossil, abandoned savior, tortured soul, tossed his head back in an ear-splitting roar before a blinding blue flash from his mouth caused Shindo's death to be free of pain and regret.