The Cat is Out of the Bag

"Okay, how do I look?" Gordon asked as he straightened out his blue tie. Katsura brushed the dust from his blazer.

"You look fine," she replied. She glanced over, seeing Maria and a Japanese looking man wearing a business suit. The man had strange golden colored eyes. It was Kiryuu in human form. Kiryuu wanted to be there to witness this personally. He did not want to wait and see it through any TV set.

"Nervous," Gordon sighed. "I can't believe I'm spilling my guts out on national television."

"Actually, there are some international stations here too," Kiryuu began, glancing around. "I see the BBC, even some Japanese stations as well."

"Great," Gordon sighed. "The whole world is gonna know you're Godzilla! Why don't we just get this over with and prepare the firing squad…I can't take it!"

"Easy, Gordon," Will said. "Just calm down."

Gordon glanced over, seeing the news people taking their seats. He was eyeing a particular camera, noticing the word FOX written up on the side.

"FOX," he sighed. "For all they care, I could be going up there wearing nothing but my underwear and a tie. Probably would make their news a bit more interesting than the drab we hear day by day." He glanced over to another camera, seeing the CNN logo on it. "CNN, wonderful. The firing squad's already here. I can just hear the moral debates on using Godzilla bones in your construction, Kiryuu. It would be better if they'd point the gun at my head right now!" He looked over, seeing ESPN settling down. "Can it get any worse? I much rather be shot in the back while I talk! I can just hear the questions. And NBC…Jay Leno's gonna have fun with me right afterwards. I much rather have Jon Stewart make fun of me! Just, blindfold me, put a cigarette in my mouth and get it over with!"

"We're behind you," said Maria. "You'll do fine."

"Good, it's nice to know that I have friends with me when I'm about to step off the edge with a noose around my neck," Gordon sighed again, his hands shaking. Will and Kiryuu backed up as Gordon walked out onto the podium. It was more like the docks to him. He was falling, and he could see the sudden stop at the end. He swallowed as he glanced down at his already made speech to tell the press. He saw Katsura mouth 'Good luck' to him as he glanced out over the audience.

"Thank you for coming," Gordon said to the press. "The reason why I brought you all here is to answer your questions about what had happened in Ft. Lauderdale. What you saw—what everyone saw. We are working with the Florida state government and the National Guard to help rebuild what was damaged in Ft. Lauderdale. We had received reports about a monster causing strange—disturbances around the coast of Florida, Bermuda, and most of the Caribbean. We discovered that this monster was a—dinosaur called Titanosaurus. Titanosaurus was discovered by Dr. Akira Mafune in 1977. Dr. Mafune is a Japanese marine biologist whose theories on Titanosaurus made him appear as a mad man to the Japanese scientific community. The Utah Foundation has put that to rest in the confirmation of Titanosaurus' existence. Titanosaurus is proof that there could be more monsters out there besides Godzilla, which is why we have Kiryuu Mechagodzilla on our side. We must be ready."

"You are saying that monster fighting should solely be the Foundation's responsibility?" began a reporter from FOX.

"Well, unless someone else has a few billion dollars to spend on building another giant robot capable of fighting these monstrosities…" Gordon began. "I mean, that is what we built Kiryuu for."

"You built Kiryuu only for the extermination of Godzilla," began a reporter from CNN. "But from what we've seen in Ft. Lauderdale, and from what the Japanese government have reported, and eye-witnesses reports from Nevada have stated that you have failed countless times in this duty. Godzilla still remains. Kiryuu was not built to destroy other monsters, it was built to destroy Godzilla. How can you explain this?"

Gordon swallowed: "Well—Godzilla is a very difficult monster to destroy. I mean, all of the others are easy pickings for Kiryuu. But Godzilla is different."

"How can you explain about the spines?" the reporter continued his question. "They weren't metallic like we've seen several times in photographs from your company, and from the Internet."

"The spines…" Gordon rumbled. He glanced back at Kiryuu, who nodded. "That is why I have this to show you. Uh—Mr. Penter…"

A screen lowered down from the ceiling. The lights dimmed a bit and a movie started to play. A scene faded onto the screen showing a massive skeleton laying out on the floor of an empty hangar. Gordon heard several gasps, and a few people whispering among themselves as they watched this scene play.

"Ladies and gentlemen," began Gordon. "Godzilla's skeleton. In 1952, the biggest H-bomb the US ever tested exploded over the Bikini Atoll. It was codenamed Mike. Near the Bikinis was an island inhabited by a dinosaur who awoke from a 130 million year suspended animation. The fallout from that H-bomb mutated it, making it grow large—to about 200-feet tall, giving it the plasma breath. And so, Godzilla was born. In 1954, this monster called Gojira by islanders from Odo Island came to Tokyo and completely decimated it. It was later killed by an unknown, experimental chemical created by a Japanese scientist. Only its skeleton remained. But in 1966, another Godzilla showed up—this Godzilla was probably the first one's relative. From our samples, we have theorized that it was the offspring of the first one." Gordon cleared his throat. He was visibly sweating. "When Japan contracted the Utah Foundation, a sub-contractor of the industrial company Lockheed—now Lockheed Martin, we were asked to build them a weapon that could destroy Godzilla—the current one. Godzilla had at that time raided much of Japan, and parts of the US in search for its food—which was discovered to be plasma. Because of our success with bio-syntech used in prosthesis and partly in robotics—we were asked to build them a Godzilla fighting robot. We decided—as irony would put it—that sometimes one's on worst enemy is one's self. So, we built a Mechagodzilla, getting the idea off of another one that existed in the 1970s. They built theirs first, I built one better. So, using the technology available to us, we built Mechagodzilla. We contracted Robo-Tech to build us a proper frame support for Mechagodzilla—a metallic skeleton. When we added everything to the metallic skeleton—it fell apart. We tried everything, titanium, steel, iron, and a few mixtures. But we wanted performance as well as strength. We needed something that was lightweight, but also durable, and strong—able to hold up nearly 40,000 tons of weight.

"We had already taken a sample of the skeleton from the original Godzilla to create our syntech muscle system. We used fragmented bone marrow in order to create it. Reptiles, unlike humans, have their genetic code stored within their red blood cells. So it was easy to do and we had enough. But then, we saw that because our metallic skeleton could not withstand the weight we applied as well as the maneuvers we wanted, we had to look elsewhere for a way to get a skeleton strong enough to do it. Godzilla's skeleton seemed perfect for the job."

"You mean to tell us," began the FOX reporter. "That Godzilla's skeleton is inside that machine's armor?"

"We had it slightly reinforced with some titanium," said Gordon. "Mostly around the joint areas. But, yes—under the armor and the syntech lies the skeleton of the first Godzilla. The teeth, skull, ribcage, thigh-bones, back-bones, spines, tail-bones, forearm bones, arm bones, pelvis, fingers, toes—Kiryuu now possesses. The current Godzilla ripped the right arm off of Kiryuu, so he no longer possesses that part of the skeleton. But the rest of the first Godzilla's skeleton is still very much inside of Kiryuu. Which comes to the other problem. Because the bones of the father are inside Kiryuu, Godzilla feels a slight connection to Kiryuu. Godzilla knows and respects his predecessor—so, recently, instead of being a hindrance, Godzilla has proven to be a rather useful ally. Which could be used to our advantage. Also, because of this, we have surmounted tests on Godzilla that we could never have been able to do without Kiryuu. From these tests we've even discovered that both Godzilla and Kiryuu possess a regenerative property within their cells. An amino acid that allows for full cell reconstruction. Which is why Godzilla is hard to kill. He's—invincible. The syntech has heightened this ability for Kiryuu though—which is apparent in his ability to create the famous bio-syntech blades. So, basically, Godzilla and Kiryuu are equally the same. They cancel each other out. But because of their connection, Godzilla has rarely been seen now. He knows that Kiryuu can kill him at any time. The technique used on Titanosaurus was once tested on Godzilla, only—because of certain malfunctions, it was not fully utilized. It was not fully tested. Godzilla knows that Kiryuu can kill him, and in a way he fears that."

"What we saw on the beach didn't look like fear," said another reporter from one of the other stations. "More like Godzilla was concerned for Kiryuu's well being."

"Well, his father's skeleton is inside Kiryuu…" Gordon shrugged. "The dumb animal sometimes mistakes Kiryuu for his real father. I don't think that Godzilla knows his father is really dead." Gordon caught himself for a moment, his eyes wide. Fuck, what the hell did I just say?!

He noticed that Kiryuu was burying his avatar's face in Maria's shoulder.

"Godzilla mistakes Kiryuu for his father?" the CNN reporter asked.

"How can I put this…" Gordon sighed. "Has anyone seen Star Wars: the Empire Strikes Back? It's kinda like that." Lord, I'm ready, strike me down with your wrath.

"Kiryuu's Darth Vader?" he asked. "And Godzilla is Luke Skywalker?"

Gordon could hear some chuckling from the back. He shifted his stance, scratching his neck.

"Yeah, that's basically it," Gordon replied. "At least that's the theory going around the base as to why Godzilla acts like that when Kiryuu is around. But again, it is very hard to prove this. We, at this time, do not have the scientific proof to back it up. It is a joke among my staff and I."

"What about that plasma blast that came out of Mechagodzilla's mouth?" began a reporter from ESPN. "How do you explain that?"

"That was a malfunction do to many lightning strikes hitting Kiryuu," said Gordon. "Also, do to the fact that Kiryuu really isn't all that seaworthy. We were in a rush to make him seaworthy, and didn't have time to test it. My Dr. Vasquez, who was the head of our underwater bio-syntech research project to create an aqualung from syntech, used an experimental program to try and make Kiryuu more seaworthy."

"About this regenerative property in Godzilla cells," began another reporter. "Do you plan on marking this in some form?"

"Uh," Gordon began. "No. We do not know the dangers of G-cells on humans. So far, any thing that has been done using G-cells was only for the construction of Kiryuu. What could be a blessing to both Kiryuu and Godzilla may be a curse to us. For right now until we have more information and more time to research G-cells, I will not be marketing them."

Kiryuu sighed, turning away.

"Kiryuu," began Will. "Can you like—maybe…uh…do something to some of their transmissions?"

"Interrupt them?" Kiryuu asked. "Or perhaps erase some of the things Gordon said?"

"Erase would be better," Will said. "Foul up their broadcasts. Do a little censoring of your own—edit their broadcasts."

"Some of these are being recorded," Kiryuu said. "And will be shown later. It will be hard to do anything about the live broadcasts."

"Get the ones that are going live now," said Will. "Then, when the others come in, attack those as well."

"I'll see what I can do," Kiryuu said, turning into himself. His face appeared to be in deep concentration. He closed his eyes and began to feel around through the satellite broadcasts. He connected to every news satellite in space and began to filter what he could. The reporters paused for a moment, standing up when they began to hear static coming from their monitors and headphones. Gordon glanced around, seeing the disturbance. Will walked up to him, informing him of what was going on.

"Technical difficulties?" Gordon asked. Then, he saw Kiryuu. "A godsend."

"What the hell?" called a reporter. "Our live feed is being interrupted."

"What the hell happened to our satellite hook up?" asked the FOX reporter.

"Someone's jamming the transmission," another reporter said. "We're loosing the satellite feed."

"I'm terribly sorry," began Gordon. "This place is bad for transmissions. Can never get my cell phone to work here."

Kiryuu gasped, letting go of the satellites. He shook his head at Will.

"I tried," he said. "Live feed is so difficult to edit. Wouldn't even matter if I did edit the taped broadcasts."

"You tried, pal," said Will. "Guess you can't do everything with that hacking skill of yours."

"It would have been better if I had edited some of the broadcasts made on that day," said Kiryuu. "We would have had a better chance. But—I was too exhausted."

"We've got the feed back," said the reporter from CNN.

"I can just see Jon Stewart's show," said Maria. "A picture of Kiryuu wearing a black cape and a red light saber in his claws. And Jay Leno, we'll never hear the end of it."

"I think they'll just keep us around just to amuse themselves with making jokes about us," said Will.

"The government?" Katsura asked.

"Yeah," Will replied. "The government."

"Just hope for more monster battles in the future," Kiryuu sighed. "That's the only thing that can save me now."

"So, you want to continue to fight?" Maria asked.

"It's my job," he said.

"Mr. Knight," began the reporter from the BBC. "What are your views about the Monster Zero attack on London?"

"No monster attacked London," replied Gordon. "It was terrorists. You were trying to use a monster attack as an escape goat for getting caught with your pants down. Everybody knows that."

"That is what the United States' government keeps telling the world," the reporter protested. "But a monster did attack England. If Monster Zero returns, will your Kiryuu fight it?"

"If Monster Zero exists," shrugged Gordon. "Yeah, Kiryuu would give it a good beating."

"Monster Zero," said Katsura. "It really did happen, didn't it?"

"I've hacked every military grid in the world," Kiryuu replied. "Yes, it did happen. It happened before I was completed, though. The US government tried to cover it up to protect their own people from panic. Monster Zero seems to be a monster more powerful than Godzilla. The last thing they wanted to hear was that another monster existed besides Godzilla."

"Mothra was there," said Maria. "From what I heard."

"She was," Kiryuu replied. "Another reason why I believed it happened."

"You've got proof too, don't you, Kiryuu?" Will asked with a slight chuckle.

"More proof than a Big-Foot hunter," said Kiryuu with a slight smile. "But I am buying my time right now. I will soon let it go public, though."

"What are you planning, Kiryuu?" Katsura asked.

"Nothing right now," he replied. "I've got friends over the net, though. Friends that would so desperately want this information to go public. The world must be warned. Monster Zero has attacked this planet before, he will return again to finish the job."

"Do they know who you are?" Maria asked. "Your 'friends'?"

"They don't," Kiryuu replied. "But I know who they are. Now, here's the question. Maria, do you think you can stand to work with a few nutcases like my team?"

"I'll live," Maria smiled. "Besides, if I get upset, I'll just smack you a few times."

"So great to be loved," Kiryuu sighed.

"Don't you even dare take it out again on my mecha!" Katsura cried.

"Honey, he ain't yours anymore," Maria laughed. "He's mine now."

Katsura growled a bit, her face was flushing. Maria crossed her arms, smiling deviously. Kiryuu and Will just stared at both of them and then at each other.

"Kiryuu," Will began. "What is your secret? I have got to know."

"Right now, Will," Kiryuu began. "I do not have an answer to that question. And I don't think I want to know."