Chapter 11: History

Maddie lay down on Godzilla's neck as if she were hugging a very old tree. She listened to his last growl, felt his feet stomping on the floor. It was reminding her back to the first few days here where they were, where she was almost happy to have met Godzilla. Now she wanted to get back to a certain normality. Behind her she heard a slight curse. She looked back with a slight smile.

It was Aaron who leaned against the first of Godzilla's back plates and felt as if he was about to rush off, but it was relatively safe if Godzilla wasn't in great motion like a fight, the skin was covered with rough scales, similar to a shark, an adaptation to the water, you could almost not slip off and mostly got stuck on the scales.

Nevertheless, Aaron had taken a small safety precaution. From his bag he took a rope that he had taken with him for all falls, along with a climbing hook that he had always used whenever they had to leave the village and climb up the mountains.

"Do you think the big one will feel it?" Aaron asked them, "I don't know, but watch where you put it. Better not poke it in the skin." "Why, is he going to get mad at me?" Aaron joked. "He may not, but I will." Madison said. Aaron raised his eyebrow in confusion, Madison rolled her eyes and lay back down on Godzilla's neck. "Try to throw the heel open in the crack between the back plate." Aaron looked down at the rope, shrugged his shoulder and tried his luck. He turned around and threw the hook backwards, aimed as well as he could in the direction of the plate, landed close to the edge of the backplate, slowly pulled it back up and slowly hooked into the plate. Godzilla didn't seem to make any noise and so Madison didn't seem to notice anything. He tied the rope around his waist and made a tight knot in it, praying that he wouldn't slip off.

He didn't really know how long they would take, Godzilla didn't move very fast and walked relatively slowly, but his stride was a little bit too slow to compensate, the trip would still take a while if the temple was on the other side of the island. Despite all the years he had been here, he had never ventured far from the village and only used the known and established routes. It made him nervous, he couldn't even know if there were new strange creatures there or if there was no danger at all, although he saw this as a rather naive view of himself. On Skull Island pretty much everything was dangerous, almost every animal here was adapted to be perfect for hunting or to have the perfect defense, even the plants here. There were some trees or plants that were covered with highly toxic spines.

So what was waiting on the other side worried him.

He tried to distract himself and thought of other things, which rekindled his curiosity. He still knew little about Madison, now would be a good time to confront her. She was still lying on her stomach with her arms around his neck.

"Madison?" He cried out loudly to avoid being overpowered by Godzilla. She woke up, apparently almost asleep. She turned to him and crossed her legs, well balanced.

"Yes what is it?" "I wanted to ask you something." He hesitated a little. She looked at him. "Come on, what do you want to know?" "Who are you?" Madison blinked in surprise and didn't really know the answer to the question. "What do you mean, who are you?"

"I hardly know anything about you, where exactly did you come from, how did you get here." "I come from Boston and was taken here by Godzilla." "No no." He shook his head, "How did you get here, what are you doing where you are or why are you here?"

She sighed and nodded her head slightly. "All right, so you want to know everything, the whole story?" "Well, we have a little time." Madison put a small smile on her face and worked through the whole thing again, took a deep breath and went back to the beginning.

"You know the story of Monarch's founding in 1945? How an American nuclear submarine first touched the deep sea and Godzilla awoke?" Aaron nodded in agreement.

"Well then, I'll skip ahead to 2014, because Godzilla was bombed in 1954, and then he disappeared into a short hibernation. But then he woke up again, in 2014, after one of the two Mutos hatched."

"Which Mutos were they, it is a code name for massive unknowns-"
"Terrestrial organisms, exactly. We do not have a real name for the species yet. They are insect-like mammals that fought Godzilla. They are natural enemies and Godzilla was hunting them. This led them to San Francisco, where I and my family were living at the time."

Madison paused briefly to take a deep breath. "Are you all right?" "I'm fine." "Do you want to continue?" He asked. Madison nodded.

"I was quite small; we had just celebrated my brother's birthday. We couldn't get out of town in time before the bridge collapsed. We were trapped in a mousetrap, with monsters that wouldn't even pay attention or give us a comment. When it was over, we were separated from my brother, we had lost him, forever." She looked to the side, at the mountains they were passing through, smaller rocks fell from them and rolled down until they hit the ground.

"Anyway, our family was torn apart. We all had certain problems. Actually, my mother had raised me less than the environment of Monarch and Serizawa, who was my godfather." "The things you hear about being cut off after so long." Aaron joked a little to lift the spirits a little.

"Well, what about your family at that time?" "Like I said, we were torn apart, my father started to become a terrible drunk, my mother couldn't stand it, that they fought a lot. The whole thing weighed on her emotionally, too much. Her emotions have become less in the last few years, her attitude towards everyone has become cold and she tries to distance herself from Dad, she was convinced that he was the bad guy in the story."

"It's never that simple, just like Godzilla is not the bad guy because your brother died trying to fight those parasites." Madison agreed with Aaron, nodding.

"She went crazy, not in a way you'd notice, she was completely closed off from the outside world in her thoughts. That she had helped defeat Muto Prime, the second monster to awaken shortly thereafter, and helping Godzilla out of trouble in some way did not make it any better, as she was hailed as a hero."

"How had she helped? We had Monarch defensive weapons on the way here at the time, but they won't be able to take on 100-meter monsters." "No, you're right." Madison laughed. "It was the prototype for a device that my mom and dad had named the Orca. It was designed to protect whales from being beached on the shore. A side effect was that it could also communicate with the Titans. This allowed her to distract Muto Prime long enough and Godzilla won the victory." Madison took a deep breath, ran her hands through her hair once and shook her head briefly.

"Then what happened over the next few years?"

"Actually, it got a little quieter than we thought, but we found more monsters, 17 and counting. Well, that gave my mom time to prepare me and herself for her *plan* with Jonah."

"What was that plan?" He asked. Madison sighed again, knowing this part was coming, but she felt the strength to tell herself these things again.

"To awaken all Titans to restore a natural balance, to preserve the world through the destruction of man, so that life will continue to exist. But not everything went as planned, nor was the plan a good idea to start with. It was naive, not thought out and exploited by a man who firmly believed this crazy idea."

"So you woke up all the Titans?" "Not really, the idea was to slowly wake everyone one by one, but we woke the wrong Titan first." "What was this 'Wrong' Titan?"

"We called him Monster Zero. His name was Ghidorah. The closest, if not the inspiration of the devil for mankind. Trapped in the ice of Antarctica, and we woke up. Godzilla started chasing after him, but we humans only made things worse because we didn't have the control over these things."

Aaron crossed his arms and nodded in agreement. "That had never really changed with Monarch and the organization that worked with them, but we want control over these things, but we can't. I mean that's how I ended up here, I wanted us to control this island more tightly because I didn't trust Kong enough to keep the Skullcrawlers and other animals apart."

Madison sat back for a moment and stretched out her arms. "Some things never change." Meanwhile, Godzilla began climbing a small mountain, slowly, one step at a time.

"So what happened to the plan?" Madison looked just behind him and watched Godzilla's movements and held on tight to his scales, then she replied.

"Well, Ghidorah had fought Godzilla, the two were underwater, and Godzilla seemed to be gaining the upper hand, but then the news came that the military wanted to intervene and detonated a bomb, at least as glorious as an atomic bomb, if not much worse. The Oxygen Destroyer, as she called him, managed to kill Godzilla, but not Ghidorah. He is not of this world, he contradicted everything that existed in the world."

"An alien." "Bingo, crashed on Earth millions of years ago, the king of terror. Since then he terrorized life on earth to gain the upper hand, but Godzillas and other Titans before him fought against him. But this time he had won and began to take control of the other Titans. He was the new Alpha and brought all the Titans of this world to awaken and wipe out the humans and this planet."

"So the Skullcrawlers woke up because of him?" "Most likely."

"And what happened here on the island... happened all over the world?" Madison nodded in shame. "Yes. Many cities and towns were attacked. It wasn't what we had planned, the Titans were supposed to repair the Earth, you know, rebalance nature and stuff. But they had done the opposite and destroyed everything in their path, erasing whole strips of land until only a pile of rubble and charred ashes remained."

"And if Godzilla was dead, why didn't it stay that way? Who would stand against these Titans and Ghidorah?"

Madison paused to think, she had already said too much to stop now.

"We, or at least some of us, stepped in and stood up to these things with what we could. I decided against my mother, no matter what. It became too dangerous for me to be in the bunker with Jonah and his henchmen, it wouldn't take long and we would probably be a burden to them."

"Jonah, you mentioned that name a lot, who is this guy?" "An asshole, I'll tell you that." Escaped Madison, Aaron seemed surprised by her sudden change of pitch.

"You don't seem to like this guy." "He's the only person I wish dead because he has other lives on his conscience but feels no remorse for it, despite his mistakes as an eco-terrorist, in the name of the environment. He took advantage of my mother and manipulated her and therefore me. If it wasn't for him, these things would never have happened."

"Okay, so you stood up to your mother and an eco-terrorist who used her as a marionette with his henchmen? This is getting complicated."

"I should elaborate on this. We were in Boston at the time, one of the Monarch bunkers built for such events. That was his base from where he was observing and controlling everything. By a lucky coincidence, I overheard him and my mother talking about how she suggested he lure Ghidorah to Boston at the stadium. But she would never have done it, I knew that. So I decided to take responsibility for the things I regret and pay for them, no matter what the cost."

"Kind of like how I helped the Iwis?" "Exactly... me... I'm... sorry, I'm gonna need a minute." "Take your time. This must be really stressing you out." Aaron didn't really know what else to say, he wasn't sure if he was too insensitive, he hadn't had any experience with it for a long time.

Madison rubbed her hands across her face and briefly turned her neck, it felt very tense. She felt a slight cracking sound coming and felt much better. All of a sudden it went down a bit, Godzilla slowly stomped down the mountain again.

Madison exhaled, continued and approached her fears head-on.

"I stole the Orca and crept through the building, that was running smoothly, so it was the same after a few hours with the stadium, I just walked past everyone while they were too busy to evacuate. I waited and then broke into the Red Socks recording studio. It would take a few minutes for the speakers to record the sound around the world from the Titans but then it worked and the attacks stopped. But now I was faced with another problem, which was that Ghidorah was chasing me."

"That Ghidorah, that was the three-headed dragon, was it?" Madison nodded. "Exactly. And it was after me now, a 521 ft. thousands year old dragon with three personalities chased after me the rebellious Teenage Girl. Aaron smiled a little. "When you say it out loud it sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster." Madison laughed a little, but continued with her story.

"At the same time they were looking for Godzilla after Mothra showed them the way. My father, Serizawa and her colleagues Chen and Rick were on a deep sea submarine on its way to the underworld, the hollow earth." "So the old man was right after all." Aaron said as he scratched his head in embarrassment.

"Yeah. They were all right. The reason your father made the first expedition here was real. There was a lost civilization underneath. I always joke that it's Atlantis. It's probably something else entirely. These humans had successfully lived together with the Titans and benefited from each other, it was his last retreat where he regenerated. However, this probably took years. But the world needed him now."

She paused to think of Serizawa, her godfather, who had practically raised her. "What...What did they do?" "Well...they had to fire a nuclear device at Godzilla. But the submarine could not fire it after getting scratched. So someone had to fire it manually. That someone was Serizawa."

Aaron's eyes were a little shocked. He never thought he would ever hear about who had died and who was alive. But hearing Serizawa's death hit him like a hammer, he was a very smart man, the Monarch just started running the place when he was there in '95.

"I know how you probably feel." Maddie said. "I still feel terrible about it. When my family split up, he was practically the one who was there for me the most. He was my Godfather, except he was like my father to me. To experience his death only after all this had happened felt like my neck had been broken."

She held back her tears and snorted a little. "At least he saved the world... and me somehow."

"How?" Aaron her directly, a little thrown off track by this message.

"Well, Godzilla was now also on his way to Boston. I was waiting, not quite sure what I was doing there, either brave enough or stupid enough." "Which is why?"

Madison embarrassedly grabbed the back of his neck, and below Godzilla's feet you could just hear water stomping, a swamp or something.

"Well, Ghidorah was there, there in Boston, I just saw this cloud coming towards me in the beginning and I ran back inside the studio thinking I was safe. But before I knew it, I was in the eye of a hurricane caused by the Titan. Right in front of me he landed on the stadium, destroyed the equipment to end the signal. I fasted a decision and pulled the plug, but that wouldn't shut down the Orca."

She felt it running cold across her back again, this fear of the memory. But she pulled through, shook herself and continued.

"He... he looked at me. This yellow eye started to hate me when I held the Orca in my hand and the signal continued. He must have thought that I was the one giving it away, now he was going to end it. I saw his neck fill with yellow flashes, despite my position I tried and ran, and he just missed me by a little. As I ran through the hallway, when the proverbial devil came after me, more and more lightning struck through the walls. In front of me was the staircase, I jumped down and for a brief moment he lost me, but he began to lay all the buildings around him in ruins.

Madison began to tremble a little, but she continued to fight her fear. Aaron was fascinated by the story and excited, so detailed, he slowly realized what kind of girl she was.

"I ran down the stairs, a stone hit me on the head, but my body had just enough adrenaline pumped into it as never before, so I didn't feel it. I ran down onto the field, disoriented in the rain, inwardly I slowly began to conclude that this was it, after all I had delayed the destruction of the earth for a few hours. Then an explosion hit me from behind and threw me across the field. When my body bounced, at first I only heard a short buzzing sound, everything sounded so muffled. I continued to fight anyway, sat up and saw this damn thing, which had ruined my family, and the dragon's left head in the corner of my eye. Go to hell I thought, grabbed the thing and threw it over to Ghidorah. He stomped on it, which didn't completely destroy it, as we found out. I heard the thunderous roar, which practically meant death. I was ready to face him, it was too late at that point anyway. I got up and looked at him, the rain fell on my face, my vision was blurred, but still I could see the three necks building up in front of me and the lightning sliding along again. As the lightning climbed up Ghidorah's neck, all I could hear was the sound of thunder. I didn't know what my last words should be, so I just yelled at him so he knew I wasn't giving up. I would have been dead, crumbling to dust like other people before me. But... God... Godzilla he..."

Madison looked down at the scaly skin of the one creature she owed her life to. The tears broke through her, she squeezed her eyes together and let the tears out, from her face they landed on Godzilla's surface. What neither Aaron nor Madison knew, Godzilla noticed. His footsteps slowed a little, he looked up with his eyes, and heard Madison sobbing. He left a soft humming sound that went through his whole body like a purring cat.

The two upstairs felt it. Aaron looked around in a little panic, thinking something had happened. While Aaron was distracted, Madison started smiling again. She wiped the tears from her face and gently stroked Godzilla over her skin, her eyes still pointing down. Even though not a word was said between them, she could understand.

"Don't be sad Madison."

She looked up, Aaron put his hand on her shoulder to calm her down.

"Madison, you don't have to be sad. You're one of the bravest, strongest people I've ever seen, I really mean that." He took his hand away, Madison felt better, she wiped the remaining tears from her face. "And you mean that in all seriousness?"

"Sure I do. Think about how many people your age would have been able to keep this up, even some adults can't, as I've seen for myself. I understand the pressure it all had to put on you, but now you've landed here and you haven't stopped going on, staying sane, no, not only that. You have something that not everyone can do, the courage to stand up for others, innocent lives. Your mother had made mistakes and you have, you felt responsible for them and kicked against her to protect innocent people, even if maybe it was not all your fault. Whatever we are on this journey or those that lie ahead, I'm sure you've grown for it."

Madison smiled, it was a true smile, these words encouraged her and brought her back up.

"Thank you, Aaron." "No, I-" Madison hugged him, surprisingly for Aaron. It took him a minute to adjust. He tapped her gently on the shoulder.

"I never had a daughter, but if you were mine, I would be very proud of you right now." He said. "Thank you." Aaron shook his head. "No, thank you, because people like you always give me a little hope in this world."

She let go of him and sat back down. "We'll be on the road a little while longer, I guess... how about you get some more rest?" He asked.

But there should be no rest right now.

Godzillas didn't move anymore but a loud growl came from him, he was aggressive. From underneath, a stench poked up into their nose, it smelled like rotten eggs and meat.

"Puhh, what the hell is that?" Madison said. Aaron looked to the side, his eyes widened. "I think the next best thing." Madison raised his eyebrow, slightly nervously looking down.

It was a cloud of greenish-yellowish gas that was several feet above the ground and stretched for several hundred feet. Below she could only make out certain outlines, including boulders and, bones.

"Is that..." "The bone field where the skull crawlers hold their meals, exactly." He looked frantically left and right all the time, down on his string so it wouldn't break. He had his weapon firmly in his grip now, even though he knew it couldn't do much against a Skullcrawler. Gunshots in the eyes kept them well away.

"As long as we're up here, we should be safe." Madison said. "I think so too, but I'm still a little nervous. I've only been here once and I've never looked back."

Then she heard a slimy roar nearby. All three of them immediately looked in that direction. It was quiet on the other side, only the panting of Godzilla could still be heard. He was now king over this island, but the Skull Crawlers were very primitive in their instincts, especially the younger ones would not hold back.

He slowly took a few steps forward, going deeper into the field. The stench got worse, but Aaron and Madison were still a good distance above the cloud. Then they heard the roar once more, Godzilla stopped.

Madison looked down. She saw movement below, directly toward them. "Down there!" She yelled out, Godzilla heard it and immediately noticed the shadow that crept through the fog, with a powerful thrust, turning his tail sideways and striking the target, sending it several hundred feet through the air. For a short time the stall of the Skull Crawler emerged from the cloud, but then it dived in again, the impact was well audible.

The next sound was made by Madison. It was Godzilla growling slightly, something had made him very angry again. He looked down at his leg and started shaking. "Aaron, what's there?" Madison said as she tried to hang on. When he looked down, he immediately fired a few shots instead of answering. Madison leaned over on his side.

A Skullcrawler, around which Godzilla's leg tried to climb up 10 meters. It had anchored itself firmly into his skin with its claws. Aaron kept firing and actually managed to land a good hit, the skull crawler screamed up and lost its grip on one leg.

Godzilla stamped his leg on the ground, which catapulted him to the ground. He took no chances. He lifted his leg again and stepped on the skull crawler, the last thing you heard was a smacking and cracking sound. Madison got light goose bumps.

Godzilla roared loudly through the field, so loud that it stirred up part of the fog. He took a few steps forward and positioned himself approximately in the middle.

"What are you gonna do?" Madison asked, the answer she heard only seconds later. A loud buzzing sound came at her from below, it was getting warmer beneath them. Aaron looked behind him, he saw a blue light slowly climbing up out of the fog onto her.

"Hold on!" he shouted. Madison turned to him and saw Godzilla's atomic breath continue to charge, it now reaches almost to his neck. The heat became great enough that she reached away with her hands, but her clothes helped her to sit. The blue light had now reached her, it glowed through several spots on his body. She narrowed her eyes and hoped for the best and listened to the sounds below.

Godzilla unleashed his atomic breath to the ground beneath them and started a chain reaction when the gas mixed with the heat of the breath, it exploded, you could hear it through the valley like one explosion after another, turning slowly away from the explosions and unleashing it again. Madison saw a slight blue shimmer in front of him that the explosion and flames had been colored blue by the mixing with Godzilla radioactive breath. The heat it generated was bearable, but now she could well imagine how the other Titans felt when exposed to this heat.

Slowly Godzilla stopped, he still had to conserve some of his energy in case a fight broke out. He went on as if nothing had happened.