It had to be done...
Erwin looked around, smiling to himself. Since those crazy reptile people had turned up, things had improved a lot as far as he was concerned. Much less crime, a cleaner bay, and more importantly from his point of view, the fishing seemed to have improved a hell of a lot.
Standing at the rear of his boat, the engine shut down and making gentle ticking sounds as it cooled, he looked out over the sparkling water early on a fine late spring day and felt that the world was going well, certainly compared to the last few years. He squinted towards the shore three or four miles away, seeing a number of ships moving around including the largest one he'd come across since the tanker sank decades ago.
With the removal of that obstruction by Kaiju, on one of the most memorable days he could ever recall, things had changed for the better as far as shipping went. There were a few trawlers even going out for proper deep sea fishing in the last couple of weeks, the ships having been refurbished and equipped with the financial backing of the city in the form of very low interest loans.
He'd considered doing something along those lines himself, he was a man of the sea and always would be, but he'd decided that it was too much very hard work for someone of his age. He was content with his much more modest little dory, although he was eyeing up some upgrades for it. Even so, he was happy to take advantage of the improvements to the waterways and venture outside the bay for fishing when the weather was nice, as it was today.
Shifting the huge wreck and clearing the channels had moved a lot of currents a surprising amount, which meant it was much less risky to go in and out of the bay now, and actually possible for something of a decent size.
Nodding in satisfaction, he set to work baiting hooks and erecting a number of fishing poles around the stern of the boat, then unfolded a deck chair and sat in it with a grunt of relaxation, before reaching for a cold bottle of beer. Popping the top off with a practised whack with the side of his other hand, he drank deeply, then put his feet up on the side and closed his eyes, a smile on his face.
Life was good.
Some indeterminate time later, he heard an odd sound, which made the boat tremble a little. Blinking, he opened his eyes and looked around.
Nothing was visible.
However, he wasn't naive enough to think that didn't mean something wasn't happening. Not after living in Brockton Bay all his life, and certainly not after the last few months.
Cocking his head he listened carefully. The waves lapping at the hull and the cries of seabirds were the loudest sounds, but he could make out very faint noises from the distant city, engines of other boats a mile or so away, and occasional splashes as fish jumped and fell back.
A few seconds passed, then the sound came again, louder. His boat shivered a little as it slowly drifted.
The sound was a deep bass grumble, not loud, but giving an impression of massive power being used for something. Sort of the sound he'd heard on TV from one of the NASA launches, but a lot more meaty than TV speakers could properly reproduce.
It stopped again after a few seconds.
Looking around slowly as he sat up, he put his half-depleted beer bottle back into the cooler and closed the lid, then stood to see over the cabin. Nowhere was anything particularly unusual visible.
He knew what that probably meant.
Sighing slightly, he knelt on the deck, then bent down and put his ear to the worn and bleached planks.
There was, right at the threshold of perception, a very deep voice muttering to itself in a tone of mild irritation, somewhere deep below.
"Now what the hell are they doing?" he wondered out loud even though he had no audience other than a herring gull that had decided his cabin roof was a good spot for a rest. Standing up, he moved to the side and leaned over it, shading his eyes from the sun. While it was very clear, it was also very deep, and whatever was down there was down far enough that he couldn't see anything.
"Kaiju?" he mumbled speculatively. The voice hadn't been quite right for the enormous cape, although it sounded a lot like her.
While he was peering into the water pondering the matter, the sound came for a third time, more loudly. This time it didn't stop.
Some distance away, perhaps three or four hundred yards to the east, the water rippled oddly, a huge circle shivering and quaking, as if a depth charge had gone off.
The bass roar got louder, then much louder.
His impression of a depth charge was suddenly and shockingly reinforced as the water inside the circle erupted in a huge tower of foam while the sound became overwhelming. Thousands of tons of water leaped skywards as he fell on his ass in surprise, gaping in amazement, his hat dropping to the deck beside him. The gull screeched in terror and left very quickly.
Out of the top of the plume of displaced sea, which looked a lot like the sort of thing he'd seen video of from when a submarine-launched missile broke the surface, an absolutely enormous form appeared, lifting skywards with a bone-shaking rumble. He stared as the thing, over two hundred feet long and twenty feet across, climbed steadily into the clear blue sky on multiple vast columns of water screaming out with immense force from the rows of nozzles down either side.
It looked like an enormous eel with the front arms and head of a vast lizard on the end, the immense mouth split in a wide reptilian grin of pleasure.
"WAAHOOOO!" the thing screamed in joy, accelerating into the sky.
Erwin slowly pulled himself up using the side of the boat as a hand-hold, needed due to the way it was rocking wildly from the concentric rings of waves spreading outwards from the launch point. The column of water took nearly thirty seconds to finish falling from the air, by which time the flying sea serpent was a distant dot against the blue background, shrouded in rainbows from the plumes of mist under and behind it.
Staring after it, hearing a faint cry of "Not fast enough yet!" come out of the heavens, he slowly shook his head in disbelief.
"Just when you think you've seen everything," he mumbled to himself.
"Weird fucking place, Brockton Bay."
Sighing, he waited for the boat to stop rocking, picked up his beer, then sat down again and tipped his hat over his eyes, sipping slowly.
After a minute or so, he began grinning.
The takeoff had been pretty impressive, but he wondered how she was planning on landing...