Final Wars, 2007
Inside the Global Defense Force's ready room, everyone could tell what was happening. The invaders had come, Xilian, Nebulan, Simian, and more. They were winning.
"The ship, Rumbling, has crashed, no response from personnel onboard."
250 crew onboard. They're all dead.
Commander Stacker Pentecost could remember each one. He'd picked them himself for the Global Defense Force's new series of flying carriers, successors to the Super-X line. Lo that his life that he'd forget a single crew member.
Another report came in to the ready room, as another explosion rocked the building to its foundations.
"The ship, Enclair, confirmed destroyed. Kamikaze crash into an M Nebulan carrier, no escape pods."
The captain was supposed to go down with their ship. All 300 of the Enclair's had either been unable to leave, or decided they'd accompany their captain into whatever might come next. A nothing or a something, Pentecost was never a man to really know.
One thing he did know was that humanity was losing this Final War. He'd known that hours before he heard these messages and picked up the transponder to the one set of vessels still airborne. The G.D.F.'s flagship, marked with a crown on the global map as per its status as their force's strongest unit, alongside a rebuilt relic from G-Force's last stand.
"Captain Gordon, Captain Hayata," He addressed the two blips on his global map labeled the Gotengo and Super-X3 respectively, the only two flighted super ships still in the fight, both making a beeline for the Xilian flagship where they'd all watched the execution on live feed days ago.
Biologist 023 was many things. The Mysterian alien had been a wanderer from the stars, a reluctant commander, stoic, cold, and very often disagreeable in stark contrast to his human-wed wife and half-human daughter. Regardless of it all and the titles he bore, Stacker had known him as a friend. 023 had been as human as any person born of Terra in the end, when his last words were to declare himself Terran to spite his ancestral leader who'd come to invade and televised the event. And he'd watched the deranged emperor of his own kind murder him onscreen.
Pentecost felt a bitter cold go down his gut and his fist tighten.
They murdered his friend, murdered who knew how many he didn't have the chance to know. And it had been 023's last act to call for Terra's retribution, one Pentecost had been failing to deliver.
And the dead biologist's own flesh and blood was onboard the Gotengo, on a collision course with the very ship Stacker could see in the distance. The Xilian capital ship, that damned orb, seemingly defying the laws of gravity as it had the laws of mankind, hovering over a city of ruin and char.
The barrier shields were holding up to constant bombardment and not even Pentecost was confident the full salvo of their best ships would have been enough.
"Rumbling and Enclair are both down," Pentecost noted bitterly, "You're all the back-up you're getting."
"We'll make due," Gordon called back through the call, gruff and controlled as ever. Stacker knew him well enough to notice that meant even the infamous Douglas Gordon was not feeling assured of things.
"Nebulan dropship downed, one hundred clicks east of here!"
Pentecost turned an eye to the communications officer who'd called out, "We don't have anything in the east. Malfunction?"
They were wide eyed in surprise as they shook their head slightly, "Rodan sighting confirmed. He brought it down."
"I thought they were across the planet?" Stacker said with a furrowed brow.
Tracking kaiju was at times impossible, but this was a surprise. Especially when another tech called out.
"Southeast division called in. Tripod formation destroyed! Anguirus and Gamera did it!"
"Simian destroyer downed fifty clicks south of here, Mothra is engaging another while in route to the north!"
"Sonar mapping showing ten large, organic objects at sea and swimming rapidly to the east towards- Sir it's in a direct path to the Xilian capital ship!"
"Gomora and Baragon sighting coming in eighty clicks to the north!"
"Yonggary-"
"Manda too-"
"Raiga sighted-"
"Orka is in route-"
"Kaiju tracker is going ballistic, they're all coming this way!"
Often with names only recently known, some unknown, and plenty also not known to get involved in human affairs. Pentecost looked up to the global map, over two dozen blips showing up on the map. Tracking exact spots was impossible, but estimated routes were already calculated. One dot that was unknown was already extremely close.
Somehow everyone noticed and looked in the same direction. Far out to sea, behind the arriving Gotengo and Super-X3, there was a blinding flash followed by an explosion. An Xilian cruiser that had been trying to chase down the desperate charge of the G.D.F.'s gambit, burst asunder in an explosion that left a visible mushroom cloud of burning, yellow plasma. Not a second later, as a small blue sun appeared within the veil of the destruction, another dawn came in the middle of the night.
Gordon and Hayata, piloting the Gotengo and Super-X3 respectively looked towards each other in a dumbstruck expression. They couldn't see one another, for the blinding torrent of blue with spirals of white that shot between them was all consuming. Fired directly between the ships from kilometers away, the beam's endpoint was to crash into the Xilian capital ship. It's barrier shield of green octagons became visible and flickered, holding back the tide of destruction for a time. But only for a time.
The blast cleaved into and blasted a hole in the structure before finally cutting off from running out of charge. Hours upon hours of bombardment by the G.D.F., and they'd just had the door opened for them by another.
The other blips on the map were all trickling closer, some changing direction to come up behind Godzilla. It was only now that it was visible that he'd taken point in the growing formation.
"The kaiju they're converging..."
"The one outside it's.. It's gotta be..."
"He is here," Pentecost spoke for the whole room as the blip on the screen at sea changed.
UNKNOWN ENTITY …... GODZILLA.
He tried to fight the tiniest of smiles. He was in Kyoto over a decade ago, back when he was the captain of the Mechagodzilla crew. He'd seen the creature who'd hatched from an egg and was gentle as a lamb. He'd seen that same creature grow to wear the heavens on his brow and walk with thunder in the twilight of that same ancient city.
Or perhaps, a crown would be fitting to that brow.
He took notice of the symbol currently marked on the Gotengo, marking the flying ship as the rally point for every unit they had left to converge upon and cover as their strongest name in the fight. The kaiju were still arriving without stop. Already Mothra and Rodan had arrived, with more falling in by sea or land with an ETA measured in minutes. Stacker recognized many of them had reason to be where Godzilla was.
Orka whom had had her son rescued from captivity by the saurian.
Anguirus and Gamera, guardian beasts of yore whose losing battle was turned by his arrival.
Mothra, protector of the planet, who'd entrusted that role to the son of her parents' enemy when she was laid low.
Gomora, Manda, Varan, and Zilla with who knew how many other mutations, given safe harbor and homes in his domain of the Solgell islands.
You saved humanity once too, all of us, not ten years ago in the dawn of the new era...
"It's like the Terran kaiju are rallying behind him," Hayata called in from the X3 through the coms as he watched the advance he'd now become a part of.
Stacker thought, and he needed only do so for a short time. There was reason this army has arrived and were following whom they were.
He didn't fight the smile anymore when the distant boom of Godzilla's roar echoed across the night sky in direct challenge to the invaders. They might just live through this yet. Pentecost knew exactly where the kaiju were rallying to and he said so over the coms so every last person, potentially worldwide, could hear it, "They're rallying to their king."
Pentecost tapped at the screen and transferred the crown symbol from the Gotengo to Godzilla just as the great dragon made landfall in route to the mothership. If this was their final war, let it be one he had something befitting to bestow. As any sensible Briton would desire, he always wanted to be part of a coronation.
The brief memory of that little beast, that young prince; transposed onto a being such as this. Pentecost had been charged with the salvation of Terra against the invaders. Metaphorically, he'd found himself placing that title, as a crown, upon a different brow.
Pentecost made ready to rejoin the advance himself. If this was to be Terra's last battle, he wasn't going to miss this.
And so, the King of the Monsters was crowned in a name that entered the popular lexicon. On a night with thundering earth and stars falling from the sky as the prison Gorath, and whom it contained, was called in to confront him. The sovereign of giants was ceaseless in advance even as the invader's crafts bore forwards in the drawn battle lines and deployed their own colossal champions to the field, barreling forward to drive off the invaders as more and more living titans fell in line alongside and behind him. Blasts of scouring fire from ship and enforcer of the invaders burned across or bounced off the great dragon's hide as he knowingly took fire to cover the other's charge. And he wasn't slowing down.
The remaining arms of mankind may not know why their capital piece had been moved from their greatest ship to the powerful creature on the planet, but in the heat of this final conflict in the final war; those present did not question it. Choppers, planes, tanks, ASP suits, anything left joined into the charge. Apprehension had been left as mankind rallied behind the very image of terror that had lasted half a century, following the most powerful creature on the planet into the fray.
The alien craft that so plagued the humans shot down under sweeping fire by the monster king and his cohort, as his honor guard engaged the invader's living weapons from their horrific menagerie of enslaved giants. Battle lines were drawn between charging goliaths. Mothra against Gigan, Rodan against Hedorah, Anguirus opposite the Gryphon, and more clashes to go down in history.
Sweeping blasts rained from the heavens, like the bolts of Zeus, Thor, and Raiden all at once. Massive wings spread agape and parted the dark clouds, as the golden demise descended from on high. The invaders' seemingly under-control trump card was acting on its own, the giant that dwarfed titans entering the field. Grand King Ghidorah, the extinction of many by this one, was an imposing sight. One that should have made the humans, in their ships or on foot, turn tail and flee for their lives. The granduer of the King of Terror however was one soon marred, when Godzilla's charged onslaught of burning wrath crashing into his chest with enough force the dragon of the stars was knocked back by the drake of the seas. The kings made for one another in a clash where heaven and earth would quake.
The echoes of what was said by those charging into the fray among the giants would be known for hundreds of years hence, from the day Terra did not die.
"New rally point set-"
"Theodore Wylder here-"
"South division falling in-"
"Beta flight inbound-"
"Converging behind the advance-"
"To the king unit-"
"Colonel Gabriel calling in-"
"Chopper Flight formed up-"
"To the king!"
"To the King!"