Disclaimer: I don't own Evangelion or Godzilla (but hey, a guy can dream can't he?).
Author's note: I guess now would be a good time to explain how everything is going to work out in this story. First, I'm primarily drawing from the storyline from the Heisei series of Godzilla. Most of the monsters from both the Showa and Heisei storylines should make an appearance in this story. Everything is the same except for a few minor changes. Those of you reading this that are actually Godzilla fans will understand what those changes are when you read this and later chapters. As for the rest of you, just sit back and enjoy.
Also, the main part of this chapter is to bring people who don't know all that much about Godzilla up to speed. G-fans can probably skip over the main section of this chapter.
Chapter 4: The Gathering Storm
It floated through the darkness of space, or seemed to float. The giant, dark mass drifted in the vast stretches of emptiness between the stars. It had been adrift in the infinite depths of space for only a short time by its reckoning. Indeed, barely two decades had passed since it had left its last prey, driven away by a force beyond its reckoning. Injured beyond measure and driven mad with pain, it had sough refuge in the soothing cold of vacuum. The battle had severely weakened it.
However, adversity builds strength, and this thing was not an exception. While it licked its wounds its strength slowly built. It gathered its strength for the day when it would finally return to finish the task allotted to it at the moment of its unholy birth. Out in the cold vastness, its course changed.
It slowly came around, until it began to return the way it had come. Slowly, but gathering speed with each passing second, it made its way back. Back to the place from which it came, back to the tiny green and blue planet known only as Earth.
***
"How is the cleanup going?" asked Ishiro, looking at the staff member who stood in front of his desk. The look on the man's face clearly conveyed his discomfort with the situation. Ishiro Saegusa could sympathize with him. Had their positions been reversed, he would have found it odd to be answering to a fourteen year old boy as well. In the time since that fateful debriefing, Ishiro had been granted his own personal lab and access to all the equipment he could ever want. He had quickly immersed himself in study and spent quite a lot of time in his lab.
"We're almost finished uh…sir," stammered the guard after a moment.
"And where are the samples you've acquired now?" inquired Ishiro.
"The samples we've recovered were put into cold storage with safeguards against radioactivity," replied the man, "Just as you instructed."
"Good," said Ishiro, "And did you make sure that you completely cleaned out the forest area?"
"With all due respect, why should that matter?" said the man.
"The last thing we want are for G-cells to be introduced to the local fauna," answered Ishiro.
"Why should we worry about saving the animals?" asked the man sarcastically.
"I'm not worried about the animals; I'm worried about the people in the city," replied Ishiro. He folded his hands and rested his chin on them, a gesture not all that different from something Commander Ikari would do. "Do you know what a sea louse is?"
"O-of course," stuttered the man, unable to figure out the connection, "It's a parasite."
"Right," agreed Ishiro, "And they aren't very big are they?" The man nodded. "No, in fact they're absolutely tiny." The man stood, not understanding this line of thought at all. Ishiro met his gaze squarely, before explaining what he was talking about. "When Godzilla appeared for the second time, his first victim was a small fishing boat. The boat was left intact, but her crew was all dead. They had not been killed by Godzilla himself. They had been killed by a sea louse that had fed off of Godzilla's blood. The blood caused a fantastic mutation in the sea louse causing it to grow to be five feet long."
The man shivered visibly at the implications of Ishiro's statement. "That's right," Ishiro went on, "Imagine what would happen if something larger than a parasite were to ingest G-cells. What if that something were a more aggressive predator?" The man was sweating now. "Now you know better than to question my logic in this matter."
Ishiro gathered up a few sheaths of paper on his desk and headed for the door. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a briefing to attend and you have a job to finish." He left the flummoxed staff member alone with his thoughts.
***
The briefing room was packed with more than the usual amount of staff. A number of people were there, including Maya, Makoto and Shigeru. Other staff members from the command center were there as well. Even Ritsuko had been called away from her duties overseeing the Evas' repairs to attend.
"We have quite a turnout," muttered Fuyutsuki to Gendo. They sat in the back, observers as much as anyone else in the room.
"We have a unique situation on our hands Kouzou," replied Gendo, not looking away.
"This is unlikely to be the last one we have," remarked Fuyutsuki.
"Indeed," agreed Gendo.
Asuka and Rei sat up at the front of the room. Misato had seated herself next to Asuka. Much to everyone's surprise (except for Gendo's of course), Shinji was also at the meeting. It had been a few weeks since the battle with the beast known as Godzilla. The doctor had given Shinji leave to move about in a wheelchair.
The door hissed open and Ishiro entered. All eyes went to the boy as he made his way to the platform at the front of the briefing room.
He looked at them gravely before beginning his speech. "Godzilla is not anything especially new to us. However, his existence is a surprise today as most scientists of the 21st Century concluded he had died in Second Impact, which is obviously not the case. Godzilla has threatened Japan, Tokyo in particular a number of times before. In fact, Godzilla has been a thorn in our government's side since long before any of us were born.
"Godzilla first appeared in 1954. Before that he was not as he appears now. In fact, Godzilla was at one time a creature known as Godzillasaurus, a name coined by the Japanese upon learning the truth of his origin. As ludicrous as it may seem, Godzilla was in fact a dinosaur that had survived the extinction that had occurred over 65 million years ago. This Godzillasaurus inhabited the island of Lagos in the south pacific.
"During World War II, Lagos became home to a Japanese garrison. When the Americans had begun their counteroffensive against Japan, they wiped out the Japanese garrisons on the neighboring islands one by one. When the time came to invade Lagos, the Godzillasaurus appeared and actually routed the attacking Americans. However, in the process it was severely injured by artillery fire from the battleships offshore.
"When the garrison left, the dinosaur was dying. Then came the H-bomb tests on the Bikini Atolls not far from Lagos. The island was destroyed during the test. The dinosaur's body responded abnormally to the intense radiation from the blast. It mutated considerably and grew to an unbelievable size. That was how Godzilla was born.
"When Godzilla first appeared, he attacked Tokyo. The army used every resource at their disposal to no avail. No weapon could faze the monster. After all but completely leveling the city, Godzilla retreated into Tokyo Bay.
"Meanwhile, the army finally developed a weapon which might have been able to defeat Godzilla. A local scientist had been conducting research into the properties of oxygen. His discoveries led to an unexpected and terrible invention, a chemical weapon known only as the oxygen destroyer. The oxygen destroyer was said to be so powerful that it would make even the BC weapons of today look tame by comparison. After much deliberation, this scientist finally decided that the oxygen destroyer was the only thing that could stop Godzilla.
"The government put the scientist to work immediately. Within a day they were ready to place and fire the weapon. The scientist insisted that he place the weapon himself. He did so and fired the weapon as had been planned. However, in order to prevent the oxygen destroyer's use as a weapon ever again, the man took his own life, taking to the grave everything regarding the oxygen destroyer. To this day no one has ever been able to recreate it…"
"And Godzilla?" interrupted Gendo.
"The oxygen destroyer seemed to work. Godzilla was not seen again for thirty years. Then, in 1984, Godzilla once again appeared and attacked Tokyo a second time. Even though he was probably the same Godzilla, he was very different from how he was in 1954. Godzilla had almost doubled in size over the thirty years between his first appearance and his reemergence. When he first attacked Japan, Godzilla was only fifty meters tall. When he emerged a second time, he was eighty meters. Later on, he reached a height of one hundred meters, his maximum to date. We attribute this to a number of nuclear accidents and tests in the pacific, which probably furthered Godzilla's mutation.
When Godzilla attacked for the second time, a second scientist came up with a way to lead Godzilla to Mt. Mihara by replicating the specific frequency of bird calls. Apparently, a certain portion of Godzilla's brain had been innately conditioned to follow these calls to their source, probably a result of dinorsaurs' relationship to birds. Using equipment to create an artificial frequency, they succeeded in leading Godzilla to the mouth of the volcano. There, they used explosives to trigger a controlled eruption, knocking Godzilla into the mouth of the volcano.
"However, Godzilla was not completely contained. In 1989, Godzilla escaped from the volcano and remained at large for a considerable amount of time. Over that period of time, Japan was beset by a number of other kaiju. These kaiju all had different origins. Not all of the kaiju were hostile, one or two of them were even benign. Some of them fought with Godzilla, most of them lost those fights. At least two of the kaiju hailed from outer space oddly enough.
"While these other kaiju represented potent threats, Godzilla remained the primary threat to Japan. The Japanese government created a branch of the military specifically for the purpose of counteracting the threat of Godzilla. They called this organization G-Force. In some ways, G-Force was NERV's predecessor when it came to defending Japan from specific threats. Of all the branches of the Japanese military, G-Force quickly became the best funded.
"In order to fight Godzilla, the scientists at G-Force created a pair of giant robots. These robots were in a way the Evas of their day. They were built at different times. The first one was a robotic replica of Godzilla himself, aptly called Mechagodzilla. The robot had limited success in fighting Godzilla but was destroyed in its second sortie. The second robot called MOGUERA actually fought alongside Godzilla against one of the space born kaiju. It was destroyed in that battle.
"During this period of time, an egg was found on an island in the Bering Sea. Scientists brought the egg back to Japan. It soon hatched into a baby Godzilla. The creature was eventually liberated by Godzilla and went with him. They took up residence on an Island called Birth Island in the Pacific. When studies were conducted on the island, it was found that the island lay on a bed of almost pure uranium. Only the uranium's impurities kept it from reaching critical mass. The radioactivity had drawn both Godzilla and his adopted son to the island. There, they seemed content enough to draw on the island's ambient radioactivity. For a long time they were merely observed so long as they did not pose a threat to Japan.
"However, in 1995, the impurities in the uranium under Birth Island suddenly seemed to disappear. As a result, the entire island vanished in a massive nuclear fission reaction. Fortunately, the uranium's location located beneath the island and under the ocean floor kept the island from becoming a giant A-bomb.
"The same could not be said of Godzilla. The destruction of the island had infused him with more radioactive energy than even he could hold. Godzilla had a special organ in his body that utilized his nuclear energy, the organic equivalent of a fusion reactor. This reactor began to overload. Godzilla was in danger of literally exploding. When he did so, his sheer mass combined with his power would cause an explosion of cataclysmic proportions. The explosion would be so powerful that it would ignite the Earth's atmosphere, creating a worldwide firestorm that would wipe out life as we know it.
"At the same time, Tokyo was beset by a new and strange kaiju. These creatures were formerly Precambrian era crustaceans that had been mutated by the oxygen destroyer over forty years prior. These creatures grew and eventually combined to form a giant monster that was essentially a living, breathing oxygen destroyer. The scientists at G-Force determined that if this creature could kill Godzilla, the explosion would be stopped.
"The younger Godzilla had appeared off the coast of Japan, heading north. Using tactics which have never been made public, G-Force altered Godzilla Jr.'s (that's what they called him) course so that he would head for Tokyo. As they predicted, the original Godzilla followed Jr. In Tokyo, Jr. fought and for a short time defeated the creature which had been dubbed Destroyer. However, by the time Godzilla had arrived, Destroyer had mutated into an even more powerful form.
"This ultimate Destroyer killed Godzilla Jr. and came within a hair's breadth of defeating Godzilla. But Godzilla's out of control radioactivity proved to be too much for Destroyer and the creature was forced to retreat. It was killed by the military before it could get very far.
"The military fired special freezing lasers at Godzilla in a last ditch effort to stop the explosion. It seemed to work. Instead exploding, Godzilla melted down, saturating Tokyo and everything within 200 miles with intense radioactivity, turning a massive section of Japan into a lifeless tomb. Then, the radioactivity vanished. The cause of this phenomenon was soon discovered. Godzilla Jr. had absorbed the massive amounts of radiation released by his predecessor's death and had mutated into a fully mature Godzilla. This new Godzilla disappeared into the ocean and wasn't seen again, until now." Ishiro looked up from his notes at his audience.
The entire group sat silently. Most of them appeared to be thunderstruck by the information. Gendo seemed to be considering it and trying to figure out a way to use it. The briefing room was silent for a long time.
Finally, Gendo spoke. "Why did Godzilla disappear for so long?"
"Well," said Ishiro, "You have to remember that this was not the original Godzilla. He started life as an un-mutated Godzillasaurus. However, when Godzilla brought the baby to Birth Island, the island's radiation accelerated the immature Godzillasaurus's development exponentially while at the same time beginning his mutation into another Godzilla. The original Godzilla had already reached maturity as a Godzillasaurus before being exposed to the radiation which transformed him, whereas this infant Godzillasaurus was being mutated as he matured.
"When Birth Island disappeared in that nuclear cataclysm, his growth and mutation were accelerated even further, resulting in a near adult Godzilla with the psyche of an immature Godzillasaurus. When Jr. absorbed the radiation from the original Godzilla's death, he reached complete maturity in body, but not in mind. As a result of not just one but three such extreme mutations, Jr.'s mind was probably close to overwhelmed. He was in the same position a human would be if a five year old were to suddenly find himself in the body of a twenty year old. In order to give his mind time to cope with his physical maturity, Godzilla probably went into hibernation until he had reached full maturity in body and mind."
Fuyutsuki asked, "How has Godzilla been able to stay underwater for so long?"
"It's hard to say, but seeing as Godzilla is saurian in nature I would have to rule out the possibility of gills. I believe that Godzilla is able to draw oxygen out of water by breathing it in much the same way that we humans are able to "breathe" LCL."
Gendo nodded and then asked another question. "What has worked when fighting Godzilla?"
"Several different tactics have been used," replied Ishiro, "The oxygen destroyer was the most effective, apparently forcing Godzilla into a thirty year period of recovery, but we are still no closer to actually creating another one. Geneticists also created a strain of bacteria that absorbed nuclear energy at one time. They injected the bacteria into Godzilla. It worked for a short time but failed ultimately."
"Could the bacteria be used again against this Godzilla?" asked Gendo.
"I doubt it. The tests that I have conducted thus far show that Godzilla's genetic structure is surprisingly adaptable. Exposure to ANB would probably trigger a mutation in Godzilla that would give him immunity to all strains of ANB bacteria."
"What do we know about Godzilla that will be useful in fighting him?" inquired Fuyutsuki.
"An excellent question; let me show you data gathered from our last battle." The screen behind Ishiro lit up, showing a recording of the battle as gathered from various cameras located around Tokyo 3. The scene showed Unit 01 firing at Godzilla with the rifle. Suddenly, the image froze.
The imaged zoomed in on Godzilla at the exact point of impact for the bullets from Unit 01's rifle. "Watch closely," instructed Ishiro. The image played in slow motion. The bullet impacted against Godzilla's skin.
Chunks of Godzilla's hide flew in every direction and a jet of blood actually streamed out of the vicious wound. Then, the wound was gone, as if it had never been there. Finally, a second bullet could be seen coming into the field of view.
A gasp came from the back. It had come from Maya.
"Mein Gott!" hissed Asuka.
"Incredible," was all that Misato could say.
The room was full of gasps of surprise for a moment. Ishiro looked gravely at them all. "Godzilla's regenerative abilities are far beyond those of any Angel. Godzilla can heal his wounds in microseconds. He was able to heal this particular one before the next bullet even hit."
"How can we counter something like that?" pondered Ritsuko.
"For the time being, I am at a loss," admitted Ishiro, "I have no idea on how to deal with this. Our only hope is to analyze the samples of G-cells that we have now and hope that we can discover some weakness in Godzilla's regenerative abilities."
"I trust that you will be in charge of that," said Gendo. Ishiro nodded.
"Can you give us a conjecture on why Godzilla came here in the first place?" asked Fuyutsuki.
"I can," replied Ishiro, "I believe that Godzilla may have come here following the trail of the submarine that we sent out to locate the missing ship. Then, when our forces opened fire on him when he was approaching shore, they drew him further in. Finally, he sensed the presence of three large, unknown creatures, the Evas, on land and went to challenge them.
"Several attempts have been made in the past to map the extent of what we believe might be Godzilla's territory. We believe that it extends at least as far north as the Bering Sea and south into the South Pacific. It extends west into the waters around Hong Kong and east, all the way to the West Coast of the United States. For all we know, Godzilla's territory might encompass the entire Pacific Ocean. If that's the case, then he would have viewed our Evas as intruders into his territory and come to drive them away.
"There is also an equally plausible theory. Godzilla came here to feed."
"Feed on what?" asked Misato, "The Evas?" Asuka shuddered, imagining the monster gnawing on Unit 02.
"Not on the Evas," replied Ishiro, "Godzilla absorbs radioactivity to restore his energy. This entire complex and the city above are powered by multiple nuclear reactors. To Godzilla, this place probably looked like an all you can eat buffet."
Ishiro's face closed. "That's all I can really say on the matter. I can't give you any more information until we've done a full analysis on the G-cells we have."
"Then this briefing is over," declared Gendo. Everyone slowly filed out. Misato pushed Shinji's wheelchair, taking him back to the hospital wing. Asuka followed them. Maya, Shigeru and Makoto all made their way back to the command center. Ritsuko went to oversee some work on the Evas. Only Gendo, Fuyutsuki, Rei, and Ishiro were left in the room.
"Well done Pilot Saegusa," commented Gendo. Ishiro met his gaze squarely, not in the least intimidated by the man.
"I will inform you on any developments sir," said Ishiro. He turned and strode out. Even though he couldn't see her, he knew that Rei's eyes followed his every move.
***
Far below the geofront, in the vast complex of rooms and caverns known as Terminal Dogma was a titan. Suspended on a massive cross the white figure hung motionless, her face covered by a mask, a mask that represented the deceit of the men who had placed it there. In the center of her humanoid abdomen were two small puncture wounds. The rest of the body was unmarked, save for the hands which were pinned to the cross by giant nails. Her feet dangled into a pool of amber liquid that was nothing more than its own blood.
She had lain dormant for many years and had only recently been given the prompting to reawaken. Of course, it required the insertion and subsequent removal of the most powerful weapon the world had ever seen to stimulate her silent nerves.
In the empty silence, a low moan, one almost too low to be heard by human ears, echoes through the chamber. Slowly, the moan built in volume, the chamber's acoustics reverberating it. She began to struggle against the nails which held her in place. For a moment it seemed like the massive titan might break free; but only for a moment. Slowly, her moan died away and her struggles ceased. Within moments the massive white figure returned to her silent state.
However, still deeper under the steel of NERV, another heard the trapped one's cries. In the solid rock of the world's crust, in the sloping mountains above and below the rising and falling tides of oceans, beneath lakes both small and vast alike, in the craters of active and dormant volcanoes, in the forests and jungles, in the rivers and streams, the cry reverberated. And deep within the molten core that is the heart of the planet called Earth, a response slowly came.
***
Ishiro looked up from his microscope. He had heard her moaning cry as clear as if he had been standing in front of her. He also knew that he was not the only one who had heard it. Slowly, a smile spread across his face, a smile that reflected the infinite amusement at the situation that was slowly developing.
"Ikari," he muttered, "Fuyutsuki, Seele, all of them, fools." His smile became a grin. It will not be long, he thought, She will soon come to claim her daughter. His thoughts shifted to the right hand of Gendo Ikari. And her son.
***
Rei sat on her bed in the dingy apartment that was her home. Of course, the term home had never really meant anything to her before. To her it was merely a place where she was to be stored when she wasn't needed. Now however, she was beginning to consider the meaning of Ishiro's words. Make your life your own, he had said.
She wondered how to go about doing this. Open your mind. Shed the barriers that your emotional conditioning has placed around your sole.
I do not know enough, she concluded, I shall ask Ishiro.
***
The Pacific Ocean was home to a number of islands. With the rise and fall of the sea-level after Second Impact, many of these islands had been all but washed away. Yet, despite the destruction, a few stubborn spots of land remained. One of these was a fairly nondescript island located not far from Indonesia.
There was nothing especially remarkable about this particular island. Even though it had been large enough and tall enough to weather even the worse tsunamis of Second Impact it was not found to be noteworthy.
Of course, no one bothered to look any closer or they would have found something worthy of their notice. Within one of the island's enormous caves, a massive form shifted her bulk. The low moaning cry of the trapped one did not go unnoticed here either. She shifted her bulk, uneasy from pondering the implications of the cry.
As her mind drifted on thoughts of the one trapped far below, she became aware of something else, a terror from above. Turning her eyes upward to behold the sky, visible through a hole in the cave's roof, her thoughts turned to the one who came from the heavens, bearing a terror not known for many years.
Within a mind too complex for humans to grasp, a conclusion was formed and a decision made. The thoughts of the one trapped beneath slipped away from her consciousness as she began to prepare for the god of destruction who was making his descent. The goddess began to reach out towards her unknown chosen.
***
Meanwhile, night had fallen on the now peaceful streets of Tokyo 3. Few people were out and about at this particular time of night. Most slept in preparation for the day ahead. Most slept peacefully, untroubled by dreams or disturbing images.
But in the apartment of Misato Katsuragi, one was not sleeping very well at all. Asuka tossed and turned on her futon. Her blankets and sheets were tangled about her restless form. Despite her body's constant state of motion, Asuka Langely Soryu was very far from the world of the awake.
In her dream she floated in a vast empty space. The very air around her seemed to glow with unearthly light. Looking ahead, she saw the figure of a woman. There was something oddly familiar about her, yet troublingly different. Asuka willed herself to move closer and was surprised to find that her body obeyed (this was a dream after all). She was soon able to make out the details of the woman.
"Mama," she gasped, for she was certain that the figure in front of her was indeed her mother. Yet, she bore almost no resemblance to the mother Asuka knew. The woman's face was that of her mother. Her figure was completely hidden under a robe of rainbow hues which seemed to be made from giant moth wings.
"I am so sorry little one," said the woman, her voice laden with kindness, "But your mother I am not. I merely wanted a form which you could identify as familiar and hopefully not frighten you away."
"If you're not my mother then who are you?" demanded Asuka, "How dare you show up looking like Mama? I shouldn't listen to another word you say!"
"Please," pleaded the unknown woman, "The lives of so many hinge on the decision you're about to make, whether or not to pay heed to me."
"Alright," snapped Asuka, "But make it quick. What do you want to tell me?"
The woman's face filled with sadness at what she was about to do. "I cannot tell you, so I must show you." Slowly, the robe pulled away from her body, revealing that they really were the wings of a giant moth. However, the brilliant wings were the last thing that captured Asuka's attention as her gaze was drawn to the vision the wings revealed.
Asuka's scream of sheer terror resonated through the apartment. In her room, Misato sat bolt upright at the sound. Rushing over to Asuka's door, Misato didn't hesitated to throw the door open and rush into the room.
The impact nearly threw Misato to the floor. Asuka clung to her. Her arms had wrapped themselves around Misato's waist as she sobbed against Misato's chest. Having no idea what was going on, Misato wrapped her arms around Asuka's shoulders and slowly lowered them both to the floor. There, Misato gently rocked her young charge back and forth, making a number of attempts to soothe the girl.
"It's okay," she whispered, "I'm here."
Asuka couldn't speak; she just leaned against her surrogate mother and cried. For a few moments, everything had been wiped from her mind by an image that invoked nothing less than her most base and primal fears.
Misato held the child, trying her best to comfort Asuka. Had it not just happened, she would have never believed such a thing to be possible. She considered Asuka to be the least likely person to have these kinds of nightmares. "What could have done this to you?" she wondered aloud. Asuka had no answers.
***
Ishiro wiped his forehead. He was surprised to find that in the vision's aftermath he had been shaking. And I had a good idea what was coming. He hadn't been bothered in the least by the fact that he had seen the vision. After many years, such eavesdropping had become quite natural to him.
He sat on his bed in his almost empty bedroom, pondering the implications of the vision. Quitely he intoned, "When man found Adam he found his God. Now, humanity will soon face his Satan." He shuddered at his own words.
It's all happening now, he marveled, humanity will soon be beset from all sides.
***
Deep under the ocean's surface, the creature known to the world as Godzilla began to stir. The hunger within him had not yet been sated. Slowly, the monster stirred. Steadily he began making his way back to his intended destination. Godzilla hungered, and unless that hunger was sated, nothing would deter him from his goal…nothing.
***
Ishiro leaned back away from his desk, sighing in frustration. He wasn't used to having to work so hard to figure things out. "Humans are one thing," he groaned, "Godzilla is another entirely." He had not had any success in devising a way to effectively counter Godzilla, short of driving him off with the Evas again.
But that is only a temporary solution, he thought, Given time, Godzilla will simply try again. I need some way to at least deter him for a longer period of time until we can devise an effective countermeasure. He sighed. And he's already on the move again.
His mind flashed through a number of possibilities. Then it hit him. If the radioactive energy from the reactors is what Godzilla is after, then all we need to do is provide him with an alternate source of sustenance.
He hit the intercom button. "I would like to see Major Katsuragi please," he said.
Ten minutes later, Misato walked into his "office." "What is it?" she asked, obviously curious as to why he wanted to talk to her.
"Misato, are there any areas with ambient radioactivity nearby?"
"What do you mean?" Misato blinked in surprise and confusion.
"Nuclear waste dumps, accidents, test sites, anything?" Ishiro's eyes betrayed a sliver of desperation.
"Yes," replied Misato, "Old Tokyo is a radioactive wasteland. A nuclear accident bathed the entire area with radioactive energy and killed everyone there." Her eyes widened as she hit on his train of thought. "You're going to lead Godzilla to Old Tokyo instead of letting him come back to Tokyo 3."
Ishiro nodded. "Exactly."
"But that won't do any good," Misato protested, "If Godzilla feeds off the radioactivity, he'll only grow stronger. And when he finishes Old Tokyo he'll come back to Tokyo 3."
"This is only a temporary solution," replied Ishiro, "Right now; the key to everything is time. I need more time to analyze the G-cells we have in order to find an effective way to fight Godzilla. Godzilla himself is already on the move again and heading to Tokyo 3 and he's getting desperate to get at those reactors. The Evas won't be enough to drive him off a second time. The radioactivity in Old Tokyo will keep him busy for some time, giving us the time we need to prepare a really effective countermeasure."
"I see," said Misato, nodding, "So you're just buying time with this little trick."
"If there's as much radioactivity as you say in Old Tokyo, then we could buy months, even one or two year's worth of time."
"Okay," said Misato, now eager to begin, "What do we do?"
"Here's what needs to happen," declared Ishiro, getting out a map of Japan. He looked at his desk, cluttered with microscopes and other equipment and spread it out on the floor instead. "If everything works right, we won't even need the Evas."
***
Misato left the room heading towards the command center feeling very satisfied. They had worked out a satisfactory plan to lead Godzilla towards Old Tokyo, taking him away from Tokyo 3. It'll give the pilots more time to relax if they don't have to fight like this, thought Misato happily.
She was halfway to the command center when the thought struck her. He said Godzilla was already on the move. How did he know that? She froze. The monster disappeared off all our sensors after he left and we still haven't found him.
She looked back the way she had come. You creep me out kid. Making a decision, Misato continued on towards the command center.
***
"I approve of this plan Major," stated Gendo as he looked up from Misato's written proposal.
"Pilot Saegusa deserves all the credit sir," replied Misato humbly.
"Tell the pilots and all other relevant personnel to report to the briefing room at once," ordered Gendo, "I want to begin work on this immediately." The sooner Godzilla is taken care of, the sooner we can get on with Third Impact.
***
In a place that was not really a place, the twelve monoliths of Seele were deep in conference.
"This has thrown back our schedule considerably."
"Indeed, this creature will make Third Impact difficult to instigate."
"Our hybrid failed against the new Eva."
"What about the pilot? What do we know of him?"
"We know less than we know about the Eva itself."
"Our sources within NERV tell us that he has already risen to a position of considerable stature within the organization."
"How?"
"It appears that he is the sole person in the organization who can be called upon as any authority on Godzilla."
"For now we will have to call of all further planned attacks. As long as Godzilla is a problem, we cannot try to instigate Third Impact."
"Ikari will soon solve this problem for us. If we cannot act, then neither can he."
"Once this problem is resolved, we can advance our schedule as planned."
None of the twelve members were aware that their conversation was being monitored in the most clandestine way possible. And far away, in a place that was a place, Ishiro Saegusa burst out laughing at the fools' presumptions. They have no idea the Pandora's Box they have already opened. A savage grin spread across his face. Godzilla is but a catalyst. He has set in motion the forces that have been gathering ever since man tampered with God's plan. He looked up at the ceiling of his lab. These fools have already sown the seeds of their own destruction and soon those seeds will bear fruit.
Author's note: This is not one of my better chapters. It's boring for one thing. A lot of this is just review about the history of Godzilla. I can promise however, that Chapter 5 will have a lot more action.