Osaka's eyes opened on the sea, just as the huge whatever-it-was passed over her head again. This… was a dream, wasn't it? She clearly remembered falling asleep on Yomi's couch while she and Tomo watched the news. But now she could feel the warmth of the sun on her brow, smell the sea-breeze and feel sand shifting beneath her bare feet.

"Hmm… maybe I'm going insane. That would be fun…" Looking down at herself, she saw that she wore a sky blue dress with a bright red sash. Oh, yes… the test. Of course she'd have to present herself well! Suddenly nervous, she tried to remember some of the tips Tomo had given her for the coming college interview, but then also recalled that they were all pretty useless.

"But I'm telling you, they've already bonded! If we make her give it up now, we could be sunk anyway! And who says that the Soul of Light would even find it then?"

"Look, it's not a matter of strength, or chance, or anything else! The fate of the world was entrusted to the SoL, and I'll be damned if we let this cotton-puff ruin everything!"

For some reason, she found the acronym very amusing. Osaka finally came upon the two priestesses, facing each other on a grassy hill above the beach where she'd started. "Doncha know it's rude to talk about people behind their backs?" she asked lightly.

"What are we gonna do now?" the one on the left asked softly.

"United front!" the one on the right snapped. They conferred silently for a few seconds, then: "You're a strange case, Ayumu," they chorused.

"I get that a lot," she replied modestly.

"You are not the Soul of Light, and should not have been entrusted with the egg of Mothra. We're sorry that this burden has fallen on you."

"Aww… so who was it?"

"Chihiro."

"Who?" Osaka asked blankly.

"It isn't important. For some reason, Mothra has already bonded with you; now we have to test your worthiness. First, the SoL should be able to join us in the Song that calls out to Mothra."

Osaka sat down and folded her hands. "I'm not much of a singer."

"It's not much of a song," the priestess on the right replied. The other hit her.

And so they sang. It was an exultant, sweeping melody that made Osaka's heart soar, the kind that one can't help but try to sing along with, even if one couldn't carry a tune to save their life. But while she was a fair bit better than that, when Osaka opened her mouth to try, something inside of her froze. It wasn't… the song wasn't right…

Instead of joining in, the girl found herself humming a different tune. It was a counterpoint to the twins, threading through Mothra's song and giving it a bitter, longing quality. After a few seconds of this, the priestesses faltered and looked at each other uneasily.

Osaka continued humming after they had stopped, swaying slightly from side to side. Finally, the Shobijin cleared their throats and her shimmering eyes drifted open. "Oh… how was that?"

"Nobody's ever done that."

"Huh?"

"You…" the priestesses looked at each other. "Didn't sing with us. Everybody always tries to join in the melody. We don't know what this means."

"But… but… you're the tiny little magical women! You're supposed to know what's up!"
"We're sorry."
Osaka smiled wanly. "That makes me feel so much better."

"You know, we could…" Lefty said, turning to her sister.
"No way! She couldn't handle that… er, could she?"
"I think so."
"I dunno, she seems pretty fragile."
Nervous, the girl looked between them. "Wh-what am I too fragile for?"

"Saving the world, for one thing," Righty said dryly. "Okay, I guess it's all that we can do." They continued together, "We will show you that which opposes Mothra, the creature that your strength will have to stand against."

Without any ado, something huge blotted out the sun. Though she had never actually managed to see it, she knew that this was a different "something huge" than the one that had been making flybys the whole dream. This one… she was paralyzed with horror just by the knowledge of its existence!

What was it? Even Osaka's mind, removed as it was from the vastly overrated reality of her peers, refused to accept the horror that she saw descending towards her. A scream died in her throat and fell leaden in her chest, adrenaline surged through her frozen body, her heart clenched violently and—

"Osaka? Hey, there's food!" Tomo said, shaking her.

"Oh!" Osaka's eyes snapped open and she grabbed her friend's arm in a lightning motion, sitting bolt upright with a ragged gasp. "Thank you!"

"Uh…" Tomo looked at her arm awkwardly.

"Oh… hehe…" Osaka released the other's sleeve and put a hand to the back of her head, "Hey, Tomo." After a second or two to recover, she looked around in mild confusion.

"Yomi's house, remember?" Tomo said impatiently, "C'mon! Grub!"

Ah, yes. Yomi's house. They'd spent all of fifteen minutes in the amiable rough-and-tumble that was the Takino household before Tomo decided to call her best friend and make up. And by "make up" I mean that they insulted each other and argued until Yomi's wrath was finally spent and they were green-lighted to come over for dinner.

"D'ya ever wonder why they call it grub?" Osaka asked as her friend towed her through the small house. It was plain to see that her mouth was working without input from her brain. "It's not like we're eating caterpillars or anything…"

"Uh-huh."

"And take it from me, caterpillars don't taste very good, anyway."

"Uh-huh… wait, what?"

As usual when Yomi had multiple guests, dinner was set out buffet-style for people to serve themselves. Taking a plate in still-shaking hands, Osaka very carefully dished herself a little; this family had a fondness for ridiculously spicy food and she'd suffered enough injury that day.

"How's your leg, honey?" Mrs. Mizuhara asked, pouring her a glass of milk.

"Huh?" The letter-opener wound throbbed, reminding her. "Oh… fine, thanks."

"You look a little peaked. Be sure you eat enough, okay? I swear, you children are all so scrawny… say, do you girls want some apple slices?" Yomi and Osaka glanced at each other, but before either could give a polite negative, Tomo hopped up between them with a cry of, "For sure!"

Mrs. Mizuhara laughed. "Go on out with your food, I'll bring them to you."

"Thank you!" Tomo chirped, and made off with her meal.

"She's so polite, isn't she?" she commented, prompting a sigh and shake of the head from her daughter. As they moved at a much more sedate pace to join their friend. Yomi glanced at Osaka. "Are you all right? You look like you've seen a ghost."
"How about a three-headed space demon?"
Yomi blinked. "Sure."
Osaka giggled. "You're pretty perceptive."

The Great Saucer's hold was a humongous pool of shadow. The darkness was almost a tangible thing, cool and slick, sliding around over Prince Xolarus's head as he entered. Equally as tangible was the sense that the space was full… though it was in near total darkness, the prince fancied he could see the titanic form resting within.

Xoltan followed at a respectful distance, looking up into the hold apprehensively. This place gave him the willies and what they kept there scared him stupid, but he always insisted on coming along for these visitations. He hardly knew why.

"Here to see your pet?" the Keeper asked casually.

"Yes," Xolarus nodded. "Has he been sleeping well?"

"Actually, no." The Keeper handed over a glowstick that he wisely refrained from using and led him deeper into the blackness. "Something came up a few minutes ago… he stirred."

"He… stirred."

"I have no idea what caused it, my lord."

"That… damn." Xolarus looked up uneasily. "Do you have any notion of how unbelievably bad it would be if he woke up?"

The fellow looked at him helplessly.

"Oh, can I?" Xoltan asked eagerly. When the Prince nodded, he stalked forward and grabbed the Keeper by his lapels. "If that creature woke up, he would tear the ship apart, kill us all, fly back to Planet X and lay waste to the whole world. You yourself could possibly be fried by a gravity beam, smashed by wreckage or sucked out into space where you'd suffer explosive decompression! So you're telling me that, in spite of being the sole caretaker of a monster with the power to annihilate all life in the solar system, you don't know what's-?"

"Whoa," Prince Xolarus laid a hand on his shoulder. "Tone it down. You're freaking the guy out."

"I… uh, I thought freaking the guy out was the object."

"Well, yes, but he isn't supposed to crap himself."

"Okay…" Xoltan looked back at the Keeper and slapped his shoulder amiably. "Sorry about that, man. But seriously, you should look into that."

"It's the Guardian," a new voice said.

Xoltan turned sharply, hand dropping to his needle-ray projector, but the Prince threw out a hand to stop him. "Who's this?" he asked their host.

"Oh, it's my sister," the Keeper said dismissively. "She has all these idiotic theories…"

"No, no, I want to hear this. C'mon into the light."

An Xian girl emerged from the shadows, small and plain, wearing a modest white dress and carrying one of the Keeper's implements. Xolarus remembered that she sometimes helped her brother care for their colossal charge. "My lord," she murmured, giving him a curtsy.

"What's your name?" the prince asked kindly.

"Xandra, sir."

"And what was this about a Guardian?"

"His dreams were disturbed…" Her wide, solemn eyes were a darker gold, almost brown, yet they glimmered even in the scant light. "He's caught his first sight of his adversary, Earth's Mystical Guardian. It… she, I think, was sizing him up. I… I don't know what we can do about it, but he hasn't stirred since."

"Mystical guardian, eh?" Xoltan snapped his fingers. "Do you guess it's that great lummox that slogged up on Japan's shore a few hours ago? He looked like he could give our boy a fight…"

"I doubt it…" Xolarus considered, "He was acting like a big dumb animal, wasn't he? Well…" he turned back to the girl. "So how did you find out about it?"

"I don't know… I've been having dreams…" Xandra looked disturbed. "They, they want me to do something…"

The officers looked at each other, but Xolarus laid a hand on her head. "Don't you worry. Your dreams can't harm you, little one." Feeling impulsive, the prince raised his glowstick on high. Strident light burst out and struck a wall of golden scales above them, illuminating the beautiful, grotesque, impossibly huge creature that slumbered in the darkness.

Xolarus chuckled deeply, kindliness evaporating as a cold smile twisted his elegant mouth. "Nothing will harm my subjects. The Earthmen can have their laser guns. They can have their mystical guardians. They can even have Captain Kirk. But no matter what they have… the forces of Earth shall crumble before the invincible space monster--King Ghidora!"

The glowstick flickered out and they all stood around blinking for a few seconds. "Word," Xoltan finally said.

Like most of Tokyo, our heroines were mostly glued to the news. Though the strange case of Godzilla's visit and subsequent retreat wasn't developing very quickly, it was rather like a slow-motion trainwreck that one couldn't look away from.

Tomo and Yomi sat side by side on the living room's floor, using half of their brains to absorb the news and the other half to bicker about some trifling matter or another. Osaka was curled up on the couch behind them like a cat, staring into space and absently stroking the fossilized mushroom's smooth surface.

"Here you go, girls," Mrs. Mizuhara said, slipping in and setting out a platter of sliced apples. "Eat up… especially you!" She poked Osaka's side gently. "You're nothing but skin and bones!"

"Thanks," Yomi said absently, reaching back without looking and taking one of the rounded-off end pieces.

"You zeroed right in on it," her mother said affectionately. "Did you know that when Yomi was little she used to cry when she didn't get the end piece?"

"Mother…!"

"Sounds just like her," Tomo said with a grin.

The newscaster was droning on through this whole conversation, but Osaka perked up when he said, "…speculate that Godzilla has gone to Birth Island to lick his wounds. An expedition is being assembled…"

"I have to go there!" the space cadet suddenly piped.
"Huh?"
"What?"
"Birth Island!" Osaka shifted in her seat and pointed to the screen, suddenly alert. "It all makes sense now! I have to take the egg there!"

"What all makes…?" Yomi glanced to the TV, where a map of Japan was highlighting a small island several miles southeast of Hokkaido. "I don't think I've ever heard of Birth Island."

"I'm not surprised. It's completely fictitious!"
There was a general pause.
"Sorry," Osaka said, abashed. "It just popped out."

"So that's an egg?" Yomi asked. "Wait a second… why do you have to…?"

"Shh!" Tomo hit her arm. "Listen!"

"Thanks, Ichiro," a field reporter said, "Once a beautiful retreat for feudal lords, Birth Island was reduced to an irradiated wasteland by Hydrogen Bomb testing. As recently as 1992, radiation levels…"

Both looked back at Osaka, who'd stood upon the couch, looking serene and determined. "That's my quest. I have to take the egg of Mothra to Birth Island!" she laughed softly. "It's all so simple! Why was I worried? I mean… how could it possibly go wrong?"

Just then, the TV let off a blast of static as its signal was hijacked. After a little noodling, wavering and a faint "is this thing on?", the picture settled. As you might expect, it now showed the terrifying alien visage of Prince Xolarus! "People of Earth…" he greeted.

(A/N: It looks kind of weird to use "Xian" for the Planet X people, doesn't it? It makes one think of the abbreviation for "Christian." I imagine this would lead to some awkward headlines, like: "JAPAN BRACES FOR XIAN INVASION" and "BISHOP DENOUNCES XIANS AS EVIL." Blehh…)