(A/N: Emile Zola I'm not. I didn't bother to exhaustively research the effects of extreme radiation exposure, so I just sorta wrote for dramatic effect. Osaka fans: fear not. It's not over till the fat lady sings, and Tomo will be glad to tell you that Yomi can't sing to save her life. Ow!)

The three soldiers that had been summoned to the firing range were a little nervous. None of them had been told why the third-in-command wanted to see them or why they had to bring their combat gear. All they knew was that they'd been asked to accurately record the addresses of their families so their last paycheck could find them in the event of a brutal evisceration.

It did little to ease their minds when Xoltan swaggered into the room with a great mass of lethal machinery slung over his back. Yanking roughly a third of it off and hefting it over his head, he cried, "Listen up, you primitive screwheads! This is my boom stick!"

There was quite a long pause. "Uh… sir?" one of the 'primitive screwheads' ventured.

"Sorry, just tryin' it out for the Earthmen." Xoltan unslung his weaponry and distributed it; they were three large weapons that quite resembled rocket-launchers and thus weren't like anything the Xians had seen before. They hefted the things uncomfortably and swung them around experimentally. "These boom sticks are actually Proton Anchors, shoulder-mounted anti-Kaiju weaponry. You three have been chosen to head up our big ugly dog-thingy hunt."

"Big ugly…?"

"This guy attacked King Ghidora and slapped him around a little before hiding in the city. We were just going to raze it to find him, but Xolarus vetoed that. Our mark's having a really easy time avoiding Ghidora, but he won't even be looking for little dudes with guns, right? Well, one of these will blow him right in half!" One of the men, who'd been peering down the barrel of his, hastily jerked it away.

Before Xoltan could go on, the door buzzed sharply. "What the hell is that?" he asked irritably. He cuffed the soldier that volunteered, "The door, sir?" and excused himself to answer it.

Whoosh! The door hissed open on… empty corridor? He glanced down. "Xandra…!" But the planned rebuke vanished in his throat when he saw the look on her face. "It's Xond again, isn't it? What did he do to you?"

"It isn't me…" she swallowed. "Y-you know the dreams I was having?"

"Uh… the Guardian and all that?"

"He thinks they're real! He's… he's going down to Earth, t-to Sendai, now, to kill one of Ms. Sakaki's friends because of them!"

Xoltan blinked. "The Queen's…? Why would he…?" But the more he thought about it, the more it made a frightening kind of sense. Of course Xandra's dreams would be influenced by talking to Sakaki, and of course Xond would see in them the justification for blowing someone away! "Well, he's not gonna manage it. Don't worry Xan, I'll take care of it."

He clapped her on the shoulder and marched back to his soldiers. "Change of plans. Xavolon, go back to the barracks-I'm taking your Proton Anchor down personally." The indicated soldier shuffled away, hanging his head. "We'll each get a pair o' regulars down there, so nobody runs alone, got it? There's more than Earth monsters to worry about…"

And beneath the weak, milky sun substitute that filtered through the astral plane's eternal overcast, the Shobijin conferred. "I rather like him," Lefty commented.

"Don't admire him too much," Righty cautioned.

"Whyever not?"

"Mr. Xoltan isn't much of a hero or philanthropist. He's merely an overly romantic buffoon, propelled to his current rank by blind luck and nepotism, motivated not by a reasoned set of principles but by a bizarre and outmoded chivalry that, for the most part, he lacks the courage to act on. There's no telling that he would have done anything useful without our nudging."

"Oh." Lefty considered this. "Well, be that as it may, I still like him."

"Then it's a good thing I'm around."

They meditated for a few minutes/hours/years, neither bothering to measure the meaningless passage of astral time. After what seemed to be a short pause but could have been millennia or just as easily milliseconds, Lefty spoke again. "I'm still frustrated that we can't find a way to save Ayumu."

"It's unfortunate, yes, but the alternative is much worse."

"You know, some other astral beings are taking exception to this whole business. It seems that young Ayumu gets around up here. She spends a lot of time in the realm of Orpheus, I hear, and James Brown likes her, too."

"As I said, it's unfortunate, but none of them can do anything about it either. It would take somebody like…" Suddenly, they both noticed an ovoid shadow falling over them and whirled as one to face the greatest of the Elder Ones! (Well, behind Cthulu.) Even the emissaries of Mothra stood in awe of the creature that now addressed them…

"I wish I were a bird," it said slow, deep voice.

The girls trooped through Sendai's empty streets, astounded at the near total quiet after the monsters' thunderous battle. Chiyo was moving with a weird little hybrid of a run, a skip and an overly casual walk, giggling madly. "I've never done anything like that before!" she exulted, "That was so much fun!"

"Heh ha! We'll make a delinquent outta Chiyo-suke yet!" Tomo threw an arm over her shoulder and punched her arm. "Next time, let's rob a convenience store together!"

"Um…" The prodigy sobered quickly.

"Okay, why did we just leave my car?" Kagura asked in annoyance, helping a still hobbling Osaka along. "Why are we running towards the giant monsters? Would somebody tell me what the hell is going on?"

"We're savin' the world," Osaka said vaporously.

"I figured out that much!" the athlete snapped. "But why-?" She was interrupted by a deep sound suspiciously like a kettle drum. Before anybody managed to comment on it, it sounded again and they felt a slight tremor through their shoes. A light drizzle picked up as they stood there, an awful suspicion forming in their minds… after all, they were right on the coast…

"I'm going to check it out!" Kagura said before anybody else could. She pushed Osaka onto a protesting Tomo and took off at a sprint none of them could match. "Ms. Kagura!" Chiyo called frantically, starting after her. Yomi took a single step to follow, but then turned and held out her arms against the others. "Hold on! Someone has to stay with Osaka!"

"Sorry, guys…" Osaka sighed, cursing the letter opener.

Chiyo jogged a few blocks, coming upon Kagura overlooking the water. The kettle drum thrummed again, louder. "I don't know if we'll see it from here," Kagura commented, then put a hand to the back of her head, chuckling weakly. "Uh, sorry. I just got excited… y'know, I missed out yesterday."

"You didn't miss much," Chiyo comforted as they started back. Just as they turned a street corner though, the drum boomed so loudly that it nearly knocked them over. Chiyo froze as a blast of hot, reeking air rushed behind her, carrying a strong smell like sulfur, baking stone and fish. It was… breath.

Another colossal footstep made the pavement shake nauseously, actually cracking apart in places. The thin, high-pitched thread of Chiyo's whimper was lost in the now near-constant rumble. She stood trembling, not daring to turn, wide-eyed and white-faced as the ground shook harder and the leading edge of something appeared in the street behind her.

Kagura also stood slack-jawed, but facing this dreadful apparition. After another thunderous noise, the next street was entirely blocked by a wall of rugged, dark gray flesh, a titanic three-toed foot that plunged into the street as if it were snow. The odor was now more agreeable, a sort of barnacle-reptile-seawater-rust-extreme-heat blend that would stick in both girls' memories forever. So would the terrific clamor of the armored plates that ran up the creature's back beating together as he ambled along, looking around Sendai almost as if he were a tourist.

The two of them stood not five hundred meters from the King of the Monsters!

Godzilla roared, and though it smote their ears nearly deaf, Chiyo had to admit that Osaka was right: it did in fact sound like someone had taken a contrabass, rubbed it with a glove coated in resin and played the sound backwards. He moved with shocking speed for something so big, striding into the human metropolis with grim purpose.

"Tail," Kagura said.

"Wh-what?"

"Tail!"

Chiyo just stared at her blankly--then yelped as Kagura grabbed her arm and started to run away. And not a moment too soon, for just behind them, Godzilla's tail, swinging casually but still unspeakably powerful, pulverized a whole row of storefronts and nearly brought down the block of buildings next to them.

Suddenly, being in Sendai was an even worse idea. Our unfortunate heroines would be caught in the middle of the most brutal title bout in history!

"Kaori, hurry up! You're going to lose us!" Yomi called over her shoulder. Kaori glanced up in surprise, noticing the distance that had grown between her and the others; she'd been brooding again, which was a very unhealthy habit in a city minutes from being torn to bite-sized chunks.

The Fellowship rounded a corner ahead of her and entered the home stretch, with only two or three blocks separating them from the boat and the end of their quest. Kaori ran to catch up… and skidded to a halt when she heard a horribly familiar voice yell, "Hold it right there!"

She plastered herself against the wall and peered around the corner, watching what followed in horror. Four men in black suits emerged from cover around her friends, closing in around them swiftly with those strange little pistols held at elbow height. The girls backed together—except Kagura, who yelled "Scatter!" and sprinted straight at one of the spacemen, pushing roughly past him towards freedom.

The lead alien stepped quickly up to Chiyo and pressed his gun to her temple. "Call her back!" he snarled.

"K-K-Kagura!" she shrieked.

The athlete stopped dead in her tracks and turned to see the black suit beckon mockingly, sharp face stretched by a poisonous smile as he poked the snout of his weapon into Chiyo. When she returned, the agents made their captives to spread out a ways and sit on the ground with their hands in plain sight.

"Ha!" he crowed. "It's a good thing I caught you here! The Prince and his consort are just three streets away, and if they saw you I wouldn't have any fun!" He glanced up sharply, but the flicker of motion he'd seen around the corner must have been his imagination. "I am Agent Xond, a veteran of infiltrating your primitive world!"

The girls just stared at him with expressions ranging from hostility to terror. In the near distance, Godzilla had stopped and stood watching the horizon, where the distant form of King Ghidora wheeled in its search. The mighty beast seemed to be… cogitating. But surely not!

"What are you going to do with us?" Yomi asked, her voice tightly controlled.

"In spite of what you may have heard, I do not have the stomach for killing little girls," Xond explained. "My rocket will be coming to pick us up shortly. You will all be held on our Mothership until this planet is conquered. Now which of you…? Aha!" He knelt next to Osaka, who was curled miserably around the watermelon-sized egg. "I might have to take that from you. But if you mean to die protecting it, by all means, feel free!"

"Stop picking on her!" Tomo cried, standing.

"Tomo!" Yomi snapped. "Sit down, you idiot!"

"Don't worry!" Tomo replied dismissively, waving a limp hand, "Those aren't even real guns! Wouldja look at 'em? They're like water pistols or-!" Dew-dew-dew-dew! A violently glowing beam stabbed through her side and she blanched, swaying on her feet. "…ow." And without another sound, she collapsed practically right into Yomi's arms.

"What the hell?" Kagura rose to a crouch but halted when three guns were leveled on her. "You-! You shot her!"

"Don't get excited, that was the lowest setting. She's barely singed."

"Yomi, it hurts!" Tomo's voice was uncharacteristically soft and held a genuine note of fear and pain that the others had never heard in it before.

"Shh-shh…" Yomi hugged her, afraid to make a larger move under the aliens' unwavering weapons. "Don't worry…"

"Yes, don't worry," Xond agreed, "Unless you do anything stupid, none of you will be harmed further." He sat cross-legged facing them, making a great show of checking his watch. "So… why don't we talk, eh? All of that staring must be getting boring, and I'm sure you have more questions for the scary invader… and you won't like what happens when I get bored."

Chiyo didn't want to test this veiled threat. "Um… w-well… Mr. Xond, I was wondering how it was that we never found your planet."

"Didn't you hear the Prince? It's hidden from your primitive detection by the mass of Jupiter." He paused. "In fact, it's a dark world hidden by Jupiter."

"But how does that work? Why does it being dark matter? I mean, wouldn't the Voyager probe have-?"

Xond pulled his gun. "I SAID IT WAS HIDDEN FROM YOUR PRIMITIVE DETECTION!" Chiyo covered her head with a small scream; evidently the spy felt this reaction sufficient because he calmed right down and pocketed the weapon again. "Anyone less annoying have a question?"

"I do…" Osaka said. Her manner was so drifty and loose that you would never have guessed that she was being held at gunpoint by a quartet of alien invaders. To Chiyo, she seemed almost fatalistic. "What d'ya call the ground on Planet X?"

"What?"

"We say earth here, right? Y'shovel earth, move earth, an' walk around on God's Green Earth… but what d'you guys say? God's Green Planet X?" The girls all hung their heads, certain that they'd be mowed down.

"…what?"

"Maybe you-" Osaka was interrupted by the first six bars of Poi Poi Peace issuing from a tinny speaker. Except for Xond, the invaders clutched their weapons and cast about for the its source nervously. The commander pointed to the still-simpering Tomo and ordered, "Answer it! But I'll be listening."

When she made no move to, Yomi fished the cell-phone from her pocket and answered it. "Hello? …yeah, yeah she is." She placed the phone on the ground and slid it very carefully to Chiyo, who snatched it up nervously and answered in a curiously high-pitched voice. "H-hello?" She nodded. "Y-yes. I… yeah, actually I am. … Wh-what? Oh, no! Are you…? Thank you very much. Yes, thank you. Y-yeah, I love you too. Right… good-bye."

"What was it?" Xond asked sharply.

"He… my father… the…" she petered out and continued in a tone that completely failed to convince anyone, even Osaka. "My dog was hit by a car."

"Hmm…" Xond rubbed his chin. "I don't think I quite believe-" Then an alien communicator chimed for attention. "Great space, it never ends!"

After glancing a question to him, one of the agents snapped open his communicator and answered with a curt, "Go ahead." There followed a brief conversation, made much longer by Xond's impatient foot-tapping and angry muttering, before the agent made his report. "It's Team 7, sir. They're having trouble penetrating the Mihama house."

"You're trying to break into my house?" Chiyo cried.

"Did you have to report in Japanese?" Xond sighed, running a hand down his face.

"Sorry, sir." He glanced down at himself. "It's the suit."

"So…" the alien commander whirled and stalked over to kneel next to Chiyo. "You must be Chiyo Mihama, then, am I right? The daughter of Yasuhiro Mihama?"

"Y-yes."

"I want you to call your father on that cell phone and tell him we have you."

Chiyo closed her eyes tightly. "No."

"What?"

"No! I'm sorry, but I can't help you twist his--!"

Xond stuck his needle-ray projector to her head. Chiyo flinched, but not nearly as much as before; she was starting to get used to it. "Do it right now or I'll blow your pretty little head off! Ten seconds. Ready? Ten… nine… eight…"

"Chiyo, do what he says!" Yomi hissed. "Don't let him shoot…!"

"Dude, he'll do it!" Kagura added, "He's unstable, man, you can see it in his eyes…"

"Six… five… four…"

"HEY!" Xond jumped a little; his finger tightened momentarily on the trigger, but then he jerked the weapon away from her head and leveled it at the yeller. Xoltan stood at the end of the street behind him, flanked by two men in the Planet X Marine uniforms – a silver jumpsuit and a sleek helmet with antennae, though the Third himself had forgone a helmet. "Just what in the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Well, well. If it isn't Xethnex's bitch. What are you doing down here?"

Now, Xond giving a simple explanation would have saved the Xians a lot of grief, but Xoltan wasn't in the mood for explanations at the moment. "You were gonna shoot her, weren't you, you sick bastard! Didn't you know we're not supposed to blast civilians, especially kids?"

"You aren't supposed to," Xond corrected coldly. "Intelligence doesn't follow the same rules."

"Well, guess what?" Xoltan said, walking forward with his own gun out. He seemed to be trying to intimidate the other (after all, the spy only stood up to his chest), but if that was so, it certainly wasn't working. "The rules are changing right now. I outrank you."

"Do you think I give a-?" Xond stopped when his ears caught a distant whistling sound. As one, everybody in the street turned and watched as a tiny, brilliantly glowing projectile whipped up from a distant street and struck Godzilla's chest with a clearly audible thlatch! "The Proton Anchor?" Xoltan yelped. "That idiot! He's supposed to-!"

Boom!

A candy-red explosion knocked the King of Monsters back a step with a startled roar, clawing at a foe that wasn't there. He looked around in confusion even as the wound on his chest healed before their eyes. What looked like pieces of black rubber fell all around them, and Xoltan was spattered with a light green fluid.

"What the…?" Xond picked a piece of the rubbery stuff up. "What the hell is this?"

"I think…" Chiyo suggested tentatively, "I think it's Godzilla's skin."

"Ah…" Xoltan nodded. "And so that would make this stuff…" he looked down at his stained shirt and suddenly screamed. "AAAAHHHHH!" Forgetting all about their confrontation, Xond pointed at him and screamed as well. The Third frantically ripped his shirt off and threw it on the ground, then both men hosed it down with needle rays.

"Scatter!" Kagura howled again, and, more than a bit haphazardly, the girls responded. The street dissolved into a chaos of yelling in different languages and crisscrossing needle rays, though to be honest, none of the aliens were quite sure who they should be shooting and thus didn't manage to hit anyone. In the center of this maelstrom, Xoltan and Xond grappled fiercely.

"Traitor!" the spy hissed.

"Asshole!" Xoltan countered.

He was really no match for his opponent, but he might hold the guy long enough for Sakaki's friends to escape. This was his main priority; after all, Xolarus wasn't the only one enchanted by their new Queen…

Yomi found herself running alone, with only the water and the towering form of a confused Godzilla for landmarks. She didn't know which way she was going but didn't dare stop, and thus was thoroughly lost when her panic finally subsided and she coasted to a stop entering a wide thoroughfare.

Just then, she was overcome by a powerful odor. It was one part burnt hair and two parts wet dog (making about seventy wet dogs all told, she estimated.) Yomi turned slowly, dreading what she would see… and her eyes fell on King Ceasar, crouching behind a large bank, peering over it at the distant Space Monster! She let out a large squeak upon seeing him, swiftly covering her mouth.

Ceasar glanced over, and, with a look of good humor in his crazed eyes, lifted one twisted finger to his horrible lips. Yomi was not one to argue.

Fortunately, Chiyo had thought to entrust the boat's key to Osaka, the one member of their Fellowship that absolutely had to make it out to sea. Even more fortunately, Osaka didn't lose it. Not too long after their confrontation with Xond, the Mihama family's little motorboat skipped out over the waves, moving a little oddly for its inexperienced crew, but as eagerly as ever.

Tomo laughed. "Holy crap, they've got GPS and this little auto-pilot dealie and everything! It must be awesome being rich! Ha haaaa!" She quickly found her way around the boat's console and had it cutting north along the coast (the daughter of a water skiing enthusiast, the Takinator—shockingly—knew what she was doing.) Her only disappointment was the key, as it would've been cool to try out her mad (i.e. nonexistent) hotwiring skills.

"What didja do…?" Osaka asked dimly, sprawled in the bench next to her, "…head's spinnin'."

"Oh, that's easy. I floated like a butterfly and stung like a wasp, baby! Everyone thought I was done for, then pow! I saved the day!" Tomo slouched back in the pilot's chair and threw a playful little kick at Osaka's shin. "You're pretty damn heavy, by the way."

"Sorry…"

"Might be the egg, I guess. Ah, well." She absently lifted the corner of her shirt and scratched at the needle-ray wound. Osaka cringed upon seeing a horrible scarlet burn that spread out of sight in both directions… but didn't comment. What Tomo didn't know wouldn't cause her hours of agony, after all.

The wind of their passage cooled an otherwise unseasonably warm afternoon, ruffling Tomo's fine hair wildly as she gazed out to sea, eyes half-lidded. Actually, with a ray gun wound and a long, hard day to take the edge off of her, Tomo was really quite pretty. Osaka considered pointing this out, but then remembered the running gag she'd started earlier and kept her peace. "I'm gonna sleep a bit… wake me up when it's time ta change course, alright?"

"Always sleeping. Man, you're even lazier than Kagura!"

Osaka drifted off without responding, and this time, no extraplanar entity descended on her. After a string of unsettling visitations, it was nice to have a normal dream for once, even if it was a nightmare about a vampiric moth sucking her life away—or was it trying to wrap her in a cocoon? The two images were eerily conflated.

She flailed desperately at its ragged, musty-smelling wings, stumbling over the strangely uneven ground. All at once, though, Osaka's dream-self realized what the creature was. Swallowing her fear, she opened her arms to it and gasped as its proboscis stabbed into her chest…

And then the dream dissolved into a pleasant pastel smear. Now she was seeing Chiyo-chan as a seventeen-year-old, who reminded her of a great big Labrador puppy: towering, lanky, goofy, openly affectionate and almost unbearably cute, though the particular flavor of cute was much different now. And there was Yomi, now genuinely a responsible, respectable adult, strong and smart and professional… but still with a tiny sliver of a childlike sense of fun to her. And Tomo she saw, still every bit as genki as in the present, but with all of that energy tempered and focused. Does that mean she actually got to be a cop?

Though this vision of things to come was beautiful, Osaka had an awful feeling that someone was missing. For the life of her, she just couldn't figure out whom. Let's see: Chiyo, Yomi, Tomo, Sakaki, Kagura, even Kaori were there… so who…? "Osaka! Hey, get up." Her eyes drifted open, and for some reason, tears were running down her temples. "Yo."

Tomo helped her up and then walked to the rail next to the boat's console. "We'll be headed East in 'bout two minutes," she said. "Won't be too far to your island, then."

Osaka nodded silently. She walked up next to her friend, watching the coast as well, then suddenly hugged her from behind. "I love you, Tomo."

"Whoa! Hey, I thought you said you didn't swing that way!"

"Don't miss me," Osaka murmured into her shoulder-blades.

"What? Why would I…?"

"Offhand," the space cadet changed the subject, resting her chin on Tomo's shoulder. "How far would you say it is to shore?"

Tomo blinked uncomfortably. "Maybe half a kilometer. Dunno."

"Couldja swim it?"

Responding instinctively to the challenge, Tomo straightened. "Of course I could! Nothing easier! Why—WAUGHHH!" Splash! "What the hell are you--?" She watched in consternation as the boat wheeled to the East and accelerated. "I woulda been fine!" she screamed after, "A little radiation never hurt anyone!"

Now for that half-kilometer swim…

An hour later, the boat ran violently aground on the barren shore of Birth Island, skidding across the rock nearly ten meters before it finally slammed into a ridge and was still. "Hehe…" Osaka mumbled, staggering to her feet and regarding the ruined hull, "Sorry, Chiyo-chan… guess I got carried away…"

Osaka hefted the egg, limped out onto shore and surveyed the desolate, rocky landscape about her. So, this was the famed radioactive hellhole, eh? "Ah, it's not so bad…" The letter opener wound was throbbing steadily, making it dreadfully painful even to walk. For a fleeting moment, Osaka regretted not bringing her friend, but as the first ghostly tendrils of nausea slid through her, she knew it was for the best.

Not far away, she espied a shelf of rock that looked almost like an altar… no, not almost. It was perfectly formed! Somehow, miraculously, it had survived the battle between Godzilla and Ghidora, the craters and scorches of which covered the island's whole surface.

"Easy enough," she decided, and started to hobble towards it. Unfortunately, the egg was growing steadily now, getting heavier and heavier. The already meager strength ebbed from her limbs as she shambled forward, cradling the egg against her torso. After a few seconds, she noted entirely without concern that a runnel of blood was flowing from the corner of her mouth.

Suddenly she started to chuckle. Osaka always used to wonder how she would die, but she never imagined that it would be from a combination of extreme radiation poisoning and having her soul sucked out by a Moth goddess. The egg slid sluggishly from between her hands as she faltered. The altar was still five meters away… but it might as well have been five hundred.

The next thing that Osaka noticed was that she was lying on her side and the egg was rolling away from her, growing even faster. That's funny… she didn't remember falling… Before she could investigate the matter further, she coughed violently, spraying the stone with blood.

"Eehh…" she said thickly, staring at the altar with increasingly blurred vision, "Close enough, right?" Osaka was confident that somewhere, somehow, Mothra was slapping an ethereal forehead with a nonexistent hand. The image made her giggle, which was a mistake, because her chest was really starting to hurt.

She curled slowly into a ball, marveling at the fascinating cocktail of tingling, burning, nausea and pain that was filling her poor body. Her mind was already pretty well disengaged, observing impartially as she hacked another spray of blood and her vision clouded horribly. But now, she realized, even her mind was unraveling.

Oh, great, am I gonna go into the hereafter brain-damaged? Osaka wondered disjointedly. Then it occurred to her that in the hereafter, she wouldn't have a brain. This raised all sorts of fascinating metaphysical questions, but Osaka couldn't pursue them because she was dead.