(A/N: And this is the phase of most Godzilla movies where the humans are reduced to standing on the sidelines looking stupid while the monsters do their things. I shall do my level best to counter this…)

Xond shoved his opponent away and pulled the extra needle-ray projector from his sock, leveling it at his superior with a feral yell. Showing that perhaps he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, Xoltan just chuckled and threw out his arms. "You're pretty good at waving those things around and scaring little girls, agent! I wonder how you are at- whooouf!"

That last came as he was folded around the smaller man's fist, which dug into his gut deeply enough to provoke a round of dry retching as he fell to his knees. The assorted Marines and secret agents clustered together and watched uneasily; they still weren't sure just who the mutineer was. Xoltan's intended witty retort came out as, "Ughhhah!"

"How's that for an answer?" Xond smirked. He turned swiftly and saw Tomo just disappearing around a corner with a confused Osaka in tow. He took a single running step towards them. "After th-!"

Unfortunately for him, he missed the Third's hand shooting up behind him and grabbing his hair, though it was impossible to miss the knee slamming into his Xian kidney equivalent. He turned and tried to bring his weapon to bear, but Xoltan caught his wrist and they were back to grappling again.

"That's it!" Xond finally snarled, letting the projector drop, "You're done!" and then he broke Xoltan's nose on his forehead. Riding a wicked adrenaline rush, the larger man lunged for his throat and shoved him against the wall, but in response, Xond pulled himself up on the arm and wrapped his legs around his foe's neck. This standoff dragged on as their men watched.

"My legs… are stronger… than your hand…!" Xond hissed triumphantly.

Xoltan nodded. Then, with a harsh scraping sound, the agent was hauled off of the wall and slammed to the pavement. Not letting up, his superior soccer-ball kicked him in the groin, which hurts no matter what planet you're from. Even as his head was cracking on the wall, Xond tried to regain the initiative… that is, until they heard the roar of a motorboat starting in the near distance. "I hope you know what you cost us," he growled, finally admitting defeat.

Xoltan snapped his fingers and pointed to one of the Marines, who relinquished his shirt. "I think I can live with myself." He turned away and took one step before the agent's foot lashed up into his groin.

"No, it is not corporate pride talking," Mr. Mihama grated. He was still on his rocking chair, watching the stand of trees warily. One arm was leaning on a table the butler had set for him, holding a cell-phone to his ear; the other was holding the shotgun unerringly on the trees. "G-Force can handle the situation better than anything the Americans can bring to bear. Er, hold on…"

BLAOW! "Son of a--!"

Mihama grinned and started to reload. He enjoyed keeping the infiltrators on their toes. "Huh? Experience?" He shifted his grip on the phone. "The Americans don't have any experience with… what? With respect, the creature that attacked New York in 1998 is nothing compared to Godzilla. Well… very well, Mr. Prime Minister. I just wanted to be sure you knew the implications of what you've ordered. Yes. Good-bye."

"Your luncheon, sir," Alphonse announced, emerging from the house and setting out a bottle of wine, a plate of vegetables and a steak. It was more dinner fare, and the wine was completely wrong for the entrée, but Mihama was feeling a little cheeky that day. "Thank you. Now, Alphonse, I'm going to give this steak the attention it deserves. Can I trust you to hold down the fort?"

"Very good, sir." Alphonse accepted the shotgun.

The infiltrators watched this development with no small amount of glee. "How much you want to bet that old codger can't shoot for beans?" the first said. "Let's go in one, two-!" BLAOW! A squirrel on a branch beneath them vanished in a puff of vaporized blood. "N-never mind."

"Slow down, Chiyo-chan! What about the Americans?" Kagura asked, taking the girl's shoulders. The two had run quite a ways, finally coming to rest in the lee of a shopping mall with no Xians in sight. "It's okay!"

"No it isn't!" Chiyo cried, "Don't you understand? We don't know where the others are and we have no way to find them! They don't know!"

Kagura grabbed a handful of her bangs. "What don't they know?"

The prodigy stopped and calmed herself visibly. After swallowing a few times, she finally continued, "That call was my father… he had a burst of intuition and thought we might be here after the boat. Didn't know why. But… but he told me… an American fleet is coming! They're going to bombard the city with Frontier missiles, and if that fails… if-if it fails…"

"Yeah?"

"They're going to use a hydrogen bomb!"

"A hydro… um…" Kagura tried to process this. "Could that… possibly be…"

"Yes! It is very, very bad!" Chiyo sat down on a bench and covered her face. "I couldn't let the Xians know, b-but now our friends are stuck here! …Ms. Kagura?" The other glanced down at her. "If you don't mind, I think I'm going to cry for a bit."

"What a miserable waste," Xolarus said sadly, "Why couldn't they just surrender?"

He and Sakaki stood more-or-less alone in the middle of a decimated street. There were reliable reports that a platoon of the Earth laser tanks had been arranged here, but it would have been impossible to tell. The jagged scar of a gravity beam tore up the middle of the street, punctuated along its length by masses of char and explosive craters. There wasn't an unbroken window in any direction for a block at least.

The Prince also wore the Marine uniform, complete with the helmet, and adding his customary golden cape. Upon first seeing him, Sakaki had commented that he looked "different" with the helmet. "How so?" he had asked. "More commanding? Dashing?" After a pause just long enough to show that she was lying, she had replied, "Um, sure."

But concerning the state of Sendai, "H… horrible…" was all Sakaki managed. She'd wanted desperately to return to Earth, but not like this!

"It is," Xolarus agreed soberly. "But… in the end I have to believe it's worthwhile. This world will be ours even if this must be the fate of every city."

"No…"

"Sakaki?" the Prince looked to her. She was shrinking away from him, shaking her head. "You can't… you can't mean that…" He mentally kicked himself for being so careless. "No, Sakaki," he comforted, holding out a hand that she pointedly ignored, "It won't come to that. Trust me, I won't let- uh!"

"GET AWAY FROM HER, YOU CREEP!" The Prince wheeled away, clutching a hand to his freshly-cracked helmet. Sakaki stepped back in shock, raising her own hands, but whether it was to aid him, shield herself or just out of reflex was unclear. Kaori stepped between them, brandishing a two-by-four with a nail through it. "I won't let you hurt her!"

"Goddamn!" Xolarus spat, "What the… why the hell did you just…? A goddamn nail and everything! Argh! Sakaki, do you know this girl?"

"Yes," she answered, not trusting herself to say more.

"Well… ahh…" he removed his helmet and rubbed his head. "I'm going to walk this off, and when I get back, you'd better have an explanation ready for me!" With a melodramatic swirl of golden cape, he stalked away. An awkward pause ensued.

"Who is that?" Kaori asked, a little giddy.

"Prince Xolarus," Sakaki replied, looking after him. "We're going to marry." Kaori whirled, eyes growing to the size of dinner plates. "Er, not by choice. I have to, or else…"

"I'll protect you!" Kaori volunteered wildly.

"You can't," Sakaki said flatly. When she saw the effect her words and tone had, she awkwardly went back on herself. "Um, sorry."

"But… but why do you…?" Kaori looked at the ground. "No. Well… you… you deserve a prince, anyway." Sakaki was just about to ask what she meant when they were rudely interrupted.

"I'm back!" Xolarus strode up to them and crossed his arms, kicking the two-by four skittering across the street away from them. "A club! Primitive piece of…! So, do we have an explanation?"

"Well," Sakaki started hesitantly, "Uh… she…"

"I love her!" Kaori snapped. Everybody else (even a random soldier that was happening by) stopped and stared at her in surprise. "You love her?" Xolarus asked blankly. "Isn't that a little… um… deviant?"

Kaori laughed. She'd just done what she never thought she could, and now a blue guy from outer space was suggesting that she was weird! "I don't know what it is! I don't know if it's just a childish crush, if I'm some kind of freak or what, but I do! I love her! And you know what else? I'm not scared of you!"

"She's insane!" Xolarus exclaimed, almost laughing himself. Sakaki couldn't disagree; she was still in shock. Love! So that explained… everything. "Well, you know, you just attacked royalty. That's punishable by d…" the Prince met Sakaki's entreating eyes and sighed resignedly, "Servitude. Yes, servitude. We'll indenture you. Um… Sakaki, I guess you could use another attendant, huh?"

Before she could answer, his communicator chimed and he snapped it open instantly. "I'm busy! What is it?"

"Sir!" an appropriately panicked underling cried, "The Earth monster, the big one, is moving again! He's going to engage Ghidora!"

Xolarus nodded tightly. "Battle Plan Four." The communicator snapped shut and he looked between the Earth girls gravely. "We'd better not stay on the surface. Follow me… and no more blunt objects, please."

They set out, only pausing so that Sakaki could take her friend by the shoulder and help her along; Kaori seemed to be in shock. "At…attendant?"

Godzilla's first move was to raid Sendai's nuclear power plant. Strangely intent, he plunged through the complex, dug his claws into the reactor and squinted against the resultant cloud of superheated steam. SDF observers initially freaked out, but their Geiger counters didn't even twitch; the monster was absorbing radiation as fast as it was released!

A few inquiring minds wondered why he hadn't simply absorbed the radiation of Birth Island. ("Maybe it's important that Birth Island stay radioactive for some reason?" a young grad student wondered aloud, but the scientists he worked under just looked at him like he was stupid.) Other inquiring minds wondered how Godzilla absorbed radiation at all, but that was a mystery that would only be solved when the Monster King was stuffed and mounted, a happy day that G-Force worked toward diligently.

Ghidora took to the air, rising to a positively dizzying height before mounting his assault. Godzilla was just slurping up the last dregs of Sendai's reactor when gravity beams started stabbing at him from on high. He staggered back with an aggrieved roar, searching the sky for his tormentor.

Jagged beams lashed up and down his body, driving him back and back. The Keeper was certain that this strategy would work; how could a dumb brute like Godzilla connect these awful beams with what appeared to be a tiny golden kite fluttering in the distance?

And for a second or two, Godzilla did, in fact, seem to be confused. But then, eyes narrowing, he tilted his head back and noted the Space Monster in the distance. Even as Ghidora's attacks tore at him, he opened his mouth and stared angrily, eyes calculating…

And the mighty King Ghidora was struck from the air.

He twisted violently at the last second, taking the atomic ray on the broad surface of one shining wing. Ghidora's triple-shriek filled with frustration as he spiraled towards the ground, wings folded. In a move that would have done seabirds everywhere proud, he spread his wings at the last moment, his claws striking a long trail of sparks across the street as he swooped right into Godzilla.

The monsters went down together, Godzilla's bellow drowning out the crash of their fall. Ghidora stood athwart the Monster King, striking furiously with all three heads, and they became a tangle of striking limbs and flashing blades. Judging by the thrashing of Godzilla's tail, it seemed that he was getting the worst of it.

At this point in the engagement, a strange creature rose silently from the ocean. It was an enormous, darkly armored caterpillar… and profoundly, astonishingly ugly. Its beady blue eyes glowed brightly for the shadows of deep sockets and a many-toothed mouth worked steadily between them, just beneath a strange sort of crest. Earth's guardian had arrived!

One of Ghidora's heads whipped around and blew it right back into the water with a single gravity beam. Nobody gave it a second thought.

But as this head was starting to turn back, a clod of pavement struck its eyes, bursting like a ninja's pepper ball. King Caesar leapt from his cover behind the bank, hurling another powdery projectile into the head that turned to deal with him. Before he could even step out of over Godzilla, the Space Monster found a furious living Shisa bulling in to his flank.

Ghidora's sinuous body bent around the smaller monster as he took an awkward step sideways. Big, knobby fists were pounding into his middle and chest—Caesar was inside of his reach and milking it for all it was worth. Finally, one of the heads grabbed Caesar by the back of his neck and flung him back, but the two gravity beams the Space Monster sent after him went wide of their mark.

Godzilla regained his feet ferociously and struck his larger foe with his muscular tail, unaware of the swath of wreckage his attack left. Another punishing tail strike and Ghidora turned all three gravity beams on him point blank—but he was inside the bubble of Caesar's interference and the beams peeled away like an opening flower.

To speak of Ceasar, he had grabbed hold of one of Ghidora's tails and seemed to be trying to put it in some kind of hold; it would have been comical if the stakes of this battle weren't so dire. Ghidora glanced back at him in seeming panic, and then forward at Godzilla, who was readying his atomic ray.

And then the Space Monster employed one of his favorite tactics. He sprang into the air just as Godzilla's spines lit with blue energy, leaving King Caesar grasping at thin air when the tail twisted from his grip. The howling blue ray flashed through the space Ghidora had just occupied, bearing down on the small defender…

But instead of being incinerated, the shaggy beast took a stance like a sumo wrestler, head thrust forward, and Godzilla's attack twisted and funneled down into his orange eye. For endless seconds he sucked down the blisteringtorrent and history would never know that the main reason his head wasn't exploding like a melon stuffed with firecrackers was the auspicious placement that Kazuki Izumi had given his statue.

Once it was over, Godzilla stared at him, completely baffled. He almost looked like he was considering belching another ray to see what would happen. Ghidora was even more surprised, and not a little worried, for he knew what happened when Caesar absorbed—

BRAMMMMMM! (or thereabouts)

The amplified beam that issued from Caesar's other eye was red. No, it wasn't just red, it was RED! It was an impossible, bloody hue that temporarily turned the universe into a sheet of crimson. There was not a single observer of this battle that wouldn't be seeing green every time they blinked for hours after.

It speared up and impaled the Space Monster's chest, continuing unhindered into the firmament. Ghidora was more than hindered. He flopped to the ground, landing drunkenly on his feet, wound gushing black, stringy fluid onto the ruined street. Godzilla didn't give him a moments mercy, tearing into him with tooth and claw, battering him viciously and driving him almost to the water before hosing him down with yet another atomic ray.

The Monster King then did something very strange. He stood over the fallen monster and spread his arms out, thrusting his barrel chest out and roaring as if to say, "I'm from the streets, bitch!" For his part, Caesar sat down, loosing an awful bray that could only be laughter, though he didn't have much to laugh about; his eyes were in blank white ruin, surrounded by a grotesque raccoon's mask of tears and retinal fluid.

Ghidora's center head spewed another gush of brackish blood and he was still.

"Damn!" the Keeper barked, hitting his console. "Damn it all to hell!"

Xandra stood at his elbow, silently watching. She found the brutality of the last few minutes very upsetting, but somehow felt she owed it to Earth to subject herself to it. This was the course her people were taking, and she wouldn't turn away. However, as she stood there, an eerie feeling swept over her. "It's happened," she said softly.

Her brother looked at her impatiently. "I'll say it happened! Any other brilliant insights?" But when he met her dark, glimmering eyes, he knew that something was wrong. He turned back to the controls like a man in a trance.

"Keeper, report!" Xolarus's voice issued from the grille next to his console. So he was still down on Earth? That was bad news. "What's going on?"

"I've lost the signal from the control device," he said dully.

"So Ghidora's dead?"

"No." The Keeper took a faint, perverse pleasure in delivering the news. "Worse."

After that, everything happened so fast that not even the Xians were able to piece it together afterward. Godzilla was just starting to lumber towards the sea when that familiar tri-toned shriek rang out--but it was wrong. It was a trumpeting sound now, no longer raspy and gritty. Ghidora's eyes were windows into a terrible, hellish furnace.

Before Godzilla could even turn, he was stitched by red-wreathed gravity beams and thrown to the ground with a roar that was more of a scream. He tried to rise but the Space Monster kept after him, hammering him with the dreadful red-and-gold energy until he stopped moving.

With one wing-aided leap, Ghidora crashed down behind King Caesar. The blinded monster whirled, expertly winging a chunk of the street towards his crazed foe—but Ghidora scythed it from the air with his beams. Caesar leapt towards him, was snatched from the air and slammed into the crater he'd made. It was promptly filled with infernal lightning and shredding teeth as Ghidora attacked with astonishing speed. When this assault let up, Caesar reached weakly out of his blackened pit… then Ghidora's great foot slammed down, ending his guardianship of the Izumi family forever.

Satisfied, the Space Demon took to the air once more and the destruction of Sendai began in earnest.

However, Sendai is a pretty big place, and this new, enraged Ghidora wasn't very methodical. By the time the sun had started to set, his campaign to turn it into a blasted desert still had some ways to go, and those few unfortunates still trapped in Sendai had a chance, however slender, to escape.

Well, most of them did.

Chiyo lay on a waterside street where she had fallen in the last moments of the monsters' engagement, still tugging futilely at her leg, which was pinned under a great clod of rubble. She had lucked out in that it wasn't actually crushing her leg, but that wouldn't matter much when Frontier missiles started raining from the sky.

"Ms. Kagura…" she said desperately. "Why are you still here? You should go!"

"And leave you?" the athlete asked. She gave a small grunt as she pushed at the chunk of concrete, but it didn't budge. "Forget it!"

"But…!"

"We've been over this," Kagura said patiently, and sat down next to her. "I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I just ditched you here."

"But you won't be able to live at all if you don't!"

"Well, we'll see."

Chiyo stewed for a moment, fear giving way to anger. "Kagura!" she suddenly exploded, "Dammit! Get out of here while… uh…" the prodigy trailed off, looking abashed at her lapse. "S…sorry."

"You kiss your mother with that mouth?" Kagura asked, raising an eyebrow. Evidently, she had no concept of the pot calling the kettle black. "Y'know, I have this feeling that things will work out." She took the younger girl's hand. "Listen, I'm going to take a little run around and look for the others again, all right? I'll be back in just a little bit, okay?"

"Be careful," Chiyo implored, "He's coming closer…"

"Aah, the way he's been going, it'll take him forever to get here." Maybe not forever, but the rational part of Chiyo had to agree that the way Ghidora was going back and forth over the same ground until nothing was left but grit (according to her friend's report, anyway), she wouldn't have to worry about him for quite a while.

As Kagura started away, though, Chiyo took hold of her pantleg. "Ms. Kagura, look!"

As the Eastern horizon darkened, pinpoints of light were starting to stand out over the waves. The moon peeked through a hole in the overcast, and Kagura realized what they were. The running lights of a flotilla of ships. The Americans!

"Huh," Kagura said, "Sure are a lot of them."

"It won't be long now," Chiyo commented, chuckling a little.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, that wasn't mirth, I'm just uncomfortable. It is a strange feeling, isn't it? That you might be suddenly vaporized without ever knowing what happened?"

"Well, jeez, Ms. Sunshine…" Kagura started sarcastically.

The sky vanished. With an absurdly faint rushing sound, a colossal shape rose from the water, the slow beat of its wings sending a gentle wind over the two girls. Both were completely silent as the apparition passed overhead, drinking in every detail of the strange and wonderful (or was that terrible?) creature.

It was not a giant moth. Its sleek, furry body took on that general shape, but it was much more elegant and streamlined. Its long head came to a sharp point at the snout, dominated by two great, sapphire compound eyes and a pair of gently curling antennae that almost looked like the eyebrows of an Asian dragon.

And its wings? If it were to stand still for them, Chiyo could easily imagine spending hours staring into the bizarre patterns coating them in purples, blues and faint bands of red, growing increasingly agitated as the image her brain would be grasping for refused to coalesce.

Just as it reached the shore, the moon emerged again, and another pattern of sparkling silver and blue lines overlaid it. It was stunningly beautiful, but also not a little disturbing. Before they could see much more, it was gone, leaving a wake of cool, sweet-smelling air.

"Wh… what the hell was that?" Kagura asked.

"Offhand?" Chiyo replied, spirits rising, "I'd say it's Ms. Osaka's baby."

(A/N: If the whole "absorbing radiation" thing bothers you, you're probably thinking too much. But if it makes you feel better, you can replace every instance of "radiation" with "sake," if it doesn't bother you that the scientists need a Geiger counter to find alcohol, then.)