(A/N: I apologize for any awkwardness stemming from the monsters that are attacking the girls and the big meanie that's fighting Godzilla having the same name. I might've called them Destroyeroids or something, but, I mean, come on… Destroyeroids? Pfft.)
It's possible that Godzilla has his own instinctive reasons for gravitating towards Tokyo, or perhaps he's compelled by a force (somehow) larger than himself, but in either case, the SDF was strangely unsurprised when his head broke through the dark waves of Tokyo bay, declining to set off their expensive sonar network as always. Thick, dark clouds were rolling in with him, but he was oblivious to the dramatic element as he strode ashore and looked around expectantly.
No bright blue lasers flashed out of the city to strike him. No fighters came careening out of the sky to be consumed by his atomic ray. There were no tanks on the waterfront pounding shell after futile shell into his impervious hide. With a grunt that could only signify pleased surprise, the Big G started to head inland, making no particular effort to avoid those unfortunate buildings in his path.
He was dimly curious as to why nothing had attacked him yet; unaware of humans as individual beings, he would never figure out that most of the city had already retreated into the Godzilla shelters or had evacuated due to the advent of another titanic monster. The closest he managed was that perhaps the irritating little creatures that buzzed around his head and peppered him with explosives had been scared off by…
Godzilla stopped in his tracks. He was getting really, really tired of these weird situations he kept finding himself in.
For its part, the Destroyer's whole existence was a weird situation. As soon the tanks were dealt with, it had set out find another concentration of micro-oxygen to feed, articulated legs carrying its hideous body high over the streets. Of course, there was only one other concentration in the whole world… the areas around Tokyo Bay affected by the discharge of the original Oxygen Destroyer, back when it had been used to kill Godzilla in 1954. (The creature that lumbered ashore now was either another of a similar species, miraculously resurrected, or had somehow survived a bath in the most lethal acid mankind's science could devise.)
Its form was still twisting, however, growing as more and more small creatures scuttled up and hopped on. The claws had retreated into its body early on to be replaced by a pair of batlike wings, but before it could take flight they rolled up and thickened to become a pair of arms, then started to split into both. Its churning forest of legs condensed and merged, making its progress awkward and stumbling at times, but its limbs came out of the process with more strength and surety. Always the monster grew, becoming more solid and (amazingly) even uglier as it clambered on.
By the time it stood before Godzilla it had ballooned to nearly 120 meters tall, striding on two powerful legs. In fact, its build was similar to that of the Monster King, though hard and angular, coated in dark brown armor. The wings had bloomed into magnificent, gargoyle-like sails that would never lift its bulk but looked impressive all the same. Its tail wound sinuously out behind it, capped by a twin hooked prongs of bone. A ceratopsian crest spread out around its blunt, vicious face, framing a short, wickedly serrated horn that crackled with deadly energy. This was its final form.
This was… the Destroyer!
Godzilla looked the monster up and down, lips curling up around his yellowing fangs. As the black clouds continued their march across the sky, he raised a roar to shake them, a brutal, triumphant bellow whose sentiment was clear: "Now this is more like it!"
"Did you see what happened to that guy? I didn't see! Is he dead? Is he…?"
"Tomo!" Kagura grabbed her shoulders. "Shut up and calm down!"
"But what should we-? Are they-? What-?"
"Quiet!" The Wildcat's mouth snapped shut, but her eyes were still bulging. Kagura groped for something to say that would soothe her. "Look, I don't know what happened to him; the thing knocked him away an' I didn't see where he ended up." While this was true, she didn't think the poor guy's odds were so good. "Look, we're safe here, and I'm sure the others will be fine, an' would you just keep it together!"
"Right… right…" Tomo swallowed, "Together… where… where are we?"
"I dunno. It was… an armored door, I didn't think about where we were going."
"But what… what about Yomi? Osaka? Andrea?"
"Who the hell's Andr--? Oh, right. It's fine, Tomo, they're in good hands. Mr. Mihama's lookin' out for them."
"Aw, man, they're screwed, aren't they?"
"Shh… shut up. We've gotta see if there's a way out of the building through here or if we have to wait it out."
"And… and what if the monsters win?"
"Tomo…" Kagura hauled her to her feet. "Just stop. We're safe here."
"Right. Yeah. Safe."
They moved together down the narrow, dark corridor they found themselves in, away from the muffled shrieking and stuttering of small-arms fire. It was much cleaner here than it had been in Secondary Control, but the air was stuffy, and had a certain stale, sealed-in odor to it.
Before either could comment, the girls passed through a threshold and the room's lights sprang to life. "Waugh!" Tomo sprang back into the dark corridor, but then reemerged slowly when she saw that Destroyers weren't springing out of the woodwork and eating Kagura. "What is this…? Wait a second."
There were four seats spaced around the room, all facing a great screen that was at the moment dark. Consoles spread out over the walls and grew from the floor at apparent random; Kagura noticed that the chairs were on tracks and could easily be moved to different sections.
"Kags! Do you have any idea where we are?" Tomo cried, eyes bright and trauma completely forgotten.
"Kags? Since when…?"
"This is… holy shit, we just got eight stars!"
"Eight st…? Oh no! Tomo, we've got to get out of here!"
"Get out of here, hell! Where's the 'on' switch?" The Takinator launched a wild, fruitless search over the banks of consoles, hammering buttons all over the place in search of the one that would launch her real rampage.
"Tomo, you moron!" Kagura yelled, "This isn't Gundam! We're not Amuro Ray or Shinji Ikari or whatsisface from Tetsujin 28! Why do you even want to…!"
"Is somebody in there?" a voice crackled through the radio. Tomo wasted no time in hitting a random button on the panel and crowing, "Damn right, there is!"
"You're not coming through," the voice continued. "This is Primary Control… Mechagodzilla's transmitter was damaged and we didn't get around to fixing it, so you won't be able to talk to us. We just know you're there because we can see the systems turning on and off at random. Listen… a giant monster of some kind is attacking Tokyo." The fellow coughed; he never thought he'd have to say that and mean it. "We need you to pilot Mechagodzilla."
"All right!" Tomo cried.
"What?" Kagura shrieked. "You're joking! This is mad!"
"Just, uh… I dunno, flip the lights on and off. We'll go one flip yes, two flips no, okay?" They could all but see Control shrug. "We're gonna have to play this by ear. Are you ready?"
"Noooooo!" Kagura jumped on the light toggle and started flipping it back and forth madly. Tomo started her diabolical laugh, which was positively nightmarish with the strobe effect going. "The world is ours, Kags!"
"Wow, look at 'em go!" the guy in Control said to his superior, a woman in her forties. The indicator for the cockpit lights on his screen was flickering like crazy. "They must really be raring to go!"
"I'm glad they're so enthusiastic," she replied dryly. "Launch."
Meanwhile, in the Golden Realm, the Elder One's assistant slapped his stone forehead in disbelief. "And you've been planning this since when?" he asked. "Okay, now you're just showing off."
Chiyo-dad glowed in self-satisfaction.
If Secondary Control was a mess before, it was something mystical now. The men and women that had been working there, be they loyal MI employees or SSS9 scum, banded together to defend themselves from the arthropod menace… as effectively as they could, anyway. Fortunately, automatic weapons were present, and those who carried them didn't seem to mind that they were marking themselves out as turncoats by revealing that they'd just happened to bring an OTs-33 to work that day.
Osaka didn't care about automatic pistols or giant crab monsters at the moment; her concern was much more focused. She, Chiyo and Sakaki crouched in a row under a heavy desk/console, huddling together against the horrible clamor. Oddly, it reminded her of the day all those months before when their school had been crammed into the Godzilla shelters, and they three had shared a couch until Tomo crashed through them.
"Chiyo-chan? Chiyo?" Osaka took the tiny girl's shoulder, "Chiyo! Snap outta it!" Chiyo was as white as a sheet, her eyes the size of dinner plates, breathing quickly and shallowly. She didn't respond as her friend waved fingers in front of her eyes, shook her gently, and continued to say her name like a mantra. "Chiyo! Chiyo-chan, please, come back!"
Sakaki leaned out from under their cover, but noticed a streak of blood across the ground right next to her and snapped back. This was not squeamishness; she certainly wasn't afraid of blood, but any sane person would fear the things that had released it. Even with the whole alien abduction thing under her belt, she had no idea what to do.
"Chiyo-chan, please…!" Feeling futility like a knife, Osaka licked a finger and rubbed the frighteningly bright fleck of blood from her friend's cheek—which made her suddenly respond, jerking away with a panicked squeak. "Chiyo! S-sorry!"
At a loss for words, the Space Cadet threw her arms around the smaller girl (wincing from her collarbone's protest, but ignoring it) and pulled her close. Chiyo was shaking like a leaf, which would have been less upsetting if Osaka weren't scared out of her wits herself. What could she say to help Chiyo? What could she do to let her know that…?
Everything will be fine, mother.
Osaka suddenly smiled. She laughed even. When Chiyo looked up, she held the young prodigy out at arm's length and said, "We're leaving, Chiyo-chan. C'mon." The child's eyes were terrified and uncomprehending, but didn't she protest as Osaka helped her to her feet and took her hand. "Let's go."
Sakaki made to stand and beat her head against the bottom of their cover. "What-? Ayumu! You-!" her protest was cut short when she saw that it had come too late. A Destroyer was suddenly there, howling demonically and descending upon them with unbelievable speed. It hissed with malicious glee as its claw fell towards the two girls, instants from spraying them all over the-
VOIP!
As the hum and roar of Mechagodzilla being raised for launch filled the air, Yomi considered. There was no panic in her mind, but no serenity either; she tingled, watching herself from a safe distance as her other self searched for a way out of certain death. This was surely no time to freak out.
"Sandra?" she asked calmly, turning to the figure that shared her meager cover. "Do you have a weapon?"
"A… a… a weapon?" Sandra looked about frantically. "I- um, crap- yes, I-" She tried to remove something from her sock, but her hands were shaking too badly to get it. A purple micro-ox ray ripped across the ground in front of them, leaving its distinctive reek in the air and totally breaking her concentration. "Ack! Ahh!"
Yomi easily reached over and plucked the object from her sock—it was a small, rounded weapon of a sort, resembling a hot-glue gun, or one of those toys that shoots bubbles… a prop from a sixties science fiction movie, perhaps. Though she didn't know the name for it, Yomi recognized it as one of the aliens' needle ray projectors. "Where on Earth did you get this?" she asked, not noticing the pun.
"I- um- f-found it." Sandra swallowed. "On the ground."
"Hmm," Yomi said disinterestedly. It had occurred to her that since the monsters smelled so strongly for the solid micro-oxygen solution she'd worked with at the University, their shells must have had a high micro-ox content. And the ridiculously, dangerously easy way you could make the solid solution dissolve into its lethal liquid form?
The Bespectacled One leaned out from under her cover, took aim at one of the room's sprinklers, and fired. Dew-dew-dew-dew-dew! The ceiling next to the sprinkler burst into sparks. There was a brief silence as even the monsters paused to wonder what the beam was and where it had come from, then the fire-alarm went off and the sprinklers rushed to life.
The Destroyers screamed in agony and staggered, steam rising from their armored bodies in great stinking clouds. Of course, if it were that easy, the SDF wouldn't have bothered with expensive freeze-rays. The monsters recovered quickly, but now, instead of just skipping off of their armor or becoming uselessly lodged, the bullets blew gushing chunks out of them. The tide, it seemed, had turned.
Yomi looked down at the projector. She didn't really feel sure of herself enough to try Rambo-ing her way out, but there was nothing to be gained by staying crammed under this desk. What to do, then? Tactical espionage action? "We should probably get moving."
"How the heck are you so on top of things?" Sandra wailed.
"I've been through worse."
"You liar."
"I'll tell you about it sometime."
In spite of the obvious language gap between them, both monsters seemed to have the same idea, and without further ado, their titanic bodies collided with a meaty boom the likes of which had never been heard. The Monster King's irradiated muscles strained against the freakish alien sinew of his larger foe, his tail raising billowing clouds of debris to be sodden and driven to the ground by the sudden downpour.
The Destroyer shoved him away and raked its serrated claws across his chest, raising a shower of sparks and a thin film of pale green blood. Godzilla responded by giving it a haymaker that would've made John Wayne proud, sending a fang the size of an Amtrak car spinning into the dark sky.
The rain did not have the same effect on this mightier beast than it would have on the creatures that made it up. Destroyer's shell had hardened, and the micro-ox content had dissolved from the outer layers… thus, it didn't shatter when Godzilla's next punch plunged a few meters into its solar plexus area, which didn't have nearly the effect the he was hoping for.
Clawed hands closed around the sides of Godzilla's head, and before he could react a purple torrent of energy was pouring over him. He yowled and raised his hands to protect his face as the hateful beam played over him. The strange wounds it left were not quite ulcers, burns nor anything else that conventional medical science would have a name for. (But we all know how much use the big guy has for medical science.)
Godzilla grabbed his foe's throat and bulled forward, choking the beam off. The brute dimly remembered this tactic being used against him by Biollante, and truly enjoyed getting to be on the other end of it. Destroyer grabbed at his wrist with both hands, but a sweep of the Saurian's other arm knocked his grip away. Just as a foam of gray, cloudy blood rose from its gullet, though, the larger monster's tail came into play.
The twin spikes closed together around Godzilla's ankle like a claw and jerked the Monster King off of his feet. Destroyer stepped on his chest and loosed another horrible micro-ox ray, making the ground about them burst into strangely glowing cinders. Godzilla's atomic death ray answered, the thick beam snapping angrily across Destroyer's chest and forcing it a crucial step backwards.
At this point, Mechagodzilla made his appearance. He had been approaching for some time, in fact, but it was slow going and he was just now coming close enough to be significant. Unlike during his terrifying performance against Biollante, he moved awkwardly… robotically, almost.
Godzilla rolled out of under the Precambrian monster and planted huge hands on the tortured pavement, collecting himself to rise. The Destroyer turned to face this newcomer, uncertain of what to make of a moving thing that didn't smell like food. Its uncertainty lasted right up until the moment that the railguns on MG's forearms started pounding away, knocking chunks out of its armor.
Destroyer marched painfully into volley after volley of super high velocity rounds while the mechanical monster backpedaled slowly, moving as though it couldn't concentrate on more than one thing at a time. Ironically, for all the lethal weaponry crammed into his body, it seemed that Mechagodzilla couldn't walk and chew gun at the same time.
But before the Destroyer reached him, he demonstrated a new trick—the Chromatic Death Ray leapt from his gleaming jaws, flashing red, then yellow, then green, then blue before slamming into the Destroyer and making it jerk to the side, wings beating to hold its balance.
The micro-ox ray struck back, making a pretty light show on its armor but otherwise having no effect. At this point, inexperienced pilots might have become cocky… and let's be honest, considering who's in there, we can be sure they were… but you don't go through millions of years of evolution in just a few minutes just to get blown up by a rainbow.
Arc missiles streaked from the heavy pack affixed to Mechagodzilla's back, rushing in wide semicircles to converge on the Destroyer and engulf it in an unbelievable gout of flame. The wall of smoke that resulted, coupled with the mist and rain, totally obscured the fact that the Destroyer was hardly fazed, and right on top of them!
BLANG! Mechagodzilla was knocked off of his feet, skidding like a 95 billion dollar toboggan through a nice little residential area. He automatically moved to right himself, firing more railgun rounds to slow down the living monster. The Chromatic Death Ray rasped over its armored skin once again, but didn't even leave a mark.
Energy danced blindingly around Destroyer's horn, then leapt out in a crescent shape as it twisted its head bull-like and brought the horn down like a sword. Mechagodzilla lurched back stiffly, almost falling again even as another huge, glowing sweep knocked him to the side.
At this point, a miracle came. The crazy mechanics of Mihama Industries had somehow managed to duct tape the totaled Osprey together. In spite of the fact that it was barely able to fly, the VTOL looked grand and heroic as it swooped down a couple of kilometers away and hovered where its crew could see the struggling monsters. MG's proper pilot flexed his fingers over the controls as word went to his stand-ins.
Mechagodzilla's escape capsule popped free and shot away unnoticed, bearing his unfortunate proxy commanders to a distant corner of empty Tokyo. Empty, that is, except for the Destroyer's brood!