Shimmering wings fluttered at the edge of sight, but neither they nor the creature's faint fragrance held any menace for Ayumu. Contact was welcome, and far from killing her, his tiny weight atop her head filled her with warmth and vigor… both of which she had a good use for. She would have simply sat back and enjoyed their reunion, but there was something to take care of first.

She waited patiently, poised to strike, until the Shobijin finally decided that it really was safe and emerged from around the mighty tome Kaori had left in her chair. "Ayumu Kasug-!" they started, then Lefty dove to the side as the pillow crashed down on her sister like a big puffy asteroid. "Agaa!"

"What the hell did you do to mah baby?"

"Stupid!" Righty snapped, "We didn't- agaa!"

"Why doncha be more civil? I'm the one with the pillow, here!"

"And if Mothra comes to knock down your house?" Righty growled, rising once more.

"I don't got one! Ha!"

"This isn't helping anything," Lefty admonished. "Come now, stop beating up my sister and let us explain."

Ayumu set the pillow aside, sat up and crossed her arms in a classic 'this had better be the best explanation I've ever heard in my life' stance. Atop her head, Gathra took its moth equivalent, mute as ever. "'Kay. Hit me."

"Ayumu Kasuga!" they started again, and this time the sky didn't fall. "It was a terrible thing that was done to you, but it was done for a reason. Twice, Gathra had overstepped himself and intervened in battles that were none of his business to protect you!"

"That doesn't sound too bad."

"It wouldn't, to you," Righty pointed out. The corner of Ayumu's mouth quirked upward, but she didn't interrupt as they continued. "A Guardian's presence in the world holds the door open for anti-Guardians, demons of the darker planes. This is why Mothra must be reborn and then die every time the world is threatened, and why we could not allow your son to continue as he was. That is why you both had to forget."

"But why'd he turn inta that… that…"

"We hadn't considered that the difference between the noble Gathra and the vampiric monster he became was in you, Ayumu. Without your spirit to guide him, he was a loathsome and corrupt creature that lived only to kill and suck the life out of others. It is good that you were wise enough to avoid going to him in this state; he would have killed you as well."

Ayumu reached up and ran her fingers over the invisible, fuzzy back of her son. As bad as the past few years had been for her, they must have been even more terrible for him. She'd merely been mortally confused and terrified… but he'd been twisted into another being entirely!

"The presence of you and your sisters has warped the astral plane around Earth beyond recognition. There was a time when we could see our path into the future as clearly as you could see a road before you, but now a shroud has fallen over the world. When we were faced with your son, we could not have known what would happen, only that we had to do something."

"Aheh…" she thought back to the giant artichoke and arachnid monsters. "Guess I was goin' crazy anyway, so…"

"Actually," Lefty said, rolling over her sister's silent objection, "If not for the astral visitations and monsters, you'd be a well-known author dating the frontman of a small-time rock band and… agaa! "

"Sorry, ah couldn't resist. Y'really shoulda kept your mouth shut." Ayumu tossed the pillow aside. It was a good thing she'd struck before the priestess got to 'And Tomo would be graduating from the Academy about now.' "But I guess none o' that means anything to me, now."

"That's true," the priestesses looked at each other. "We will probably never meet again. Your son… he is no longer a Guardian. We don't know what he has become and it is not our place to investigate, for soon Mothra must leave the Earth altogether."

"What? But… but the aliens!"

"Are the natural enemy of another, who will rise to fight them. Or not." And just like that, the Shobijin were gone. Ayumu sat back, struck by a massive feeling of anticlimax. She had hoped that her reckoning with Mothra would be more… cataclysmic. But then, in a cataclysmic encounter with something like that, most of the cataclysmicness would end up coming down on her head, wouldn't it?

"So…" she, asked, stroking Gathra again. "How was dyin' for you?"


The Black Hole People were not great builders of monuments, but nobody ignores monuments when they present themselves. So it was that when they were handed the perfect way to commemorate their victory over Earth, they didn't waste it.

The conventional military had been no match for the attacking swarm of monsters, but there had been effective resistance. A corporation called Mihama Industries had built a tremendous robot, a mechanical dragon that towered over all but the largest of the invaders' thralls, and it had stood to fight them in this plain.

Here it still stood, frozen where it had finally run out of power, coated in corrosion and slowly, ever-so-slowly leaning as the earth shifted beneath its incredible weight. (The rust was because Space Titanium, as you may have guessed from its name, likes oxygen and water even less than other metals.) Heaped at its feet were the bones of all the Gaijin monsters it had killed; after all, it doesn't hurt to show how powerful a defeated adversary had once been.

Masema leaned on the historical marker a half a kilometer away, taking in the sight of the monolith as it was silhouetted in the rising sun. He was enjoying it so thoroughly that it didn't even break his composure when Yukia turned up suddenly in his blind spot, as was her wont.

"The only person that can stand against me is a complete weakling," she said without preamble. "If nothing changes, you'll have your war."

"Good." Masema didn't turn. "We must make our move shortly. The Supreme Commander is talking about releasing our collateral prisoners as a gesture of good faith, and I refuse to allow this to happen."

"Just, just one thing…" Yukia glanced over her shoulder and edged closer to him. "I'm going to need you to kidnap some people for me."

"Not a problem. By the way, did you hear that Gigamoth was killed?"

"What?" Yukia shrieked, and the Commander's bodyguards thirty meters down the road jerked in surprise. "By who? When?"

"Last night," Masema answered, enjoying her panic. "Another creature like him appeared and killed him."

"This other creature, did our monsters show any… reluctance to attack it?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact."

"We have to kill it!" Yukia stood on her toes and grabbed both of his lapels. "I know what it is and it can ruin everything!"

"Unhand me!" Masema barked.

Yukia let him go but didn't back off. "Don't let it live. You can't do anything against the Earthmen as long as it's alive!"

"But if our monsters won't attack it, what can we do?"

"Well, we have one creature that might," Yukia turned away from him and gripped the marker. "If you can stand to release him, that is."

"You mean the one we took from the Xians?" Masema grinned. "All right! I've been waiting for years to turn him loose!"


"Imagine my surprise," Kagura said as she entered Yomi's humble abode. "Not only invited to your home, but at a decent hour, no less! I didn't know you ever came back here before 8! Are you turning into a 9-to-5 worker? You slacker."

"Oh, shut up." Yomi was still in her work clothes, leaning back in an easy chair with a small glass in one hand and an ice pack in the other. The ice pack would be normal Yomi-after-work, but the glass…

"Hey, isn't it too early to be drinking, though?"

"Yes." Yomi took a long sip. "It is."

"And won't you be hung-over tomorrow? I mean, it's not the weekend yet, not that that sort of thing matters to you…"

"I'm going to call in sick tomorrow."

"Wow, this sounds serious," Kagura dragged another chair over and sat down next to her. "Any of that for me?"

"Help yourself."

"So… I assume you didn't call me so we could get hammered together. That'd be fun, but it doesn't seem like your kinda thing."

"Eh…" She seemed a little peaked, and it looked like she was having trouble breathing, but Yomi was still perfectly lucid. Perhaps it was just going to be the drink in her hand. Perhaps. "It's all just caught up with me. You know how too much stress weakens your immune system."

"Your whole body, really," Kagura nodded. "Yeah. But that isn't all, is it?"

"No, I wish."

They sat for quite a long time, the only sound the ticking of an old clock hanging above the television. Kagura really was reminded of a prison cell, now that she was sitting here and not just blowing on through. "So… you gonna tell me about it?"

"Today Those Bastards' second-in-command came in and had a shouting match with our ambassador over the collater… Kagura, do you know about the collateral prisoners?"

"Nope."

"Not many people do. It's the sort of thing that could set off riots."

"Well now I have to know."

"I figured you would," Yomi sighed. "But don't tell anybody I told you."

"You can count on me."

"They're… they're why there isn't more of a resistance to the aliens. Something like three-thousand prisoners in a kind of… suspended animation or cold sleep or something. About a quarter of them were chosen strategically, but the rest were taken more or less at random, you know, during the riots. They can be released or killed based on how well we Earthmen behave."

"That's…" Kagura took a swallow of her drink. It was fiercely bitter. "Shit, dude."

"And every time I hear about them, all those poor people, all I can think of is the possibility that maybe, just maybe, one of them is…" Yomi drained the rest of her glass. "But that's a stupid thing to pin your hopes on."

"But what if…"

"And on the other hand, if this Masema guy gets his way, they'll all be killed. Three thousand people and all I can worry about is this stupid little ghost of a chance… ugh."

"Hey, take it easy," Kagura said. "They'd never do that, right? Just kick back and take a break, Yomi. No one can say you haven't earned it."

"I can."

"But you won't."

"Oh?"

"Are we gonna have to throw down, here?"


Maya entered through the pet door looking very pleased with himself; apparently he'd found his breakfast scampering around in the yard. Passing right by his filled dishes, he padded up to Sakaki at the kitchen table and tried to hop up into her lap, which he was a mite too large to manage without a little jostling and scrambling. As she stroked the big cat, Sakaki happened to glance up and notice a note folded on the table.

Moving even more silently than Maya, Chiyo finished packing in the living room, wincing at the sound of her duffel's zipper. Hefting it with a soft grunt, she started towards the front door in an exaggerated stealth-walk, careful to maneuver the bag around various breakables. She hesitated in the entryway and looked back sadly, reflecting that this probably wasn't the nicest way to make her exit. It couldn't be helped, though; the memory of her encounter with the Gaijin woman and what it meant had hit her in the head like a sledgehammer in the middle of their little planning session. Screwing her resolve to the sticking place, Chiyo turned back to the door…

…and ran up against an immovable wall of irritated veterinary assistant.

"M-ms. Sakaki! What…?"

"I read fast," Sakaki said flatly.

"So… so you know why I…"

"I'm amazed that you think so little of me," she continued. Her expression was bland in the same manner as an endless, featureless tract of blazing desert. By contrast, her voice was as cold and level as ever, but Chiyo couldn't hear any warmth hiding behind it. Was this… angry Sakaki?

"I… huh?"

"Why do you think I didn't argue against your coming?" Sakaki didn't normally speak at length, and didn't here. The result was long, awful pauses between her sentences that Chiyo didn't have the courage to interject in. "We both knew it was dangerous for you to come. Didn't you think that I'd make arrangements for your safety? Or my own? You wouldn't be protecting anything by sneaking off. And once you did, did you think that they somehow wouldn't find you if you checked into a Sunroute Hotel? Did you imagine that you'd be able to get into a plane without their knowing?"

"You… but… I…" Chiyo quavered. "But what if you get hurt because…?"

Sakaki softened. "Why didn't you just talk to me?"

"B-because…" the girl smiled bashfully. "Because this would probably happen. I wanted to do what I thought would be right, and I didn't… you… oh," she said a word in English that her mother probably wouldn't have appreciated hearing. "…I'm the dumbest prodigy that ever lived, aren't I? I'm sorry, Ms. Sakaki."

"It's okay." What else could Sakaki say? She'd been expecting something dramatic and pathologically selfless ever since Chiyo had staggered in after her Gaijin attack. "This… wasn't a surprise."

"So, um," Chiyo stepped back and set her duffel down. "What do we do now?"

"Lunch, I assume." Just like that, it was like nothing had happened. "Then we'll go to meet Takeshi, like you wanted to."

Chiyo warmed to the change in subject. "Would you like to visit Ms. Kaori's, too? They're probably busy restocking, but I'm sure they'd be happy to see you."

Sakaki briefly let herself imagine seeing Xandra, Kaori and Ayumu again all in one go… then shook her head. "I shouldn't. It would be… awkward."

"I, I think that Ms. Kaori is over the…"

"That isn't it. It's Xandra's dragon."

"Her dragon?"

"Does he ever fly?" By this point, they'd reached the kitchen and Chiyo took a seat at the table. Maya brushed by her legs, prompting her to reach down to pet him, answering, "Not very often, that I saw. He sleeps most of the time. Why?"

"He hasn't healed yet, then." Sakaki said sadly. "It… pets… sometimes don't like each other." Maya yawned, showing off his lethal dental battery, and wandered away. Chiyo looked after him, wondering if there was anyone that didn't have a hidden dark side these days.


One of the sights in Tokyo that Chiyo hadn't seen was the crystal tower at its center. (Though huge, it was dwarfed by the modern skyscrapers around it and only visible from nearby.) This was the structure that held the Black Hole People's ultimate space monster! When Masema gave his fateful order, this tower split open in an astounding but honestly fairly generic lightshow. A smaller formation of crystal shot from its depths and whipped out over the city, aimed towards the distant Gobi.

Mothra rested atop a rugged mountain, waving her wings drowsily. She had just one more thing to do before she left Earth forever, and there was no need to rush into it. Sure enough, the crystal shell that bore her nemesis came streaking over the desert, kicking up another sandstorm along the way. It tried to plow through her, but she lifted off at the last moment and casually flew over it.

The shell skipped across the mountain tops and crashed down a distance away. There, another lightshow ensued as it cracked apart and unfolded into the fabled monster… Space Godzilla! (What, were you expecting somebody else?) The interplanetary brute looked very similar to a blue-tinted version of our homegrown Monster King, but even more massive, with great spikes of crystal jutting from his shoulders. The Xians would have you believe that he was also stronger and meaner, but that's open to debate.

As Mothra looked him over, varicolored light flashed around his spines and the growths from his shoulders. She made no move to evade or counter when a blue-red-gold beam roared from his gullet and lashed towards her… then struck an invisible barrier as though it were the discharge from a squirt gun, continuing to roll and wash about the surface of a perfect sphere around her.

He tried again and yet one more time as she flew there peaceably, and the beam failed to strike home each time. By the time he decided to try closing with her, it was too late; making her first move since avoiding his charge, Mothra sent the sphere of his own energy rumbling towards him like a vast, unstoppable bowling ball of death.

SG actually waved his arms in panic as the sphere engulfed him and exploded; it was exactly the sort of finishing blow that Bob Saget would have added a funny (or allegedly funny) sound effect to. Thus the Gaijin's trump card found himself lying insensate at the base of a kilometer-wide crater, blearily watching Mothra as she flew skyward, slowly fading away.

Her last act as Earth's Guardian had been to teach its new masters humility.