A/N: Here it is – the next chapter! Sorry for the long wait, but your patience is appreciated :) This chapter gets back to the Argo crew as they head to Pennsylvania, and offers some more hints about what's to come….

Own Godzilla, I do not.

Chapter Three: Pennsylvania

THE U.S.S. ARGO – ABOVE QUEBEC, CANADA

At about 12:30P.M. local time, the U.S.S. Argo turned south and headed for the shores of Lake Erie. If everything went well, it would reach the lake with about forty-five minutes of fuel still left. But this change of direction also slightly unnerved everyone, as Ghidorah's monstrous hurricane, previously not visible out the bridge's windows, was now unmissably positioned on the left side of their field of view. The eyewall of the storm seemed to become increasingly concentrated and stronger, and Mark thought it resembled a dark grey pillar holding up a ceiling of clouds. Lightning occasionally illuminated Ghidorah's outline inside the eyewall, like an ancient drawing on the column.

The Argo passed over the U.S./Canada border shortly after, and even though they were still a few hundred miles from the eye of Ghidorah's hurricane, the team started to see its effects outside. Thunder frequently rumbled, followed by forked streaks of lightning that lacerated the heavens. As they approached Lake Erie, the storm further intensified, with gale-force winds constantly whipping and howling around the Argo.

Suddenly, the Argo shook and everyone heard an explosion from behind them. "What the hell was that?" Barnes asked.

"Dammit!" Stanton yelled. "We got hit by a lightning bolt, and it took out our rear engines. Everyone, the ship's going down – we've gotta get out of here now!"

"How?" Mark asked.

"The Osprey in the hangar," Coleman said. "We should be able to get in that and get out before the Argo crashes."

"Well, we weren't gonna be taking the Argo anywhere else anyway," Stanton said as he and everyone else got up. "Though I gotta say, this is a pretty stupid way for her to be wrecked, considering all the spats with Ghidorah and Rodan that she got us through in the past few days, and then she's done in by a lousy lightning bolt."

"Well, if it helps, think of it as Ghidorah taking her down," Coleman said, "given that this storm wouldn't exist if not for Ghidorah. I mean, I personally don't find that to be a helpful way of looking at it, but if it works for you…."

"Yep, that works. Thanks, man."

The group headed to the back of the Argo and into the hangar, where a lone Osprey was suspended above the hangar doors, still hanging open after the battle over the Gulf of Mexico. But as soon as they reached the hangar, Stanton realized, "Wait…someone needs to be at the controls to drop the Osprey, or we're not going anywhere."

"I'll do it," Foster said.

"But…whoever stays behind isn't getting out of here," Coleman said.

"I know. The captain goes down with the ship." Everyone still hesitated, and Foster said, "Go, now! Get on the goddamn Osprey!"

Everyone turned and headed for the Osprey. When they were almost there, Stanton turned back and saluted to Foster. "It's been an honor."

Foster nodded. "Just go."

Once everyone was in the Osprey, Mark turned it on. Through the windshield, he saw Foster count down with her fingers the seconds until she would release the Osprey. Once she pushed the button, the Osprey gave a sudden lurch as it was released and plummeted from the Argo's hangar. Mark yanked on the lever to switch the Osprey's propellors from vertical to horizontal. The aircraft's freefall stopped, and not a second too soon – looking outside, everyone saw that they were only about a hundred feet above the treetops below.

"That was close," Stanton said.

Mark wheeled the Osprey around until it was pointed to the southeast and then took off. A few seconds later, everyone heard a muffled explosion behind them and saw a flash of light illuminating the undersides of the clouds. "What do we do now?" Coleman asked.

"We win," Chen said, "We make sure she didn't sacrifice herself for nothing."

Another flash of green light flashed throughout the eyewall, and everyone thought they heard a distant screech echoing throughout the storm.

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

Less than an hour later, the Osprey flew over the outskirts of Philadelphia. Given how close it was to the center of the storm, the city didn't look all that bad; someone might have thought it was just weathering out a really bad thunderstorm instead of the apocalypse. Some of the streets were covered in a thin layer of water, and the city's darkness indicated that there had been a blackout, but it wasn't in the state of complete destruction that other cities were.

"Last we knew, he lived down…there, in Fairmount," Coleman said, pointing to a residential area. "Well, somewhere in there. 2623 Aspen Street."

"I'll land the Osprey over there," Mark pointed out the windshield to Fairmount Park. "We shouldn't have to walk too far to get to his house then."

The Osprey descended over Fairmount Park, stirring up a flurry of fallen leaves and branches as its propellors neared the ground. Mark reverted them to their vertical position as they touched down. With the sound of the aircraft's engines gone, everyone became aware of how heavily the rain was hammering the Osprey's exterior. "We'd better have one hell of an umbrella," Stanton said. "And do we even know exactly where we're going, or are we just gonna be wandering blind throughout all of Fairmount until we find Aspen Street?"

"We don't know exactly where it is, but we'd better start somewhere," Coleman said.

Everyone grabbed a coat from the Osprey's storage and pulled up the hood to defend against the falling rain. Mark lowered the ramp at the rear of the aircraft and everyone tentatively stepped out. Fortunately, the rain wasn't falling as heavily as it had sounded from inside, but it was still coming down fairly hard. The team headed for the east end of the park and, once they left it and ran through a parking area, found themselves on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Stanton asked, "Think there's a building here with the address 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?"

"That's hardly our top priority," Emma said, walking towards a nearby intersection. "This road here is…North 27th Street. And going to the east is…Aspen Street! Here it is!"

"That was fast!" Coleman yelled over the wind, which suddenly began howling and whistling down the streets.

Barnes walked a short distance down the street, to the first house, and declared, "This is 2643 Aspen. We're looking on the left side of the street, and it shouldn't be too long before we see it."

They set off down the sidewalk, which was littered with less debris than the street. The street was covered in the broken remnants of telephone poles, streetlights, tree branches – and, in one case, an entire tree – and overturned trash cans. In addition, several of the lights and wires were sending off sparks into the puddles of water they lay in, which would have made safely navigating the street even more dangerous. Overhead, thunder continued to rumble, sounding like gigantic dice rolling across the sky.

After the team had crossed North Taney Street, Madison pointed to the first building to their left, "There – 2623."

Everyone walked towards the building, and Mark climbed the steps leading to the front door, then knocked on it. After several seconds and no reply, he knocked again. While they waited, everyone looked around at their surroundings. Visible over the tops of the buildings to the southwest was the top of the eyewall. Strangely, it no longer appeared to be intermittently flashing with lightning, as much as the lightning seemed to be pulsating from the bottom to the top of the spire every few seconds. One of the flashes illuminated a flying Titan in the distance beyond the eye of the storm – it looked to be either Quetzalcoatl or Rodan.

Everyone turned back to the house as they heard the front door open. Standing in the doorway was a man with unkempt blond hair, who asked, "Who the hell are you?"

"Are you Dr. Nathan Lind?" Mark asked. When the man nodded, Mark continued, "We're with Monarch. We'd like to ask you some questions."

"We think we might have a plan to stop Ghidorah," Emma added.

Nathan shrugged and took a few steps back, holding the door open, "I don't know how you could possibly stop him at this point, but come on in anyway."

Nathan led them to his living room, where he took a seat in an armchair. Mark, Emma, and Madison sat on a sofa opposite him; Chen sat in another chair; and the others remained standing. "So, what do you want to know?" Nathan said. "I doubt I have any information about Ghidorah you don't, so if you're looking for any sort of weakness of his to exploit, you've come to the wrong guy."

"We actually aren't looking for information about him," Emma said. "We understand that your brother discovered another Titan underneath Gobekli Tepe, but didn't tell anyone at Monarch much about it. We were wondering if he shared anything with you about it, like what it is, what powers it has."

Nathan, who had inhaled sharply as soon as Emma mentioned Gobekli Tepe, asked, "Why do you want to know about that thing? Please…please tell me it is not because you plan on freeing it."

"Ghidorah is virtually indestructible now," Mark said. "He killed Godzilla and Mothra and absorbed their powers. All the Titans are under his control except for Kong and Abaddon, who, quite frankly, I don't think would stand even the slightest chance of beating Ghidorah in a fight at this point, This thing underneath Gobekli Tepe might be our last hope, but we need to know more about it."

"You cannot let it out!" Nathan yelled. "It will destroy the world. And I'm not talking Ghidorah-level destroy where humanity could hold out in the bunkers Monarch set up around the world. This thing is pure evil. It will raze the planet over and over and over again until all other traces of life have been completely annihilated."

"Dr. Lind," Chen said, "if you don't want this Titan to be freed, at least tell us why. What do you know about it?"

Nathan exhaled shakily and said, "Zachary didn't want anyone else to know."

"Who?" Stanton asked.

"Sorry, I meant David. My brother. Zachary was actually his first name, but he always went by his middle name. What he told me, he didn't want word of it to ever get out to anyone else."

"It's the end of the world. I think these are extenuating circumstances," Emma said.

Nathan bowed his head. "Shit," he muttered. He then looked up and said, "Fine. I'll tell you what David learned in his research.

"Long ago, in the most primitive days of humanity, before even the Titans, the planet and its inhabitants were protected by a being called the Warrior of Light. People called him something that would roughly translate in English to 'Ah-Khay-Shus.' I guess, in a way, he was actually the first Titan.

"But after many millennia, the planet was threatened by some sort of creature from outer space. Around 50,000 years ago, this creature fell to the earth where the temple of Gobekli Tepe is now."

"Ghidorah's from space too, so are the two related? Like, from the same planet?" Madison asked.

"No. Monarch has been able to determine what Ghidorah's trajectory must have been when he landed on Earth, and that would place him as having come from a planet in the constellation Corvus that we've dubbed 'Planet X.' This creature…we have no way of knowing what it looked like, because nobody depicted it in any cave paintings, and its name was stricken from all written records. It's like they didn't even want to acknowledge its existence. But anyway, David was able to track where the creature must have come from, and it's somewhere at the very top of the constellation Scorpio. Because of that, he came to call the planet-"

A peal of thunder cut off Nathan's sentence. The entire house shook, and two seconds later a flash of lightning shone through the windows. "Doesn't thunder usually come…after lightning?" Coleman asked.

Stanton shrugged, "I think Monster Zero just likes messing with the natural order of things whenever he can."

"So…what was the name of the planet?" Madison asked.

Nathan waved this aside, "Doesn't matter. Once this creature arrived on Earth, he immediately started a rampage across the planet, destroying entire civilizations. And he didn't come alone either. Two other monsters whose names – again, roughly – translate to 'Sah-Loh-Mann' and 'Kah-Thoo-Loo' worked for him. Ah-Khay-Shus fought against the alien monsters to defend humanity, and at some point in the conflict Sah-Loh-Mann defected and joined Ah-Khay-Shus. But he was later killed by the monster that's under Gobekli Tepe in revenge.

"Eventually, Ah-Khay-Shus realized that the only chance the planet had was for him to use his full power on the monsters, even though he would kill himself in the process. He did this, and the result was not the expected death of the two evil monsters. Instead, they were put into a state of indefinite sleep, which people believed would never naturally end unless they were intentionally awoken. The monsters' leader was trapped two miles underneath Gobekli Tepe, while Kah-Thoo-Loo was reportedly imprisoned in a lost city called R'lyeh at the bottom of the South Pacific.

"But what is believed happened after this was that Ah-Khay-Shus' energy spread around the globe and…empowered, if you will, certain creatures, causing them to evolve into the Titans. So if we free this monster, we would have no way of stopping him. The one creature who could have done it sacrificed himself to make sure that this beast never threatened the world again."

"So…," Chen said a few seconds later, once she was sure Nathan was finished, "if that theory is correct, and all the Titans we know of descend from this Ah-Khay-Shus, then would all of them oppose this monster and be able to unite and stop it, if we freed it to stop Ghidorah?"

"You would think, but I honestly have no idea. It's not something I ever researched since I had no plans of freeing him in the first place. It's possible that, like you said, they'll oppose this creature. Or it might convince them that it is the rightful alpha, like Ghidorah's done, and they'll blindly follow it. Also, for that to have a chance at succeeding, all the Titans would have to survive."

"Survive what?" Mark asked.

"Here's how I believe this situation will play out. As soon as Ghidorah senses that this new foe has awakened, he will send several of the Titans loyal to him on a mission to destroy it, and call others back to D.C. to defend him. The ones he sends out will likely be going on a suicide mission, because if we're right, all the Titans would need to unite to stand a chance of victory. Once the monster defeats the first group of Titans, it'll undoubtedly seek out and kill Ghidorah and the others. Not to mention, Godzilla and Mothra are already dead, as well as countless other Titan fossils at the Boneyard."

"Well, Sekhmet attacked the Boneyard earlier today and resurrected all the dead Titans there, but you make a good point about Mothra and Godzilla," Stanton said.

"But can we use Sekhmet to resurrect the Titans who are killed afterwards?" Barnes asked.

"If Ghidorah sends the Titans to stop this monster, Sekhmet'll be one of them," Mark said. "And if Sekhmet's killed, there's no way to resurrect her."

"So we extract Sekhmet beforehand," Emma said. Everyone looked at her, and she continued, "We can get near Sekhmet, then use the ORCA to override Ghidorah's control on her."

"ORCA?" Nathan asked. "What's that?"

"A device that can send different frequencies to the Titans. If we're close enough to her and send out an alpha frequency to her, she'll obey us instead of Ghidorah. Once we do that, we'll get her to safety somewhere. Then after the battle between Ghidorah and the monster under Gobekli Tepe finishes, we can use Sekhmet to resurrect the Titans and unite them against this other monster. Maybe Sekhmet can even resurrect Godzilla and Mothra somehow."

"And what if that doesn't work?" Nathan asked. "Then this monster will kill them all over again and destroy the planet."

"Not like we'll be in a much worse situation than we are already."

"…I still don't want to free this thing unless there's absolutely no other option," Nathan said. "What about Kah-Thoo-Loo? We could try freeing him instead. Monarch still has submarines, right?"

"We do, but I'm not sure trying to awaken a Titan at the bottom of the ocean while in a submarine is the best idea. When it wakes up, it might accidentally – or intentionally – damage the sub, and then we're done for," Coleman said. "With him out and all the Titans, so far as we know, either dead, under Ghidorah's command, or not standing a chance against him in battle…I hate to say it, but I don't think there is another option."

Nathan took a deep breath and said, "So this is it? You're really doing this?"

"Yes," Mark said, "but we'll need to split into two groups once we arrive in the Middle East. One to wake up this monster, and the other to find Sekhmet, assuming she's still over there."

"We can figure out who will do what on the way there," Chen said.

"How will you get to the Middle East?" Nathan asked. "Going there would take you through an area where a lot of the Titans were held, and I'm assuming that's still more or less where they're roaming around."

"It is," Stanton confirmed.

"We won't be going aboveground," Mark said. "We're planning to take a submersible through the Hollow Earth tunnel in Lake Erie – wait, no! The submersibles we would have used, they were onboard the Argo!"

"What happened to it?" Nathan asked.

"It was struck by lightning and crashed in the woods near Lake Erie," Emma said. "But with the submersibles gone, we can't get to the tunnel."

"Are there any other tunnels we could still access?" Barnes asked. "Ones that have been used fairly recently by monsters?"

"There is one I can think of, but it's not known to have been used recently," Nathan said. "Is that important?"

"Well, we know the tunnel that your brother went into hadn't been used in a long time by any Titans, but a couple days ago we actually entered one that Godzilla sometimes uses, and we were fine," Stanton said. "So we're thinking that the tunnels the Titans use more often are safer."

"That wasn't the gravity alone that killed David, there's no way. I've always believed that was just some bullshit Monarch cooked up because even they don't know what the hell went wrong. But that wasn't ordinary gravity. It couldn't have been."

"Then what do you think did it?"

Nathan paused, then quickly shook his head, "I, I don't know. But about this other tunnel, how much fuel does the Osprey have?"

"Almost a full tank. We just used it to fly here from where the Argo crashed," Mark said.

"That should be enough. There's one down in Carlsbad Caverns, in an unexplored section at the bottom of the caves. Nobody from Monarch has ever gone down there, but the energy readings we've gotten from it are the same readings we've gotten from every other known Hollow Earth tunnel."

"Hang on…," Emma said. "We haven't figured out where we'll exit the Hollow Earth. Are there any tunnels that come out close to Gobekli Tepe?"

Nathan nodded, "One comes out on the banks of the Euphrates River about fifteen miles from there."

"We'll have to be careful. Some Ospreys that have been flying over the region going after the resurrected Titans they're all still there, roaming around the Middle East. Everyone except this guy Zilla, nobody's found him. But a bunch of other Titans were also converging on the area last we checked – Methuselah, Amhuluk, Mokele-Mbembe, and some others."

"Fifteen miles," Nathan said, getting up. "Well, once we arrive there, we'll have to move fast. Simple as that."

"Wait, are you coming with us?" Chen asked.

"Yes. If we're freeing this son of a bitch under Gobekli Tepe, there's some…closure I want too."

Everyone else exchanged confused looks. Then Coleman said, "Wait a minute. I have an idea. The Ospreys that have been flying over the Middle East. Once we get back to our Osprey, we should contact a group of them and have them waiting for us at the Euphrates. They could get us to Gobekli Tepe."

"Good thinking," Emma said. "And…then once we reach Gobekli Tepe, we'll split up. Some of us would take the ORCA and go with the Ospreys to find Sekhmet, while the rest of us stay at Gobekli Tepe."

"Well, as long as we've got all this figured out now, let's go," Nathan said, walking past the others to the front door. "There's no time to waste."

Nathan opened the door, and the others followed him out the door and up the street towards Fairmount Park. As they walked, Madison jogged up to Nathan, who was ahead of everyone else, and asked, "Just curious, Dr. Lind. You never said, what was your brother's name for the planet this…creature is from?"

Nathan turned to her and said, "He called it Zenith."

A/N: Yep, you read that right. Zenith. Now all of you probably know who this mystery monster is. I held off as long as I could. Oh well – you were gonna find out sooner or later anyway.

Please review the story, I'd love to hear what you think or any possible improvements you can think of! I hope to have Chapter 4 up sometime before the end of the year – I'm working on a couple other fics as well, and this one probably takes the most thought of all of them as to planning it out. Hope you enjoyed it!