And now, to finally show what our "bat-things" are. Enjoy the chapter.

Godzilla is © Toho. The Gryphon is © Toho/TriStar. The idea for the Husks is © TriStar. The name of the Husks is © Me.

THE HUSK

USMCF HQ

"You'd better help a damn good explanation for this, Carlhan," Plaqueze snarled, "This is confidential information that you told that girlfriend of yours!"

"I didn't tell her…" Mike started, "Well I did, but… it was a private conversation."

"With a reporter," Jill seethed. "I don't believe this… do you have any idea how lucky you are that I don't have the time to have you booted out of here?"

The phone bleeped on Jill's desk, and the receiver was instantly pulled up to Jill's ear.

"What?" She snapped, listening angrily to the other voice, "What?"

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Jill, Plaqueze, Jack and Mike all entered the front area of the USMCF building, where several security guards were struggling to hold somebody back. Jill's eyes widened the second she saw who it was.

It was the same person. Without a doubt. The same young spiky-haired Japanese man.

"I have to talk to her," The man shouted, "It's got to be stopped! You blind fools! It's going to kill us all!"

"What in the name of all things sacred is going on here?" Plaqueze demanded.

"This crazy bastard just won't get out of here," One of the guards informed him, "Won't even say who he's looking for."

The man suddenly twisted his arm, shifting his weight and, executing a perfect Judo throw, slammed one of the guards into the floor. Immediately, two more grabbed and restrained his arms behind him.

"Mom?" Tina called as she ran in, "What's going on?"

"You!" The man shouted, glaring at Jill and Tina, "Listen to me! It has to be stopped now! Destroy it now, or you'll doom us all!"

"That's it, lock this psycho up," Plaqueze ordered.

Immediately, the guards slapped a pair of handcuffs onto the man's wrists.

"How did this lunatic get in here?" Jill demanded of the remaining guards, storming over to them.

"Tina," Jack greeted his old friend, "Been looking all over for you."

"Missed my that much?" Tina winked jokingly.

"If only. Come on, you need to see this…"

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New York Museum of Natural History

"And why are we here?" Tina asked as she and Mike walked into the museum.

"Because I ran a little image cross-check with our Batman reject, and we're here because I found something. I couldn't find a picture of the whole thing, and thus, we're here."

They rounded a corner, approaching a glass display case.

"Look familiar?" Jack pointed to the tablet inside.

It was carved on a piece of what looked to be old, rusted metal, covered in unusual runes and markings. In one corner was what looked like a long, jagged chunk of rock, and in another was a vaguely humanoid figure in between a pair of large bat-wings.

"That's it," Tina realised, "That's what I dreamed about. That and…" She pointed to the carving of the rock, "That."

"Now that's more than a little spooky," Jack admitted as he removed a small camera from his pocket, turned off the 'flash' function and took a quick snapshot. "Anyway, I've got a programme that should be able to help translate this. Although there is one more thing you need to know about this thing."

"What's that?"

"That it's nearly five thousand years old."

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USMCF HQ

"I don't believe this," Mike groaned as he approached the lab, Plaqueze beside him.

"Be glad you're under Major Lampard's command," Plaqueze reprimanded him, "I'd have half a mind to lock you and your girlfriend up for…"

"I get it," Mike groaned as he opened the door to the main area of the lab. "Look, I need to check the…"

As soon as Mike opened the door to the next part of the lab, however, he was suddenly thrown back as something struck Plaqueze round the chest hard and fast.

The thing that burst out was 7 feet tall, a wingspan fully twice the length of its body extending to its fullest as it reared up on thin legs ending in sets of talons, a pair of well-built arms reaching out to the sides of its thin, almost skeletal form as a short, snarling face, a mouth wide-open to display three rows of serrated teeth between two bony frills, gave a deafening, monstrous screech. The entire creature was covered in hard, black, sharp scales with spikes all over its body, and a long tail curled up behind it, ending in a pair of curved blades even as it hunched back, ready to strike.

"Jesus Christ," Mike breathed as the creature leaned over him, pulling its head back as its teeth literally turned to point forwards in its mouth.

Before it could strike, something smashed against the side of the creature's head, knocking it sideways to the floor as the offending object smashed to pieces of plastic and circuitry.

Plaqueze stood still, breathing heavily, his heart pounding as he dropped the remains of the computer monitor to the floor.

"What… the… hell… was… that?" Plaqueze breathed slowly.

Mike glanced into his laboratory, seeing the trashed room and the destroyed Petri dish.

"It's the specimen," He realised, "The one we found at the meteor site."

"A little blob of gloop grew into that?" Plaqueze replied sceptically.

"Unbelievably, yes." Mike answered. "Don't as me how."

"Well is it dead?"

The creature's dark-red eyes flashed open, the thing giving another screech as it rose to its feet with a flap of its wings.

"No," Mike shook his head as he slammed his palm onto the 'security' button.

Plaqueze instantly levelled his handgun at the monstrosity, squeezing the trigger and firing three rapid shots into the creature. Each shot hit its mark, the stomach, chest and shoulder of the creature forced back by the impacts as pools and trickles of silvery liquid began to ooze out of the wounds, the monster howling in pain before it lashed out with one clawed hand, grabbing Plaqueze's forearm, raising him above the ground as it gave another screech, its jaws parting in readiness to strike…

Before something else slammed into its back, hard and fast and painful. Dropping Plaqueze, it turned as Mike levelled the fire extinguisher again.

Finally, the door to the lab flew open, three armed soldiers moving in as they raised their firearms. The creature turned, screeched and leapt towards them.

It was met with a hail of hard, fast bullets, smashing through its thick skin as the silver ooze sprayed and poured out of it.

Through the hail of bullets, it leapt onto one of the soldiers, pulling him to the ground in the midst of a savage shriek, before digging its fangs into his chest.

The soldier screamed in pain as a disgusting slurping noise started from the creature's mouth. Even as he screamed, the soldier's veins started to blue, then loose all colour as the pink drained from his skin. He finally became silent as his skin wrinkled and withered, finally being dropped to the floor, utterly drained.

The creature, with blood-stained fangs and spread wings, hunched back, then launched forward as the gunfire started again.

By the time it reached the soldiers, it fell to the floor, a pool of the ooze spreading out beneath it.

This time, it did not rise.

"Carlhan…" Plaqueze said quietly, "You'd better find out what the hell that thing is!"

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"Any luck?" Tina asked as she handed Jack a can of soda.

"Getting there," Jack nodded, looking up from the computer, "This thing's like nothing I've ever seen; there are elements of Egyptian, Aztec, every ancient language I've ever heard of and some that I haven't."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that this is older than any of those civilisations. Wherever this is from, it's from the very dawn of civilisation."

"So, how'd you end up working here?" Tina asked, "No offence, but you don't really act like a computer geek."

"None taken. I'm basically here because I hacked into their system when I was 12. Could've started World War Three."

"And that's supposed to be funny?"

"Guess you had to be there. So what about you? You ever think of doing something like this?"

"Not really," Tina admitted, a hint of sadness in her voice, "My mom does this job, and it's all she ever thinks about…"

The computer suddenly started beeping, attracting their attention.

"Finally," Jack cheered as he started punching keys, "I couldn't get all of it, but by the looks of it, this thing describes some sort of life cycle."

"OK, shoot."

"Right- now this is gonna sound crazy, so remember that I'm just reading what's in front of me," Jack warned, "This thing's starts out as this chunk of rock, which apparently isn't a rock, but its 'travelling hide'. When it lands, it sort of 'births' these flying thing, this calls them 'heralds'. The heralds apparently drink the blood to birth their father."

"Well that makes no sense at all," Tina interrupted.

"I know, but that's what it says. And here's the bad part: Once the destroyer is reborn, it will 'slaughter all things for its sustenance, 'till naught remains on the planet but death, then it becomes the next hide and will seek its next meal'."

"So it eats everything?"

"That's what it says. Must have one hell of an appetite, I'd hate to use the bathroom after this thing."

"Can we be serious here for a second?"

"Yeah. Absolutely." Jack nodded, "Near as I can figure, this thing travels from planet to planet, repeating this process wherever it goes."

"And now it's here?"

"Yeah. And here's the other thing. Mike said that the meteorite in Kansas was organic."

"Like it says," Tina realised. "You don't think…"

"Normally I wouldn't, but I always knew there were aliens out there. Knew it. I can't tell you how many times your Mom's had to stop me hacking into Area 51. But anyway, it turns out there are other samples of similar stuff to that, and the interesting thing is how old they are."

"OK… so how old are they?"

"65 million years." Jack answered hesitantly. "The extinction of the dinosaurs."

"So this thing, if you translated that thing right, came here before and ate the dinosaurs."

"Yup… guess now it's here for desert."

"So what now?"

"Now, I need to tell your Mom and the Doc about this, and you might want to pay a visit to our guest."

"The crazy guy?"

"Well, that's the thing: I'm not sure he's so crazy."

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"This is insane," Mike informed Jack as he circled the corpse of the creature, "I've looked inside this thing, done blood tests… or ooze tests… and this thing's made up entirely of this ooze. There are no organs, no nervous system, no brain… it's impossible for this thing to even be alive. It's not an animal!"

"So what are these?" Jack motioned to what looked like eight silver organs laid out on the desk.

"Sacks," Mike answered, "They're just empty sacks. Here, take a look at this…"

Wearing a pair of white rubber gloves, he pulled open the wound on the creature's chest, showing a cleanly severed tube nestled among the ooze.

"This connects straight to its teeth," Mike explained. "It looks like it just sucks blood and stores it in these sacks."

"To digest it?" Jack guessed, "Like eight stomachs?"

"That's what I thought at first, but this ooze doesn't seem to do anything, it has no way of breaking it down. It's as if they're designed to just gather blood."

"Like drone ants."

"Sort of. But like I said, it's empty. Dead. Mindless. It's just an empty husk waiting to be filled."

"Husks," Jack repeated, "That's a cool name for them. We should call them that."

"This is serious, Jack."

"Yeah, I know… so here's the million dollar question, slick: If these things are gathering up blood, who are they gathering it for?"

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USMCF HQ Holding Area

The Japanese man looked up as, on the other side of the bullet-proof glass, Tina sat down in the chair and looked across at him.

"So…" She started uncertainly, glancing across at the armed guard, "Uh, I'm Tina. Tina Lampard. So… who exactly are you, and why do you want to talk to my Mom?"

"My name is Tomoyuki," The man answered, "And I am not here to find your mother."

"Then… what are you doing here? Because there's kind of a crisis going on…"

"Godzilla is not the enemy," Tomoyuki interrupted, "The enemy is already here. And I came here, Tina… to find you."

Again, a long chapter there. So now we know what the bat-things are, right? There'll be some more explanations in the next chapter, which should answer most of your questions (hopefully).

All Reviews Welcome!