Chapter Five
Connie Matsu stared numbly at the camera pointed at her, unable to say a word. She was trembling slightly and whenever she tried to say something, the word would freeze in her mouth. Her cameraman, despite having thought he was too jaded to be fazed by anything couldn't motivate her to say a word. Matsu just looked blankly into space with a microphone next to her face. Then at last, a word did slip from her mouth. "Cut."
That actually forced the cameraman out of his stupor. "What?"
"You heard me Ronnie. Cut! Tell the station that we're having technical problems or that the radiation is messing things up. I don't know. I just can't do this."
Ronnie the cameraman put his cell phone to his ear and nodded. He put it and the camera away. "Don't have to worry about that Connie. Ahmed just ordered a news blackout on all this. Nothing that happened after we left King Ghidorah's and Super Apophis's fight is going out until he says so. The assault he planned against King Ghidorah has been called off too."
Matsu then walked to the side of the ship and placed her arms on the guardrail. Shivering in the night air and silently sobbing, she lifted her head to look up towards what was had once been Egypt. Even though her helicopter had made it to the Freedom in time and the Freedom had made it far enough out to sea that the blast wave hadn't caused any serious damage, the Godzilla Watch Network Reporter could still see the destruction in the distance. And her heart still ached for those there.
Around Ground Zero, she saw a small mountain range created by thrown up boulders. Around them, fires burned in all directions, from horizon to horizon. They gave an eerie red glow in the darkness. Seeing the ugly smoke rise into the night sky made Matsu shake inside. Mary in heaven, she almost felt like a vulture in making a living by telling people of the misery wrought here.
Matsu's cameraman could only see her back as she faced away from him, over the guardrail. He then heard a sad, tired voice, coming from her. "Ronnie, you asked why I wanted you to cut. Well its because I'm a human being and I don't want to be some scavenger that profits off of the misery of others. We're United World News, not The National Enquirer, not Super Mystery Magazine. I wonder if this was how Steven Martin felt about reporting on Tokyo after it was destroyed."
Ronnie put his hand on Matsu's shoulder and squeezed. "He did feel like this and even worse because one of the people who died was his best friend, but he knew that he had a job to do and that he was the only one to do it. Connie, you've got to pull yourself together; the story has to be told and you're the one people will look to be to be told it. You're—"
She yanked her shoulder away from Ronnie's grip and cut him off. "Don't you start on that, that I'm the 'second Steven Martin.' I never asked for a title like that and I don't want it! I don't plan to go on and become a miserable old woman who can do nothing but mumble about monsters; I don't even want to mumble about monsters now. I said, 'This looks like a scene from some Denham disaster movie!' My God, the original ape-napper himself couldn't think up something like this after smoking a room full of crack!
"Ahmed was right to call a news blackout, y'know. He wants to prevent a panic. He knows that he can't keep this a secret; sooner or later, the people are going to find out. But to have everyone know like this! …It would smash what little hope all those poor people around the world have."
She sighed and paused for a moment before continuing. "I never thought that we'd ever see something this crazy. I remember when we were the only ones on the scene when Kong and Godzilla had their big tussle on Mt. Fuji way back. Heck, that was how we got our jobs! I thought that that was it, y'know, fight of the century and all that. The two mightiest monsters of all times, nothing could top it.
"But I look at this and… oh I don't know. It reminds you of the Cold War … Its like how back then you lived in the shadow of doomsday and couldn't do anything but wait for the bombs to start falling. People were waiting for a nuclear winter. With what happened to Apophis, does that mean that we're not going to see the sunshine for who knows how many years and that we're going to die in the dark and in the cold like the dinosaurs did? Did you see what happened! This is friggin doomsday!"
"This… this scares me Ronnie."
"You're not the only one Connie. I'm scared too."
She looked up from over the side of the ship and turned towards her longtime friend. "Are you sure about that? I'm not scared for my life. I'm scared for all of us. I've heard those kill-crazy cultists pray for Ghidorah to destroy the world. What if they are right? What if this really is the end and there is nothing we can do to stop it?"
Ronnie put a comforting hand over his shaking, sobbing friend's shoulder. "We can't give up Connie. Remember what you told the people back home. We can do this if we work together. It'll be tough, but we are going to stop that monster. We've got to.
"But if we can't stop that thing and we all die anyway, then we're gonna die fighting. So that space monster has killed off planets before, what's to make us think that we're special that we'll do any better? Maybe nothing, but I'll bet that those other planets didn't roll over and give King Ghidorah what he wanted, no siree. They fought to the very end without giving up and if they could so can we."
Connie sniffed and smiled a sad smile. She looked to Ronnie and wiped a tear of her cheek. "Buddy," she weakly said, "I think you've been watching too many movies."
He then looked towards the flaming horizon and sighed. "Yeah, well let's hope that the heroes really can win in this one."
The place that had once been the city of Alexandria was now desolation where everything was smashed flat. It looked like the end of the world and anyone there would have half expected the damned to stagger about dressed in rags or stuffing their mouths with ash. However, while they were not the lost souls of the inferno, the last pathetic surviving dregs of the King of Terror's mindless victims were indeed wandering the ruins in silence and despair. Already the Taint had reduced them to diseased skeletons. Everywhere the darkness of night was broken only by the sickly red light of countless funeral pyres set among the choking dust laden air. Indeed, it wasn't just the stench of burning flesh that made Godzilla's eyes water.
The King of the Monsters overlooked the devastation and was blasted to the depths of his soul and wondered if there was no end to Ghidorah's evil. By the Great Tyrannosaur, it was the Cretaceous Extinction all over again… What few whimpering survivors that remained were broken husks lost in the shadows; mothers were childless and children were orphaned, just as had happened when the space demon struck his pack all those eons ago. The broken lament and tragic cries echoed so horribly that only a heart of stone could not be broken.
Godzilla looked about and beheld a landscape of unending blackness broken by red fire where buildings were smashed flat and corpses littered the ground like confetti. He saw hospitals and schools made so much rubble and that the children that had gone to both were bloody paste smeared across the stones. He beheld destruction and suffering and death the likes of which nobody should ever know. If this wasn't what Hell looked like, then Godzilla was seeing the closest approximation that he ever would.
The King of the Monsters was not an evil creature. He took no pleasure in the suffering of others, not even when he was the cause of it. Even with all his battles with the humans and with all the cities destroyed, he had never sought to cause ruin on this scale. That he would punish human sinners for their evil, 'twas true. But he could not, would not, punish the guilty at the cost of the innocent. Miki taught him that when she made him spare Tokyo in 1985.
Godzilla felt a tear for the humans come from him as he looked on the devastation. That was when he realized what he was doing and shook himself from his stupor. He then banished such soft thoughts from his mind. All humans were evil; they had to be for they were his enemies. He couldn't let himself feel pity for the same wretched mammals that built their miserable rat holes atop the blood and bones of his people. He couldn't show mercy to the same insects that had stolen the world that so rightfully belonged to the saurian race!
The last vestiges of the saurian empire, the Lost World and Skull Island, had lived in peace for eons. Yet in both cases the humans destroyed these final refuges of the children of the Great Tyrannosaur in a matter of years after their discovery. If the humans could do such things, if they would leave a five billion-year-old Earth dying in a mere two centuries, then they deserved whatever fate awaited them! Humans were evil and they all deserved to die.
…Didn't they?
"Excuse me," said the passing pedestrian.
"Y-yes… of course," replied Kyle Martin. It was very common to accidentally bump into someone in a crowded city. What had happened to the kaijuologist was nothing special. What was extraordinary was who had bumped into him. It was of all people, a yeti. A snowman!
He was not the only one in shock. Miki nervously looked back and forth at all the yeti, or watchika as they called themselves. In searching for way to help Tenzin Yetrigar become a giant to fight King Ghidorah, she and Kyle had followed him into this mountain and had seen what there was to see. She had seen a thriving underground city and a rain forest more fitting for Africa. Salno had told Kyle and herself that although the Simeons had long ago adapted to snow and mountains in becoming the Watchika, they had never forgotten the verdant jungles of their home world. Both the jungle—which was made up of home world plants—and the city were illuminated by an aurora borealis that gave off both light and heat. Because of it, they were now walking without their warm clothes.
She had always prided herself on being open-minded and on welcoming the new or different. That, along with her powers, had set her apart from the other people on Odo Island. Perhaps because she was different, Miki had sought to be tolerant of differences. Yet this! A whole civilization of non-humans, of ape-men! It was almost too much for her to take in. The previous lost civilizations that the human race had encountered had at least been human or human like.
"And what does being a Homo Sapiens have to do with it?" asked the telepathic Belvera. She looked from her seat on Fairy. "A person is a person, right? Besides, we're all in this fight together. If the US and the USSR could play nice to fight the Nazis and later the Mysterians, why can't humans and non-humans work together now?"
Miki looked around and saw that all around her. She was on a twenty-foot wide stone bridge overlooking a steaming hot subterranean jungle hundreds of feet below. She could feel the heat and the vapor rising up and heard the cries of monkeys. A city and a jungle both inside the Himalayan mountain range, the sheer thought still staggered her. On the stone pathway, several yetis were passing them, yetis! Though they were less and less as they began to reach the end of the bridge.
Miki had known what to expect; Yetrigar had told her. But it was still amazing. Not only were the fabled "abominable snowmen" real, but they had built Shangri-La and maintained a thriving ecosystem inside a mountainside. She shook her head. "No Belvera, you're right. A person is a person, whether he or she is a human or not. It's just a bit much to take this in all at once."
Belvera mischievously smirked as she heard that. "When Godzilla first came, Yamani compared it to prints of snowmen found in these mountains. This is weird, but like they say, it's not like Godzilla's normal."
Miki smiled. "Got me there." However, as she and her friends crossed the bridge and entered the opening in the cliff side where it led, she grew increasingly pensive. As she and her friends re-entered the stone heart of the mountain and descended ever downwards, she had to ask. "Moll, you said that Salno and Yetrigar had gone ahead to the chamber. Is Professor Hayashida there?"
Moll let her mind race forward to said chamber to see what was inside there. Let's see, there was Salno and Yetrigar as she expected. They were in a large stone chamber that was illuminated by a steaming glowing lake in the center. The lake was huge and could easily hold a kaiju. Surrounding the lake, Moll could see several watchikas moving electronic equipment and mystical talismans into proper position. She saw watchika priests and among them she saw Hayashida. "Yes Miki, the Professor is there."
"We'll be there soon right? From what I heard, the two of you will be needed for the transformation to work."
Belvera turned back to face Miki from the slow moving Fairy. "Don't worry kid. We're on the last leg of the journey; it won't be long now. Me and sis' are going to get there on time."
They crew of four—Miki, Kyle, Moll, and Belvera—kept their pace down into the rocky caverns. Ever deeper they went, ever farther. As they went, the stair grew increasingly broader and more watchikas came up and down on them. As this happened, it began to become hotter; in fact, Kyle began perspire.
"Tenzin said that the city was powered by geothermal energy," said Kyle. "It's the heat of it that we're feeling, right?"
"Observant little man," Belvera sighed. Though she no longer hated humans, she still found a number of them to be exasperating. Why did they always have to state the obvious? "Yes Kyle, it is heat from the geothermal power sources you feel. That also means that we have reached our destination."
"We have?" asked Kyle.
"Yes we have," answered Moll. "If you look down below you'll see the end of the our path and the light that ends it."
And so it was. A hundred feet away from them, the stone stairs finally did end. The two Elias sisters weren't bothered; they had Fairy to ride. But as for Kyle and Miki who had had to walk, this was a relief. On reaching the end of the stairs, the quartet came across a mammoth archway or perfectly carved stone. It looked ancient. Salno had told them that on offering the then Simeons asylum in Selginia thousands of years ago, that the royal family had carved the arch for them.
It was clearly a holy place and the four proceeded in hushed silence past the arch. It was here that the champions of the Watchika were born and, hopefully, there would be born a new champion today. Past the arch, it was not as Moll had seen in her astral projection. It was far greater.
The dome of the rock was over a three hundred feet high; at the top clouds were seen forming. Protruding from the clouds was a forest of stalactites just as the rough and rocky floor was ringed by stalagmites. The length of the cavern was such that the end of it could not be seen through the vapors that rose from burning incense. At the center was a huge lake of water as deep as it was wide; its red tinted water gave off a heady smell as it bubbled and churned. It was seemingly a lake of blood and that could easily be imagined with the chants of the priests that surrounded it. Although a row of computers and scientific devices were placed at an unobtrusive place, this was primarily a religious rite. Yes, for millennia had the Watchika made champions here in accordance to their faith and there would be born a champion there that day.
Pain. That was all he felt, a world of absolute and unending pain. The creature desperately moved through the pain and through the rubble that he was buried in. He needed air and he needed to think. He groggily shifted about and braced himself through the scrapes and the bruises in order to reach the surface from underneath the ground he was buried.
How long did he dig? A day? A week? A month? He did not know. What he did know was that when he finally came to the surface, he collapsed in exhaustion from his trial and his awakening. His breathing was labored but, wary of what might be awaiting him, he craned his mammoth head upwards. Thus, silhouetted by red fires against the night surrounded by smoke, did the winged serpent see the suffering around him. His name was Quetzalcoatl and he was one of the four sons of Manda. As such, he was the brother of Apophis and had been in his thrall for a long, long time.
It had begun millennia ago when Apophis rebelled against their father. Though the eldest and thus destined to one day be ruler, Apophis seemed filled with a lust for power. His worshippers deserted him, his priests abandoned him, and his family turned on him. Apophis was exiled and youngest brother's chief priest volunteered him as "probation officer."
While they were not the only ones, good Shen Long and wicked Jormungand left Mu in time as well, Apophis and Quetzalcoatl were the chief ones. Quetzalcoatl saw his wicked brother sentenced to live out the rest of his life among the barren desert wastes of northern Africa. The winged serpent, on the other hand, made a home for himself in the lush jungles of what humans now call Mexico. There, he encountered a sorry lot of humans who, on seeing him—a colossal monster of seemingly magical power—, came to worship him. This posed no psychological difficulty for the youngest son of Manda. He had been worshipped in his native Mu and thus had no problem accepting the prayers of these humans.
However, he knew that he had a responsibility to the humans and thus gave them a civilization; he raised them up from the barbaric existence that they had known. He spoke to them by means of human avatars. By them he taught the people that would one day be called the Aztecs math, science, farming, astronomy, and other things. He refused human sacrifice and would accept only flowers and song as tribute for he was a gentle beast that taught the humans mercy. He made not war but peace in his friendship with the ancestors of the Incas and their guardian, Tuol. Quetzalcoatl loved his people and would die to protect them.
However, such happy times were not to last for the day came that Quetzalcoatl learned that his brother was not in solitude as he had hoped. Instead, Apophis had built an empire on the backs, and minds, of human slaves. That could not be allowed to continue and thus the youngest son of Manda confronted the eldest in a battle of good vs. evil. Quetzalcoatl allied himself with the monsters and humans who resisted Apophis's tyranny and, at the cost of his freedom, defeated his vile brother.
That was the last thing the winged serpent remembered before darkness overcame him, that Apophis fell first. What had happened since then, Quetzalcoatl did not know. How much time had passed? One year? Ten? Fifty? A hundred? He overlooked the land and let him mind feel its pain. He could feel the pain of the rocks, fire, wind, and water. He felt it and knew fear.
Beyond fear, beyond darkness, beyond evil, it had come. The devil's hammer had come to smite all righteousness and make the world a living nightmare. Quetzalcoatl could sense it; the enemy of his family who had slain his great grandfather's children, who had killed his grandmother, who had menaced his father… and who had murdered his brother. The death of Apophis was so horrible that it was writ in the very soil itself and by his telepathy, Quetazalcoatl saw it. The Great Dragon knew that he and had his brother had fought time and again, but by the emperor of all draconians, Quetzalcoatl never wanted Apophis to die like that.
The son of Manda looked about. The ruins he had excavated himself from were those of Alexandria. Though he knew it not, that was where his sleeping form had been taken when Mubarak found Apophis. All Quetzalcoatl knew was that King Ghidorah had come and that, no matter how impossible, no matter what the cost, the space demon had to be stopped. Yet as the winged serpent stretched his senses, he could feel energy left by a tremendous monster, a King of Monsters. Quetzalcoatl realized that this stranger was also a son of the Great Dragon, or the Great Tyrannosaur as the stranger would call the Great One for this King of Monsters was of the saurian race, not the draconian. The son of Manda also sensed that the saurian had passed by the city mere moments ago and had headed south.
South was where King Ghidorah's stench led and it was south that Quetzalcoatl would go. Perhaps the son of Manda could ally with this King of Monsters and strike alongside him at the dreaded Bane of Life. True, it had taken seven monsters to defeat the demon before, but the battle would have to be fought, regardless of personal cost. With that Quetzalcoatl shook his feathered serpent head, twisted his coils, and let his wings carry him into the air towards his enemy, towards King Ghidorah.