Chapter Sixteen
Actually Miki had been lying to some degree in telling Kyle that she was at 110% back at the courtroom and Kyle would scold her for it. That she was alive at all was a testament to Godzilla's healing powers which she had been temporarily given but it would be wrong to believe that even his abilities could leave someone who had been on life support at full strength in a matter of hours. Even so, over the course of several weeks as she made her way to full recovery, Miki was poked and prodded by those doctors who had heard of Regenerator G-1 and wished to see the results on a human test subject; they were not disappointed. Although she had to rest for considerable time and spent several days in a hospital bed, she was healing faster than the doctors had ever imagined a human test subject could.
It was in this state that Miki used her expanding psychic powers to find the one who had done this to her. As always she sought a time when she would be alone and could concentrate her abilities; the dead of night past hospital closing hours was best. It was at this time in a dream that was not a dream that Miki left her body behind in order to find a monster just as she had done when she was a child some fifteen years ago. Now just as then, she found him.
Astrally projecting herself, she found Godzilla, utterly alone at the, dark murky bottom of the Illinois half of Lake Michigan. (If Steven Martin in Chicago only knew…) When he finally caught sight of her, he registered some mild surprise at the shimmering form of Miki that illuminated the lightless silt filled waters around his face. It was a very mild surprise, however, because he had seen that there were more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of in a philosophy. What was she doing here, with him of all creatures?
Miki's glimmering astral form moved through the water effortlessly and caressed a hand over his huge eye. She then spoke, either by means of sound or thought, and the monster heard her. "I wanted to see how a friend was doing. Are you feeling well Godzilla?"
At that, the King of the Monster buried his head deeper into the lake bottom silt and created a cloud of silt that obscured everything. He had done that because he didn't want her to see him. For what had happened in the battle against Red Ronin, the shame he felt was immeasurable and the remorse was incalculable and so he hid himself. (Rather futile considering that she saw him by power of the mind.) How could she ask what she was feeling after what he had almost done to her?
"…Don't be so hard on yourself Godzilla; it's alright."
Alright? Alright? He had almost killed her and she was willing to just say that it was alright?
"Yes I am," said Miki as she let her thoughts wash over the monster and soothe his warring spirit. "I know that you didn't mean to hurt me and I know just how sorry you are."
How could she?
Miki smiled. "That's because in order to save me, 'evil' Kyle mingled your blood with mine so that your power to heal could be mine for one day. In addition to saving my life, it allows me to feel your pain and power as I could not before so I do in fact know how you feel."
She could see into his very soul, now could she? If so he could only wonder how she must cringe at what she saw.
Miki sighed; if anything she was the one who felt some measure of guilt for how the Project T1 transmitter was still on Godzilla's neck. Dear God in heaven, that day felt like it was centuries ago. "No Godzilla, I don't cringe. These are the Monster Wars and in war these things happen. I'm not saying that they're being accidents makes them any less wrong, or painful for those who lose a loved one, but its wrong to hate the soldier whose faulty aim strikes a bad target or the officer that gives a bad order."
She then let the words sink in. "It's wrong to hate."
"I don't hate you Godzilla just as I don't hate Kyle. When the other humans sought to punish him, I stood at his defense that he might be shown mercy and be given one more chance. He was wrong to let hate control him and drive him to do the things he did against you and the things he almost did to those poor people you managed to save. Like you, he acknowledges that he was wrong and, like you, deserves the chance to make up for it.
The King of the Monsters felt the hope in her voice at what she said next. "In saving those lives I think you might have already taken the first steps."
Perhaps he did save those lives but those lives wouldn't have been in danger if it hadn't been for the humans that had left them there in order to be destroyed. For some time he had been wondering if he had been wrong to hate the humans but after he saw that they were so debased as to leave their wounded behind to die all his old hatred was rekindled. They left their own behind just as he had been and by the very humans he almost died to protect at that. By the Great Tyrannosaur, how could he have been so deluded!
The dinosaurs whom he had been protected those millions of years ago had never committed such crimes. They had refrained from such things by the command of he who was father to all of them. By the Great One's law a dinosaur could only kill to eat or to keep from being eaten. All the scions of the saurian empire had kept that law and had prospered by it.
And now, thought Godzilla, because of his own inability to stop King Ghidorah 65,000,000 years ago, the world of the dinosaurs was dead and in its place was a world usurped by the same wretched mammals that had scurried at the dinosaurs' feet for more than a million centuries. These rodent spawns were freaks that would betray those who would die to protect them. Godzilla know realized that he indeed hated the humans, perhaps he always would, and that nothing could change that.
Miki felt her jaw drop as she heard this. "How can you say that Godzilla? Didn't you hear what I just said? It's wrong to hate. It's wrong to hate everyone for what a few have done just as its wrong to hate yourself the way you're doing right now. Gigantis and Blood Fang and Pretty Kill all loved you; they wouldn't want you to torture yourself like this… just as they wouldn't want you to become what you hate the most. You gave your all that day to save everyone and there's nothing more you could have done."
Godzilla all but rolled his eyes at that. Humans seemed determined to do "everything they could" in walking the path of madness. On seeing Miki's thoughts ever since he had first met her, his loathing for the mammals had only grown. Through her, he had seen their wars and genocides and holocausts. He had seen enough to know that the human race was arrogant and corrupt. Its final destruction was merely to be… postponed while he battled with King Ghidorah.
Miki felt her heart break as she psychically heard this. She had seen his thoughts and feelings over the course of the Monster Wars and had hoped that perhaps her long awaited dream might finally come true, that she might change him for the better. The Great Tyrannosaur had told her that hers would be the one to "wash his sins away," that she would change him. However, in this brief meeting, that hope was dashed. Though she had known him for just a few decades (considering that Godzilla had seen whole continents cross the globe, decades were indeed a short time), she knew that there was no reasoning with Godzilla when he put himself in such a mood.
This was especially sad because it was no longer misguided anger or despair that drove him on but rather his own self-loathing. Ever since King Ghidorah had returned, two hatreds had roiled in Godzilla's heart: hatred for the skyllan for what he did, killing his family, and hatred for himself in what he had failed to do, protecting his family. That was enough to drive any sentient being to the brink of madness yet now added to that cauldron was another thing, self-hatred for what he had done to Miki.
In a strange and confusing world, she was the only one that loved him… and he had almost killed her. What if you were to have left your father in the hospital, or your best friend in a coma? The pain would be unbearable and the only way for Godzilla to cope with his was to hide from his own mistakes, to not accept responsibility. With that and to loose his rage on all he saw and all that lived.
He had sworn the destruction of the human race and Miki had been there to hear it. Before now, before the Monster Wars, she had heard him make that vow but balancing it was the fact that there was one drop of goodness in him, that he would never hurt her and that he would not make war if she would wish it. That was gone now, not because he no longer cared for Miki; rather it was because he cared for Miki that that was so. The shame he felt for almost killing her was great and he was unable to face it; because of that he tried to bury it in false hate.
Miki knew all this along with how she knew that there was nothing more she could do. With that, she left that place and returned to her body. That night's excursion was quite exhausting and she would have to sleep for several days to recover her strength. Yet as she did so, the nurses saw that she suffered a restless sleep.
In a cold frozen place a little boy named Kenny woke up and began vomiting blood. Frightened, he began crying and whimpering. After wiping the vomit from his face and trying to dust off his short shorts, he looked up from his hands and knees to look about but he didn't recognize anything. The last thing he remembered was waiting in the apartment for his uncle and now he was gone… but where to! He didn't know and all Kenny could see were strange shapes in a thick white fog, all he could smell was a vile stink, and all he could feel were icky slimy things at the bottom of the fog. Confused, Kenny timidly touched whatever it was on the ground.
He picked it up and brought it before his face and saw that it was a human skull. At that, he screamed and fell back… much to the notice of two red eyes. Kenny did not see them but, terrified, he cried twice as loudly as before. Though he was a weak and cowardly child, he couldn't be expected to behave in any other way, not while there was a bloody skull from which bloody meat still hung on his lap. After crying for a good long while, Kenny got up, looked about and began walking on wobbly legs. He cried out in his high pitched whining voice but nobody answered.
Nobody answered except for a thing capable of giving a most hideous hiss.
Kenny whipped around on hearing that and was quickly paralyzed in fear. Afraid and confused, the boy didn't know what to do. He looked about and saw something in the shadows, something with six spindly legs and an ugly bulbous body. On seeing this thing, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him but that quickly proved to not be fast enough. The thing was soon joined by other things and they all moved through the mist and the shadows towards the tiny boy. As for the boy, he soon slipped and fell on the bloody bones that littered the ground, helpless prey for hungry hunters.
At that, the things, came out of the mist; they were a giant cockroach, a giant, beetle, and a giant mantis, all the size of elephants or bigger. Their mandibles clacked and drooled at the prospect of their first meal that the new master had promised and this sent the boy screaming. Kenny couldn't have known that he would be the first of thousands of children that would die like this, just as he didn't know that he was in some insane dome created by the evil King Ghidorah. He knew none of this, all he knew was that he felt a burning, lancing pain beyond all reckoning before eternal darkness.
As a storefront window shattered when a baseball bat struck it, the looter who wielded it dove in to pull out the television set inside. He did so greedily saying, "Come to papa!"
A distant siren suddenly blared. On hearing it, his partner in crime yelled from the car parked in a dark trash-strewn alley next to the store. "Forget bragging rights Dean, just put it in the car and let's get out of here."
Putting the television in the grimy trunk of the car, the man hurriedly looked at his friend in the driver's seat and smiled. "Relax Roland, ain't nothing gonna go wrong."
Roland nervously began scratching the rash that had spread across the entire face and anxiously gripped the steering wheel. "Yeah, well just get in before the cops or somebody come!"
With that, Dean ran to the door and opened it. As the two sped away, he cursed underneath his breath for the loss of his son, for the fact that he was going to die of whatever it was he and everyone else was sick with, and for the fact that it was seemingly the apocalypse. "Who cares. With King Ghidorah, it's the end of the world anyway."
Though a mere looter, Dean's sentiment was echoed by many a person of that tiny town because it proved to be a microcosm of the national situation in the widespread rioting and mass breakdown of law & order. It had been that way in the US ever since the arrival of King Ghidorah and had only grown worse after his battle with the Swarm. King Ghidorah had sent the Swarm on a psychotic rampage of total destruction and they spread death and despair and disease everywhere they went. Indeed, seeming as if the Bubonic Plague had returned, if the Taint with which King Ghidorah had poisoned the land with before was bad then the Taint he had the Swarm spread now was much worse.
Everywhere in Dean and Roland's madness and violence was the order of the day. Everywhere in the town, street gangs and ordinary people alike were stealing, setting fires, turning cars over, and worse. The National Guard had already been deployed in an attempt to quell the violence with orders of shoot to kill but it all seemed far beyond their ability to stop. Yet even with all that was happening, it would be wrong to judge these people too harshly, they were frightened and confused. And in addition to fear and confusion, the people were beginning to suffer from starvation and were already dying by the thousands every day due to King Ghidorah's disease like Taint that was spreading across the country.
The results of this fear confusion were seen quite well in one corner grocery store.
In that store chaos ruled. Sick and panicked shoppers there were frantically throwing everything they could into their carts; water bottles, meat, vegetables, canned foods, everything. People were screaming, that's my food, give me that medicine, or shut up or I'll kill you. At the checkout stand, the store owner grimly accepted the hundreds of dollars being thrown at him as his customers all but ran away with their hastily bought merchandise. He had told himself that he should be happy that he was making so much money—after all, raising the price four or six times as high was just a matter of supply and demand—but he was beginning to ask himself, what's money worth if its doomsday?
That was when news reports came through the radio that King Ghidorah had been sighted approaching the city. At that the people in the store screamed and stampeded out; in the overcrowded building, not a few people were crushed to death. Some just took their supplies and began running to wherever they could while others were thinking of people beside themselves. These others were seen to be parents because when they left their foodstuffs, they frantically ran screaming for their children. They would never see their children again.
In houses, in apartments, everywhere they slept that night, the pajama clad children of that city tossed and turned in the grip of nightmares. They woke up screaming, leapt out of their beds, and ran to the windows of their rooms where they saw for themselves that though they were awake, the nightmare hadn't ended. They saw this because a boogeyman was coming to get them. The shadow flew towards them but seemingly did not attack; instead it just passed by and caused no harm. Yet when their parents came and threw open the doors to their rooms they saw that their children were nowhere to be found. Instead, rooms were empty, windows were open, and a sad wind blew so many papers about.
This was what Belvera saw as she rode astride Garu-Garu. She rode through a window into a baby's nursery to see a grieving woman huddled in a corner, trembling and crying as she held a blanket; she was the mother no doubt. The eldest Elias had Garu-Garu land on the crib's rail at which she leapt off into a mass of sheets and pillows. Although she still projected a grim and cynical image of herself, Belevra's heart couldn't help but break on seeing the empty cradle. She felt a tear well up from her eye on seeing the crying woman and on touching the teddy bear larger than herself.
Whilst her sisters were helping Earth's monster allies—Mothra, Battra, Quetzalcoatl, Tuol, Yetrigar, Uchihikrah and Mechanstein—prepare for another round in the Monster Wars, Belvera had volunteered to serve as advance scout in the war effort. It had taken a personal turn when the domes had appeared for the domes signaled the death of innocence. The three-headed monster was a cruel beast that every so often robbed a world of its most precious treasure: its children. Though Salno had warned G-Force that this might happen, it hurt just as much now that he was doing it here on Earth. As children were born so rarely to the Elias race, it had been especially hard for the three sisters and it made hatred burn that much more fiercely in Belevra now.
This tragic scene was repeated over and over across towns and cities and by the end of the Monster Wars, it would be repeated across the globe. The only thing to compare was the rash of spontaneous human evaporations back in the 1892 but this time it was far worse. This time, children were stolen away in the dead of night and their families wept on learning it the next morning.
The men and women of G-Force didn't say why this was happening or where the children were being taken. They lied because they knew; they knew that the children were being teleported to the domes spread out across the Midwest to serve as food for King Ghidorah's armies. The men and women knew this or thought they knew this but they were wrong. As with Belvera, all those that had lost a child knew the real truth.
King Ghidorah had taken the children to make their parents grieve.