Nick sighed and laid his hand on the cool scales of his foster son, a frown plastered upon his face. Wires and industrial tubes ran out and all over the great mutation, the main sound in the building the hum of the machines monitoring and keeping the giant lizard alive. He looked at the line rising and falling with beeps, distress running through the human as he saw how weak and unsteady the heartbeat still was. Godzilla was still comatose, and Siseir and Gojira still missing. Nick checked the pressures on the machine that was forcing air in and out of Godzilla's lungs.
A soft whine reached his ears and he looked from the pressure gauges to the four smallest of his now full-grown but still immature grandchildren.
When will father wake up? The smallest female asked with a nudge to her father's face.
Nick walked over to the huddle of scaled bodies, raising his hand to the female he privately considered his favorite granddaughter. She was the smallest of the 'runts as they were called by Randy. Her eyes were the most stunning of her siblings in his mind, a lovely opal color that reflected everything around her.
Nick stroked along her jaw, "We don't know when your father will wake. It has been two months…" For her sake he smiled a false smile of encouragement as she made the hissing-purring sound that had earned her name: Saral.
Two months… Two months since the big battle that had all but destroyed HEATs island and the team- mutations and all- with it. The Service, commanded by Philippe had barely gotten the humans and young mutations out in time to save their lives. Siseir and Gojira had vanished in the blast that followed presumed dead and destroyed by all but HEAT and their children. Godzilla had been found mostly dead two days later and transported to the new base camp.
Everyone had been so afraid they would lose him immediately, but Godzilla had doggedly clung to life. Randy had been found on a post-battle sweep of the island, encased in a scorched cocoon. That had been all that had saved his life from the explosion, though his previous injuries were extensive. Two multiply broken legs meant that for a while Randy would be confined to a wheelchair. Not that Randy was letting that stop him.
Nick's gaze shifted to the nearby water as he heard it move. He felt the familiar reliefs of seeing his larger four grandchildren return safely, having hunted successfully without being detected by Chutluaken. As always Nouveau was in the lead. She had grown larger than all of her siblings to possess all of her father's strength and her mother's exotic beauty. If only she had inherited her parent's gentle ways with humans.
Nou would allow Monique, Elsie, and Nick to approach her and touch her, but anyone else was hissed and growled at from the moment they came within a length of her. Nick smiled at her and her three hunters as they came over, dropping gullet fulls of fish before their smaller siblings.
The largest of the males, affectionately deemed Ornith by Elsie for his fascination with birds of all kinds, whuffled at his siblings and looked at their father. His hopeful expression was quickly squashed by a low grunt from the second smallest of the females- named Ash for her strange grey speckling on her otherwise solid black hide that reminded the group of snowflake obsidian. Saral lifted her head from Nick to nuzzle Ornith comfortingly.
Nou growled, her crest standing on end and her wings fluffing. Nick looked where she was to see the group that was now jokingly referred to as the Council of War. He nodded and patted what he could reach of each of his grandchildren, "Keep an eye on your father for me."
We will grandfather. One of the two nearly-identical males answered, he couldn't immediately tell which.
Nick smiled one last time and walked over to the Council, the smile disappearing as soon as he entered the smaller room and was out of sight of his scaly kin. The grim atmosphere hit him like a brick and he moved to his team beside Philippe, "what happened?"
"Chutluaken has finished off the monsters from Monster Isle. None of them so much as scratched him." One of the soldiers said.
Nick nodded; he had been expecting that from the moment news reached them that Chutluaken had invaded Monster Isle. All the monsters there had been defeated by Godzilla or humans, and Chutluaken had all but killed Godzilla. Still, the battle two months ago had revealed a possible weakness. "Has that wound from Gojira healed yet?"
"No sir and no signs of scarring either. We can't tell why though without Gojira himself to study."
The sir caused Nick to pause a moment. He was unused to being treated as a higher-ranking officer by this strange coalition of forces from all corners of the Earth. It just went to show how destructive Chutluaken was being that he had managed to force an uneasy truce between all the worlds' military powers. A truce that centered on the HEAT team and their expertise.
It is His power. Saral's mental voice drifted over their minds shyly.
Nick glanced back out the human-sized door to see one of those beautiful opal eyes looking back in at him, "Saral? Do you want to explain?"
Saral whuffled softly and nosed the doorway enough to make it crumble a bit and Nick gestured to his team to go back into the larger hanger. As soon as she could touch them Saral quieted and gently rested her head against Nick. The bad-one cannot absorb power.
Elsie jumped a bit finding that Saral had pressed the other side of her snout to her. "Wasn't it made from part of Gojira?"
He can absorb and emit. The bad-one can only emit. The wound has His power in it like the smaller-than-seeing things that make human wounds go bad.
Nick beamed at Saral, proud that she had understood the concept of his much-simplified explanation of infections.
"So if radiation poisons the creature can we not bomb him or use your 'pets' to kill him?" one of the foreign representatives asked through his translator.
Elsie glared at him for suggesting using the eight young ones as cannon fodder again. HEAT had already made it very clear that the children were not up for consideration as weapons. Nick stroked Saral's jaw as he considered the bomb option. "Saral, what if we forced more power upon Chu-erg- the bad-one?" he asked.
You know where He is? Is He with mother? Her tail swayed excitedly and her crest stood up.
Nick was forced to grasp into her lip as the sudden happy motions knocked him off his feet, "No we don't know where Gojira is. Why is Gojira important?"
Saral stilled, looking crestfallen to those who understood the expressions of the mutations. They could all hear her physical voice giving a heartbreaking whine as her mental voice explained, Father's breath did not wound. Only His power will wound.
Nick and Elsie shot each other a look around the giant snout and whispered comforting words to Saral, scratching her lower jaw as they did. She soon calmed from her whining back into silence.
"So you're telling us we're boned. Gojira is dead." One of the generals said as his arms crossed across his chest.
He and mother are not dead! We can feel them!
That same general sneered, "You would have gotten them by now if they were alive."
"Hey! Just because we can't find them doesn't mean they are dead!" Elsie snapped back. She knew the odds and chances, but she was not ready to admit anything.
"If they were alive your little monsters would have tracked down their monster-mother."
"They were separated from their parents before they could learn essential life skills like that."
The general smirked, "Well then they aren't good for much are they?"
Elsie looked strongly as if she wanted to punch the general out, but was forestalled from action by a low snarl from behind Saral. Nou stepped around her small sister and crouched by the deer, reaching a foreleg through the small door and flattening the obnoxious general to the floor. She snorted angrily as she drew back to her father's side, glaring back at them.
"That thing is a menace! I demand it be killed at once!" the general shouted from the floor. No one moved to help him up, preferring to move farther away from the grumbling and swearing man.
"She sees you as a threat now. I strongly recommend your government sends someone else from this point on." Monique said with a dark smirk.
The tension was broken as one of the French soldiers trotted into the room and saluted, "Messieurs! Les représentants du Nigeria sont ici!"
Mendel leaned closer to Monique, "What did he say?"
Monique whispered back, "He said the representatives from Nigeria are here."
Philippe nodded to the soldier, "Bon, introduisez-les."
At this the soldier shifted a bit, showing discomfort, "Il y a un problème monsieur. Un d'entre eux est un civil."
Both Philippe and Monique went tense at this, "A civilian?"
There was a soft chuckle from the doorway the soldier had entered through and everyone turned to see General Ekwensi flanked on one side by the one-armed boat driver and on the other side by a young man that leaned heavily on a cane to compensate for his twisted leg. All three were smirking.
"I assure you we will be no problem at all."