Chapter One

While that was the mood in the UN Building, it was quite different from the mood at White House II set up about three miles south west in the north tower of the World Trade Center. President Emmerich had been one of the chief proponents of using the DT against King Ghidorah for several months now and was now overjoyed on having heard that it would be deployed. At the moment he was in his new Oval Office in his chair, putting his feet on the desk, as he looked to his Vice President. "It's going to work Frank! I'm telling you, this weapon is going to work and people are going to be sorry they didn't do it earlier like I told them!"

Franklin Smith was looking to a picture of James Madison that had been salvaged from the first White House. Considering what had happened to the Executive Mansion in Madison's term, it was rather appropriate to have that portrait he thought. He was thinking of that even as his boss was talking to the air about glorious re-election, that he was such a marvelous war leader.

Devlin Emmerich then went and pulled out a cigar, Cuban of course. "I'm going to go down in history as the man who saved the world! I tell you Frank, I'm going to be the same league as Columbus and Caesar!"

Smith angrily looked at the man who held his leash and frowned. "I must agree with what you say sir." He thought to himself that the despoiler of two entire continents and a ruthless conquering dictator would fit Devlin Emmerich perfectly. Every day, he was growing to hate the man and every day hated himself more for his inability to say no to his master.

At that, the most despised man in America's history looked to his right hand man and said, "I'm going to go down in history Frank, I don't believe it!"

"I don't believe it…" That's what Steven Martin said in the office of Japan's Prime Minister. After the destruction of the US capital, Santos had given the order that the Dimension Tide be deployed, Kyle had told him. Having been there to see the Oxygen Destroyer, the DT was something old newsman didn't want used and wanted to prevent. He had spoken with Miguel and Tomas Santos, with Goodhue, with Aso, with Hayashida, with Tsujimori, and with Yoshizawa to no avail. Now the man he was with was perhaps the only hope he had left. "I don't believe it sir. King Ghidorah is undoubtedly the worst monster that we've ever had to face but we don't need that evil weapon. We have to find some way of defeating that thing without the Dimension Tide. You've got to do something to prevent this."

The Japanese Prime Minister shook his head. "Mr. Martin, I understand your concern but please understand that there is nothing more I can do. I share your concerns and I have already pleaded with Mr. Miguel Santos but he has proven adamant in his choice. As Secretary General, his power is greater than mine and he has overruled me; quite simply there is nothing I can do. But what about you? As I recall, your grandson is his son's best friends; why not have him talk?"

Martin sighed. "We already have sir and both of them are going along with this. Can't you at least talk to Yoshizawa or Tsujimori? The two of them have to have some idea of what they're trying to do. It could mean disaster unlike anybody can imagine."

Despite the self-control ingrained in the Japanese, the Prime Minister at last angrily looked at the man that said that to him. Trying to restrain himself as he spoke, the Emperor's first minister said, "Mr. Steven Martin, I'll have you understand that I have done everything in my power to protest the usage of the Black Hole Gun and more. I don't like it anymore than you do but I know when I am beaten. Do you?"

Martin stood in silence for a moment considering the words given him. "I do Mr. Prime Minister. You have done everything you could and so there is nothing more that can be asked of you. If there is nothing more to be said then I believe that our session is ended."

"Yes it is," said the black haired man. He returned to his desk to look over the documents and reports that covered it, but as he sat down and held one of those papers in his hand he looked to gray haired man with whom he had just spoken. "Mr. Martin?"

"Yes?"

"I'm sorry."

Martin nodded. "I understand sir, and thank you."

With that, he walked out of the Prime Minister's red brick mansion to his next mission. As he did so, he turned past the gates that were already closed to him and walked away with his hands in his pockets. "So this is how it's all going to end."

"That's how it's all going to end," said Commander Aso. "We're going to deploy the Dimension Tide and that means that the Monster Wars are finally going to be over."

"It well could and I am glad of that," said Dr. Yoshizawa. "The Dimension Tide is fully functional and we have tested it several times… but I'm still a little worried about it."

The military officer turned his head over his shoulder to look at the scientist; he saw her with a hand on a computer and with her head hanging. While he didn't like scientists, Aso did feel some compassion for his fellow human beings; this was no exception. "You say you're worried, would you care to say why?" He saw a worried look on her face. "Don't worry, I won't hold anything against you."

"It's just the sheer idea of what we're trying to do. We use the star gate engine from a captured Mysterian space ship and we reverse engineer it in the thought of using a miniature black hole as a weapon. The collapsed core of a dead star is the most dangerous thing in creation… light itself can't escape, it eats entire planet… to use it is sheer lunacy. Even if nothing goes wrong, the sheer destructive power behind it and what it could lead to is beyond anything that we've imagined. I wonder if this is how the people who made the atom bomb felt like."

Aso raised an eyebrow. "The majority of them were sorry they ever built the damn thing, especially after the arms race began. Some of them even had the same fears that you have, the fear that the weapon you built would go and destroy the world. However, if you felt so badly about making DT, why did you make it in the first place?"

Yoshizawa knew that Aso already knew the answer. "I did so because it was my duty, I had no choice but God knows that I did all I could in protesting it."

"You could have resigned from your job," said the old soldier.

The scientist smirked. "We Japanese don't resign from our jobs."

"True," responded the G-Force Supreme Commander as he took a sip from his glass. "It is also true that while there are dangers in making and using the DT, the greatest danger by far is King Ghidorah. We will deal with these other problems when and if they come into play. After all, if we don't to use the DT then we won't survive to face the threats that accompany using it now will we? So far, even as all Asia has been ravaged, Japan has been the only country in the world that hasn't suffered attack by King Ghidorah and by heaven, I plan for it to stay that way."

On hearing that, Yoshizawa just nodded at Aso as he went to a nearby counter and poured a cup of saki for himself and for her. "We're going to make it doctor and the weapon you made is proof that we are. A toast then…"

"A toast… to the end of the world." Kyle was at a tiny Tokyo bar when he growled that in Japanese. He had been at Miki's bedside for weeks, waiting for her to get better and now that Miki felt well enough to walk, he had taken her out on the town in an effort to cheer her up. She was glad to have it because she had already volunteered to be returned to active duty; though it would mostly be paper work and the like at UN HQ alongside Kyle, she had gotten it. As for the situation now, young Martin had taken things easy as Miki wasn't yet to full strength, but they had window shopped at the gaudy neon lighted Ginza strip and had gone to see a movie at the Akasuka district, gone to their usual place for karaoke and pachinko and had hoped to top off the day with a stop at a tiny hole in the wall bar. It was going to be good end to a good day for the both of them but the news broadcast went and ruined it.

That he wasn't the only one who felt that way was made clear when someone said in English, "Excuse me, but are you American?"

Kyle turned around to see a woman of European descent who said that, she and a teenage boy at her side, her son probably, who were right next to him. "Hai, I mean yes," he responded as he shifted gears from one language to another. "I actually have dual citizenship, I became a Japanese citizen a few years ago but as you can see I can speak English well enough. Can I help you?"

Mother and son looked to one another and the boy said, "Hi, my mom and I just wanted to know if you could tell us what the broadcast said. The two of us are new to Japan and we were only able to understand a little bit of what the TV said."

Kyle nodded. "The newsman said that the UNGCC is going to use a new super weapon against King Ghidorah called the Dimension Tide. Its supposed to be the ultimate weapon, more powerful than a hundred nuclear bombs, and will completely destroy the monster."

The woman smiled. "That's great. If it really can beat King Ghidorah then I'm all for it. My son and I saw for ourselves saw what things like him and Godzilla are capable of when Godzilla destroyed Miami. Because of what we saw, we left America and came here to Japan."

On hearing these seemingly contradictory remarks, the kaijuologist raised an eyebrow and said, "I see." This was becoming an increasingly common sight; like New York City in the United States, refugees, especially Americans, were going to Japan. For unknown reasons, the land of the rising sun had in no way been attacked since by the King of the Monsters or any of his subjects since their king's aborted assault on Tokyo mere weeks before the start of the Monster Wars. As such, with nation after nation being burned to the ground by monster after monster, Japan was increasingly being thought of as a safe haven.

However, crowded and homogenous as his country was, the Prime Minister had been discouraging mass immigration. He correctly stated that there was no real reason to expect that Japan might not be eventually attacked—it was the monster capital of the world after all. Even so, Japan had been reluctant to lose face and appear a cold hearted ogre; thus it had actively opposed the influx of refugees only reluctantly. Recalling this, Kyle then raised his glass to the couple. "Well I hope that you have a good time here in Nippon."

"Thanks," said the smiling pair simultaneously.

At that a quizzical look came across the boy's face. Remembering why he had left America but recalling where he as, she had to ask, "Umm I wanted to know something mister. You live here in Tokyo, right?" He saw Kyle nod. "…do… y'know…"

Martin smirked. "Do the monsters really attack Tokyo every other day?" The boy and his mother nodded. "Not really. True, Japan does have a healthy population of kaiju—the largest, most densely concentrated in the world in fact—like the giant boar herds or the ebirahs in the Sea of Japan. Both are harmless and even have their places." With a blasé expression, he pointed to the steaks on the couple's plates and made them squirm. "May not be palatable when you find out what it is, but with the global famine, you take what food you can.

"As for Godzilla and the other dai-kaiju, they're really spread out. The big guys have been seen in the Americas, Europe, Africa, all over the place. Yeah, there are plenty of monsters in the western Pacific probably because of all the nuclear tests that were conducted there in the old days but they're hardly confined to Japan. Godzilla and the others have been sighted all throughout East Asia and the Pacific; they've been seen in easternmost Russia, Korea, China, the Philippines, and even as far south as Indonesia and Vietnam. But God knows I can't explain why it is that so many more kaiju live here and come here than any other place. As to why Godzilla in particular centers more around Japan, Tokyo at that, nobody really knows; the most common theory is that it was his territory in the dinosaur age."

He saw the mother place a frightened arm around her son's shoulder. "Don't worry!" he emphasized. "With his battling King Ghidorah, Godzilla hasn't been anywhere near Japan for almost a year and even if he were, you still wouldn't have to worry. Tokyo is huge, even bigger than New York City is now with its being America's new capital. Even when Godzilla does attack, Tokyo is so big that the odds of his being in your area of the megalopolis are slim to none. I do admit, it takes a certain kind of person to stick it out here, it leaves you in a constant wartime mentality… But with all the Godzilla merchandise out there and the joke that if Godzilla didn't keep destroying the city every other day that Japan would be ruling the world by now, you just kind of get use to it."

The couple just weakly smiled and nodded their thanks; Kyle said that they were welcome and turned back to his drink.

"Kyle?" asked Miki weakly.

"Yeah, what is it sweets?" he responded.

"Do you remember when we first came here? You were all surprised at the beyond mini-bar and how I always got free drinks because my age and weight came to less than a hundred?"

Kyle fought back a slight grin. "Yeah I remember that and how I felt when you told me that these bars used to be waiting rooms for brothels before the red light district moved elsewhere."

At that, the Miki rolled her eyes as he paid for their drinks. On doing that, they got up and walked out of the bar into the narrow street. They went slowly, however as Miki was still pale and recovering her strength but at least she could walk now. Now night, she and her love quickly found themselves on a wide boulevard with colossal buildings and blinding multi-colored neon signs. They began walking down the crowded streets of Tokyo; it still amazed Kyle that there were so many people there, like sardines in a can.

With well over 8,000,000 people on 223 square miles, Tokyo was one of the biggest, and certainly most crowded, cities in the world. (And that's just the city proper.) It was even more amazing just how peaceful it was since Godzilla had left. Like he had told the couple, there were no drills, no false alarms, no going into the shelters, no reports of homeless and refugees… no children cheering because Godzilla had cancelled class.

However, such thoughts were but some of many that went through Kyle's mind.

"Are you feeling all right Kyle?" asked Miki. "You seem worried."

"No, I'm ok."

Segeusa smiled and shook her head. "Kyle, I know you better than that. You're thinking of something that you're not saying."

A serious look spread across Martin's face. "Miki, you haven't stopped taking your medication have you? You know what the doctor said; until you're fully healed and can control your telepathy, you have to take those pills to suppress your powers."

She shook her head and decided it was time for some Western communication. "Its not that Kyle, a girlfriend just knows these things. So what's on your mind? You've been holding something back the whole afternoon and it's been burning you up."

Rather uncomfortable, he looked away and said, "No it's nothing, nothing at all."

Uncomfortable herself about what she was going to say, she nevertheless went and made herself say it. "No Kyle, there is something wrong. It won't help to keep it locked up."

Now feeling angry, he asked, "Why not? You do it all the time."

"I'm Japanese so I was taught from childhood to hide my feelings," said Miki. "You weren't raised in a society like this, it is not good for you. You should let whatever it is that's bothering you out."

At that, Kyle and Miki stopped. "Fine," he said. "There is something bothering me and it's the fact that Santos is going to use DT and that means it's over for all of us."

With people crowding past them, Miki slowly walked towards him and placed a hand in his shoulder. "The Secretary General didn't come to this decision lightly, he didn't have any other choice."

Kyle turned away from her and laughed. "'No choice…' As I recall, the man was considering several other choices, even bringing Godzilla into our little 'monster squad,' when you went and talked to him, telling him that he had to use the Dimension Tide or else. Leaves me wondering if you didn't use your powers to force that thought on him."

Miki gasped. "Kyle, you should know that I'd never do a thing like that!"

"I wish."

"I wish too, but I wish for there to be another way of defeating King Ghidorah." Miki looked at the man with her with a frightened look on her face. "Kyle, I've seen King Ghidorah's mind and I've seen what he's going to do. This conversation has been spoken before because we have our fears which might become reality and we have King Ghidorah which is reality."

"Ah yes, grandpa's book and the love triangle therein." Inflamed by one too many beers he'd drunk, he retorted. "Funny but another bit of history has also repeated itself. Miki, once you said that you loved me more than anyone else and for a long time, I believed you. I believed it but King Ghidorah said that in looking through your mind, he couldn't tell which one of us you loved more, me or Godzilla."

Segeusa looked to the ground. She heard Kyle angrily say, "Its true, isn't it? Maybe that monster is a liar but I'm betting that was the one bit of truth he ever spoke. All this time, I always knew that you felt sorry for that freak but I never thought that you would actually love him more than me.

"C'mon, Miki why don't you say it… why don't you skip the whole 'I'm Japanese so I'm going to lie to not hurt anybody's precious feelings thing' and tell the truth for once."

Segeusa stood in silence before finally finding her voice. "Its true Kyle, I love both you and Godzilla and I've spent many a sleepless night wondering who I cared for more, you as a lover or him as a friend. But you have to understand, with Godzilla, what I do for him can benefit the whole world. All the love I've given him was in the hope of changing him for the better, of making him a force for good like he was meant to be. He listened to me and that was good for everyone, not only for Japan but Asia and the world."

"For all the good it did. Sure you get him to spare Tokyo but afterwards he just goes to destroy Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, and Sapporo, with Pyongyang, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Vladivostok and Pusan on the side while he's at it." Angry, he turned to the woman at his side to ask, "What happened to the Miki that said that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me, raise a family with me, and grow old with me? Did she die or is just that she never was?"

He turned his back to her and put his hands on a nearby rail. He looked up to see the people walking by and the multitude of cars going past the brilliant buildings. He then asked the one question that he had never wanted to ask but felt that he had to have answered. "Which one of us do you love more?" Kyle saw Miki trying to stall for time. "Damn it, which one! Choose!"

That outburst froze the crowd around them and many a passerby stopped what they were doing and turned to see the fuss. Miki tried to put a comforting hand on Kyle—which he immediately shrugged off in anger. She heard him say it again, this time in a low menacing voice. "Choose…"

Segeusa was frozen at that. She tried to speak, tried to find some words that could soothe his angry heart but they could not come. She had been asked to choose. Her reply? "I can't."

At that, the man that once loved her angrily stomped off, fists clenching and unclenching in anger. Fearful for him, Miki stretched out her hand and said, "Kyle wait…"

He stopped and turned around for what she had to say. "If it makes any difference, I always loved you."

He shot her a dirty look before leaving. "Yeah, but my love for you just wasn't good enough, now was it?"

With that, Kyle went off into the Tokyo night, leaving Miki alone.

He'd went off into the night be left alone, completely alone, because feelings of anguish and confusion were not limited to humans.

In the frozen wastes of the far north, there is only ice and snow and bitterest cold because the Arctic Sea is naught but a frozen sea. The sub zero winds blowing across the solid ocean reminded one of how only in its southernmost extremities and in the warmest of summer months is the Arctic Sea even partially unfrozen. It was in this place amidst mountains and islands and forests of ice that a blue Atomic Ray shot through the cold and hardened water of the North Pole. The ice was blown apart and vaporized with immeasurable force and heat from the ray, with that its owner hauled himself out of the hole he had made.

Godzilla came out of the huge hundred-foot wide steaming hole and left boiling water behind him, the cracking ice sounding like an earthquake. At that, the leviathan stood at the rim of the hole he'd made in the ice pack and looked back and forth. The King of the Monsters saw nothing and walked forwards in this solitude. It was, of course, freezing and the salt water that cascaded along Godzilla's side turned into so many streaks of white that he looked like Lupis. Despite the frost frozen into the nooks and crannies of his gnarled black hide, the cold didn't bother him and he felt his warm breath turn to vapor in the cold air. No, what he felt cutting to his bone was something far deeper.

At the middle of the Arctic Sea amidst unending ice, the place was one of the most desolate and isolated places in the world. This was the place where he always went when he needed to be alone and after what had happened, he definitely needed to be alone. There were no humans there to claim it because none could live there. Human armies couldn't follow across the snow, nor could their navies come in force past the ice, nor could their planes come to battle because of the distances to any place for them to be launched from. With the magnetic interference of the North Pole, not even Miki's telepathy could find him there. Nothing was there to disturb his solitude, neither man nor beast, just the endless expanse of white. He sought such privacy because he needed to be alone to think.

Godzilla kept walking, every sound he made magnified a thousand fold by deafening silence. His footsteps crunching in the snow, his back plates clanking together, his breath hissing as he breathed in and out, the growls he made echoed across the frozen land. As the King of the Monsters walked past mountains of ice, many of which dwarfed even him, he wondered if his life would forever remain as cold and as sterile as this place.

This wasn't the first time that he went to this northern clime and probably wouldn't be the last. It was because ever since he felt the Beast emerge from his icy tomb in the human year of 1954, he had been drawn here. However, with the Rhedosaurus's death, Godzilla truly was the last of a dead and forgotten race. Awakened as "Godzillasaurus" in the 1930s, he had been a stranger in a strange land, remembering only the death of his kind and sadly seeing that it was true. Confused on seeing the mammals—whom he remembered from his childhood as being an inferior race of rodent spawn—ruling the world in place of the dinosaurs, he had tried to claim a home amidst the last, withered, remaining vestiges of the saurian empire. The Lost World had been destroyed but Skull Island was still untouched yet with its destruction, even that wish for asylum was denied him.

His world, his mate, all of it gone forever. His mate… dear sweet Gigantis. She had loved him and cared for him, she had showed him passion and she had been beautiful, she would have even given him a son. Yet Gigantis whom he so loved died that black day 65,000,000 years ago. She had died that day along with his parents, his son and everyone else whom he had ever loved; as guardian of the saurian empire, that meant many indeed. He was their protector; he'd been born to safeguard the saurian race and to ensure its survival but when they needed him the most, there hadn't been anything he could to do to save them. He had failed them, failed the Great Tyrannosaur, and had had to live with the shame and guilt for over 65,000,000 years; sometimes he'd even asked himself if his solitude wasn't some kind of punishment for his failure. In the cold of the north, Godzilla almost wept ice.

Almost, but not quite as sorrow was tempered with hatred. He had lost his family and all those whom he loved by the fault of the demon known across the stars as King Ghidorah. The demon was evil and more than evil; he was a cancer on creation and stain against the cosmos. His first sin was to slay the world of the dinosaurs, Godzilla's world, and that was not a sin that the King of the Monsters took lightly. The three-headed monster was a cesspool of sin and cruelty that the leviathan despised to the very core of his being as the author of all his woes and as the source of all his pain.

As the eons passed him by, Godzilla had tried to forget the hate as a futile gesture in the thought that it wasn't as if he would ever have the chance to confront the enemy. Yet with the evil one's advent that had changed in an instant because he felt all his fury rekindled and all his old memories dredged up. King Ghidorah remembered his old foe and had returned the mocking hate to challenge him to battle. It was a call to arms that Godzilla was all to ready to accept. He then stopped walking across the ice and buried himself as best he could amidst a mammoth snowdrift, several hundred feet deep. There, he left himself buried amidst the white powder and felt the cold caress him. He then remembered a different thing that he had had to face in playing his hand in the Monster Wars: humans.

On first seeing the humans, Godzilla had been stunned to see that the rodent spawn he remembered from his hatchling days as huddling in holes and skulking in darkness had gone on to become something more. After Shindo's betrayal on Lagos, he felt that it was barely more. He'd gone on to hate the humans for having ruined the world he had protected and for having stolen his ancestral home. In raiding Japan from southernmost Kyushu to northernmost Hokkaido and the land around it, Miki had told him of those who suffered for of his wrath. Perhaps, but had he not suffered more for having claimed that land first? Godzilla had hated the humans as a band of evil and arrogant creatures, wretched mammals unaware of their own insignificance.

Godzilla shifted in the snow, perhaps hoping that the cool powder would soothe his burning heart; it felt good, like Hokkaido's Kitami Mountains in January. With the dawn of the Monster Wars, he had found himself fighting alongside humans as often as he had fought against them. They clearly shared a common enemy in King Ghidorah so why had the humans fought against him in the last battle? If the humans had truly wanted the three-headed monster dead, then wouldn't they have let him do battle against it? Those mammals had fought him not only in that battle but across the sea and through the air all through the War. If only Miki had been there to hear him. She would have understood; she would have talked to them.

The leviathan got up from the snowdrift and resumed walking, shaking off snow as he did so. Why couldn't the humans understand? That he had fought against them was true, but did they truly think him any worse than the demon? If the humans were so stupid, then Godzilla was tempted the think that they all deserved to die. With all they had done to him and to his world, the King of the Monsters knew that he would never shed any tears for them. He had no pity for them… except for Miki, it always came back to her. Why did she please him so only to devil him?

After the death of Gigantis, Godzilla had been convinced that he would never feel love again and yet every time he and Miki met, she showed him love and pity and kindness and made him feel whole. In all the eons it had known, the leviathan had only felt such feelings of contentment when its mate lived; it was as if Gigantis was reborn inside Miki. At the same time though, she made him feel doubt and confusion, made him ask if following his vendettas was the right path. Time and again whether it was a skyscraper, a bullet train, or a stadium in the megalopolis of Tokyo, a shrine in Kyoto the old capital, ships in the Inland Sea or even just a lowly farm in backwater Shikoku, Beast looked on Beauty and stayed his hand from killing.

She had done so not because she was a human but for the sake of mercy to be shown on all living things. If Miki showed such mercy, would it not be for a reason? The King of the Monsters had known her since she was but a hatchling and had seen her grow up. When she'd been a child he'd thought that it was mere naiveté, thought that she was blind to a truth that she did not wish to see. Now after all these years, he couldn't help but ask if she had been in the right and that it had been he who was blind to a truth that he had not wished to see.

Godzilla stopped walking because he felt that he'd had enough brooding. King Ghidorah yet lived for he had yet to be destroyed. Godzilla knew he would have his revenge and that he would destroy all those that stood against him in order to claim it. Walking past a mountain of ice, he walked towards where the ice was thinnest, his weight making the ground crack; with that, he charged his ray and fired downwards at the snow as his plates shone. He managed to shoot a hole in the icepack wide enough for him to go into and after giving a final look at the frozen wasteland. He then leapt into the frigid Arctic waters and swam away.