Chapter Four
A hiss of a maser beam broke the silence. An officer in camouflage turned on hearing that and saw an enlisted man holding a rifle in an aiming position. "What happened soldier?" he asked.
The soldier looked at his commander and slung his smoking energy weapon over his shoulder. The Lagos Platoon soldier walked towards the charred remains of a pine tree and, on breaking off a branch, showed a headless brown dorat twice the size of a man buried beneath it. He wrenched the drooling beach ball sized head from beneath the trunk and held it up by its green hair; the Medusa like trophy also showed a head bud at the neck. "This happened, sir."
"Damn. Leave it there and tell your Lieutenant to organize a search party to see if we missed anything else. Tell him that and to tell three other Platoons the same."
"Yes, sir." The Private than ran off to follow his orders
The Lieutenant Colonel cursed; he had no idea how his Battalion could let something that ugly get so close to Headquarters. He then called up some nearby grunts to place the carcass and the head on a jeep and take it to a pile where they would be incinerated. They got to the destination soon enough and the privates unloaded the corpse onto a fly swarmed pile of carrion; however, flies that landed dropped dead the second they tried to eat it. The Officer shook his head as he saw a pile of mutilated dorat corpses now twice as high a man. For a time he'd just left the bodies where they lay or took trophy pictures but after it was discovered that dorats ate their dead and grew stronger for it, that was discarded.
Back in November last year, back in the American Campaign, they had thought that the Swarm was trouble, now it was just three months later in January and they were using Inagos's kids as bait. Already back in the jeep and having told the driver to take him back to his quarters, he thought to double check that and pulled out his walkie-talkie. "Captain Jordan, how's the operation going? Do we have Them ready, over?"
On getting a response that the giant ant bodies were strewn about the target area but that no Dorats had been sighted, he said, "So far so good. All right, just keep at it and keep your eyes peeled, over and out." After putting his walkie-talkie back in his coat, he put up with the bumpy roads. As he did so he happened to take a good look to his right and saw the forest of aspens, firs and poplars and past them the Canadian Rockies. Should the Dorats hole up in the mountains, only God knew when they'd be able to get them out. If only Lieutenant Santos were still there in DFE Special Ops, he'd have had wiped them out in a week… alas, he'd been kicked upstairs and was now piloting that robot against what was left of the Swarm and after that King Ghidorah himself. The officer knew he couldn't really complain then but damn, weren't the Monster Wars ever going to end?
Sometimes it felt that the Monster Wars wouldn't. Despite the attempted news blackout of the dorat escape, it quickly became global news that shook the world. Yes, it shook the world but not for the better in how Earth was now to be plagued by the Prince of Skyllan's unholy spawn. Such feelings of defeat were especially acute with how keen eyes saw that King Ghidorah was even more dangerous than before. Panic had erupted when the three-headed monster claimed the Swarm and led it to burn and pillage across the land of the free and the home of the brave. Now there were many devils, each one filled to the overflowing with all its sire's malice and cruelty. Being legion for there were many of them, it was as if they had seen King Ghidorah and said, "Why wouldn't we want to join a snake like you, all twisted and ugly and full of bitterness?" Everywhere men could hear and see, it was known that the demon was joined by his children and for it despair grew.
Such feelings were exemplified in St. Patrick's Cathedral, a large and beautiful church right in the heart of New York City; it was on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue to be exact. It was a large and glorious structure that had exalted the Name of God since the day its doors were opened in 1879. Despite New York's being the "city that had everything," it still felt rather strange to see something like that there. A cathedral was something that you'd expect in a place like Cologne, Germany, or Paris, France, not in the New World, not in the United States. And yet there it was, an ornate, pristine jewel of stone arches, stained glass, graceful spires, tolling bells, towering pillars and statued chapels, a place that worshipped God in a city that worshipped mammon. It was there, made to honor the Creator of Heaven and Earth, set in a bustling metropolis that one would think had no place for such things.
However, that was where such a person would be wrong. Far from having no place, the cathedral was at the holy of holies of New York's spiritual and historical traditions and served to offer soothing balms for troubled souls. That was especially true now with the fear and doubt that made all the people that could make their way to the holy place walk in humble procession for it is in darkest times that men most need light. (Said more simply, there are no atheists in fox holes.) Many people looking for something to believe in had gone to this holy place and such was the case now for Franklin Smith.
However despite all the times that the bishop's church had been filled to capacity in recent times, the Vice President was alone there now, alone in the silent dark; that wasn't surprising as it was three in the morning. That was all the better with the solitude that filled his heart; in the gigantic cathedral, he felt like some dust mote for the ceiling of the bishop's chair alone towered more than a hundred feet above him. Yet for all that he had done, and for the man at whose side he stood, he felt smaller than a dust mote before He in whose honor this church was made.
Some ghostly moonlight filtered in through the stained glass windows but it was weak and wound up only casting strange shadows across the vast floor of the nave; all the better for it reflected the solitude that Smith felt as he sat at the center aisle edge of the front most pew. He'd never thought of himself as a particularly religious man, but now he was in the House of God hoping to gain some solace from Him. Despairing in this place, moonlight washing over him, the man looked to the image above the alter and silently asked the same question that all who believed had: why? What sin so horrible could man have committed that God punish the world so terribly for it?
Franklin Smith didn't know, all he did know was that he was frightened. In the darkness, he looked towards the bronze Baldachin that surrounded the main alter and saw set amongst it was the Crucifix and on it the image of Christ crucified. Looking on the Savior's Passion, he asked himself if He, in His sufferings, felt the pain that the world endured now.
"He does, sir."
The Vice President turned around from the pew where he sat and saw the psychic Miki Segeusa weakly standing a few pews away. Franklin Smith was startled and told himself that he must have had been too absorbed in his own thoughts to have noticed her coming. Now that he let himself hear, her steps sounded sharply against the marble floor of the mighty cathedral and filled the entire House of God. Miki was at Smith's side and turned her gaze towards the image of the Messiah saying, "His Father is our Creator and therefore the Son is our brother. That His love is so great that He would give His life for us proves that He shares our pain."
Smith sat unmoving and he remembered how Segeusa had, on her recovery and her desire to help, asked to be sent to New York and the important work that was to be found there. He looked at her before nodding slightly and moving a bit to the side in order to give her a seat; she stood in the aisle however. He looked away and asked her, "Preachy peachy. Why are you here anyways?"
Miki looked this way and that, noticing that some of the Christmas decorations were still up even if months had passed. She stayed quiet for a time before letting her voice echo in the church. "I needed to be here, though I admit that it would be easier for me in a Shinto shrine where I could ring the sacred bell and clap three times. Anyways, I knew that I had to come. Being a psychic, you just feel these things."
Smith managed a weak smile but his thoughts soon shifted. "Miss. Segeusa, I've gone onto notice that ever since the Monster Wars began, you've been all let's rally the troops, let's save the day, let's keep fighting. And from what I heard, you can barely use your powers right now and you're still here. What did happen to your telepathy, by the way?"
Miki sighed. "It's because of how I tried to enter Ghidorah's mind, my mind suffered trauma. The doctors gave a prescription to subdue my telepathy and prevent it from going out of control until I was back on top. A mad psychic is a dangerous one. Without my powers, I've been transferred from active duty to paperwork; with my boyfriend transferred to New York, I decided here was as good a place as any. The doctor said that I'll be off the prescription soon however; the proof of that is seen with how I was able to feel that you needed someone to be with."
"I see. Thank you. Yet despite that Miss. Segeusa, despite the fact that you've lost your powers, you still put yourself on the front line and insist on doing double duty and then some, even after you were almost killed in New Orleans, even after you were almost killed in Washington. Why?"
Miki looked up and remembered the mission that the Elias had given her, a mission of saving the world that a higher power had given her. "It's because of how dark the world can be. I was there all through the battles and there all through the campaigns and have seen horrors to blast my soul in a battle of gods and monsters. There is of course the desire for mere survival, King Ghidorah won't stop until he's killed us all, but there's also more. It's just the sheer principle of the thing. I have been there all the way and in the darkness I have felt despair. In entering Prince of Skyllan's unholy mind I felt fear and sorrow as I never thought I could; I was tempted to give up and lose all hope. For a great time afterwards I was tortured from within and bordered on the edge of madness and even asked the question that I dared never speak."
At that moment, Miki began to shake and held herself because of the thoughts that ran through her mind. "All my life I have known of the darkness in men's souls and yet I never lost hope that that darkness would one day be defeated by the light and that we could learn to live in peace as we were meant to. But when I saw King Ghidorah's blackened thoughts I lost all faith in what I believed in and asked, not can the world be saved but if the world even deserves to be saved. We've both seen the genocide and murder and destruction and atrocities our species is capable of, of man's inhumanity to man.
"Kyle Martin was there when I woke up from the coma my attempt to control that demon left me in. He was the only one I could speak to and the only one who could understand what I would say. He held my hand as I asked him if it was Noah's flood all over again, if God was punishing the world now as He had then. I even asked if God was sorry that He'd ever made us and if King Ghidorah was the new flood that would cleanse the world of us."
Franklin Smith looked up from where he sat at her. Curious, he asked, "And then what did he say?"
"He told me to remember what happened after Noah's flood. The rainbow shone in the sky as a covenant of hope, a promise that the world would never be destroyed like that again. Kyle told me to remember that and to remember something else. He said that if humanity truly is worthless, if we truly are beyond all salvation, then what about John 3:16? 'That for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not die but have eternal life'. "
At that, Miki placed a comforting hand on the Vice President's shoulder. "Kyle told me something that his grandfather told him, that if even God Himself won't give up on us, then how can we give up on ourselves?"
From where he sat, Smith tore his shoulder from that comforting hand and looked away. "Faith… that's something that I haven't felt for a long time. You see Miss. Segeusa, I haven't talked to God since my grandfather died. It's funny though that once I was just like you. I remember when I was just some kid fresh out of Princeton ready to 'save the world.'" He didn't see Miki tense on hearing those words. "I left with a degree in political science ready to make a positive change. I rose through the ranks from a paper pusher to a senator campaigning all the while for every bleeding heart cause I could think of. I was so full of hope, so full of certainty; I was so sure that I was going to make a difference."
Miki paid close attention to what the man said, feeling that she was listening to the devil's advocate as she did so. "I fought for affirmative action, I fought for animal rights, I fought for government aid programs, I fought for environmental laws. I did all that and failed every time, kinda sad, eh? That was when I came across my future boss and, at that time, my worst enemy 'El Presidente.' Emmerich wasn't president back then of course, he was the Chairman and CEO of Bio Major… mostly because of daddy's money of course. And yes, Bio Major, the Saradia hating Frankenstein laboratory really is as bad as the tabloids say. Even back then Emmerich was an incompetent fool but in some ways I was an even bigger fool because the day I met him was the day I sold my soul to the devil.
"I met Emmerich, he told me to never call him Devlin because we weren't friends just Emmerich, saying that I could make a real difference if I went to work with him. He offered me a job working for him and I went to work for him, even if it was a toxic waste dump or opening a forbidden meteor or a plasma power plant or whatever megalomaniac scheme he had up his sleeve. Whatever it was even if it meant putting up with his playing God. By then, I was so disillusioned that I threw in my cards with him thinking that at least this way I could do something that was real, something that wasn't an illusion."
"That's why you went to work for Devlin Emmerich because you wanted to avoid an illusion…?" On hearing Smith's words, Miki felt her jaw drop and the bottom drop out of her world. She turned around and glared at him in the marble halls of the darkened cathedral. "Thinking that you can get away with playing God, that's the illusion! Idiots like him having been ruining things for the rest of us since dawn of time with their 'I'm better than you so I'll do whatever the heck I want,' attitudes. We've seen what insane arrogance like that costs us time and again but we're just too stupid to learn from it. Ever since Eden's forbidden fruit, there have just been some things that we were never meant to do or know but we just have to build that A-bomb, we just have to build the Oxygen Destroyer, we just have to build the Dimension Tide, we just have to think it up."
Miki was facing the church's alter when she looked towards the man there with her. She said in a weak and tired voice, "We think we can control the power but we can't. We're not gods, only mortals. King Ghidorah's makers thought that they could control the power and their planet was the very first he destroyed! Oh God help us… we brought this on ourselves."
Franklin Smith slowly shook his head on hearing that. "We brought this on ourselves, that's what Martin always says, the grandfather. 'Says that about Godzilla and other things… Funny, for years, decades, we've bad mouthed Godzilla as being the worst monster of them all, always trying to kill him off. We thought he was bad and then King Ghidorah comes along who's so much worse that he puts bad in perspective. You know, it's really sick of me to say this with you here but I almost wish Ghidorah would attack Japan so he and Godzilla would fight until that three-headed monster was dead."
Miki froze on hearing that and her eyes went wide. With what was happening, it now was seen that there was absolutely no choice and that Godzilla was the only one who could save them… and as sure as she was the chosen one, she knew that the rulers of Earth would at last know that it was time.
Vice President Franklin Smith looked at her with an appearance of concern as she froze like that. He got up from the pew and said "…Miki?" She did not hear him but instead had a smug little smirk on her face as she walked out of St. Patrick's Cathedral.
It was said that paper pushers made the system go round. Well there wasn't a system bigger than the UN and paper pushers made it go round. In some remote corner of the UN Building, a legion of faceless people were going about documents and typing away at their word processors. The entire floor was just cubicle after cubicle and not a one of the people in them strayed from their pen and paper; for one whose bread and butter was adventure, this was torture.
That someone was a tie and collar Kyle Martin and he was working in his cubicle in some remote corner of the UN Building. He was checking documents, overlooking blueprints for new machines, and reviewing kaiju reports. It was nothing new, just some giant boar sightings in Honshu, Japan; funny he thought that they'd all been taken off the big island and relocated to Hokkaido. Good God, feeling his eyes burn from staring at a computer screen, it was only then that Kyle realized what he had been spared when he went straight from Tokyo U to UNGCC front lines.
However, it was there and he had no choice in it so he looked to the computer screen before him and began typing. On checking the report, he stopped on seeing that he needed some information he didn't have so he opened another window and went to UNGCC's official database: Kaijuphile. It was the best monster site on the web; with founder C.L. Werner and webmaster Brandon Waggle nothing could even compete. It wasn't until just know that Kyle realized was so vast and all inclusive, he would have to track down Werner and Waggle and congratulate them one of these days.
In any case, after using Kaijuphile, he quickly finished his report and hit send; on pulling it out of the printer he reached for a pencil to begin proofreading. However, he was just going to get it when he accidentally knocked it to the ground. He reached for it as it fell but as he did so, the pencil began to slow and before he knew it stopped in the air. Kyle's widened eyes tracked it as it began to levitate towards his cubicle's desk; as it gently went to rest on the desk, he cracked a smile. He held the pencil in his hand and began tapping it against his computer keyboard. "All right Miki I know you're there."
The blonde man turned around in his swivel chair and saw the smiling psychic. "And it looks like you got your powers back."
Miki telekinetically pulled some paperclips up and out of their little bin and made them fly through the air in a figure eight. She then made them move in an O-pattern before making them link up and form a necklace to go around her. "Yes Kyle it's me."
He got up from his seat and kissed her. "Are you back to full strength?"
Miki nodded and levitated the paper clip necklace off her shoulders, eyes tracking it all the while, and into her raised hand. "Just about. I'll be back on active duty very soon and with the ideas I have, they'll be glad of it."
Kyle sighed in a most envious way. "Wish I could be there but I'm stuck. What is the idea you plan to volunteer anyways? You seem really happy about it."
Miki immediately brightened even more on hearing that. "I should be happy! If this works then it means that the world is going to be saved. Well, I know that it might seem strange but here goes."
She then proceeded to tell Kyle of her idea. She told him about how it was really an old idea but one that she had kept thinking about all through the Monster Wars. Her idea had finally left the back burner when she had spoken with the Vice-President over in St. Patrick's Cathedral. She had been afraid because of how her plan had been rejected earlier but now she knew that it was time for the plan to come to fruition, that she knew that the plan could work, she just knew it! That was of course if it was approved, she needed Kyle to come in to support it and make sure that it got approved so she was there asking if he would help and so would he?
Kyle just stood there for a time, letting it all sink in. He didn't move and Miki just looked at him slightly worried. She was worried as he just stared away. It was then that the edges of his mouth began twitching as he began to realize the implications and possibilities of the plan's simplicity. He began laughing and he grabbed Miki and lifted her up. She gasped as she was swept off her feet and he kissed her. He said. "Yes! Yes, I'm with on this plan one hundred percent!"
Miki's feet touched Earth again and she could barely keep herself from crying and she hugged Kyle as hard as she could.