-- ReginaldGusto - 08 Nov 2015

“I was not present when the first Kaiju erupted, but I felt it.
‘Kaiju’ must seem such a strange word to you. I know no other name for us. ‘Monster’ seems to suit, but some of us take offense at the term. I use the term ‘Brother,’ and ‘Sister,’ but Gods help anyone who’s not one of us if you misuse those terms. ‘Kaiju’ itself is not wholly appropriate, depending on who you talk to, because some us are Human in form.
But our destructive power and looming presence is no less for it.
The first Brother to erupt was a tragedy. The tension in the world had been building to a critical mass for some time. The collective insanity of the Human Race showed no signs of calming, even as we approached the point of no return on global climate cataclysm, nor did it do any less than accelerate as we rocketed past that Rubicon. The social unrest in America blossomed into a fulsome conflict, pitting race against race, political party against political party, rich against poor, and religion against religion. That the battles were fought with word and image, on the internet, did not comfort anyone, and in fact made the occasional bouts of actual violence that much worse. The openly corrupt government did nothing to help, except continue to comfort the comfortable and afflict the afflicted, in the name of populism. In Africa and the Middle East, a full-on holy war blazed, complete with barbaric torture, genocide, and wholesale destruction. Europe burst at the seams with refugees she could not sustain, and racist nationalism ran rampant. Russia continued her efforts to conquer, and all of Asia trembled as China and the two Koreas shook the world with nuclear threats.
And then came the pandemics.
And the famines.
And the water shortages.
I am surprised anyone noticed a Kaiju erupting in the midst of all this mess we made of ourselves.

The Brother’s name was Cayce. Norman Cayce. Or, at least that was his name before the eruption. After his death, the other Brothers and Sisters called his Kaiju form Balder, and true to his Norse namesake, he was to be a sacrifice heralding a changing of the world.
I’ve pieced together what I could of Balder’s story, from witnesses, federal reports, and expose’s. Norman Cayce was an accountant for a Senator in Washington, DC, on full time retainer. He got paid a pittance, since minimum wage laws did not apply to private contractors, and if he worked more hours in the week than there were in the week, he might have made a living wage. He and his wife lived with friends, until the friends got evicted on suspicion of Anti-American activities. A church fed him and his wife. He had a phone, but had to take it to a pirate to get the number masked, because a newly de-regulated creditor industry hunted him like a fox. If he were caught with a masked phone, he might be arrested. Were it not for his wife, he would welcome the arrest—at least in jail, he would have been guaranteed shelter and food.
They say that one day, she got cancer. Any doctor 15 years ago could have saved her, but if they showed up at the hospital, the creditors would have gotten them.
So all he could do was beg and barter on the streets for back-alley treatments, only some of which didn’t poison her worse.
Until she died.
The First Eruption happened on a Friday morning. Norman showed up to work to do the Senator’s taxes. He sat down at his desk and began organizing the accounts again, when Senator Maxwoll said,
“My god you stink.”
Norman tried to ignore him.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Sorry, sir.”
I can’t imagine what went through Cayce’s mind, but I know what went through his heart. The Brothers and Sisters have that in common. We also have in common what he did next: he kept typing.
Everyone thinks we are un-controlled mountains of fury, but nothing is further from the truth. We are intensely self-controlled, and have been since before we were us, before we could erupt, when we were merely Human. And that control is exactly the problem. Some of us are better at it than others, some of us need it more than others, but Eruption is seldom our first choice.
And it wasn’t Norman’s first choice either. He tried. God bless him, he tried. But Maxwoll kept browbeating him, eventually turning to insults.
“Look at you. You can’t even be bothered to shower. Don’t you have any pride?”
And still he kept typing.
“I can’t imagine how you take care of your family if this is how you take care of yourself.”
Norman stopped typing.
These are the kinds of signs we’ve learned to watch for. Sometimes they are too subtle to see, but spotting them can save lives, if you’re fast enough. You won’t always be. Norman was the first, so neither he nor Maxwoll knew what was about to happen. They both, in their own heads, thought the worst case scenario would be impotent rage, an angry man attacking a Senator with his fists and being hauled off to jail crying while the Senator made some glib comment to the press.
No.
It did start that way, to be sure. The Secret Service and Homeland Security have the security footage. Norman was arrested, crying. It didn’t last. The ground split and Hell emerged like a hungry titan. Nearly six thousand civilians and untold numbers of Military personnel died that day. The Washington DC I grew up loving as an American citizen was leveled, razed to a smoking glass surface, fused by the heat of a 30-story tower of radioactive magma that roared his pain to an insensitive universe and lashed out at anything he could reach. It took the military hours to figure out to fight him with water, and to get the firefighting planes there. Even then, it took hours more. His water-tempered obsidian corpse now stands where the the National Mall once stood, a monument to our awakening.
Whether anyone likes it or not.”

—Nibiru Yog-Sothoth

The Battle For Life

Tony stopped at the entrance to Chem Consolidated. To the west, the sun peeked its last over the horizon.
Before them stood the tinted, bullet-proof glass front of the 20 story fortress they had come to storm.
Doug tugged on his sleeve. “Hey uh…You know I probably better wait down here. It might be bad if I, you know, go off, in a tight space up there.”
“How tense are you right now.”
“I’m pretty on edge.” He nodded earnestly.
Behind them, Julie scolded, “We can do this without making a mess.”
The robotic voice of their companion war-robot answered. “Odds of achieving objective without eruption: 127 to 1.”
Tony sighed. “Jeez, that good, huh? Alright. Doug, go to the docks and wait for my signal. Julie, try to get this place cleared. It’s gonna get messy. Can your people help?”
Julie grimaced pleadingly. “Ohhhh god, Tony…” She sighed. “Yes, I think so.” She stepped away and dialed on her phone.
Tony twisted his head to one side until it popped once. “Okay, Destructo. Ring the bell.” He stepped back a few feet.
Destructo stepped forward and raised his arm. A missile launcher unfolded from it.
Doug went wide eyed. “OH SH—”
BANG!
The bullet proof glass, it seems, was not explosion proof.
“Jesus Christ, Tony, are you trying to summon me early?!”
Tony pointed. “Get going!”
“I’m going, I’m going!”

It took no effort at all for Destructo to hack the elevators. He projected a pair of cables into the access card reader and the elevator welcomed them.
Tony patted Destructo on the shoulder. “When these doors open, we’re gonna have a problem. I can’t erupt in here. You’re going to have to take care of them.”
“Affirmative.”
“Don’t hurt the Humans in any permanent way.”
Destructo did not answer at first. Finally, he said, “After all this time, do you still think me incapable of compassion and restraint?”
Tony scowled. “Not at all.” He sighed. “It just bears repeating with our kind.”
“Already a mission parameter.”
Tony took a deep breath. He could feel the tension pooling in his stomach like bile. “No,” he thought. “Save it for later.”
He went through a mental exercise his therapist had tought him: He imagined storing that emotion in a crystal and putting it on a shelf, to deal with later. In an instant, his stomach settled.
Three more floors.
Two more floors.
One.
Ding.
Tony tensed for gunfire, gritting his teeth. Destructo projected his forcefield and bristled out his mechanical tentacles. The doors of the elevator rumbled open—
—but all was silent.
No guards greeted them. An empty hallway stretched away from them down to a pair of enormous wooden double doors. Destructo lowered his shield and retracted his tentacles.
“Huh.” Tony shrugged, led the charge.

BOOM!
The door splintered inward under Destructo’s arm. Tony marched through.
And there sat the object of their wrath. Gregor Sullivan, the CEO of Chem Consolidated, lounged easily in his leather office chair, behind his cherry-wood desk. He smiled.
“Tony Salvatore and the great Destructo. How nice to see you, Brothers.”
Tony clenched his fists. “It’s over, Sullivan. Where’s Alex.”
Sullivan laughed. “Come on, Tony, I thought you were smarter than that. Do you really think I’d keep the prize in such an obvious place?”
“I’m not fooled. Our sources told—”
“Your sources.” Sullivan leaned forward with a checkmate smile. “You mean Sasha Molotov?”
Tony’s stomach dropped.
“My fixer?”
Tony stepped forward to the desk and leaned over it. “If you hurt that child, I swear to god I will swallow you.”
“Sullivan leaned in closer. “I dare you, Dragon. Call down your best.”
Tony clenched his fist. More turmoil pooled in his stomach. This time, he could not fight it down. He had less than a minute. Blood pounded in his head. One corner of his mouth turned up in a snarl. Blood dripped from his clenched fists where his nails dug into his skin.
Sullivan stood up, pacing like a victor. “You’re too late. He’s already on a ship. They should be leaving…” He glanced at his watch, and then shrugged. “Well, right about now, actually.”
Tony glared at Sullivan. He turned to Destructo. “The window.”
Destructo launched another missile. Sullivan ducked in surprise. The enormous window behind him exploded outward. Tony charged for a flying leap. In mid leap he released the fury in the pit of his stomach and transformed. A long tail, huge bat-like wings, cruel ebony claws each the size of a man, and a horned, crocodile snout with a hook-like beak, reptilian eyes, and a spinal ridge of maple-leaf plates unfolded from him, covered head to toe in glistening ruby-red scales. With two buffets of his wings, he alighted on top of the Chem Consolidated buiulding. He extended his neck toward the docks, and roared.
—————————————————————————————————————————————
A bang. Glass rained down around Julie as Tony took flight.
And then came the roar.
Julie’s hand shook as she dropped her phone. “God dammit…”
Her breathing heaved in panicked bursts. Her heartbeat rushed in her ears.
No no no no not now…”
And then the sirens sounded. The roar of helicopter blades filled the air. Men in black rappelled down around her. Trucks screeched to a halt and began unloading barricades. A tall man with balding gray hair in camouflage strode up, a look of anger on his face, which he held in when he spoke to Julie. “Simms. I thought we agreed you would call before you made your move.”
Julie took a deep breath. “We think Sullivan was tapping the line. He’s got Alex.”
Colonel Jackson’s face took on a grave hardness. “Where.”
She pointed to a gaping hole at the top of the Chem Consolidated building. “Up there.”
Jackson shot a frightened glance around him. “And Taurio?”
“Doug went down to the docks to wait for Tony’s signal.”
“Sweet Jesus…” He raised a radio to his lips. “Alright, start clearing this area, and get an evac team down to the docks, on the double! Move!”
“Julie!”
Julie’s heart leaped. She turned instinctively and ran toward the voice, a young man in a suit and sunglasses, moving toward her with intent purpose.
“Kenneth!”
She ran into Kenneth’s arms, hoping she could just hide there, but knowing she could not.
—————————————————————————————————————————————-
The signal.
Doug said a silent prayer and let the sound flow through him. He unleashed his rage, relishing the sensation like a sick man vomiting. He dropped to his knees as the water in the harbor swelled. A ship launching from the pier made a sharp turn and sounded its fog horn.
From the waves emerged first the head, a domed crown of bone like a helmet, covered in mossy green amphibian skin. Then came the sidewall eyes of veined orange. Then the snout. And then the upper torso, including two broad shoulders, the packed muscles of a chest and abdomen, and the ripples of body-builder-like arms tipped in claws the size of trucks.
“Ohh god…”
But Taurio did not even look at Doug. His eye was on the ship.
“No, no, don’t hurt them—”
But he could feel that Taurio would not. Taurio was his monster, and today, he was in a mood to listen. Taurio picked the ship up gently in both hands and carried it ashore. Water cascaded off the beast’s skin as he stepped onto dry land. Doug’s vision swam, and he blacked out.
————————————————————————————————————————————
“Emergency mode engaged.” A servo-mounted Minigun unfolded from Destructo’s back, leveled at Sullivan. The man dove aside just as Destructo let her rip. Bullets shredded his desk and the potted trees behind it.
Something struck his gun hard, knocking Destructo to the ground. He rolled away, just as wooden spears slammed into the carpeted floor where he had been laying, deflected by his tentacles. The warning programs in his system blinked red—the robot’s version of panic. He wrestled it under control and flexed up to his feet.
A scarecrow stood before him, eight feet tall, rail thin, bones of wood and flesh of hay. Glowing red eyes glared at him from the empty sockets of a Longhorn skull. A tongue of denim flicked out and licked the side of its face.
The creature sank down into a Serpent Kung Fu stance.
Destructo documented a note to add a flame-thrower to his next upgrade, and unfolded his tentacles.
Scarecrow lunged, thrusting his wooden arms forward, thrust after thrust punching wooden spears out from his hands and retracting them. Destructo swayed and ducked aside, stepping back with each step until he batted aside a thrust enough to twist inward.
But Scarecrow was not unprepared. He kicked forward.
Destructo flew back. In a last ditch effort, his tentacles shot forward and entangled Scarecrow’s bony wooden arms, pulling him with Destructo as they both plummeted out the window.
———————————————————————————————————————————
Gregor Sulivan darted for the wall and pressed a button on a hidden door of his office. A panel slid open revealing his inner sanctum.
“Murphy! Molotov! I need you!”
A female voice over the intercom. “We’re detained at the docks! Taurio showed up too fast!”
Sullivan sighed. “Keep them busy!”
He stopped in front of a stone statue of a creature. In place of a normal lower body stretched tail of a python. It had the arms and upper torso of a man, but the head of a boa-constrictor. Two huge fangs protruded from the upper jaw of its open mouth. The creature held its hands cupped in front of it, awaiting an offering.
Sullivan rolled up his sleeves and began chanting in Sumerian. He drew a sharp, ceremonial blade and lowered it to his left wrist, over the cupped hands.
——————————————————————————————————————————
Julie gasped. Above her, Destructo wrestled in freefall with Sullivan’s Bogeyman assassin.
In an instant, she made her choice. She pulled away from Kenneth and strode toward the front of the tower.
“Julie!”
“Get clear.” She reached up to the sky and called down the lightening. The pain of it hitting her outstretched hand burned with hellish agony-but only for an instant until she released Lady Caesar. A layer of infra-red haze covered her vision, and her skin glowed, sparking arcs of electric power between her arms and her body. With an edge of indisputable command to her voice, she added, “I have work to do. SCARECROW! YOU FACE ME!” She reached out, shooting a bolt of lightening at the nightmarish Bogeyman. Before her bolt hit, he vanished.
Lady Caesar knew what that meant, but was not fast enough to react. The wooden spear plunged into her side from the left. She shrieked in pain, lashing out with a backhanded strike. Scarecrow blocked her hand with a raised supple wrist and stepped back, rising up on on leg and presenting both hay-filled gloves like the heads of serpents. He swayed his hands back and forth, stepping gingerly.
Caesar juggled a bolt of lightening back and forth between her hands, her eyes locked on Scarecrow’s red lights. “Come to Mama.”
—————————————————————————————————————————
The mercenaries on the ship opened fire. Taurio moaned and stepped back, shielding his face with his arm.
Two more prickly sensations called to his senses—the arrival of two more Kaiju. He could sense them, feel them in the distance: his friends, the little nightmare tussling with Lady Caesar, the beacon of light buried in the belly of that ship…
And the shadow. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Something was coming.
Something huge.
Don’t hurt the Humans. That one command tugged at his mind as he snarled and kicked a wave of seawater up onto the ship. It bought him a respite from the gun-fire, but the other two would be here soon—Sullivan’s gigantic minions. He tried to call for help, but all that came out was an almost bovine trumpeting. The ground shook with their steps.
The Black Goat paced around him, her gargantuan cloven hoofs clopping on the concrete beneath her and cracking it with every step. Minos, her partner, circled to the opposite direction. He ripped the cable out of a nearby cargo crane and began whirling it like a manriki chain.
Taurio breathed in and out through flared nostrils. He fixed his sights on the Black Goat. She inclined her head, beckoning to him with one matted fur-covered hand. Taurio lowered his head and charged.
He should have hit her, but she was faster. The Black Goat twisted with his charge, throwing him forward through the wall of a warehouse. Before he could move, the lash of a crane cable cleft into his flesh to his ribs. He screamed.
———————————————————————————————————————
Destructo lashed with his tentacles, and Lady Caesar shot bolt after bolt of lightening. Scarecrow batted the tentacles aside. He tried his disappearing trick again, but made the mistake of trying it with Destructo. The robot’s tentacles grabbed him soundly before his attack from behind could land. Destructo cinched down tight with a vengeful focus. Scarecrow hissed in pain.
The ground shook as Tony landed. He licked his lips. “Yoohoo…Little Bogeyman…”
Scarecrow forced his way out of Destructo’s grasp and disappeared again. This time, he did not reappear.
Lady Caesar shrieked her frustration to the night, dripping glowing white blood that hissed on the concrete with each drop.
Tony lowered his draconic head to the street mere feet from Lady Caesar. “Leave him! Alex is on a ship!”
Destructo was the first to mount Tony’s scaly neck. “If so, Taurio is in danger.”
Lady Caesar mounted smootly behind him. “Drop us on the ship. You dig out Taurio.”
“Aye aye, Sister.” Tony took off and wasted no time.
———————————————————————————————————————
Taurio rolled hard. He brought his hand up just in time to catch the Black Goat’s cloven hoof in the motion of a flying kick. She bleated in surprise and fell hard. Taurio snarled and brought his other hand up to smash her face where she lay, but the steel cable wrapped around it hard. With a yank, Minos pulled Taurio’s arm down against the street. He lowered his horned head and charged.
But Taurio was no rank amateur. He shot his own bony head forward. With a sickening CLOCK heard a mile away, the two heads collided right between Minos’s horns. Taurio’s head swam. Minos stumbled backward with a panicked bovine scream not unlike Taurio’s.
Tony’s roar reached Taurio’s ear once more, this time from much closer. The Black goat snapped up a car and threw it at Tony, but he winged aside easily. The air whooshed as his shadow passed overhead with a strafe of fire-breath that nearly caught Minos, but instead coated the parking lot in a wall of flame between Taurio and the giant minotaur.
Taurio rolled up ponderously and drew a bead on The Black Goat as she watched Tony land by the ship.
Taurio took the opening. He snatched up an empty car and pegged it right for the Black Goat’s matted head. It hit squarely. She bleated again, this time paying Taurio the attention he was due. He huffed steaming breaths in and out, gathering his energy in the pit of his stomach.
He beckoned to the Black Goat, the way she had beckoned to him.
——————————————————————————————————————
Destructo and Lady Caesar hit the deck fighting. Lady Caesar tempered her bolts to only stun the poor Human fools while Destructo took very carefully-aimed and precise attacks with his tentacles, with his forcefield up, to drive their attackers to cover. A few rough fellows attacked with knives, but Caesar’s taser-hand and Destructo’s tentacles made short efficient work of them.
Lady Caesar led the charge down into the lower decks. Some of the less experienced crew, hesitating in their fear, charged anyway. Lady Caesar turned them back with a white-eyed glare. “Think real hard!”
Destructo blasted open the door of the brig. Two hefty guards stood up and brandished their assault rifles, but with two precise zaps, Lady Caesar put them down. Destructo swept up their guns and smashed their actions.
She called out. “Alex?!”
Pounding on a nearby steel door, and a muffled, “I’m in here!”
“Stand back from the door!”
Destructo did not need to be told this plan. He braced his feet against the far wall of the corridor and pushed against the lock with all his might. The steel groaned, screamed, and then finally popped. The door fell inward with a bang. Alex wasted no time running to them. He threw his arms around Lady Caesar’s waist with a fearful squeeze. He jumped back, staring at the glowing white blood on his arms. “You’re bleeding!”
“Ignore it. Are you hurt?” she asked.
“No. Sullivan’s crazy, he thinks he’s gonna summon a god, he called it Seti and he thinks I can stop it that’s why he took me!”
She bent down to his level and pushed the hair back out of his eyes with a gentle hand. She fixed him with a reassuring gaze. “You’re going to be alright.”
Alex swallowed. “Are you?”
She turned up one corner of her mouth. “Always. Trust me. I’ve had a lot worse than this.”
The eight year old hesitated for a moment, and then nodded.
“Let’s go.” Lady Caesar twisted up on her heels and led the way.
As they came up on deck, only a split second’s notice saved Caesar from the thrust of a wooden spear. She ducked under the thrust, but a second thrust scraped skin from her left temple, narrowly missing her eye. She snarled in surprise and barrled forward, shoving Scarecrow back. He tried to twist with her, but she was too fast. She grabbed his wooden wrists and spun. He flipped with the twist, but she brought one knee up into his hay-packed stomach. She pushed him clear and sent two bolts of lightening at him. He swayed aside.
Minigun fire. Scarecrow vanished and reappeared behind Caesar, but this time she expected it. With an explosive pop of electricity, she sent Scarecrow flying.
Destructo follwed with his minigun, but Scarecrow kipped up and ran.
Destructo ran out of bullets. He powered down the minigun. “Get Alex to safety. Leave Scarecrow to me.”
Normally, Caesar would have argued, but this time she did not. She hustled Alex toward the edge of the ship.
Not three hundred feet away, Taurio hunkered and caught a full charge by the Black Goat sending them both flying back into the wrecked warehouse while Tony roared and pounced Minos into the harbor. A wave of seawater washed up around Taurio’s feet. Alex stared in wonder.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Scarecrow bounded into the maze of tied-down shipping containers on deck. Destructo ran after him, tentacles out.
He ignored the otherworldly cackling and the stray sounds. By now, the four of them had learned to recognize Scarecrow’s auditory illusions. The flicker of a shadow here, the leap of a figure over the gaps in the containers there, he would look, but he waited.
Scarecrow’s Human touchstone was a serial killer, a special kind of mad-man. They liked to play, but if you bored them, you could lure them to strike.
And then the voice. Sharp, playful, staccatto. It came from everywhere. “You aren’t playing by the ruuuuules…”
Destructo effected a shrug. “If you have no interest in this game, I intend to move on.” He turned around to walk toward the exit.
A hiss from his left. He moved to duck under the strike and step in, but it was an illusory feint. The actual attack came from his right. Had he not suddenly attempted to dodge, the spear would have pierced between the plates of his back weapons covering and into his power core, but his sudden downward drop caused the spear instead to dislodge a neck servo with a pop of electricity.
Destructo’s sensors overloaded for just a second. Scarecrow grabbed his head and slammed it into a shipping container, denting the metal.
Destructo did the only thing he could think to do: He jumped up, bracing both feet against the shipping container, and pushed off with all his strength. Scarecrow hissed in surprise and pain, his wood and hay form sandwiched between the robot and the next container. His wooden bones cracked and snapped. Destructo pistoned again, and this time the hiss sounded like a scream.
Destructo found his footing again. His tentacles threw Scarecrow down the narrow corridor like a rag doll.
The foul Bogeyman reached with one shaky, splintered hand, trying to crawl away. Destructo knocked him out with a slap across the back of his cow-skull head.
He stood for a moment, staring at the prone monster.
It would be so easy. No one would see him. All he had to do was crush the skull. Somewhere, hidden in some nook he thought was safe, a serial killer would die of a brain hemorrhage and there would be one less monster in the world.
He raised a fist to do it, to commit himself to a merciful murder.
But at the last second, he punched only the deck of the ship next to Scarecrow’s head. He bent down to where his ear should be.
“For my promise to the Diaspora alone, you live.” He rose and strode away.
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Taurio snarled, raising the Black Goat over his head with both arms. With a scream to the night, he brought her down across his knee. A sickening CRACK sounded through the air like thunder. The Black Goat went limp. He dropped her unconscious body onto the concrete and wiped his amphibian mouth with one arm.
In the harbor, Tony pushed Minos’s head under the surf with a horn in each clawed hand. “Say Uncle!”
Angry bubbles and muffled mooing emanated from the water. Minos slapped the surface with his enormous hand.
“Say it! SAY IT!”
And then, the storm started.
A howling, banshee scream filled the night.
And then the portal opened.
Tony let go of Minos and stepped back, his eyes hard on the black gate above them.
Taurio stepped up beside. Below them, Destructo and Lady Caesar, the latter with her hands on the shoulders of their prize. All five looked up.
And then the first tentacle came through the gate.
Tony nodded, his mouth open. “We’re gonna need a bigger Kaiju.”