Chakra plopped herself down next to X and snuggled up close to him. “It’s not much fun for me, either. I’m pretty sure I saw Saint Peter roll his eyes at me last time I kicked it.” It was a half-hearted joke, but it did seem to soften X ever so slightly, so she continued. “I worry about you too, you know, but I’ve never stopped you from doing what you have to do. You’ve devoted your life to saving the world, and you use your powers to do it. All I want is a chance to do the same thing. I don’t want to think that I endured all those years of torture on the island just so I could sit on the sidelines.”
She placed her hand under his bearded chin and tilted his head up so she could look him in the eye once more. “Besides, Kozerah showed up today. He hasn’t shown up anywhere in years. That tells me the situation is getting pretty dire. You’ll need all the help you can get, right? Well, I can help.” She smiled sweetly. “We’re the same, X. We were both made for this, as much as we were made for each other. So let me help you next time, okay? Please?”
X’s mouth curled in such a way that was almost a smile. “I’ll have to sleep on it,” he said.
Chakra’s tail wagged as she grinned and drew closer to him, picking up on his hint.
Meanwhile, in the small theater, Richard was about to receive his answers about Kozerah, and he had no idea how profoundly they would change his outlook on the entire world. He was once again seated beside Nancy, while Daisuke Armitage stood apart from them and leaned against the wall.
“You’ll have to excuse the poor quality,” Nancy said as the reel began to play. “This was filmed in the early days, after all. Nineteen Fifty-two, to be exact.”
The image was, to Richard’s surprise, in full color, though the shakiness of the footage did make the image occasionally hard to see. In the moments when it steadied, he saw Kozerah descending the slopes of Mount Fuji, grappling with a group of four dinosaurs. The shot was filmed from above, likely from one of the shuttles, if he had to guess.
“We first learned about the big ones in Forty-nine, but we didn’t find them until Fifty-two, when groups of the smaller Kaiju started assembling in certain areas all over the world. Best as we can tell, they were staging some sort of coup by catching Kozerah and the others off guard.”
Richard’s head whipped from the screen to Nancy so quickly that he nearly gave himself whiplash. “Others?!? There are more Kozerahs out there?”
“Sort of.”
The reel switched, and before him was another aerial shot, somewhere in a rocky desert mountain range. Whatever titan was in this video nearly blended in with the sand and rocks around him, but Richard could see that it was covered in spikes and beating the tar out of some truly massive scorpions.
Nancy continued to exposit. “Like I told you earlier, ‘Kaiju’ is just a general term, Japanese for ‘strange beast’. They can be any size, really. The big ones are their masters. Some of us call them Daikaiju, giant strange beasts. You’ve seen Kozerah.” She pointed to the spiky behemoth on the screen. “That’s Armadagger.”
The reel switched again, showing a flock of pterosaurs flying towards a snowcapped mountain range, led by one of their own who was much bigger than the rest.
“And that’s Andrea,” Nancy continued, “and her charges, the Pterosaurs.”
Richard scratched his head. He was amazed by the sight of these giants, but something was bothering him that he could not quite piece together. He struggled to put it into words. “So, these big ones are on our side?” No, that wasn’t quite what was bothering him, but it was a good question either way.
“It would be more accurate,” said Daisuke Armitage, “to say that we are on their side.”
“You mean because they’re gods?”
Armitage, who was leaning on the doorframe, shook his head. “They’re not literally gods, no. Godlike, to be certain. They are dragons, who are in a league all their own. They were here at the beginning of time, and shall be here at the end of it.”
In any other circumstance, Richard might have taken the doctor’s words as pertaining to myth, but he could not fully dismiss the notion that they were meant to be literal. After all he had been through, Richard had no trouble believing it. “But aren’t dragons evil?” he asked. “In all the classic myths I’ve ever read, I’ve never come across a friendly depiction of a dragon.”
“They were not considered evil in Asia,” Armitage replied. “In China and Japan, dragons were the wise protectors of humanity. In a way, we are their charges.
“I wish I could tell you more about their origins,” he sighed. “Sadly, we can no better espouse on that topic than we can on the origins of life itself. Accounts of the Daikaiju go back to the earliest days of recorded history, and they likely predate even that. The ancient texts are where we learned their names. Even in those, it would seem the Daikaiju named themselves, rather than being named by us.”
Richard nodded in understanding, but something still bothered him. “How many of these big ones are there?” Another good question, but still not quite the one he was trying to ask.
“Not as many as the small ones,” Nancy answered, “but one Daikaiju has the power of at least a thousand Kaiju, and they don’t all have our best interests at heart.”
The reel presented new images, these ones static. They were lined up together, and from left to right, they showed a cave painting of an especially large theropod dinosaur, a fleeting glimpse of a vaguely insectoid thing with oddly-shaped hands that reminded Richard of sporks, a thing slipping through the water that might have been a fish or an iguana, and something that looked to Richard like an alligator with horns glued to its body.
“Again, sorry for the poor quality, but the big ones have been elusive up until recently.” Nancy rose and pointed to the pictures in left-to-right order. “These four are the ones that currently have our attention, the masters of the dinos and bugs that you’ve seen. This cave painting depicts Allorex, the bug with sporks for hands is Exoskel, the fish-lizard is Barracudasaurus, and the resplendent alligator is Wanirah. Based on all of the evidence, these four are the masterminds behind the destruction we’ve seen so far.” She gave a signal to the booth, and the projector switched off. “Based on our research, these four used to regard each other as enemies, but it seems the only thing they hate more than each other is us, so at the moment, they’re united until humanity is out of the equation. So, you were kind of right earlier: some dragons are evil.”
Richard nodded, but something was still bothering him. “So, wait, if that Pterosaur one-”
“Andrea.”
“Yeah, her. If she’s also prehistoric, how come she doesn’t have it in for us too? Shouldn’t she be with the dinosaurs?” No, still not quite what was bothering him.
“Pterosaurs aren’t dinosaurs, Mr. Godfrey,” Armitage replied.
“No, but neither are bugs or sea monsters.”
Nancy shrugged. “Andrea defected. We don’t know exactly why. Our best guess is that she figured the pterosaurs would stand a better chance at survival if she sided with humanity’s protectors. I don’t blame her, either. Kozerah is one heck of a juggernaut.”
“Fair enough,” Richard said. “I guess the important thing is that she’s on our side, right?”
Nancy laughed. “You couldn’t be more wrong, Richard. Like the good doctor just said, they’re not on our side. We’re on their side. It’s not the place of Man to tell God what to do.”
Richard nodded, scratched his head, and in a flash, he suddenly knew what had been bothering him. “Nineteen Fifty-two!” he exclaimed. “You said that’s when Kozerah, Andrea, and Arm-and-hammer-”
“Armadagger.”
“Right, him. You said that’s when they first appeared, right?”
“Yes, starting on December 15.”
“I remember the reports. Some eyewitnesses saying monsters had shown up, but they fell off the radar, and the official word wrote the destruction off as natural disasters. But it was really those three!” Richard
turned to Daisuke Armitage. “They appeared a week after you…spoke at my…college…”
In his mind, Richard set up a corkboard on which were posted all of the strange things that had happened both to him and to the world at large. Mental strands of thread began stretching between each item, twisting and linking in ways that Richard had never thought of before. By the end, his mental corkboard looked like a deranged art project concocted by a paranoid conspiracy theorist, and yet the connections all made perfect sense.
He stood, still staring at Armitage in utter disbelief. “You… You knew what would happen, didn’t you? That the Daikaiju were going to wake up, and that I’d be in the audience to hear you speak that day. Somehow, you knew.”
Armitage was as stone faced as ever, but his voice had a knowing, almost coy tone to it as he replied. “Hmm. Quite an absurd notion, isn’t it, Mr. Godfrey?”
CHAPTER 13
Michael Sun had spent the whole day fielding calls. Those representatives at the United Nations who knew about Operation Red Dragon were livid about the recent attacks in Japan and South America, especially considering how Operation Red Dragon had failed to contain them properly. He had caught all of their anger, and now he was angry, but with no outlet upon which to vent his anger.
His contact had been right. Those freaks were clearly planning to go public with the whole thing. Mike even suspected that they had deliberately botched things in Fukuoka and left Boca de Vacca to its fate for just that purpose. The news was already lit up with coverage, filled with speculation from people who claimed to be experts, many expressing skepticism about the veracity of the footage and eyewitness testimonies. Since none of them were involved with Operation Red Dragon, Mike knew these so-called experts were nothing but clueless fame-seekers, but he welcomed their skepticism as long as it helped keep a lid on things until he could find a way to fix this.
If the Red Dragons weren’t going to keep things quiet, somebody had to.
Yet the appearances of Kozerah and Andrea after all these years implied something else to him, something he did not want to acknowledge as true so he could continue being mad at them. If those two had surfaced, the predictions made by their scientists had been correct: the world was indeed heading towards some sort of large-scale Kaiju event, which meant that things were about to get very bad very fast.
In that case, the machine would have to be launched, whether it was ready or not, for the sake of all mankind.
Mike sat on the unmarked private bus that ferried people back and forth between Groom Lake and civilization, silently urging it to move faster so he could get to the secret base sooner. His personal hatred for the place had taken a backseat to the urgency of recent global events.
He was just thinking about what sort of harsh, scathing things he would say the next time he called X and General Tsujimori when the bus plowed hard into something on the road, jolting him as violently from his thoughts as from his seat. The impact point was low and should have simply stopped the bus in its tracks, yet as he tumbled forward, Mike felt the vehicle’s rear end rise toward the heavens and continue forward, as if whatever had struck the bus was flipping it.
Time seemed to slow as the bus hung inverted above the street, its occupants tumbling end over end.
Another flip so it was upright once more, and the bus slammed hard back onto the road, the last scraps of its momentum giving out as the wheels splayed outward and the underside scraped the pavement.
Mike was dazed, having been knocked against several benches, the ceiling, and at least two other people. He might have remained on the floor to recover, but the sudden appearance of a thick bony horn piercing the hull right before his face snapped him into fight-or-flight mode.
But there was nowhere to run. Similar horns stabbed both sides of the bus. Through the windows, he could see scaly arched backs that could only belong to the dinosaurs.
Mike joined the other passengers huddled in the center, and saw from the corner of his eye that the rear emergency exit of the bus had popped open, and was unguarded.
“Head for the back!” he shouted to the other passengers. “Get out and run like the devil himself is after you!”
The passengers heeded his command, and were fortunate to escape unmolested by the Kaiju, which Mike had a feeling were triceratopses, or some similar species.
Mike made sure everyone else got off before he did, but as he ran for the exit himself, the dinosaurs pressed their attack, making him stumble and twist his ankle as he ran.
Through the back, he saw the other passengers escaping, and not a single Kaiju was in pursuit.
That made no sense. These Kaiju hated humans and wanted them all dead. The bus was not their enemy, and they must have seen the others running. There was no way to miss them. This was the Nevada desert, a vast expanse of nothing for miles around, so any human caught here would be a sitting duck.
Mike finally staggered through the exit and began limping away as fast as he could go.
He paused when he realized that the sound of the bus being destroyed had stopped.
He turned and saw that the army of ceratopsians had abandoned the bus and were now focused on him, slowly encircling him like sharks. There was no way he could move fast enough to evade them, and the other passengers were already too far away to help him.
What on Earth were the monsters doing singling him out like this?
A thought struck him, and though it seemed too absurd to be true, the evidence before his eyes was undeniable.
The Kaiju had let the others go and continued attacking the bus when he was still in it.
Now that he was out, they had abandoned the bus and turned their attention towards him.
They were targeting him specifically.
Oh God…
Michael Sun slowly sank to his knees. He knew in that moment he was going to die right then and there, and knowing how vicious the dinosaurs could be, there would probably be nothing left of him to bury.
He took a deep breath in an attempt to steady his nerves.
If he was going to die today, he may as well face his fate with some dignity.
He closed his eyes and spread his arms to expose his chest, waiting for the beasts to gore him with their horns.
His eyes opened again when he felt the ground trembling from below.
The street before him heaved upward, peeling away to reveal a massive, mottled brown carapace covered in ivory spikes.
As it had on the bus, time seemed to slow as Mike drank in the details of the arisen titan. At a guess, it was perhaps a hundred and fifty feet tall, though its humanoid posture was slouched. The backs of his hands, tops of his feet, elbows, knees, the top of his head, and top of his short tail sported segments of spiky carapace similar to that on his back. The head was broad and flat, with a pointed snout and large eyes that glared down at him. The skin not covered by shell was smooth and sand-colored, making it hard to tell if he was reptilian or mammalian. Though the resemblance was superficial at best, the completed image reminded Mike of an armadillo.
He knew the beast’s proper name, though.
Armadagger.
The ceratopsians charged the new challenger, their original task of murdering Mike abandoned.
With movements oddly similar to a raging gorilla, Armadagger pounded at the ground, slamming the armored backs of his hands down on his attackers.
For a moment, Mike noticed that Armadagger was slowly backing away, and the dinosaurs were following him, taking the chaos of the fight from where he knelt. It seemed a deliberate move, as if Armadagger was herding the beasts away to save him.
Was he imagining it? Was it just his terror playing tricks on his mind?
No, of course not. Though he had never seen one, he still knew from the files that Armadagger was a Daikaiju, and Daikaiju were more than just mindless beasts. It had to be deliberate.
The fight was over in a few minutes, and the Daikaiju was the proud victor. Armadagger roared triumphantly to th
e sky. It was a warbling sound that was heard clearly in towns several miles away.
With the enemy sufficiently pulverized, Armadagger began to dig, tossing sand and rock into the air like a dog burying a bone, and almost as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone.
Michael Sun stayed rooted to the spot where he knelt on the ruined road, staring at the newly formed crater surrounded by dinosaur carcasses. It was like a scene straight out of a prehistoric horror movie. He did not know how much time passed between the end of the fight and the time the black helicopter from Groom Lake arrived, no doubt investigating the disturbance.
Armadagger had saved him from what was, for all intents and purposes, an assassination attempt.
Michael Sun now had a greater understanding of what was really going on.
CHAPTER 14
General Ishiro Tsujimori had secretly been monitoring all communications being sent and received by the Akira since his discussion with X in the hopes of catching the informant, and his patience had finally paid off. While going over the transmission records with the communications officers, he had determined a pattern of who was aboard the ship and where the individuals in question were whenever messages were sent from the private conference rooms.
Fortune had smiled upon him, for he had been alerted to another transmission in the wee small hours of the morning.
There was only one person who could be in the private conference room at that moment, and General Tsujimori already knew who it was by process of elimination. Nancy Boardwalk was with Armitage and Richard, which he had confirmed for himself, while Chakra and X were…otherwise occupied. Only one other person on the whole ship had access.
He had ordered the hallway to be clear of personnel until otherwise stated. If, heaven forbid, the situation turned violent, he did not want anyone caught in the crossfire. He also did not want to convey the perception that there was disharmony amongst the commanding officers on the ship, which would be bad for morale, especially at this dire juncture.
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