~ Every 100 Power Stones = Bonus Chapter! Your votes keep this climbing. Thanks!
"You... you saved me?"
"Good lord..."
Rao's heart was still hammering. He looked up and found the giant's bright eyes looking back at him, the massive figure crouching as it set him down on the ground.
This was surreal. Completely, utterly surreal.
He had been certain he was about to be crushed. Instead, this giant had pulled him out. This thing... was it something like Kong?
The giant didn't answer. It only gave a slight nod, then retracted its arm and straightened to its full height.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
MUTO had already recovered. It surged forward on its limbs, crushing collapsed buildings beneath each stride as it charged.
"GROOOWL!!" Corrosive drool dripped from its gaping maw, its eyes burning with hunger for the energy inside the giant's body.
The giant had already settled into a stance, ready to receive it.
"Shit!"
Rao turned and sprinted. Trained soldier or not, his legs were still working, and he used every bit of that training now, cutting hard down the opposite end of the intersection.
"The giant and the Titan are still engaged. No clear victor."
"AGM-65 missiles are ineffective against the Titan. Awaiting instructions." In the night sky, a fighter pilot watched the two behemoths trade blows from the cockpit, the jet screaming past as he relayed updates over comms.
"Continue observation."
"Copy."
The three fighters held back. No follow-up strike. No bombardment.
Same as San Francisco, five years ago. Humanity had no clean way to insert itself into a fight between Titans.
Inside the Monarch monitoring station.
"Radiation signature detected — moving fast from the Pacific seabed toward San Francisco. Arrival in three minutes!"
"That's... Godzilla!"
A technician spotted the reading and turned to Dr. Ishiro Serizawa.
That signature. He knew it immediately. The same Titan that had fought MUTO at the Golden Gate Bridge five years ago.
Godzilla had surfaced a handful of times since then, but nothing like this. Nothing that felt this deliberate. Like it had come looking for a fight.
"Godzilla..."
"To finish off MUTO?" Dr. Serizawa watched the dorsal fin break the Pacific's surface on the monitor, his expression unreadable.
MUTO fed on radiation. And Godzilla, saturated with it, was the perfect prey in MUTO's eyes. The two were natural enemies in the oldest sense of the word.
In the distant past, a Titan of the same Atomic Dinosaur lineage as Godzilla had been consumed by a MUTO. That MUTO had gone further still, parasitizing its eggs inside the dead creature's body, using its stored energy to incubate its young.
"MUTO. The giant. Godzilla."
"All three in San Francisco. What does that mean?" Dr. Serizawa's brow furrowed as he turned it over in his mind.
He had always believed Godzilla was different from the others. Not a destroyer. A balancer. Something ancient and purposeful, something that could, in its own way, be reasoned with.
Whatever was unfolding in San Francisco tonight, it felt like a turning point.
"Dr. Serizawa!"
"The giant's chest crystal — it just changed color. It's flashing red!"
The technician's voice snapped him back.
On screen, after another exchange between the giant and MUTO, the crystal embedded in the giant's chest had shifted from deep azure to red, pulsing in a steady rhythm, like a signal being broadcast.
"What does it mean?"
"Stamina dropping?" Dr. Serizawa guessed, frowning.
In nature, red meant danger. Flashing red meant danger closing in.
On the giant, it might be a warning. A countdown.
"No... that movement..."
"The one in danger might be the Titan." He saw the giant raise one arm in the ruins, standing still. He pulled off his glasses and leaned closer to the screen.
Out on the battlefield, soldiers scattered across the rubble caught the same motion.
"What is he... doing?" Jared, pressed against the base of a building, watched a faint light pulse at the giant's wrist. He had no idea what he was looking at.
This thing from outer space was a complete mystery to all of them. Its behavior was impossible to predict.
"GROOOWL!!"
MUTO clawed its way out of the debris and roared. The giant hadn't moved, still slightly hunched, arm raised, completely open.
The opening was enormous.
This was its chance.
"No!"
"I have to run!" Rao had seen enough. The memory of the last few minutes hit him all at once, and instinct took over. He sucked in a breath and bolted.
Then the giant's other arm came up. It swept in a clean arc and locked onto the raised wrist, both arms crossing.
VWOOM!
Light detonated.
Blinding blue, flooding the ruins from edge to edge.
"That's a super high-temperature heat ray!"
"One hundred thousand degrees... three hundred thousand... five hundred thousand... one million degrees!"
"The giant just released a heat ray exceeding one million degrees!" The technician's voice cracked as he read the numbers. He looked at the display again like he expected it to correct itself.
On screen, the moment the blue beam erupted, the buildings flanking the giant began to melt. The shockwave picked up everything in its path and hurled it outward, igniting a wall of fire. The beam tore straight down the street, vaporizing the structures on both sides, scorching a hellish trench into the ground, and drove directly into MUTO.
Lethal heat, spreading in every direction.
Rao had made it some distance down the block. He glanced back and saw the crimson wall of heat rushing toward him. He threw his arm up on instinct.
Everything around him was starting to melt. But the heatwave rolled over him and kept going. It didn't kill him. It didn't even break his skin.
Like stepping into a sauna. Brutal, suffocating, but survivable.
"GROOOWL!!"
MUTO wasn't so lucky.
The Specium Ray hit it like a freight train, the impact alone launching it backward. The heat charred its skin where the beam touched, and it screamed, a long, wretched sound, the cry of something that had never felt pain quite like this.
The beam punched through a corner of the ruined city and kept going, all the way to the dark water beyond. It didn't kill MUTO. It drove it into the ocean.
SPLASH!
The Titan went under, and the sea heaved.
Then, a beat later.
SPLASH!
Something else broke the surface. A dorsal fin, cutting through the dark water, lit with blue light. A Titan shaped like something from before the age of man hauled itself onto land, passing MUTO in the shallows without a glance.
"SKREEONK!!"
Godzilla turned toward the city. Toward the giant still standing in the ruins, both arms locked in a cross, the beam fading from his hands. It roared.
The air between them had been ionized by the heat, warping the space across the ruins in great rippling waves.
A sea of fire burned between them.
The giant and the Titan looked at each other across the flames.
➤ Next: Very Well, Aloof Guy
~~~~❃❃~~~~~~~~❃❃~~~~
Read up to (50+ ) advanced chapters on Patre\on
Visit us here: patreon.com/DarkGolds
Happy reading, everyone!