Godzilla - Prelude to Revelation: Erica's Journey Chapter 3

Godzilla Revelations

Part 1

Prelude to Revelation: Erica's Journey

by

D. A. Tindall

AKA The Quandary Man

 Originally written 1997-1998. Transcribed and updated 2015.

 Chapter 3 – Responsible

            Early 1993. Mothra had sensed the dangerous power of the singularity and was able to avoid its pull, but her scent trail, floating in empty space, drifted into the warped waves of the void, setting a trap into which Erica and the blue orb fell.

            Cloaked in a field of ancient and unknown energy, Mothra rested on the surface of a slow-orbiting asteroid. If the insect goddess cared about irony or vanity, then she might remark in some ancient tongue about the fact that she traveled this distance to stop an asteroid that was on a collision course with Earth, yet here she sits, using this smaller asteroid as a perch to gather her strength while her yellow, white and orange wings contrast heavily with the pumice gray surface of the floating rock.

            A tiny glow sparks on the tip of Mothra’s right antenna, and a tiny glowing likeness of herself appears from it, gliding down to the rock’s surface. On its back are the tiny avatars of Mothra, known recently to the people of Earth as the “Cosmos.” They have not, however, shared everything about themselves with the humans, and they have gone by more than one name. Shobijin. Cosmos. Alias. Once, a group of explorers even called them Peanuts. Their magical bloodline seemed to date back thousands of years, but no living soul knew their true origins. These tiny sisters, smaller than a child’s doll, had not shared even their own given names with their human friends—Moru and Lora. It was an act of caution they regretted after establishing trust with the likes of Miki Saegusa, but they have no time for pleasantries or apologies now. They accompany Mothra on a mission of grave importance, and they pray they will not fail.

            Although they are twins, a span of a day separated their unique birth, and the older of the twins, Moru, was the wise, serious and cool-headed one. Lora was impulsive, never taking things too seriously and often looking to her sister for guidance. This idea to go down to the asteroid’s surface was, of course, Lora’s, and Moru went along despite her opposition, just to make sure Lora didn’t get herself into trouble.

            “We have no time for this, Lora,” Moru says.

            “We have been adrift in space for so long, Moru,” Lora responds. “There is nothing to fear here, and I need to stretch my legs. Mothra may be able to protect us from the emptiness of space, but She has no cure for the ache of boredom in my muscles.”

            The surface of the asteroid was almost completely inhospitable, rough and jagged, but Lora spotted a small patch near Mothra’s left wing that apparently had been scraped smooth after a collision with another floating space rock.

            “Fairy,” Moru and Lora call in unison to their winged transport, “land right here.” The tiny moth chirps and does what is asked.

            Lora kneels down and picks up a small handful of dust, running it through her fingers. “Such a shame. Look at this soil, Moru. It is not lifeless at all. So many minerals. If it had air and water, just think of how much could grow here.”

            “Perhaps this stone came from a world that once had life. Perhaps it is a floating reminder of why we are here, one more victim of the destruction our target leaves in its wake.”

            “Perhaps you are right. I…” Lora, looking at her sister with a smile, stops talking suddenly when she sees that her sister has a more serious look than usual on her face. “Moru, what is it?”

            Moru waves her hand at Lora as if to shush her, looking off into the distance of space. “Lora,” she says, terribly concerned, “do you… hear that?”

            “Hear what?”

            “It… sounds like a voice, as if someone is calling out for help. It is faint, but…”

            “Wait. I hear it, too! It sounds like a human voice, a woman’s.”

“Impossible. No human has traveled this distance.”

“It could be some kind of trick, but it sounds like… she… needs help, our help.

            “Only the humans know that we are here, and they cannot follow us.”

            “I was just thinking about…”

            “Even Belvera would not go out of her way to trap us here in space, no matter what sort of mischief it suited.”

            “You know her too well.”

            “Mothra!” the sisters shout in unison. “We must find the source of this voice, whatever it may be! We…”

            Mothra chirps, interrupting them. She hears the voice as well, and something about it feels familiar. But Mothra cannot leave her position. If this strange voice is to be investigated, then the sisters will have to do it themselves. Mothra chirps again, and the sisters nod in agreement. “Fairy!” they call to their winged companion, and Fairy carries them away from the asteroid to discover just from where this strange sound could be coming.

            “Isn’t she beautiful?” Erica hears a female voice ask, but she is too weak to see through the darkness. “Who could she be?”

            Another female voice replies, “I am more concerned about what she could be. This is… unique… even for our eyes. She looks human, but she is… ethereal?”

            “A ghost?”

            “Yes… and no. Something more. Part of her still lives, but she shares that part with something else. Can you not feel it?”

            “I… yes, I feel it. It is familiar but too faint to tell.”

            “I can’t quite sense it either, but that does not matter now. Her energies are fading. We must take her back to M--”

            Erica slips back into an unconscious state, unaware that Moru and Lora have discovered her. Although she was little more than a translucent orange orb floating in space, the sisters could see her human spirit as if it were solid mass.

            “Lora,” Moru says, concerned. “Have you noticed where we are?”

            Lora looks around, thinking nothing of her sister’s concern at first because she has become bored with the monotonous emptiness of space. Then, she gasps and realizes what her sister means. “How…?” Lora is unable to finish her question. She suddenly realizes that her own boredom led her into a trap, and she did not realize that something should be here but no longer is.

            “This can’t be,” Moru says, deathly worried now. “It is gone.”

            “The singularity… vanished? How does a singularity vanish?”

            “I do not know, but this changes everything, alters everything we came here to do.”

            “How did Mothra fail to notice it?”

            “Mothra’s senses are not tuned to every corner of the cosmic plane, Lora. Perhaps She did sense it, but, for Her, it does not change Her mission. This only changes how She will face it. Come. We must take this… person… back to Mothra. Although she might be beyond saving, it is our duty to try.”

            Lora nods, and the sisters close their eyes, reaching out their hands in gestures with translations lost to modern tongues. They chant a song—a hymn that glorifies the powers of Mothra—and they encase the orange orb in a glowing field of energy tethered to Fairy.

            Mothra knows that her ill feeling is not unfounded as the twins draw closer with their discovery. She feels that same spark of energy she felt when she left the Earth. Somehow, it has followed her this great distance, and her failure to acknowledge it has altered the course of everything.

            “Mothra!” the twins shout in unison, landing on the smooth spot near her wing. Mothra is unusually silent.

            “Mothra!” Moru shouts. “I… we do not understand this being at all. She simply should not be, and we found her at the center of something just as impossible. I fear we are all doomed.”

            Mothra remains silent.

            “That doesn’t matter right now,” Lora says. “Mothra! You must help her! I think she is dying!”

            Mothra still is silent, staring at the orange sphere, feeling an urge to save it and to destroy it at the same time. This close to it now, Mothra can see deeper into the orb’s core than her twin companions. She sees not only the human spirit but also the beast. It is weak, but it remains there. The orb itself is weak, but it is not dying. Perhaps it cannot die at all. Perhaps this is some new godlike being gifted—or cursed—to exist among the Earth and stars for millennia just as Mothra has, being reborn with new power no matter what deadly trial may present itself. Mothra can sense that this being has suffered some difficult trials already.

            Mothra chirps, and the orb reacts to the sound, glowing brightly and then dimming as the call tapers off. The orange orb is hemorrhaging mental energy as it struggles to reconstruct itself, but it is all Erica’s mental energy. Moru and Lora now understand what Mothra can see as the orb’s mind penetrates them. In her helplessness, it seems as though her human life passes before her, and nothing that occurred after her human death is scattered among the images that flow through the insect goddess and the twins. They suddenly know this woman as if they had met face to face in the past. They now know her name—Erica—even though she died years before Mothra’s most recent egg was unearthed. And they see a dark shape attempting to hide from them, an amorphous mass with glowing red eyes and a dark maw of teeth hiding behind Erica’s beautiful smile. But they do not see Biollante. They do not see Godzilla or Space Godzilla, and they know nothing of Erica’s connection to the collapse of the black hole. They see only Erica, the kind daughter and friend, wishing—hoping—that this same Erica exists within the orb.

            Mesmerized by the mental images before them, Mothra and the twins do not seem to notice that the orb has been acting on its own initiative, extending tiny threads of energy from its form toward Mothra, strands so thin that they are nearly invisible. The strands touch Mothra’s leg gently, brushing over the grooves between the giant moth’s scales. The orb tastes something, and Mothra does not resist at first. She understands what this dark visage is within the orb now, but she does not seek to destroy it because she understands that the beast is a fragment of a whole, no different than the capacity for good and evil, kindness and selfishness, in any other living being on Earth. These tiny strands are reaching out for something that belongs to them, not to do harm, and Mothra will not be the one to deny them their rightful possession: the Godzilla cells.

            They were weak and desiccated, almost void of any of the energy that lured Biollante’s cells into space, but these still were Godzilla cells. The orb could not deny the pull, the never-ending desire to be whole. The strands sweep across Mothra’s talons, and Moru and Lora watch with confusion and worry as the orb becomes opaque again, glowing brightly with its energies. Mothra senses that she was correct not to judge the dark image within this being. She senses no increased strength in the dark spot, no ambition to conquer or control the whole. Whatever has happened to this conflicted creature, no one fragment of personality has total control over the others. There is a tense balance but a balance nonetheless. Around the sphere, Erica’s transparent form begins to materialize again, her eyes closed. To the twins’ surprise, she begins to speak.

            “Creature… my… fault,” Erica mumbles as her eyes begin to open. Her vision is blurred, and she is unable to see anything but a bright, hazy image of yellow, white, and orange colors. “Must… stop it…”

            “What do you think she means?” Lora asks her sister. Moru doesn’t answer.

            “Who… is there?” Erica asks. “I can’t see.”

            “Do not be afraid, Erica,” the twins respond in unison. “You are no longer in danger. We are the Cosmos of Planet Earth. We found you floating in space, and you almost died… again.”

            “Again,” Erica echoes. “Afraid? No… Just so… confusing. There is nothing out here. Everything is dead. No one could have helped me. It was just an empty gesture. This can’t be real.”

            “You speak of reality with a human ignorance that betrays your experiences,” Moru says, always suspicious. “You have died, yet you are not dead. You are human, yet you simply must be something more. You travel freely beyond the borders of your world, yet you disbelieve anything else could.”

            “Anything… else,” Erica echoes again, her vision starting to clear and an agitation welling up inside of her from Moru’s poor choice of words. “Don’t talk down to me… whoever you are. There is… something else. Something evil. That is why I am here.”

            “Please forgive my sister’s suspicious nature,” Lora apologizes for Moru. “You are something… fantastic and beyond anything we have ever seen, and we, too, are here with a purpose that weighs heavily upon our emotions. We sense similar emotions within you, Erica, but there still is so much we cannot see. Secrets have a way of unnerving my sister and making her act uncharacteristically.”

            “Sense… emotions,” Erica says. You know my name. Are you telepaths? Psychics?”

            “You might say that,” Moru says. “Perhaps we would be, if we were human.”

            Of all the confusion and even irritation Erica has felt during this conversation, she finds this statement the least surprising.  “You make too many lofty assumptions not to be human,” Erica says, but her vision finally clears enough to make out the figures of the twins. “You’re… no bigger than Jenny dolls. How…?”

            The sisters speak again in unison. “Much like you, we are more than we appear. We transported you here at the will of Mothra. Mothra is our reason and our power.”

            “Mothra?” Behind the twins, Erica finally sees the colorful, winged goddess take shape. Mothra lets out a low chirp, and she senses right away that she may have been mistaken in letting Erica live. The instant their eyes meet, Mothra hears a raging fury roar within the orb, and she realizes that the balance is stronger than she thought. There are no more secrets. There is no dark visage hiding behind Erica. Now they begin to blend together. The combined living fragments within the orb share emotions, and when they share the same anger, Godzilla and Erica share the same roar.

“You!” Erica bellows in a much-different voice as the orb begins to float upward from the ground. Moru and Lora are thrown back as a shockwave of red light hits them, and Erica’s psyche invades all of their senses. There are no more secrets from either side now. Erica sees through the guise of the so-called “Cosmos” and fills in the pieces missing from between their words, and her eyes turn a dim, bloody red. Her beautiful human smile is no longer human. It twists and contorts as her mouth begins to widen, and her human teeth begin to lengthen and end in sharp points. The orange orb pulsates within her stomach, glowing more and more brightly, and her human body becomes solid again as energy ignites within her dormant cells. Her long, black hair comes to life, lashing out as thick tendrils and grasping the twins from the gray surface of the dead rock. Fairy chirps, taking off and trying to intervene, but a hairy whip strikes it away. Fairy falls to the ground, twitching.

“Fairy!” Lora shouts. “Erica! What are you doing?”

“Liars!” Erica shouts at the twins, holding them close to her inhuman face as a thick green substance drips down a pair of sharp fangs. “You have lied to everyone you have met! Protectors of Earth? What have you protected with your many names and your stories rotting on cave walls? Shobijin. Cosmos. Alias. Pawns of Mothra, sitting in judgment of human ignorance while your goddess lay dormant in an egg as devastation happens all around her! A goddess that never appeared when she was needed! A goddess that would ignore the very Earth itself begging her not to leave and doom it to die!”

Erica’s cryptic words horrify the twins, but they cannot ask what she means. Mothra waited for Erica to say what she wished to say, but now the insect goddess has heard enough. In Erica’s present state, she could bring harm to the twins, and Mothra will not allow that. Mothra’s antennae glow with a pulsating white energy, and Mothra roars so loudly and fiercely that it seems to create a great wind in the void of space, a wind capable of blowing against a ghost. Erica’s hair loosens, and she drops the twins. The force of Mothra’s roar pushes her back, and her feet touch ground for the first time in almost five years, scraping across the surface of the asteroid as she resists the insect goddess’ assault. Then, surprisingly, Erica stops resisting. She closes her blood-red eyes and her toothy mouth, and she folds her arms over her chest. The twins had said themselves that this asteroid could have come from a planet that could sustain life, and the rose can taste the enrichment, thirsting for more. Erica’s misshapen human form disappears, and only the pulsating sphere remains. It falls to the ground, disappearing beneath the surface like the sun setting behind the ocean.

            All is silent. There is no sensation in the air, and Mothra and the twins cannot even feel a psychic presence. It is as if Erica never was there at all. Lora, unsurprisingly, is the first among them to feel a naïve relief coupled with an underlying sense of grief, believing that Mothra’s roar had exorcised Erica’s spirit from the living plane. As Moru brushes off the shoulders of her matching orange dress, she still keeps a suspicious look on her face. Mothra is silent, as she has been for such a long time. There is no need to contemplate Erica’s words. Mothra is no goddess. Goddess is a human word. Even the twins’ fealty to her is a product of the human ancestry they often deny exists within them. They are unique but still a human connection between Mothra and the Earth, and Mothra is simply something above human obligation or comprehension. Her obligation is to Earth, and that is why she is here now. She is here in desolate space to protect her home, even if it costs her life and she is never reborn from the ashes again.

            The ground beneath Mothra and the twins begins to quake, and Fairy has recovered just enough to take flight with the twins on its back. Mothra’s size, however, does not give her the luxury of such a quick take off, and she begins to flap her wings slowly. A whirlpool begins to form and swirl beneath her, and Mothra begins to sink into it. At the dune’s center, like a gigantic antlion trap, a toothy maw emerges, opening its alligator-like jaws and lying in wait as Mothra slides toward it.

            Mothra’s wings lift her into space just before the waiting teeth can snap shut on her, and she hears a frustrated moan from beneath the dirt as the giant mouth disappears beneath the waves of silt. Mothra circles around the dune, getting her bearings, and she is not prepared when four enormous vines shoot out from the ground from all sides, grasping at her talons and attempting to pull her down as the dune begins to reverse its flow, rising upward to form a mountain of dirt. Mothra feels herself being drawn too close to the mound, and the massive crocodilian head explodes from the sediment, striking her from beneath and hurling her away from her former resting spot. The massive head points skyward, rising out of the soil to reveal its entire body. Moru and Lora keep their distance and stare in awe as a hideous beast occupies the spot where Erica once stood. Covered in flailing and lashing vines, the beast opens its jaws wide to roar, showing off row upon endless row of drooling, razor-sharp teeth. Mothra looks down upon her attacker, and, when their eyes meet, Mothra and the twins can hear Erica howl its name: Biollante.

            A spray of green liquid shoots from Biollante’s gullet, propelled by the lack of gravity in space, and it strikes Mothra’s left wing. Mothra cries out in pain as the wet ooze burns her, but the distraction is temporary. A white pulse flows through her body, shaking the burning fluid loose from her flesh, and sonic beams emit from her antennae to strike Biollante’s hide several times. A burst of sparks causes green sap to spurt from Biollante’s wounds, but this only increases her anger. She spits more acidic sap at her flying adversary, but Mothra tilts her wings to avoid the attack, diving sideways past Biollante and grabbing one of the massive vines in her talons, shredding it and tearing it free from its host. Mothra drops the flailing tendril to the ground, and it flops around like a frightened earthworm until it is spent, splattering green ooze on the gray soil. Biollante seems weakened and distracted by the gory attack. Mothra believes that she can attempt the maneuver again, but she underestimates how much intelligence and strategy still function beneath Biollante’s rage. As Mothra dives in, aiming for another lashing vine, She dodges to avoid another spray of acidic sap, but she is too late to notice several new vines erupt from Biollante’s body, each tipped with a large flytrap mouth. Mothra is too close now, and she tries in vain to turn her flight away from the massive plant beast. Biollante’s vines reach out, wrapping themselves around Mothra’s neck and abdomen, and her flytrap vines latch their mouths onto Mothra's wings, drooling their burning sap. Completely bound, Mothra cannot remain aloft, and she crashes to the ground.

            The twins fly close to Biollante, trying to communicate with Erica, but they realize that the human spirit is too angry to listen when they meet the cold gaze of Biollante’s right eye.

            “Can you feel it, Moru?” Lora asks her sister.

            “Yes, it is just as you said. What an overpowering life force. This seemingly dead rock is so rich with elements that it must have come from a world that supported life, and Biollante is a creature that absorbs the very essence of the soil to transform and regenerate at will.”

            “It would seem that Biollante is a goddess of the earth, just as Mothra is a goddess of the air.”

            “I would not be so sure, Lora. She absorbs the elements from this stone, but this is not a planet with an atmosphere. She cannot use the energy and return it back to the soil from whence it came. There is no rejuvenating cycle. The energy she uses simply burns up and drifts into the vacuum.”

            Mothra struggles, but she cannot flap her wings. Instead, they begin to vibrate, and a glittery powder begins to create a dust cloud around her. On contact, the vines around Mothra’s neck and abdomen begin to wither away, and the flytraps release her wings to avoid the same fate. Mothra takes to the sky again, blowing the cloud in Biollante’s direction. The shimmering dust burns Biollante’s skin, and Biollante fires sap blindly in all directions, trying to dissolve it. The twins approach their goddess, and they spot Biollante’s potential weak spot for the first time.

            “That bulb at the center of Biollante’s chest!” Moru shouts. “Just like the orange orb… that must be her energy source! Mothra!”

            Before Mothra can stage an attack, Biollante reveals another of her powers. Her body flashes red with telekinetic energy, and an invisible mental wind blows the powder—and Mothra—away from the giant plant beast. Biollante’s vines begin to split and multiply, braiding and stitching themselves together until Biollante is concealed beneath a protective dome of wriggling plant matter.

            Mothra and Fairy attempt to breach the dome with their sonic beams, but each damaged spot instantly regenerates. The ground shifts beneath the dome as Mothra sees roots spread out from all sides, continuing to feed on the essence of the rock. Mothra turns her attention to the roots, trying to cut off Biollante’s apparent food source, but each root regenerates itself too quickly for this to have any effect. The surface of the small asteroid is turning brittle. Unlike the Earth, it has no sun, air or water to replenish its limited life essence. Its elements have made Biollante seem invincible, but it has been amputated from its world. The infinite pull from all sides of empty space is beginning to tear its weakened form apart, and it cannot provide Biollante a battery of nourishment for much longer.

            A strange hum begins to emit from within the dome, invading the moths’ and the twins’ senses as if an entire beehive has been set loose in their minds, and it makes Lora’s teeth chatter. The ground cracks and vibrates beneath the dome as the roots finally meet beneath the ground. The dome launches free from the asteroid, holding a massive shard of rock in its roots. The asteroid beneath her has been drained of all its nutrients, and the rocky core in Biollante’s grasp is the only reminder that it could have fed lush vegetation on some undiscovered planet. Were it to survive the re-entry and strike some living world, the meteorite left behind would be nothing but inert metal and silicate. Biollante’s dome begins to glow bright red, and the buzzing suddenly stops. Like an enormous seedpod, the dome splits open, and a huge, green, thorn-studded bud emerges from it on a long braided stem. The stem extends outward farther and farther until, Mothra realizes, it is not a stem at all but more like an enormous umbilical cord attached to the last chunk of the space rock. The petals of the dome shrink and fold outward, almost covering the asteroid fragment completely, but streaks of gray are still visible in between the petals. Two thorny petals also begin to open from the large bud, but they are quickly revealed not to be petals at all. They are two leafy green wings, almost bat-like and each covered with hundreds of branching veins and thorns on their edges. Biollante’s head appears, smaller but still the same pointed reptilian shape, and she roars a full two octaves higher as the head extends out from a streamlined new body that is no longer restricted by roots and soil. Twirling between her jaws is a long, forked tongue. Six fang-mouthed vines flail from her stomach to protect the brain-like bulb in her lower abdomen. Two trunk-like legs stretch from her back end, each ending in jagged, branch-like talons, and the long, braided umbilical cord of vines sways back and forth like a tail as it tows the small asteroid dome behind it.

            Mothra’s first instinct is to strike at the umbilical vines, but Biollante swings and undulates them back and forth too quickly for Mothra’s sonic beams to hit their target. Biollante swiftly turns her entire body around, pulling her wings in, and the asteroid dome swings around, striking Mothra in the side like a gigantic wrecking ball. Mothra spins around out of control, drifting deeper into space, but she rights herself again as her antennae glow brightly. She fires her sonic beams long-range directly at Biollante’s head, but Biollante counters the attack with a new power as red beams fire from her eyes. The creatures’ beams collide between them, exploding harmlessly with red and white fireworks. Soaring through the remnants of smoke, Mothra and Biollante strafe each other. Mothra’s right wing scrapes against Biollante’s right wing as they pass each other, but neither is thrown off-balance as sparks shoot off their skin. Biollante turns around to charge again, but she hovers in place, flapping her wings as she sees Mothra and the twins are still flying away in the other direction. Out of ideas, the twins suggest Mothra might be able to take advantage of Biollante’s scarce flight experience. Biollante is still adapting to her new form, and the tethered asteroid dome, no matter how difficult it is to hit, remains a crutch that will not support Biollante forever. Biollante believes they are retreating, and, as Mothra and the twins expect, Biollante follows. Mothra slows down, allowing the flying plant to catch up a bit.

            Red beams of energy shoot from Biollante’s eyes, and Mothra tilts her wings from side to side, avoiding the beams effortlessly as if she is deliberately trying to make Biollante even angrier. When Biollante gets close enough, her mouthed vines reach out to grab Mothra’s abdomen. Two of them succeed, but Biollante does not realize that she is right where Mothra wants her. Mothra executes her plan before she can be bound again, tilting her wings and head upward. She flies up and over Biollante in a perfect loop, coming to a stop directly behind the plant monster. The two flytrap vines, still latched onto Mothra like sleigh reins, have stretched to their breaking point, and Mothra strikes them with sonic beams to rend them from Biollante’s body. The flytrap mouths release Mothra, and the two vines drift lifelessly into space. Biollante howls and begins to turn around, but Mothra is keeping pace with her now and matching her every move. Mothra fires more of her sonic energy beams into Biollante’s back and wings, slowing the beast down, and Mothra counts on the twins to be the eyes in back of her head to warn her of what she knows will come next.

            “Now, Mothra!” the twins shout in unison as the muscles in the braided umbilical cord tense up and stretch. The wrecking ball asteroid dome arches up and forward, curving as the enormous ball attempts to come down on Mothra’s back, but the twins’ warning allows Mothra to swerve out of the way just in time. Biollante strikes herself with her own weapon as the asteroid dome crashes into her back like a mighty sledgehammer. Thick green blood spews from her back as the large stone is embedded in place, and her wings no longer have the strength to move. Howling and spitting blood, Biollante comes almost to a complete stop, and the umbilical cord hangs behind her, tangling itself like a noose. Mothra flies up and over in another loop, flying through the noose like threading a needle, and her right wing strikes the edge of the braided vines, severing the cord with another spray of green sap. Mothra lands on Biollante’s back, burrowing her talons deep in the dome engulfing the asteroid. The skin on Biollante’s back comes to life, erupting with tiny vines and roots that try with all their might to hold on to the pod. The four remaining flytraps on Biollante’s stomach extend around to grab her unwanted passenger, but Mothra’s sonic beams sever them from their stems, causing them to flail like wild water hoses and spew green ooze in all directions. Tiny drops of the sap inevitably spatter Mothra’s body, burning her fur and scales, but she ignores the pain. Glittery powder flows again from Mothra’s wings, but it is not as effective on Biollante’s body as it once was. It only slows Biollante down to a halt, but that is what Mothra wants.

            Static runs across Mothra’s body, conducting into Biollante’s to cover both creatures in a web of electricity, but as quickly as it appeared, the static flows backward back into Mothra and disappears. Blinding lightning bolts strike downward from Mothra’s wings, completely rending Biollante’s from her body. As fountains of green sap spurt from the wing sockets, Mothra tears the asteroid pod free from her back and hurls it into space in front of her. With one more calculated strike of Mothra’s sonic energy beams, the asteroid pod and the brittle chunk of rock inside explode. Biollante roars, seeing the surface of the asteroid beneath her. Desperate and without her wings, she uses what is left of her telekinetic energy to nudge herself into a swan dive toward the asteroid’s surface. She falls… and falls… and falls… and she realizes she has no energy left to slow her descent.

            Biollante’s impact on the asteroid surface crates a gigantic crater. Broken and bleeding, Biollante rests at its center, barely conscious. Tiny roots extend and scratch at the ground, but there is nothing left to absorb from the soil to help the rose to regenerate her form. Hideously wounded, the brain-like bulb in her lower abdomen is completely visible, and thick, yellow molasses seeps from its cracks. Mothra and Fairy drop into a dive, striking the bulb with their sonic energy beams with expert precision. Biollante’s head arches upward, roaring in defiance at Mothra, and then it crashes back down to the surface, motionless. The bulb ruptures, spilling a tidal wave of yellow liquid that saturates the lifeless gray ground. Her energy source completely depleted, Biollante’s physical form evaporates in a cloud of smoke and red light. Glowing yellow pollen floats into space above the surface of the asteroid crater. The green and yellow blood from Biollante’s wounds dissipates into the air, leaving behind nothing but space-worn dirt. As Mothra suspects, the small orange orb reappears where the massive bulb once sat, and the glowing pollen is drawn to it as Erica reabsorbs the faint remnants of her cells. Not a single cell denies the pull. Even the dismembered vines and spilled blood from the battle in space above them disintegrate into the same yellow pollen to join their host. When the last speck of yellow pollen disappears within the sphere, Erica’s translucent human form appears again, staring at Mothra with a weak but angered frown. Her human form flickers as she reaches a hand out toward Mothra, still defiant, but she is spent. Erica vanishes, and the orb floats to rest on the asteroid surface, pulled by what slight magnetic gravity the asteroid’s size still manages to create.

            Mothra and Fairy land in the asteroid crater, and Moru and Lora approach the sphere.

            “Why did it have to come to this?” Moru asks angrily.

            “I think she said… that we were to blame for something,” Lora says with tears in her eyes.

            “To blame for what? What could we have--”

            Before Moru can finish her question, Mothra chirps for them both to be silent. She opens her mind to the twins, allowing them to see everything that Mothra was able to see within Biollante as they fought. The sisters did not know that Mothra’s battle with the plant monster was more than physical. During the entire confrontation, Mothra reached out with her mind to glean every secret Biollante had spilled with her rage.

            “Get out… of our… my… mind!” Erica’s voice emanates from the orb, but she is too weak to resist. “We… I… kill you…”

            “Her identity is in conflict,” Moru says. “In her weakened state, the fragments of her being have no balance. They cannot decide who is in charge, and none of them are strong enough to take hold.”

            “Shut… up…” Erica whispers. “Don’t… know us… me…”

            Lora is crying. Her empathic mind is buckling under the psychic emotional strain of the ordeal, and Moru takes her hand. “I can feel her sadness,” Lora says.

            “No…” Erica struggles as her mind is probed, but she feels Lora’s intense emotions. She had chosen Lora and her companions as her enemies, but Lora shed tears for Biollante when she fell. Erica feels the same depression in her as she did when she almost harmed her father on the dock of Lake Ashino. She had lost control again and put caring souls like Lora in harm’s way. “Everything gone,” Erica says, “…dead… we… I… nothing to be sad about anymore. Should be…. want to die… We… I… only destroy just to be… whole. We are... I am… never whole.”

            All of the memories of Erica’s recent past flood before her and her chosen enemies. Her three-year sleep. The invisible tapestry and its explosion. The blue orb that eluded her into space pursuing Mothra. The black hole and its collapse. Space Godzilla.

            “No,” Lora whispers as she sees the creature’s image. They hear its shrieking roar in their minds as clearly as if it were before them, and the twins are struck with a terrifying thought.

            “That creature will destroy the Earth,” Moru says.

            “He… it… is not after Earth,” Erica says, slowly regaining her strength, “not now, but it will… destroy… anything that keeps it from its goal.”

            “I can feel its mind,” Lora says. “It wants Godzilla.”

            “Like us… me,” Erica says. “The pull. The urge of the Godzilla cells. Their animal instincts tell them that they have been separated… stolen… from their rightful place, and they have. But I’m not… and the creature… we are not Godzilla anymore. The cells do not understand that. They only understand the pull, but what bonded with the Godzilla cells in… the Space Godzilla… I don’t know what else to call it… I could feel something else. It was something alive… something possessed by greed. The Godzilla cells within its body want Godzilla, so it answers the pull. The other cells… the crystals… they want more than Godzilla, more than the Earth. They want everything.”

            “I can sense them,” Moru says. “They are something… ancient.”

            “Godzilla did not defeat Mothra," Lora says, in denial. How could he win against--”

            “Mothra had help,” Moru says hesitantly, fearing it shows her doubt in Mothra’s powers but unable to avoid the obvious statement. “Godzilla had… unexpected power, so much so that even Battra could not commit to his feud with Mothra any longer.”

            “I did not defeat Mothra, either,” Erica says, “but I only bested Godzilla because of human intervention. He was ill from a virus when we fought, a virus made from the same Godzilla cells that led to my death. I... we could taste that he no longer suffered from its effects when we... met.”

            “That may be true,” Moru says, “but can you put all your faith in the belief that Godzilla alone can defeat this Space Godzilla?”

            Erica falls silent. Her answer is one of doubt, and she can’t say it. “That is why I must return to Earth… to help him, if I must. I am responsible.”

            “You cannot return yet,” the twins say together.

            “But I must--” Erica begins to say, but Mothra’s shrill chirp cuts off her rebuttal.

            “What?” Erica exclaims, understanding the words behind Mothra’s call as their minds are still linked.

            “The reason we are here,” the twins say in unison, their words mimicking Mothra’s thoughts, “the reason we have all become responsible to one another—connected to one another—is still here, and it is coming.”

            “The creature!”

            “No, something far worse,” Moru continues alone. “Before we faced Godzilla or even understood what he was, Mothra was new to this century, hatched from a new egg just a few years after your human form died. Mothra has lived and died for thousands of years, once part of a prehistoric race that ascended to something greater from the life force of the Earth. She lives and dies as everything does, but She always lives again. Her spirit passes from one physical body to another similar to the Phoenix in some of your human myths, and each physical body is designed to suit Her needs. She is reborn a new Mothra each time, but She retains the memories and compounded wisdom of Her former life.”

            “Mothra’s rebirth also spurred the rebirth of Battra,” Lora says, a look of fear in her eyes at the sound of the creature’s name. “Battra and Mothra were distant relatives, but they had decided long ago that they would be enemies. The humans could not comprehend why Mothra and Battra even had reason to be at odds when they both seemed to share the same mission. We shared very little of the truth with them, but we will hide nothing from you any longer. Battra was not evil, but they were two sides of a coin. Mothra carried compassion within Her to see the need to protect human life and even to spare the life of Godzilla because they were a part of the Earth. But Battra… Battra saw humanity and Godzilla’s mutation as a cancer that needed to be cut from the planet, and Mothra was in his way… until he realized that he was doomed to fail. Battra and Mothra’s ancient feud never was over good or evil. It was over their methods. Battra never truly believed that Mothra was right, but he believed that something made Her stronger. He cast off his blood feud with Her and told Her of something that only he knew, something that he planned to do once he had wiped Mothra and Godzilla from the Earth forever. He told Her because, even in his death, he could not forget his duty.”

“Before Battra’s death, Mothra promised that She would take up his task Herself,” Moru continues, “and She would have to contemplate his other positions on Her own someday. That is why we are here. As we speak, an object of great size and power is on a wild path that will cause it to strike the Earth in the year 1999. If it is not stopped…”

Moru cannot finish her sentence, but Erica does. “… It will destroy all life…”

“Yes,” the twins answer in unison again, “but what we told the humans about this object was intended to ease their tensions in the coming years and to instill some faith that Mothra was duly equipped to stop the object and easily prevent any threat to Earth. It was a falsehood. We told the humans that it was a meteor, but this was a lie.”

“What?” Erica asks.

The twins hesitate to answer, but they must. “Our ancestors, the Shobijin, called it… Gorath.”

Post-script:

            You can thank too much adrenaline and anxiety over a trip downtown tomorrow for a Pokemon symphonic music concert with my nine-year-old nephew for this entire chapter being cranked out in one sitting. It took almost eight hours, streaming Toho monster scores from Ifukube and the rest on my music player the entire time as I always do (but not Emerson… never Emerson), but I did it. This is the first time I have been on such a role with no writer’s block, and even though most of this story was written already, I made several changes that were not present in the old draft. It was hard to stop at the end of this chapter, but that was the cliffhanger I had planned all along. Neat, huh? That’s not a name you ever expected to hear again, now is it? And no preview of next chapter this time either. You’ll have to sit on that name for a few days.

I always considered the Mothra trilogy of the late 90s as being set in the Heisei Godzilla universe. It was aimed at children, but it felt like it fit. Godzilla, Sr., was dead, suffering a core meltdown after his battle with Destoroyah, and Godzilla Junior, having mutated into something new and confusing, was in no mood or position to become involved in the troubles of the world. That, however, is a story for later. This chapter incorporated the Mothra trilogy versions of the Alias, Moru and Lora (or Moll and Loll depending on your translation), into the story and established them as the same twins that called themselves the Cosmos in 1992, going on to explain what was happening with Mothra in the depths of space after her battle with Godzilla was over. When the Heisei series introduced the Shobijin, they were no longer identical twins like the Peanuts of the 1960s, and the Mothra trilogy would separate their ages a little bit more, throwing in an older sister named Belvera. The opening scene and a large chunk of this chapter was brand new, and the dialogue is increasing as this chapter brings us almost to the middle of the story. The original draft began simply with description-free dialogue between Moru and Lora and only a passing reference to their sister Belvera as Mothra flew through space. I did not intend for Mothra to make any stops along the way, but she was very close to the end of her mission now. The original story had almost no setting up of scene. It didn’t seem necessary because the vacuum of space never really changed. No matter where everyone was, the background all looked the same. As I did the transcription, it started to become a bit disorienting because almost no one ever sets foot on solid ground. I could pretend and say I planned it that way from the beginning as a metaphor for the confusion Erica’s new path in life/death has created, but it was entirely subconscious if it was there at all. I rushed through much of this story in general, leaving it mostly as dialogue and some limited description of what was going on. I wanted peace of mind in a little more detail because this entire story is, in actuality, a large flashback of the present day 2001 Godzilla story I wanted to tell, but I couldn’t justify twelve years of Heisei Godzilla mythos in just a couple of narrative pages. It was inevitable that this story grow into something much larger because I am not satisfied at all with the lack of depth the original story had. It makes me cringe to think that I made a college creative writing class muddle through that. To be fair, the present-day 2001 story was over fifty pages and had a lot more detail, incorporating a lot of my creative writing professor’s instruction and peer feedback. I don’t recall whether or not this prelude was part of the story they read, but it had almost none of the elements of the larger story. “Erica’s Journey” started out at a glorified synopsis, so I hope that it can be enjoyed now for what it was meant to be: a space adventure.

            Erica’s reawakening went through a complete change in this chapter and the previous chapter. She was so weak from her distance from Earth that she couldn’t do anything but float around most of the time in the old draft. I felt this was unfair to her character and a little boring. Space Godzilla originally took her out without any problem, and the original story also called for Mothra, still unable to see the truth of what Erica was, using her own energies to “recharge Erica’s spirit” (those were the exact words in the original story I wrote, and, while I am glad I cut them out, I won’t deny I wrote them). Bringing in the other movie theory of how Space Godzilla could have been created through the Godzilla cells on Mothra, however, I had a new idea in front of me. This was the reason Erica was out here in the first place, and it was already going to come to a head with a big battle. I figured why not let the Godzilla cells inside Biollante get what they wanted just this once? Erica's transition into something out of a horror movie just jumped out at me. I still have a first draft on paper somewhere of a horror movie crossover I intended to write, pitting Erica against Misa Kuroi from the Eko Eko Azarak series, and I was thinking about it when Erica's anger started building up. Erica seems capable of anything, and Mothra and the twins are seeing her on two distinct planes of the mental and the physical. 

             Biollante’s new flying form… man. It became so much more complex than I intended it to be, but darn it, I was going for something practical. I still remember how silly that image of a little Biollante floating like a dandelion seed, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t end up having an effect on the final image. The old draft was simply a streamlined flying form as described, but things had to change when the asteroid turned out to be so important to her as an energy source. The entire dome and asteroid were supposed to explode. The new Biollante form would just appear from the dust, but I had had enough Michael Bay movie explosions. Yes, Godzilla movies are great with a lot of explosions, but the fact that Battra never cocooned always annoyed me a little, too. This battle couldn’t go on much longer, and I already knew the winner. It still plays out rather short even though the description goes on for a page or two, but just imagine it on a theater screen. Just like her first battle with Godzilla, Biollante could not win when she simply gave in to the beast’s rage, and she needed a physical weakness to match that internal turmoil and help Mothra bring things to a close. I have to admit that the flying Slivilith monster in an old Star Wars book-and-record story, “Planet of the Hoojibs,” inspired some of the imagery in my head for Biollante’s flying form insomuch as the body shape and tentacles. “Hoojibs” was one of my favorite little book-and-record sets as a kid, and I probably listened to it a hundred times.

            So... Gorath. I had seen the movie Gorath for the first time shortly before I began writing this story. It was a fantastic story of pure science fiction from the Showa era, and I thought that, if the “Cosmos” were hiding so many secrets from the humans, then why not have them hide a few secrets about the truth behind the “asteroid” headed for Earth just in case their last few years before oblivion were for nothing. Sure, telling them it was a large meteor was still oblivion, but it was a milder oblivion that would just kill all life on Earth, not shatter it into dust and consume it into some roaming cosmic entity. This Showa connection was an important part of the story from the beginning. Almost the entire story takes place in deep space with so few background details other than darkness and distant starlight. I wanted to include something larger and more colorful hurtling toward Earth than a simple lifeless meteor. The timing of seeing the movie Gorath was perfect for this story. First, I had a collapsing black hole, and now I had another fantastic cosmic phenomenon in the form of a “living planet” that consumed everything in its path. Next chapter, there is a major surprise in store as Mothra and Erica discover that they just may be ill-equipped to complete the task of stopping Gorath even working together. Battra was an idiot thinking he could do it himself. Sorry, Battra.

            The story is flowing rather well now, and I can say with some certainty that it will be limited to eight chapters and an epilogue. I don’t expect each chapter to be more than seven or eight pages long, but the finale may be a whopper.