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.

Godzilla - Prelude to Revelation: Erica's Journey Chapter 2

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 2 - Singularity

 

Forgive you for damning me? Erica thinks as an anger not entirely her own wells up inside her. You selfish old man. An explosion has torn Erica from her living vessel a second time. She can feel herself drifting apart with each passing moment, and her missing fragments move with ambition. This time, however, the separation is not permanent, for, unlike her frail human body, Erica’s physical being allegedly cannot be killed or destroyed. It only can be broken down and dismantled. A unique psychic bridge—created between the trinity of organisms that combined to form Biollante—is the only thing that holds the disparate masses of cells together now. When once they were a single, new organism, they now struggle to pull apart from one another because one of their number thinks it has found its true path.

The fragments of Godzilla cells in Biollante’s body feel the vitality of the Godzilla cells on Mothra’s talons, and they hunger for it. Erica feels it herself within the orange orb that contains her very being. The pull is different this time. Erica does not know how much has changed on Earth since her Godzilla cells were separated from their original host. The Godzilla cells that Mothra carries are from a very different Godzilla, a Godzilla torn free from time itself and mutated into something larger and even more menacing than he was before. The machinations of time travelers from the year 2204 had led to a new form of Godzilla whose cells were nourished with modern nuclear energy instead of the primitive materials used in the bomb tests of 1954.

If Erica knew of these changes, then she would question why she herself even continues to exist. If Godzilla had been transplanted from the time of his birth to another time just a year ago in 1991, then her death—Biollante’s creation—never should have happened. The race for the Godzilla cells. The explosion. Her father’s assassination. But her memory, sketchy as it is at the moment, feels unaltered. Every moment that flashes in her mind tells her there still was a Godzilla in 1984. Even if Erica knew these questions were there to be asked, then they still would not matter as much as the pull. The pull is the only thing that ever mattered, and it beckons her in the opposite direction of her home. The large blue orb cluster of Biollante’s cells continues to float into space, and Erica, controlling the flight of the smaller orange orb, follows close behind it.

With no need for eyes or even a concept of passing time, Erica does not know that she has been traveling in space for an entire Earth year. She only follows a hazy string of light in the darkness, never knowing how quickly she is moving. Passing between unseen layers of dimensions as a combination of physical molecules and spiritual consciousness, Erica would not know, even as a scientist, if any calculation existed to explain how she covers her distance so quickly. The farther she progresses, however, the stronger she can feel her physical being becoming. The regenerative aspects of the rose in Biollante’s cells allow her to absorb energy as she travels, providing her a seemingly endless food supply, but there is more. Pure animal instinct has been driving the blue orb ahead of her for so long, but its will alone is not enough as the psychic bridge between Erica’s cells begins to weaken within its form. The orb has been shrinking, losing bits of itself that Erica has picked up along the way, and she slowly draws closer and closer to becoming whole again. Still, the shrunken blue cluster that remains continues to elude her.

How can they avoid me? she thinks. They are mine. Frustrated, Erica knows she is lying to herself. She knows all too well that her body does not belong to her alone. She tries to deny it, but she learned the truth in Lake Ashino, the truth that part of her body once belonged to Godzilla. Her father’s creation was a beast with two minds and two agendas, and its body was made of not one mass of cells but three. The first two, widely known and accepted, were the rose and Godzilla, but Erica was the third.

1989. The world was aghast to learn that it had more than one monster. Photos appeared in newspapers in every country of the enormous rosebud sitting in Lake Ashino. It didn’t move to attack civilization. It only sat there, waiting and crying, but the plant’s size and the toothy flytrap vines slithering around it evoked all the necessary fear in the populace just days after the news broke that Godzilla still lived within Mt. Mihara and might even be freed from his molten prison if avaricious men’s demands were met. Dr. Shiragami stood on the edge of a pier in the lake, overlooking his creation. He told the world that this giant rose was his creation, the combination of Godzilla and plant cells, but he did not let on that his belief in Erica’s spirit was far more science than supernatural. He did not have to admit that there was a strand of human DNA from his own daughter running through the creature’s form. The faith he had in Erica’s earthbound spirit was enough, and Miki Saegusa was his prophet, proselytizing that she could hear Erica’s voice within the creature… until she couldn’t.

Between layers of dimensions separating life and death, Erica could see and move, but she could not feel or be felt or touched. Her father’s presence on the dock stirred something within her. Although she was connected again to a physical form, Erica could project her consciousness outward, invisible to the living eye. The pull, ever-present, drew her consciousness toward her father, and she felt his anguish. For that moment, she forgot about how much she hated him for what he had done to her, or so she thought. She could not make out the words as Dr. Shiragami argued on the pier with reporters, but she could feel his anger. His anger quickly became her anger, and her anger quickly became Biollante’s anger. A vine from beneath the water lashed out, destroying the edge of the pier and just barely missing any human life standing on it. Shocked that she could have taken her own father’s life, she remembered lashing out in her father’s laboratory and killing the two men that had attempted to steal her father’s work. She almost killed a third in that same skirmish, but the Saradian agent escaped, causing the first pain she experienced in her new form as he severed a young vine binding his legs. She had taken human lives with new strength she could not control, and it weighed heavily upon her. A part of her truly had wanted to lash out at her father, but she was no longer her father’s child lashing out with tears and harsh words of rebellion. She was something else, and her human anger brought with it the fury of Godzilla and a mass of deadly tendrils.

Miki sensed that Biollante was crying out to attract Godzilla, but she was psychically unaware that the cries also carried Erica’s grief. Erica had separated her consciousness from Biollante to try to reach her father, and she had unwittingly given the beast time to take control. When Erica attempted to return to her living vessel, a gigantic pair of ghostly red eyes met her gaze, and beneath it was a disembodied, crocodilian smile of razor-sharp teeth. This was the manifestation of Godzilla’s pure territorial instinct, but it did not look like Godzilla at all. Regardless of the manifestation’s appearance, Erica had forgotten in her momentary answer to the pull that they were constantly at odds. The raging animal spirit opened its mouth and seemed to devour Erica whole, trapping her at the core of its being as it waited for Godzilla to answer its call. Erica’s mind struggled within the beast as the massive rose fought a futile battle against the King of the Monsters in the waters of the lake. It had all of Godzilla’s capacity, but it had none of Godzilla’s stamina in this early stage. Biollante was defeated, but the two warring minds within her retained separate agendas.

            The blue orb is almost within Erica’s grasp, and she feels herself almost whole again. But now the blue orb is still. Has it given up its pursuit, or is it too weak to continue? All the orange orb has to do is to reach out, but now, Erica realizes, both of them are still, unmoving. There is a new pull, encompassing and inescapable, freezing the orbs in place. Erica attempts to open her “eyes” to “see” her surroundings, but she sees only darkness.

Could this be the afterlife finally calling me to its radiance? Erica thought. It couldn’t. We…I’m not finished… whole again. Not when I’m only this close… no. As Erica struggles to break free of the tremendous pull, she feels bits of debris surround her and stick to her cells. As the force grows stronger, Erica realizes that she cannot, and will not, break free, for even light itself cannot escape the power of a black hole. This dark power… a singularity… this close to Earth? No… nowhere near Earth anymore. This could be anywhere. How far have I traveled to die? As the pressure of the void pushes down upon her, Erica can feel her consciousness slipping. In what she feels may be her final moments, she prays, and she is surprised to discover that she does not pray to die. She prays to live…

Theories abound of the creation of black holes and effects on the space around them, but even Erica could not comprehend what was happening. Some ideas suggest that even time itself can become trapped in a black hole’s pull, freezing an object in place for hundreds of years as it slowly swirls toward the center of the force. Some ideas suggest that the tremendous pressure can destroy matter. Some ideas even suggest that a black hole is a two-way phenomenon, drawing matter and energy into it from one part of space and emptying it back out another through a white hole. Whatever has happened, whatever time has passed, whatever matter has been destroyed or compressed, Erica regains consciousness to find herself somewhere else. She can see stars again in the distance, different from any constellation she knows, and she can see the hole. It looks different somehow, a reversed image of the dark power that sucked her in, and instead of feeling its pull, she feels it pushing her away. Somewhere in the vast regions of space, this is where the force of the singularity reverses itself. It is here, far from where the pull of the black hole began but connected through a tear in space itself, where any form of matter that survived the pull—and even that which did not—comes to rest. The orange and blue orbs are so close to one another. Erica can feel it. The blue orb gives off almost no signature, as if it is floating dead in space. There is no more ambition left in it, no will of pursuit. Surrounding them is nothing but powder-fine, glittery space debris, all that remains of any base elements that were caught in the black hole’s power. Erica tries to move, but even the orange orb merely drifts, so close to its quarry yet infinitely far away.

All Erica can do is to rest. She can feel the regeneration of the rose within her, still defying its mortality as the orb synthesizes the light and debris around her to restore its energies. Something, however, feels different this time. Erica senses a desire again. It is infinitesimal and difficult to detect, but she can feel it around her. It does not come from the blue orb. Erica can feel the orange orb rejecting its nourishment. Something in the dust is incompatible and toxic, but attempts to cling to the orb nonetheless. The field of psychic energy surrounding the orange orb repels this strange dust, but the dust is continuously drawn to the orb, displaying what appears to be a pattern of intelligence. Like a bright orange bug zapper, the orange orb grows stronger with each spark, sending each speck of space dust farther away from it. But the space dust keeps coming back, and she begins to feel its desire growing.

What once was dust becomes several fragments of a luminous white crystal. Each time they are repelled, they fuse together into larger and larger fragments until, finally, a small crystalline rock is all that remains, glowing with a blue aura and constantly changing its polygonal shape as it seems ever-drawn to the energy of the orange orb but never strong enough to penetrate it. Erica wonders what this strange structure could be, but her human curiosity is a costly distraction. She has built up a substantial charge of energy while repelling the debris, but she has ignored the faint pull of the blue orb. In one final burst of psychic energy, she repels the crystalline rock once more, and the rock changes its target, moving toward the blue orb. The orange orb races to meet the blue orb, matching speed with the crystalline fragment, and they collide in an explosion of silver light as they fuse together.

Erica has absorbed the blue orb into herself again, but something is wrong. The blue orb refuses to rejoin her. The crystalline stone begins to envelope the blue sphere, feeding off Biollante’s psychic energy and preventing her from excising it. Like millions of needles, Erica feels the points of the crystals pierce the cells in the blue orb, extending their reach outward in an attempt to impale every remaining cell within the orange orb as well. Rather than to allow this malignant presence to take her over completely, Erica chooses to do the last thing she ever sought to do: she defies the pull, reversing it completely. After spending indeterminable time to reconstitute herself, Erica uses her store of psychic energy to tear her entire being asunder, and the orange orb shatters, sending glowing yellow pollen in every direction. Where the orange orb used to be, the blue orb sinks into the heart of the crystalline stone. The orange sphere slowly pulls itself together, and Erica can feel that the cells within the blue orb are lost to her forever. They have rejected the rose and rejected her, and they have bonded with something extraterrestrial. Erica still feels the pull, but it is no longer a desirable call. Instead, she feels a desperate and instinctive urge to retreat from it. She can feel its greedy hunger and desire to consume her. The blue orb pulsates from within the heart of the white crystalline stone, and it begins to grow, still reaching out for the orange orb as Erica struggles to elude its grasp. She fails, but the crystalline form does not succeed, either. Its entire molecular structure has changed after absorbing the blue orb, and its form is still mutating. A shock of red static electricity propels the orange orb away from the crystalline stone, a powerful psychic backlash, and the stone continues to grow.

The crystalline stone seems to feed off the psychic reaction, and it begins to grow larger and larger as red streaks of light dance across its blue aura. The mass expands, and its form is no longer simply that of glowing white crystals. Between the jagged shards, a form of skin emerges, blue and scaly. At the center of this mass of scales, the psychic energy from the orange orb seem to split into their components, painting the blue mass with a splash of yellow, red, and a peculiar green. A long spear of blue flesh juts out from the bottom of the crystalline mass, twisting and undulating as two more thick, trunk-like masses grow out from either side of it. Legs and feet, each tipped with four pointed toes, and a massive tail, startlingly familiar save for the small cluster of crystals that come to rest at its tip. Two muscular arms emerge from the upper portion of the blue mass, ending in hands with four razor-sharp claws each. Finally, two of the crystals expand and protrude from fully-formed shoulders, and, between those shoulders, a head begins to appear, its features blurred behind the blinding red glow of its eyes. Erica is horrified as she begins to see the head take shape. This is no longer a mass of cells and crystalline stone. It has taken the shape of a creature, and that creature is Godzilla. The head and body shape are unmistakable. On either side of the beast’s mouth, she can see characteristics of Biollante in small, tooth-like tusks on its cheeks. She sees the familiar rows of Godzilla’s teeth lining its maw. On its forehead, something completely new, Erica sees an oddly-shaped horn. This creature is Godzilla, and yet it is something else entirely. A Space Godzilla.

Within the creature, Erica feels something that cannot be seen. It is a force of will unlike any she has sensed before, and it is not the will of Godzilla. Whatever substance merged with the blue orb to give birth to this abomination may have been damaged and weakened from the force of the black hole, but it is something alive, intelligent, and feeding off Godzilla’s rage and memories. Erica attempts to probe the Space Godzilla’s mind telepathically for a better perspective, but all she sees are cascades of color. Explosions. Strange structures and peaks collapsing. An entire star going nova. Every image is of something dying, entire worlds ending, but behind all of it, she feels something else. Erica feels the creature’s delight. Whatever cruel fate could have led to the disasters that landscape the creature’s memories, whatever ancient devastation brought its remains to the black hole and laid them to rest here, the crystalline side of this Space Godzilla revels with insane pleasure.

Space Godzilla tilts its head toward the orange orb, letting out a shrieking roar. Erica’s intrusion into its mind has not gone unnoticed, and the creature stares at her. It can see her human spirit as if a living human were floating in front of it.

“What… are you?” Erica asks, not expecting the beast to answer… but it does.

“We… are!” Space Godzilla seems to shout into her mind. The two words repeat and overlap in ear-shattering intensity as if a crowd of a thousand chants them. Whatever the crystalline formation was before it merged with the Godzilla cells, it still had a voice. The mental noise is silenced abruptly, and the creature closes its eyes, the orange horn on its head radiating a blue light. Erica can feel it searching its own mind—Godzilla’s mind—for something. The beast finds the images it seeks quickly. It finds Godzilla. It finds Biollante. It finds Earth.

“No!” Erica shouts, and the orange orb surges with power. Space Godzilla opens its eyes, surprised as the orb begins to grow and change shape. The orange glow dims, disappearing into a massive green bulb, but the Space Godzilla shares Erica’s memories. It knows exactly what Erica is and what threat she poses. The gigantic crystals on the creature’s shoulders and the horn on its head glow, and orange lightning erupts from its maw, curving and twisting through space until it strikes the bulb. Yellow lightning passes from the shoulder crystals to the bulb, and the beast spins forward. Its tail moves with such ferocity that it cleaves the bulb in half, and the abomination can hear Erica screaming. The ruptured bulb bursts into a cloud of yellow mist, and Space Godzilla merely swims through it in the direction of the white hole. But Erica is not defeated. A strand of the mist encircles the creature’s tail, solidifying into a thick, green plant vine. There is no gravity and no rooted soil to dictate its form in space, and Biollante returns once again to the physical plane from the mist in a nightmarish form, an almost shapeless mass of dark green plant matter covered in vine tendrils. At the center of the mass, surrounded by enormous red petals, is the faceless mouth of Biollante’s first form, snapping as the tendrils reach out to grab the blue beast and entangle it.

As Space Godzilla nears the singularity, it thrashes its tail violently, and bursts of electricity from its crystals pour into the single vine that manages to hold onto it. But Biollante does not let go. She cannot let go. Her frustration and rage—Erica’s emotions combined with Godzilla’s—build within her, and Biollante’s form continues to mutate. The petals around her mouth wither and fall away, and her oval flytrap mouth expands, stretching into the familiar crocodilian shape that once tried to swallow Godzilla’s head whole. The manifestation of Godzilla’s rage Erica first saw in Lake Ashino, the enormous mouth has glowing red eyes and a seemingly endless blanket of teeth leading into its black gullet. Toothy flytraps sprout from several of her vine tendrils, and they lash out at the crystal beast, burying their fangs into its blue flesh. Space Godzilla roars, but Erica does not sense pain in the creature. An eerie tingle passes through her entire being as she feels that insane delight again.

No… it wanted this, Erica thinks as she feels the lightning energy coursing from the beast’s crystals through her body… and back into Space Godzilla. What have I done? Space Godzilla was not trying to escape. The crystalline beast had tricked Erica into taking a physical form, and it was using her as a conduit to siphon off the energy it could not consume from the orange orb. Now, Space Godzilla was an unstoppable comet headed straight for the white hole, and Biollante was the comet’s tail. Biollante tried to let go of Space Godzilla, but it was no use as their bodies became encased in red flame. Erica could feel the pull. What unimaginable power must have been flowing through their bodies to resist one of the most powerful cosmic forces in the universe, but the singularity holds no power over them. The creatures travel blindly through the void, and only in charging against the tremendous force trying to crush them and push them back do they know which way they are going. Space Godzilla and Biollante’s defiance has upset the black hole’s entire gravitational balance, throwing it in reverse, and the singularity begins to buckle under the weight of its own failure, dissipating around them like a spent hurricane. The core of the singularity begins to collapse, narrowing the tear between dimensions. Space itself bends and narrows around Space Godzilla and Biollante, and their bodies bend and narrow to match it, holding their velocity as if it still has no effect on them.

When Space Godzilla and Biollante emerge from the black hole, everything comes to a halt. Although they seemed to have been traveling at infinite speed between the ribbon connecting the black hole and the white hole, their speed in real space and time was no more than a crawl. The warped space at the center of the black hole folds in on itself infinitely until it disappears, and everything around it hovers in place for a moment as if in shock that its phenomenal power has ceased to exist. Slowly, the flow of electrons and debris in the vacuum begins to adhere to the new pull from every direction of the stars and planets, and balance is restored.

Exhausted, Biollante’s entire form goes limp, and the flytrap vines and tendrils finally, mercifully, detach from Space Godzilla’s body. The red flame fades, and Space Godzilla’s floating crystal mass turns an effortless one hundred and eighty degrees to face the enormous plant mass. The crystals on its shoulders glow and hum with energy as Space Godzilla opens its mouth to deliver a final blast of its weaving flame.

“No,” Erica whispers from within Biollante.

As if to taunt Erica, a voice responds from within Space Godzilla. “Yes,” it whispers.

Energy belches from Space Godzilla’s maw, spinning and twirling through space as if it knows no direction, but it strikes true, hitting Biollante directly in between her jaws. Buried deep within the plant mass, invisible to the naked eye, the lightning energy strikes her bulbous core. Like the invisible tapestry that once hovered over Earth, a yellow, stained-glass pattern of cracks form on Biollante’s body, stretching and growing until they consume her. Her body expands, and the cracks pull her apart at the seams. Biollante explodes in a crackling flash like a shattered mirror. There is no light. There is no floating yellow pollen. There is no orb. Only microscopic dust remains, joining all of the other space dust that makes up the dead vacuum of space.

 Space Godzilla turns again, its back to its fallen “sister,” and it closes its eyes again, smelling the trail of breadcrumbs. A faint trail of psychic energy—the signature left behind when Erica pursued the blue orb—points straight to Earth, and Space Godzilla only has to follow it. “Yes,” the voice from within the creature whispers again, and Space Godzilla is gone.

A voice echoes in the dead space where the singularity once churned. Help… me…

Preview of Chapter 3 - Responsible:

            “Do you hear that?

            “Hear what?”

            “It… sounds like a voice, as if someone were crying 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 she would not go out of her way to trap us in space, no matter what sort of mischief it suited.”

            “You know her too well.”

Post-script:

I wonder who else could be having a conversation out in space right now. It should be obvious, but all will be revealed next chapter. Things are quickly drifting away from metaphysical rehashes of Godzilla movies and into the meat of my original idea. While Godzilla is on Earth battling the military’s new Mechagodzilla robot and becoming a surrogate parent, this chapter opens the door to space, and Erica unknowingly becomes the first deep-space astronaut. In the first “final” draft of this story years ago, I dismissed a lot of singularity theory entirely, paying no real attention to the science of black holes. This was more of a paranormal fiction than science fiction, and I was creating a concept for my story that would have to account naturally for the very unnatural passage of time between the end of Godzilla vs. Mothra 1992 and the beginning of Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla. This was only about two years, meaning that the key players only had one year to travel into deep space and one year to come back. From a science fiction perspective and taking into account light speed travel theories, this didn’t seem possible. It didn’t seem like the cells that would create Space Godzilla could reach a black hole, be pulled into it, and come out to make the journey back to Earth in such a short time. Brilliant minds such as Stephen Hawking perhaps would take issue with my ideas, and I don’t even have an amateur-level understanding of quantum physics to explain in this story what was intended to happen. I decided to go back and watch the Heisei series again, and some of the issues and plot holes in the films forced me to make some tweaks. I explained it so that their theory just happens to be the right one, but they don’t have all of the details.

I did not want to reference Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah at all because of how many discrepancies it creates in the very existence of this story, but, as later Heisei films suggest, some unknown something in the time stream happened that prevented Biollante from being erased from history. Both Erica and I have to share the complete lack of knowledge of what that something was because even a guess on my part would be a completely different story. It did, however, have a positive impact on this chapter because I realized that the Space Godzilla creation theory had two distinctly different sets of Godzilla cells involved. The Godzilla cells Mothra scratched off and carried with her were from the Godzilla that had been “created” with modern nuclear energy in 1991 whereas the Godzilla cells used to create Biollante were from 1985 and only had a little taste of what modern nuclear energy was like. This taste of greater power became the motive for the Godzilla cell fragments in Biollante’s body to pursue Mothra, but, for now, I am just going to leave the plot hole that Toho left dangling themselves with regard to time travel. I put “created” in parentheses because that time travel mess is still giving me a headache, and something just isn’t right about it considering Biollante and Gondo factor into Space Godzilla’s plot so prominently, not to mention Space Godzilla’s cheek tusks and telekinetic powers lean in the direction of the Biollante theory rather than the Mothra theory. In reality, it is just a huge, paradoxical plot hole.

There must be an answer in story form, but I don’t have it right now. If not for the presence of Mecha-King Ghidorah’s remains being reverse-engineered to build Mechagodzilla, the entire Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah film could be written out as non-canonical, so another untold time travel story is the only way to explain it away. Even if I used a parallel world theory and considered that the time travelers replaced Godzilla with an alternate form of himself, then that still would not work. In fact, it would unravel my story completely because it hinges on Biollante’s Godzilla cells retaining a connection to their original host. Godzilla does look and sound slightly different in Mothra 1992, so the simplest explanation for me is that perhaps some descendants from even farther in the future pulled Godzilla out of time again in 1991 after his battle with Mecha-King Ghidorah, siphoning off the excess energy he had consumed and returning him to 1944 to ensure his original creation… nope. It still doesn’t work, but I’d love to see someone else explain how the events of Space Godzilla could have happened at all if everything before King Ghidorah was erased from history. It’s the references to Biollante and Gondo in Space Godzilla that create the time travel plot hole in the first place, and I don’t think I’m making it out to be a bigger paradox than it is. Something is missing. It certainly is a lot of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff, and that is why I am sticking to the metaphysical and biological material I wrote in the first place. I have an origin story to tell.

Again, this is a sort of paranormal fiction, and I am dealing with some imaginary ideas that split atoms. It wasn’t my plan to combine metaphysics with biology and astrophysics, but the plot sort of wrote itself. I did not account for Biollante’s physical make up in the older draft, so it has been fun trying to come up with a more detailed explanation of Biollante’s body on the cellular level as well as what happened on either side of the black hole. The Biollante I portray in this story eventually will be a Biollante that realizes the full potential of the film version, and even the small list of things she could do in the film was fantastic and unheard of. There will be some more scientific detail later in the story, but this little taste should suffice for now.

The final scene of this chapter took a completely new direction compared to the original story. I did not intend to use “Space Godzilla” as a name at all until later in the story when his name is established on Earth, but we all know who he is. I didn’t see the point in using a dozen permutations of “blue crystalline beast” to describe him. Even Erica could see that he was a “Space Godzilla” the moment she laid eyes on him. His birth in this chapter is virtually identical to the original draft, but the formation of the crystals and their magnetic and “intelligent” attraction is completely new. I always had intended for there to be some alien sentience within the crystalline rock that drew it to the Godzilla cells, but I never gave a description to their behavior until now. About midway through transcribing this chapter, I let it sit for a week. I watched the Shout Factory Kaiju Movie Marathon as well as watching Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla and a few other Toho films from both Show and Heisei eras. I won’t mention which ones.

When I wrote it twenty years ago, this story was designed to incorporate one idea from Toho’s Showa era into this Heisei continuity, and that little connection will be revealed at the end of the next chapter. Watching some selections of the Toho library again, however, I discovered something about Space Godzilla that seemed familiar. I ended up with a radical new theory and simply could not get it out of my head. That won’t be revealed for at least three more chapters, but rest assured I will come back to it. Depending on how much more complexity it adds to the story later on, I might drop the new idea entirely to keep things from getting too crowded. It is going to create some dramatic changes to the events of the final chapter if I follow through with it. If I do decide to cut it out, don’t worry. Each chapter from this point on will contain a post-script just like this as I flesh out the details and origins of the story as it progresses and compares to the original idea. I still think I am going to keep the new theory, though. It just feels like it fits the underlying stories of Biollante and Space Godzilla too well not to throw it in, and it is underexposed as a plot in existing films just as the Biollante plot that inspired this story. I want to expand upon their unrealized potential. It certainly will add a little extra incentive to continue on to the stories I have yet to write beyond a brief synopsis. Two Showa connections might be fun. We’ll see, but I’m pretty excited about it right now.

            I also did not intend for Biollante to make an appearance in this chapter (other than in flashback memories) because Erica was still weakened from her experiences. Her form in this chapter as it appeared popped into my head about an hour before I wrote this sentence, and I just ran with it. Years ago, I had a cutesy and silly idea of what form Biollante might take while floating through space. As a plant, the first thing that came to mind was a dandelion seed hanging from a cottony balloon. I never really wanted Biollante herself to be the one traveling through space in a physical form. It seemed more convenient and practical for the orange orb to do all of the work because it seemed capable of a metaphysical faster-than-light travel, almost a teleportation between physical and astral planes. Her physical and metaphysical forms served their own distinct purposes, and Biollante just did not seem built for space travel or even flight. The original draft saw Space Godzilla catch Erica off guard and dispatch her before she could do anything. When it strikes her with its tail, this was supposed to be the end of it. There was not even a bulb to rend in two in the old draft, just the weakened orange orb, and Space Godzilla was powerful enough to leave Erica behind and close the black hole behind it with its own energy, leaving Erica trapped in unknown space on the other side. There was a matter-of-fact description of Space Godzilla passing freely through the singularity and collapsing it, and this seemed too simplistic while making Space Godzilla seem a little too cosmically overpowered. I think he has the potential to match the original King Ghidorah, but collapsing black holes like pulling down a camping tent is a bit much. Erica’s first encounter with Space Godzilla needed some more monster action, and there needed to be a more reasonable, if fantastic, explanation for how Space Godzilla and Biollante returned to the other side of the singularity. You are getting a little peek into Biollante’s future early, but no regrets. There are plenty of surprises and new interpretations of the Heisei Godzilla universe to come, as well as a whole universe of ideas I put into motion that kept the Heisei series going for a dozen more films in my head. There are more battles coming up, and the next one is one of my favorites.