"I'll be damned!" Yamada whispered.

Matsumura spoke into the walkie. "Bunker 1, shackle the man on the beach and get his face out of the water! Containment, refreeze Ghidorah. Complete dormancy! Destroy Ghidorah if dormancy is impossible."

"Acknowledged."

Matsumura rushed into the house.

The soldiers in the first bunker ran forward to pull the man out of the surf. In seconds, his wrists were shackled in old-fashioned irons and chain.

Yamada asked Takenaka, "He does have just a normal man's strength, right? He didn't somehow keep his titan strength even in this form?"

Takenaka shrugged. "Dunno. Never done this before."

Yamada nodded and turned to Sergeant Fujisawa. "Check on the SAM crews and the fires. Report to me ASAP. Send the boat on patrol; tell them to look for anything unusual."

"Yes, sir." The sergeant left.

Yamada zoomed the camera onto the strange, new man.

Matsumura sprinted to the beach, her mind whirling, her stomach churning with emotion. After years of planning, after decades of destruction, could it be? she thought wildly. Did I really do it?!

The man was on his feet now, glaring around, looking panic-stricken and confused. The spell had given him a simple white cotton shirt and pants, but he was barefoot. The soldiers held him.

Matsumura arm-windmilled to a stop ten feet shy of him, panting. She stared. He whipped his head around to glare at her.

He had black hair and a hawk-like nose, but the most incredible thing were his eyes. They were mesmerizing.

They were the most intense eyes Matsumura had ever seen.

They held thunderstorms.

They held volcanoes.

They held the creation of the Earth itself.

The man hunched his shoulders, leaned forward, and breathed at her.

It took Matsumura a moment to realize what he was doing.

"No breath weapon," she said, shaking her head. "Not any more. And I know you understand me."

He just glared some more.

She nodded at the soldiers. "Take him inside."

 

Matsumura went to the restroom to compose herself. She leaned on the counter for a full minute, shaking and panting.

Finally, she quickly turned the faucet and splashed cold water onto her face. She tried to calm herself, taking slow, deep breaths. She leaned on the counter again.

She just let the water run. Somehow, the sound of it soothed her. In a way, her mind was mostly blank. One part of her knew she was in mild shock.

After several minutes, when her heart had finally calmed, she turned off the water and looked at herself in the mirror.

She smiled.

 

Composed again, Matsumura retrieved her laptop and headed for the conference room. Yamada stood outside it.

"Ghidorah's back in deep freeze," he said. "No casualties. The SAM crews are mostly fine; three have minor burns, many have eardrum damage. SAM 1's fire is under control. SAM 2's fire is worse, but should be contained within the hour, and it won't reach us. No need for reinforcements."

She nodded her thanks. "Is he in there?"

He nodded at the door, giving both an assent and an invitation.

She looked at him a moment longer, then said, "Join me."

They walked into the conference room and shut the door. Sergeant Fujisawa stood guard by the wall. The video camera was already set up and recording.

Godzilla sat shackled to a chair. He glared at them.

Other than his prominent nose, his face and build were oddly generic, and at first, Yamada couldn't figure out why he looked so strange. Then he had it: Godzilla's human form was an amalgamation of every racial characteristic on the planet. East Asian, Mayan, Hispanic, Norse, Inuit, Sub-Saharan African, Arabian, Native American, Celtic, Indian, and dozens and dozens of others.

Matsumura and Yamada sat facing him. Yamada let Matsumura do the talking.

"Good afternoon," she said, opening her laptop. "I'm Atsuko Matsumura. This is Toshiaki Yamada. Welcome to Junto Island, in the nation of Japan."

Nothing. Just a glare.

"Do you have a name for yourself?"

Nothing.

"You might be interested to know that we have a name for you. Would you like to hear what it is?"

Nothing.

"We call you Godzilla. It was originally Gojira, but somehow it morphed, and the generally accepted worldwide name is now Godzilla."

Nothing.

"Let's start with-"

"Why?" Godzilla asked. He barely moved. His voice was baritone, sonorous while still being a little rough.

"Seriously?" Matsumura asked.

Nothing.

"Self-defense. You've killed thousands of people and caused untold destruction. Is that not obvious?"

Godzilla looked back and forth between them, then said, "Insects."

Matsumura narrowed her eyes. "People."

Godzilla gave the tiniest snort of contempt. "Amoeba." He seemed to understand he was getting under Matsumura's skin, and also seemed to enjoy it.

He's adapting to his new situation very quickly! Yamada thought. He couldn't possibly have known what amoeba were ten minutes ago, and he's already using the word as an insult. He might be a lot smarter than Matsumura thinks he is. He said nothing, because he knew how smart Matsumura was, also. She, too, would be assessing Godzilla's response.

"No amoeba could ever reach up through a microscope and capture the scientist observing it," Matsumura said, and smiled smugly.

"Touché." Godzilla tilted his head. "But little humans have captured more than they can handle. Where is three-head?"

"We call him Ghidorah, and we have one of his heads. We keep it deep-frozen so it's dormant. We thawed it and stimulated just enough brain activity for you to detect. It's back in containment, so, sorry you can't play with your friend."

"Humans think you're clever, playing with toys you don't understand."

Matsumura flashed him another smug smile. "We're doing all right so far."

Godzilla looked at her levelly. "You only have to slip up once. And I'll be the one to clean up the mess."

"No, you won't. Now that we have the spell, we can handle all kaiju!"

Mockingly, Godzilla said, "Can. You. Really."

"Maybe we'll sit you all down in a circle of chairs so you can chat. Make it a reality TV show."

Godzilla looked at her with incredulity. "Reality TV. You know, I liked this world a lot better fifteen minutes ago when I had no idea what horrors you humans were capable of."

Yamada noted the change in Godzilla's speech pattern, as each moment he grew more comfortable using words.

"You don't seem surprised that we transformed you," Matsumura said. "This has happened before."

Godzilla nodded.

"What did the monks a thousand years ago want with you?"

"They held a feast in my honor, and thanked me for protecting the balance of nature. They wanted to be sure I understood their gratitude."

"That was all?"

"They returned me to my true form after one day. They did me no harm, and I got to enjoy eating food as a human instead of absorbing radiation. On that note: I presume you'll be feeding me while I'm your guest, so you should know I'm vegetarian."

"For real?" Yamada asked.

"I'm not a monster."

Matsumura narrowed her eyes at him.

"Where do you come from?" she asked.

Godzilla gave her a puzzled look. "I come from the world."

"I mean, what is your species? Are there others of you? Did you know your parents, and if so, what happened to them?"

Godzilla shook his head. "I am me."

"Don't speak gobbledygook, I know you understand the question."

Godzilla still looked puzzled. "I am the world. I have always been."

Matsumura and Yamada glanced at each other.

Matsumura parked the origin discussion for the moment and moved on. "Why did you attack Tokyo fifty years ago, unprovoked?"

"What is Tokyo?"

"All right, I guess normal vocabulary doesn't extend to place names." Matsumura turned on the large monitor with the remote, then brought up a world map on her laptop and sent it to the monitor. "We call our entire planet Earth, and this is a map of its surface. The blue represents water, everything else is land. The polar regions, where it's cold all year, are at the top and bottom. The pole with the ice cap covering an ocean is at the top, the pole with the continent is at the bottom. This view of Earth is what the human race has agreed is "right side up," so to speak, so most people never see a world map from any other angle. Though you've never seen Earth from above, I presume you recognize your territory."

"I do. It's not how I picture it, though. Are you sure it's accurate?"

"The areas near the top and bottom appear stretched due to the effect of presenting a curved area on a flat plane. Do you understand this?"

"Perfectly. I see it now. And I'm the opposite: I think of the ice-covered continent as the top of the world. It's the only land which points to the same sky all the time, so it feels like the center of everything, like all other points radiate from it."

"Have you always been aware of Earth's rotation?"

Godzilla shrugged. "In a way. It was either that or the sky traveled around the Earth. I've long observed that the sky is different in the areas you call the poles, so I intuitively understood there's an axis almost at a right angle to the sun's path, but never gave it any thought. But that's why I consider the pole with the continent as the top of the world; I can stand on solid ground in the center of all motion."

"Interesting," Matsumura said, and meant it. She looked at the map again and used the mouse pointer as an aid. "We are here. You swam here from this direction. Tokyo is here. It's the extremely large city you attacked fifty years ago, immediately after you woke from a long slumber. We want to know why you attacked it."

Godzilla shook his head and seemed to become a little agitated, his fluid speech suddenly more clipped. "For all my memory, the world was clean and good. I woke to the smell of oil, gasoline, rubber, vile smoke. I choked on it. I saw vermin poisoning my air, my water. Rage. I reacted."

"But as of today, because of the knowledge the spell gave you, you now know what those things are and why we make them."

"Learning the words changes nothing. Learning of the greed behind the smells makes it worse for you, and justifies me."

"You killed thousands of innocent people, including children."

"So do earthquakes and floods. Do you fire missiles at tsunamis? Do you put typhoons on trial and demand restitution?"

Matsumura was incredulous. "You compare yourself to random, gigantic forces of nature?!"

"Because it's accurate, yes."

"You are sapient. Those other things are not. Don't you dare pretend to be too stupid to know the difference!"

"There is no difference. Do you worry about stepping on ants when you walk? Do you care about roaches' feelings when you clear an infestation?"

"If they were sapient I would, but they're not. We are. Your comparison is not valid!"

"I am the world, and you are all insects! I have lived for eons, and will live countless more. Your lives are nothing but eyeblinks. Tell me why I should weep for a single one of you."

Matsumura pondered this.

"Touché," she finally said. "But in defense of my species, tell me why I shouldn't put a bullet through your brain right now."

Godzilla smirked. "How many times have I saved your bacon?"

Yamada cracked a small smile, admiring Godzilla's logic and chutzpah.

"Yes, you saved Earth from Ghidorah," Matsumura said. "And from the alien invaders, who call themselves Xiliens. And from several others." She looked at Godzilla keenly. "But you didn't do that for us."

"Irrelevant. Where would you be without me?"

"Is that why you don't seem afraid, even though you're completely in our power?"

Godzilla tilted his head back and roared with laughter. Matsumura just gave him a bemused look.

"You will restore me to my true self within three days, and you'll do it gladly!" Godzilla exclaimed with a sharp grin. "Killing me would ensure your own destruction."

"What do you mean by that?" Matsumura asked.

But Godzilla would answer no further questions.