This tale that you will soon read is but one of many. And there are, indeed, many. These tales are written to chronicle an age that began in 1954, an age that began with the death of the previous. For it was in 1954 that a man named Steven Martin wrote a book called This is Tokyo. In its prologue, he wrote "And thus the Age of Men has ended, for the Age of Monsters… has begun."

GODZILLA: THE MONSTER WARS

Book Three: …The Dawn of a New Day

A tale of the Age of Monsters

By

Juan Garcia.

27Now the house was full of men and women, and all the leaders of the Philistines were there. There were about three thousand men and women on the roof, watching while Samson was being mocked. 28Then Samson called out to the Lord and said: "O Lord God, remember me, I pray you, and strengthen me, I pray you, only this once, O God, that I take revenge on the Philistines for my two eyes."
29Then Samson took hold of the two middle pillars upon which the house stood. He held one with his right hand, and the other with his left and shouted "Let me die with the Philistines!" 30And he bowed himself with all his might, and the house fell upon all the people who were inside. The number he killed at his death was greater than that he killed in his life.
The Book of Judges. Chapter 16. Verses 27-30.

1Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and He will live with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. 4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."
The Book of Revelation. Chapter 21

Prologue

The time that the world was in was called the Monster Wars. With battles raging across the seven continents and all the forces of the planet standing together against the enemy, it was the greatest battle that the Earth had ever faced and would ever face and all that lived knew it. They knew it just as they knew that their planet was on the brink of destruction and there seemed to be nothing that anyone could do to stop it. The human race was helpless to defeat the monster that sought to ravage their world yet they there were those among them that simply would not cede defeat. In fighting for Earth, the humans who ruled it were either too stubborn or too stupid to give up; proof of the latter was seen in what had happened to the woman that had been chosen to save it.

At that, moment the psychic Miki Segeusa, the woman the Elias had charged with saving the world, was hospitalized somewhere in Japanese homeland to heal as per the Elias advice. She was hospitalized there because she had dared enter the mind of King Ghidorah, the destroyer of worlds, and she had paid the price. That was seen in that it had already been a whole week since the failed battle for Washington but there was still no change in her condition. The best doctors on Earth were doing all they could to save her but they couldn't even begin to explain what had happened. What had happened was that she'd suffered no physical injury and yet despite that, she was almost dead. The medical staff had four IVs feeding her Solgell Island Red Water and the Regenerator G-1 gene therapy was still in effect but neither was helping. That was because what affected Miss Segeusa wasn't a malady of the body but of the mind.

Considering that she had suffered this after trying to psychically merge with King Ghidorah in an effort to control his actions, confused doctors suggested that she suffered some kind of psychosomatic illness. That was the only logical explanation and was very likely considering who Segeusa was and what she had tried to do. However, while this was essentially correct, the whole truth ran far deeper. In fact, some of the only people that could understand what had happened would be the victims of demonic possession and the priests that performed the exorcisms.

The truth was that King Ghidorah had entered her mind, the mind of the most powerful human psychic yet born, and had almost destroyed it from the inside out. That seemed impossible and yet the very existence of the monsters that walked the Earth since the Age of Monsters began had been regarded as scientifically impossible. Breaking unbreakable laws, King Ghidorah seemed made to do that. That was because men made the laws of men but the laws of science that were built into the very fabric of Creation, were made by God, the King and Creator of Creation, and the three-headed monster spat on and despised all that was of God.

As for G-Force's main psychic, she was at the moment sleeping a troubled sleep; she tossed and turned on the hospital bed, suffering nightmares and suffering a cold sweat. In that darkened room, Kyle Martin sat at her side and heard her speak and moan and cry in her sleep. At that, the reporter's grandson took her hand and held it in his own in an effort to comfort her. At feeling the reassuring touch of the man she loved, Miki stopped her turning, but she still kept her heavy breathing and her chest still kept heaving.

Kyle Martin shook his head at this; as his expertise was desperately needed elsewhere, he wouldn't be able to stay in Tokyo much longer. If he'd have been able to, Kyle would have asked his grandfather to stay at Miki side in his absence but that was out of the question. His grandfather was already an old man and the destruction of their home back in Chicago had in no way improved his health. True, the elder Martin had selflessly volunteered to be there for the woman that both he and his grandson loved but it wouldn't do.

Yet while Kyle had been touched by the sentiment and he knew that Miki would catch up with the two of them in New York soon enough, he was determined to stay at her side as long as possible. He knew that Miki would make a full recovery, even if would take an inordinately long time. She was a strong woman and she'd make it; she had last time hadn't she? Until that time that she woke up, he would stay at her side.

It was then that that Miki's eyes began to move slightly and she began to slowly stir to consciousness. Her head ached as she dragged it across the pillow but she forced herself to move anyways. On seeing this, Kyle gently clasped her hand and brushed his hand across her forehead; he was greatly relieved to see that she was fine. He softly said, "Miki, it's me, Kyle. I'm here for you, just relax now."

Miss Segeusa looked towards him and weakly nodded. She then smiled as she squeezed his hand, before leaning back and closing her eyes. "Thank you."

It had been almost a month since what had happened at Washington but she had finally woken up… but what had she woken up to? Some would say that it would have been better to die and be done with it rather than face the world that now presented itself. Across the globe, cities lay in ruins, people were dying by the millions, and governments were collapsing by the day leaving only anarchy to rule in their places. In not a few countries, the people had just given up and mass suicides had taken place, leaving corpses to litter broken streets. The greatest proof of surrender was that the people were so desperate that they were prepared to use the Dimension Tide. The reporter's grandson shook his head at that thought. Since it came to his attention, both he and his grandfather were opposing it; Steven Martin had an appointment with Japan's Prime Minister to talk about it.

However, Kyle and those he knew weren't among them such quitters; if anything they were ready to stay true to the words Churchill spoke when the British people faced their darkest hour. Churchill said that they would fight in the seas and on the oceans, that they'd fight on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, and that they would never surrender. Indeed, what that man said of his people was now true of all peoples in that if their world were to last for a thousand years, that generations hence would say that this was their finest hour. Martin believed so with reason because he was younger than his grandfather was when he had crawled out from the rubble of a ruined Tokyo to tell Emiko if there was some way of helping that it had to be taken. Steven Martin's grandson and those with him hadn't given up then and they wouldn't give up, not now, not ever.

Miki's grandfather had heard a similar thing from another. On remembering this, Kyle looked at her sleeping form in the darkness and recalled what Private Akira Segeusa had heard in the Pacific War. It had been from his commanding officer and it was that they still had to believe in the final victory over the enemy. It was then that Major Shindo had told his men of all those that fought before them had fought valiantly and had fought to the very last man without giving up. It was true than and it was so now. They would fight on, no matter what. Martin passed his hand over Miki's forehead and knew that they'd fight no matter what.

However, while there were some willing to fight on, there were inevitably those who had lost all hope and thought to do nothing but hide and wait for the hour of their destruction. A few months later this was seen in one man, let's call him "Tim," who was amidst a sick, starving, ragged mob in front of the four city block sized City Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The broken skyscrapers that surrounded the burnt Hall were empty and the fountains around ran dry; it showed how the whole city was almost deserted and would soon be emptied. At least that was what the people on the food convoy said

On top of a Hummer, an armed National Guardsman spoke over a loud speaker. "I'm sorry but I have my orders that this will be the last delivery of food and medicine to come here. The city of Philadelphia is lost and you will all have to find somewhere else to go."

Someone shouted, "But this city is our home!"

"Yeah, we can't leave. We've nowhere else to go."

The guardsman shook his head. "I'm sorry but I have no choice. In fighting King Ghidorah, US forces are stretched dangerously thin as it is; we simply cannot waste any more resources here either protecting the city… or helping you."

"You back stabber!" an old man shouted as he raised his fist. "You say that you'll protect us and then when we need you, you turn your back on us!"

"Really soldier boy?" asked another. "Are you going to let us starve then?"

"Damn it!" yelled the guardsmen through the bullhorn, finally loosing his cool. "We have a war going on, the nation, hell, Earth is under attack by King Ghidorah! Not to mention that America still has the Swarm to worry about with a new Megaguirus to lead it AND the fact that Kansas is gone. Now all of you just shut up, get over it, get in line and get your food."

At that, grumbling people with sunken cheeks and showing ribs sullenly walked forwards to the military vehicles holding government foodstuffs. (What they got was the same kind that people on welfare get and it was just as humiliating.) With some of the nation's richest farmland, Pennsylvanians were a traditionally well fed people; that was seen in how the state had been the chief food processing area in the country for years and that its agriculture had been worth over three billion dollars.

But with the war on and with the Swarm having stripped orchards, vineyards, and wheat fields bare, and with King Ghidorah having Tainted what little hadn't been, those days were a memory. (Not to mention how Megaguirus, on taking command of the leaderless Swarm had had it destroy the state's manufacturing plants, steel mills, etc. She'd even had Them dug tunnels into Pennsylvanian coal mines so that the monstrous kamikaze fireflies could fly in to set the mines ablaze. After all, industry is the lifeblood of a modern nation. Clever thing, wasn't she?)

The soldiers in charge looked on as the hungry starving people walked towards the trucks; when they saw the food being distributed, they began shoving and shouting. The guardsmen on the Hummer soon saw that isolated incidents of violence began and that the hungriest people, those that most needed food were shunted to the back. Angry with this, the man in charge yelled over the loudspeaker. "Stop this right now and get back in line! Children and their mothers first!"

On seeing that the mob was neither listening nor stopping, the angry National Guardsmen fired a shot from his gun into the air. "I SAID, CHILDREN AND THEIR MOTHERS FIRST!" The echo of the shot hadn't even died down when the frightened mob immediately stopped in its tracks to let desperate ragged urchins go forward for boxes marked "cereal" or for bags marked "bread." However, there were still some who were itching for a fight and were ready to trade blows. A long column of people formed, desperate families, wanting to feed their babes. On receiving what was given them, the parents turned back and timidly took the food and their children back with them. But still more came to take their place.

At this "Tim"—remember him?—saw that the food would quickly be exhausted on those people. He knew that he had to get some food back to his own family. Unable to prove that he had one, he also knew that he would never get any. Desperate, he shoved people aside to get to a woman whom he saw had gotten several vials of medicine, maybe some of it was even Regenerator G-1. Tim saw the woman holding her son by one hand and a bag of food & medicine in the other to say, "Please, miss, I'm desperate. I've got kids at home and they're hungry and sick. If you'd just—"

"What?" exclaimed the woman. "I'm sorry, but I can't give you any. My kids are hungry too and they're right here. You're just going to have to get in line like everyone else."

With that, the woman walked away but Tim followed her. "Please! I didn't bring my kids and so they're putting me last in line. They're going to run out of food by the time they get to me!"

"Listen, you're going to have to get in line. If you don't, then you'll be sorry!"

Desperate, Tim grabbed her by the coat and said "Just one crumb, I'm begging you!"

At that, a tall man, the woman's husband no doubt, stalked towards her, pushing people aside as he did so but unwittingly sowing the seeds for a riot among an already edgy crowd. Ignoring the people that were beginning to shove and yell once more, the man came to his wife's defense and pulled Tim off saying, "Get your hands off her! Leave her alone and get out of here!"

Frightened, Tim pulled wads and wads of money out of his coat and pleaded. "I'm no thief. Take the money but just give me some food."

Amidst the fighting that had begun, the man that held Tim punched him across the face in disgust, saying, "Damn it! Money's no good anymore!"

With rioting and soldiers trying to restore order around him, Tim pulled out a gun from his coat and screamed, "You're going to give me that food or I'll kill you!"

On seeing this, the woman held her son to herself in fear even as her husband held up his hands and said, "Listen we need that too. You want some, just get in line."

"I can't wait that long. I know you won't believe me but I want you to know that I'm really sorry for this." Taking advantage of the situation, Tim picked up the bags the couple dropped and ran off with them and hid himself in the rioting crowd. Ignoring how much of a scavenger he was and instead telling himself that everyone else was doing it, he hurriedly picked up the food that other people dropped and ran towards a dilapidated automobile. After all, he told himself as he drove off, if he were to have let such thoughts of morality get in his way, he would never have stolen the Volkswagen.

He drove on the highway for hours until he got away from any urban areas and made it to the countryside. By then, he was on the highway going through the forest when he came across a large area of several hundred square miles that had been burned to the ground by napalm and blasted out of the soil with explosives. It had once been a place of green rolling hills and soft plains but now there were just scorched rocks, hardened sand, and dead trees for hundreds of miles around. This had been where the first battle between human armies and those of the new Swarm had been fought. You'd think it was the Arizona desert or something else but for now it was base camp for a tent and RV city made up of desperate refugees.

On arriving at his destination, Tim drove off the road and towards the shanty town of hundreds of tents, hovels, and RVs hoping for a warm reception from his wife. As for the wife, she was outside, leaning in the shade against a RV pensively watching the television set up next to a portable generator with several other people. They were watching news updates on the war and none of them was good. That Matsu woman was saying "Ham radio operators from Tokyo to Bogata are trading rumors of military forces in hiding, unwilling to reveal themselves for fear of annihilation."

At that she shook her head. That report was sure easy to believe; in the months since King Ghidorah had destroyed Washington, there hadn't even been a mention of resistance. It was then that Tim stopped his car near where his family's large cabin tent was and got off much to his wife's relief. She got out of the RV's shade to hug him and say, "Honey, are you all right?" She lowered her voice. "Did you bring back any food? Anything to help the kids?"

Tim smiled and pointed to the bags that were in the car. So that he might not be heard, he softly said, "Sure did. Look at them and at this."

With that he led her to the car and opened the door, leaning over to pull out a bag from the passenger side front seat. Bringing it out he opened it and revealed a syringe and several vials marked Regenerator G-1, the famed miracle medicine that was one of the few bright spots in the Monster Wars. The wife looked at it and cried tears of joy as she kissed her husband. "Oh, thank God, we might be able to save Bobby!"

With that, the two of them went towards the large tent that held them and all their remaining earthly possessions, their shoes crunching the sand and gravel as they passed the tents and cars. Yet as they walked past them all, Tim hid the medicine in his pocket, knowing that the other sick people there would quite possibly kill to get it-he saw the proof of that when he craned his neck and saw the Jones's burying their son. Last they heard, King Ghidorah had Tainted the boy with smallpox; he hoped that the other people in the Emmerichville had been able to get medicine from Philly but if not, then he would share his supply only after his own children were safe.

On getting to his large, walk in tent and opening the flap he saw his son and daughter asleep. The girl was suffering a cold sweat and was coughing; Bobby was suffering all that along with strange lesions and some scattered pustules. Seeing them, Tim closed the flap on the tent and pulled out a syringe; filling it with the odd green liquid marked Regenerator G-1, he injected his two children. Susan immediately stopped relaxed coughing and relaxed immediately; as for Bobby, he stopped sweating and turning, his lesions even seemed close in seconds.

Looking at this, the mother smiled and kissed her husband. "Oh sweetie, I can hardly believe this! It looks like they're getting better already."

Tears freely coming from his face, Tim chuckled. "Who ever thought we get something from Godzilla."

The wife said, "Oh I don't know, with all he's been fighting Ghidorah, maybe he's more than just some monster. Anyways, sweetie, I was wondering about all the food I saw back in the beetle, how'd you get them to give you so much food? I mean, it looks like it's more than what the government would give to one person."

"I… it's that…"

At that, his wife gasped and reached into her husband's coat to pull out a gun. "Honey, you promised you wouldn't! You could have killed someone with that!"

Tim cursed. "Oh what else could I have done? I had to get something for the kids!"

She sighed at that. "It's just that with those separatists trying civil war out west, and all the gangs that have been rioting and taking whole cities… I'm afraid that you'd turn into one of them. Honey, couldn't you have done something else?" asked his wife.

He shook his head and remembered how his brother had gone mad before turning into an emaciated skeleton that rotted away in its own filth. "No… with King Ghidorah there is no other way."

The wife looked up, deep in thought. "Maybe there is. If we can make it north to New York City, we'll be safe. It hasn't been attacked and there's enough food for everyone there. It's worth a try, don't you think?"

At that the fellow whom we have named "Tim" sighed. "Maybe."

At that moment in New York City, Secretary General Santos was brooding as he looked over the city from the windows of the UN's towering black Secretariat Building. At that moment, he saw how the setting sun made the forest of skyscrapers glow red. The man thought of how New York had been America's capital since the aftermath of DC's destruction and was serving its purposes well. (However, with White House II set up in the nearby Twin Towers, this also meant that he and Emmerich were now butting heads every other day.) After all, hadn't the city been the first capital of the US—Washington had been inaugurated President there—so wasn't America's capital just coming home? Well, many native New Yorkers didn't see it that way because the situation was going beyond even their ability to take things in stride. With so many refugees coming every day into the city, it was becoming dangerously overcrowded and the once seemingly infinite resources of the city were being taxed to the limit. Looking out from the UN Building, Santos could see the proof of this in the two Emmerichvilles—Hoovervilles in the Depression—that were carpeting Sheep's Meadow and the Great Lawn about a mile to the north in Central Park. With the warming of spring, there were more shanty towns like them in parks and other places across the city, especially on Staten Island.

New York City… the Imperial City of an Empire State it was America's largest, wealthiest, most powerful city. Built by the Dutch and called New Amsterdam, since its founding in 1624 the city had always been where big things happened. It was the center of world trade and of multinational corporations; it was a land of manmade mountains and a testament to man's ingenuity and knowledge. New York was a cultural center without equal, a place of books and poets and museums and operas. It was a place of Chinatowns, of Stock Exchanges, of Little Italies, of Macy Thanksgiving Parades, of St. Patrick's Cathedrals, of Greenwich Villages, of Columbia Universities, of Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, of Cloisters, and more. It was a place where America's greatest symbol cried out to all the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free, to the wretched refuse of teeming shores, a statue that cried out send them home to me. New York was a place where people of every nation, race, and creed, had come in the hopes of making a better life for themselves and their children. It was a virtual rainbow where every form of diversity; black men and white men, Jew and Gentile, gay and straight; was known and celebrated. New York was the gateway to a New World where countless immigrants had passed in hopes of freedom and a second chance.

Yet New York was also a place where violence and bigotry and ignorance had divided the very people that came there for that second chance. It was, in fact, a place where, during the Civil War, immigrants who came for that freedom had rioted and looted and killed, burning even hospitals and orphanages, in hatred at the idea that they were being recruited to fight for the freedom of slaves. It was a place where Tammany Hall leader Boss Tweed had ruled the city more than a hundred years ago with a corrupt and iron fist before falling from power and where political machines ground the people with an iron heel for decades afterwards until they too fell. It was a metropolis where pollution of the skies and of the waters and of the heart had run rampant for years. New York was a place where cynicism and callousness and greed were common place; as a place of business it was, in fact, built on greed. It was the place of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" where the rich had cruelly ruled the poor for so very long, making them slaves without chains. It was a place where its people had been made to anonymously slave away as if they were insects in an ant colony, a place of poverty and slums and ghettoes.

Yet in a strange way, having both the light and the dark bound together made New York what it was. In every way possible, New York City was America, both the good and the bad, right down to arrogance and decadence to the glory and the hope. As the most international city on the planet, a microcosm of the human experience, it was not surprisingly home to the UN, thus making it the capital of the world. It was by far America's greatest city and in many ways NYC, not Washington, had always been the capital.

From his topmost corner office, Santos looked across the awesome skyline of the city, every single building a tower of Babel, and wondered to himself how hard it would be for King Ghidorah to destroy them. As he sighed, he thought to himself that it would probably be rather easy for the three-headed monster to do so. In recent times, New York had come to be something of the light's last outpost before the eternal dark. It had held that position after the blood and carnage of the second World War in how the UN was formed as a global congress so that men might live on in everlasting peace. Since then, the New York headquartered UN had faced down invasions from lost civilizations and from alien races, it had seen the dawn of the Age of Monsters in the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. And it was in this city, that Secretary General Santos had vowed that the human race would fight on until it claimed final victory from King Ghidorah.

Santos shook his head as he took it all in. This city had always had a magical lure for him and it was very special to him. It should be; he had lived there for the past fifteen years and had spent the last nine in his current position as king of the world. For almost the past year since the Monster Wars began, this city had truly become Earth's wartime headquarters, something of Washington or London in WWII. Now, however, it seemed as if Hitler had taken London… and Moscow. Now, thought Santos, it seemed as if a vow of final victory seemed empty rhetoric. But as Stalin reminded his troops as he put guns to their heads in the "Great Patriotic War," it's for the principle of the thing that we fight.

Miguel Santos smirked at his bit of black humor; he knew that his son Tomas would have only rolled his eyes at that. Well, thought Santos, Tomas has enough on his mind with battling Megaguirus and the Swarm in Canada without such nonsense. It was in times like these that the Secretary General looked to leaders of the past and see the choices they made and apply the lessons they learned to his own policies. The only leader that had been in a comparable situation had been President Harry Truman in deciding whether or not to use the atom bomb. There was a difference, however in that Truman's Manhattan Project scientists had only wondered if their weapon would set the sky on fire while Santos had to wonder if his weapon would send humanity spiraling to the abyss with the push of a button.

Tomas had been asking his father to authorize the DT for months but he had always told his son no. It was quite simply too dangerous, too risky he had said. But after seeing everything that the DFE could throw at King Ghidorah fail and leave him free to burn the capital of one of Earth's mightiest nations to smoking cinders, the man felt that this was the only way that any of them could live on. It had been by far the most difficult decision that he had yet to make but he had at last given the order that the Dimension Tide be deployed against the three-headed monster.

It was than that Santos looked over New York City, the capital of the world, his world, and cried. He had given the order for the most destructive weapon man had yet formed and all he could think to himself as a one tear rolled down his cheek was, May God forgive me for that which I must do…