Godzilla/Marvel WORLDS COLLIDE Part 16

CHINA

The inorganic and the mythical collided in the ancient forest, turning the beautiful green valley into a pockmarked war zone.
Dashing backwards with a flap of her wings, Mothra dodged a swipe from Gigan’s right scythe, chirping and retaliating with twin beams from her antennae.
Guarding himself with his other limb, Gigan deflected the attack and twirled around to lash out with his tail.

“Jeez” Said Cyclops as he shook his head. “That thing is going to butcher Mothra if it gets the chance.”

Watching the fight from a hillside, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Kitty and Wasp looked on in awe as a creature of beauty and nobility warred with a monstrosity of alien flesh and engineering.

“She seems to be holding her own so far.” Wasp clutched a hand to her chest, wincing every time one of the cyborg’s blades nearly cleaved through their newfound ally.

Kurt did not share her optimism. “Ja, but for how long?”

Gigan lunged head first, his visor glowing. Savvy to his tricks however, Mothra loosed a cloud of reflective scales just as the ruby beam was fired, resulting in a massive detonation much closer than the alien Frankenstein anticipated. He stumbled back blinded, unable to stop Mothra from slamming the side of her body into him with such force it sent Gigan careening several hundred meters.

The group on the hillside let out a collective groan.

“It looks like he got thrown from a car!” Kitty exclaimed with a raised eyebrow, stifling a laugh.

As Mothra continued the fight, charging forward then evading a red beam, the leader of the X-Men pursed his lips. Scott Summers didn’t like being sidelined in a fight, not least one with this much at stake. He kept trying to think of ways for his team to help the benevolent Kaiju in some way, but it just seemed like nothing they did at their scale mattered.

“Look!” Nightcrawler called out. The others turned to see him pointing to where a barrel-shaped craft was lowering itself to the ground on thrusters. The large “Stark Industries” logo on the side confirmed that this was the rescue that Janet’s fellow Avenger had dispatched to them. Bearing the same color scheme as its creator, it landed with a surprisingly quiet thud, and a section unfolded to make a walkable ramp and an open space for them to enter.

Kitty was the first to make a move for the pod. “Exit, stage left!” She mused as she climbed inside. Attached to the inner walls were six seats, padded for comfort and stability, and interlaced with five-point harnesses.

From a speaker overhead, the familiar voice of the AI JARVIS greeted them. “Please enter quickly, and the pod will transport you to safety.”

“Sweet!” Kurt said, appearing in a seat and beginning to fiddle with the harness straps.

Wasp entered next, giving the portable room a look-over. “I hope he put a bathroom in this thing…”

Last, Cyclops put a foot on the threshold, pausing as he braced his hands on the sides.
I really should get in a seat. He thought to himself. But a combination of shrieks, one mechanic and another soulful, turned his ear.

“Uh-oh.” Janet said, noticing Scott’s delay. “I’ve seen that look on Captain Rogers a dozen times. And it never winds-up with a quiet ride home.”

“I’ve never run away from a fight I thought I could win.” Cyclops muttered with a snarl. “And I never left a friend behind.”

The rest were taken aback.

“Is there something about ze giant monster fight you think you can win?” An incredulous Nightcrawler asked from his seat. “Did you make friends with ze giant bug while I vasn’t looking?”

Scott slammed his fist in the wall. “We can help. We can do something.”

“We already tried ‘something’ Scott. What more can we do?” Kitty pleaded.

Glancing back to where Mothra was pushing the assault on a retreating Gigan, Cyclops made up his mind.
“You guys get to safety, I’m gonna stay and help her.”

“That would be a very dangerous decision Mr. Summers.” JARVIS warned. “Data I acquired while on the other side indicates-”

“I appreciate the advice, but the X-Men specialize in danger. We even have a room for it.”

Leaving the pod, Cyclops took a few steps before peering over his shoulder to see if anyone was going to stay with him.
“Anybody else?”

“Well I’m certainly not going to leave you here alone.” Kitty told him as she walked down the ramp.

Wasp rolled her eyes, “The rest of the Avengers would never let me live it down.” She too, abandoned the craft.

“Oh come on!” Kurt objected, raising his hands in frustration. He disappeared in a plume of smoke, and reappeared alongside Cyclops.
“I suppose if ve are in this, ve are in zis together, ja?”

Scott nodded to his friend. “Alright team, first time around we were playing softball. Now we swing for the fences.”
Looking to the wreckage of the Blackbird, he smirked.

Parrying a beam combo Gigan leaped forward, extending a stab with his arm with the target of Mothra’s belly. The guardian was forced to bend back horizontally to avoid being impaled, the tip of the scythe barely missing her. She rolled in place, and knocked his arm away before he had the chance to follow through, banking at a hard angle to keep the cyborg in front of her.

Thrusters activated, Gigan launched into the air, his thin red beam cutting a zigzag path along the ground until it threatened to slice of Mothra’s wing. It struck the edge before she snapped herself away with a painful chirp, the point of contact singed and burning. While she was flailing, Gigan’s chest saw buzzed to life, and he dive-bombed straight for her.

A ruby beam struck Gigan in the head, surprising him and disrupting his flight. Seeing the opening, Mothra raced up to him, grabbed his tail with her claws and somersaulted, slamming him back-first into the ground.

“Great shot!” Wasp commended, Cyclops next to her in the bush putting his visor back on. “Hawkeye would totally be jealous.”

“Thanks Jan. If we can keep hitting him where he doesn’t expect us, we can give Mothra more opportunities to finish him.”

Gigan wailed as he shook off the dirt and debris, getting back to his feet with his arms raised defensively. Mothra squared off with him, firing an array of ultrasonic beams to keep him in place.

In a poof of dark blue smoke, Nightcrawler and Kitty landed on the cyborg’s forehead. Between them they carried a section of the Blackbird’s fuselage taller than either of them.

“NOW!” Kurt yelled.

Together they hefted the metal, and using Kitty’s phasing power, put it through the surface of the smaller red optic until it stuck halfway out. Their task done, Kurt grabbed her by the shoulder and teleported them both away.

Trying to get back on the offensive, Gigan used his thrusters to dash sideways, and prepared to lance her through with a beam. As the mechanisms generated the power, an error alert flashed in his mind that the structure was compromised, but they were too late.

The optic in the middle of Gigan’s forehead exploded in a flash of red energy, causing the alien slave to scream and spasm.

Mothra reared back her wings, accumulating internal and lunar energies until the patterns glowed. With a single flap, she projected the energy in a wave that kept the shape of the wings, hard light weaponry. The wave collided into the paralyzed Gigan full-force.

The guardian of life on Earth, beautiful and divine, Mothra felt a pang of compassion for her opponent. It was just a feature of her nature. She knew Gigan was still a living creature, mangled and brutalized by whatever beings had first transformed him. Then mutilated further by the Vortaak that discarded even more of his natural body, exchanging touch and emotion for metal and circuitry. As formidable an enemy as he was, she pitied him.

The light force hit Gigan with his defenses down, and he was lifted bodily off his feet by the shockwave. His tactical response programming raced to initiate an effective counter-measure, and while he was still airborne, one was activated.

Gigan vanished in a flash, and manifested behind Mothra. Swinging down, he slashed through her right wing, opening a tear in the center. She cried out and fell to the ground, trying desperately to get back up on her good wing. Still disoriented, the alien cyborg came down behind her and made his version of a growl sound as he leveled his arm at her.

Grappling hooks launched from their batteries underneath the scythe, and wrapped themselves around Mothra’s neck. The cables began retracting, yanking her backwards against her struggling and alarmed trills.

“The lines!” Cyclops yelled, he and Nightcrawler sprinting. “We have to sever the lines!”

Taking to the air, Gigan strangled Mothra as he hauled her along. She fluttered madly to keep up, feeling the metal beginning to rip her apart. Gigan however had no interest in giving her the time to adjust, and dived low, skimming the top of the forest. The arc caused Mothra to crash into the earth on her back before plowing through everything where Gigan dragged her. Her wails filled the valley and the human observers with fear.

“That thing is going to kill her!” On their own trail, Kitty and Wasp watched on in horror as the ran on a parallel path to the fight. Seeing their ally getting the worst of it, Kitty wished there was more she could do.
“If only I could phase his head through a mountain!”

Wasp put a finger to her ear, “Tony! How’s things coming on your end?”

STARK ORBITAL PLATFORM “VERONICA”

“Just about ready Jan!” In zero gravity, Tony Stark worked his way through several floating holographic data windows.
“Just buy me another minute.”
Bringing one around in front of himself, he saw the feed of Gigan stopping short to allow Mothra to collide into his feet.
“Try and put some distance between those two, I don’t want the good one to be collateral damage.”

“You got it!” Janet confirmed. Glancing to Kitty, she swallowed a nervous lump.
“I’ve got something that should slow him down.” She said with questionable confidence. “But only for a few moments. Do you think you can get to Mothra? Get those cables off her?”

The junior X-Men didn’t have an answer in the moment. She had never attempted to phase something that size before, never mind under a high-stress situation like this. But millions of lives, including theirs, were at stake.
“I’ll try like hell.”

Gigan approached the writhing Mothra, giving her head a sharp kick. Looking down at her, his scanners revealed reams of information, not that he was particularly interested in the heat of battle. This was the third time they had fought each other. The first had been thousands of this planet’s years ago, when interested Nebulan colonizers had come exploring for a new outpost in their continuing conflict with the Simeons. They used him to smash any local resistance on selected planets, the vanguard for the occupation forces. Mothra had come to the rescue of the burgeoning Humanity and repelled him.

The second, had been under the command of the Vortaak empire, the matriarchal half of the Xillian race. His deployment had been to combat the Earth’s defenders, mainly the most powerful one. But Mothra had intervened in the battle, taking him away from Godzilla, and fought him to a standstill wherein both were critically injured.
Now, abducted to this planet, with no command signal from the masters to guide him, Mothra had found him again, determined to defeat him at last. In the absence of a current command directive, he would execute the standing orders for this world: destroy the host resistance, ensuring the successful occupation of command forces.

With an ear-splitting shriek, Gigan raised its free arm, the scythe poised to run his enemy through to the ground.

A puff of smoke appeared in the middle of the grappling cable’s length, Cyclops and Nightcrawler clinging to it like a tree. Aiming a few feet above from where he hung onto, Scott took off his visor, and let the unfettered power of his crimson beams burn through the space-metal.

The tethers came apart with a snap, and as the lower half fell away the X-Men removed themselves from harm’s way in a wisp of sulfuric miasma.

Gigan was unprepared for the sudden release, and was thrown off balance by the whiplash.

“Good thing you’re light!” A tiny Janet van Dyne said as she helped to lift Kitty up the slope of Mothra’s head. Holding onto the nape of her uniform, Wasp used her deceptive strength to boost Kitty as she climbed the up the cable that encircled the Kaiju’s neck.
Moving her hands and feet quickly up each spiraling strand, Kitty broke a smile. “I’m so self conscious about my waistline, it‘s ridiculous!”
Together they reached the curve of the summit, Wasp releasing her to make the rest of the way on her own.
“You can do it, girl!” Janet cheered before darting away.

Pryde took a deep breath. “Ok, concentrate.” Crawling her way along the turbulent geography, she rushed until she reached the middle. Laying a hand on either cable, she psyched herself up with a series of paced breaths, then channeled her phasing ability into as much of the tree-trunk wide lines as she could.

Recovering from the snapback, Gigan screamed in anger when he examined his severed cables, the interference of the humans a serious obstacle. Looking back to Mothra, he prepared to finish her off with a point blank blast of his remaining optic beam.

“Here goes nothing!” Putting herself in-between the two monsters, Janet reversed the mechanics of her shrinking ability, growing instead to many times her normal height. Her feet met the ground as she continued to rise, 25-feet, 40-feet, 65-feet, 90, 100-feet before she stopped. Straining her muscles and willpower to maintain the height, she raised her hands towards Gigan’s face and fired a volley of her stinger blasts.

The cyborg was bombarded from below by orbs of yellow energy the size of tanks. Though she was only a third of Gigan’s height, the alien was forced to stagger back by the rapid fire assault. They were not concussive, but the energies penetrated through the armor and played havoc with the touch sensors and circuitry that lay beneath.

“Come on!…” Wasp grunted, the effort wearing her down faster than she anticipated. “Just a little longer!”

The barrage overloaded Gigan’s sensory input data, preventing him from coordinating enough processing power to activate a teleportation from the line of fire. In a impulsive move he spun in place, his bladed tail slicing through the air.

Janet caught the movement in time to duck, “WHOA!“ causing her stamina to give way. She instinctively shrunk back down to her flying form, and circled back around to where she had left Kitty.

Her eyes shut and sweat dripping from her forehead, Kitty felt her power flowing through the length of the cables. “It just has to be long enough!” She told herself, “It just had to be long enough for-”

Surging upward like a resurrection, Mothra moved through the intangible cables, freeing herself from their choke hold. Unprepared for the sudden lurch, Kitty shrieked as she passed through the Kaiju, emerging out the other side as Mothra got away. Opening her eyes to now find herself astride a pair of unsupported cables, she realized to her dread that there was nothing to stop her from falling the several stories to the ground.

The lines collapsed and fell away from one another, forcing Kitty to hang from one by her fingertips.
“Oh no, no, no, no!” The cable pitched and she lost her grasp, falling backwards with arms outstretched.

“One good turn deserves another!” The tiny voice of Wasp called out as she wrapped both arms around Kitty’s wrist. “Get ready for a rough landing!”

Unable to support the weight fully, Wasp glided them down at an angle until Kitty could hit the ground running and combat roll to a stop. Pryde chose to spend a few moments laying on the ground to catch her breath and settle her nerves. Janet grew to her normal size and sat beside her.
“You X-Men don’t disappoint on the death-defying action huh?”

“Unfortunately not.”

“You know…” Wasp began, “When you were hanging there, I had to resist the urge to say: ‘hang in there’.”

It took Kitty a second, but as the image of the famous poster came to mind, she started to chuckle.

Mothra, listing to one side, prepared for another go-round with her long time rival. Her injured wing stung, but after her battles with King Ghidorah and Godzilla, it was nothing that couldn’t be dealt with. In that moment she remembered that even if she defeated Gigan, there would still be both of them to go face. Godzilla she could try and persuade, but there was no chance of surviving Ghidorah in her current state.

Unless…

The guardian of life on Earth began chirping, trying to reach the alien cyborg on some level of communication. Somehow, Mothra hoped, if she could somehow get him on her side, than the trio of Gigan, Godzilla, and herself could defeat the planet killer. Even though he had been a consistent opponent, the idea wasn’t any more improbable that it had been in 1964.

Gigan, seeing her change in posture hesitated to continue the fight, appraising her curiously. His audio processors told him that she was trying to communicate with him. Was this a new type of offensive strategy? Was this a distraction? Gigan offered only a sharp warble in return, unable to understand what his foe was attempting.

In bits and pieces, Gigan’s mind began to translate the chirps and trills, like hearing a transmission fading in and out of clarity through static.
“…you….to….please help…together…stop…orah…”
This was new to him, fascinating, and he lowered his defensive posture the longer he listened.
“…we don’t…fight…you can…”

A sudden pulse of incapacitating pain swept over Gigan, buckling his knees. His internal systems began to put a firewall around the incoming communication and the translation data, blocking it off from him. Outwardly he spasmed and jerked, inwardly his data feed was glitching and running through reams of information and readings. Finally, the system went dark.

Standing in place, Gigan fell silent. Arms dropping to the side, the light in his visor fading out, and his posture stooping.

“What just happened?” Nightcrawler asked, he and Cyclops having rejoined the women. “Did she use the secret password?”
Scott shook his head. “I don’t know. He looked like was listening to her, then he went on the fritz and shut down.”

Mothra tilted her head and barked, not knowing whether to be worried or relieved.

First the optic visor returned, its red light expanding from the center outwards. Then his head snapped up straight, the system rebooted. His targeting system locked onto Mothra as his face rotated in her direction.

“You guys…” A wary Kitty said. “I think Gigan just did a hard reset.”

Regarding Mothra with a drawn-out wail, Gigan tilted his head

“Hey Wasp!” Tony Stark yelled into Janet’s earpiece. “Get clear!”

“Time to go!” She told her teammates, waving an arm in the opposite direction of the Kaiju.

The group gathered together, “Kurt, take us back to the pod!” Cyclops ordered.

“Keine problem.” Nightcrawler said with no small degree of relief.

Mothra retreated slightly as Gigan took a step forward, she knew she’d been connecting with him, there was something underneath the synthetic exterior. But right now that part of him wasn’t in charge.

“Target acquired, Sir.”

Seeing the reticle focus in on Gigan from the bird’s eye view, Tony Stark entered the last of the firing protocols.
“Fire when ready JARVIS.”

The orbital platform thrummed with the sound of arc-reactor generators amplifying their output. Beams of light cast from each of the five fingers converged over the center of the hand-shaped machine to create an artifact. Built into the palm, was an arc-reactor 50-meters wide that started glowing brighter and brighter as the generators amassed their power.

Gigan shot his optic beam, but it was deflected by a cloud of scale from Mothra’s wings, erupting in a jarring multitude of explosions, the percussive force shoving her back. The cyborg continued to advance.

A column of repulsor energy shot out of the orbital gauntlet with a massive THUUME, streaking towards the Earth.

“Holy cow.” Pausing in the threshold of the escape pod, Kitty stared up at the point of light that got larger and larger by the second.

Catching sight of the incoming blast, Mothra yelped and fluttered away.

Gigan halted, not trusting the abrupt departure of his adversary, and expanded the range of his ambient sensors to detect any approaching threat. By the time his scanners identified the repulsor beam, he craned his head skywards, there was no time for evasive maneuvers.

The energy beam hit the ground like a meteorite, smashing a hole into the ground that turned trees and boulders into shrapnel. The crater left was covered in charred earth, a trail of smoke rising from the epicenter.

“Target missed, Sir.” JARVIS stated.

“WHAT!?” Stark yelled in shock, glancing between several data windows. “Where the hell did it go?”

Manifesting in a flash, Gigan had teleported several hundred feet in the air, the only means to escape harm in a split second. Engaging his long-range telemetries, he used the angle data of the beam to retrace the direction it had been fired from. Hovering high in stable orbit, he discovered the Stark satellite. With an angry screech, his thrusters propelled him into the atmosphere.

“JARVIS, how long until we can fire again?” Eyeing the feed of Gigan rocketing towards the station, Tony’s mind raced to parse his options.

“Two minutes to sufficient capacity, Sir.”

“And how long until Gigan intercepts us?”

“Approximately one minute, Sir.”

“Damn…” There was one trick that might work, but it bordered on exceedingly risky. “Tighten the fist JARVIS, deploy the defensive batteries, and set this thing on a collision course. We’ll see if Gigan wants to play space-chicken.”

The fingers of the station closed to form a fist, the boosters and stabilizers on the other end igniting to push it out of orbit.

“Sir, I advise against a direct impact. I’m still unable to discern what metals Gigan is armored with, they're not elements I understand.”

“Hopefully he doesn’t know that.” Tony said, “I’m usually one of those guys who can bluff his way out of a fight.”

On another nearby satellite station, many more onlookers were tracking the events.
“Director!” A male tech called out, “We’ve got another one! Just entered our jurisdiction.”

Striding over to the station where the technician had brought-up a depiction of two coordinates moving towards one another, a green-haired woman examined the readings. The signal that had originated on Earth matched the data of the anomaly that had appeared over China.
“Got you now.” SWORD director Abigail Brand snarled.

A dozen cannons unfolded from their compartments around the circumference of the VERONICA satellite, and began shooting their own smaller repulsor beams.

Gigan navigated into the hailstorm of fire, the Vortaakian armor easily protecting him from the inadequate ballista. Whatever this construct was, it clearly posed enough of a threat to place itself among his designated targets for destruction. A threat that had to be neutralized.

In case of the worst, Stark donned his personal armor, the face plate coming down as he watched the distance between them shrink.
“I think you need a lady’s touch.”

“20,000 meters Sir.”

“Stay the course JARVIS.”

“14,000 meters Sir.”

The front of VERONICA became cradled in a fiery aura, the friction of re-entry turning the satellite into a burning cudgel.

“8,000 meters Sir.”

“Come on you son of a bitch” Tony muttered. “Take one on the chin.”

“2,000 meters.”

As agile as he was on the planet’s surface, in space, Gigan was unsurpassed.
With a shriek Gigan flipped over, activating his chest saw. As he and VERONICA converged, Gigan skimmed along the underside, the buzzsaw slicing through the satellite’s armor.

Inside, a number of alarms and sirens were going off, inundating Tony with red lights and strobes.

“Superficial damage to the exterior.” JARVIS reported, a half-dozen data windows circling Iron Man. “But power to several of the stabilizers has been cut-off.”

Still hurtling towards Earth, the satellite started to wobble, losing the ability to stay straight.
“If the underside ends-up in the front, it’ll peel the armor off!” Stark realized, “And if the reactor core is de-stabilized, this whole thing goes supernova!”

VERONICA coming to an unexpected stop threw Iron Man against the wall, along with everything else in the cabin that wasn’t nailed down.
“TUUUUH!” The sound of the wind knocked out of him compounded by the pressure that squeezed his chest, was the same he‘d make after being punched in the breadbox.
“JARVIS!” Tony wheezed, “What the hell man?”

Instead of his often smarmy AI, there was a soft singing that answered him. A pleasant melody that he had only heard once before. Tony smiled because he knew he’d been saved.

Holding the satellite in her claws, Mothra trilled, heading into the outer atmosphere.

Seeing the two adversaries together, Gigan growled and dashed to attack them both.

Mothra fired a series of beams from her antennae, strafing ahead of her to keep Gigan from getting too close. The cyborg glided between them deftly, having evaded long-range fire from more than a hundred worlds. He returned fire with his optic beam, which she avoided by inches.

Exiting the thermosphere, Mothra released the Stark satellite into the weightlessness of space, continuing on to try and draw Gigan’s attention away.

“Thanks for the save big girl!” Iron Man said, unsure if she could hear him or not. An egress hatch on the exterior opened, his specialized armor allowing him to live for a time separated from auxiliary life-support systems. Long enough he hoped, for him to get a few of the stabilizing thrusters back on-line

If she was at a disadvantage before, outside of Earth’s nourishing atmosphere Mothra was even more vulnerable. The life-force of the planet was the source of her powers, and this wasn’t even her Earth. But the Sun was pretty much the same.

Putting the sunset to her back as it descended below the western horizon, she felt the solar energy soak into her wings. The light not only stored itself in her cells to revitalize her, but healed the tear in her wings. Like the world that begot her, she too was replenished by the life-giving touch of Sol.

Gigan opened the compartments in his chest, and released the pair of flying razor disks to lead the way ahead of him. Constructed around a remotely controlled gyrostabilizer, Gigan could guide them as accurately as if they were a part of his body.

The disks honed in on the unmoving guardian, their targeting instruments bracketed in on her head. A payment in kind for the conclusion to their previous encounter.

Her attention snapping to the incoming attack, Mothra bolted forward in a blur of sunlight, weaving her way through the disks with a spiral that left a twisting golden streak. The disks detected their missed objective, and circled back around.

Gigan fired his optic beam once more, and this time it struck home, meeting Mothra head-on. The ray however was deflected as she burned through it, casting the crimson energy aside like one arrow piercing another.

Recognizing the form of attack, Gigan avoided colliding into her with a barrel-roll over the top, coming down on the other side. He turned around just in time to receive his razor disks back into their pectoral compartments. Much had been learned since they last battled, strategies updated, techniques refined.

“All stations, prepare to fire.”
Aboard the S.W.O.R.D. orbital station The Peak, Director Brand watched as her subordinates went about their tasks of preparing to fire the FERG. They had missed their first shot, and she was determined not to miss again.

Mothra approached from behind Gigan, attempting to latch onto his wings and cripple his flight capabilities. But the savvy cyborg anticipated her, and reached up with the four-pronged claw of his tail and dug them into the base of her abdomen. She wailed as her exoskeleton was pierced, pale green ichors spurting out and the globules drifting off.

Contorting himself to face her, Gigan readied for a point-blank blast of his optic beam to decapitate her, but then found himself immersed in a cloud of the shimmering reflective scales. Pulling back on the discharge at the last second, he was dazzled by the multitude of tiny surfaces creating a barrage of light. Mothra knew she had him stunned, and proceeded to fire her own ultrasonic beams into the cloud, where they bounced off the scales a dozen times before assailing Gigan.

“We all lined-up JARVIS?”

“Indeed, Sir.”

With both hands and a shoulder, Iron Man was physically adjusting VERONICA, turning it in the direction of Mothra and Gigan’s fight.
“Those stabilizers back online yet?”

“The necessary ones are Sir. You’ll be able to fire the Repulsor-Cannon, but restoring flight control will require hands-on repair.”

“That’ll do JARVIS, that’ll do.”

Mothra’s strategy continued, despite the bleeding from her wounds. She and her brother had used a similar trap to incapacitate Godzilla, and it seemed to be working again. Gigan dare not fire his optic beam, or deploy his razor disks into the scales, he had learned those lessons. At such close range however, neither would be necessary. He would finish this adversary once and for all.

Launching his remaining grapple hooks from the left arm, Gigan aimed them for her head once more. The scales redirected the barbs onto harmless paths, but the distraction was enough to draw Mothra’s attention for the few precious seconds.

Thrusting forward with an underhand drive, Gigan stabbed his right scythe into Mothra’s thorax between her legs. She loosed a high-pitched wail that lost itself in the vacuum of space, the impalement a mortal blow.

“NOOOO!!!” Iron Man screamed, horrified by the magnification of the image in his internal display .
“JARVIS, acquire target and fire!”

“Acquiring now Sir.” JARVIS confirmed as the fingers opened.

Aboard the Peak, the crew stood to their feet, mouths agape and wide eyed. Even Director Brand cringed. The only voice in the bridge, was the countdown.
“5, 4, 3...”

Mothra shuddered as she writhed on the point of the blade, the light in her compound eyes going dim. Blood trickled from the corner of her mandibles, brought up by the piercing of her lungs. Her strength began to fail her and the claws that scratched at the length of alien metal got weaker and weaker.

At the same moment the Focused Energy Rail Gun of the Peak discharged its shot of green energy, the Repulsor-cannon of VERONICA fired.

Gigan reared back with his left arm, ready to bring it down, ready to win this ancient feud for good, ready to sever Mothra’s head from her body.

As he swung down, his long range scanners detected impending energy attacks. In the heartbeat his combat reflexes realized that he was too encumbered to dodge in time, and there was too much interference from the scales to activate his teleportation, Gigan squawked.

The combined blasts from the Peak and the Stark satellite hit the cloud of reflective scales, and pushed through the nebulous obstruction within a second with a popping sound before they met each other and exploded.

The detonation dwarfed both kaiju in a brilliant flash of light.

Iron Man shut his eyes and turned his face away, his mouth twisted in a scowl.
“Anything we can do for her JARVIS?”

“Nothing from here Sir, we simply can’t reach her.”

Gigan’s unconscious form was pulled into Earth’s atmosphere, its eye dark. Though its armor would withstand the heat of re-entry as it accumulated speed, he was severely damaged from head to toe. Electricity sparked from a number of breaks in the joints between sections, his arms connected by a few bare wires and the space-titanium that comprised the skeleton. The vanguard of the Nebulans and Vortaak plummeted broken to Earth.

Mothra’s lifeless body was thrown in the opposite direction, the whole back of her alight in an orange nimbus as she too was claimed by gravity.

The crew of the Peak remained silent as they watched the glare dissipate on their main monitor. A few bowed their heads, some shed a tear.

“Both monsters appear to be neutralized Ma’am.” Announced a stoic technician. “Projections estimate that Gigan will come down in the mid-Atlantic, between Brazil and Africa. Mothra, somewhere on Antarctica.”

Director Brand, pursed her lips and nodded her head slightly. “Get me on the horn with SHIELD, we need to coordinate recovery efforts.”

A number of faces peered out from the small windows of the rescue pod as it rocketed towards safe harbor in Japan. Kitty and Nightcrawler in one window stared at the faint light of the explosion far higher in the sky, wondering what it meant.

Cyclops and Janet in another both felt like they knew the answer.  


TEMPORARY SHIELD HQ
NEW YORK CITY 0029 HRS

The medical wing of the underground facility, after the ordeal of handling the surge of wounded in the wake of Godzilla’s and Orga’s attacks, had finally settled into a quiet routine. The harmony kept by the steady rhythms of the cardiographs and ventilators that stayed the hand of death from taking any one of the dozens who teetered on the brink.

With the triage sorted out after hours of chaos, flared tempers, and so much blood it had to be mopped up, many lay asleep. The staff of trained medical personnel and volunteers taking their own break to rotate the most weary out for some downtime, while others continued to monitor the patients and organize the supplies that continued to pour in. Cots filled the rooms and hallways, bearing those who injuries didn’t require the comfort of a proper hospital bed, and even many whose did.

Behind a large viewing window in the isolation ward, two figures stood in contemplative silence, hovering a foot away from where their own reflection was superimposed over the comatose body of Bruce Banner. Steve Rogers, his friend and sentinel, stared over at the peaceful face of his fellow Avenger under the breathing mask, where the fog of his breath continued to cloud the plastic. The respirator next to his bed rose and fell, pumping air into lungs that might otherwise shatter windows.

Rogers had his arms crossed over his chest, the tension not just in his nerves but on his mind. On top of all the repercussions of SHIELD being crippled, the Orga creature had rendered one of the most powerful heroes on the planet a vegetable. But at least he was alive, which was more than could be said for hundreds of others. And that was the work of one of the “good” Kaiju.

“It’s odd to see him like this.”

Next to Steve, Betty Ross looked even more drained than he did. Her hair a sweaty, unruly nest; her face drawn in exhaustion. She had spent most of her time since arriving assisting the hospital staff, doing all she could to take her mind off the obvious. Now that the calm of night had settled in however, she found herself staring at a man that tormented her to love. Due to the unique nature of the effects of Bruce’s accelerated heart rate, it wasn’t since before the accident that they’d been…together. Seeing him in bed once more, so quiet and serene, it brought back better memories of their former life.

“I know.” Rogers agreed. “I’m so used to seeing him either busying himself with something in the lab, or tearing through walls.”

“It was his damn hero complex you know.” A stifled sob in her voice, Betty recalled a familiar pain in her heart. “Like when he rushed out onto the testing grounds to rescue that kid and threw himself into danger, the selfless bastard.”

Tentatively, Rogers put a hand on her shoulder. “I’d say it’s part of the job. But we both know it’s just part of who he is.”

Tearing herself away from the sight, Betty leaned her shoulder into the window. “I’ve been running around all day, did they give a prognosis?”

“They said it looks like the worst case of exhaustion they’d ever seen. He’ll just need time to recuperate. Fortunately, there’s enough of the other guy left in him to take the brunt of the physical injuries. So he should recover.”

They stood in silence for a few minutes more, both their minds racing with objectives to be accomplished in a short amount of time.

“What are they Steve?” She asked him, snaring his attention with a start. “Why are these creatures here?”

“Hell if I know.” He said with a disquiet tone. “No one seems to, not even Richards. They’re from the other world, but they didn’t come through the same way Godzilla and Mothra did. I think there’s another hand at work we’re not seeing.”
A pair of nurses walked by, loaded down with dirty sheets, some crimson flaps poking out of the pile.
“I’ve reached out to a few specialists.” Steve continued. “But the ones I’ve heard back from weren’t able to help. All SHIELD’s resources are just so tied up at the moment.”

Indeed, in the wake of the events, several terrorist groups and super-villains had taken the opportunity to strike. Hydra and launched attacks in Europe and Asia, chatter among the Brotherhood of Mutants had picked up to a frightening degree, and there were unconfirmed reports of movement in Latveria.
For all the destruction the Kaiju were causing, there were plenty of home-world villains to match them. If the Mutants decided to hit a major city, they could wipe out hundreds of lives before intervention. Hydra could attack Washington D.C., and take the nation’s leaders hostage. It was all just too much at one time.
An uncomfortable silence had grown between them, and Betty decided she couldn‘t stand it. “Any word on Fury yet?” It was just something that came to her mind.

“Nothing.” Stepping back to lean against the wall, Captain America hung his head. “We’ve recovered all but a few bodies from the wreckage of the Triskelion, still no sign of him.”

“I saw those… Shadows.” Like the others, she knew that some of the people had been obliterated by Godzilla’s beam. “Maybe…There’s nothing left of him to find.”

Rogers cocked his head like he was working an ache out of his neck. “No, just doesn’t… it just doesn’t feel right. I keep thinking I’m going to turn around and see him standing in the doorway, with that ‘You thought my job was easy huh?’ look on his face.”

“I suppose I know the feeling.” Many times, Betty had dreamed that the past few years had all been some terrible dream, and that she’d wake up to find Bruce next to her, or sitting at the breakfast table, waiting with a smile. But that day never came. Despite what she felt for him, seeing him just made her angry, angry over the life she was denied, angry that the best man she knew could do nothing about it. Angry, to see him driven into a desperation that she couldn’t help him through.
“We don’t always get what we want.”

A sudden surge in activity inside the ICU brought both of them to the window. Bruce’s cardiograph spiked, his heart racing and his chest pulled upwards as if by some invisible force. The team of SHIELD doctors assigned to his care awoke with a bewildering start in their side station, sprinting to his bedside to check the equipment and try to understand what was occurring. Banner began to seizure, thrashing against the restraints and bucking so hard they had to pin him down.
Ross could see the eyes of the medical staff in between their sterile protective gear, wide with terror. She couldn’t blame them, at any moment the Incredible Hulk might erupt, a monster of pure rage and instinct to smash them all. It was in a situation like this that she had first watched Bruce transform. She had no need to imagine the disaster that Hulk could wreak if he woke up in this situation.

But just as quickly as the furor began, it ended. Bruce’s body collapsed to the mattress and went limp, leaving every one of the medical crew stunned. The readings of the equipment returned to normal, and everything went back as if nothing at all had happened. One woman doubled over, hands on her knees, and took several long breaths. Afraid to move and trigger some aftershock, the doctors simply watched as Banner’s chest rose and fell.

A breathless Captain Rogers turned to Betty. “Any idea what just happened in there?”

“If I had to guess…” She gulped. “His body just got over the healing hump. The regenerative aspects of his cells reasserting themselves with a vengeance.”

“Sounds like a good prognosis.” He muttered, just glad that an enormous green rage-monster hadn’t come out. “Whatever that Orga-thing did to him was temporary.”

“Well if Godzilla is any indication, I’d say it’s only a minor affliction.” In the time since the alien’s attack on the SHIELD base, Rogers had provided her with information obtained by Reed Richards about the monster. Whether or not a human could recover like the giant radioactive beast could, was not something she planned to pin her hopes on. This, luck or not, was a good sign.

Footsteps coming towards them from the end of the hall drew their attention, to a face neither one of them had particularly thought of seeing here.

“Look at him, sleeping like a baby.” Cupping his hands over his brow to stare through the window, Hawkeye let out a snort of amusement. “Orga must have Nyquil in his saliva.”
Turning to his slightly annoyed company, Clint gave them a casual smile. “Big guy’ll be just fine. Don’t you worry.”

“How’d things go with Strange?” Rogers asked.

Barton’s face went from content, to confused, then to indecisive. “Well, turns out he’s real busy with something. I asked what, and his house-boy, you know, the little guy Wong? He started going on about some mystical mumbo-jumbo, about the ancient tome’s of evil, and the transcendences of the astro-something, and the hairy hosts of Hogwarts. I can’t follow that stuff.
Long story short, Dr. Strange is deep into some Sorcerer Supreme stuff, and therefore cannot help us fight giant monsters.”

That was not good news. Stephen Strange was one of the few people who could be a huge help in sending the Kaiju back to their own world. But if he was too tied up with something to help the Avengers stop monsters from destroying cities, then Rogers guessed it must be pretty damn important.
“So we’ll just have to get Richards back on track to creating another portal then.” The thought was not exactly an enticing one, but it was the next logical choice. Besides, this was technically all his fault.

“Speaking of Reed…” Hawkeye began. “I wonder if he’s given any thought to the legal consequences he might be facing when this is over.”

“What do you mean?” Ross leaned in.

“I mean… If I had a dog, and he got loose and bit someone, I’d be responsible. I’d be charged for it. Reed created a door that allowed a 30-story monster to walk though and… well… Exactly how many cases of negligent homicide is “Mr. Fantastic” up against?”

While the thought of blaming Reed Richards for the carnage and death brought about in New York and the with the Navy seemed absurd. Rogers nonetheless had to concede at least logically, that he might face formal charges for perceived crimes, at the very least enough lawsuits that could bankrupt the Fantastic Four.
“We’ll cross that bridge when he get to it. For now, we need to concentrate on getting the monsters under control.”

AZORES
1247 HRS.

“Are you sure about this Fury?”

Standing on the isolated rocky outcropping in the mid-Atlantic, Wanda Maximoff looked back to the man who had desperately, perhaps dangerously, woken her from the medically induced coma. Saved from the domination of her father, and hidden away to make sure her incomprehensible powers could not be used harm innocents anymore, she had hoped to wake up to better world. But as the luck of her life would have it, she went to sleep to escape one monster, only to be woken up to fight another.

“No, I’m not. But each one of those things is a walking weapon of mass destruction. So I needed one of my own.”
He had promised Wanda to keep her safe. To keep other people safe from her. But now she needed to be the one doing the saving. Very few people on the planet could boast the powers to combat such creatures, and only a few of them were on his side.

“Is that what I am Nick? A weapon? To be dusted off in times of need?” Clothed in her red robes once again, Wanda looked back out over the surf, out to where a titan from another world stalked where it did not belong.

“No, you’re a human being Wanda.” Fury assured her, despite the pain still wracking his body. “A human with incredible power.”
He stepped closer to her, the wind whipping her hair in his direction.
“A very brave young man once told me, that with great power, comes great responsibility. Now you and I both have great power, in our own ways, mine just isn’t great enough. Not this time.”

“Great power? Yes, I suppose you could describe it that way. I’ve usually thought of it as terrible power, power beyond that which mortals should wield.” The iron rule of Magneto had taught her what the very powerful could do, and he had used it to instill fear and breed hatred.
“When my father realized the power I have was greater than his own, what it could do, he told me what my responsibility was.”

“And trust me,” Fury sighed. “We are all grateful you chose not to use your powers. Right now though, it’s your time to step up.”

With a long exhale, she took a few steps forward on the sea-washed rocks, letting the cold water lap against her feet.
“I know it is cold… but it feels so good.”

As much as his mind was conscious of their dwindling time to bring this monster crisis to a end, he couldn’t deny her the simple pleasure, the simple humanity of the moment. He pursed his lips, and let her take in the free air, the taste of salt in the wind, the sensation of the ocean on her skin.

“I will try Nicholas, to do what you have asked, but there are many variables, too many to control with any degree of certainty. But… perhaps if I can… just give him a little push in the right direction.”
Opening her hands, and reaching them out beyond the southern horizon, she concentrated, a single image in her mind, a force of willpower. Wanda closed her eyes, concentrating, focusing, stretching her powers out to her known limits and beyond, searching.
She let out a gasp, having found him. Slowly, a crimson energy engulfed her hands, the nimbus growing as it crept around her arms. Her arms waved to the right, then to the left, as if she were moving a gaseous cloud out of her way.
Then her face clenched, and Fury could tell she was exerting her power to effect change, and it wasn’t just her.
The water at her feet began to defy gravity and ascend in huge droplets into the air, creating a reverse-waterfall to either side of her. She drew her hands to her chest, folding her fingers closed.

The missing director of SHIELD felt a rumbling, not just in the ground, but in the very particles of air around him.

Wanda shot her hands outward, in a motion that peeled the water away from her, the force of the wave nearly knocking Fury off his feet.

When the water had settled, she opened her eyes and doubled-over, her heart racing and her body worn from the exertion.
“It is done.” She told him. “I was afraid of doing anything too complicated, so…”

“You did good Wanda.” Striding up and helping her to stand erect. “You did good. Now come on, let’s get you out of here before the Brotherhood gets wind you’re walking around.”

The Brotherhood of Mutants could do enough damage on their own, without the added firepower of a woman who could bend reality and erase whole lives.

The Quinjet was parked not far away, the loading ramp still lowered. Stepping aboard, Fury sat Wanda down on the bench, and went to the cockpit as the ramp locked back into place.
“Ready to go.” He told the woman behind the controls.

“And to where are we going?” Natasha Romanov asked.

“Just get in the air and head west. Once we’re over land I’ll give you a new heading.”

Glancing over her shoulder to see Wanda laying down across the seats, Black Widow smiled.
“It’s good for her to get some air every now and then.”


ATLANTIC OCEAN

Deep in the cold abyss, moving above a volcanic fissure glowing along the border of tectonic plates, a titan closed his eyes and fell asleep. Drifting every slowly downward towards the molten vein.

When he awoke, Godzilla found himself in a much different place, surrounded by vegetation, the air full of the scents of primitive life and unspoiled wilderness.

But there was another smell carried on the wind. Death.