Sleipnir was firing heat rays, which got Godzilla's attention. Scott went to gas form a moment before the super-truck slammed into the beast's chest, knocking it over. A vast wave swamped the shore. Godzilla got back up, holding Sleipnir in a bear hug as the truck fired all of its weapons.
    Phoenix Talon and Scott got a call from Reilly, who wanted to know if we had looked out into the harbor lately.
    "You mean the giant lizard whose head I'm standing on at the moment?" Scott asked.
    "Oh good, I'm glad to see that you're handling it."
    "Define 'handle,'" Phoenix hedged. "I think 'dealing,' dealing is a better word."
    "This is a really big lizard," Scott understated. "Jets!"
    "Yeah, I'm on the phone with someone from a US Army unit that's in the area, they want you to try to lure this thing up towards where they are." He gave them some coordinates to the north.
    "We'll try." Scott wound up and poked it in the eye. Godzilla shrieked.
    "Needle, can you pick me up and get me on its snout?" Phoenix Talon asked me once Reilly had signed off.
    "Sure. You're crazy. Want to come along?" I asked Thunderbolt.
    "Sure."
    I grabbed both of them and darted out toward the giant lizard/super-truck battle. The two separated, then Sleipnir fired its jets and came around for a second pass. Scott kept after the monster's eye, but was foiled by the clear membrane protecting it. He went to gas form and hung close around Godzilla's head, effectively blinding it. A blast of atomic fire shot toward Sleipnir, toasting its sensors. Godzilla then reached down, picked up a large boat, and homered the super-truck halfway across the city, where it buried its front end in the ground on impact.
    Me, I dropped the suicide squad off somewhere around the back of the thing's neck, where they could climb up from spine to spine, and got the hell out of the way as the thing moved awkwardly along the coastline to the north, waving its arms. Phoenix Talon got out a line and began climbing toward the head, Thunderbolt following. As long as it was going the direction we wanted it to, I didn't see any reason to do anything—not that I could do anything to something that size. I could probably spend all day picking away at the thing, maybe scratch it. It occurred to me that this might be the mother of all distractions, and what might the Toy Man be getting up to in the meantime?
    The jets had circled around for another pass, and no doubt readying a second missile attack. Remembering the first one's fate, I waved my arms frantically to warn them off, cursing Odin's henchmen for leaving me without means of communication. They must have seen me, since they aborted their attack run. One gave me a thumbs-up as they passed.
    Phoenix Talon wound up with his bokken, going for the eye as Scott had, and with the same problems. Thunderbolt tried a shot, but it blinked. We soon came into view of the army forces; I yanked my teammates away as the tanks began firing. Godzilla screamed and stepped onto the land, crushing a tank casually. Phoenix Talon popped a flash to try and blind the monster, but got the angle wrong. I reluctantly reached out to try to hurt the creature and discovered that it was not in fact alive; not a huge surprise. A second flash from my teammate succeeded. Godzilla screamed again.
    Scott found a high-tension line nearby. He wrapped one end of himself around that, and stretched the other toward the lizard. He was made of superconductive material, after all.... It was almost more energy than he could handle, and it sent a significant jolt into the shrieking monster. Bombarded from all sides, it stepped backwards and breathed a vast cloud of atomic fire across the ground in front of it. Tanks melted instantly, bodies were reduced to ash.
    Even Phoenix Talon was stunned into silence at the sight. Scott called him—as is often the case, he was thinking the most clearly of any of us.
    "Ask Needle to see if the soldiers were actually alive?"
    If they had been, they weren't now; I didn't see a single human aura down there, and hoped Scott's hunch had been correct. Flames arced up from the ground, wrapping around Thunderbolt like the ghosts of the newly dead, then shot against Godzilla's armored hide. It minced backward, still blind and clearly confused.
    Three news helicopters hovered around the edges of the scene, recording everything. I don't know what the hell they were thinking, and I flew over to the nearest one and ordered them in no uncertain terms to get out of the area. That one and a second pulled back; the third was having trouble with the superheated updrafts in Godzilla's destructive wake. I hauled the pilot and the news crew free a few moments before the chopper crashed into the monster's side in a ball of flames.
    Phoenix Talon wanted down. He dropped onto its snout and whacked it solidly, almost getting tossed off when it shook its head angrily and the blindness wore off. He gave it another flash and was rewarded by a scream. Now on the ground, Thunderbolt continued to direct his streams of fire at the thing. Godzilla was looking much the worse for wear at that point. I peppered it with whatever loose debris I could grab from the ground, for whatever good it would do.
    Scott sent another pulse of electricity, a nd then Thunderbolt's energy sensitivity suggested that Godzilla was about to reduce the robot to ash with atomic breath. He redirected it the same way he had the flames, surrounding himself with the deadly energy. We were all of us separately thinking that this was going to look really good on film.
    Phoenix Talon continued to chip away at the thing's snout, determined if nothing else. Godzilla had moved far enough that Scott could no longer maintain the connection, so he let go of the high-tension wire. The creature staggered back from another of Thunderbolt's blasts, currently supercharged thanks to the atomic energy he'd absorbed; then it turned and lumbered back out to sea. I snatched Phoenix Talon back up just before it leaped in a shallow arc and dove into deep water. Scott let go and watched it disappear in the sunset as well.
    "Hell of an afternoon," Talon pronounced.
    "Don't talk right now," I suggested flatly.
    Scott called Reilly and suggested someone go arrest Odin. There was the four of us, and a field of ash. No bones, no molten metal, just ash.
    "Which is relatively consistent with Godzilla movies, but does make me wonder if these were actually plastic soldiers," Scott mused.
    "That would make me feel a lot better. Hop on, guys." I was still worried about what we might be missing back in the city; we returned to Boston at the fastest pace I could manage.

[Aside: Elsewhere]

As it turned out, nothing was happening. The news footage did look fabulous; no one was watching the Holly Shapiro show.
    "I think I'm going to buy myself a tanning bed," Scott mused, plugging himself into the wall with a sigh; that fight took a lot out of him.

| Top |