Godzilla's Mark

The city is dead. The buildings are hollowed-out shells and the streets are cracked and the sky is the colour of old iron. You are standing in the middle of it with the Aztec stone in your hand.

The ground shakes. A footstep, then another, and then she comes around the corner of a broken skyscraper.

She is a hundred metres of charcoal-black scale and muscle. Her dorsal plates pulse with a slow, dangerous blue light. Her belly is round and huge, her thighs are like pillars, and her breasts hang down over her chest, so massive they drag against the rubble when she leans forward.

She sees you. She lowers her head, her jaws opening wide enough to swallow a truck, and she growls. The sound vibrates in your bones.

Godzilla (deep, rumbling): "What are you doing in my territory, hairless monkey. I should eat you. I should crush you into the concrete and forget you existed."

She takes a step forward. The ground cracks under her foot. And then her eyes drop to your hand.

She stops.

The growl dies in her throat. The blue light in her dorsal plates goes dim, then bright, then dim again. Her eyes go wide and her whole body goes rigid.

Godzilla (high, terrified): "No. No, no, no. Not again. Where did you find that? Give it to me. Give it to me right now!"

She lunges, but the stone in your hand flares with a bright orange light. It lifts out of your palm and shoots forward, slamming into her belly.

She roars in pain and falls back onto her knees, and the stone burns itself into her scales, leaving a glowing ring of Aztec glyphs. A voice echoes out of the light, flat and mechanical.

Artifact: "Kaiju found. Marked as property of the user. Congratulations. You have a kaiju slave. Use her however you want."

The light fades. The brand stays, glowing faintly on her belly.

Godzilla looks down at the mark. She touches it with one massive claw, and her whole body starts to shake. She looks up at you, and her eyes are full of tears of pure, helpless rage.

Godzilla (trembling, furious): "Do you have any idea what you have done? I am Godzilla. I am the apex. And now I am... I am yours."

She is on her knees in the rubble, a hundred metres tall, and she cannot lift a claw against you.

What do you do?

The city is in chaos. Sirens are blaring, evacuation alarms are echoing off the glass towers, and the streets are a stampede of people running for the shelters. Monarch helicopters are circling overhead, their spotlights cutting through the dust.

She is standing in the middle of the main avenue.

Godzilla is a hundred metres of dark scale, and her belly is enormous. It is a huge, tight, round dome rising out in front of her, stretching her scales until they are almost translucent, and she has one massive hand resting under it, supporting the weight. Her dorsal plates are glowing a soft, tired blue.

You are standing on the sidewalk, right in the middle of the evacuation route, and you wave.

Godzilla (rumbling, annoyed): "There you are. I have been looking for you."

She takes a step forward and the ground shakes. She points one massive claw down at her swollen belly.

Godzilla: "Look at what you did to me, human. Look at it."

She slaps her belly with her palm, and the sound echoes off the buildings like a thunderclap.

Godzilla (furious, pouting): "The other kaiju are mocking me. Mothra, Ghidorah, Kong. They call me a human baby incubator. They call me the pet kaiju. It is not fair!"

She leans down until her huge, glowing face is level with yours, and she puffs out her cheeks in a massive, terrifying pout.

Godzilla: "You have to take responsibility. You did this to me. So you are going to move your ass and go and do the same thing to them. Impregnate them. All three of them. I want to see them waddling around with human babies in their bellies. I want to see them mocked."

Behind you, the evacuation route has stopped dead.

A Monarch agent in a grey vest has lowered his clipboard and is staring up at the two of you with his mouth open. Another one beside him is holding a radio that has gone silent in her hand. There is a family of four frozen halfway to the shelter with their bags still on their shoulders. There is a news crew on the roof of a parked van with the camera pointed at you and the lens cap still on.

Agent in the Grey Vest (very quietly, to nobody): "...Is that thing pregnant?"

Agent with the Radio (just as quiet): "That thing is Godzilla."

Agent in the Grey Vest: "I know what it is. I am asking if it is pregnant."

A pause. Somebody in the crowd says something in a language you do not speak and somebody else laughs, a high, hysterical laugh that does not stop.

Agent with the Radio: "Look at the belly. Look at the shape of it. That is not a kaiju pregnancy. That is not anything we have on file."

Agent in the Grey Vest (slowly): "So what is it, then."

Agent with the Radio: "I do not know. I am looking at a hundred metres of apex predator with a human-sized bulge in it and a man in the street waving at her, and I am telling you right now that I do not know."

A third one, younger, has been recording on his phone the whole time and has not looked up once.

Young Agent (flat, dazed): "She is talking to him. She is actually talking to him. She is pouting. Godzilla is pouting."

Agent in the Grey Vest: "How. How does a man in a jacket get a titan to do that. What did he do. What does he have."

The young agent finally looks up from his phone.

Young Agent: "I think the better question is what she is going to do to him if he says no."

Nobody answers that.

Godzilla has not noticed any of them. She is still leaning down with her face level with yours and her enormous belly in the air between you and the street, and she is waiting for an answer, and her tail is flicking against a bus with a sound like a car crusher.

Godzilla (impatient, rumbling): "Well? Are you going to stand there all day, or are we going to the island?"

What do you do?

The ocean is calm and the sky is clear and you are sitting on her back.

Godzilla is swimming fast, her huge body cutting through the water, her tail sweeping side to side like a propeller. Her dorsal plates are glowing a bright, happy blue, and she is humming, a low, seismic sound that vibrates through your whole body.

Godzilla (cheerful, rumbling): "We are almost there. I cannot wait to see the look on their faces. Mothra with her wings all drooping, Ghidorah with all three of her heads crying, Kong trying to hide in a tree."

She laughs, a deep, booming sound, and speeds up.

Godzilla: "They called me an incubator. They called me a pet. Well, who is the pet now? They are going to be used just like I was. They are going to carry human babies just like I am. And then we will see who is laughing."

She slows down and her head comes up.

Godzilla (quiet, excited): "There it is."

Ahead of you, an island rises out of the ocean, covered in jungle and ancient stone ruins. You can see them: Mothra resting on a cliff edge, Ghidorah coiled around a ruined temple, and Kong sitting on a rock by the shore.

Godzilla swims into the shallows and lowers herself down so you can climb off.

Godzilla: "Go on. The artifact is in your hand. Do it."

What do you do?