He knew that the newspapers would say that the ground shook, but it didn’t, and the tremor was not something that eased into existence; one moment it was just there.
Toshiro’s six mat residence was only a few hundred meters from the bay, but he never saw the water. Not only did his small window face in the opposite direction but the wall of buildings would sufficiently block his view even if it didn’t.
His books were laid out in front of him, and he was carefully picking his way through the tenses of his Italian language studies when it happened.
The ground beneath him wrenched sideways as if the earth itself had been dislodged from its place in the universe and sent tumbling. The air forced against him and the room in which he was sat so quietly only moments ago came alive with sounds of distress.
The coffee table – made of a slab of oak thicker than a gravestone – split, perhaps through its own sympathy with the plight of the earth itself.
Then he heard the thud and he felt something in his head burst. Blood dribbled from his ears, and he clamped his hands over them as the second thud hit and the ground wrenched sideways again.
Toshiro had seen the same far-off figure on the TV screens that everyone else had, he had seen the grainy footage from ’56 and heard the stories but nothing had prepared him.
The thud came again, and the wall split like kindling.
Another thud and a piece of the wall fell away.
The skies had turned a dusky grey, but Toshiro knew it wasn’t because the sun had retreated, he knew it was the ashes from the fires that had obscured it. The red in the sky was not sunset, it was Armageddon.
Another thud and more of the sky was revealed.
Toshiro climbed to his feet and ran for the stairs, but another thud threw him down them. He collided with the wall and tumbled when another thud pushed him into the air and against the wall opposite.
The floor at the foot of the stairs had already splintered and his impact finished the job. Toshiro fell through it and into the room below.
It came like death, something known but still unexpected. It moved like time, slow but unalterable and inexhaustible; a Dark God born of fire and pain.
Its howl was unlike anything human ears had ever heard, filled with power, and pain, and rage; underlined with something that called to the very joy of existence itself.
It was unstoppable.
It was unrestrained.
It was The King of Monsters.
Three toed feet that dwarfed buildings crushed everything in their wake, legs larger than office blocks carrying the huge beast through the city splintering buildings and scattering vehicles like ticks from the back of a hound.
It lashed out and brought down cell-phone towers and electrified power cables with equal ease, clearing a way for its inexorable trek west.
Its tail was twice the length of its body, and it swung in a low arc the swept the debris behind it as flat as a baseball field.
Around it flew helicopters as gnats would hover around the head of a jungle beast. Helicopters that took footage while gunships awaited the order to fire. The pilots, civilian and military alike, sat in cold sweat with even colder grips on the controls. They too had seen the footage, but they had seen the pops of fire and the spiralling aircraft as the creature swatted them from the sky.
For now, the King of Monsters ignored them, its bulk swaying towards the far-off mountains and whatever awaited it there.
Toshiro woke to something soft beneath him and a blanket draped over him. He could still hear the thud of gigantic feet, but the sound was far off and though he felt each impact they were muted.
Pain ripped through him when he raised his eyelids; everything hurt.
He closed them again and listened.
Nearby a TV commentator gave a running commentary, to Toshiro’s left a gaggle of people spoke in hushed tones in a language he could not place. Perhaps they were tourists he mused, tourists who had picked the worst possible place and time for their visit.
Carefully he opened his eyes again, felt the pain and paused with them half lidded a moment.
The TV was a large Samsung hung on the wall with bar-towels in multiple languages pinned around it.
He was in a western style sports bar that served beers the locals could never afford. He had been here once before with a group from university but had left for a karaoke bar when they had seen the prices.
He figured for the moment he would stay.
He thought his legs may not carry him far; so, it seemed wise.
The large screen TV showed the monster at the edge of the city, with furrows of earth torn up behind it as they were swept flat by its swinging tail. Behind it a furrow had been cut through the city punctuated by fires and mounds of torn masonry and dotted by the ant-like residents who picked their way through it all to safety.
A shadow drifted across Toshiro from his right and carefully he turned his head. His vision swam and the world softened as if though a romantic haze. He knew that consciousness was deserting him and the last thing he saw was the face of a young woman – a little younger than himself – as she turned towards him, and he felt something cold pressed against his brow.
The King of Monsters tore through the forest, its pace slowing as it fought up the first rise to the mountains. Around it buzzed the helicopters, cameras and guns trained on it in anticipation of what was sure to come.
The mountain rose and fell into a valley on its far side, a mass of foliage through which few men trod but was inhabited by the raw beasts that had made it their home since before man had walked these shores.
One such beast watched.
It rested on a small rise of earth on the far side of the valley, its body curled into a coil. Trees were pushed aside like strands of grass; bowing, then breaking as its body rolled to the side in its sleepy repose.
It would not waste energy; it would need it all in the fight to come. It just watched; and waited.
There was a moment when Toshiro thought he heard sirens wailing, and then another when the world was filled with blue light, but when he opened his eyes once more the world was white and filled with the muted sounds of hushed muttering.
It was not a hospital ward, it was a corridor beside one, and he had been placed in a hospital gurney at the far end beside a set of blue painted double doors marked Hospital Staff Only.
The pain had ceased, and he could feel a swimming sensation that he associated with the remnants of some kind of sedative, and he wondered if the pain would return when the swimming ceased.
At least two televisions were displaying the drama unfolding outside the city, so Toshiro heard the commentary from two separate locations, each slightly uncoordinated with the other. He closed his eyes and listened as the monsters’ actions were echoed once more.
Again and again, round, and around.
From the sea it would come and to the sea it would return.
Round and around and around.
Toshiro drifted.
The King entered the valley and the serpent rose to meet him.
The tops of the trees reached to halfway up the King of Monsters legs, trees in which men could hide little more than untended grass to the huge creature. On its hill the other side of the valley the serpent rose on a tail as thick as an ocean liner, pushing its head high, higher than the King. Muscles tensed along its sides and a cobra-like hood extended like a gigantic sail.
The beasts surveyed each other in silence.
The images were captured by news helicopters and beamed across the country and further still. Perhaps one day long from now aliens in the depths of space would watch the transmissions as transfixed as the humans now did. Perhaps even these millions of years from now the King would still be the King, or perhaps his dominance would end this very day.
Existence waited and watched.
The Cobra rose higher, balancing on its tail like a slithering ballerina. Its body tensed in an “S” shape and its head bowed menacingly before its hood of muscle and flesh.
The King roared and the trees around him were driven back as if cowering, but the Cobra did not retreat. At its thinnest point, its tail was thicker than a dozen trees, and at its thickest it would dwarf a skyscraper, the hood was as wide as the King was tall and its skin was decorated in scales as large as an ocean trawler.
The King roared again, and the Cobras’ hiss rumbled like the breaking of surf in reply.
The Cobra struck with speed that baffled the mind, teeth gleaming as they arced downward. They tore into the Kings green flesh, tearing gouges of pink that blossomed to rivers of red. The King grabbed at the Cobra’s hood and pulled, the claw of his thumb hooking under a thick scale and popping it off like the cap of a bottle. The scale flew past a helicopter, momentarily blotting out the sun.
Collectively the aircraft backed off.
Both beasts bled, crimson splashing over the forest below, geysers of blood, waterfalls filled with it.
The King had one of the Cobras teeth in his hand, tugging it from his flesh, with a crack that could be heard for miles the tooth broke the and Cobra snapped its head back as it whipped its tail forward.
Thick coils engulfed the King, wound around him and pinning one arm to his side. Along the Kings back a row of spines extending from its vertebra glittered, arcs of blue energy cascading from spine to spine.
Viewers across the country moved closer to their screens.
The spines begun to glow and the energy between them grew in intensity. The blue faded to white, and the King unleashed.
Hell spewed like the light of a thousand stars from between the Kings jaws, a tumbling mass of energy that the newspapers called The Atomic Breath. Around the beasts the forest burned without flame, the energy turning the green foliage to a carpet of brittle brown that burst to dust; and still the energy roared.
The Cobra writhed and twisted and here and there a scale popped like popcorn in a pan, the flesh under them seared a volcanic black. Around it the air cracked with a unique energy that was the very essence of the Kings rage.
Another hiss escaped the Cobra, this one rumbling like far off thunder and five seconds later the King’s Atomic Breath faltered and died. The huge lizards’ chest heaved and once again a roar erupted from him, a challenge dredged up from somewhere even deeper than the sea depths from which he came.
Trees buckled and crashed to the blood-soaked earth as the Cobra turned and retreated, its body writhing in a wave of flesh. The King took to the chase, his huge legs bounding one, two, three steps before he leapt: crushing the tail of the Cobra under his enormous weight.
The King’s claws dug deep into serpentine flesh, hand over hand drawing it in, chunks of flesh as large as a car thrown this way and that. The Cobra writhed and twisted even as the mighty King’s hands wrapped around the flesh of its head and for one final time his spine sputtered into unimaginable brightness.
The King roared out atomic fire and the Cobras jaws melted under its power. Its coiled twisted and curled, at first with vigour – thrashing furrows in the earth that would one day become lakes – then its movements grew as lazy as the men who would one day fish beside them.
The Cobra twitched; then died, but the Atomic Breath continued.
Each time the King unleashed with his Atomic Breath the TV screen was filled with the static of interference. The digital signal fighting to get past the unnatural energy he produced.
Through the stuttering image the viewers watched as the snake creature melted, parts of it popping into flame while its blood boiled from the wounds of battle.
For a moment, the crowd gathered in front of the hospitals TV screens fell into silence, a few heartbeats of amazed quiet before another roar erupted: this one of triumph from the people watching.
Toshiro watched from the hospital gurney. The sedative had begun to wear off and he could feel a dull ache that might at any moment erupt into a searing pain and he looked on the snake beast with some solidarity.
The crowd cried out words of encouragement and slapped each other on the back as if their team had won some sporting tournament.
It made no sense to Toshiro.
Surely a beast was a beast, he thought, the evidence of the torn city showing that the King was no more on their side than the snake beast.
The image on the TV screen settled and on it the King turned dragging the snake beast with him. He twisted and span like an Olympic shot-putter and threw the snake beast as if it weighed nothing at all.
A moment later the hospital was eclipsed and those lucky enough to be near a window saw the coils of a gigantic snake block out the sun on its final journey to its grave in the sea. Those by the shore saw the impact and readied themselves for the mini tsunami it would produce; but back in the hospital they would be safe.
Not that Toshiro or any of its inhabitants would be aware of it; because it was then that the King began his trek back to the ocean and the hospital erupted into panic.
Between the King and the sea stood the city.
Toshiro was already up on unsteady feet, one hand brushing the wall for support and when the rest of the onlookers realised their fate, he was already halfway out of the door when their panic ensued.
Toshiro did not appreciate the way events sometimes conspire, how the beasts fighting and the torn city around him had deposited in this place at this time; but the results of this conspiracy of fate would be long lasting.
He saw the young woman framed against the far-off fires, bathed in the crimson that impersonated sunset. She had a phone raised, searching for a signal and for the moment she had not seen him.
Toshiro remembered her, he remembered her placing a damp cloth to his brow while he waited for the ambulance, but he thought he knew her from somewhere else, and then it came to him. She lived in the apartment just under his own and is was this apartment into which he fell when the King first approached the city.
She noticed him then, slowly dropped her arm to her side and turning to him. She smiled and Toshiro forgot about beasts and fires and torn cities; he forgot about the impending danger; as well as all the bad in the world.
The King of Monsters made his way back to the sea, some internal compass always pointed him unerringly in the direction he was needed and back to his home when he wasn’t. The valleys sides, steep and slippery, ripped in gouges as his impossibly large feet tore through the earth.
For a moment, the huge creature stood on the crest of the hill. The peak high enough to offer a view across a vast distance. The city smouldered slightly to the North and when the King of Monsters made his way down the far side of the hill and out towards the ocean his course took him through empty farmland populated by sparsely spaced homesteads.
The destruction was over for the day.
The farmland was cut in furrows and as the gigantic beast entered the water of the bay two shallow rivers were formed that led all the way back to the valley.
In the city a man and a woman watched at the silhouette of the King of Monsters waded into the water, backlit by the setting sun. The ground beneath them shook with each of his mighty steps, but neither felt it.
In the years to come each would tell the tale, and almost a decade later they would tell their daughter of how they met, and she would look on them with cautious amazement; unsure of how much to believe; until – that was – the day when she too would see the King of Monsters and have her own adventure.
But that is a different story for another day.