The Destroyer — Into the Cherenkov Light
A Bite-sized Godzilla Fanfiction Story
Written by Alyssa Charpentier, 08 MAR 2023.
The JSDF's first confrontation with the Destroyers, nightmarish crustacean creatures hailing from the Precambrian Era, goes terribly awry in this short story that chronicles the brief fight for life and meaning between one JSDF soldier, one brother in the force, and one very nasty beast from Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah (1995).
Juvenile Destoroyah (“Destroyer”)
“Do not go gently into that good night.” —Dylan Thomas
Shapes are shifting in the rafters.
I sense them.
Dark presences that make the shadows snapping at our heels seem brilliant, even celestial, in comparison. I have a feeling whatever's bedded up in that network of pipes will do more than nip my heels.
Maybe it wants to sever an artery. Gnaw on my nose until it crumbles clean off? Perhaps it wants to plunge into my chest and slobber on the goods inside?
All the best organs are in the torso.
Unless...
I grip my gun tighter and slip further down the industrial labyrinth, suppressing an inevitable shiver.
Unless it likes brains.
This thought almost amuses me—I briefly consider grinning—when I remember what's around me.
The oppressive air doesn't allow for smiling. It chokes everything like a nuclear arm, a great fist of fever-hot hatred that I fear will descend on us soon and smash our bones into paste.
I glance back at the nearest soldier and grimace. He always was the sensitive type. Too busy with his mouth, spewing idle idealist chatter at every opportunity and subtly condemning me for my resistance to it.
Once, he'd asked me, “Why don't you value your life?”
Calmly, sipping from my bitter mug of matcha, I dared him to repeat himself.
“You seem withdrawn, and I heard you tell someone once that you wouldn't mind dying and just getting it over with,” he'd said timidly. “If you don't mind my question, why did you join the JSDF?”
Another splinter of movement above me snags my gaze and the memory briefly abandons me. I tense, a living weapon of sinew and flesh, and continue my quiet passage down the meandering lanes of concrete and plumbing.
“I joined for the same reason as anyone else.”
My mind inevitably slips back into the past.
Something about feeling like you're about to die does that to you. Makes you almost wish you'd appreciated what you had.
Almost.
“To die for something?” My fellow soldier asked.
He was a lower rank and only significant enough to scorn; I couldn't place his name beyond this.
I'd stood and poured out the rest of my tea, watching it churn in the drain before vanishing like an unimportant thought.
“That's right.”
He'd frowned, the whiny fool, and he was probably frowning at me there in the building. Why was he tailing me so closely?
“You joined to die for something,” he'd said, “Instead of live for it?”
Don't ask me why I'm dwelling on these withered recollections when I feel like I'm about to rub noses with Death. Certain statements don't mean much to you until specific circumstances draw them out. Such is the case with me and that soft-hearted soldier right now; he asked me questions I hadn't wanted to answer at the time. I didn't know how to beyond fitting my mouth over the open throat of a bottle.
Now, vaguely, I wish I had a bit more time to do so. It’s looking like Godzilla is undergoing a change so horrific it will kill us all. Unfortunately, I'm a meat puppet; I don't have much choice in matters of life or death. At least, not when it comes to me being on the line.
“Hey.”
He's whispering to me now, the dolt. Doesn't he know anything about stealth?
Softie, as I like to call him, nods at the ceiling. There it is, again. That muddled shape and the off-kilter feeling it carries with it.
The air deepens. It's ice, black ice, the kind that sends drivers skidding to their deaths in the cold seasons, and I've no reason to be optimistic about it now.
Am I a careless car owner steering precariously toward my demise?
Can't think these thoughts; you joined the JSDF for more than a chance at death but a noble one in a world of monsters. This is your purpose as a man!
A yell slices sharply through the intangible fog of oppression, followed by a dark thump.
Expletives color the air.
One of the men from my unit is struggling within the claw-clad clutch of some otherworldly crustacean. I steal a glimpse of its crimson carapace and a flash of ear-shaped growths cresting the sides of its head.
I think no further. I aim and shoot.
Whatever that thing is, it's got to go.
The only problem is it doesn't seem to be reacting to my gun.
Well, it's undoubtedly peeved off because it's now lumbering toward me on more legs than I'd like to count—anything with more than four legs is from Hell, a general rule of thumb—so I'm running, too.
I don't have a choice.
The gunfire… it doesn't even affect it!
What do you do against something like that?
"Help me, God, someone, anyone," I whisper, though it strangles out of me more as a whimper than anything.
Disgraceful coward.
I don't look back at Softie. He can keep pace if he wants to survive; that crab thing isn't here for prisoners, and I'm not here to be its jail food, anyway.
I'm running, but the forceful scurrying behind me rocks the floor in increasingly aggressive vibrations.
Can almost smell it now, a death scent, pale and acrid—
"Ah!”
A blade cleaves my shoulder. It's got me, the thing, cut me right inside my neck.
I topple.
The creature has me now.
I flail and scream. I may as well die wailing, a failure to my stone-firm resolve. I'm no better than that theatrical mess, Softie, but how else can I react to this cold-eyed entity peering over me? Its shadow blackens my view. The end of its dark red claw, tipped in my blood when it stabbed me, collapses on my face.
My cheek caves.
It's got me.
Thrashing as any other animal might, I scream inside the creature's hold. It bends into my throat where it will embed itself, surely, and then I'll—
"Get out from under it!"
Bullets snarl behind me. The crab thing swivels to face its attacker, and I roll away from its pinning "feet.”
I don't ask questions or hesitate. I'm back up in seconds and making for the door at the end of the passageway.
Then a new cry lights the air.
Softie.
The nightmare beast is scuttling toward him now, its attention diverted too successfully. I have two options, and I hate both of them.
One: I break for it and get out of there. That's the traitor's way, but it guarantees I don't die at the hands of something that makes me question my entire friable existence.
Do I want to take my chances that there isn't an afterlife and I don't wake up in some happy little cloud realm in the metaphysical reality? Do I want my last thoughts before I'm hauled off to Hell to be of not only pain but a crumbling horror at the existence of this preternatural, utterly abominable beast?
Did the Bomb make it like it made Godzilla?
Or am I willing to restrain my fears for a man I despise—who also just saved my life—and...
Well, there I go.
Dashing off into the maw of the monster.
I shoot it a few times to get its attention back on me.
Yeah, you ugly bastard. Look at your old pal, the original snack. Lick your lips and show me that crooked smile.
As if it hears me, it grins.
I wish it hadn't.
That is a smile no orthodontist can repair.
For some inexplicable reason, whatever created this thing decided one mouth wasn't enough. They say digestion begins in the mouth; does that mean this... this... Destroyer creature is used to digesting very particular meals that require greater chewing effort?
Like human flesh, perhaps?
These thoughts and several other morbid ones dally in my mind. I'm done thinking. I open fire again, and when the thing smacks me with its spider leg—it bends curiously like a soda straw, and I bend with it—I bash it back with the butt of my weapon.
It snorts and hisses, narrowing its glassy golden eyes at me. Suffice it to say it didn't care for its prey retaliating.
I don't anticipate its next move.
Sparks shimmer and bluish-white energy streams from its two repugnant mouths like sulfur steam belching up from the Hot Place. It greets my open chest like a kiss of stone. This kiss, like any good one, has me reeling... and then I'm on the ground.
The beast looms over me again. This time, it takes a taste of me with it in its miniature mouth, which jets from its first set of mandibles like the head of a PEZ dispenser.
I can't begin to wonder what it will dispense in me when it lands the blow. The mini mouth descends with all its jagged teeth, probing ruthlessly through the flesh in my chest until it clacks against my sternum. The skin and meat there yield easily to its intrusion.
To my vague, hazy horror, something does invade my bloodstream when it buries itself there.
Dear God—there I go thinking of God when the very opposite is feeding on me—what's it doing to me? Liquefying my insides like a spider so it can slurp them up? Poisoning me?
I don't know what it's doing, and that's worse than the pain and fear: the fear of uncertainty and that of a likely lethal surprise.
The Destroyer's agent seeps swiftly through my blood. I'm drowsing under the side effects and wonder if they aren't side effects at all but intended effects. Maybe it does want me dead for an instant meal.
My thoughts are starting to disassemble into disjointed nonsense. I can't bother thinking much anymore.
Another round of gunfire lights off and Softie yells.
“Away from him! Get me, demon!”
The Destroyer is distracted for a flicker of time and shrieks before it's driven back by a fresh flood of uniformed faces. Arms grasp my battered body and draw me back from the creature.
"You okay, buddy?”
Through the film muddying my mind, I make out Softie's face. The guy I chose to save has now rescued me. It seems we're somewhat even, though I disapprove of score-keeping on the battlefield.
Softie notices my bite wound and winces. He may be the emotional type, but I know, from that wisp of concern, that he doesn't think I have long.
Fair enough. I've had a good life… I think.
“I'll get you out of here,” he whispers.
I begin floating in midair, or so it seems, but I assume it's just Softie carrying me. As he shuffles me off to my destination, he taps my pulse, curses, then mutters what sound like pleas.
“Not yet. Not yet for him, please, not yet.”
I can't feel much at this point. Everything's starting to go out on me like a slowly shorting circuit board, but I feel strangely at peace with this soldier looking out for me. It's evident he cares about my well-being. I don't know why. I've never been nice to him, never given him cause to care.
Maybe that's the difference between him and me. A difference that makes all the difference in the world.
Oh, how I once scorned you.
The next few minutes are distorted. I grope through them like a video game character navigates their highly pixelated world, just barely able to make out specific shapes and sounds.
"Sir?" Softie touches my face, and the calamitous noises have quieted.
I can't respond. Numbness hugs my lips and won't relinquish its grip.
"Sir, you've been injected with micro-oxygen. You don't have long to live.”
I blink once, twice, and realize it isn't my brother-in-arms speaking, but Dr. Kensaku Ijuin. Ah, yes, the micro-oxygen man. My addled mind remembers that much and recoils in disgust as if he can be blamed for my death.
I move my lips to give shape to the questions and statements that want to be born on them but cannot. Dr. Ijuin seems to understand.
"It shouldn't be long," he promises gently, "But it may hurt some even in spite of the medication I’ve administered. I'm very sorry, sir. Thank you for what you did today against the creatures.”
I remain silent. The doctor pats my hand and informs me I have a visitor.
A new face pops over mine. It's Softie.
My… buddy. Or something.
I'm still undecided, but the man did save my sorry hide.
I feel a smile coming on but can't work the muscles to give it life. I've become some mangled marionette whose master has cut the strings. A few remain, affording me my tenuous grip on existence, but even those are starting to fray.
The only pleasure now is knowing that I am the one dying and my friend is not. Indubitably, he has more to live for than a waste like me.
I made the right decision after all.
"Thank you," he says quietly in the dimming light. "You did great out there."
A compliment from one man to another. I appreciate it as I try, vainly, to focus on a brother’s face and let it bolster my convictions about life and death.
He rightly doesn't expect me to say anything, though I wish I could thank him for his efforts, which were considerably more valiant. Instead, ruined, I lie motionless on whatever surface the doctor found for me and wait for Softie to say anything more.
After a tense silence, he finally takes my cold, weak hands and says, "There's still time, my friend, just a bit of time. It's not long, but it's enough. We can work with it."
I think I'm catching on. I'm a dying man. I'm more willing than most to throw away my freedom for... whatever he's about to propose to me. After all, what freedoms will I have now that I'm almost dead?
And after the hellish things I've just seen...
Softie's hold tightens.
"Please just listen. That's all. I know you can still hear me."
He doesn't wipe away the tiny tear that's formed in the crinkling corner of his eye. As spirited as he is, the guy has never acted quite this vulnerable before.
I'm touched. Deep in my being, below the masculine stoicism and the surface-level micro-oxygen death sentence slithering through my bloodstream, paralyzing everything it touches, warmth flowers within me.
Is this how Godzilla feels as he, too, slowly unravels?
"Why’d… you save me?" I croak through a stiffening throat. "I only ever… mocked you. You were like scum to me. Stupid scum."
Softie chuckles. "I'm a man, Mr. Hayama. I fight. I forgive. I do it all with little to no expectation because a man cannot expect things in this world. Increasingly, nothing here is guaranteed. That includes your loyalty when you deliberated between helping me and abandoning me to my fate."
"A severe… offense,” I choke out.
"Yes. And if I reported it, the law would not so readily forgive you. But you gave your life for me, so you are now beyond reproach. I offer you now to a higher Law, should you accept it.”
I make no guarantees about these last few minutes of my life. I don't believe I owe anyone anything, but I am willing to at least lend my ear.
At this point, it's all I've got. I'm done for.
Dead.
Wasted.
I am another product of monsters and violence, and I'm ready for whatever peace and optimism my friend has to impart. I could certainly use some right now.
"Before you speak," I groan, "Remind me of your name. I… think I've forgotten."
It is better to die remembering the name of my defender even if he cannot salvage me from Death’s sleepy embrace. I feel myself being tugged toward the inevitable now; my personal end, a doorway beyond which everything is unknown to me.
"Yashiro," he answers simply. "Now, stay with me for just a minute more."
I grunt my thanks and allow Yashiro to share his final message.
I find myself already missing it and those he has shared with me in the past. Back then, I was sure I only wanted to die for something; living for something seemed too troubling in its uncertainty. For some, living aimlessly is as easy as breathing; such has never been the case with me.
It is this realization that challenges what I always believed about Yashiro and our differences. It seems we are not so different at the end of things. I wish it had not required my demise to see that… that he, in his excessive, exuberant compassion and optimism unbecoming of men, represents the gentler sensibilities in myself.
Perhaps in all of us.
This, I find, is the part of me that does not want to release my failing grasp on the troubling, threadbare, roundabout rope of life.
Even if what Yashiro is about to tell me sounds stranger than fiction, I tell myself I live in a world with Godzillas and Destroyers—building-sized radioactive dinosaurs and Hell crabs—my friend, Softie, Yashiro, will have a hard time topping that.
Godzilla will die dignified. I believe that as deeply as I believe I am well and truly on my way to the Other Side, too, so I curl my fingers like I did as a little boy who once believed monsters were cool and imagine they are the sore, searing claws of the Kaiju King.
"Go on," I croak with the last of my retreating breath.
Send me away into the Cherenkov light.
This short story was inspired by my recent viewing of Godzilla Vs. Destoroyah, a film I have admittedly watched more times than I can begin to count… something of which I am not ashamed. ;) As I was watching the scene where the Japanese Self-Defense Force team first encounters the juvenile Destoroyahs (or “Destroyers” as I call them in this story), I had a sudden desire to write a sort of drama about one of the soldiers. Mr. Hayama and Mr. Yashiro aren’t real characters in the film, but I felt their (brief) story should be brought to life just the same. I hope you enjoyed my first piece of Godzilla fanfiction in ages!
~Alyssa Charpentier (AKA Alyssa GojiGeek101)
