Bikini Kaiju - Ch 12

Though the debate was forever ongoing, people generally fell into one of two camps with regards to Professor Cracknal, the man credited with creating the Bikini Sentinels. Either he was a scientific genius who planned everything to go exactly as intended, or he was a different kind of genius who adapted tremendously well to bizarre circumstances. No one knew for sure how he came to deliver the five giant Sentinels to the world. Sure, the basic story had gone down in legend – the eccentric physicist and his government cronies had employed a team of models to help put a positive spin on nuclear weapons testing, unwittingly bringing a boat too close to a radioactive blast that changed them forever. No one really believed it was chance: they were in exactly the right place at the right time to receive the full impact of the Castle-India bomb without being killed. But did anyone predict what their unique positioning and the experimental weapon combined with the perfect weather conditions would do? The fact that it took over a decade to even remotely reproduce these results suggested the giantism hadn’t been intended. But the fact that the girls were then ideally situated to fight off enormous monsters was awfully convenient.

This pattern of dualities typified Cracknal’s career, at once too chaotic for design and too convenient not to be planned. If he’d intended to make weapons out of the Sentinels, why a diverse group of women and not an all-American crew of super soldiers? But then, could he have predicted that the Sentinels’ combined beauty and character would make the world more forgiving of their destructive natures? And if they’d known the bomb would change people so drastically, why had they not been able to precisely explain or repeat the results, instead concealing all record of Castle-India? But if they hadn’t known, what were the boatload of women really doing so close, in obvious testing range?

These sorts of questions followed Cracknal and the Sentinels for half a century, never quite explained, and Naomi Cooper considered herself as much an expert on them as anyone. The Sentinel history was a rich topic owing itself to debate and continual revisiting, nuanced, unclear and subtle. It required attention to minute details to draw any meaningful conclusions about how the world had found itself in a situation where a dozen unfathomable beasts and five amazing women had reshaped everything. There was a general consensus, however, that wherever you fell on the line between Cracknal’s design and chance, the decades of giant monster emergence and battles were plainly somehow entangled, a great mess of cause of effect. If not for the bombs and the Bikini transformations, might the monsters have never come?

What Cooper was witness to now, though, with the return of the kaiju and the presence of Sweet Sloane and her extensive financial backing, was not in any way subtle. The Sentinels might have looked like the bad guys, ganging up on the kind, heroic newcomer after she had saved what was left of San Francisco III, but what they were saying was plainly true. Sloane’s people were behind this. Cooper had seen for herself that their lab were involved in more than just a giant woman.

Thousands had died in San Francisco, perhaps tens of thousands, and thousands more would have to be relocated, in ways that hadn’t been seen since the founding of the great refugee cities like The Borough. Yet the world’s media were celebrating, awash with headlines praising Sweet Sloane’s quick reactions and decisive leadership. Pundits were discussing how she had brought the Sentinels together as effectively as in the heyday of Steel Ruth’s command. Many were cheering on the opportunity this presented for America to once again, rightfully, step to the front of the world stage, with dramatic photos of Sloane and Washington Fury fighting the giant wolf side by side. The most shared image of all was Sloane snatching a woman quite literally from the jaws of a monster. A dozen drones had snapped the shot at just the right moment, a woman falling into the Sheerwolf’s maw with Sloane’s hand closing on her, to pluck her out. Light and dark, what a contrast, with Sloane’s pale skin above the wolf’s ferocious black-furred snout.

News outlets were falling over themselves to report quotes from Sloane and Ash Lee, a hapless New Yorker who’d apparently just been enjoying the sights. In soundbites about Sloane just doing her job and Ash shakily saying she was just thankful to be alive, all the rest was lost. No one was asking who the hell Pelican Estate were or how Sheerwolf had come back. No one was dwelling on the things Ruth and the others had said. If the Sentinels got any mention at all, it was only in comparison to Sloane’s younger, more energetic self.

Step aside, Sentinels, there’s a new sheriff in town!

“Why aren’t you running stories asking why there’s a need for a new sheriff?” Cooper had all but shouted down the phone at Solomon. He told her to back down, just get some details about Pelican Estate to fluff out what they were already running with. No one wanted to rock the boat when this had become a day of victory instead of total disaster. Read the room. But Cooper didn’t want to bow to the public pressure. She didn’t want to go with the flow and celebrate; she wanted the same answers that the Sentinels did. Instead, her own publication’s website had a glossy shot of Sloane holding up Ash, with the headline America Stands Defiant.

In the space of only a few days, everyone was rallying behind the new call of the giants and the weird Alaskan lab was forgotten. The forward focus now was the Strength Summit, an event that had been announced out of nowhere but which everyone was suddenly talking about. As if the aborted World Unity Summit had never existed, pundits, politicians and influencers were raving about Sweet Sloane and Pelican’s proposed summit as a stroke of genius, with anyone of any importance racing to the White Fort outside Indianapolis for a meeting of minds (and giants). Under the auspicious guidance of Mr Heckard Nyman, world leaders and defence experts would discuss a new initiative to secure civilisation against the potential return of giant threats. They would decide, amongst themselves, where the greatest threats lay and how best to tackle them. With the event mere days away, Cooper, stranded in an outpost in Alaska, was vying to get access to it, but Solomon insisted he had people on it. He’d be there himself, probably.

Damn them all. Cooper would fork out her own cash to catch a flight back into the action. If no one else was willing to report the real news, she would.

***

Ash found herself thoroughly conflicted.

The world had whipped by in a whirlwind of flashing lights and big sweeping motions as she was lifted and twirled and cleaned and preened. One moment she had been looking down the gullet of a monster ready to swallow her whole, the next she had become the pet of a global hero, and was wrapped up in her rising stardom. Thrust before cameras, she was answering questions almost on automatic:

“Do you have any particular message to share with the world about Sweet Sloane?”

“Well, I’m alive, so thanks, I guess?”

It brought laughter and stories online about her, people calling her shy and shell-shocked, forming entire opinions about her having heard her speak for nanoseconds without really knowing what she was saying. Half the things they quoted she wasn’t sure she had said, praising the giantess and the Sentinels and saying thank God Sloane was there to help. There’s hope for us all. A niggling feeling told her she should’ve used this opportunity to rally against the monsters, to explain how Steel Ruth had killed her dad and all of this was bad, but in the moment, in the many moments before the cameras, her inherent politeness took over and she had to thank Sloane and just be nice.

She’d been carried away from San Francisco, given medical attention and then been tidied up in a plush hotel room with a team of image consultants. She’d acquired expensive but casual clothing and a crazy permed hairstyle, and had been whisked away again, partly escorted to cars by men in suits, and partly picked up and carried again, set on the shoulder of Sloane for photos. Then there was a jet, and lots of people smiling and shaking her hand, and more press, and more hotels, and finally she found herself in Indianapolis, with a woman named Mandy rapid-fire explaining that she was to be a guest of honour at the White Fort in two days’ time.

“You’re a symbol, now,” Mandy explained in a moment between frantic rushing about. “You’re their hope. Everyone can relate to you. They want to be you.”

“Me?” Ash bleated, quite sure no one would really want to experience the shock and humiliation she’d been through in the past week. But she had flowers thrust at her, shouts of adoration from crowds behind cordons, and fine food for dinner. A couple of people who she was sure were movie stars shook her hand, and someone even more important, a Secretary of Something from the government, offered his thanks on behalf of all the American people.

“What for?” she asked, and he laughed, and the papers had a new headline calling her the Humble Hero.

More dinners, more photos, and she found herself back in the hands of Sloane, posing before crowds of cheering people, the Indianapolis skyline beneath them as the sun fell. How the hell had she got here… She’d never been to the new American capital before, this glistening city having established itself as a bastion of business and commerce when those closer to the coasts had become too dangerous to stay in, replaced by refugee cities further inland. There was the Freedom Spear, and the Drum Electrics towers. And in the other direction, far off, the expansive estate of the White Fort, the castle-like compound that formed the seat of American governance.

“That’s where we’ll be at,” Sloane told Ash, privately, seeing her looking. “Gonna be quite a summit.”

Ash swallowed, still fearful of being addressed by this enormous woman. She was standing in her palm, unable to relax at this terrible height, at the giantess’s mercy. All it would take was for Sloane to turn her hand and she’d fall to her doom. There were drones hovering above them, flashing photos, and reporters down on the street level, on temporary staging or on rooftops, but Sloane was standing at the centre of a park, away from the buildings themselves.

“I…” Ash started, hesitantly. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“Ah make the most of it. Your fifteen minutes won’t last long and I’d say you earned some adoration. And they’re gonna wanna hear a normal woman’s perspective. You’ve seen it up close, what could happen to this world if it ain’t cleaned up. Gotta let them all know.”

Ash frowned, strangely feeling like this was the first time she’d been addressed as an actual person in however long it had been since her trip to the Marshall Islands. Ironic, then, that it was coming from the person holding her in one hand like a toy. She said, “You want me to praise you. To say the world needs Sentinels.”

“Don’t it?” Sloane smirked. The giantess turned her back on the crowd watching them, little people shouting questions and requests she ignored. She flapped a hand at the sky, scattering some of the drones, and the others backed off. Lowering her voice further, she lifted Ash level with her face. “Forgive me for saying but you don’t sound awful happy I saved your little ass?”

“I am,” Ash blurted quickly, well aware of where she was. “I really am. But…”

“But you think us giants might be a bit responsible for the whole mess to begin with?”

Ash lowered her eyes. She didn’t know this woman, young and apparently heroic. She was standing in her hand and had been in her mouth, but Sloane could be anyone. Maybe nothing to do with the Sentinels. Still, she hesitated about answering her honestly. Ruth and Ramona had only kept her alive, after all, to stretch out their amusement.

“I ain’t a Sentinel,” Sloane said. “I aim to do better than them. You wanna share your thoughts with me, maybe that’ll help.”

Ash deepened her frown, meeting the giantess’s big eyes again. Face wide as a building, a mouth that she could climb inside. She exhaled wearily, and said, “You’ve invited them to work with you. How much better can you be.”

Sloane bit her lower lip, a disarming affectation. “Guess we’ll see. But I’ma say right now, I want you to be fully honest about all this. You don’t like them, you damn well say it. I got your back.”

“Really?” Ash replied warily and Sloane nodded.

“For sure. Stick with me, little lady. We’re gonna change the world.”