Bikini Kaiju - Ch 10

**The thrilling conclusion of the Sheerwolf battle! Woo!**

The Sentinels were taking a licking and everyone around Cooper was barking into their phones, either to organise some kind of (useless) national response to this disaster or to relay whatever news they could to add to the story. For her part, she quickly got over the irritation at not being on the scene this time – as was evident by the live news being broadcast for them on Pelican’s projector, there were more than enough drones capturing excellent footage of the fighting. No, she was better off here, with all the world distracted, because it meant she could slip down to the rear of the massive welcome hall and sneak out back to see what they were really hiding. In the furore, with the Pelican staff as flustered as their guests, she managed to navigate a series of sterile corridors until she reached the real hub of activity. Through a door with a glass window, she found a widespread lab, worthy of the giants, with various gangways and shiny vats, twirling dials, techs in lab coats darting all over. Much bigger and busier than anything that had been shown in their video – the Pelican employees were scrambling about monitoring equipment.

This focus, studying their science at a time like this, rang alarm bells all on its own. Then Cooper spotted charts, beyond all the movement, which raised a whole new concern. There were diagrams on a far wall, big diagrams that unmistakably showed kaiju. Not Sentinels, but kaiju – depicted in scientific models. A squid. An ape. A rat. They were projected alongside smaller images, progression pictures. As if someone was trying to map out the origins of the great beasts, even though half of them had never come from anything ordinary. A rat, Cooper thought again, fixing on that one. Queen Rat, studied here in this lab – and she had a sense that wasn’t new. They’d been working on this before the monster re-emerged.

And there. A wolf. The wolf. With lights flashing around it – an active analysis.

None of this was coincidence, this freaky Arctic lab studying kaiju and revealing a new giantess the same time that these very monsters returned. She needed to get closer. Cooper leaned in, testing the door handle.

As she did, a door opened behind her, down the corridor. She quickly pushed the lab door, but it didn’t budge, locked! Leaving her trapped at the end of the hall, turning to face a pair of men in uniform, with guns.

“Hey! What the hell are you doing down here?”

She raised her hands and gave her most winning smile. “Looking for the ladies’. Just got a bit turned around –”

“Move! Get away from there!” the lead one ordered, a bearded guy who now had his gun aimed at her. She did as she was told, saying nothing else, immediately seeing how serious they were. She could’ve predicted it, but these guards confirmed it. Pelican were not good people. And they weren’t afraid of getting their hands dirty. The guards marched her back up the corridor, reporting her intrusion into a radio, and she dreaded hearing the response, that someone was going to instruct she be silenced.

Maybe she should run. Just break for the main foyer where they couldn’t shoot her in front of everyone. But she’d never clear the corridor. Better idea, play it off…

“Guessing I got close to the lab then?” Cooper asked brightly. “Where the magic happens? Hope we’ll have a tour later.”

The guards shared an uncertain look.

“Have you guys worked here long?”

They came to a door and one of them stepped forward to open it. The other pushed her through and she winced, expecting some terrible sealed-off space. But no, the brightness of the foyer and the chatter of dozens of concerned people hit her, and the door closed behind her. Ejected back into the party. She let out her breath, relieved. That only lasted a second, as she saw the screen, where Washington Fury, standing here only a couple of hours before, was now backing up over the ruins of downtown San Francisco, holding her side and all cut up, with the Luprime stalking towards her. Things weren’t going well out there.

***

Washington had barely landed a few good blows on the oversized man-dog. Didn’t need to, though, was her theory. No point engaging the kaiju properly when she didn’t have a hope of beating it – she was conserving her energy, on the back foot, just trying to lead it away from the most populated parts of the city. Sheerwolf had been playing along, toying with her, like it just thought she was afraid. More than a few towers had fallen already, scores of people flattened underfoot as the pair paced side to side, probing at each other. Unavoidable. Acceptable collateral damage if she could just drag this out long enough for the backup to arrive. They shouldn’t be too far off now.

Sheerwolf shifted, a paw kicking through a small museum, shattering old pillars and tumbling the roof around its claws. He sprang forward and Washington ducked to the side, turned around the attack and shoved him off, to trample over a block of townhouses and slam a paw into the middle of a park. He threw his head about, snapping his long jaws at the sky in frustration, spittle flying. With a little distance between them, the giant wolf swiped down and grabbed a couple of people fleeing through the park. Drew his arm back and tossed them with a powerful pitch, a man and a woman spiralling through the air screaming towards Washington. She held up an arm to block on instinct, the guy hitting her forearm and flicking off to a deadly fall, the woman coming in underneath and bouncing into her chest. Sheerwolf came right behind them, jaws spread wide to bite in the distraction. He clamped onto her wrist and bit down as she reeled to the side, trying to shake him. Washington gave a ferocious roar of her own and punched at the wolf, but his teeth dug in hard, worrying at her. She drove her knee into him, headbutted him, then felt his claws rip towards her gut – just shifted out the way in time.

“Get your filthy paws off her!” Sloane cried, dropping in with both hands clasped in an overhead strike that carried all her weight. She caught Sheerwolf hard enough that he went down into a face plant, ripping free from Washington’s arm. Sloane followed through with a kick to his ribs but he rolled off, breaking apart another city block. The same time, he threw a kick back, claws ripping into Sloane’s leg and knocking her to a knee. Her hand came down on someone who’d chosen that moment to dart out of cover and she winced as the poor civilian was flattened.

Sheerwolf scuttled away on all fours, into the sparser hill, regrouping, as Washington helped Sloane back up. Both of them panting now, bleeding.

“Hot damn he’s fast,” Sloane gasped, watching like she’d never seen the old footage of this monster in action.

“Quit trying to engage him,” Washington growled. “Wasting your energy without backup.”

“Didn’t I just save your ass?”

“Takes more than a bite to end me.” Washington flicked her arm out to the side, spraying blood up the side of a tower block. The pair turned on the spot, following Sheerwolf with their eyes as the giant wolf paced back and forth a few miles off. He shook his coat like a dog shedding water, then hunched down and gnashed at the ground, snapping up a few more people. They could only watch as the giant wolf slurped his prey in, quickly gulping them down before turning his horrible yellow eyes back on them. Was it natural instinct to grab a snack wherever he could or was he just trying to piss them off? Either way, made Washington growl louder.

“Hey. You got something.” Sloane interrupted her fronting, though, reaching towards her chest. Washington almost flinched away, to slap her hand off, but Sloane’s fingers stretched to the tiny woman clinging desperately to the material of her top, legs kicking free over the ledge of her breast. Sloane gently plucked her off, holding the woman up for Washington to see – hardly calming the human, who struggled between her finger and thumb. “Poor little miss was just hanging there!”

“Got no time for that,” Washington grunted, towards the wolf again.

Sloane shrugged and lowered the woman, saying, “Pardon, ma’am, I’ll keep you safe.”

Sheerwolf started towards them again, snapping angrily, cracking through a street and scattering cars. He ripped a fallen tram up and tossed it crumpled ahead and this time Washington deftly caught it, fingers squeezing it tight like an empty can as people burst screaming out the windows. She dropped it aside and twisted, swung a fist up, ready to clock the beast. Sheerwolf swerved at the last second, ducking her punch and snapping towards Sloane instead. He smacked her with a shoulder, sending her toppling, and Washington saw the little woman she’d just rescued now threaded in the rear waistline of her bikini pants – a second before Sloane sat heavily, ass splatting her. Sheerwolf sprang past before either of them could get a hit in, turning, ready to come from another angle.

As he did, a shape fell from the sky, with the boom of a great helicopter circling above. The kaiju barely managed to look up before Steel Ruth landed on him, two booted feet slamming into his back, smashing him into the ground. All the buildings in a three-block radius rattled and cracked, some of them falling to dust. Sheerwolf was momentarily stunned as Ruth dropped into a crouch raining punches on him, but he rolled, throwing her off, and slunk out slick as a lizard. Another fierce quake followed as Ramona Dynamite landed alongside Washington like a mountain dropped from the sky, fists raised and ready.

“Hey perrito!” she shouted. “Time to take you to the pound!”

With Sloane staggering back upright and Ruth steadying herself, the four of them stood in a wide arc to face the recovering wolf, a good battle-ground of already ruined city between them. A wave of civilians was emerging from the fresh destruction, the relatively scant portion of survivors, but otherwise this part of San Francisco was laid to waste. Ready for them to do battle. They charged in together, screaming.

***

Ash wrestled against the thick cotton of Ruth’s pocket to pull herself up, trying to reach the lip to steady herself more than to escape. She was being thrown around, smacking against Ruth’s thigh or up and down into the canopy, breath catching, sure she’d be flattened at any moment. With a gasp for fresh air she got clear, seeing the world whizzing by as Ruth’s leg swung around. She braced herself just in time to hang on tight as the giantess kicked the huge wolf across the face, a blow that rattled Ash’s whole body. Ruth’s step back, quaking the earth, sent an almost equal shudder through her. Ash hung over the edge, forty feet or more above the devastated city below, nauseous and terrified. The scale of damage was shocking, the rubble and fissures, clouds of dust where there’d once been civilisation.

She got only a moment to take it in before the wolf pounced at Ruth, driving her back, and the pair went down together, grappling. Ash screamed, falling as if dropped off the edge of a tower, but she bounced up, weightless for a moment with the sway of the pocket, and swung down as Ruth slammed into the earth. As the huge wolf threw savage claws at her, Ash dropped and let go, flopping to the other side of the pocket. Staring down, she saw the ground. Only metres away. She thrust herself out, a short fall before cracking into uneven blocks of concrete, rolling painfully clear. The giants were clashing hugely above, a massive arm falling towards her; she had to move. Hurt and dizzied, Ash pushed upright and stumbled out of the way just as Ruth’s elbow burst through the road next to her. It threw her to the side and she rolled again, banging her head, coughing on the dust.

Ash stood again, ran, hopped over rubble. The ground kept quaking with one impact after another, and she moved senselessly, darting side to side as giant shapes fell around her, another elbow, a paw, a knee. Then a boot, another giantess swinging in, and a yelp as Sheerwolf was knocked back. The giants parted then, the boot lifting off and over Ash as she ducked low, terrified, and kept running. She climbed panting out of the divot to a mound of unsteady masonry, waving a hand to clear smoke. Coughing, she took a moment to appreciate the relative calm, the monsters moving slightly away. Then the ground shook again and she looked up as a vast shape swept through the cloud above. Spreading claws, a huge paw. Ash screamed as the Sheerwolf caught her, roughly snatching her off the ground. She was flying up, squeezed in a calloused paw, and then falling, high above the city – above the monster’s stretching jaws. She screamed again, straining her vocal cords as she twisted in the air towards a maw bigger than a metro tunnel, thick tongue lashing wetly in anticipation, flanked by jagged teeth. She could see right into its gullet as she fell through the moist air of the Luprime’s breath. About to touch down, another giant object swept into her, though, and she was heaved away, squeezed again into flesh, this time softer, warmer.

She heard the booming voice of a giantess, assuring, “I got ya!”

Ash was carried through the air, stomach churning as her saviour plucked her from the wolf’s jaws, before another impact sounded, more quakes of ferocious blows. Then an apologetic, “Sorry, only place to keep you safe.”

Before she could process that, the hand holding her unfolded and Ash shrieked as she saw another maw opening before her – the round, pink mouth of a woman. She was thrust inside and landed with a splat on a tongue wider than her. The mouth clamped shut behind her, thrusting her into darkness. As she squirmed, trying to turn away from the wetly moving cavern of a throat, the tongue lashed under her, curled, and pushed. The teeth parted and she was shoved hard into the wall of the giantess’s inside cheek, before the teeth closed again and she was snapped into place, squeezed between flesh and teeth. She tried to move, to push against the giant chompers, but there was nowhere to go, and she was oddly secure, if getting soaked, as her captor bounced up and down with giant movements.

Ash cringed as she heard the developing thrusts of the fight outside. Giant footsteps, punching and slashing. The wolf snarling, growing tired, the woman shouting to coordinate. Then they had him, catching on, circling him, holding his arms tight as they attacked, and Ash’s captor was moving fast, separated from the rest, rejoining the fight. There was a sudden, huge, squelching impact that shook through Ash, followed by a terrible splattering aftermath, and she tensed in horror at what might have happened. A horrific injury, but for who?

The giantess’s jaw slacked and Ash trembled, fearing falling out of a dead woman – but fingers slipped in and took her, pinching her chest. She squeaked as she was lifted out, trailing saliva, and lowered into a loose fist. Limply holding onto the giant woman’s fingers, Ash saw the Sentinels were spread out, all standing, staring down. The fight was over, but each of them looked stricken with horror.

All except her own captor, who wore a determined, blood-spattered face high above, scowling at her foe. Her other hand, Ash saw, was thick with blood, and the Sheerwolf lay on the ground at her feet. His eyes were vacant and there was a massive hole in his chest.

“Jesus Christ.” It was Ramona Dynamite who spoke first. “Did this bitch just rip out his heart?”