Bikini Kaiju - Ch 4

One thing (of many) that the great masses never quite understood about the Sentinels was how their great size didn’t make it possible to get around the globe in an instant. Sometimes it actually made things a lot harder. All the little people saw was a giant storming in and saving the day at the right moment, and that timing was mostly fortuitous. It tended to rely on a team of hundreds monitoring global seismic activity, sending out alerts of possible threats hours and even days before an attack occurred. For example, when the world woke up to the Ocean Ape tearing through Portland, and Steel Ruth and Ramona Dynamite flew in just before it reached Old Town, that was the result of two days’ travel and a third hovering up and down the Oregon coast. And that was twenty years ago, when the Sentinels had a much stronger support network.

Now, they were complacent, and it was pure chance that Ruth happened to be only a few hours out from Taipei with her monster jet fuelled up. As she rested prone in the cargo bay custom-built for a giant, she imagined how much damage that giant rat would have done when she arrived. Two hours from the alert to her arrival was a lot of time for a kaiju to run loose in a city, a little worse than their old average response time. The worst had been when Gargantula had run rampant in Bucharest for six hours before any of them managed to get there, and it hadn’t left much of the great city standing. At least, that was the worst publicly recognised: at least a half dozen South American and African cities had fared worse than that, but no one much bothered reporting on those, except when Ramona stirred up a fuss.

Then, sometimes the monsters were lazy, taking their time, like when Vorocalypse had ravaged Barcelona over a period of three days, coming and going as it attempted to build a nest. There had been a few occasions like that, when the Sentinels had been engaged with other monsters or simply took too long to get their act together, but the kaiju had thankfully not been intent on outright destruction. Mostly, though, they wanted to fuck shit up and eat people, and a long delay would mean a lot of people dead. After a twenty-year hiatus, Ruth was sure that Queen Rat would be making up for lost time.

They had last seen the vile rodent in London, not long before the Kaiju Calm, when they’d managed to pin the writhing monster down and put it on ice. Literally. One of Professor Cracknal’s last and greatest contributions to the world had been the mobile freezing platform that allowed them to slow kaiju long enough to get them to the Arctic, where they could be permanently frozen. Against public demands that the creatures be left above ground, to serve as eternal reminders of their vanquished threat (more like a fate-tempting tourist trap), they had successfully sunk eight of the great kaiju to freeze at depths of at least a thousand metres. Never to be seen again. That was the idea.

They’d had twenty years of peace from even the toughest of the giant creatures. What the hell had brought them back?

Ruth tried to put those frustrations out of her mind as they drew closer. In the past, someone on the Sentinel Tactical Team would’ve been spewing out updates and advice over the intercom, if only to keep her company, but most of the STT had been disbanded and the plane intercom was broken anyway. Stewing in thought wasn’t a good way to prep for what promised to be a sloppy fight. It had been so long, she could already imagine the tabloid headlines: Rusty Ruth’s Devastating Fight Against Rodent. Dammit, she wasn’t looking forward to stirring up a whole new generation of people angry at her for accidentally stepping on their loved ones while trying to defend them. They were only just shedding personal connections to all the damage from the past. Angry visitors like the new pet she had back in her den had become rarer. But it was what it was. And it’d be good to get some exercise, anyway. Pick up a few extra snacks . . .

The red light blinked to signal the five-minute warning – that, at least, still worked. Ruth took some steadying breaths, flexing and stretching as much as the limited confines of the plane allowed. The plane decelerated and the light flashed faster, ten seconds, and the bay doors opened beneath her, revealing the world below. She dropped out, arms coiled, towards a broad patch of thick trees, a park big enough to thump safely down in. She landed with a ground-quaking boom, trees crunching under her boots, and had to run a few steps to stop the momentum from completely bowling her over. She stopped just short of a phalanx of tall buildings, digging her heels in and churning up earth and, yes, half the road. As she steadied herself, she saw she’d ripped a clumsy path through the park and knocked a couple of cars out of the road with her feet, and a few upset people were running away below, but all given that was a pretty good landing.

Still had it.

Ruth stood taller to check the skyline, and was briefly surprised at how normal it looked – rows and rows of shining towers. Standing, undamaged. Was she in the wrong city? But she saw smoke and the gaps in the skyline further off. A building broken near the top. Got you. Ruth strode towards the smoke, glancing at the ground to find reasonable spaces to thump through. The roads were wide enough that she could walk without having to smash much, and she remembered to tread a little lighter, seeing as the danger didn’t seem too vicious right now. Fingers crossed the giant rat was in one of those nesting moods. There were still plenty of vehicles in the way, though, the city not evacuated or even having ground to a halt, which slowed her down as she tried not to step on too many of them. She cringed and apologised as she felt the familiar pop of a car underfoot, but didn’t look back. It was unlikely the occupants survived, anyway.

Growing closer to the destruction, her vision of it got obscured by buildings taller than her, and she noticed flocks of people banging on windows, pointing and delightedly taking photos. There were no screams ahead, or buildings being smashed. No signs, in fact, that Queen Rat was still here, let alone wreaking havoc. She supposed she’d have to hunt the rodent across the country, following it into ocean caves or whatever.

Ruth reached the scene of the attack and found familiar patterns of broken earth and chunks of buildings missing where they remained standing – a couple of plots were reduced to piles of rubble. People in high-vis jackets and uniforms were scrambling around underfoot mixed in with dusty businessmen all trying to dig out survivors, and they scattered confusedly as Ruth walked through. She frowned with equal confusion. Normally she got a more enthusiastic welcome. It wasn’t that they were unhappy to see her, just oddly surprised.

She reached the epicentre of the destruction, though, where an ugly circle of ruins marked a ferocious giant attack, and the situation suddenly made more sense. Queen Rat was down, done. And there was another woman already here, giant and triumphant. The fight was over, with the kaiju quite unmistakably dead. It had been a long time, but Ruth could scarcely remember a scene quite so brutal: the giant rat’s body lay on its side, half-buried in the remains of buildings it had smashed through, but its head was a few hundred metres to the right, battered out of shape with a huge tongue lolling out. There was blood everywhere, coating the debris, dripping in thick lines down the remaining skyscrapers, pooling and streaming in the cracks in the street. Yet, savage as all this was, it was made surreal by the presence of people darting about, climbing over the rubble, pointing and taking photos. They had no sense of danger or fear, and, in the wonder of this huge corpse, had apparently lost their sense of disgust, too. It stank.

There were surely people stuck under the debris here, and plenty in need of medical aid, but there was only a limited effort to help anyone, as most people were too busy celebrating the rat’s defeat. That atmosphere, Ruth realised, was thanks to the woman who had apparently decapitated Queen Rat. She was standing with one bare foot on the creature’s flank, posing with a bicep flexed and a finger pointing playfully at a group of people photographing her. She smiled with a flash of perfect white teeth, accentuated by the dark blood that marked her face, and winked. A picture-perfect blonde bombshell, slim and toned, wearing only a skimpy blue and red bikini and the copious blood of her enemy. She had icy blue eyes, penetratingly stark. She twisted on the spot, striking another pose for another group of cooing people, gave another wink, then finally turned to Ruth. She must’ve seen Ruth a way off, but was dragging out this public display, and the little people who should’ve been wallowing in post-disaster despair were lapping it up. The giant woman gave Ruth a sparkling smile and a wave.

“Steel Ruth!” she called out in a thick Southern drawl. “Oh my days! I can’t believe it’s really you!” She took a step closer, somehow dainty and not shaking all the buildings, and people swarmed out then back in again, aiming their phone cameras at her. “Well now if I couldn’t shake your hand, that would just make my day. You’re really here! As I live and breathe.”

Ruth stared, trying to parse this gushing preamble with the young beauty before her. She was sure the accent and affectation were exaggerated, the quintessential Southern Belle. There was a hint of something rougher underneath.

“Sorry, I seem to have taken all the fun for myself,” the woman said, taking another step to within arm’s reach, placing a hand gently on her chest. Deliberately, Ruth saw, drawing attention to those globe-like breasts, half revealed by the bikini bra. “I’d say you travelled all this way for nothing, but it is my absolute honour to have a chance to meet you.”

“These people still need help, by the looks of it.” Ruth finally spoke, irritated by the woman’s flippancy. There were, if you listened carefully, groans of pain somewhere nearby. On cue, something a few blocks over collapsed loudly and the locals startled.

The blood-stained giantess glanced towards the sound and smiled again. “I’m here and ready for anything specific they need. But these big fingers can do more damage than good in the delicate work of picking through the remains, don’t you think?” She held up a slender hand that looked anything but clumsy. Her fingers were manicured, the nails decorated in stars and stripes motifs. A far cry from Ruth’s chunky, calloused mitts which had repeatedly been accused of causing more losses in ill-fated attempts to pick through debris for survivors.

Ruth considered the city again, the dead rat, the people joyfully watching and recording their interaction. The presence of this new giantess and her calming effect on the city was so startling that Ruth hadn’t yet processed what had happened. Queen Rat was dead. One of the Great Eight who they could never manage to put down permanently, no matter how many times they’d tussled. She’d been killed by this slim waif. Ruth said, “You tore off its head?”

“I did indeed,” the woman said with a shy smile, running a hand through her hair, smearing blood there. “Things just kind of escalated and I wanted to end it fast. I only wish I could’ve been faster. And made less of a mess.” She gave a little oops shrug. Cute.

Ruth wasn’t liking any part of this. She felt useless and awkward, a giant idiot who’d trampled a few people on the way to save the day when it had already been saved. She didn’t trust this woman’s bubbly charm, nor the fact that she had killed such a formidable kaiju. Both a long-dormant monster and an apparent saviour appearing on the same day after twenty years of silence – what was going on? Ruth scanned the destruction again with a sinking feeling, and itched to just grab a few snacks and get out of here, back to her island. But seeing as she hadn’t actually helped, and this woman was watching, she doubted grabbing any locals would go down well.

“I’m Sloane.” The giantess interrupted her silence. Grinning again, holding out her hand to shake. “Sweet Sloane Alabama.” She put a hand up to shield her mouth, like this was just between them. “Don’t tell anyone, I’m actually a Louisiana gal. But you know. Like the song?” Sloane tilted her head, and when Ruth didn’t respond added, “Lynard Skynard. It was big in the last century. It’s not bad, is it?”

Her smile had faltered slightly, like she was genuinely unsure if Ruth understood the reference. Ruth merely stared back, trying to keep things cool. Her instinct was to pick a fight, which would be very inappropriate. She said, “Where the fuck did you come from?”

Sloane laughed. “Well, Louisiana, silly, like I said. Baton-Rogue, if you really –”

“There hasn’t been a kaiju attack in twenty years. There hasn’t been a new Sentinel in sixty years. How are you here?”

The giantess paused, her charming blue eyes betraying something sly underneath. Yeah, something was definitely off with this, and beneath the friendly show, Sloane knew that Ruth knew it. She winked again and said, “Well, there’s the fun thing, Steel Ruth. I am no Sentinel. Not yet, anyway. But I’d sure love to change that.” Her eyes flicked down to her hand again, still hovering between them, waiting.

Some of the good nature that had captured this bloody death scene was fading as Ruth’s tension infected the people watching. Ruth needed to shake that hand, if only for public appearances, to stop the world of little people from panicking. They could figure out their differences later, and get to the bottom of this, but the merest suggestion of conflict between giants would cause all sorts of international upset and reignite long-dormant, tedious debates. She needed to shake that hand.

“Fuck this,” Ruth sneered, and walked away.