Chapter 124: Something of Interest

“Slap!”

A thick stack of photographs was flung onto the table in the war room.

Interwoven bands of red, yellow, and green traced the outlines of two colossal beasts.

The images had been captured by an infrared surveillance satellite.

“This is your answer to me? Monsters capable of destroying a modern nation!

“Two of them!

“They fought in Hinomoto, and after I ordered you to monitor the site, this is what you give me?!

“You intend to show this to the congressmen?!”

The white-haired old man in a United States military uniform spat venom at the people seated below him.

If these had been photographs of some nation’s secret base or military operation, thermal imagery this clear would have earned the people responsible a commendation.

But this was Hinomoto! Two hundred-foot monsters that made no attempt to hide—and could not have hidden even if they had wanted to!

Were they really planning to present these red-and-green infrared silhouettes to Congress and demand funding?

“Sir, when they fought, the ground was torn up to a depth of two meters. The pulverized dust was carried by the shock waves into every corner of the city,” said a bespectacled man in camouflage, his tone troubled.

That sentence seemed to flip a switch. Another bespectacled man, this one overweight, continued.

“Concrete dust, burning ash… Every particle of smoke and dust in the city was compressed into a kind of ‘privacy screen’ by the spherical shock waves. And within the shock-wave zone…”

No one would have dared remain inside the blast radius amid such a cataclysm.

No one said the implication aloud, but everyone present understood it perfectly.

The United States general drew a deep breath and steadied himself.

“Why didn’t you deploy camera drones?”

“Sir…” The bespectacled soldier in camouflage hesitated.

“All our drones were expended during the previous engagements. Even if we brought in replacements, their electronic components wouldn’t withstand Godzilla’s radiation without radiation shielding.”

The general had no answer to that. He could only turn toward the Monarch Organization member serving as an adviser.

“Mr. Serizawa, have you discovered anything?”

“Hm?” Serizawa had been staring, entranced, at the stack of photographs scattered across the table. Hearing the general call his name, he hurriedly collected himself.

“General, we have seen this newly arrived Godzilla before, out at sea near Bikini Atoll.”

“That’s right. At the time, we even fed it a nuclear bomb.”

“Yes, General. Perhaps we really did ‘feed’ it a nuclear bomb.”

“Hm?”

The general caught the subtle shift in Serizawa’s tone. His eyes widened.

“What are you implying?”

“Ever since we first discovered these colossal beasts, we have been asking ourselves the same question: what kind of energy could sustain bodies like theirs—bodies that seem almost divine—and allow them to carry out the functions of life?

“Now, perhaps we have our answer.”

Serizawa pulled several infrared photographs from the stack.

In one, the mountain-like body of Godzilla was glowing a deep, searing red with heat. Only four patches across its shoulder were blue with abnormally low temperatures.

They belonged to a three-meter-tall offshoot, frozen rigid from the loss of heat atop Godzilla’s shoulder.

In another image, just as Tokyo Godzilla’s claws were about to reach its opponent’s neck, the temperature around its elbow suddenly plunged.

“The giant beasts feed on radiation energy. And the energy source of the Godzilla in Tokyo is a thermonuclear reaction.

“…It literally drained dry anything that came into contact with it!”

Professor Serizawa delivered his conclusion with absolute certainty.

Perhaps the reasoning was flawed, but the result was certainly correct.

~~~~~~

Thanks to the Kengan Association’s influence and Metsudo Katahara’s favor, Bai Tang Jing once again obtained, without the slightest difficulty, Hinomoto’s government report on the operation against Godzilla.

As expected, he found no mention of “superhuman,” “assisting the giant beast,” “super-speed freezing,” or anything similar.

Every movement made by a colossal beast possessed the destructive force of a natural disaster when measured against ordinary people and equipment.

That was why, despite being creatures a hundred meters tall, there was so little visual footage of them—even within a specialized organization like Monarch.

The moment such a creature began to move, equipment and personnel within its range were virtually guaranteed to be destroyed.

Of course, Godzilla’s final act—annihilating its opponent’s cells with that astonishing atomic breath—had also ensured that every trace of the boy’s involvement was erased.

Optical images had been obscured, while in thermal imaging he appeared as a “cold human,” perpetually shrouded in Soul Absorption.

It was only natural that the report revealed nothing.

After one Godzilla died and the other departed, they left behind a battlefield reduced to utter devastation. Once the Self-Defense Forces entered, the surviving residents of Tokyo gradually emerged from their hiding places, their faces still marked by the relief and terror of having escaped death.

Their fear of giant monsters would seep into their very genes, becoming a lifelong shadow.

Evacuations and rescue operations continued for half a month.

And that was only because, on the night Godzilla spewed violet light and annihilated the cabinet, tens of thousands of Hinomoto citizens had been killed or injured beneath collapsing buildings and streams of highly penetrating radioactive heat.

The people burned and irradiated by the superheated radioactive particles carried in the monster’s breath were too numerous to count.

Those requiring long-term medical care would become a nightmare for the island nation’s entire healthcare system in the years to come.

At the post-disaster press conference, the new prime minister wept openly, overwhelmed with grief. He expressed his deepest condolences for the catastrophe and promised relief payments to the citizens who had suffered.

He seemed desperate to shoulder all the islanders’ pain upon himself.

Unfortunately, the people of Tokyo—driven half-mad with terror by Godzilla and only recently beginning to recover—were not buying it.

Before the government had even released its report on residual radiation, they had already organized mass demonstrations.

Against the backdrop of the ruined city, the procession of survivors was a deeply moving sight.

Moreover, during the preceding half month, the attention of the entire world had been drawn to the island nation by Godzilla’s appearance.

Thus, the latest “anti-monster marches” quickly spread across much of the world.

Unlike the protests previously held over such minor issues as “sexual minority rights” or “skin color,” this concerned a monster out of myth that had landed and obliterated the largest metropolitan area on Earth!

That fact, absurd as a fairy tale, destroyed humanity’s sense of security in an instant.

The stock markets and global economy did not merely plunge—they fell off a cliff.

Apocalyptic cults and hedonism sprang up across the Earth like mushrooms after rain.

In the end, people really had only one demand:

We want to be safe!

And if safety was what they wanted, then they wanted the monsters hunted down.

This left politicians around the world in a state of despair.

After a final round of meetings and deliberations, the Monarch Organization, which had once operated in secrecy, was thrust into the center of the storm.

Dr. Serizawa and most of Monarch’s senior members were among the world’s leading scholars.

They possessed all the temperament and disposition of academics, and so they had always been less than pleased when the United States acted as their patron and source of funding.

Now, they took the opportunity to propose the globalization of the organization.

Monarch would be granted substantial autonomy, while its funding would no longer come from the United States through the old Truman-era system. Instead, it would follow the model of the Special Defense Authorization Act, with funds allocated internally through the United Nations.

The public welcomed the arrangement.

It was as though they had suddenly found a body of recognized experts and authorities in the field of monsters.

Whether those experts handled matters well or not, at least someone was now responsible for the monster problem!

If they did a poor job, people could always denounce them afterward.

And just as human society was being tossed about by wind and rain, a telephone call from Watsuki the Warrior reached Bai Tang Jing.

“Bai Tang, are you free? I think you’ll be very interested in this.”

The steady, honest muscleman could not conceal the excitement in his voice.