Kaiju for Dummies Read online

  “I know,” she says after a moment. “Lusitania told me.”

  “Oh.” So much for my worrying about that. It seems important that she knows though. Like, maybe she’ll understand just how dangerous us players are.

  Isabella mutters a series of soft swear words in Spanish that I don’t quite make out over the phone, finishing with, “Dios mio.”

  “Yeah,” I say again.

  “So, what are you going to do about it?” she asks, so matter of factly that for a moment I think she’s asked something else.

  When it does register with me what she’s just asked, my brain freezes up. What they hell does she mean, what am I going to do about it? I’m not the one who just massacred a prison and brought a fucking kaiju to our world. I was nearly killed. How the hell does she figure that any of this falls on me to fix?

  I sure as hell didn’t tell anyone how I’d managed to bring Taisaur to our world. Hell, I don’t actually know how I managed that. I’d thought it might just be a one-time fluke. Apparently, I’d been wrong. And so was Isabella because this wasn’t on me to fix.

  “Not a damn thing.” I’m more snappish than I mean to be and the words are too sharp. Too harsh. She doesn’t deserve that. Not after weeks of the silent treatment.

  To her credit, she doesn’t get mad and when she responds, her tone is calm. Cold even. “How’s that?”

  “It’s not my problem and it’s not my fight,” I say to her. “I’ve got things to work on here, my mother needs my help, and what the hell could I do anyway?” At most I could talk to him. But if I were to go back into the game to talk to him, how long would I be able to keep myself out of it before diving back in just to feel the sensation of being Taisaur again?

  And there it is. Everything else is an excuse. I know it. And I think Isabella knows it too. Logging in is too dangerous though. Last time I logged in around Mom, the aliens attacked the city I’d logged in from. Not that I intend to do anything to them, but is it a risk I can afford to take?

  So, leave, another part of me says. Go out to the middle of nowhere where there’s nothing to smash and try. Mom would be safe that way.

  But would I be? As badly as I want to feel the exhilaration of being hundreds of feet tall and bursting with power, I’m terrified that the second I give into that desire it will be like giving into my old anger. Where I’m in control but not really. Feeling omnipotent and unstoppable and like I’m riding a fucking high, only to come to seconds later and realize I’ve messed up and regret everything.

  Giving in might just undo me. “You’re right, Isabella. Someone needs to login and fix things. It just can’t be me.”

  Chapter Five

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  Despite my words to Isabella, I find myself out in the middle of nowhere, at least an hour’s drive out from Kerrville. The thing about Texas is that there is a metric shit-ton of land. More land than anyone has any real idea what to do with. It’s why the roads and infrastructure are all crap. None of the cities had to worry about space until they did and by then it was like someone had dropped a bowel of spaghetti and called it a map.

  So, I’m in the middle of nowhere. The upper corner of my smartphone says “no service.” I believe it. I also have a feeling that Kaiju Wars Online doesn’t actually need an internet connection to work.

  My car’s off and I’m sitting on the hood overlooking a sunlit sky that will be orange and purple soon with sunset. I’m not paying any attention to the sky, though a part of me wants to. All my attention is on the smartphone held up in front of me. On the app with the monster face.

  This isn’t my responsibility. It isn’t something I have to fix. My hand shakes, making the words beneath the app logo unreadable. I want to login so badly. I miss the game. Miss how it made me feel. I miss doing missions with my friends and I miss Taisaur, weird as that sounds.

  And logging in might get me some answers. Hell, it might mean talking Megaptera out of another mass murder spree. Or manslaughter spree. It’s entirely possible that he somehow thinks that, despite the news, he’s still playing a game. I flashback to the memory of him glaring at me from the ruins of the penitentiary. God, I hope he thinks that it’s a game.

  My clenched stomach won’t let me believe it though. His rage bar had been pulsing with so much energy that he had to have been in a real fury. Destroying that prison had been deliberate.

  Why though?

  It doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got a fucking kaiju, a creature whose entire genre is meant to be a metaphor for epic level disasters like nuclear explosions and typhoons, and the first thing you do is attack a prison in Huntsville, Texas?

  A terrifying thought occurs to me. Are the Game Masters back and giving out missions specific to our world? They’d been great at motivating us to destroy specific targets on the alien’s world in the game with big payoffs and rewards. Could they have offered Megaptera something like that to attack Huntsville?

  There is only one way to find out.

  That’s a lie. There’s more than one way. There’s Lusitania, for one. She could login and maybe get in touch with these guys. And maybe some detective could piece things together enough to track us down. How long will that take though, for either option? How many more cities might get destroyed in the meantime?

  My thumb is moving toward the app before I realize what I’m doing. I stop it, barely a millimeter over the screen. Everything in me wants to let it go, to just push the little icon. I take a deep, shuddering breath. If I do this, I need to do it for the right reasons. Is that what I’m doing now, or am I just trying to justify myself?

  Screw it. I could be here all day and night debating with myself.

  My thumb presses the icon and I log in.

  Welcome back, Mr. Morretti, says a familiar, digitized female voice. It takes me a moment to place her and when I do, I groan.

  It’s the helper lady, the guide voice that accompanied me when I first started out and had to explain everything. Or at least, felt the need to. If she wasn’t so obnoxious I might have actually learned some things about the way the game works instead of getting it all from Xenatlas and the others after I ran into them.

  “I thought I turned you off,” I say.

  You did, the voice admits cheerfully. However, the system has undergone a large update. Please wait while the updates load.

  “No! No, I don’t want to wait,” I all but shout at the unseen speaker. It doesn’t do any good.

  Updates in progress, please hold on. This will all be over soon. She sounds so damn cheerful I want to vomit. If I do with her disconcerting voice in my head though it would probably come out rainbows or something.

  A LOADING window appears on my phone screen and a bar at the bottom begins filling up, a percentage number in the center climbing higher and higher.

  And then I feel it. Whatever this update is, it’s not something to do with the software. It’s the hardware.

  My hand burns. Specifically, the flesh beneath the scar on the palm of my right hand where the Game Masters inserted their chip that lets me play and records my data burns like a mother. My hand clenches and unclenches then throws itself open and won’t close. There’s too much pain.

  The heat crawls up the inside of my wrist like venomous napalm, coursing up my limb until it reaches my body. I fall off the hood of the car. The phone tumbles away. I can still see the loading screen and the little bar filling up. Fuller and fuller.

  Some part of my brain makes the connection as the heat in my arm reaches my torso and halts that the bar is moving at the same pace as the pain. The bar jumps up several percent. It’s the only warning I get before the inside of my chest is set ablaze. I throw my head back and can’t scream. My mouth is open, ready to make the sound, but no noise comes out. There’s nothing for me but pain and the loading bar.

  My eyes roll up into the back of my skull and all I see is
blackness. And the damn loading screen. 75%. 78%. The heat crawls up my neck, reaches the base of my skull. 80%. That’s the last number I see before I lose focus.

  Distantly I’m aware of falling, tumbling through the air.

  There’s a screen in front of me, listing my options. HUB, ATTACK, and KAIJU.

  Welcome back, Mr. Moretti, said the stupidly cheerful voice. Please select an option.

  Did I have to? My thought is more of a mental groan than anything properly coherent but the voice chooses to respond anyway.

  You do not, she says. You may choose to exit the menu at any time.

  Great, the damn thing is reading my mind. I take a long, deep breath, intending to hold it and let myself calm down…only I can’t feel myself holding it in my chest. There’s a particular sensation that accompanies the act of breathing, a swelling, a feeling of something expanding, until fullness is reached. That sensation is absent.

  Upon realizing this, countless other details registered as missing too. Things that I take for granted every day until now that they’d vanished.

  I have no heartbeat. I’m not actually breathing. Despite these things, I don’t feel as if I am suffocating. I can’t taste the inside of my mouth. There is simply an absence where that sense should have been automatically relayed to my brain. It isn’t the only sense missing either. So is my entire sense of touch.

  You don’t realize how many things you are actually touching until you are touching nothing at all, whatsoever. There’s always something in contact with your skin, even if it’s just the air, or your clothes, or even the feel of your lips against each other. There’s always some kind of touch sensory information being relayed to your brain. Unless you’ve got a computer chip in your palm that’s somehow jacking with your brain.

  I start swearing. Long and loud and creatively. Or maybe not so creatively. I am in a panic and whatever garbage is spewing out of my mouth probably only makes me sound like an idiot. Supposing anyone other than the AI help-bot can hear it.

  No one can hear you swearing, Mr. Moretti, the bot supplies helpfully. Just me.

  Just fucking great.

  You are not in any physical distress, the voice continues. You are safe. Your mind is now more fully integrated with the Kaiju Wars program.

  What the hell does that mean? I would scowl if I could feel my mouth. That answer is decidedly lacking in explanation.

  My apologies, Mr. Moretti. Given our previous interaction I thought that it would be your preference that I not speak unless spoken to save for where my programming will not permit me to remain silent.

  “Uh, right, whatever,” I say, torn between frustration that my preferred calming technique’s been taken away and relief that I can’t hyperventilate.

  “Take me to the HUB,” I say. “We’re going to Monster Land.” And the sooner I get there and touch base with the others, the sooner I can log out and put this crap behind me.

  Understood, Mr. Moretti, the happy voice says.

  I feel it then. The rush. My senses suddenly connected and relaying sensory information that doesn’t belong to me. My long ears twitch. My tail lashes behind me. I stand up, rising above the trees on powerful, feline legs as I take in the part of the game affectionately referred to as Monster Land by the players as I’ve never seen it before.

  And I can say that in all honesty because the only time I’ve felt this way before was when I’d somehow brought Taisaur to Dallas. I take a deep breath and the fresh scent of the forest fills my nostrils and makes my mouth water, saliva rushing around my fangs.

  I swallow and my ears twitch again. I haven’t just logged into the game. Somehow, I’m not just playing Taisau, I’ve become my kaiju again.

  Chapter Six

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  Back when I thought I was just playing a game, I’d occasionally have flashes of sensation that I had no business experiencing, such as taste and smell. In hindsight they’re obvious, but at the time I was so wrapped up in what was occurring that little things like experiencing senses that don’t belong in a videogame just slipped by me. There is nothing little about those senses now.

  I can smell the ocean nearby, the salt mingling with the odor of abundant foliage from the forest around me. Each type of tree has a different scent and they’re so exotic that it makes me wish I knew more than a handful of types of tree that they might be. Maybe they aren’t plants that exist on earth? There’s a breeze flowing over Taisaur’s silver striped hide and between the plated spikes on his back that transform into full on spines just before the tail.

  None of those sensations holds a candle to my new sense of scale. More than having spikes or a tail, that had been the single most disorienting thing the last time I’d been Taisaur. And unless I miss my guess, Taisaur’s gotten even bigger since then. Bringing him to earth and defeating Titanocobra must have leveled him up. I really have to check his stats after this.

  My kaiju is a beast, looking like a cross between a black tiger and a dinosaur with a long powerful tail, feline face and limbs, three silver horns, and the aforementioned spikey plates on his back, plus an additional pair of spikes jutting out from his shoulders, just for laughs. I don’t know how big I am right now. At last count, Taisaur stood about two hundred feet tall. I think I’m bigger now.

  Any kind of movement at this size is weird. Hollywood and most videogames have our minds programmed to equate big with slow, and that’s not entirely accurate. For one thing, each hesitant step I take caries me nearly a hundred feet. Think about that for a moment, how much distance I can cover as Taisaur in a relatively short amount of time. My reflexes aren’t bad either. Or is that our reflexes?

  I’ve never quite been sure whether or not Taisaur is just a vessel for me to control or an entity entirely separate from myself. I can’t help but feel that if this was supposed to be a body made for me that being in it wouldn’t feel so alien.

  I take several moments to move around and adjust to my new condition before something else hits me. The world I’m in now is more real. Previously the kaiju in the HUB, or as we players called it, Monster Land, were semi-transparent and only able to interact with inorganic material like rocks. Now? Now, I’m trampling the trees beneath my feet and tail.

  And I have my HP and Rage bars. Those definitely weren’t here before.

  Monster Land is supposed to be a safe haven, a place for the players to interact solely with the other players. I’d been warned that the game was changing. Now things are dramatically different and I don’t know the score. One thing’s for certain, I wouldn’t have my HP meter if I didn’t need to keep track those things, which means that this time around I can lose HP. If not the other players, then something else here can hurt me.

  So much for feeling invincible.

  I take a deep breath, scenting the salty forest air through Taisaur’s enhanced senses, and focus. That was all that was required last time I was here to find players who were okay with you looking for them in Monster Land. This time, nothing happens.

  Maybe that part of the game’s changed too?

  Hey, AI-bot, you still there? My question comes out a low snarling growl from Taisaur’s mouth, deep and powerful enough that it would have rattled my bones had I been in my own body and standing nearby.

  How may I be of assistance, Mr. Moretti? The cheerfully feminine voice chimes in my head like a digitized bell.

  I can’t find my friends. What’s the new method to locate them?

  You have no friends, Mr. Moretti, the voice happily supplies.

  My ears fall back and I flash my teeth in a kaiju scowl. Did the update wipe my contacts?

  No, Mr. Moretti, the voice says. All of your contacts unfriended you.

  Fuck me.

  My attention briefly drifts to my HP and Rage meters. I am off to a truly terrible start.

  Fortunately, despite the changes, this area isn’t tot
ally unfamiliar. With few options left to me, I take off on my own. My group of players had this peninsula with a rocky outcropping where we would meet up to coordinate our attacks. That place is my last chance at reaching out to them.

  Travelling as Taisaur through Monster Land this time around is a new experience. Everything is more real. I can feel my muscles propelling me hundreds of feet forward per second and the foliage against my thick hide pressing against me. I’m going fast and yet frustratingly slow at the same time because of all the stupidly large trees in my way. It’s like trying to sprint through a three-foot swimming pool. Nothing in my way can resist my momentum or even hurt me, but it does resist me and the knowledge that I could be going faster grates against my nerves.

  I don’t know how long I’m looking before I find the peninsula. It feels like forever but it’s probably not that long. I come up short and without thinking about it, sniff the air. The ocean smell is stronger here than that of the trees. Another smell is on the wind though, both familiar and not.

  There’s a kaiju at the end of the peninsula. When the hell did I learn what a kaiju smells like? For that matter, since when do I sniff the air looking for them? The answer hits me right away. Never. But Taisaur knows how to use his body. His instincts have always made an already disorienting experience bearable. Without them I’d probably have gone mad when I’d first appeared as him in Dallas.

  Even so the action disturbs me. I can’t treat this like I’m playing a videogame anymore. These monsters are real. If Taisaur can influence me here, what’s to say he can’t influence me back in my world? One more thing to worry about.

  I step onto the peninsula, a rocky bridge extending out over the ocean from the forest. It feels a little narrow to me, but considering my sense of scale, that probably means it’s around a quarter mile across.

  The outcropping waits for me like some kind of primordial fortress. I can see the countless notations Xenatlas carved into the rock to coordinate our growth and strategies. It’s all done in a code of his own devising that I never even tried to crack. I’m decent with numbers and computers, but that’s mostly because I’m not afraid of them rather than because I’ve got legitimate skills. It’s amazing how far being fearless can take you, or sometimes even just pretending that you are.