Godzilla Lives!
A Godzilla fanfiction by Travis J. DeSantis
Chapter Five
Miki Saegusa was most definitely not having a good day. First the handle of her brush snapped, so the bouncy shoulder-length hair style she preferred was currently looking a tad disheveled. Miki then proceeded to spill coffee on her favorite blouse and broke off a key while trying to lock her apartment door. But she was a positive, optimistic person, believing her luck would pick up once she got to work.
It often seemed that Miki was one of the few people in Tokyo that genuinely enjoyed her job. Of course, it wasn't exactly what most would consider a conventional occupation. She worked at the Psychic Research Center, an organization run by the government to locate people in Japan who possessed a talent for Extra Sensory Perception and to help develop their abilities. Miki herself was their top student and was generally regarded as one of the best telepaths working at the Center, so she was often contracted for jobs requiring her particular brand of ESP.
Unfortunately, Miki's optimism was not to be fulfilled. Yesterday, she was assigned to find out what was wrong with some Tokyo PD drug-sniffing dogs whose performance were dropping sharply. For the most part, they were still in their prime, so age wasn't a factor, and the veterinarians couldn't find anything wrong with any of them. Miki succeeded in identifying the problem--the officer that worked the kennel was sneaking out drugs for himself and the dog's were starting to identify the scents as 'normal' instead of 'illegal'--but a reporter on hand was quite frank about his disrespect for Ms. Saegusa's craft.
So it was with much trepidation that Miki bought a newspaper and was flipping the pages while absent-mindedly walking the halls of the Research Center.
"Hey, Miki!" called another woman. Saegusa lifted her head and looked around, realizing she had walked past her office. The woman calling to her was Asuka Okouchi, another of the Center's telepaths and Miki's partner, with whom Miki shared an office. "Have you seen it yet?" Asuka asked gravely.
"No," Miki replied with a sigh. "But I can already tell it won't be good."
Asuka put a friendly arm around the younger woman's shoulders. "Well, at least he doesn't mention you by name. Not that what he does say is any better..."
Just as Miki entered the office, she found the article. It was a small piece on page six, not even accompanied by a picture. Truly, the contemptuous reporter didn't mention Miki's name, instead calling her a "pet psychic" that had "swindled the Tokyo Police out of valuable funds." He went on to make note that Miki's efforts "could have been accomplished by the police's own detectives for half the cost," nevermind that they weren't even aware a crime was in progress. She threw the newspaper away in disgust.
"Cheer up! Who cares what that jerk says?" Okouchi added placatingly. "The Center has been getting a good rep lately and one biased reporter can't change that."
"Yeah, you're right," Miki replied. But her tone was unconvincing; she was really taking this to heart. Miki plopped down in her nicely-padded chair and tried to block out the negative thoughts. After a moment, she grabbed a small spray bottle on her desk and wheeled around to spritz some water on her collection of ferns.
Asuka dealt with the majority of their paperwork, so the shelving behind Miki's desk resembled a jungle more than a work space. Communing with plants was always much easier than with animals, perhaps because plants lacked a brain. But whatever the reason, Miki enjoyed 'talking' to the citizens of her private little forest and it always helped her relax.
All of a sudden, Asuka snapped her fingers, bringing Miki back to attention. "I've got an idea! Why don't we head down to the children's ward? I heard there's been some interesting activity in the Precognitive class lately. Want to check it out?" With a genuine smile, Miki nodded her assent.
The Center's child ward was where adolescents identified with ESP abilities were taught. Teenagers and older stayed in the Center's dormitories, under constant monitoring. But those younger would stay for only a three-day weekend and were then allowed to return home for school and an otherwise normal upbringing. Okouchi and Saegusa enjoyed helping out with the children when not on assignment, so they were always welcome. When they arrived, the children were surprisingly silent. Everyone was bent over their tiny desks, working quietly.
"What's going on?" Asuka asked the teacher in a whisper.
"The kids are drawing their dreams," explained the teacher. "Sometimes it's hard to interpret, but most of them are getting quite accurate with their dream predictions."
While the two older women continued to talk, Miki knelt across from a little boy with light brown hair. "So, you're drawing your dreams?" she asked.
The little boy nodded in the exaggerated way children do. He grabbed a red crayon and started scribbling all over the picture. "Wanna see?" he replied with a grin, revealing his missing tooth.
He turned the picture around and held it up in front of his face, to which Miki gasped in surprise. The boy had drawn a mountain with curly green shapes at the base, a forest most probably. The red lines he scribbled seemed to be coming out of the mountain's summit and running down its sides. But there was also a massive black shape behind the mountain with spikes on one side and a stream of blue coming from the other.
It was a crude image to be sure, but the black shape triggered a childhood memory deep in the woman's mind. Frantically, Miki's eyes scanned the other kids and their drawings. A small girl with a pink bow in her hair was drawing what roughly appeared to be a green dog, but its mouth was much too long and filled with crooked fangs. Another boy had drawn a silver oval with various colored lines connecting it too another large black shape. But this boy apparently had some drawing ability, as his was more clearly defined. It was a giant, standing upright with a long tail and red eyes. The spikes on its back were outlined with blue.
"Y-y-you saw th-that?" Miki stuttered. The children around her nodded, holding up their own drawings. As Miki looked around, the memories came flooding back. She had seen this sort of thing herself. It was one of her earliest memories, before she even mastered walking. Such images once dominated her nightmares, but they were not premonitions. This was a nightmare that she witnessed in real life. Frighteningly real life.
Asuka and the teacher had since stopped talking and now stood behind the younger woman, also enthralled by the children's pictures. They too recognized the drawings and the black giant had a name...
