Portals of Infinity: Kaiju

by John Van Stry

  "Wow," She said looking around. "So this is your god's domain?" She said and smiled at me. "No wonder you and he are such good friends!"

  "That was quick," I said, "I figured I'd have to wait until you went to sleep or something."

  "Nah, I'm dead."

  "Dead?" I looked at her surprised.

  "Yeah, when the gojira stepped on us, it killed me and half a company."

  "Gojira?" I said looking at her, "You know what this thing is?"

  "Of course I do, I told you I liked movies, Will. The Japanese made lots of movies about them."

  "Wait," I stopped and thought a moment. "You mean to tell me, that thing out there is Godzilla?"

  Evean nodded, "More or less. How the Japanese picked up the legend of it, I have no idea. Maybe some portal traveler brought it through, and wrote a story about it."

  "That seems like a bit of a stretch to me," I said. "Then again, the sound that it made," I said and shuddered, thinking about it.

  "Big lizard with a breath weapon that likes to stomp on things and lives in the water," Evean shrugged, "Sounds like a gojira to me."

  "So, how do we kill it?"

  "Simple, we just need to find us an Okishijen Desootoria."

  "What's that?"

  "It's the weapon they used to kill gojira in the first movie."

  "And you think it will work?"

  "Those of us who know about it," Fel said, breaking into the conversation, "do."

  "So, where do we go to get it, and when do we leave?" I asked.

  "We?" Evean said looking at me.

  "It's a threat to my people as well as yours, besides, I think I owe you one," I smiled.

  "After Evean reincarnates, you'll be leaving. A couple of the other gods will be sending people with you."

  "Anyone that I know?" I asked.

  "Jane."

  "Aww," Evean frowned. "If Jane comes along, how am I supposed to get Will in bed?"

  "Oh, I'm sure you'll find a way," Fel laughed.

  "Gee, thanks," I grumbled. "Will anyone else be coming with us? Any of yours and Aryanna's friends?"

  "Suzona, Gregory, and Joseph."

  "Why them?" I asked curious. I liked Joseph, Gregory was okay, Suzona however left a little to be desired. Mainly because she had the biggest ego I'd ever run across. It didn't help that she was entitled to it either.

  "They're all from high-tech worlds, and we believe the Okishijen Desootoria comes from just such a world."

  "You don't know for sure?" I asked surprised.

  "That's why were sending so many of you," Fel said.

  "At least we know where to start," Evean told me.

  "Oh? Where's that?"

  "Japan, of course."

  Seven

  Saladin - Hiland

  "You're taking Laria with you!" Rachel growled.

  I sighed, this argument had been going on for probably longer than any argument we'd ever had. Not that we'd had all that many.

  "No, I can't."

  "Yes, you can, and you will, William!"

  "There are going to be eight other champions on this quest, eight! Only three of them I trust, and of those three, one of them I'm not even sure of half the time, seeing as I killed her once! Three more of them are from here, this plane, and their gods and their countries aren't even on good terms with us!

  "I don't need that kind of liability, Rachel! Laria will end up dead, and it will be my fault because somebody will try to use her against me!"

  "I told you before, William, you will do as I say, and you will take her, or else!"

  I growled long and low and I jumped on Rachel pinning her to the bed.

  "I've had enough of this, Rachel. You may be the queen, but you are my wife! And like it or not, this time you are going to do what I tell you, or I'll put you over my knee and spank your royal ass! Do you understand me?"

  "You wouldn't dare!" she growled back.

  I grabbed her wrists in one hand, rolled over to a sitting position, pulling her with me and dragging her across my lap I curled a leg around hers to lock them in position, and then started to spank her.

  She screamed and she swore and the guards stayed the hell out of the room. We didn't have many knockdown drag outs, but when we did, everyone cleared out.

  I stopped after six and then waited for her to run down. She was pissed, but then I was pissed as well. Maybe I should have brought her down to the temple and had Fel tell her for me. But dammit, she had to understand that I wasn't doing this just to get another plaything.

  "Hon," I said in a much softer voice, "You know I love you, but you have to understand that many of us are going to die on this quest. That's why they're sending so many of us. We have to be fast and we can't be safe, and we can't wait for anyone. Laria isn't able to jump portals, and she's mortal.

  "I can't take the time to watch out for her or protect her. If she gets in trouble, I'll have to let her die."

  Rachel froze at that.

  "You'd let her die?" She asked.

  "If it would be the choice between saving thousands of our people, or her. Of course I'd let her die, I'd have no choice. You'd do the same thing, and you know it."

  Rachel sighed, and then whacked me in the face with her tail.

  "I'm still mad at you," she growled.

  "Well don't kill me," I said, only half-joking. "We're leaving tomorrow and Fel will be pissed if I don't go with them. This monster may be in Barassa right now, but eventually it may cross the river and be in your Kingdom."

  "Let me up," she growled.

  I did and pulled her close, she was being stiff and prickly; all of her claws were digging into me somewhere. Rachel did not like losing, ever, to anyone, even me. Usually I let her get her way, but every once in a while I still took the time to remind her that we were husband and wife first, Queen and Champion second, and sometimes we were going to do things my way. Like it or not.

  "You can leave her home," Rachel said still softly growling.

  "You will not take this out on her, Hon." I said and gave her a hug. "I already had this argument with her last night and she's terrified of what you're going to do to her."

  I felt Rachel relax a little, "No, I will not take it out on her. I know it's not her fault. But if you bring home any surprises, you are likely to wake up dead.

  "Several times!" She growled.

  "Why are you getting so possessive these days?" I asked, a little surprised. "I thought you didn't mind my occasional dalliances?"

  "It's nothing," Rachel said and turned her head away from me.

  I grabbed her chin and slowly turned her face back to mine. "It's important to me, you're important to me, Rachel. Tell me."

  A strange expression ghosted over her face for a moment, anger, fear, sadness, I wasn't sure which.

  "I'm not getting any younger, William."

  I stiffened a moment, she hadn't said 'love' or 'dear'; she'd said my name.

  "But you aren't getting any older," she sighed and buried her face in my chest and started to cry.

  "You know I love you more than I've ever loved anyone, ever, Hon. You know that, right?" I whispered softly, holding her and letting her cry into my chest, her arms coming around and clinging to me.

  "I'm getting old, old! Eventually I'll be old and gray and you won't! You'll have all of those young girls throwing themselves at you! How am I to compete with that?"

  "Do you want me to quit?" I asked softly.

  Rachel gasped and looked up at me. "What?"

  "Do you want me to quit? I could ask Fel to make me look older, look my age, before I did."

  "You'd do that?" Rachel's expression was rather shocked. "For me?"

  I nodded, "Of course I would. I've been meaning to ask Fel to make me look older anyway."

  "You really do love me, don't you, Hon?" Rachel said, and I lowered my head and gave her a kiss.

  "Yes, I really do. If you want me to quit, when I get back from this quest, after we get rid of this m
onster, I'll quit. I don't care how old you get, or how old you look, Love. I know when this life is over, we'll be together in the afterlife, and if I can't love you here, until the end, how could you love me there?"

  I kissed her again and then I pulled her down to the bed then and made love to her. I meant what I had said, if Rachel wanted me to quit, I'd quit.

  The next morning when I left, Rachel looked a lot happier, if thoughtful. Laria was still a little concerned, but Rachel had taken the time to put her at ease with the situation.

  I walked down to the temple, I really wasn't sure where we were going next, just when to show up. I wasn't even sure who was going to be in charge of the group.

  "Morning, Fel," I said when I walked into the temple.

  "William," Fel's voice replied.

  "I'm sorry about what I said last night," I sighed.

  "William," Fel's voice was lighter this time, "if you didn't love her, you wouldn't be who you are, or as good a champion as to our people as you are. I'll talk with her, after she's had some time to think about it. I'd rather not lose you, but if it's what the two of you want, I won't complain."

  I nodded, I wasn't quite sure if it was what I wanted, there were still a lot of places I'd like to travel to, and things I'd like to see, if the infinite really was infinite. But I didn't want to lose Rachel, ever.

  "Thanks, Fel. She was pretty upset and, well, I've been worried about something like this for a while now."

  I looked around, no one else was around. I thought Jane would be leaving from here as well.

  "Where am I off to?"

  "Japan, as I said."

  "Where is everyone?"

  "You'll all be meeting at the same, spot."

  I nodded, "Who is in charge?"

  "Evean, she not only knows the most about the item, but she also speaks Japanese."

  "Well, I guess I get to finally see just how ugly she is," I sighed shaking my head. "I hope I don't do anything stupid."

  "I've found that knowing someone makes a huge difference in what you think about their looks, William."

  "Then I'm doomed," I sighed.

  "Well, let me open up the portal for you."

  "So, just where in Japan am I going?"

  "Tottori." Fel laughed then, "Doesn't help much, does it?"

  "Nope," I said and stepped through the portal as it opened.

  "Will?"

  I turned and saw a young woman, the first thing I noticed was she had a rather nice figure; the second was that she was ugly. She had a cleft palate that hadn't been dealt with properly, as well as a weak eye, and several of those 'port-wine stain' type birthmarks on her face.

  "You haven't done the cosmetic surgery?" I said walking up to her.

  "No 'hello, Evean, it's nice to see you, Evean?'" she grumbled at me.

  I shrugged and gave her a hug and a kiss. "It's nice to see you, Evean, I'm glad you're here, Evean, where the hell are we going, Evean?" I said and smiled at her.

  She paused a moment and looked at me surprised.

  "You kissed me."

  I shrugged, "I seem to recall doing that the last time I saw you and hadn't seen you in a while."

  "Yeah, but..." she stopped then, looked at me a moment, "boy scout," she mumbled and then moved on. "We're the first here, the others should be coming through shortly, but I wanted to go over the plan with you before they do.

  "First, we need to find out who designed the monster for the movie. Then we need to go talk to them, and see if we can find out where they got the idea from."

  "Do you think they were a portal jumper?" I asked.

  She shrugged, "Maybe, maybe not. Could be they learned of it from someone else. I don't know. But it's the first spot to start. It beats the other option."

  "What's the other option?"

  "We go through the portal in Barassa and try to backtrack through a portal there to the place that can kill them."

  I shook my head; I didn't see that working very well at all.

  "Will?" I heard, followed by a string of what I could only guess was Japanese.

  I turned and there was a rather tall Japanese woman there, she looked like Jane, so I figured it was her.

  "Hi Jane," I said and she looked at me funny. Evean said something to her and Jane nodded and said something back.

  "Why can't I understand her?" I asked Evean.

  "Jane's never been here before, so her template locked her in as a Japanese woman. She won't know any other languages here. Same for the three others coming from Saladin."

  Suddenly I realized why it was so important that Evean spoke Japanese, as well as English. I was from here, so my template was North American and English speaker. Joseph, Suzona, and Gregory had been here before and were locked in as European looking English speakers. As long as we were in Japan, half the team wouldn't be able to speak to the other half, except via Evean.

  Joseph showed up next, followed quickly by Suzona and Gregory. I introduced them all to Evean, Joseph didn't react to her appearance at all, Gregory and Suzona both did, but at least Gregory seemed to get over it almost immediately.

  The other three showed up in quick succession then, and as expected they all looked Japanese and spoke only Japanese. Evean introduced them to the rest of us; they were Loomis, Shin, and Teshes, which was the Saladin word for Tuesday.

  I looked at Evean, "Her parents named her Tuesday?"

  Evean laughed, "Yeah, I know. According to Roden, all of her sibs were named for a different day of the week."

  "I can imagine that must have been rough. Are all three of them homegrown then?"

  "Homegrown?"

  "Native to Saladin."

  "Oh, Teshes and Loomis are. Shin comes from someplace else."

  I nodded.

  "Tell them," Evean waved to the other English speakers, "The basic plan; I need to fill these folks in on Japan and what I need them to do."

  "Sure," I turned to Joseph, Gregory and Suzona. "Evean is in charge, I'm second."

  "Why?" Suzona asked.

  "Because," I sighed and rolled my eyes. "Any other stupid questions?"

  "It's not stupid!"

  "Actually, it is. She knows the country where we are, and speaks the language. She's also the only one who recognized the monster and knows how to destroy it."

  Suzona started to open her mouth and I raised a finger, "So we are going to look for the one person here, who we believe to be connected to the history of the monster here, and see if they can tell us what sphere the weapon that kills the monster comes from."

  "The monster doesn't come from here?" Gregory asked.

  "No, the monster comes from one of the negative energy planes."

  "And the weapon doesn't come from here either?" Gregory asked.

  "No."

  "Then why are we here?" he asked looking perplexed.

  "Because about forty years ago, someone made a movie with a creature that looks, sounds, and acts a lot like our monster. They also had a weapon in the movie that killed it. We think that either the author was a portal jumper, or heard the story from one.

  "So we're off to find them, and talk to them."

  "It sounds stupid," Suzona said and scowled at me.

  "Joseph?" I asked.

  He shrugged, "Just how big is this monster, anyway?"

  "I'm not sure, one hundred and fifty feet maybe?"

  "How tall are you again?"

  "Six foot."

  All three of them paused a moment.

  "That's big," Gregory said, and the other two both nodded.

  "Okay," Evean said and turned back to us. "Let's get going, follow me."

  "Where are we going?" Suzona asked.

  "Into town to catch a train. Then off to a town you've never heard of, to find a man whose name you don't know." Evean said and smiled rather sweetly at Suzona. On her face it didn't look all that sweet however. I could suddenly see why Evean could be such a bitch at times, and I suddenly suspected Suzona had met her match,
though she might not have figured that out yet.

  Suzona grumbled and fell to the back of the group to talk with Gregory, who seemed more than happy to talk with her, Joseph tagged along with me as I followed Evean, Jane and the other three following us.

  "So, you know where this guy lives?" I asked softly

  Evean shook her head, "Nope, haven't got a clue. But I think the company that made the movie is in Tokyo. So we'll head there first, ask some questions, and go find this guy."

  "That easy?" Joseph asked.

  "They made like a dozen sequels to the first movie, they were all huge," Evean said. "This guy is probably famous. I don't think we're going to have any trouble finding him."

  "Well, at least its not hostile territory." I said.

  "But we don't speak the language," Joseph sighed.

  "Well, they do," I nodded to the ones with Jane, "and Evean here does."

  "Don't worry about it," Evean said. "Almost everyone here speaks English."

  "Really?"

  "Yup."

  "When was the last time you were here?" I asked curious.

  "Ten, fifteen years maybe? Doesn't matter." Evean looped her arm around mine and smiled at me. I just shrugged and smiled back. For some reason, I was a lot less paranoid about Evean here. Then again, she didn't look like a sex goddess here, or have the ability to cause my hormones to go on a rampage using pheromones, so maybe that helped.

  We walked for a couple of hours, and eventually came to the outskirts of a small city. Evean led us to what was apparently the local portal jumpers trading house, and converted some gems into cash, and then bought us all train tickets to Tokyo.

  Next she led us to a small noodle shop of some kind and ordered us all food while we waited for our train, then led us onboard and got us situated.

  To be honest, I was impressed. Evean was efficient, decisive, and able to get us to do what she wanted us to do without being offensive about it.

  I noticed as we traveled on the train that the locals all seemed to snub Evean, I wasn't sure that it was her looks however, she was obviously not Japanese, the only one other than those of us who were Caucasian, on the train. The Japanese looking members of our party were treated with the typical behavior of the locals for another. Polite, but no real interest.

  Suzona however they were all over, given her six-foot tall, blond, svelte and busty super-heroine female appearance.