Ethan rolled his shoulders and stretched his arms. "Time to be God for a few minutes."
The raging cyclone came to an abrupt halt.
The freezing winds vanished as if someone had switched them off, leaving behind an unnatural silence that spread across the shattered glaciers.
Ethan raised a hand. "Time and space bend to the divine rule. Return to the point before destruction."
A golden light spread outward from him, flowing across the fractured ice.
The broken glaciers stopped shifting, then slowly began moving in reverse. Cracks sealed themselves, shattered ice fused together, and collapsed formations rose back into place as though time itself had been rewound.
The evacuation helicopters had already gained some distance when the pilots noticed the golden glow spreading across the horizon. Confused, they slowed and turned to look back.
Every passenger who looked through the windows froze.
The impossible scene unfolded before their eyes as the golden light restored everything it touched.
Broken glaciers reformed, the storm disappeared, and the frozen landscape returned to the way it had been only minutes earlier.
None of them had ever witnessed anything remotely close to it.
Rick stared at the sight in silence before shaking his head. "Well... I'm changing religions."
Mark gave him a flat look.
Rick shrugged without taking his eyes off the glowing horizon. "Come on. You can't expect me to keep my old beliefs after seeing that. "
"If someone stops a cyclone, and fixes an entire glacier with a wave of his hand, I'm calling that God until someone gives me a better explanation."
Dr. Chen kept staring out the helicopter window. "Well... he did call himself God."
Nobody answered.
A few minutes ago, none of them would have believed a word of it. After watching him stop a cyclone and restore an entire glacier, arguing over the title felt pointless.
"I'm bummed out. I need a drink."
The voice came from inside the helicopter.
Everyone jumped and turned at once.
Ethan was sitting near the rear of the cabin with one leg crossed over the other, looking more tired than triumphant.
"How did you—" Rick began.
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. "Can we do questions after I get that drink?"
"And you've got one big problem. You do know that, right?" Ethan said.
"Yeah. Monster Zero," Serizawa replied.
Unlike Godzilla, who could be considered Earth's guardian and a force that maintained the planet's natural balance, Monster Zero was a predator Titan.
"Yep. That thing's going to wreck havoc, and I won't stop it."
"If I do, those eco-terrorists or whatever this bunch calls themselves will just release another Titan, and then I'll have to stop that one too. It becomes a never-ending cycle."
"The people responsible for this need to understand just how unbelievably stupid what they did was," Ethan said.
Mark didn't know what to say. His ex-wife really had done something incredibly stupid.
Serizawa didn't waste another second.
"Get the USS Argo ready. We're tracking Monster Zero. We have to stay on it before it reaches any populated country."
The crew immediately acknowledged the order and began preparing the Argo for pursuit.
***
Inside the USS Argo, Monarch's flying command center, the atmosphere was tense as officers monitored the incoming data on the main display.
"Where is Monster Zero going?" Serizawa asked, his eyes fixed on the command screen.
Mark studied the storm signature moving across the digital map. "There's only one major storm system traveling across the Pacific, heading toward Mexico. That's Monster Zero. Its course is taking it straight there."
"Mexico?" Serizawa asked. "Where exactly?"
Rick zoomed in on the map until a small island appeared on the screen.
"Isla de Mara."
Dr. Chen's expression changed the moment she saw the location.
"That's Outpost 56," she said. "Rodan."
A heavy silence settled over the command center.
"If monster zero wakes Rodan," Dr. Chen continued, "the volcano will erupt. Isla de Mara is built around it. The eruption would destroy the town before most of the people could get out."
"How long until monster zero reaches Mexico?" Serizawa asked.
"Thirty minutes," Rick replied after checking the projected course on the main screen.
"Dr. Chen, what did you find on Monster Zero?" Serizawa said. They had thirty minutes to stop this before thousands of people died.
"After going through the historical records, there are legends of a three-headed dragon, a cruel and malevolent creature that brings destruction wherever it goes and has an ancient rivalry with Godzilla," Dr. Chen said.
"Among those records, there is one that supports what he said. It describes the dragon as arriving on Earth inside a meteorite."
"So it's really an alien?" Mark asked. If that was true, they couldn't predict how it would behave compared to the Titans that originated on Earth.
"Yes. It's a possibility," Dr. Chen said.
"Hey, don't call me 'he.' I have a name, and it's Ethan. Just call me that," Ethan said, raising his hand while continuing to play a game on one of the consoles.
'Well, that's a normal name for a god,' thought all of them but no one said it out loud.
"What is it called in the legends?" Rick asked.
"Ghidorah," Dr. Chen replied. "The One Who Has Many Heads, the Bringer of Destruction."
***
A/N: And on Patreon, The Boys arc started.
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