Teruhisha turned pale. From a pocket, he pulled what looked like a cell phone. He spoke into it, gesturing curtly at Jenna for silence, and then paused and spoke some more.

The sirens still wailed. Looking past Teruhisha, Jenna could see that her audience was gone now, and the sidewalks almost empty. Men weren't staring at her anymore, and Teruhisha had been rude.

It was like the world was coming to an end, or something.

He came up swiftly through his lightless world, through blackness that first was absolute and impenetrable, but which soon gave way to mere darkness, then gloom, then something like dawn, as the sun's rays penetrated the depths and found the monster's eyes. Then, at last, the blue-green waters of Tokyo Harbor parted to reveal the cloud-flecked, inverted blue bowl that was the roof of the world.

Beneath that arched roof stretched the familiar skyline of the hated city. The monster paused and gazed briefly at Tokyo through hooded eyes, as if taking its measure. Then the moment pa.s.sed and he moved forward, continuing inexorably toward his traditional goal.

Only seconds pa.s.sed before he was sighted, first by the pa.s.sengers of a tour boat negotiating the harbor. Crowded and noisy and clumsy, the fragile vessel rocked violently in the thrashing turbulence of the monster's wake. As it pitched and yawed, he could hear screams of terror and recognition-the same thing, really-coming from its deck. Interspersed among them were more than a few calls of the name that had been given him by the soft ones, the crawling little humans who sought to share his world with him. He took no note of any of their bleating, nor of the more anguished cries as the tour boat capsized and began to sink. Such chatter was beneath his notice.

Approaching the city, however, he heard something more to his liking-the throbbing shriek of a familiar siren, growing louder as he lumbered towards the sh.o.r.e. It was a familiar wail, one that he had heard before. He had no idea what it meant to the humans, or why they sounded it, and he did not care.

For Reptilla, King of the Monsters, it was the promise of battle.

"We must go immediately," Teruhisha said, but he still took time to gather up the litter from their meal and deposit it in the appropriate waste receptacle. Their fellow diners had already done the same.

"Go?" Jenna said, and blinked. This was a very different Teruhisha Kitahara than the one who had been her recent companion. He was more decisive and emphatic, and Jenna wasn't sure she liked the change.

"Where are we going?"

"You must return to your hotel," Teruhisha said. "A shelter is there. You are a guest in my country and you must be protected!" He gestured with the device he held. "I have my orders to proceed to Mobile Defender Park."

The odd name was familiar. Jenna remembered an earlier stop on her tour of the city, a flower-filled expanse, incongruously large, with a near-abstract metal sculpture in its center. "My hotel?" she asked. "That's miles from here!"

"I will find you a cab."

"I don'tthink so," Jenna said, irritated. Losing a t.i.tle, a manager, a husband, and an accommodating escort, all in a mere four days, was a bit much. She pointed angrily at the sidewalks and street outside.

Already, they were deserted. "Do you see any cabs out there?"

This time, Teruhisha blinked, then nodded again. After a long pause, he spoke again. "You must come with me, then. There is s.p.a.ce for an a.s.sistant or pa.s.senger. You will be in less danger. But we must move swiftly!"

"What is it? What's happening?"

"The city is under attack," Teruhisha said. "Reptilla has been sighted!"

"Reptilla?" Jenna smiled. "They haven't made a Reptilla movie since I was a little girl!"

Teruhisha stared at her. "No movies, because Reptilla has not attacked in years," he said. "Until today!"

"Oh, come on," Jenna said, "You can't really expect me to believe-"

Her words broke off as Teruhisha's right hand, half the size of hers, grabbed her left wrist and tugged, hard. Mainly because she was too surprised to resist, Jenna found herself being pulled towards Teruhisha's car, a powder-blue Nissan parked in front of the restaurant.

"We must go now!" he said. "Time is short!"

As if to lend emphasis to his words, the sidewalk beneath Jenna's feet trembled and shook.

Reptilla climbed out of the harbor waters.

Reptillakept climbing out of the harbor waters.

He was larger by far than any living thing had a right to be, a living mountain of muscle and bone and meat, all sheathed in armorlike scales. He was so big that it took him long moments to tear himself from the harbor's wet embrace and right himself on the land. Hundreds of feet stretched between his snout and the tip of his finned tail, and water was still cascading from the contours of his enormous body as he hauled the last of himself up and into the day.

In the minutes since he had first raised his head from the depths, most of the humans had found places to hide. If Reptilla noticed, he did not care. It was not the humans that drew him, or even the city where they lived, but some primal drive deep in his reptile brain. Here, the whispered prodding of instinct promised, there would be battle, and for Reptilla, the need for battle was sometimes as strong as the need for food or drink or air. The city was to be his battleground, but he scarcely took notice of those who lived there.

The reverse was not true, of course.

High-explosive, high-caliber cannon sh.e.l.ls split the air as they threw themselves at Reptilla. They cameroaring out of paired gun emplacements hidden within the warehouses that crowded Tokyo Harbor, heavy artillery that had waited long years since last seeing use.

The monster screamed his anger as the barrage found him and smashed into the scales of his armored skin. His eyes glowed red and the bulldozer jaw of his mouth dropped open.

Fire spewed forth.

Steel melted.

Brick burned.

Almost instantly, the first of the hidden gun emplacements was gone, now merely mounded wreckage painting the sky black with greasy smoke. The second fell less swiftly but no less decisively as the monster turned and lashed out at it with his tail, using the prehensile appendage like a ma.s.sive club.

Reptilla roared again, this time in triumph. Then, slowly, as his echoing cries faded, another sound made itself known-the roar of jet engines.

A half-dozen fighter jets appeared in the sky.

Reptilla ignored them and strode forward.

The earth shook with each step he took.

Jenna's ex had been a maniac behind the wheel, but he had nothing on Teruhisha. The nice little guy who had waited so patiently while she compared consumer electronics and tried to figure out exchange rates was gone. Now, the man who had taken his place clenched the wheel with white-knuckled fingers and tried very hard to push the accelerator through the floor. In no time at all, they were doing nearly forty-three miles an hour, unheard of in downtown Tokyo.

It was a good thing the streets were empty, Jenna thought, and then she thought to ask why.

"Evacuation," Teruhisha said. He was calmer now than he had been at the restaurant, but it was a lethal calm, and he spoke with the voice of a man accustomed to command. "The sirens have sounded. The populace knows what they mean and where to go. It is a well-established procedure."

"Where arewe going, then?" Jenna asked.

"Mobile Defender Park," Teruhisha repeated. "We were there earlier."

"Why?"

"I thought that you might like to see it. It is very beautiful, really. The chrysanthemums-"

"No, not then-now," Jenna interrupted. "Why are we going there now?"

"The Mobile Defender is the city's final defense, built after Reptilla's last attack. The perimeter defenses will delay the monster, but if they do not stop him, I must man the Mobile Defender to ensure that Tokyo is saved." Teruhisha held up the device he had spoken into earlier. "This is the key," he said proudly. "It ismy month to carry it."

"But, even if Reptillais real-"

Teruhisha took his eyes from the road just long enough to shoot her an irritated glance.

"Okay, okay," Jenna amended. "He's real. But why would you put a weapon downtown?" She had seen decommissioned tanks and airplanes at parks in America, but nothing that worked.

At least, she didn'tthink they worked.

"The Mobile Defender is mobile," Teruhisha said, "but it must be accessible." He spoke as if he were saying the most reasonable thing in the world.

"But aren't you afraid someone will steal it? Or vandalize it?"

"Who would interfere with something so vital to the land's well-being?" Teruhisha asked. "Surely no one in America would do such a thing?"

Jenna wasn't sure how to respond to that.

That was when she heard thunder in the distance. A moment later, the road bed they were riding on shook like pudding. "Shock waves? What's happening?" she asked. "Are they bombing?"

Teruhisha shook his head. "Air-to-surface missiles are more likely," he said. He paused for a moment as he negotiated a turn without slowing, making the Nissan's little tires squeal. "But I do not think they will stop him," he continued. "They never do."

Three missiles came roaring towards Reptilla. Two missed, slamming into evacuated office buildings and exploding.

The third found its target.

It smashed into Reptilla's back and detonated. The monster howled as blood spurted, green in the afternoon sun. Moving with a speed that belied his great bulk, he spun in time to dodge a second volley.

These, launched on a different trajectory, raced past him and into the city beyond, but Reptilla scarcely noticed. Instead, his attention was drawn by the plane that had launched them. Even now, that plane was wheeling to fire anew.

Too slowly, too late.

Reptilla's maw opened again. Nuclear fire spewed forth. Incandescent, searing, hotter than the surface of the sun, it burned a path through the unresisting air and found the steel skin of a fighter jet.

More explosions, more thunder.

Reptilla ignored them, like he ignored the hot wind that suddenly swept over him, and continued on his way.

* * *Jenna was beginning to credit Teruhisha's wild tale. The city was empty, and the road they followed now shook and trembled so much that the little car was hard-pressed to remain in its lane. Worse, the tremors had become regular enough to take on a distinct cadence, one that Jenna found disturbingly familiar.

Slow and measured, it was nonetheless the rhythm of footsteps.

Impossibly huge, impossibly heavy footsteps.

"Only a few blocks more," Teruhisha said. "See?" He pointed at a storefront. "That is where you bought the T-shirts."

Jenna nodded. They were in familiar territory, all right. Even so, however, she knew that this street would never again be the same. Already, jagged cracks had opened in the pavement and display windows were spider-webbed with silver fractures.

Teruhisha seemed to read her thoughts. "Collateral damage," he said, a sound of agreement in his voice.

"It is always thus, whenever Reptilla strikes. Oh! My poor city!"

"It-it looks like a war zone."

Teruhisha nodded. "It will be worse, before the day is done. But we will rebuild, as we always do." He looked suddenly bleak. "As we have, so many times before."

Something raced by overhead, something white and moving fast-a stray missile from the battle that raged somewhere behind them, Jenna realized. It buried itself in the facade of an internationally famous telecommunications firm's headquarters, creating a cloud of concrete shrapnel, much of which rained down in the Nissan's path.

Teruhisha said something in j.a.panese, something short and sharp and harsh, a word that Jenna suspected he would never have voiced before a woman who could understand it. He snapped the wheel to the left, hard, and then to the right, trying to dodge the chunks of flaming, falling stone.

"Brace yourself!" he said. "We-"

A fiery ma.s.s, small and heavy, struck the hood. The car flipped, tumbled, rolled. The world spun around Jenna. When it stopped, she hung sideways in her seat, held there by the harness Teruhisha had insisted that she buckle.

The car was on its side.

She shook her head to clear it, then struggled free and inspected herself for damage. A few cuts, a few aches were all she found, but no broken bones.

Teruhisha had not been quite so lucky.

Like Jenna, her companion hung in the nylon web of his seat belt and shoulder harness. Unlike her, he was motionless, his eyes closed. Jenna peeled back one lid and inspected the blank orb beneath. She breathed a sigh of relief as she realized that he was unconscious but basically unharmed. Aspirin and rest, lots of each, were all he needed, most likely.

Jenna wasn't a doctor, but she knew a lot about being knocked unconscious. She paused a moment, thinking. They were only blocks from their goal, and G.o.d knew how far from her hotel. She shrugged, her decision made. It made more sense to go forward than back.

She pulled Teruhisha free and slung him over her shoulder-he didn't weigh much more than her gym bag, really-and began walking.

Behind her, she knew, Reptilla was walking, too.

Technically, it wasn't the Army whose forces lay next in Reptilla's path; technically, j.a.pan had no army, only heavily armed defense forces.

Reptilla didn't know the difference.

Had he known, he would not have cared.

He gazed for a moment at the low vehicles that swarmed towards him on tractor treads, bearing mounted cannons that did him even less harm than the missiles. He scarcely noticed the sh.e.l.ls that struck him, or the clinging incendiary gel that splashed across his body and burned. Instead, moving without pause, he strode forward, stepping on some of the tanks and over the rest, nearly oblivious to the difference. Instinct drove him forward, uncaring, unmindful.

Mobile Defender Park was a square of green bordered by steel and gla.s.s office towers. In turn, the park's gardens and rolling expanses of close-cropped clover served as a setting for the squat a.s.sembly of steel cylinders and slabs at its center. Earlier, Jenna had a.s.sumed that the asymmetrical structure was some kind of abstract monument, but now she was willing to believe it was something more.

At least, she hoped it was.