“Wouldn’t you like to rest, little one?” the wanderer asked. He curled back his lips to ever so gently and tenderly scratch the pup’s back with his teeth.

The pup murmured giddily. It wiggled, flailing its fins and tail until the foreign beast watching over it pulled away. Its fin and tail flopped against the warm sand, and it relaxed. It heaved a dramatic sigh.

Within moments, its tiny snores rhythmically blew loose dry sand into the air.

The wanderer sighed quietly. He tiredly gazed down at the tiny creature that laid beside him. He carefully, painfully slowly as not to disturb the pup, shifted his weight so the sensitive pads of his midlimbs lay flush to the ground. It made no difference. They still weren't picking up any vibrations that even remotely hinted at the return of the pup's parents, or anyone else for that matter. He withheld a deep rumbling grumble. The pup didn't like those. It liked being grabbed and held in place when it panicked and did its darndest to flee even less.

He gently laid his head down, nudging into the sand and tenderly pressing it against the pup's body. The pup instinctively leaned into the new source of warmth.

The wanderer lifted his forelimb to lay it protectively around the pup.

He pumped a deep breath through his lungs, relishing the sweet cooler evening air. He closed his eyes, soaking in the dying sunlight and relaxing into the soft sand. The world was peacefully quiet bar the soothing rhythm of the waves crashing at the shoreline, and the ever present buzz of animal activity in the woodlands from further down the coast.

The wanderer, too, was deep asleep by the time the pup's parents, and the rest of the pod, returned from their deep-sea dining.

The wanderer cautiously trudged through the deepening pool of stagnant cave water. His eyes strained in the dark, the sickly faint glow of the toxic not-moss that crept through the rocky walls’ cracks and crevices not even strong enough to produce reflections in the mirror-still surface of the murky waters.

He hissed a shallow breath, nostrils spasming. The rotting scent of the old wyrm was so thick it burned his tongue.

Guided by his own tender touch, the wanderer’s footfall was slow and ever careful, stepping over and between the thinner segments of the wyrm’s endless coils as he slunk into the deeper, thicker water.

Cave water cooled his throat when his wading halted, the oppressive radiance of the wyrm and the bulk of unmoving flesh beneath his feet informing him of the beast’s closeness despite the darkness surrounding him.

He inhaled deeply through his mouth, revering in the sensation of pumping air through his lungs, soaking in the vile acidity of the air in a meditative state.

The wanderer brought nothing with him into this realm but his physical self.

The wyrm, in turn, finally responded to the disturbance in its space.

Its long, twisted feelers twitched and wavered, spluttering with meek fluorescence as the wyrm searched the cave for its visitor.

The wanderer stood frozen. The wyrm’s slick, frayed feelers were slow to reach him. Uncoordinated, they fell around his horns rather than wrapping and gripping whatever they could entangle. It bound their minds regardless.

The beast was lethargic today.

Maybe it was finally going to cark it.

‘Maybe you no longer carry unique experiences,’ its dull voice pressed into his consciousness.

“Old fool, my exp-” the wanderer spluttered on putrid air- “I’m unique.”

‘By time that is borrowed.’

“You’re dying.”

‘You are not so young. Too, the winds have whispered to me. Your youth emerge.’

The wanderer snarled, the water vibrating around his form. “And you’ll be dead before they’re any old enough to give you anything worth a damn.”

‘The world is unpredictable.’

“Unpredictable? Young grow old. Old die,” he snapped, teeth bared with lips trembling as more decayed air slipped through his expression. “Here’s predictable: experience for a favour. Want it?”

The senseless psychic wyrm’s feelers were titillated, withering against his face, the larger ones weakly slithering around horns. This trader was reserved, but not argumentatively so; his desperation leaking terribly. Yet not so desperate to cast aside the competition of his more youthful kin. A fascinating conundrum, but no concern for the wyrm. This trader, Rasp the Wanderer, would have another hole in his life and will return for further again.

‘I may.’

“What does Manny do?” Lily’s question was directed at her dad, but Manny himself answered,

“I climb kaiju.”

“Isn't that illegal?” Lily quipped, an edge of delight at potential misconduct.

“Not when it's my job.” Manny grinned, mischief dancing in his eyes.

“Yeah. But how did you learn?”

“Rock climbing.” He didn't have to look past Lily to Rick to know he was being glared down, and it wasn’t just his choice of words that was being intently scrutinised.

“Rocks? To climb kaiju?!”

“There are big cliffs.” He wasn't entirely lying. Higher grade hiking and rock climbing was how he got his start.

Lily squinted slightly at him, pursing her lips in thought. With slight hesitation, she finally accepted his answer with a slow nod and simple, “Okay. Sure.” She spun her attention back to her dad, “Can I see the kaiju he climbs?”

Manny laughed for the first time in months. Cackled even. His breath was gone with the cool breeze that whipped up off the crashing waves below.

Rick was, if the crinkling of his eyes beneath thick glasses frames only evident with how far over the table he leaned was anything to go by, delighted. And hungry for more.

Manny had to flop an arm at him to ward him off, so he could twist away and regain himself between splatters of laughter.

Over the cliff's edge, the water shifted, pooling without waves.

Then the ocean receded.

Manny's mouth went dry, his grin shattered, but Rick beat him to the punch,

"Oh shit."

Tension surged through Manny's body, any semblance of relaxation from the soothing warmth of the tropical sun lost as ice filled his veins.

Manny had only ever heard stories of tsunamis. Seen the damage they caused. Mother nature was a monster of her own right. They had to get back to the island city. He stood stiffly-

"Shit. Oh shit."

The sky went dark. A few specks of water quickly turned torrential. Rain pelted down in sheets, as if the sky had opened up into a giant bucket that was dumping its overflowing contents onto the world.

Already saturated, Rick was up in a flash, flailing backwards as he stared upwards.

"Shit, shit."

Manny's line of sight moved past Rick to where the dark shadow over the cliffside abruptly ended. Only for it to shift, concentrating until a shudder ripped through Manny as a giant clawed foot descended from the heavens and he was up and dragging Rick with him before the foot hit the earth and the tremor threw them both off their feet.

Then it was a mad scramble to get out of the way of the cliffside collapsing under the weight of the giant beast.

Rick wheezed hoarsely and Manny didn't breathe at all as the latter hauled the trembling former up and out of the way as the giant shadow blotted out the sky and continued to drench them in ocean water.

Sirens from the base pierced the air. The great monster's irritated yet horrifyingly silent response vibrated through the pair's bones. Further alarms sounded, and the emergency PA system fired off, joining the cacophony of panicked sounds erupting from the island base.

The beast bellowed audibly.

The world around Rick and Manny wavered with the concussive forces of the monster's cry. The pair collapsed and stumbled to their knees underneath the creature as vision crackled with black and eardrums split.

Despite the suffocating terror, and the ground around them being torn apart and collapsing as the beast moved further ashore, both faded from the world with haggard breaths and frozen veins, as the base began its defensive strike against the god hunter that had emerged from the ocean.

Waves crashed against the pristine sands. The tide slowly receded as the first rays of sunlight spilled over the horizon, painting the ocean and sky a brilliant splattering of reds and purples broken up by the paler streaks of distant clouds.

The world was exceptionally quiet this morning. Besides the earliest of morning birds softly beginning to call, there wasn’t enough wind to stir the thick and bountiful vegetation or the island, nor stir stronger waves that would crash loudly against the cliffsides. It would be several hours still before the drone of insect activity increased as the day drew on.

It was the most peaceful time of day, and the island inhabitants made no exception to that. It was the lull between shifts; people settling down for peace and quiet of sleep, and others sleepily and quietly stirring for a day’s work. It was a respected part of the island’s routine to be quiet at this time of day.

Rasputin, as the human inhabitants referred to him as, was very much not aware of that routine.

He didn’t know what a timezone was, yet he found himself in a wildly different one to what his body was used to. He ambled mindlessly down the coastline, uncoordinated in a state of body and mind that was far less than optimal in an environment that was entirely foreign to him.

The air here was wickedly salty all the time. The trees here released different scents as well, although it was possible it was merely the salinity mixing and masking what they were supposed to smell like. There were faint notes of vigour stone in the air too, when the wind was strong enough.

In today’s stillness, the salinity burned his nostrils.

The only time when the air smelled this strongly of salt was when Rasp was seeking out a salt lick.

So, clearly, that must mean he was in this strange land because he was seeking out a salt lick.

He groggily dawdled up to the defensive beachside walls of the island’s base’s entrance. Snuffling at them, he sloppily scraped his snout against their surface. The crusty salt itched at his sensitive lips. Sluggishly, he reared up on his hind legs, towering over the wall. Hunching down, he sunk his open jaws over the top of the wall, sucking on it.

Ancient bone and muscle with the weight of a massive kaiju behind them ground against metal and concrete. It screeched and groaning in a way that would be horrifically unpleasant at the best of times, but as a wake up call to some, and a jerk awake after peacefully drifting off to others, the closest island inhabitants were treated to a sound and novel kaiju behaviour they would have all been glad to never have to deal with again.

Lily placed her hand up against the glass, the fibrous fiery streaks of the iris convulsing as they refocused the enormous eye staring in at her. Despite contracting to focus on the girl, the pupil was still so large Lily could have walked into its void and been swallowed whole.

Any kaiju made insects of humans. Rick had grown used to being dwarfed by the likes of Rasp and Nimue, but his daughter being so vulnerably close to one made him so rigid with tension he was fighting down nausea and shivering despite the island’s tropical humidity.

After the shortest eternity, Lily finally turned to look at her dad. Wonder and awe filled her grin. “It's so cool.”

“...Yeah,” Rick managed with less vigour than he'd hoped but less tension than he'd feared.

Rasp blinked and Rick fought down a full body flinch, his daughter spinning back around- now with both hands on the glass and bouncing slightly on her toes- to giddily watch the giant flaming eye.

Rick could have sworn when the beast refocused, it was staring down him and not Lily. The slight movement in the eyelids gave away that Rasp was thinking something, and Rick could only fear the beast had deciphered their relationship. After a moment, the tension focusing the eye shifted and Rasp returned to gazing at Lily instead.

“What's its name?”

“Rasputin. Liz named him.”

“Rasputin? That's funny. I like Liz,” she laughed. “I like Rasputin too.”

Rick hummed slightly, the note forced and higher than he would have liked.

“I think he likes you too.” Rick prayed to a god he didn’t believe in it was true.

A kaiju lay dead.

Its throat was torn open and its once-hot lifeblood had pooled and ran over the uneven wild granite outcrop that made the area so inaccessible to humans.

Besides the gaping hole in its throat, the body was untouched. No scavengers large or powerful enough to break through a kaiju's hide had arrived yet.

It would have been the wanderer's lucky day, had he not been following his new child and their strange bug-family to the site, and now said child was defiantly standing guard over the body.

“No! You can't eat the evidence! We have to investigate!”

The wanderer exhaled slowly. “Investigate what?”

“What killed this kaiju!” Empty was bereft. They spun around, head bobbing as they analysed the body with a great and genuine interest. “What could have done something like this? It must have been ginormous!”

He blinked, slowly. “...another person.”

“No, a person wouldn't have done this,” Empty stated with the unwieldy confidence of youth. “If we investigate the body, and talk to eye witnesses, and look for clues. Maybe we'll find out what happened.”

The wanderer shifted his reflexive exasperated horn toss into a roll of his neck and shoulders. “Only then can it be eaten?”

“No!” Empty barked. Then continued matter-of-factly, “We have to keep the evidence for the court trial.”

“If ‘court trial's is a bug thing we don't do them.”

“Well, we should honour the victim by burying them properly.”

The wanderer froze. He titled his head slightly. His bewilderment was never vocalised. This has to be one of his child’s bug-ideas. Completely baffling. Burying it? And for what? To hide or waste perfectly good meat?

He'd deal with that nonsense later.

He withheld a sigh. “Alright, child. How shall we begin?”

Empty perked up and the wanderer braced himself for the onslaught of excited chattering, of which he would be only partially listening to as he considered how to sway the situation back to his desires without distressing his child again.

“This is the deusvenator.”

“Well. We can't be certain.”

Fern tore their eyes from the great monster occupying their front yard to pierce Rick’s soul with their glare.

“You've been hanging around Liz too much,” they spat.

“What do you want me to say?” The question was delivered with a neutral tone. He let it hang until Fern’s gaze returned to the beach.

Rasputin- as they'd (well, Liz had, then it had stuck) decided to name the type specimen of D. nucleainfernii after he drank enough poison to kill a pod of Megalocephalapsis (Liz did like a good joke)- lay sprawled on the beach, sunken into the blisteringly hot gorgeously white sand. He was completely unconscious and totally at peace with the world, oblivious to the dilemma he had introduced to the island with his presence.

“If we tell anyone it's that one, they'll want it dead,” Rick continued. “And we already tried that. If we say it's not, they'll want us wasting our lives hunting it down.”

Fern sighed.

“We could test it.” He shrugged. “We could probably find something from the warpath that has the deusvenator’s DNA on it and do a comparison with Rasp. But where would that get us.”

Fern pinched the bridge of their nose.

“So we say like Liz does.” He turned to Fern slightly, though they wouldn't have been able to see him through their hand massaging their temples. “We don't know enough about the individual that was responsible, or the species, to have any opinions on the matter. It keeps the investors content, which keeps our jobs safe, and Empty's life safe too.”

“Sure,” Fern relented meekly. “Fine, whatever. ”

On a textbook example of a perfectly sunny, brilliantly clear skied late summer day, a family had decided to grab their beach gear, jump in the car and have a lovely day at their local beach. Then a juvenile denatora had collided with their car, lethally injuring itself and instantly killing the family inside.

It was yet another incident that clicked the road toll higher and higher.

Kaiju had a unique way of contributing to that. It was, once again, another statistic that juveniles disproportionately contributed to.

(The Deusvenator Incident was an outlier and should not be counted)

Being juveniles made it even more difficult to do anything about it. Adults could be reasoned with. Babies were babies.

And these babies were the size of trucks. And some of them could move faster than a racecar. Or shoot laser beams. Some, Liz was certain though she'd never seen evidence of it, could do both.

“...Pepe Silvia?”

Liz violently disproportionately flinched at the quiet, calm voice, sending a packet of pinboard pins noisily clattering across the floor.

“Sh-it Rick, what the fuck?” Liz leaned dramatically against the table.

“Sorry! Sorry.”

“Knock, won't you.” Liz sighed, recomposing herself.

“Sorry-”

“Jesus the Christ.”

“Sorry-” he gingerly began to collect the fallen pins- “this’s important?”

“Yes, if I don't want to stab my feet later.”

“Sorry, I'll fix -”

“Dude, shut up. I know.” She gently squeezed his shoulder as she passed him, grimacing as she sipped on a now long-cold and separated mocha. Why'd she even bother paying extra to get a fancy wanky one.

She drank another mouthful because she wasn't wasting something that cost her over ten bucks, letting the sound of Rick gathering pins off the floor fill the air.

“Thornton wants a review on lethal events from incidental juvenile kaiju encounters. Easier to visualise.”

“To procrastinate on writing?”

“Projecting?”

“Nah. Too productive.”

Liz spluttered on a mouthful of foul drink.

“Well. It's important. Content and process.”

“You write good, I'll trust that. This for that safety report on Empty?”

“...shit. Maybe?” She looked back over her loaded pin board. “Think I need another board to loop in bureaucracy for that.”

“Well, you've got enough of your pins back for it.” He sheepishly grinned, shaking the filling container for emphasis.

“You're a star.” She ruffled his hair, ditching the slag remnants of her mocha as she past him again to continue working on her board with a new angle.