But as the creature took another step, she looked down at her fate—and saw the still waters of the Sotobori moat directly beneath her. After a moment’s hesitation, she released her grip and closed her eyes as she dove feet-first into the water from several dozen meters above. At almost the exact same moment, Godzilla opened its jaws and released the train—which then fell right behind Noriko into the moat. The mangled, broken cars made a massive splash as they hit the water, causing a huge wave that momentarily swallowed up Noriko as she desperately swam away, gasping for breath.
Just across the street from the Nihon Gekijo and the headquarters of the Asahi Shimbun, a small group of radio reporters and cameramen had gathered on the rooftop of the Mazda Building, hoping to capture this larger-than-life threat on tape.
One of them, a reporter by the name of Tokuda, had been so stricken by shock and disbelief upon emerging from the stairwell and seeing the full scale of the beast that he nearly turned tail and ran, but his sense of journalistic duty helped him suppress the urge and step in front of the camera to deliver the truth to the citizenry.
“It’s a sight that beggars belief, folks! This gigantic monster, the likes of which we’ve never seen, is now tearing through the streets of Ginza! To my eye, it looks to be at least fifty meters tall! All of these buildings, many of which were only just reconstructed, are now crumbling once more beneath its wanton rampage! The whole area is now covered in flames, smoke, and debris all over again! You’d be forgiven for thinking we were looking at a scene taken straight from the Great Tokyo Air Raid!”
Godzilla hurled itself into the Nihon Gekijo building, ripping out entire floors’ worth of structural components as it thrashed its arms from one side to the other. Journalists from the Asahi Shimbun HQ building next door were now rushing out onto the rooftop to bear witness to this unprecedented tragedy with their own eyes.
Then, as soon as it was finished demolishing the beloved theater, Godzilla spun its whole body around, swinging its massive tail like a whip, reducing everything in its radius to dust in one swift, devastating motion. This included the newspaper building as well, which crumbled into a heap of rubble along with the journalists on its rooftop.
“I can’t believe what I’m seeing, folks!” said Tokuda. “With a single swipe of its tail, the monster just leveled the Asahi Shimbun building!”
Having demolished that entire side of the street, Godzilla now turned and started making its way toward the K. Hattori watch and jewelry shop. Seeing that the beast was now moving in their general direction, the reporters atop the Mazda Building started shaking in their boots. The only thing keeping them here was their journalistic drive to leave a record of this disaster for future generations.
“Looks like we might be in trouble here, folks…” said Tokuda, practically wringing the words from his throat as he held back the urge to run.
But Godzilla did not attack the Mazda Building. It simply walked right past.
Seeing this gargantuan creature cross right through his line of sight, the reporter couldn’t help but marvel at the sheer majesty of the beast for a moment. Gazing up at it from below, the silhouette of its giant head in profile against the setting May sun looked almost divine.
Just then, Godzilla’s foot grazed the corner of the first floor of the Mazda building, taking out a critical piece of the building’s structural integrity on which all of the upper floors relied. With nothing left to support them, the building soon began to collapse under its own weight, causing the rooftop to slant sharply. The reporters all fell to their knees and started sliding down the crumbling surface, before eventually falling diagonally to their doom along with the entire building. Tokuda let out a scream in the face of imminent death—the last thing his tape recorder captured, aside from the low boom of the building’s upper half slamming against the street.
Having artlessly dismantled the Mazda Building, Godzilla carried on down Harumi-dori Avenue toward the K. Hattori watch and jewelry shop.
But somewhere amid the chaos that lay between it and its destination, Noriko stumbled alone through the crowd of fleeing civilians like a wandering ghost.
She was all out of energy. The turbulence and fall from the broken train car had exhausted nearly all of her stamina before she even hit the water—and then it was another desperate swim to the bank of the Sotobori moat before she could finally drag herself back onto dry land. From there, she somehow managed to push herself back to her feet and run as fast as her wobbling legs would take her through the rubble that remained of the Nihon Gekijo, her soaking wet clothes clinging tightly to her skin. But she couldn’t stop running—all around her, people were still being hit by falling debris from the theater and crushed to death. So she ran and she ran until at last she’d used up the very last ounce of her remaining energy, and now she could only stumble ploddingly away from Godzilla as it stomped its way toward her, step by lumbering step.
She knew the monster was right behind her. But she could hardly bring herself to keep moving. She wanted to be freed from this nightmare right now. Perhaps being crushed beneath the beast’s massive foot would be a welcome relief, she found herself thinking—just as a fleeing man bumped into her and she fell to the ground.
“Out of the way!” the man barked, but Noriko paid him no mind.
She didn’t have the strength left to stand back up at this point.
Surrounded by all of this chaos, she couldn’t help but be reminded of that horrible night she lost her family in the firebombing. In her current state, she was too dazed and weak to even tell whether it was Godzilla or an air raid these people were fleeing from.
If I just lie here on the ground like this, I’ll soon be at peace.
But just as she came to terms with her fate, her addled mind was jolted from its delusional state by the sudden feeling of someone pulling her up by the arm.
“I won’t let you die!” shouted a voice.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
It was Koichi. He’d cut backward through the crowd to come and rescue her.
Stumbling to her feet as Koichi practically dragged her along with him, Noriko dug deep and urged her aching muscles onward despite her stamina being long since depleted. But somehow, Koichi had given her a second wind, so she ran. And ran. And ran.
Suddenly, Godzilla came to a stop and whirled its massive tail around again, mowing down all of the signboards and street vendor stalls that lined the avenue. The people who were running directly behind Koichi and Noriko were sent flying along with the rest of the debris, most of them getting crushed and maimed by the rubble before they even hit the ground. The two of them had just barely managed to avoid meeting the same fate—when all of a sudden, they heard the sound of explosions from high above.
Godzilla was being shelled by artillery fire.
The bombardment was coming from the direction of the National Diet Building, where a set of brand-new Type 4 medium tanks—which had been kept secretly in reserve but gone unused in the war due to the fighting never reaching the mainland—had just opened fire on the beast. But when an errant shell hit one of the nearby buildings instead of the beast, the whole area became clouded over with dust and smoke from the resulting debris. Still, the assault had stopped Godzilla dead in its tracks, so the fleeing civilians turned and waited anxiously for the dust to settle to see if the beast had been felled.
Surely, no living creature could withstand so many direct hits from a tank gun.
Or at least, that was what everyone wanted to believe.
Everyone but Koichi, who’d seen what happened to Takao.
He knew the beast would never succumb to a mere tank gun.
And when at last the smoke cleared, sure enough, Godzilla was still standing tall. The beast’s eyes were trained on the National Diet Building, its rage palpable in its eyes. Koichi could almost feel the remaining hope of the people around him being snuffed out.
Then, suddenly, something very peculiar began to occur.
The dorsal fin at the tip of the Godzilla’s tail suddenly jutted outward and slowly began to glow with a pale-blue light. Then the next dorsal fin did the same, and the next, continuing all the way up the creature’s spine until its entire back was lit up with these extended, glowing dorsal fins. The people could only stand there, stock-still, watching in awe and horror as though they were looking at some sort of wrathful god.
“No… It’s just like last time…” Koichi murmured.
Wasn’t this the exact same bluish light he’d seen glowing up from the bottom of the ocean before Takao was vaporized by that massive ray of heat? If so, then Koichi knew exactly what was about to happen next…