Highschool of the Dead: Fanfiction Darkpenn

Chapter 21: Gojira

Gojira

An ambiguous name for an unambiguous device.

"However, you cut it, this is an odd place for something capable of making a very large dent in the world," said Hirano. "Will you be finished soon? Because I, you know, have to make dinner."

Saya and Satsuki Kiromiri had an array of electronic equipment, wiring and papers spread over the kitchen table of Maresato farm. The warhead, a polished metal cylinder about a metre long, sat at one end of the table.

Saya looked up. "Sorry, honey, this is taking longer than we expected," she said. "We've got the firing mechanism set up, I think, but connecting the timer to it is being a bitch." She glanced at her two youngest children, Kaito and Miu, standing next to their father, watching their mother work. "Uh, I mean, turning out to be harder than we thought," she said.

Hirano frowned. "Well, I guess we can come up with an alternative for dinner," he said. "How about a barbecue, kids?"

"Yay!" said Kaito and Miu together.

Hirano hustled them out, as much to give Saya and Satsuki a chance to work in peace as anything else.

Satsuki sighed. "Pity there aren't many guys like that around," she said.

"He drives me crazy sometimes but I would find it difficult to live without him," said Saya. "And not just because he does the cooking. I assume that you haven't found anyone to keep you warm at night?"

"I live in hope," said Satsuki. "Okay, let's try this thing." She set the timer and turned the key. There was a flash of sparks and then a puff of blue smoke.

"Well, that was disappointing," said Saya.

"At least the warhead didn't explode," said Satsuki, with a little laugh. "That would make a huge hole and a toxic cloud the size of Okinawa."

They set back to work, knowing that they were on deadline. Alice and Hotaru had reported their findings from their reconnaissance mission to Tokyo a few days ago; since then, their efforts on the warhead had taken on a new urgency.

In a while, Hirano and Kaito entered, carrying bowls of barbecued food for them.

Hirano put his hand on the warhead. He was surprised to find that it was warm. "Hey, this thing isn't about to go off, is it?" he said.

Saya laughed. "At the moment, it's not connected to anything, so it's only dangerous if you drop it on your foot," she said. "That warmth is decaying photons. Nothing to worry about. The radioactive material in it is actually set off by a small conventional explosion that rams the parts of it together. What we have to do is find a way to make that initial explosion happen when we want it. The warhead is designed to connect to a missile that does that, as far as I can tell from the papers. We have had to MacGyver a solution. And then we have to connect that to a timer, so there's the opportunity to get away before it goes off. A long way away."

"What's it called?" said Kaito.

Saya and Satsuki looked at each other. "He's right," said Satsuki. "It's gotta have a name."

"How about ... Gojira?" said Hirano.

"What's a gojira?" said Kaito.

Saya laughed. "Gojira was a creature in old science-fiction movies," she said to her son. "Really old, they were ancient when your dad and I were young. Gojira was a sort of monster, created by nuclear radioactivity. It was like a really big lizard, but it stood up like a person. In the first movie, if I remember it right, it destroyed Tokyo. But then in the later movies it became a friend of humans, sort of, and saved them from other monsters."

"All things considered, that sounds like a very good name," said Satsuki. "Suitably ambiguous."

"Then Gojira it is," said Saya.

END