Well, are we agreed that we will never try to talk to the world ending monsters again?
Yes? Good.
They were in his way. They were there to conquer. Smash! Destroy! Devour!
“Hermann!”
Crush! Kill! Consume!
“Hermann!”
The puny human was only a little smaller than him. How? Had they found a way to grow themselves? Were they stealing the Builders’ ways?“
"Hermann, Hermann, look at me. Look. Look, look, look. You’re not them. Think. Know. You know me.”
“Drift,” he said. The Other was coming. Fighting back. He was slipping… slipping. “You were in the drift.”
“I’m here, now, buddy. I’m here. You’re okay. You’re safe. You’re not the monster. Who are you?”
“I’m–” at once a fifty-foot-tall beast of blue blood and blades for teeth… and an underweight, overtall man with a bum leg. He stumbled. “I’m… Doctor…”
“That’s right,” big smiles from Newt. Yes. Newt. Doctor Newton Geizler. “Say the rest of it. I know you can.”
“Doctor… Hermann…” Who? Who was he? “Hermann… Got… lieb.”
“One more time for the cheap seats, buddy.”
“Doctor Hermann… Gotlieb.”
“YES!” Huge hugs from such a small man. The monster was just a murmur in his mind.
Someone in the far background set a timer.
“One more day,” grinned Newt. “One more day of fighting this stupid damn seesaw… We got this.” He rushed away at his usual frenetic speed. Out of the padded room full of soft furniture, and into the lab they shared. “Come on, buddy, we’ve got fifteen minutes before I start to sink. I’m gonna push for sixteen, this time.”
Gottlieb retrieved his cane and made it to the board. The equations soothed his tangled mind like nothing else. Fifteen minutes, oh yes. Fifteen minutes to try and solve the last problem.
How to cure the two last victims of the Kaiju attacks.
Fifteen minutes, maybe sixteen, and he would be the one reminding Newt of who he was in the Soft Room, away from the other best minds available while Newt believed he was the Kaiju they’d linked with. It was a very Newton solution. Chip it away from the inside.
Gottlieb picked up the eraser and corrected the last, shaky figures of his previous calculations. “Have I ever told you, Doctor Geizler, that I find your incessant optimism… reassuring?”
“Not today,” grinned Newt. “Thanks, pal.”
[Muse food remaining: 15. Submit a prompt! Ask a question! Buy my stories!]