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This is probably just the beer speaking, not that beer can speak but you all understand, but Newt wants to make clear that it’s not like, you know, sad or whatever. It’s not like that. And Newt can practically hear Hermann’s eyes rolling at that start but, dude, check your eyes, we shouldn’t be able to hear them rolling. Also, shut up. Because Newt’s not, you know. He’s not. Not a groupie, he means, that is how the sentence ends, because—come on, no one remembers this—he’s got a buttload of doctorates on kaiju. Like six. Literally six. He has six doctorates, and that’s a lot more commitment to his field of study than the average groupie is ready to give. Newt’s not crying over pictures of Leatherback and Otachi as he touches himself. He’s interested. Scientifically. Not interested in a weird way. Newt’s seen some stuff on the internet. He knows how people can be interested in the weird way.
And yes, because honesty is good, maybe he hasn’t just seen stuff like, “Hi, videos, I acknowledge your presence,” and maybe he’s watched a few of them for longer than it should take to confirm, yes, this is kaiju porn, and maybe—hypothetically, and really you shouldn’t judge, no one should judge anyone ever—he’s jerked off to a couple of them. Newt’s big enough to admit that. But, seriously, this is the twenty-first century, and we’ve all masturbated to something that we’re not proud of. Hermann does it every night. Newt’s pretty sure of that.
What was his point again?
Right. He’s not a groupie. He’s a scientist. He’s a genius. Hell, he’s kind of a hero. He is a hero. He’s a big hero. He’s the hero of the day the Rift closed forever.
(And Mako, who up until this moment had just been happily listening over her own beer, shook her head. “No.”
“Wrong,” Raliegh agreed.
“That is categorically untrue,” Tendo said.
Herman just scoffed.
“Did you just say that you masturbate to kaiju porn?” Herc said.)
Okay, okay, okay, but he is a hero. And so were the rest of the people in this dining room right now, drinking these bitching Australian beers that are like whoa, you know, like whoa. And so were a bunch of people who should be here today but can’t. Because they’re dead. And Newt doesn’t want to get too emotional, but that’s really sad. There’s enough dead to dampen the spirits of even the most devoted kaiju groupie which, again, Newt is not, so you can imagine how sad he is right now. Like negative sad. That means happy. He is not negative sad. He is double plus sad. So much sadness right now.
(“Why is he pouring beer on my carpet?” Herc said like a man who didn’t understand why tragedy kept happening to him.
“He’s offering it to his homies that couldn’t be here,” Raleigh offered helpfully.
Herc looked like he was going to say something like, perhaps, “Stop pouring carpet on my beer, I could crush you with one arm,” but he just sighed and drank. It wasn’t the worst thing that had landed on that carpet.
“Just let him get it out of his system,” Hermann said with all the weariness of someone who had been forced to become the resident expert on Newton Geiszler. “He’ll be as tolerable as he gets when he’s finally expressed all of his many emotions.”)
But life goes on! Not, you know, for dead people, Newt knows that. But for like, the living? Yes? Which everyone in Herc’s dining room right now is currently living? And that’s great? For everyone here, it’s been a year of peace like they can’t even remember. Like wow, oh god, you know? Crazy! So much peace. Almost as much peace as sadness and you know, you know, you know, Newt thinks that really means something. As much peace as sadness. But more peace than death so that’s good. Well, like, obviously, people are still dying so there’s actually probably more death than peace, but it’s peaceful death. Except for the homicides and stuff because those are still around. But no kaiju! And that’s beautiful.
(Mako and Raleigh looked at each other. They managed to exchange about five paragraphs through just eyebrow movements, in language too subtle and intricate to ever properly be translated. But if you had to try, you’d probably get something like this:
“Are you going to stop him?”
“Are you?”
“Should I?”
“I don’t know. I know I’m not going to stop him.”
“I should probably stop him, but I don’t want to stop him.”
“We’re learning so much.”
“Are we bad people?”
“No. A little. No.”
“Someone in the future should at some point stop him.”
“Agreed. You are recording, right?”
“Getting it all on my phone.”
“God, you’re great, Mako.”
“You stop that.”)
And that’s, that’s, that’s good. You know? Like, that’s good. Who wants kaiju around anyway? Not this guy! Because, as you know, death. And so really, if you think about it, everyone is better off. And the field of xenobiology can go back, you know, to not existing. And that’s beautiful! That’s—that’s great. And they can all start working on new doctorates and write new books and study new things. What new things? Squids! They can all study squids. Plenty of squids around after all, and no one knows anything about squids. Like, what’s up with them? Where did they come from? What’s going on in their heads. Are they clones, part of a hivemind from an ancient and separate dimension, creatures that are both utterly alien and yet tantalizingly similar to what scientists like Newt understand about biology? Of course not! And that’s just super great. Who’d want to study kaiju when you could study squids? No one! Like, ink? Crazy! Wow, so freaking cool.
(“So he’s now sobbing,” Tendo said. “He is sobbing facedown on the table.”
“We should do something,” Raleigh said. And at that, everyone who was not currently sobbing facedown on the table turned to Hermann.
“No,” Hermann said pointedly.
“You must,” Mako said. “There is no one better qualified than you.”
“I don’t wish to be qualified for this!”
“I didn’t even get to see a category five!” Newt wailed.
Herc moved his fine china away from Newt’s head and muttered something that sounded like, “Because we needed to save the bloody world.”
“Look,” Tendo said over a particularly shrill sob, “it’s either got to be Hermann or Raleigh. I mean—” He gestured at himself, Herc, and Mako before shrugging.
“You have a point,” Raleigh said.
“What point?” Mako asked. She and Raleigh looked at each other for a moment before she huffed indignantly. “I am very comforting. Aren’t I?”
Tendo, Herc, Raleigh, and Hermann all suddenly found the walls very interesting.)
And peace is so great. So, so great, but you know, when you grow up on manga and monster films, and you get six doctorates because what else are you going to do with your life, and you’re just living and living and living when suddenly—BAM—aliens start attacking the world, it’s hard not to think, you know, that you’ve finally found your purpose or whatever. And your purpose is to know these bastards as well as you can so you can get rid of them forever, and then you do, or you help lots of people do that, and then—then you’re done. That’s it. Go back to your old life. Like, what’s your purpose when your purpose is done?
(The room looked at each other uncomfortably. Hermann sighed and finished off the last of his beer. “Fine,” he said, struggling to his feet. “I’ll do it.”)
And so that’s it. That’s what Newt’s thinking about, one year to the day. Because he can still study the old kaiju, he can still do some groundbreaking work that redefines what everyone understands about biology, he can still scoop in more prizes than he knows what to do with—except he knows exactly what to do with them, he welds the trophies together into a model of a jaeger and displays it in his front yard, but that’s not the point. None of this is going to save the world. Newt’s already done that. And—
Oh, Hermann, dude. Here’s Hermann, like where’ve you been, little buddy? Newt wonders if Hermann knows just how cool he is sometimes. Like, okay, he’s a nerd. Like the biggest nerd. The biggest, biggest nerd. But also the best nerd, and that’s really what matters. And the inside of his head was super cool and surprisingly porny! But in a cool way, you know, not a sad way.
(“Yes, he’s very drunk,” Hermann said, slightly red-faced. He patted Newt on the arm as he tried to wriggle free of the boa constrictor-like hug he was currently ensnared in. “There, there,” he said helplessly. “We must all carry on.”
Mako turned to Raleigh. “And you think I could not do better than that.”
Raleigh cupped Mako’s hands and looked her in the eyes. “You are so smart and strong and amazing. And no, you could not do better than that.”
“Thank you.”
“Seriously, you are the best person I know. And your hair is the best. I’m so glad that I’ve met you.”
Herc threw up his hands. “Is there anyone here who can hold their alcohol?”
“Oh, I haven’t drunk anything,” Raleigh said, still stroking the back of Mako’s hand.)
Hermann smells like wool and moths, just so we all know. It’s nice. Sort of. It’s sort of nice.
“For god’s sake, Newton,” Hermann snaps, yes, he is snapping that as he tries to pull out of Newt’s arms. “Get a hold of yourself, man.”
And Newt’s like scoffing because what is this dude even saying? Newt’s got so much grip on himself. Such a tight grip.
“Really?” Tendo asks and oh hey, Tendo’s here, Newt totally forgot that. “Because you spent the last five minutes rambling about kaiju and sobbing into the tablecloth.”
Which isn’t true at all because Newt’s been keeping that stuff under wraps where no one can hear him saying the things.
“That is incredibly incorrect,” Tendo says.
Oh. Oh. Which does sort of beg the question of how much of this has been verbal.
“I’m going to go with all of it,” Herc says.
Newt touches his face. There’s a lot of snot action going on. He may have been crying. Just a little bit. In a very manly way. “I think I’m super drunk,” he says, this time making a conscious effort to say that aloud.
“About ten minutes ago you tried to drink a candle,” Herc says, “so, yeah, that’s a fair bet.”
“I just, you know, I just, I just—”
Hermann pushes Newt back down into a chair. “Yes.” Hermann pats his arm again. “Indeed.”
Newt tries to bite Hermann’s hand. He doesn’t know, it just seems like the thing to do right now. “Did I say anything too weird?”
No one says anything for a moment, and Herc’s just got this frown like, okay, here’s a frown. Here’s the biggest frown. It’s like a bulldog frown, that’s what it is, and man, it is just getting deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper and—
“Stop describing my frown,” Herc says.
Oh right. Verbal. That’s Newt’s bad. “I’m just, you know, I’m just.” He rests his head against Hermann’s belly. “You know.”
“We know,” Mako says. She leans over and touches his hand with a little smile. “We all are finding out who we are in this new world. You’ll figure it out too.” She’s so comforting. She’s being way more comforting than Newt ever thought it was possible for her to be. She’s like a beautiful soft kaiju skin louse baby with razor teeth and six sexy legs.
“I’m comforting!” And Newt doesn’t understand why Mako’s now high-fiving Raleigh, but cool, high fives are cool, let’s all high-five right now.
(“I don’t want to touch his hand,” Herc said, jerking away. “I know what he does with that now.”
Hermann just rolled his eyes and said, “Please, let’s just get this over with.”
“And let’s face it,” Tendo said as he rolled up his sleeves, “is anyone really surprised to hear what Newt’s masturbated too?”
“Yes,” Herc said. “Yes. Yes.”)
And now they are all high-fiving, and maybe Newt has to grab a few wrists to make it happen, but here they are, the survivors of the day that the world didn’t end, and it’s like the freeze frame ending of an eighties sitcom. “So what if I didn’t see a category five kaiju?” Newt whispers intently in the faces of everyone looking at him. “All of us, we’ve got a category five friendship.” And it’s so beautiful that Newt throws up on himself.
And that’s beautiful too, in its own way.
“No, it’s not!” everyone else says.
So, so, so, so beautiful.