Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“This is getting out of hand,” her dad said, standing a little ways away from her. Even after so long, he was still wary. 

He wasn’t wrong, but Maddie certainly had no complaints. She sat in the sand facing the ocean, Godzilla’s miniature form doing a decent impression of Jaws with his spines, cutting through the water towards the equally miniature Methuselah. 

Mothra, smaller than both of them at a solid chihuahua size (not counting her wingspan), sprawled happily in Maddie’s lap, actually purring at the rhythmic drag of her fingers through the soft fluff covering her body. Rodan, about as large as an eagle—which was a lot larger up close than she’d have guessed—tore at the raw meat Monarch had provided, eyeing her dad suspiciously. 

With one of the largest tiny forms, baby-elephant-sized Behemoth was taking a nap, his side pressed against Maddie’s. Scylla and the MUTO nicknamed Barb by Monarch were play-wrestling near the water’s edge. Reports from Skull Island said Kong had gone missing. People were placing bets on when he’d show up and join the rest.

Maddie hadn’t chosen to be a babysitter for the mini-Titans. If anything, they’d chosen her. To her dad’s constant distress and displeasure, she had absolutely no problem with this turn of events. 

With each of them, it’d been like getting an abused cat to trust her. She had to give them space, let them approach on their own terms, and then once they realized she could not only get them easy access to food, but that she freely offered hugs and pets… well. Any chance of her dad getting his way had flown out the window. 

The mini-Titans mostly tolerated other humans, provided they weren’t bothered or threatened, but so far, Maddie was the only one who was outright welcomed among them. 

A lot of people had different guesses as to why, mostly depending on which branch of research they were part of. Those who exclusively studied Titans’ behavior—and by extension, hierarchy—suggested Godzilla’s early acceptance of her was enough for the others to follow his lead. 

Some, like Dr. Reagan, thought maybe they were attuned to people’s fear, and appreciated the general lack of it in Maddie. 

The historian side of Monarch, especially those who pieced together the past interactions between Titans and ancient human civilizations, thought the Titans’ fondness for her ran much deeper. She’d caught a few of them talking about acquiring a list of her extended ancestry.

Privately, Maddie thought it was just because she’d: one, never pointed a gun or weapon at any of them; and two, treated them much as she treated humans. They were smart little guys—or big guys—and she knew if she had the power to obliterate cities, she wouldn’t want to be studied and condescended to like an animal. 

“I mean,” her dad continued, “what if they turn on you?” 

Rodan finished his meal and waddle-hopped over to Maddie so he could flop over her legs. He yawned and went boneless. 

“Yeah,” Maddie said, as Mothra’s wings fluttered with a particularly strong purr. She scrittched the spot a little harder. “I’m so scared.” 

She received a particularly flat look for that one. Really though, it’d been almost five months of mini-Titans finding their way to her. If she hadn’t so much as been scratched yet, she really doubted any of them were planning her demise any time soon. 

Godzilla and Methuselah tussled in the shallows until Methuselah dropped down and tucked his limbs into the sand, effectively turning himself into a tiny mountain in the surf. Godzilla stared for a moment before climbing on top of him to release a roar. 

“Dad,” Maddie said. “If you really don’t trust them to be careful around me, then can’t you at least trust that they’re having too much fun being able to play around like that without causing mass destruction to even think about hurting me?” 

He sighed. Godzilla fell off Methuselah with a little screech. It was adorable. 

“I just worry that you’ll forget how dangerous they can be. They aren’t pets, Madison.” 

“Of course they aren’t. That’d be insulting to them. They’re teeny tiny murder machines and I love them.” She tickled Mothra and got a trilling squeak for her troubles. “Not that I think they’ll murder me. That was a joke, Dad.” 

Her reassurance wasn’t enough for him to remove his hands from his face. He groaned dramatically. Godzilla, who’d been wading out of the water, leaving the Methuselah mountain behind, stopped at her dad’s feet. He titled his head back and mimicked the despairing noise. 

While her dad got caught in a staring contest with the King of Titans, Maddie shifted Mothra to the top of her head. Her little legs slid into her hair like headbands and her wings draped down across Maddie’s temples and over her ears. Barb, who’d been heading her way when Scylla became distracted with bothering poor Methuselah, immediately filled the empty spot. 

She released her eerie, robotic clicking vocalizations as Maddie stroked the flat plane of her head. 

Methuselah reared up with a splash, finally fed up with Scylla’s poking. The sudden movement startled her dad into blinking. Godzilla rumbled and gave a full-body shake in satisfaction. He continued on his way, settling against Maddie on her side not occupied by Behemoth. 

It was late-afternoon, but all the Titans appreciated naps. Methuselah and Scylla joined the rest in their Maddie-pile as she leaned back against the weighted, waterproof beanbag behind her. 

“Look on the plus side, Dad,” she said. “As long as at least one of them are around, you really don’t have to worry about any human threats.” 

Even though the stretch of beach they occupied was a private one, guarded and owned by Monarch, she might not have felt comfortable falling asleep out there without her many small friends. 

Her dad’s shoulders slumped even as a little smile crossed his face. “I suppose. Forgive your old man for worrying about you?” 

And Maddie would never tell him that the reason she never really complained about his paranoia was because she liked being worried over. It meant he cared. So she smiled back and said, “Always.” 

The sun was warm, the breeze pleasant, and after she’d told her dad she’d see him later and he retreated back up the path to the house they’d been given to better accommodate the mini-Titans, Maddie drifted off, surrounded by the slumbering bodies of seven teeny tiny murder machines. 

She woke up after sunset—definitely later than she’d expected—to find a child-sized gorilla staring at her off to the side. 

“Finally,” she whispered, trying not to disturb any of the others. “I was wondering when you’d get here.” 

Maddie shifted just enough to open a spot between Behemoth and the beanbag. Kong barely hesitated before joining them, his head leaning against her shoulder. 

They’d probably all wake up in a few hours and insist on playing in the moonlight, but Maddie’s legs were a little bit numb, so she knew she’d be the first to splash into the ocean to get rid of the pins and needles. 

A pleased sigh left her as she slipped back into sleep, perfectly safe, perfectly comfortable, and perfectly happy. 

Chapter Text

The city crumbled beneath Godzilla’s feet. A particularly vicious stomp leveled a cracked building. He leaned forward and roared, the burning light of his atomic breath glowing in the back of his throat. 

Standing across from him, numerous intact buildings separating them, Kong squared his shoulders and beat his chest. He would not take such a challenge lying down. He bellowed his own war cry as he charged. 

Godzilla lunged forward as well, neither sparing a thought for the devastation they were causing. 

They met in the middle, all claws and teeth and unbridled rage. It was a battle for the ages, and they were well-matched opponents. This was no play fight. 

Kong was shoved down, smashing a house beneath his broad back. Godzilla snapped at him, but he pulled his feet up and kicked, knocking his adversary away. They began circling each other, further crushing debris beneath them. Growling fiercely, Godzilla tried to swipe Kong’s legs out from under him, only for Kong to leap on his back. 

They fought like this for a minute, scratching wildly wherever they could reach, until Godzilla managed to grab Kong’s arm and yank him around. His atomic breath charged, his spines hummed with power, and he opened his mouth to obliterate his rival, who even then was attempting to choke him. 

“Guys!” 

They both looked over to Godzilla’s left. 

Standing knee-deep in the water, Scylla dangling from her shoulder, Maddie frowned at them both. The remains of the sandcastle city she’d built lay in ruins around their mini-Titan forms. 

Overhead, the moon shone brightly, and fairy lights strung around the beach added to the dreamy effect of being out in the middle of the night. It was a good thing, too, since Maddie had been absolutely right about the Titans waking up and wanting to play. 

She hadn’t expected Godzilla and Kong to react so badly to each other. At first, upon realizing the other was present, they’d both growled periodically, refused to turn their backs to each other, and then the posturing had started. 

Making the sand-city had distracted them for a while, especially since Mothra had managed to steal Godzilla’s attention. It felt like as soon as she had turned her back on them, playing in the gentle midnight waves with some of the others, they had completely lost their patience with one another’s presence. 

Hell if she knew where the animosity came from. All Maddie knew was that Godzilla was about to blast Kong’s face off, and Kong’s hands were disturbingly wrapped around Godzilla’s throat. 

“Seriously?” she asked, crossing her arms. They both stared at her with the sort of looks best worn by kids caught with their hands in the cookie jar. She now knew the answer to the question of whether Titans could look guilty. 

Yes. Very. 

“We’re having such a nice night, and you two are trying to beat each other to a pulp. Why? You’ve both been awake and in each other’s presence for an hour at most. What could either of you have possibly done to warrant a fight to the death?” 

Godzilla had been fine all day, and any day before this when he was around the other Titans. And to her knowledge, Kong had barely had any interaction with most of the others, yet he seemed fine with them and vice versa. 

Case in point, Scylla was having a great time exploring Maddie’s shoulders. Rodan was floating on his back, wings spread wide, with the talons on one end hooked in the hem of her capris to keep him from drifting away. Behemoth and Methuselah were nestled in a little sand fort, which was only staying up as well as it was thanks to careful use of Mothra’s silk. Barb's head was barely visible above the water before she ducked under to look for pretty shells and rocks. And Mothra herself was periodically swooping over to land on Maddie’s head before going back to cling to one of the poles with fairy lights. 

Kong sheepishly released Godzilla’s neck. Godzilla reluctantly swallowed back his atomic breath. 

“Honestly,” Maddie said. “I expected better from both of you.” 

Godzilla made a deeply wounded noise and gave her a remarkably effective puppy-dog look. Kong plopped down in the sand, pouting. 

Her dad had been right about one thing: it was incredibly easy to forget how dangerous these creatures were when they acted like actual literal children. 

Sighing, Maddie bent over to set Scylla in the water and transfer Rodan’s anchoring talons to one of their long limbs. Scylla chirped at this and immediately began scuttling around, dragging Rodan in their wake. 

Free for the moment, Maddie left the ocean and went to kneel down in front of the two troublemakers. “I’m not mad,” she promised them, keeping her voice soft. “I just don’t want to see either of you hurt.” 

Godzilla’s sad face only lasted up until the exact moment her knees hit the sand, at which point, he shot forward and pressed against her—and Maddie’d been around him long enough to know he wanted a hug. She sat all the way down, legs tucked beneath her, so he could hook his chin over her shoulder. 

The sound Kong made was all betrayal and fury. His eyes narrowed and locked on Godzilla’s back, where Maddie was being careful to avoid his faintly-glowing spines. And as someone who’d once had a sibling, she knew that look. That why-do-they-get-that-and-I-don’t look. 

“Please tell me you weren’t fighting over who gets a hug,” she said with no small amount of exasperation. The very smug huff she got from Godzilla was all she needed to hear. “Oh for—get over here.” She reached a hand out towards Kong, who was quick to respond. 

A little shifting around, and Maddie had Godzilla on her right and Kong on her left. “Two arms, guys,” she reminded them. “I have two whole arms good for hugging.” 

Neither of them seemed to have a good response to that.

She patiently sat there, a pair of Titans pressed tightly against her, for a while. It was only when her legs went completely numb beneath her, her eyes had achieved that dry graininess characteristic of exhaustion, and she noticed Scylla possibly attempting to surf on Rodan that Maddie pulled back. 

“Okay, bedtime. Real bedtime in the house, not out here. Get.” She nudged them in the direction of the path, pleased to see an absence of murderous glares. Mothra swooped down to join them, settling on Godzilla’s head as they passed by the fairy lights. 

Barb followed after them as soon as she realized they were heading back to the house. Behemoth and Methuselah were also easy to get moving, with the promise that their sand fort would still be there tomorrow. She had to chase Scylla and Rodan down, but neither put up a struggle once she picked them up. 

After a quick rinse and dry for everyone with the hose on the deck to minimize sand inside—a losing battle when it came to Titans, honestly—Maddie left them in her room while she went to brush her teeth and change. 

With Titan sleepovers in mind, Monarch had specially designed her room so the extra-comfy mattress was three things: built directly into the floor to avoid mishaps; bigger than a king size, so crowding wasn’t too big a problem; and absolutely covered in pillows. They’d learned early on with Godzilla that pillow nests were in the top five favorite things for every Titan to go miniature so far. 

The little pit containing her mattress had already been rearranged by the time she returned. As always, her customary spot in the middle with her personal pillow was empty and waiting. 

Leaving her phone on the floor’s edge above her head, Maddie settled down and immediately had eight mini-Titans flopping over her like enthusiastic dogs. The lightest of them took their places on top of her, Mothra on her torso while Barb and Scylla each sprawled over a leg.

Rodan seemed to try a new location every week or so, and tonight he decided his optimal sleeping position was half on Maddie’s hip and half on Behemoth’s back. At her opposite hip, much like they’d been outside, was Methuselah. 

This left Godzilla and Kong to once again take up residence directly at her sides. Either they were satisfied with the arrangement or too tired to start anything, because they drifted off without complaint. 

Only once she was sure that all eight mini-Titans were comfy and well on their way to dreamland did Maddie follow. 

Chapter Text

It happened during one of the rare times when Maddie was alone since the whole mini-Titan thing first started. Well, not alone alone. There were plenty of humans around, after all. 

She and her dad had been asked to check out a suspected base of Jonah’s and search around to see if they could find any evidence on whether or not he was trying to rebuild the ORCA, or something similar. There were few people in Monarch who could recognize the inner workings better than them. 

The base had been confirmed empty when it was first found, and the operatives who initially located it and later staked it out reported how it was still strewn with equipment. The result of a hasty departure from the looks of things. 

Once they were confident no one would be returning any time soon, they were cleared to head in with a small group who would make what they could of the remains. Even just some idea of where they were going next or what their strategy was could prove helpful. All Maddie and her dad had to worry about, though, was any sign of a new ORCA. 

At least, that was the plan. 

Someone started shouting only about twenty minutes into their careful search. It didn’t take long for anyone to understand what the commotion was about. 

There was a walk-in freezer in the industrial-style kitchen, and an unlucky young man had peeked inside if only to cover all their bases. He hadn’t been expecting to find the freezer occupied. An extremely lethargic but still very much awake mini-Titan had choked out some sparks at him even as he’d pulled back and slammed the door shut. 

Why Jonah had left the little guy—who appeared to be a single-headed Ghidorah, which caused some major concerns—was anyone’s guess. Considering the freezer had been locked from the outside with the pin in place, it had to have been intentional. 

As most of the present operatives discussed what to do with him, Maddie stared at the door and listened to the faint scratches and thumps coming from the other side. 

She thought about how Ghidorah had been trapped in the ice, how bone-achingly cold it had been to her when she was only there an hour or two, not years. She thought about how awful it would be to feel that freezing chill begin to resettle over you, slowing you down until you couldn’t move at all, after you’d been freed and had felt the sun again. 

They weren’t sounds of rage she was listening to. They were sounds of panic and desperation. 

Maddie sighed—because she could already imagine the scandalized looks the other Titans would give her over this, not to mention her dad’s—and reached out to unlock and open the door. 

He burst out with a hoarse screech, which mingled with the cries of horror coming from behind her, and immediately skittered away into a corner. He didn’t so much as try and touch her. 

Amazingly, even the hardiest of the combat soldiers accompanying the researchers stilled their hands over their weapons at the sight of the oh-so-fearsome Monster Zero huddled in a shivering ball as far from the humans as he could be. 

The way Maddie figured, he was either a completely new creature Jonah had somehow made, or he was the reanimated head Godzilla had torn free from the rest of the body in Isla de Mara. Whichever it was, there was no chance he’d been there for the battle of Boston.

This single-headed Ghidorah hadn’t had a hand—or claw, as it were—in killing her mother, and that was why she slowly inched closer and knelt down a safe distance away. He eyed her warily but didn’t lash out. 

She heard the very familiar sound of her dad sighing heavily behind her. 

“I don’t know why I’m surprised,” he said, and she imagined he was shaking his head. “If someone would stay with her, I think the rest of us should finish up here. If Jonah’s got the means to make one, I don’t want to find out the hard way he has the means to make many.” 

Griffin volunteered to remain in the kitchen, and she offered Maddie a smile as she settled off to the side while the room emptied out. “We’ve all heard the stories about you and the mini-Titans,” she said, “but this is the first time I’ve seen it in action. Were you even a little afraid he’d try and hurt you?” 

Maddie shook her head. “I figured he’d be too busy trying to get away from the cold to bother.” She made eye contact with Ghidorah—she’d have to see if he’d accept a different name, because whether or not he was in Boston, the association still hurt—and slowly, carefully, said, “I bet we even have something in common. We both hate Alan Jonah.” 

His little forked tongue poked out with a weak hiss. So he recognized the name. And based on the way faint angry-yellow sparks fell from his trembling wings, she’d guess Jonah hadn’t been kind to him. There was even a good chance he was the one to lock Ghidorah in the freezer. 

The sound of rustling made Maddie look away. Griffin had stood to rummage through some drawers, and with a triumphant sound, she pulled out some dishtowels. “It’s not much,” she said, handing them to Maddie, “but it can’t hurt to prove we’re not like Jonah.” 

With a grateful smile, Maddie accepted the bundle and scooted a tiny bit closer to Ghidorah. He pushed harder against the wall but didn’t growl at her. Knowing better than to touch him before he was ready, she ventured just near enough to dump the whole pile on top of him before backing away. 

Both she and Griffin laughed at the bewildered look in his bright eyes. He watched them for a second longer before stretching his neck around to catch a couple towels. They sat in silence as he half-rolled around in them, half-made a nest around himself. 

Ghidorah had stopped shivering and was merely laying there, seeming to be on the verge of sleep, when another soldier from G-team entered the room from the far door. She and Griffin paused their conversation, which mostly consisted of Maddie telling funny stories about the mini-Titans—she’d been in the middle of recounting the aftermath of her having her wisdom teeth removed a few months ago—to turn to him. 

He hefted a big bucket up like a trophy as he approached. “We found enough fish in the shed out back to feed the lot of the minis. Figured this one’s gotta be pretty hungry, considering how long he’s probably been locked up.” 

Setting the smelly bucket beside Maddie, he accepted her thanks and added, “The others think we’ll be done soon. If you can come up with a good way to get him out of here that doesn’t result in anyone needing medical care, it’d be much appreciated.” 

They all knew tranquilizers didn’t really work on the Titans, no matter what size they were. 

As Maddie started tossing fish at Ghidorah’s head—which quickly became a game to see if he could snatch them out of the air—Griffin let out a thoughtful hum. “I wonder why he’s small. Seems like if he didn’t want to be here, he’d stay big and just rampage his way out.” 

That… was actually an excellent point. Maddie frowned, absently hefting a fish in her hand. Ghidorah’s head bobbed up and down, following it. “Godzilla kinda got stuck like that the first time it happened. Maybe it’s not so easy for them to control.” 

Griffin leaned her elbows on her knees. “Would it be possible for Jonah to make him stay that way?” 

Maddie fumbled the fish and overshot it, to Ghidorah’s mild grumbling. It smacked the wall above him with a wet, fleshy noise and plopped down on top of his back. 

“Maddie? What’re you thinking?” 

“What if,” she started slowly, considering what they knew, “he was messing with some sort of ORCA two-point-oh and accidentally triggered whatever it is in the Titans that makes them shrink? Jonah has no way of knowing it’s not permanent, so what good would such a tiny Titan be to him?” 

Griffin nodded. “So they gave it up as a bad job. Left him locked in there rather than risk themselves trying to kill him. Hell, maybe he even hoped we’d find this place and get one of our own hurt dealing with him.” 

“So… he could be stuck this way.” Maddie tossed another fish and watched as Ghidorah visibly perked up. “He’s a lot different, isn’t he? From the, y’know.” 

“Yeah,” Griffin said. She’d been down on the ground in Boston too, after all. “I know what you mean.” 

Maddie dug her phone out of her pocket and pulled up the search engine. 

“What are you doing?”

“I think he deserves a different name, don’t you? I don’t like thinking of him as Ghidorah.”

“I agree with you there, kid.” Griffin leaned over her shoulder and watched her find a random name generator. 

Looking up from the result, Maddie picked up the last fish from the bucket and pointed at the mini-Titan with it. “If you want a new name, don’t catch this.” She tossed it at him in a perfect arc.

It flopped against his closed snout and fell to the floor. 

Maddie grinned. “Kevin it is.”

Chapter Text

Kevin was remarkably willing to board the aircraft meant to take them back to Castle Bravo, where he would hopefully be just as amenable to switch onto an Osprey which would take Maddie and her dad back to their Monarch-issued beach house. 

He avoided getting too close to anyone, watching with a continuous hiss as people bustled around him. For his sake as much as theirs, everyone on the aircraft ignored him. Except for Maddie. She sat mostly between the rest of the jet and the bench seat he’d shoved himself under. 

The force of the engines thrummed through the floor as they took off. Kevin poked his head out a little but otherwise remained hidden. 

Quiet enough to go unheard by the humans, Maddie leaned forward and said, “I’m giving you one chance, okay? I don’t know what it’s like to have to share a body with two other heads who each have their own thoughts and desires and stuff. I don’t know how much of what happened was you specifically. But, you haven’t hurt anyone here yet, and I want to believe it’s because you just don’t want to.” 

His eyes stayed focused on her, and Maddie’d gotten very good at being able to tell when a Titan was listening intently, processing and understanding what she was saying, and feeling the seriousness with which she said it. He wasn’t staring absently or distracted. They were on the same page here.

“So here’s your chance,” she continued. “Please, please, don’t mess it up. You can make a place for yourself, you can be happy and not have to fight or anything anymore, but you’ve gotta want it. I can’t make you play nice.” 

Maddie determinedly didn’t think about how she was going to explain this to the other Titans. They’d be pissed, at him if not at her too. She could only hope Titans didn’t hold too bad of grudges, though if Godzilla and Kong represented the norm, Kevin was doomed. 

If she were anyone else, Maddie might’ve wondered if this was worth the trouble Kevin’s presence would inevitably cause. But she’d had a bit of a soft spot for the Titans even before she met their miniature forms. If she could give Kevin a chance, then—come hell or high water—she would. 

He certainly didn’t exude the wild rage and power Ghidorah had, which she took as a good sign. And compared to tiny Godzilla’s first time among humans, Kevin was winning by her count. He hadn’t bitten anyone, no one needed medical attention, and he hadn’t woken Maddie up in the middle of the night by causing destruction of property. 

“He’ll hate it if I bring all that up,” she mused aloud. “But if I need to blackmail Godzilla into giving you a fair shot to prove yourself, so be it.”

Kevin winced backward at the mention of the King’s name. 

“I’ll protect you,” she said unthinkingly. Only after the promise registered in her head did Maddie pause to think about how her life had reached the point where she was offering to protect one Titan from another. Her. A human. And yet…

If she told Godzilla to knock it off, he’d listen. He might need some convincing (or blackmail), but he would listen. 

The rest of the flight went well enough. Kevin stayed hidden right up until the final stretch, when Maddie had started drifting off with her cheek pressed against her palm, elbow on her knee. She kept jerking awake every few minutes when her head dipped too far down and slipped off her hand. One of the times she blinked back into awareness, she was quietly startled to find Kevin had emerged from his spot beneath the bench. 

He was curled up close enough to be called next to her, though he’d placed a few inches of space between them. His eyes were shut, and to Maddie, it was an excellent sign. 

Most of the Titans had needed to adjust to being close to humans on their own time, and she hadn’t tried to rush any of them. They had slowly but progressively allowed themselves to get closer, until it was like a switch was flipped and they went from being distant and aloof to difficult to pry off her sometimes. 

She suspected Kevin wouldn’t be any different. 

Once they arrived at Castle Bravo, Maddie didn’t so much as twitch while the jet emptied. She knew her dad would wait for her outside, since he’d seen this process happen enough times to know her methods. 

It was a simple fact, really, that many living creatures could read body language. Humans and cats and dogs were the ones that used to come immediately to mind, but Titans had joined the list early on. She stayed relaxed as people walked back and forth behind her, and Kevin did the same. His eyes were open, but not focused on the rest of them. He was watching her. 

Once they were alone, Maddie stood up and stretched her legs as they flooded with the dreaded pins-and-needles feeling. Kevin followed her as she walked down the ramp. 

“Good luck, kid!” Griffin called with a wave in their direction. 

Maddie smiled and returned her wave. “See you later, Griffin! Thanks for sitting with me!” 

Her dad walked on Maddie’s other side to the Osprey. He kept glancing down only to shake his head. “Unbelievable,” he eventually muttered. 

They buckled into their seats, while Kevin bravely poked around a bit. 

“Some things never change,” her dad said quietly to her. “None of them want much to do with people right away.”

“He’s definitely more comfortable now that there’s less of us here.” Maddie bit her lip. “I think he’s more afraid of humans than the others were. They were just kind of, I dunno… wary. Distrustful. But also curious and willing to give us a chance.” 

“Griffin said you named this guy Kevin.” He waited for Maddie to nod before continuing. “I think you’re right. Whatever Jonah and them did…” 

Kevin sneezed and shook his head. Finally done exploring, he slinked back and plopped down beside Maddie’s seat. He looked up at her and chirruped. 

“Yeah,” she agreed with her dad while smiling down at Kevin. They didn’t need to put words to the things they imagined Jonah’s crew to have done. “But I think he’ll be just fine.” 

• • •

Their beach house was empty when the Russells returned. The Titans had an uncanny sense of when the house was occupied, though, so it wouldn’t be long before someone showed up. Until then, Maddie aimlessly wandered through the different rooms that the Titans were allowed into—her dad’s bedroom and office, the kitchen pantry, and the library all being off-limits—so Kevin could have something of a tour. 

She went slowly, allowing him to take it all in and sniff things out when he wanted. He didn’t show any signs of stress, though he occasionally caught a scent that made him react funny. That of the other Titans, no doubt. 

Overall, his movements were relaxed and comfortable, and she couldn’t spot any remaining aftereffects of being locked in a freezer for who knew how long. She crouched down in front of him after they’d returned to the living room. He didn’t shy away. 

“I’ve got a good feeling about this, Kevin,” Maddie said. “You don’t have any murder vibes going on.” She blew out a breath. “All that’s left is, uh, reintroducing you to the others.” 

He made his feelings on that very clear as he ducked his head almost to the ground and whined. 

“I know, buddy. We’ll do it together, okay?” 

And hell, she knew the Titans were dangerous. She knew they could very easily hurt someone—and most, if not all, of them had at some point. She knew they weren’t normal animals or pets, or even temperamental toddlers. She knew they weren’t tame. 

But they made it really really hard for her to remember that sometimes. When Mothra perched on her head, when Methuselah tucked his face against her side, when Godzilla hooked his chin over her shoulder while she hugged him. And now, when Kevin inched forward to tap his snout against her knee. 

Maddie sighed, even though she couldn’t have stopped herself from smiling if she tried. She reached out and gently tapped him back. Kevin went cross-eyed to watch her fingers above his forehead but didn’t pull away. 

She lightly scratched his scales and was given a deep, rumbly purr for her efforts. 

It was only another hour or so after that when she heard the skitter of claws coming from the open backdoor. Kevin had been fed again, mostly since she didn’t want to have to deal with that when any of the others were around. 

Godzilla came around the corner, Mothra flying just above him, and immediately drew to a halt. Maddie stood up from one of the barstools around the kitchen counter as Kevin froze in the middle of gnawing on a specially-made chew toy. Pets they were not, but that didn’t mean they didn’t like the simple pleasure of working their teeth against something close to unbreakable. 

Mothra hovered in place for a moment before flitting down to settle in the cradle of Maddie’s arms. It was adorable as always, but also unmistakably a calculated maneuver. Not only was she putting herself in a decent spot to protect Maddie if need be, with Maddie’s arms full, she wouldn’t be quite as able to get involved should a fight break out. 

Which… yeah.

Godzilla’s eyes narrowed dangerously at Kevin, who squeaked and hid behind Maddie’s leg. Given he was, like Rodan, the size of a large bird of prey, this was by no means a good hiding place. 

Maddie cleared her throat. “Before you make any drastic decisions,” she told Godzilla, absently petting Mothra all the while, “I’d appreciate it if you let me explain.” 

The King’s spines started glowing. Kevin nearly took Maddie out at the knee as he pressed the flat of his head against her knee-pit. 

“One, no atomic breath in the house. Two, contrary to how you guys act sometimes, I know you’re all adults. So use your brain and consider whether you really think this,” she nodded down at the trembling mini-Titan trying to become one with her leg, “is a threat.” 

The blue light didn’t fade, but Godzilla’s tense, battle-ready posture relaxed a little. 

And then, because Maddie knew it would break the tension, she added, “His name’s Kevin, by the way.” 

Godzilla’s laughter-snort was loud enough to make poor Kevin startle. It wasn’t a permanent fix—she was sure some wrestling would need to happen sooner or later if only to get some fighting energy out—but it was a start. 

Chapter Text

Maddie took all three mini-Titans outside, despite the risk of Godzilla taking it as permission to laser poor Kevin to hell and back. Some sort of fight was going to happen, and no way would she let them destroy the house, not when she was the one her dad would give a disappointed look to. Ancient creatures with decades, centuries even, more life experience than her, and yet Maddie would take the fall like she was meant to be the responsible one. 

To be fair, though, she’d never leveled a city. So. 

Mothra seemed content as anything to remain in the cradle of Maddie’s arms, trilling happily whenever Maddie’s gently scratching fingers found a particularly nice spot. 

Godzilla was visibly tense, though Maddie wasn’t reading true anger in his posturing. The way he growled and snapped his jaw at Kevin, his tail whipping around behind him, spines still slightly lit, was intimidation more than anything. If he was well and truly pissed, Kevin probably would’ve been dead already. 

And then there was Kevin. If ever Maddie had seen a Titan, miniature or not, look to be on the brink of having a heart attack, it was now. As soon as Maddie had reached the sandy beach and stopped walking, he’d wedged his body between her legs and wrapped his tail around one, and his head around the other. 

She was essentially shackled in place by one Titan, being circled by another, with a third keeping her hands busy. Maddie tilted her head back and sighed toward the great unknown, wordlessly asking what she’d done to deserve this. 

In the next moment, she must’ve hit a ticklish spot on Mothra’s belly, because one of her wings spasmed and smacked her in the face. 

Maddie sighed again, deeper and with more feeling, through the wing plastered against her cheeks. 

She thought she should probably say something, explain Kevin’s presence or insist he not be punished for his past when Jonah had already done a good enough job at that. But tensions were running high, and even though she’d keep her promise to protect Kevin, sometimes you just had to let nature run its course. 

Boys will be boys, right? 

“No crippling injuries, no head shots, minimal radiation powers, you stop if I say stop or you’ll lose a week of bed privileges. Kevin, he’s not going to kill you. Godzilla, he’s nice.” Maddie wiggled her legs free and hopped away before she could be recaptured. “Any questions? No? Great, three-two-one-go!” 

Godzilla lunged, Kevin shrieked, and Mothra chirp-laughed at the both of them as Maddie retreated a safe distance to supervise. 

It was a lot different from Godzilla and Kong’s sand-city showdown. Though she was pretty sure they’d been playing around at least a little, she couldn’t deny the two of them had been at the same level of aggressive half-violence. Kevin looked like he’d rather be anywhere else, but he must’ve understood the necessity of getting it all out of their systems, because he didn’t try to run away. 

Most of his fighting techniques seemed to involve flailing, though. A lot of it, and since he had a grand total of six limbs to flail with, he wasn’t doing too badly. If you counted frequently smacking Godzilla in the face as not doing too badly. 

Godzilla, on the other hand, looked like he was experiencing some major catharsis. He even followed the rules Maddie had laid down, and didn’t do anything that brought more than a few pinpricks of blood to Kevin’s scales. He gave as good as he got with the smacking, though. His tail might not have been barbed, but he could get a solid thwip noise going when he whirled fast enough.

Maddie had initially worried it would be comparable to a dog fight, all ripping teeth and clamping jaws, but honestly? This was like watching a pair of feral kindergarteners finally be given permission to hit someone without consequences. She’d been that age once, she knew how much blood could be spilled on the playground. 

“What do you think,” she asked Mothra as Godzilla pulled Kevin’s tail hard enough to make him face-plant. “Are we gonna have to do this with every Titan?” 

Mothra watched the fight for another moment before twisting to look up at Maddie. Her eyes were soft, no angry narrowing or challenge-ready glow. She remained limply content where she was, wings curling every now and then while she wiggled into a new position. It wouldn’t surprise Maddie if she fell asleep from sheer comfortableness. 

“Oh,” she said. “Any fights are gonna be personal, is that it? You've got nothing against Kevin specifically, so you’re not looking to beat him up?” 

The Queen stretched with a trill and went back to being the most relaxed mini-Titan ever. 

“Rodan, then, for sure,” Maddie mused aloud. “That’ll be fun. Kevin was technically dead before Ghidorah forced a bunch of the others to start wreaking havoc, so it might be a toss-up there.” 

For being such physically imposing Titans, Methuselah and Behemoth both tended to choose a nap over a fight, unless provoked. Scylla would absolutely take the chance to brawl with Kevin, because they were just Like That. For Barb, it would depend on her mood. Kong might do it just because Godzilla did, and the two of them were worse than competitive siblings when it came to one-upping each other. 

Kevin managed to get a solid hit in, his wings crackling with golden lightning. At least he didn’t look quite as petrified anymore. Maddie might even say he looked like he was enjoying himself. Good for him, having fun in a non-lethal fight. 

It ended perhaps ten minutes or so after it started, with Godzilla bodily flopping down on top of Kevin, pinning his wings at awkward angles with no potential leverage. Kevin whined, panting from exertion. He only tried once to push himself up before accepting defeat and going limp in the Kevin-shaped imprint in the sand. 

Godzilla twisted around to gently roar his victory at Maddie and Mothra. Everything about his face and posture screamed of how pleased he was with himself. 

“Congratulations,” Maddie said, venturing closer. The sand was all kicked up and slightly burnt, showing exactly where the brawl had taken place. Transferring Mothra to one arm, she crouched down beside the fallen Kevin and gave him a little commiserating pat. Godzilla was rewarded with scritches beneath his chin. He rumbled happily. “You sure showed him who’s King.” 

Godzilla huffed proudly. 

Maddie let him have another minute of sitting on Kevin before telling him to get off. 

• • •

The rest of the day went well. Rodan arrived as it was getting dark, and with the instant uptick of tension again, Maddie repeated the rules and shooed them off to go wack each other around. No way would she let them sit and simmer all night. She sat in her pajamas on the top step of the back deck, facing the path leading to the ocean. A light blanket helped keep her warm despite the chilly breeze, and Godzilla’s presence curled against her hip did the rest. 

Red and yellow light flashed above them, twin bird-like screeches colliding into a tangle of limbs. At least they’d both be too tired to do anything else but sleep after this. 

Maddie absently traced the jagged outline of Godzilla’s spines as she hummed. The door slid open behind her. 

“Think they’ll be done soon?” her dad asked. 

“I think at this point, they’re playing tag more than anything.” She squinted up, but it was too dark to see either of them when they were moving so quickly. 

“As long as they keep it outside.” Her dad stopped behind her and bent down, kissing her forehead when she obligingly tipped her head back. “Don’t stay up too late, okay?” 

“I’ll give ’em a few more minutes before I leave them out here alone. Mothra’s already sleeping, and—” she peeked beneath the edge of the blanket at Godzilla— “I think he’s not far behind. Good night, Dad.” 

“Night, sweetheart.” 

Just as she was getting ready to call it quits a little while later, both mini-Titans crash-landed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. They looked up at her, neither too badly beat up. 

“You cool?” she asked them, standing unsteadily. Godzilla grumbled as he heaved himself to his feet. Maddie dropped the blanket over his head as he turned to trudge away, laughing a little when he did nothing to remove it. A child-sized blanket-ghost vanished into the house. 

Both Rodan and Kevin chirped tiredly, and the way they were standing next to each other gave Maddie the utterly terrifying impression that they’d just become best friends. Not like that could go wrong, of course not. 

They followed her inside, and Rodan led the way down the hall as Maddie made sure to lock the back door. 

Mothra was still sound asleep on Maddie’s pillow when she she entered her bedroom, but the other three were waiting for her to settle before tucking themselves in their customary spots. 

Slow and steady, Maddie lifted Mothra up so she could lay down. Her delicate legs loosely curled around Maddie’s wrist, and didn’t pull away even once she’d been resettled on Maddie’s stomach. 

Godzilla wiggled up against her side and immediately drifted off, Maddie’s arm draped over his back parallel to his spines. At her hip on the opposite side, Rodan curled himself up in his wings like a little fire demon burrito. Kevin crouched down a couple feet away and warbled. 

“Take your pick,” Maddie whispered. “There’s no crowding tonight, so you’ve got a lot of options. Or you can stay over there, if you want.” 

She closed her eyes but resisted the pleasant sleep-heavy warmth waiting to take her. After a long moment, a snout gently burrowed beneath her free arm, and she casually lifted it enough for a small body to fit under. Maddie set it down once Kevin stopped moving, and she smiled to herself when she felt his head rest on her upper arm. 

“Good night,” she whispered. To her pleased surprise, she got a rumble, a trill, and two slightly different chirps, all sounding half-asleep, in reply. 

Chapter Text

Maddie slumped tiredly against the kitchen counter, an ice pack numbing her fingers and face. It’d been a rough week, to say the least, and her injuries weren’t nearly as faded as she’d hoped they’d be by now. But nope, the bruises remained dark, the cuts weren’t fully scabbed over, and the bandages wrapped firmly from her elbow to palm on her left arm were still wholly necessary. 

She had wanted to put off their return to the house until she didn’t look so beat up, but with the way everything had worked out, her choices were either here or the hospital, and Maddie had never and would never like being in a hospital. 

So home it was. Where she was alone, for the moment. 

There was no telling how the mini-Titans would react to her injuries, but her gut told her it probably wouldn’t be as simple as them ignoring the bruises and such. They could be protective little brats, which last time they’d had reason to be, they’d reverted to protective enormous brats, which… yeah. She didn’t need that happening again. 

Peeling herself away from the counter, Maddie limped toward the living room, leaving her ice pack behind. She could turn a movie on and maybe even drift off, enjoy the peace before any Titans, mini or otherwise, arrived and saw her condition. 

She only made it a few steps when the familiar sound of skittering claws on tile reached her ears. 

Maddie sighed as four mini-Titans rounded the hallway corner and came to an abrupt halt at the sight of her, the ground-based ones practically tripping over each other as they did. Only Mothra avoided the collision. 

Godzilla’s eyes immediately took on the sort of blazing, narrowed quality that reduced a man to trembling pleas for mercy only a few months ago. Barb was always a lot harder to read without vocalizations, but she had a particular way of gnashing her hooked mouth that spoke of genuine fury. It was seldom seen, as Barb was generally a pretty agreeable Titan, all things considered, but there was no mistaking the gesture now. And with how many fights Godzilla and Kong had gotten into over the months since Kong’s arrival, Maddie was very familiar with Kong’s down-to-fight posture. 

Mothra, by all accounts, didn’t seem to have reacted at all, other than stopping to remain in place above the others. But Maddie knew better. If you knew what to look for, and Maddie did, then you would see the faintest shimmer of light across her wings—it was just hard to tell during the day. Basically, with few exceptions, Mothra’s wings only lit up when she was either very happy or absolutely ready to tear someone apart. 

Maddie sighed again, louder and with a great slumping of her shoulders. 

“I’m fine,” she told them, entirely uselessly since there was a zero percent chance of any of them believing her. Unlike humans, who mostly had the decency to pretend like she was as fine as she claimed, Titans didn’t accept that sort of lie. 

Part of Maddie didn’t want to move, because then they would see her limp, but her knees kinda felt ready to give out on her if she didn’t sit down soon, and collapsing on the spot would be the absolute worst thing she could do in front of the Titans right now. 

She turned away from their tense little forms and couldn’t contain her wince at the pain shooting up her left leg when she took a step. She could already hear Godzilla’s spines humming with radiation. 

It was with zero elegance and only minimal control that Maddie flopped down onto the couch. Her back throbbed at the rough treatment, but her leg thanked her. She grabbed the remote and started looking for something to serve as background noise. 

Within seconds of her settling against the cushions, her four visitors were slotting themselves into place around her. Notably, not a single one so much as leaned too heavily against her. 

Mothra took up a perch on the back of the couch, right by Maddie’s shoulder. She could feel soft warmth against the side of her neck. 

Barb leapt up onto the couch and paced restlessly for a few minutes, chittering and creaking her anger. Kong sat on her left side, and though he remained quiet, he stared with an almost uncomfortable intensity at the wounds marring Maddie’s face. 

Godzilla remained on the floor, standing with his spines fiercely glowing. His tail lashed around behind him, only to periodically curl loosely around one or both of Maddie’s ankles. He seemed to be examining the room, as if expecting to find the guilty party hidden in some corner. 

Only after she lowered the volume and set the remote aside to let The Fellowship of the Ring play out quietly in the background did Maddie turn her attention to her little bodyguards. 

She reached up to Mothra with her less injured arm, letting the Queen nuzzle against her band-aid spotted hand. Her other was offered to Kong, who gently took it and traced the edges of the bandages with a featherlight touch. There weren’t many humans who would’ve believed a Titan, miniature or not, could be capable of such care. 

Barb cautiously pressed the flat of her head against Maddie’s leg, and when Maddie showed no signs of pain, she tucked her limbs beneath herself to better lean her face against Maddie’s soft pajama pants. 

When Maddie finally spoke, she made sure Godzilla was looking straight back at her. “It wasn’t a person, or a group,” she started with, because of all the Titans, Godzilla had been the most affected by her kidnapping, and she needed him to know it hadn’t almost happened again. “It was just a car accident, okay?” 

He stared at her, and as she often did at times like this, she wished there was a way for her to understand him. Godzilla circled around her legs and very gently head-butted her bruise-less knee. He’d kept track of which side she’d favored, then, while she was limping. 

“Car accidents happen all the time. Ours—we weren’t even the worst off.” 

The collision was over so quickly that even now, days later, she was no closer to understanding what exactly had happened. It was quite literally a blur in her memory. There’d been a lot of cars involved though, and she meant what she’d said: she’d been able to walk away from the wreck, limping though she was. 

Some people hadn’t. Some people had been dead before the first ambulances had begun to show up. 

Their car had rolled, maybe several times, and she knew that because she’d been hanging upside down when everything had fallen still. Her left side was one big web of bruises, thanks to the way she’d been thrown into the door, and her knee was strained because of it. 

A mixture of glass and their unsecured belongings had been tossed through the air, which was where the cuts and bruises came from. The man who’d been driving her and her dad was the worst off between the three of them, since the car that hit them had impacted partially into the driver’s side door. 

They’d gotten lucky. Really lucky. She’d be left with a few scars, but there was nothing life-threatening about her injuries. Her neck was still pretty sore from the whiplash, but the nurses at the hospital had reassured her after a few tests that there would be no lasting damage. Even her concussion was minor. The nurses hadn’t been able to do much after patching her up, though she’d have to get her stitches removed soon. 

Her left arm carried her worst injury. She hadn’t even felt the gashes spanning the space between her elbow and wrist and creeping onto her palm until her dad had wrapped a spare t-shirt around them to try and stop the bleeding. Then it’d hurt like hell, even through the shock she’d been feeling. 

She explained it all to the Titans, going over each injury and making sure to emphasize how well each was healing. Godzilla didn’t look entirely convinced. And if the King wasn’t accepting her insistence that she was fine, then the others took their cues from him. 

Maddie hadn’t caught on until after she’d nodded off a little toward the end of the movie. When she’d startled awake again, she’d found Kong now sitting on her uninjured side her with her cell phone in one hand and the takeout menu for a nearby pizza place in the other. 

“Thanks,” she said with a little yawn, “but I was gonna make—” And before she could even follow through with the thought of getting up to prepare dinner, the four Titans shifted slightly, but just enough. 

Barb's front legs were carefully stretched over Maddie’s left thigh, not quite touching as the little talons on the ends hooked into the fabric covering her opposite leg. Godzilla, still on the floor, pointedly leaned against her right shin, pinning her even less subtly than Barb. Mothra, still perched on the couch back, simply extended her own front legs to press gently against her shoulders. 

Kong offered Maddie her cell phone. She sighed fondly and accepted it. 

After placing her order and adding instructions to just leave the pizza on the front porch—correctly guessing she’d been forbidden from the leaving the couch entirely—Maddie watched in amusement as the Titans coordinated themselves. 

They never left her alone, instead rotating through their tasks as Godzilla retrieved a blanket from her bedroom, Barb invaded the fridge and returned with a bottle of water and a tupperware full of blackberries that Maddie hadn’t even known they had, Mothra turned off the bright overhead lights in favor of using softer lamps around the room, and Kong acquired the pizza once it arrived. 

A couple napkins fluttered down on top of Maddie’s head, curtesy of Mothra, as they all settled back in their places, the pizza box resting across Maddie’s uninjured thigh and Kong’s knee. 

“And you even made sure I only need to use one hand,” Maddie observed as Barb crouched over her bandaged arm. “You’re all ridiculous.” 

The smile she was fighting probably negated any insult she might otherwise have tried to convey, which was confirmed by the way Godzilla puffed up with pride. 

She found a new movie to watch, The Iron Giant, an old favorite of hers, and picked up a slice of warm pizza, which would never not be excellent comfort food. 

By the time she was tired enough to sleep, the pizza was entirely eaten, with help from the bottomless pits she called mini-Titans, and the movie had long since ended. For a moment, it seemed like her self-appointed babysitters wouldn’t let her up to go to her bedroom. 

“I am not spending the night on the couch like this,” Maddie said with finality. She’d wake up even more stiff and cramped than usual if she tried to sleep sitting up. 

She was generously allowed up, though they all kept a close eye on her as she limped down the hallway. Sitting on the toilet seat made brushing her teeth bearable, and it was with great relief that Maddie double checked the time and found she could take more pain relieving pills. 

In a rare act of cooperation, Godzilla and Kong appeared to have worked together to build a truly impressive nest of pillows and blankets on her mattress, Mothra perched on Barb as they watched from nearby. 

“Worrywarts,” Maddie declared. “Worrywarts, all of you. They never would’ve let me leave the hospital if I was in any danger. I’m not dying, I’m just in pain.” 

She got the feeling that didn’t actually make any of them feel better. If anything, the little chirps Mothra was making in response sounding distressingly close to crying. Careful to avoid moving too quickly or in a way her body would protest, Maddie lowered herself into the nest and, to make up for upsetting them, held still while pillows and blankets were dragged about to better surround her. 

It admittedly felt a little strange to have Titans around without them using her as their pillow, though she appreciated their steadfast avoidance of her injuries. 

Maddie remained awake as the others relaxed into slumber, stuck waiting for the medication to kick in at least a little. Despite the darkness, it didn’t take long for her to realize Godzilla wasn’t actually sleeping. 

Shifting a pillow or two around, she managed to raise her unscathed arm in invitation. Silently, Godzilla wiggled closer to tuck himself against her side. 

It was weird to think about it sometimes, that this affectionate little guy was, in reality, capable of leveling cities. That, once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, a lot of people considered him the bad guy. It was hard to reconcile the fierce, laser-breathing Titan King with the two-and-a-half foot tall mini-Titan currently staring at her with sad eyes. 

“It’s gonna take more than a car crash to do me in, G,” Maddie whispered. She could only cross her fingers and hope she wouldn’t be made a liar about that someday. “I didn’t survive San Francisco, Jonah, Ghidorah, the battle of Boston, a dangerous tropical storm, and being kidnapped to go out like that.” 

Godzilla got as close to a whine as his naturally deeper vocalizations allowed, and buried his snout against her torso. 

“Hey, c’mon. I’m tougher than I look.” 

He peeked up at her with one eye. Her best guess had always been that reminders of her own delicate mortality upset him. A lot. And that was why threats to her life were treated with extreme prejudice. Based on past experiences of the aftermath of such instances, she’d be lucky if any of them allowed her to even leave her room tomorrow. 

Overprotective much? she thought. They were just lucky they were too adorable to really annoy her or anything.

“I wish I knew why, though,” she absently muttered. “Why me? Or maybe you don’t have a reason at all. Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time.” They were questions she’d probably never get a full answer to, but she’d accepted that a long time ago, when the number of Titans she interacted with was much smaller than it was now. 

Godzilla snuffled and closed his visible eye. The achey feeling throughout her whole body had lessened greatly, the drugs doing their job, so Maddie flicked Godzilla’s nearest jagged spine and said, “Goodnight, you silly lizard.” 

(Some time later, long after her bruises healed and the limp vanished and she had no more need for bandages anywhere, Mothra would offer herself up as a form of transportation. Though not a wholly logical answer for things like grocery shopping, Maddie would accept trips to Castle Bravo and back. There was never any proof of Godzilla asking his Queen to do such a thing, but Maddie knew better. 

That satisfied look in his eyes said it all.) 

Chapter Text

Maddie got the call at a delightful 3:30am. She stumbled out of bed, leaving a small assortment of slumbering Titans behind. Grumbling beneath her breath, she jammed her feet into a pair of loose boots and headed outside without bothering to tie them. 

At the end of her driveway, a small helicopter—small for Monarch, anyway—loudly waited. 

“Sorry for this, kid,” the guy waiting in the back said as he helped her in. “We just couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t piss ’em off, y’know?” 

“Oh, I know,” she responded darkly. Maddie accepted the headset he offered her and slid them over her ears as they took off into the night sky. 

“We’ll make this quick. Feel free to try and grab some shut eye.” 

Despite the noise of the helicopter, Maddie had no trouble doing just that. Hopefully, she’d be back before her dad—or any of her sharp-toothed protectors—noticed she was gone. 

• • • 

The outpost was a mess. Lights flickered, tables and chairs and all manner of objects lay overturned and strewn about the floor, and an eerie silence had descended over the usually bustling halls. Even the night shift at bases like this were busy. 

Glass crunched beneath Maddie’s boots as she stormed up and down empty passageways. The stuttering lights threatened her with a headache, and she squinted around in search of the little troublemakers. 

They were cute right up until their antics resulted in Maddie being dragged out of bed at a highly unreasonable hour. Yawning around a muttered curse, she paused at an intersection to try and listen for any movement. 

A faint screech echoed around on her left. She immediately headed for it. A trilling response had her turning right at the next corner. Just when she thought she’d lost them, a quick flare of yellow light drew her into a lounge area. 

The culprits didn’t notice her entrance, too busy chittering at each other while tearing into their stolen goods: a treasure trove of Hostess treats. She stood in the doorway and watched Rodan swallow a Twinkie whole while Kevin thrashed his head side-to-side to break through the plastic wrapped around a chocolate cupcake. 

Maddie let them savor their victory for another few seconds before loudly clearing her throat. 

Both troublemakers whipped their heads toward her. Rodan ducked his frosting-stained beak beneath one of his wings. Kevin squeaked and raised his own wings up to surround him like an odd umbrella. 

“Busted,” Maddie said, stepping closer. “What the hell possessed you two to raid this place for some sweets?” She gestured around her, keeping one hand behind her back. Scorch marks littered the walls, and it was just as much of a mess in here as it was everywhere else she’d seen. 

Kevin peeked his head up, eyes big and watery. Rodan remained half-behind his wing but exuded innocence, adding a little peep for effect. 

Despite them not being able to answer, Maddie was sure she had a pretty good idea of what happened. These two managed to get inside, probably startled the wrong people, and the humans reacted without thinking. Chaos ensued, though lucky no injuries worse than a few cuts from when someone blew out a number of lightbulbs. When she’d been really little, a bat had somehow gotten inside their house, and she clearly remembered the shrieking panic both her parents had descended into.

Something about invaders—particularly flying ones—really just triggered humanity’s swat-it-with-a-broom instinct, huh? 

“You’re both terrible,” she told them, determinedly resisting the power of their puppy-dog eyes. 

Rodan and Kevin glanced at each other, ducked down in unison, and nudged a couple wrapped treats toward her. Maddie crouched down and picked one up—a Ding Dong, if she recalled correctly. She studied it for a moment, just long enough for the two mini-Titans to start to feel like they’d be let off the hook, and then pulled her other hand out from behind her back. 

She pulled the squirt bottle’s trigger rapid-fire style, taking both of them by surprise as chilly water hit them square in their faces. 

“No mercy,” Maddie intoned as they flailed around. “This is what happens when you cause trouble at this time of night, because when you cause trouble at this time of night, they call me. At this time of night.” 

Kevin whined and toppled over backwards. Rodan threw himself clumsily into the air and cried out as he wove around to the other side of the room. 

Maddie gave Kevin one last spritz before setting the borrowed bottle down. Falling back onto her butt, she let her legs flop out straight while she peeled the Ding Dong wrapper open. 

“Don’t be such a baby,” she said to Kevin through a mouthful of chocolate cake. He wriggled around until he could crane his dripping head over at her. She held her half-eaten treat between her teeth and tore open a fresh chocolate cupcake to offer him. 

Kevin scrambled up with a chirp. He plucked the cupcake from her fingers almost delicately before settling down against her side. 

Glancing over her shoulder, Maddie spotted Rodan clinging quite precariously to the back of a couch. She fished a Twinkie out of the pile and waved it at him until he hopped over, a suspicious gleam in his eyes. Once he determined she wouldn’t be spraying him with water again, he gladly took his prize. 

Maddie munched through five desserts before gently pushing them off her so she could stand. Groaning as she popped her spine, she nodded over at the door. “Let’s get out of here, huh?” 

Rodan and Kevin, both looking rather satiated among the excess of empty plastic wrappers, sluggishly followed after her out of the room. 

“You guys better not puke in the helicopter,” she said. Rodan squawked indignantly, but with the drunken stumbling he was doing, she knew he wasn’t in any state to fly back to the beach house. Neither of them were. 

“Hm. Is chocolate bad for Titans?” They didn’t look sick, exactly, just… like they’d pigged out at Thanksgiving and couldn’t quite see straight because of overeating. “I know Godzilla’s eaten weirder things than chocolate. Do Hostess cakes even count as proper chocolate?” 

She was entirely too tired to be thinking about Titan eating habits. They were smart, if chocolate was going to make them truly sick, Maddie had to hope they wouldn’t eat it. 

The people who had brought her here were waiting outside. They straightened up as she and her troublemakers exited the building. 

“You’re all clear,” Maddie told them as she hefted Kevin into the helicopter. Rodan tried to fly up after him and failed miserably. “They made an absolute mess, though. Sorry about that.” 

“Not your fault,” the pilot responded faintly, watching Rodan’s sharp beak with slightly wide eyes. The man made a startled noise when Maddie scooped the little Titan up without fear, even as his head swung near her face. 

She tossed him after Kevin and scrambled in herself. Picking up her discarded headset, she resettled it over her ears as the chopper blades slowly started up. With a yawn, Maddie sat back and pulled her already slumbering friends closer. 

• • • 

It was unfortunately approaching six o’clock by the time Maddie returned to her bedroom, arms full of lethargic Titans. Neither of them had thrown up, thank goodness for that, but they hadn’t woken up enough to walk themselves inside. She unceremoniously dumped them on her mattress before returning to the kitchen. 

After making sure the front door was locked and her boots were placed neatly against the wall, Maddie scribbled a quick note for her dad forbidding him from waking her up before noon. She set it on top of his favorite coffee mug, the only sure place he would find it quickly. 

She brushed her teeth to get rid of the fuzzy feeling and then painstakingly shifted bodies out of her spot. They’d congregated over her lingering warmth after she’d slipped away. It was nothing less than a miracle that none of them woke up, then or now, allowing Maddie to finally flop down with a happy sigh. 

“If any of you wake me up before I’m ready,” she whispered amongst the snuffles and snores, “heaven help you.” 

Someone shifted against her hip. Maddie nodded as if that was a response. “No mercy,” she breathed before slipping into sleep. 

Chapter Text

Coming home after being out for any given time, leaving whichever mini-Titans were around to themselves, was always a gamble. Scratches on the walls or floor, broken bits of this or that, holes in the furniture—Maddie and her dad had seen it all. It was part of why Maddie didn’t really argue with the whole Cone of Shame thing, because sometimes, the twerps really did deserve it. 

(Funny enough, she had to make sure her dad didn’t insist on the Cone for ridiculous things. For someone who was so insistent on reminding her how dangerous the Titans could be, he never seemed to remember that when it came to this.)

Walking through the door to find massive burn spots littering the house was a new one, though. 

“Get the Cone,” her dad said. 

“Yep.” Maddie didn’t dare argue and headed off to find it. 

She returned from her bedroom closet to find her dad standing on the back deck, arms crossed. Only three mini-Titans were present: Godzilla, Mothra, and Methuselah. And, well, it wasn’t hard to guess the culprit—especially when Godzilla was glaring so defiantly up at her dad. 

It looked like he’d just finished delivering a stern lecture, and Maddie cringed in solidarity, having been on the receiving end of those more than once before. As soon as he saw Maddie standing by the door, her dad turned on his heel and and stalked back inside, muttering beneath his breath about how were they going to fix all that? 

She let him go without a word, feeling a lot like she used to when she watched her brother get in trouble for something. Back then, the only thing to do was try and stay invisible until Dad’s temper calmed down. Not much had changed since then, it seemed. 

“Well,” she said once he was gone. “Don’t know what made you go ballistic with the lasers in there, G, but rules are rules.” Maddie went and knelt down in front of him, continuing in a quieter voice, “And as my rules state that you can avoid this—” she wiggled the Cone— “by laying low for a few days, would you like to cut and run?” 

They didn’t always, to Maddie’s endless curiosity. Sometimes the Titans left to avoid the Cone or the Box, and came back once the danger had passed. But sometimes they didn’t, and they moped around for a few hours as if they had been wrestled into their punishment. As if they didn’t just stand there and let her put the Cone on them. 

Now seemed like one of those times. Godzilla grumbled and lifted his chin a little. 

Maddie nodded solemnly and snapped it shut around his neck. As always, she’d take it off at bedtime if he wasn’t declared free by her dad before that—and she doubted he would, given how mad he’d been—and unless he mentioned it in the morning, it would stay off.

If asked, she’d claim its removal was because there was no way she was sleeping with a piece of plastic jabbing her. But then, she always used to sneak Andrew out of his punishments too.

Godzilla took it with dignity for an almost record-breaking ten seconds before moaning tragically. 

“Honestly,” Maddie said, patting his head inside the Cone, “consider yourself lucky. If you’d done that in my bedroom…” She let the implied threat hang as she stood up and brushed her knees off. “How about we try out that projector thing I got for Christmas?” 

Mothra and Methuselah, who had been watching from off to the side in silence, immediately became excited. The Titans loved movies. They’d recently started the Jurassic series, and if there was one thing they all showed fondness of, it was dinosaurs. 

Maddie thought it was adorable. Her dad expected them to start reenacting the movies, starting with him, probably. 

She shooed them into her bedroom before going to the kitchen to grab snacks—and plenty of them, since Maddie didn’t want to sacrifice all her popcorn to their bottomless bellies. While she waited for it to pop, she counted the burn spots. There was an actual hole in one of the cabinets, with a blackened box of Frosted Flakes visible through it. 

“Yikes,” she said. 

Her dad, sitting on the charred couch in the living room, made a grouchy, grumbly noise of agreement. 

• • • 

The projector was easy enough to figure out, and it wasn’t long before her laptop was properly hooked up to it and the movie was starting on her blank wall. Relaxing against a back pillow in her bed was certainly better than trying to arrange everyone on the couch, inevitably giving up when someone found their spot unsatisfactory, and moving to the floor. 

They were on the first watch-through of the third movie, which was far from Maddie’s favorite, though she did like the Spinosaurus. It was the first—or rather, her first—because she’d have to watch it with every Titan before they could move on, and heaven forbid they had any sort of structured movie night that everyone came to.

She settled back, somehow just as covered by mini-Titans when there were only three of them as when there were six, and waited with anticipation to see their reactions to the talking velociraptor. 

• • • 

Godzilla grumbled as he settled in Pup’s bed. The Cone itched and blocked his vision and hurt his pride as King. As much as he wished to claw it off and burn it to ash, this was a human’s house with a human’s rules. The Man was king here, and Godzilla, begrudgingly, would follow the law in this territory that didn’t belong to him. 

He thwapped his tail against the mattress and tried not to glare at his Queen. He knew she hadn’t meant to do it, just like he’d known he’d be blamed. But still. Even when the assumption was an easy one to make, he might hold a bit of a grudge against The Man for this. 

The Cone itched. 

If there was one mercy to be had, it was that Methuselah was the only other witness to this indignity. Had it been that ape, Godzilla might have actually considered taking Pup’s out and simply left for a few days. Steadfast Methuselah wouldn’t mock him. 

His Queen chittered another soft apology that was nonetheless undercut by amusement. She’d gotten others blamed for her actions before—this might have been the first time it’d been by accident—and always found it funny. This time was no true exception. 

Still, her contrition was sincere. When an extreme burst of emotion took her by surprise, as it had today, it resulted in the flaring of the radiation in her wings.

Given that the damage had been entirely unintentional, it would be cruel to punish her for being happy. His Queen’s joy was important to him, and that she felt it so strongly for their makeshift family here, he could not be truly angry with her. Though he wasn’t happy about it, he would be her scapegoat. Just this once.

Pup returned with food and Godzilla managed to forget about the Cone as the movie played. It helped that his Queen nestled against him rather than settle in one of her customary spots. 

His wrongful punishment would be over soon, and he was at least guaranteed a reprieve during the night, as Pup always removed the Cone from its victim before they went to sleep.

• • • 

Her dad brought it up the next morning, leaving Godzilla stuck with the Cone for a little longer. Only, now that the worst of his anger had passed, he couldn’t stop chuckling whenever he caught sight of Godzilla in the Cone. He was full on belly-laughing after managing to snap a picture by the time they left the house.

Godzilla sulked at the base of a tree, Mothra curled up and cooing next to him, while Maddie, Methuselah, and the recently-arrived Behemoth played a modified version of keep-away combined with tag. 

And by that, Maddie meant she was the thing she had to keep away from them in a high-stakes game of tag that regularly resulted in her being taken out at the knees. It gave her about the same level of exhilarated terror as being the last one left on her team during dodgeball back in school. 

Nothing like an adrenaline rush to start the day. 

She got tired eventually, since she was but a mere mortal human, but luckily, a sturdy soccer ball was enough to keep the other two happy.

Collapsing onto her back in the grass near Godzilla and Mothra, Maddie groaned loudly. Being chased around by two Titans was exhausting, thank goodness she didn’t have to do it often. 

She listened to Mothra finish trilling a pretty song to Godzilla and something she’d been thinking about earlier came back to her. Once the little tune had trailed off, Maddie sat up and scooted closer to undo the Cone and toss it aside. 

“Don’t tell Dad,” she said, snagging the water bottle she’d had the foresight to bring out. “Besides, I think you’ve done more than your fair share of time in that thing.” She took a drink before continuing. “Especially since the burns weren’t your fault, were they?” 

Two startled looks were shot her way. She shrugged. “No way would you have done that on purpose, right? But when you sort of lose control, your atomic breath makes burn lines, not burn spots. For you to have made that mess, you would’ve needed to face a new direction every few seconds while opening and closing your mouth, which—yeah, no way.” 

Maddie reached over to tickle Mothra, who squealed. “Not sure how you did that, but it had’t’ve been you, ’cause it sure as hell wasn’t Methuselah.” 

Godzilla snorted and vigorously shook himself, dislodging Mothra in the process. She fluttered up and over to Maddie’s shoulder, and Godzilla was quick to follow once he’d finished relishing in his returned freedom. He pushed insistently into Maddie’s lap, which she didn’t allow the larger mini-Titans to do often. 

“All right, all right, you deserve it,” she conceded. Wrapping her arms around him in a tight hug, she leaned back against the tree and sighed. “You’re a great big softie, you silly lizard.” 

He tilted his head back to bump his snout against her cheek, much like a dog would, and Maddie could only laugh happily in response.

Chapter Text

The sun slowly set over the beach at the end of the path from the Russells’ home. Two silent, motionless figures sat in the sand, neither giving any indication of caring that night was upon them, bringing a cool breeze with its dark skies. 

It was a cloudy evening, blocking most of the stars from sight. The faint light of the moon was only barely visible through the dull gray of one of the clouds overhead, if you cared to look for it. 

In the silence of nature, the ocean beat a steady, rolling rhythm against the sand. Crickets played their songs in the long grass between the beach and lawn. Fireflies danced lightly over the garden and among the leaves of the scattered trees. 

At the beach house, a trio of mini-Titans crept across the wooden deck and down the steps to the worn path. The building had been oddly quiet and empty for hours now, and finally, they dared intrude on the pair of humans who hadn’t budged from their spots in nearly as long. 

Mark Russell sat with his feet planted in the sand in front of him, staring blankly at the darkening ocean. His chin rested gently on his daughter’s head, where she sat leaning back against his chest, between his bent legs. Neither of them had spoken for a while, and he almost could have believed Maddie had fallen asleep. 

The occasional faint tremble or stuttering breath told him otherwise. 

His arms were wrapped around her, and he could feel the taut tension where she clutched at one of his sleeves with her fingers. Part of him wanted to reassure her that he wasn’t going anywhere, but the quiet wasn’t worth breaking for something she already knew. 

Behind him, he heard the faint noise of sand shifting. Mark didn’t bother looking back. The footsteps were familiar enough, and for once, he found himself unable to react to their presence. 

Godzilla appeared at his left side, even as Mothra and Rodan silently landed near his feet. Though there was no way Maddie couldn’t be aware of them, she didn’t react either. Her eyes, Mark imagined, were closed. 

The tiny King scrutinized the two of them critically. Mothra and Rodan didn’t move. When Godzilla raised his gaze, questioning but not worried worried, Mark held that eye contact and slowly shook his head. 

Maddie wasn’t hurt. This wasn’t some anniversary of one tragedy or another. Nothing specific had happened to evoke this mood. 

It was simply a bad day. A quiet day. Everyone had them. 

The day had begun gloomy and rainy, and though the sun had emerged eventually, the tone of Maddie’s day had been set. She’d gotten progressively quieter as the morning, then afternoon progressed. She’d barely spoken a word at dinner, her eyes downcast and movements lethargic. 

Some bad days couldn’t be salvaged. They could only be survived, with the hope that tomorrow would be better and brighter.

And it tore at Mark to see his only child like this, knowing there was very little he could do to help. That he could help at all was all he could ask for. 

Godzilla shook himself out with a soft huff before lying down at Mark’s hip. Mothra and Rodan took up a similar position on his opposite side, their wings folding around themselves like a shared cocoon. 

The chill that had settled over Mark—from both the cooler temperature and lack of movement—was chased away by their tiny but oh-so-warm bodies. The corner of his mouth ticked up in a brief smile, and he went back to peacefully watching the waves. 

A few minutes passed in silence. Maddie shifted the tiniest bit, the most she’d moved in ages, and her left arm snaked out from the huddle she’d been tucked into. Her hand landed on Godzilla’s side, and there it stayed. 

They’d have to go inside eventually, Mark knew. But they could stay out here a while longer, just him, his daughter, and a trio of Titans. They might not have made for the most conventional picture, the five of them on the beach in the dark, but Mark wouldn't have changed it. Not when he knew that when tomorrow proved to be a much louder day and Maddie didn't look too tired to smile, he would have them to partially thank for it. 

Chapter Text

It wasn’t often they returned to her dad’s home in Colorado, but Maddie loved it when they did. Especially in winter. 

The lake was frozen solid, and a thick, fluffy layer of snow covered the ground. The bare trees and evergreens were freshly dusted, and the icicles hanging from the edge of the cabin’s roof glistened in the sun. Every breath she took chilled her lungs with the special bite of clean winter air, and formed little clouds of white in front of her face. 

Inside, Maddie knew a fire was roaring, just as she knew she’d be sitting on the rug in front of it in an hour or so, after her toes went numb in her boots and her cheeks had turned red from the cold. There was hot chocolate with marshmallows in her future, too, and an extra large blanket just waiting to be draped around her shoulders. 

Summer was great and all, and living on a beach was awesome, but a good winter just couldn’t be beat. 

Glad for her thick mittens, she finished patting snow into place to form the stomach of a snow-Godzilla, who stood beside a snow-Mothra and a snow-Methuselah and a snow-Rodan. She poked stones where his eyes went and sat back to admire the newest addition to her growing snow-Titan army. 

The conditions were perfect for packing and shaping the snow just as she wanted. Sure, they looked a bit cartoony, but she didn’t particularly see that as a problem. 

Just as she was contemplating whether to do Kong or Kevin next, a shrill, panicked screech cut through the otherwise still air, and Maddie twisted around just in time to see a golden blur crash into an evergreen with an explosion of powered snow. 

Laughing, she stood up and brushed her snow pants off. “Speak of the devil,” she said as she stomped over. 

Kevin wriggled around in the branches above her. Before she could reach the tree, or tell him to stop moving, something cracked and sent him plummeting to the ground. He vanished in a puff, leaving only a vaguely Kevin-shaped imprint behind. 

Maddie bit her lip, failing to contain her smile. A moment later, his head groggily appeared, a neat pile of snow sitting between his horns. 

“Excellent landing, buddy,” she said, crouching to help him out of the deep drift. “Ten outta ten.” 

He snorted and proudly tossed his head. 

A laughing cackle came from above. Maddie tiled her head back, squinting against the sun, and spotted Rodan gracefully corkscrewing down to them. She nearly missed Mothra swooping low over the trees to settle on an iced-over branch. She delicately fluttered her wings as Rodan practically tackled Kevin. They were immediately consumed by the snow. 

“What on earth are you guys doing here?” Maddie asked, genuinely bewildered. The Titans didn’t usually follow her and Dad when they left the beach house. She hadn’t expected this trip to be any different, and the three days since their arrival hadn’t given her a reason to believe otherwise.

Before any game of charades could commence between her and Mothra, she heard a huff from behind her. Turning around, Maddie received yet another surprise. 

Methuselah was sitting in front of his snow-self, apparently admiring it. Not two feet away from him, Godzilla was critically examining his own likeness, spines slightly glowing, like a cat challenging their mirror reflection. 

“Hello?” Maddie said. “Where—where did you all come from?” 

Her only answer was a grunt at her side, and she almost wasn’t surprised to look down and find Kong looking up at her. 

She threw her hands up in the air. “Sure. Why not, y’know?” Peering around the much-more populated clearing, she asked, “Anyone else?” 

Right when she thought that was it, she glanced back at Kong only to find Barb now standing beside him. 

“I’m being pranked, aren’t I?” 

• • • 

She wasn’t being pranked. Her dad was just as bewildered over the sudden and unexpected appearance of not one, not two, not even five, but seven mini-Titans. With only three being capable of flight, there should have been some indication that four creatures, each hundreds of feet tall, were converging on Colorado. 

“There’s no way you munchkins walked here like this,” she said, watching Kong gleefully figure out he could make snowballs better than Godzilla. 

Off to the side, Barb appeared to be entirely focused on turning an untroubled Methuselah into a mound of snow. Only his head poked out of the growing pile being packed on top of him. Maybe later, Maddie could help shape things so it looked like a castle or something.

None of them appeared to even be slightly aware of the cold, which wasn’t wholly surprising, though she would have expected Kevin to be at least a little adverse after his experience in the freezer. Rodan inevitably melted the snow wherever he went, but it wasn’t enough to put an end to everyone’s fun. 

Mothra, a warm spot on her shoulder, nuzzled her cheek, perhaps to say, It doesn’t really matter how we got here, not when a snowball fight is happening right in front of you and only three creatures present, including yourself, have opposable thumbs. You could massacre them if you wanted. 

“That’s a great point,” Maddie replied to Mothra’s imaginary words. “If I give you snowballs, will you drop them on the others?” 

Hopping off her shoulder to flutter beside her, Mothra chirped. 

“Excellent. Let’s slaughter them.” 

Maddie scooped up a handful of a snow, packed it together, and passed it over to the Queen, who immediately surged toward Godzilla with the speed and passion of someone who was currently holding a grudge. Gathering ammunition for herself, she watched as Mothra launched the snowball with surprising force into his open mouth as he roared at Kong, nearly choking him. 

Not about to be outdone, Maddie snapped one of her own off, nailing poor Kevin between the eyes. He went down with a wail. 

“So,” she casually said as she rearmed Mothra. “Less of a slaughter, more of a coup?” 

The Queen trilled happily before viciously swooping off to hunt down the King. 

“Nice.” She hit Kong in the shoulder with one snowball, then Rodan as he took to the air. Kevin cautiously peeked around the small pile he’d taken refuge behind, and Maddie almost felt bad about getting in another headshot. 

• • • 

The only thing better than beating up a bunch of mini-Titans in a snowball fight was setting those same mini-Titans loose on a frozen lake. These were creatures meant to dominate the air, ocean, and earth. Not ice. Hilariously, not ice. 

Barb’s numerous legs kept skittering around in all different directions, making it hard for Maddie to breathe around her hysterical laughter. Inevitably, all her limbs just sort of gave up and slid away from her body, leaving her on her belly, legs splayed like Bambi. 

Rodan appeared to take great delight in flying at the ice to send himself hurtling across the slick surface, tumbling wildly and with much excited shrieking. Methuselah, the steadiest of them all, kept going after him to provide a stable liftoff point.

Kevin, somehow, just kept sliding around despite refusing to move, peeping in mild alarm. One second, he would glide by Maddie in one direction, and suddenly, he’d be sailing by in another, spinning gently. She was at an absolute loss of how that was happening, but it was so funny to watch that she didn’t make any move to put a stop to it. 

Mothra, using a slightly tamer method than Rodan, also appeared to greatly enjoy aimlessly drifting across the ice. Each time she fluttered up to Maddie, clearly expectant, she gently scooped Mothra up and, much like one rolled a bowling ball, sent her sliding away on her belly. 

But Godzilla and Kong were where the real fun was at. Both being bipedal, they slipped around much like humans did, flailing their arms and frantically trying to keep their feet under them where they belonged. Godzilla had an advantage with his tail, but he lost it with the lack of traction his scales had. All in all, they were pretty evenly matched. 

Which made for the moment they started wrestling each other one of the best moments of Maddie’s life. She lowered herself to the ice, clutching her stomach as she wheezed. 

Latching onto each other, they flailed around some more, spinning around in place before finally flopping over in a tangle of limbs. That didn’t stop them, though, no siree. Because then they both started trying to stand back up, but kept pulling at each other in the process, trapping them in an infinite loop of almost getting up, to being yanked on by their opponent, to face-planting back onto the ice.

“That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Maddie gasped through her laughter. 

Godzilla made a funny garbled sound that sent her back into hysterics. Kong’s feet slid out from under him, which had him falling backward on Godzilla’s spines with a bizarrely high-pitched grunt that was really more like a squeal. He contorted oddly as Godzilla tried to buck him off, failing when his hands kept slipping out from under him and plopping him back on his belly. 

“I can’t breathe,” Maddie wheezed, wiggling around on her side a safe distance away. Mothra settled next to her, trilling. 

Just as the two finally managed to shakily stand up, and only after begrudgingly working together to accomplish it, Rodan barreled across the ice right into them, knocking them over like a pair of bowling pins. He spun away, squawking, as Godzilla and Kong crashed back down with matching bellows. 

Maddie inhaled so sharply, she choked on air. Kevin slowly slid by, warbling, and tripped over Barb, finally bringing his erratic slipping to an end. 

As the only one still on his feet, Methuselah rumbled, pleased. 

• • •

Her stomach ached long after they all went inside and huddled in front of the fire. Maddie, still periodically giggling, clutched a mug of hot chocolate in front of her, safely out of reach of any curious mini-Titans. 

“You look like you had a good time,” her dad said as he thumped down onto the couch behind her. 

“I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard,” she admitted. 

He chuckled. “I’m glad to hear that.” There was a pause, and she imagined him surveying the menagerie in front of him. “Think they’re staying the night?” 

“Kevin’s unconscious,” she said, looking over to where the poor guy was sprawled, tongue lolling out between his fangs. “So I doubt they’re going anywhere.” 

“They are not sleeping in your bed,” Dad told her sternly. “Now is not the night I want to test how much that frame holds. There’s a reason we put your mattress at the beach house in the floor.” 

Maddie nodded in agreement. “That’s fair. I’m fine sleeping out here.” 

They lapsed into silence, letting the crackling fire and rhythmic breathing of half a dozen sleepy mini-Titans fill the room. 

“You want to go to the sledding hill tomorrow?” Dad asked suddenly.

“Please,” she answered, already imagining the hilarity of the Titans inevitably trying to stay standing in the sleds as they went down the hill. 

Her dad chuckled again. “Sounds like a plan.” 

Outside, fresh snow gently fell in large, fluffy flakes, slowly covering up the evidence of the day’s shenanigans. The woods were quiet in the darkness, and the matching peace in the house’s living room was cozy. 

(Privately, Mark wondered to himself when he should tell Maddie he had recorded the entire incident on the ice and sent it around to their friends. Ilene had already informed him that Rick nearly made himself sick from laughing so hard. 

Probably tomorrow, he decided, observing his relaxed daughter surrounded by worn-out mini-Titans. It would only send her back into hysterics, and she deserved her rest right now. She would need all the energy she could get for the sledding hill. 

No way was he going to drag the sleds up over and over again, probably with passengers. No, no; Maddie was on her own with that one.)

Chapter Text

Maddie startled awake with a little noise of panic, heart racing in the aftermath of her dream. For a moment, her entire body remained tense as she stared unseeingly at the dimly glowing stars on her ceiling. Her heavy breathing seemed oddly loud in the peaceful room. 

One of the mini-Titans squirmed against her. A moment later, Godzilla blearily raised his head with a confused grunt. His fiery red-gold eyes, half-lidded, turned to her. 

Swallowing back an upset noise, Maddie reached over and tightly wrapped her arms around him, doing her best not to disturb any of the other sleeping Titans. 

Godzilla wiggled around until he was able to flop over her a bit, allowing her to comfortably lay back against the mattress. A quiet, distressed rumble built up in his chest. He rested his head across her collarbone, content to be hugged. 

“Sorry for waking you,” she whispered once she’d calmed down a little. “Just had a bad dream is all.” 

And it was such a strange one. Even after all the thing she’d seen over the years, why had she dreamed about something like that?

He nudged her encouragingly.

Already, the details were slipping away, but she remembered more than enough. “You started acting funny, G,” she began, keeping her voice low. “You totally destroyed this big building. Apex something, I think. Just tore it to shreds.” 

She hadn’t been there, and now she couldn’t recall how she’d seen it from the point of view she’d had. The burning of his atomic breath, the heat of it blowing up anything even slightly flammable. His weight bearing down on flat rooftops, uncaring of the people inside. He’d been there to destroy everything in his path, plain and simple, and it was obvious in his every move. 

“Everyone thought you’d gone bad.” She had to take a moment to breath. Overnight, people had lost faith in Godzilla. It had hurt her dream-self, or frustrated her at least, but it was nothing compared to how she’d actually react. If humanity turned its back on Godzilla, on any of the Titans… 

“Even my dad,” she whispered. Godzilla rumbled and lightly thwapped his tail against the mattress. She huffed a little chuckle. “Just because you two don’t get along doesn’t mean he thinks you’d go bad in real life.”

Her mirth faded quickly. “It was just—you weren’t acting like yourself. You were trying to kill Kong.” 

Godzilla lifted his head to peer over at his sleeping foe. Kong was drooling slightly, hugging Maddie’s right shin. They were frenemies more than rivals these days.

“But the worst part,” she said, eyes growing hot with tears, “was this thing. A robot, made to look like you. They wanted to kill you with it. Just more of the same—the Titans are dangerous, humans are the best, blah blah blah. But it… G. Something happened and it was possessed by Ghidorah.” 

Blue light filled the room as Godzilla flared his spines, as if ready to fight an imaginary adversary. He growled lowly and tapped his chin against her collarbone. The others began to stir, disturbed either by the sudden light show or by their King’s angry growls. 

Maddie couldn’t remember exactly how she’d reacted to the robotic Godzilla in her dream, but that version of her felt very different to how she was in real life. More serious, she recalled. Blunt, in a way.

But here, now, reimagining the heavy blows being rained down upon an already worn-out Godzilla, the burning laser, the bladed tail… she trembled and held him tighter. He was okay, she forced herself to think. Mechagodzilla—yeah, that was what one of the strangers in her dream had called it—didn’t exist, and Godzilla hadn’t had to fight it. He didn’t have those scars. 

“It attacked you,” Maddie finally continued, hiccuping, feeling more movement as the other Titans woke up fully. “And it was awful. You’d just finished fighting Kong, you were hurt, and it just…” 

She hoped this turned out to be one of those dreams that she completely forgot by morning. That this wouldn’t be a recurring nightmare, or even just one that stuck, one that she thought about every now and then. 

“It was going to kill you,” she whispered. “It nearly did.” 

And she’d seen it happen. She had stood, helpless and so far away, and watched the one-sided battle. 

Without her noticing, a few of the others had quietly moved up the mattress to her pillow. Mothra reached out and gently brushed her damp cheek with her foreleg. Kong made an inquisitive grunt, patting Godzilla as he did. 

What happened? she knew he was asking. 

“You saved him,” she said honestly. Godzilla, for once, refrained from snorting indignantly at the thought of Kong coming to his rescue. “And then you guys fought it together. Teamwork, yay.” 

There was someone else, someone important, who was already nothing but a small smudge of a person in her memories. A friend for Kong, she thought, just as she had been a friend for Godzilla, first and foremost. 

A tiny, friend-shaped light in the horror of the rest of the nightmare. Maddie wished she remembered more about them. 

“It was okay in the end. You were both alive. But it didn’t—it doesn’t feel good. Like it wasn’t…” She shrugged with the shoulder Godzilla wasn’t partially lying on. “Like it wasn’t entirely happy.” 

Maddie certainly wasn’t happy about it now. She was apparently pretty obvious about it, too, because as one, the mini-Titans moved forward, and she quickly found herself at the bottom of a puppy pile. 

It made her laugh, partly because she knew they were trying to cheer her up, and partly because someone’s snout was digging into a ticklish spot on her side. 

“All right, all right!” she said, squirming around to get comfortable. “Message received.” 

Squeezing Godzilla again with one arm, she wrapped the other around Kong’s shoulders to hug him. “I’m glad you’re friends in real life,” she said. “And that you wouldn’t ever try to fight each other to the death or anything like that.” 

They were suspiciously silent until she squeezed just a bit harder and said, “Right?” She got some enthusiastic nodding after that. 

“Good.” 

Mothra chirped, plainly amused, which started off a chorus of Titan-style chuckles, mostly made with grunting. 

Relaxing again, content with being buried beneath so many small warm bodies, all of whom were careful not to crush her, Maddie let go of her lingering fear and upset. 

Her friends were all alive and safe and sound, whether they were here in the house or out elsewhere in the world. There were no magic upside-down worlds, no funky axes, no age-old grudges, and no Mechagodzilla. 

And Maddie was more than okay with that. The challenge of keeping their beach house intact during their day-to-day shenanigans was more than enough. 

Chapter Text

There was a cat in the backyard. Maddie watched it from their hammock—or more importantly, she watched her visitors discover it. 

It was just Mothra and Barb here today, and they seemed equally as fascinated with the cat, a lovely if dumb-looking orange tabby. Maddie considered telling Mothra not to flare her wings—she recognized Zeus, who was chronically incapable of resisting sparkly things or light reflections—but decided this could be a nice learning experience for everyone involved. 

Barb seemed to be playing the coward, hunching down behind Mothra, which was pretty funny looking, since Mothra was among the smallest of the mini-Titans. Nevertheless, the Queen did her duty and protected her friend from the strange creature by flaring her wings. 

Zeus crouched and wiggled his butt. Maddie bit her lip to keep from laughing.

When the poor kitty pounced, Mothra’s quick reflexes carried her several feet into the air, safely out of Zeus’s claws. Barb, however, was left to fend for herself. The cat went down with the MUTO in a tangle of limbs and frantic vocalizations. Zeus, at some point during the struggle, appeared to discover the impenetrability of Barb’s shell plating. 

“He wants to play with you!” Maddie finally called over when Barb held comically still as Zeus batted at her. “Just be gentle!” 

After a moment of hesitation, Barb reached out and gently booped Zeus on the head. He leapt a foot into the air, wiggling like a salmon, and the game was on. Mothra discovered that angling her wings just right in the sun created pretty fractals of color on the grass, enamoring Zeus. 

He and Barb careened around the yard, poking and leaping at each other, with Mothra soaring overhead. She swooped low, drawing Zeus’s attention, and sharply turned upward every time he tried to jump on her. 

They were a good duo to meet an ordinary cat who didn’t possess enough common sense to be afraid of the mini-Titans.

Eventually, the trio tuckered themselves out with their game. Zeus was the first to decide to use the occupied hammock, and he jumped up beside her and curled up between her side and the fabric. Mothra followed, settling herself on Maddie’s stomach. Barb, after receiving a little assistance in getting up, stretched out half on top of Zeus, who was content to let her squish him. 

Her days were always going to end with her covered in Titans, weren’t they?

• • • 

Jackson Barnes sat stiffly at the conference table, surrounded by a few of his fellow G-team, Colonel Foster, and Dr. Reagan. Across from them stood two government men in suits, neither of whom had ever spent a day in the field, by his guess. 

“Are they dangerous?” Suit One asked, for roughly the sixth time in the past hour. This “meeting” had turned into an interrogation pretty quickly. 

Dr. Reagan, who had given them every answer except a plain old yes, rolled her eyes and said, “As dangerous as anything else with teeth or claws. Will we be locking up the common dog for weapons testing?” 

Suit Two scowled. “The Titans aren’t pets, Doctor, in case you’ve forgotten that.” 

Suit One banged his fist against the table. Absolutely no one startled at the noise. “You’re hiding them somewhere,” he sneered. 

“It’s hardly hiding,” Colonel Foster said frostily, “if we don’t bother keeping their location a secret.” 

“The address you referred us to was empty!” 

If they hadn’t cut into his lunch hour, Jackson might almost feel sorry for the frustrated men. Since they had, though… he couldn’t help snarking, “Is it illegal for people to leave their houses?” 

Suit Two looked ready to strangle him, and Jackson nearly dared him to. He had over a foot on the guy, and he was a soldier. The twiggy exec would go down with one solid punch, mark his words. 

“There were no Titans there, regardless of the humans’ presence,” Suit One said with a weak glare. Jackson had looked into Godzilla’s open mouth. No measly human was going to intimidate him. 

“And I suppose you were expecting to find them caged up?” Dr. Reagan said sarcastically. If only Rick had been invited, the two of them would’ve reduced these guys to mince meat. At the look on the man’s face, she barked a laugh. “My gosh—you actually were!” 

“How else would anyone control them?!” Suit One nearly yelled.

Griffin, who’d mostly remained silent throughout the entire debacle, snorted and lounged lazily in her chair, as if it was the comfiest seat she’d ever had. “Didn’t anyone tell you?” she asked, sounding bored. Jackson smothered a grin when both suits visibly stewed at her tone. “We have our best agent watching over them. What she says, goes.” 

“That can’t—”

“It’s true,” Dr. Reagan butted in. “It’s how we got Godzilla under control when he first showed up.” 

“We call her for support if there are ever any… incidents,” Colonel Foster added. She leveled a stern look at the suits, who both cowed beneath it. “I’m sure you gentlemen wouldn’t interfere with a top agent’s line of work.” 

It wasn’t a question. By their silence, the men were smart enough to realize that. 

Foster stood. “Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, your meeting has run over its allotted time.” 

As the group dispersed before either government lackey could protest, Jackson paused and told them, as if in confidence, “Our agent, y’know. She says ‘bite,’ and those Titans might as well say, ‘who?’ Just something to keep in mind, if you ever go back around to that house.” 

He strode from the room, smiling to himself when he heard a panicked conversation erupt behind him as he left.

• • • 

Paul Baker lived an extremely ordinary life. He woke up every morning at the same time, always sat in the same seat on the bus ride to work, greeted the same barista in his preferred coffee shop every morning the same way, while ordering the same coffee, before turning up at work perfectly on time, not a minute early or late. 

Not much could be said about the rest of his daily routine; it was just more of the same. 

But on this particular evening, he’d worked late, breaking his habit. Someone in some other department at his office building had gone and made a mess of things, so he and a few of his coworkers resigned themselves to sorting it out before it could throw off their routines tomorrow, too.

As a result, it was already dark by the time he left the building and shuffled across the large plaza to the street. Yawning, he double-checked his watch. He had plenty of time to catch the next bus. 

A light splash off to his side caught Paul’s attention, and he paused in his tired march onward. 

There was a fountain in the center of the plaza, with a sizable circular basin and a tasteful two-tiered water feature in the middle. Water would burble out of the top to fill the first, smaller bowl, which overflowed into the second, larger one, which overflowed into the main basin on the ground. 

There were lights set into the bottom of the pool, which were illuminated, but the hour was late enough that the fountain was still and quiet. 

For a moment, Paul thought he’d merely heard a bird splashing around in the water.

But then, backlit by shimmering underwater lights, a small creature reared up into view. Its scales shone, its eyes glowed, and between its claws, it held a small object up to its blunt snout. 

Paul remained frozen to the spot, staring with his mouth fallen open. 

A second creature appeared, like a many-limbed lake monster. It stirred the water, earning itself a growl from the first animal. It hissed in response before vanishing back beneath the fountain’s rim. 

The first beast set the object on the ledge and leaned down again, so only its imposing, jagged back spines were visible. When Paul craned his neck slightly, he could see a small pile of shiny things beside the creature. 

Should he call someone? What was one to do when unfathomable animals inhabited the fountain at one’s work place? 

Before he could make up his mind, or even simply convince his feet to carry him away, a third creature, more horrifying than the last two, revealed itself. A large pair of bat-like wings stretched, glimmering, out of the fountain. Light spilled around its form like a halo as its long, sinewy neck stretched up. Its silhouette opened its jaw wide, revealing rows upon rows of sharp teeth.

With a startled little yelp, Paul took off at a quick trot, eyes wide and fingers clenched tightly around his briefcase handle. He didn’t dare look back, for fear of seeing a pair of otherworldly eyes watching him. 

In the fountain, Kevin made a couple undignified hrkking noises before he successfully regurgitated a slimy handful of coins. He turned to Godzilla for approval. 

Though finding his method somewhat distasteful, coins were coins, so he nodded with a pleased rumble and swept Kevin’s pile into his and Scylla’s. 

• • • 

Maddie sat on the floor in front of an array of those large, colored, customizable talking buttons. Twenty-eight of them, to be exact, one for each letter of the alphabet, one for backspacing, and one to function as a space bar. With some help from some friends at Castle Bravo, they’d figured out a way to get the buttons to link up with a large TV screen on the ground beyond the buttons. 

The Titans were smart. They knew words, they learned quickly. They’d gotten into her dad’s laptop a few months ago, which had been hilarious, but had also proved there was comprehension. 

The biggest problem was that keyboards were too small and cramped, and touchscreens only worked for a few of them. These buttons, though, could be pressed by everyone. 

They were arranged alphabetically, and with half a dozen mini-Titans around her, she pressed out the letters of her name, which appeared in large font on the screen. 

“Maddie,” she said, pointing at the word. “That’s my name.” She booped Mothra on the head, deleted her name, then typed out Mothra. “And that’s Mothra’s.” 

A chorus of fascinated vocalizations rose up on either side of her. She went through everyone in her “class,” showing them how to type out each of their names. 

Deciding to leave out things like grammar and sentence structure, she showed them words like movie, pizza, beach, and nap. Things they were all plenty familiar with. 

Surprisingly, Kevin was the first one to hop forward with an inquisitive chirp and smack his face against a series of buttons. He bobbed his head at the screen as if to confirm he’d gotten the word right, then turned to her with his puppy-dog eyes. 

Typed out on the screen was the word home. 

“You little turd,” she muttered, pulling him forward for a hug. “Getting ahead in class, what the hell, Kevin.” 

He cooed as the others all crowded in themselves, pressing close into a group hug. It seemed there were some words she didn’t need to teach them at all. 

Chapter Text

“Google said pumpkin seeds are safe for cats and dogs, so… have at it, I guess,” Maddie said, waving her arm at the array of pumpkins spread out on the back deck. Newspapers were layered across the wood, futile as she suspected it might be, but Dad had insisted. 

A dozen pumpkins of varying sizes were converged upon by the mini-Titans. It was immediately the biggest mess she’d seen since Kong turned on the blender without a lid.

“Try to leave the pumpkins intact,” she added, half to herself. Rodan was well on his way to climbing inside his, so she’d be genuinely shocked if more than one or two survived the evening. 

Protectively pulling her own closer, Maddie began scooping the slimy guts out. She had no idea what to carve, but it’d be a while yet before she even had the knife in hand. Grinning, snaggletoothed faces were classic but not terribly exciting. Bats and cats were cool but had lots of curves and small bits, which were hellish to carve. Anything with detail was out of the question, thanks to a lack of patience and skill. 

She considered trying to do one of the Titans, but since it would have to be only one of them, due to size constraints and the aforementioned lack of patience and skill… well. Maddie didn’t feel much like breaking up a fight. 

Her speaker played an appropriately spooky tune from a YouTube playlist of Halloween music. Supposedly Halloween music. Though the tone was accurate—the cackling witches in the background were a bit on the nose—it was just too generic. Instrumentals, mostly, too. She sighed. “Halloween needs more music dedicated to it,” she announced. Mothra, who was the only Titan not to be veritably bathing in pumpkin guts, chirped at her. 

“I mean, Christmas gets so much music, right? There are entire radio channels dedicated to Christmas music. Halloween was robbed.” 

For some reason, an old memory chose that moment to surge to the forefront of her mind: an audiobook or something her third grade teacher had played for their class in place of recess. The lights had been turned off, fake candles had been turned on, and they’d all gathered around in quiet excitement. 

It was a collection of horror stories, she was pretty sure. Framed as if the two narrators were characters themselves. If she was remembering it correctly, one turned into a werewolf or something at the end.

It took her back to the days of elementary school Halloween parties. The mummy wrap game with toilet paper. Reaching into covered bowls to feel eyeballs and guts—otherwise known as peeled grapes and cold spaghetti noodles. Apple cider and donuts on strings. Messy paper bats hanging above each desk.

Maddie smiled down at her pumpkin. Some memories were more than worth hanging on to. 

Their house wasn’t exactly in a neighborhood good for trick or treating, but it hadn’t been hard to convince her dad they should decorate anyway. Strings of orange and purple fairy lights surrounded the house, lighting up the deck as the sun set. Hanging from various trees, ghosts made from sheets and chicken wire spun aimlessly in the gentle breeze. A collection of gravestones decorated the front yard, perhaps a bit morbidly. 

It’d be a good Halloween. She was sure of it. 

On the other side of the deck, Kevin’s pumpkin rolled over onto its side with him in it. Kong absently pushed it away as it rocked to a stop beside him, beginning a game of “how long can we kick it around before Kevin finds his way out.” Pumpkin seeds scattered everywhere as Kevin rolled, screeching, from mini-Titan to mini-Titan. 

Maddie started giggling at the sight, but the thing that broke her was Scylla, who had managed to empty her pumpkin—which was much more squat than Kevin’s—out enough for her to wiggle to the bottom and shove her legs through the shell. And so, a walking pumpkin scuttled around. 

By the time her dad cautiously slid open the glass door, the newspapers had proved more futile than she’d initially thought, especially since the pumpkin shenanigans had largely migrated to the yard. 

Kong had more or less made a helmet out of his. Godzilla just had his whole pumpkin on his head, lacking even simple eye holes. He didn’t seem to have a problem with this. They appeared to be wrestling despite the visually impaired King.

Rodan had finally granted Kevin some mercy and freed him from his pumpkin prison, but only enough so that Kevin ended up wearing his pumpkin not unlike a Halloween costume. His head stuck out the top, his legs stuck out the bottom—it occupied the cute end of the “mini-Titan in a pumpkin” spectrum. Scylla was firmly on the opposite side, looking not unlike a spider-pumpkin.

Barb and Behemoth were nowhere to be found, which was actually somewhat concerning. Alone, neither of them were particularly mischievous, but nearly any combination of Titans increased their plotting abilities by 100%. This wasn’t the duo Maddie had ever thought she’d need to be worried about, but lo and behold, she kept peeking over her shoulder.

Only Mothra and Methuselah had remained on the deck with Maddie. Methuselah, sprawled on his belly, was lazily devouring his entire pumpkin and whatever leftovers remained from his kindred’s carnage. 

Mothra was carving her pumpkin, her forelegs sharp, thin, and perfect for slicing delicate lines. Based on the quick glimpse Maddie had caught earlier, her skills far outweighed Maddie’s clumsy knife-wielding. It wasn’t overly surprising, to be honest. 

Her dad took this all in in silence, though he eyed Methuselah rather dubiously. “Cider?” he finally asked. 

“Oooh, yes, please!” 

He disappeared back inside for a minute before returning with a mug of chilly apple cider and a cinnamon-sugar donut on a napkin. “What are you making?” 

Maddie carefully accepted her treats, wary of spilling. “Just some stars.” The simple stabbing motion to achieve the points was about as easy as pumpkin carving could get. Plus, they’d hopefully look cool all lit up in the dark. 

“Very nice,” her dad said. “Is Mothra…?”

“Yeah.” 

He shuffled over to watch for a moment. “It’s an entire beach scene.” 

“I know.” 

“There are layers. She’s not just cutting shapes out, she’s actually carving different depths.” 

“I know. Dad, please, my stars are already looking very lopsided.” 

Chuckling, he ruffled her hair. “I guess opposable thumbs aren’t always superior, huh?” 

Waving her knife at him, she retorted, “Maybe not, but knives are superior to vulnerable legs.”

Her dad danced out of reach, laughing. “Well, I can tell when I’m not wanted. Good night, kiddo.” 

“Night, Dad! Thanks for the cider!” 

The mini-Titans slowly began making their way back to the deck, all dotted with pumpkin seeds—save for a conspicuously clean Barb and Behemoth. 

“To the ocean with all of you,” Maddie demanded, waving them away. “Anyone who has even one seed on them is sleeping outside tonight!” 

The long-awaited Monster Mash came on as they stampeded away, leaving only the culprits of the prank and those who hadn’t participated at all. Maddie held her pumpkin away from herself, critically examining her stars. Good enough for a job done half in the dark, if she did say so herself. 

Chapter Text

Maddie wasn’t entirely sure what happened at first. One minute, she and a handful of mini-Titans were kicking around a soccer ball, the next, Kong was unleashing an unholy screech and tearing off across the yard toward the house. 

Whirling around in a confused panic—small as they were, Titan calls still had the capacity to freak humans out solely through instinct—she spotted three people standing on the back deck. 

Right, today was when two seasoned Monarch field agents were coming to visit her dad so they could talk about something very adulty and probably boring. She’d promised to keep their little gang of troublemakers busy while they were here. And maybe she’d kinda forgotten about that, but did it really matter since she was doing her job anyway? 

Regardless, Maddie absolutely couldn’t be blamed for Kong going berserk if her dad was the one who brought the agents outside, okay? Like, c’mon, they didn’t even know strangers were in the house.

But one of the agents—the woman, from what Maddie could tell—all but leapt down the deck stairs to the ground and very nearly skidded to her knees in time to intercept Kong the way one might snatch up an enthusiastic child. 

Huh. Weird. Most people turned tail and ran screaming at the sight of a Titan, mini or not, bearing down on them. Especially when they were as vocal as Kong had been.

Leaving the others to their game, Maddie jogged across the yard. Her dad had a pained look on his face, one she was used to seeing when he was looking at her, typically when she was buried beneath mini-Titans. The second agent seemed fondly indulgent, if perhaps a bit exasperated. 

“Really, Mason,” the man said as Maddie got closer. “What happened to keeping your cool?” 

“That was keeping my cool,” the woman, Mason, retorted. Her voice was muffled, buried against Kong. Seeing an adult give a mini-Titan a full-body hug was pretty funny, actually. The size difference was more obvious, making Kong really look like a regular old ape. 

“This is my daughter, Maddie,” her dad introduced her. “And this is Mason Weaver and James Conrad.” He gestured first at the woman, then the man. “They’re some of the primary field agents working on Skull Island.” 

“Just Conrad, please,” he said, stepping off the deck to shake Maddie’s hand. He looked like he was her dad’s age, but something in his eyes made her wonder. “We were a bit slow on the uptake, but when we heard Kong had come here after his disappearance, well… sker buffaloes couldn’t keep her away.” 

“You missed him too!” 

“Lies and slander,” Conrad said pleasantly. 

Turning to look at him, Mason gestured at Kong. “You have to admit, he’s adorable like this.”

“You think he’s adorable full-sized as well, so I’m not sure what your point is.” 

“They’re multiplying,” Maddie’s dad muttered despairingly. “I’ll never know peace.” 

“He just doesn't want to admit the Titans are growing on him,” Maddie told the agents in a very conspiratorial manner. 

“Like mold. Or parasites.” With a sigh, her dad turned back toward the house. “I need more coffee for this conversation.” 

He hadn’t even finished pulling the door shut behind him when Mason stood up, Kong having embraced the spirt of the koala to cling to her. She looked immensely pleased by this turn of events. “Who’s carrying who now, hm?” she sassed him. 

Kong huffed. Then, as Mason came to join Maddie and Conrad, he bared his teeth at the latter. 

And instead of getting scared, Conrad laughed and stuck out his hand in an offer to shake Kong’s, who took him up on it. Oh, Maddie really liked these people. 

“Nice to see you again, old friend,” Conrad said, and despite his teasing of Mason, his tone was genuine and fond. “You had us worried when we couldn’t find you.” 

Kong grunted lowly and ducked his head. An apology. 

“So how did you guys meet?” Maddie asked, her curiosity too much to contain. 

“Long story short,” Mason said, “the two of us were part of an expedition to Skull Island, but under… somewhat false pretenses. The big guy ended up saving our hides once or twice.” 

“The beginning of a beautiful friendship,” Conrad said, comically monotone. A smile twitched at his lips, betraying him. 

Mason hip-checked him with a snort, echoed by Kong. “It was a long time ago,” she continued, nostalgia and memories making her eyes go distant and soft. “Before you were even born. We stayed on with Monarch after everything and have been the primary field agents for Skull Island since.” 

“Tempting fate daily,” Conrad added. But there was a spark in his eyes that made Maddie think he didn’t mind so much.

She was hit with a sharp, soul-deep pang. This duo reminded Maddie of her and Andrew, and she wondered if she and her brother would have grown up to be like them. All fond teasing, following each other into trouble, and loving every second of it. 

Maddie swallowed down the longing, and while the adults before her didn’t notice anything off, someone else did. Godzilla, who was really getting to be too good at sneaking up on people, was suddenly leaning against her leg with a comforting rumble. 

Mason gasped in delight. “Oh, but I’m very interested in hearing your story, Maddie. Field agents are old hat. You, on the other hand, have a small army of shrunken Titans, if the rumors are true.” 

Glancing down at Godzilla and remembering some of the past few months since he first came into her life, she could only nod sheepishly. “It was something of an accident.” 

“Accidents,” Conrad said, leaning forward as though to impart some great wisdom, “are my favorite types of stories. They’re so much more fun to listen to than a story where everything goes to plan.” 

“Story for a story?” Maddie suggested. “You give me the long version of yours, and I’ll give you the long one of mine.” 

Mason put out her free hand with a beaming smile. “You have yourself a deal, Maddie.”