My name is Shi Mian. I’d never liked my name. It translated roughly to wet(濕) noodle(面), so I’d always gotten made fun of for it. Slowly I’d come to hate the thing. I mean, what were my parents thinking choose a name like that?

I chose to ignore it though. It wasn’t like I had any friends anyway. I didn’t associate with the people who laughed at me, so it made it easy to get by. I wasn’t your typical geeky shut-in. Sure, I played the occasional MMORPG but what I was really into was monster movies. Kaiju specifically. It was awesome watching big, crazy goliaths duke it out whilst I chewed through my popcorn faster than I could swallow, inevitably leading to a choking fit. I’d never imagined I might become a Kaiju myself…

It was an ordinary Saturday like any other. I’d left the house to fetch some food from the corner store, when I’d seen a kid on the opposite side the street. I didn’t pay him much attention, but I did notice he was hopping around right on the edge of the sidewalk. Just then they’d caught their foot and teetered on the edge before falling and rolling right into the middle of the road.

Huh? My eyes darted along the street and I saw a truck barrelling along down the tarmac. I looked back at the kid. There was no way he was going to make it back onto his feet on time, and the truck driver clearly hadn’t noticed him lying there, because he didn’t appear to be slowing down at all. Without thinking too long I dashed into the road, my arms stretched out in front of me. I pushed the kid with all my strength and fell flat on my face.

There was an awful crunch as the truck ran over me. The last thing I heard was the kid’s scream.

***

I wasn’t sure how much later it was, but it felt as though I came to instantly. I was lying on the ground and my head was pounding. I lifted my hand to rub at it but froze as I saw a monstrous clawed thing approaching my face.

“What the hell?”

I tried to dodge out of the way, but it chased after me. I stopped moving, not sure where to go, and the claws halted too. Huh? I tried moving my hand. The claws moved. Wait. No. This was impossible, wasn’t it? Slowly, I turned my head downwards. I did not see my own body. What was below me was green, scaled, monstrous. Immediately my mind thought, Kaiju. Somehow, it seemed I had not truly died, but had been reborn as a monstrous creature I had only before seen in movies.

I felt grass beneath me. I looked around.  The sky above was blue and clear. To my right, in the corner of my vision, there was some floating text.

LVL: 20

HP: 2000

MP: 300

Atk: 71~73

Def: 42~44

Below this was something that read ‘STATS’, and on another line, ‘SKILL TREE’. I tried to reach out to the text, but my hand passed through it. Hmm. Next, I imagined myself pressing the word ‘STATS’ and with a pop sound a screen opened up in front of me. There were a bunch of new abbreviations and numbers now displaying: AGI, STR, etc. Typical RPG stuff. Next, I pressed SKILL TREE.

I was greeted by another pop, and a network of circles joined by lines, forming a massive tree like shape across the whole of my vision. Most of them were greyed out, but near the top there were a few in colour. I imagined hovering over the first of these, a fire icon, and some more text displayed.

HEAT BEAM:

LVL: 5/20

DPS: 34~36

Range: 300m

MPS: 20

I selected the ability and another text box appeared, asking if I wanted to equip it. I chose ‘yes’ and then closed the SKILL TREE. In the left side of my vision the fire icon now hovered. I got to my feet. There wasn’t too much around me, but I saw some building some distance away. It looked tiny, like a toy set, but I realised it must be a city.

I selected the HEAT BEAM icon. Immediately I felt an intense and fiery heat building up inside me. When I felt I couldn’t hold it any longer, my mouth opened by itself. There was a huge flash of light as the beam fired, followed by an explosion as the attack collided with the tiny city. The beam continued to fire for about five seconds until I closed my mouth, shutting it off. The icon greyed out. I smiled.

“Holy shit, I’m really a Kaiju.”

I couldn’t believe it. This was the craziest situation I’d ever found myself in. Not that that was saying much. My life was so… normal before. It wasn’t difficult for something more exciting to happen. But this? This was beyond anything I’d thought possible. This was, next level, you might say.

I made my way towards the city. As I got closer, I heard squealing. I thought it sounded like insects, but when I looked down, I saw people fleeing in chaos. They were so small I might have mistaken their figures for insects too They were moving so… fast? I’d read once that the larger a living creature was, the faster other things seemed by comparison. I could only move as slowly as a giant reptilian monster could, I guess, whilst the people down there were moving as fast as a human normally would. The difference in our speeds made it seem, from my perspective, like they were moving very fast, and their voices were, comparatively to mine, pitched very highly.

I hadn’t actually heard my own voice yet, thinking of it. I assumed it was equally as monstrous as my form. I couldn’t think of anything cool to shout so I just screamed “I’m a Kaiju!” What left my mouth was a deep throated growling. A terrifying, booming snarl that you could only imagine being in the lowest budget of B-tier monster flicks. Somehow though, I could understand what I’d said, not only because I knew what I’d meant to say. The sound made sense when it reached my ears.

Feeling pleased with my entrance onto the scene, I looked at my display again – I guess I should just call it a HUD. My MP had dropped to 200 after using the HEAT BEAM. The number was blinking, and suddenly it changed to 201. I guess it replenished over time. That much was to be expected. I opened my SKILL TREE again. There were some other abilities here that I hadn’t checked out just yet.

FIREBALL

LVL: 2/20

DMG: 119~121

Range: 100m

Mana Cost: 80

The icon for this one was, well, a fireball. Pretty self-explanatory. It was a shorter-range ability, and single use rather than continuous fire, but it did a bigger chunk of damage in one go than the HEAT BEAM could. I grinned eagerly as I selected it. I looked for a target. I discovered a tall, thin building pretty close by. It was hard to judge the distance since I was so big, but I felt sure it was within the ability’s attack range. I let loose the FIREBALL, sending the glowing orange sphere hurtling straight into the side of the skyscraper. It exploded with impressive force, concrete and metal blasting out into the air in all directions.

My MP now read 122. I’d have to be careful now not to use up all my MP, else I’d be left without any way to utilise my abilities; though, by the looks of things, that wouldn’t be a problem. I smirked. These people were defenceless. I almost wanted to let out an evil laugh like some cheesy movie villain. I’d basically ended up in a massive real-life video game, except instead of fighting giant monsters, I was the giant monster.

Deciding to save my abilities for later, I started smashing the buildings around me with my bare hands – or should I say, claws? Skyscraper after skyscraper tumbled as I knocked them aside like they were nothing. I stomped my foot and the shockwave shattered the street beneath me. I roared and terrified people screamed and ran. Cars driving frantically away crashed into one another. This was the best!

Eventually I began trying all sorts of ridiculous attacks. Picking up buildings by their base and then piledriving them. Diving headfirst through structures and landing with a crash on the other side as the collapsed into rubble behind me. I shouted out attack names like I was in an anime before unleashing some poorly executed manoeuvre onto the defenceless construction.

“Super Dragon Fang Punch!”

“Tailspin of the West Wind!”

“Mega Stomp of Ultimate Destruction!”

After some time, I felt a sense of embarrassment. The thought of, ‘what if my mom walks in right now?’ crossed my mind, but I brushed this aside. I’m a freaking Kaiju. My mom can’t do shit, and anyway, I died and got reincarnated. It’s not like my mom followed me here.

Feeling smug, I continued my rampage. Then, I was struck still by an ear-piercingly high-pitched sound. I put my clawed hands to the sides of my head in an attempt to quell the noise, but it did little. It stopped and I looked around for the source. Atop a nearby building stood a small figure, a man with cape billowing out behind him. Despite his tiny appearance, I felt a strong presence from him. I thought about saying something but, somehow, I doubted he’d understand.

“Capture!”

I heard him shout those words and then I saw a flash of light. I felt some force pulling me towards him. I resisted but the strength of it proved too strong to resist. I felt incredible pressure from all sides crushing me. I winced in pain. Space twisted into a spiral of colours around me, and then everything went black.