Zofi_Persson

"Will one of you fools do something?" Ichi wailed. "I am being threatened by this—this—this monster!"

"Maybe it wants to be your friend?" Kevin called from where he was peeking out of a porta-potty. Ni's eyes glinted in the shadows behind him.

The peacock stretched its neck up and jabbed its beak into one of Ichi's shoes. Ichi's voice cracked on a squeal as he tried to hoist himself higher.

Godzilla's knees fully buckled, and he crashed to the ground in hysterics. Maddie wasn't sure he was actually breathing with how hard he was laughing.

"Oh dear," Mothra said.

A second peacock, perhaps summoned by the cries of the first, had appeared from down the path. It shook its impressive fan of feathers up and out, then joined the fray. Ichi rained ancient Titan curses down on them; they remained fearless, circling.

Maddie zoomed in.

"Heeey, Maddie," Rodan said from behind them.

"Yeah?"

"What's Monarch's stance on us Titans keepin' pets?"

It was on the tip of her tongue to say they probably wouldn't mind, but it occurred to her that he was asking this question at a zoo. She turned around.

Rodan wiggled his eyebrows, grinning the grin of a master troublemaker—and someone who already knew the answer to his own question in this context. The pair of small penguins he had tucked in his arms honked quietly.

"Oh my god," Maddie whispered.

"Do you," Rodan, who had a "secret" tiktok account that Monarch was staunchly ignoring, said, "want to form an alliance with me?"

Mothra started to turn around too, but Maddie stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Don't," she said. "Plausible deniability. Save yourself. Rodan—hell yeah I do."

Her day went from amazing to perfect: there was a crack of wood giving out, a telling thump of body meeting dirt, and a rise in shrieking, both human and peacock. Maddie whirled around to capture Ichi's mauling on camera.

"Excellent," Rodan murmured. And then, and she really wasn't sure how, considering his arms were kinda full, he snuck a baby penguin—where had he been keeping that?—around to her front. "You're in charge of this one."

Shifting her phone to one hand, Maddie gladly accepted her fuzzy burden and slipped it inside her leather jacket.

• • •

"God, I wish you could talk," Maddie said, watching Godzilla drag his snout and neck all over the side of a patient sheep. He was like a cat with one of those catnip roller balls. "I would pay so much money to know what's going through your head right now. The only thing better than this was your reaction to the flamingos."

She'd seen a lot in her time as a mini-Titan wrangler, but that full on jaw-dropped, wide-eyed look of shock was a first. A hilarious first, and a memory she would cherish forever.

"'Scuse me." Something tugged at Maddie's shirt.

She turned and found a little girl, maybe five years old, watching Godzilla with a look of awe.

"Hi," Maddie said.

"Hi. Can I pet, please?"

Maddie looked at Godzilla and tried to convey up to you, dude with her eyebrows. He considered the little girl, then bobbed his head once, crooning.

Maddie crouched down. "Yeah, go for it, kiddo. No pulling or poking, okay?"

"I know rules," she declared, then very bravely and confidently ran her tiny little hand down the neck of the King of Titans. Maddie puffed her cheeks out and pressed her lips into a trembling line; she didn't want the kid to think she was being laughed at.

Godzilla rumbled and tilted his head in encouragement, eyes nearly rolling back in his head when the girl found a good scratching spot.

Apparently satisfied after a minute of petting Godzilla, the girl stepped back, carefully said, "Thank you. Very nice," and wandered away before Maddie could come up with a response.

Godzilla looked like he was increasingly happy with this trip to the petting zoo.

"Mama!" Maddie heard. "Mama, I pet a croc'dile!"

A distant, harried voice croaked, "You pet what?!"

Maddie barked a laugh. "What'dya think, G? Is the truth better or worse?"