Island Cuisine

The advertising for Diamond Cay uses the tagline anything is possible! At three thousand a night for a resort on its own private island, you’d expect no less. The finest food and drink, private boat charters, diving tours, tennis taught by tournament-winning pros, concierges who can get just about anything on short notice regardless of legality.

One thing you hadn’t counted on being possible: a kaiju attack just before sunset.

Is kaiju insensitive? How about if the kaiju is surprisingly hot? A shapely vixen wearing very little, with long blonde hair and deep blue eyes. A flying vixen. People gape up as she soars overhead, close enough that everyone can feel the draft from the downbeat of those enormous crimson bat-wings, but nobody runs. They point, murmur, scream, laugh, even applaud.

And why not? She’s an astonishing special effect. Maybe some celebrity influencer or crypto-millionaire’s into monster movies. Sexy monster movies. Are those a thing?

Dozens of phones come out for photos and videos as she passes over the hotel, circles around and flies lower, swinging her legs forward, wings coming back for landing. Wide digitigrade paws smash into the shore strongly enough to cause a tremor, a boathouse completely disappearing under one in a spray of wood and glass.

The laughter and applause die down, murmurs grow uneasy. She strides forward, taking out a beachfront concierge stand. Is this…real?

She sets a pretty paw on top of a faux-thatch-roof bar on the opposite side of the pool, a little one with just a half-dozen stools, and curls her toes. Everything freezes.

At that moment, you see her beautiful face clearly, read its expression. Her eyes meet yours, and somehow you know it’s not just that she’s looking in your direction, she’s looking at you. You, specifically. She knows who you are. And she knows what she’s doing.

Then she brings her weight down on that paw, the bar and everyone in it disappearing underneath. With a grin showing off perfect carnivore teeth, she speaks, voice simultaneously booming and melodic. “Bangohan no jikan!”

You don’t know what that means, but all the Japanese businessmen here scramble to their paws and run screaming. You take the hint.

Her next step flattens five chaise lounges and two starlets who’d been watching with exasperated, bored-with-all-this expressions. This time, though, she leans forward, dragging her hands through the crowd. Nimble fingers close around a half-dozen in one hand, eight in the other, and bring them to her muzzle, licking them inside and swallowing them down. She toys with the last one briefly, letting them hang onto a claw tip over her open mouth until they lose their grip.

Another step, mere yards away from you. She sweeps the paw back and forth, knocking a dozen people into the pool. She grins, knocking more in, and more, and more, then fishing them out easily with her fingers. You get a magnificent view from behind, looking up those legs toward her luxurious tail, and can’t help but whistle. Then the little voice that keeps saying damn, that is one attractive monster gets overtaken by the one saying run for your fucking life, idiot.

She resumes walking, and you gape at the sight of the frantically kicking legs of someone stuck between her toes.

Then you run.

Keep away from the crowds. Clearly, she’s going for handfuls of vacationers, not one or two at a time. You head toward the side—

Thoom! A paw drops yards ahead. Fingers lower.

You turn, then try to get away from the crowd you’ve plunged into, diving as giant fingers come close, ignoring the screams behind-now-rising-above you, desperately sprinting back and forth until you’re clear. This is not a pool area, this is a buffet table, and you need to get away.

You manage to make it to the steps of the resort’s main building, where most of the crowd’s taking refuge. Almost as if she’s following you, she takes a single, big stride toward it, leans over, and smirks.

Then she parts her jaws, and breathes fire.

You stare up dumbly as she sprays a massive jet of flames toward the roof. In short order, hundreds of people run out of the building again. This time, she just drops to all fours and starts catching them with her mouth.

You dash toward the resort, unconsciously holding your breath as one of her massive arms come to rest mere yards to your right. As her head lowers down to your left, you can feel her body heat, and get as close to a front-row view of wailing millionaires being eaten alive as possible without being part of the meal yourself.

You make it into the resort and turn for a moment, trying to catch your breath. The view outside the three-story lobby is mostly her cleavage and, above, her throat ruff, rippling as she swallows.

Then she thrusts her head into the resort, right over you, and her eyes meet yours again. You run like a demon’s pursuing you. Maybe one is.

She’s got to have eaten dozens, hundreds, by now, but you think most of the guests are still alive and intact and doing just what you are: dashing to golf carts, to limos, or just scrambling on foot to private villas hidden around the island.

You dive for a golf cart as it’s pulling away. The felines on it—you think you recognize them as some Silicon Valley power couple—start to argue, but then the vixen stands, towering over the blazing resort, watching survivors flee. That ends the argument.

The villas are each about two thousand square feet, well-appointed and, so rumors have it, hardened against hurricanes. You don’t know if that means they’re hardened against dracovixens, but it’ll be a luxurious place to tough it out until help arrives.

The vixen’s still there, standing in front of the resort now, but she’s looking up. You do, too. A plane’s taken off from the resort’s private airstrip, hasn’t it? One of the business jets. “Oh God,” the woman moans behind you despairingly. “They’re the only ones who are going to get away, aren’t they?”

The giantess crouches and leaps into the air. You grab a pair of binoculars the resort provides for bird-watching and track her, just in time to watch her jaws snap around the fuselage. It’s big for a business jet, but not even a quarter as long as she is. You watch, mouth open, as her jaws keep snapping, tongue curling, pulling the jet into her mouth nose-first. Her teeth shear off its wings, and with a few more jaw-snaps, she eats the entire plane.

“No,” you say hoarsely.

The dracovixen continues to circle, but she’s flying up, away from the island.

“But I think we’re probably safe now.” You lick your lips, mouth desert-dry, watching her fly higher still, then off into the distance, and lower the binoculars. “Getting the rest of us villa by villa isn’t worth her effort.”

After another minute of calm, a flash of light brighter than the sun fills the horizon, and a thunderclap rolls across what might as well be the entire world. The kaiju woman’s suddenly flying back toward the island. Suddenly much closer.

No. She’s still far away. She’s suddenly much bigger. You grip the railing, trying to get a grasp of just—just how big—

She “lands” miles off the island’s shore, a tidal wave of spray in all directions. Wings still spread, her body becomes the horizon. She literally eclipses the sun. Light glows like a fringe around her form, highlighting the acres of blonde hair. Her arms come forward. Everything looks like it’s in slow motion, each hand bigger than the whole main building had been, arms longer than the whole of the private island. Her muzzle slowly tilts down.

You’re aware of the screaming around you, but you just stare up dumbly as the vast lips approach. Tremors start, and they don’t stop, rolling slowly from the western shore toward the eastern. Fangs bigger than the biggest skyscraper pass by far overhead in sync with the strongest tremors, and the sky becomes the roof of her mouth. The temperature and humidity rise. Saliva splashes like thick rain.

The dracovixen’s mouth slowly closes, and everything goes dark. The entire island tilts and starts sliding toward the west. Toward her throat. As your last bits of sanity crumble, you feel her laughing.

And as she swallows, you join in, giggling hysterically. You thought getting everyone villa by villa wasn’t worth her effort. You didn’t understand how little effort she’d need to put into it.

Kitana appears courtesy of her creator.