EARTH - 250 MILLION YEARS BCE

Battra was dead.

Mothra was dead.

Even Mighty Gamera had fallen.

Before the battle, The Ancient Destroyer was over a megameter in total diameter. Now he was a mere kilometer. The Angels had made The Devil aware he was in a fight. But he had survived, and their still-beating hearts lay in his gullet. King Ghidorah had won.

So the Great Beast descended to Earth. It was too weak to destroy that world, just yet. But it didn't need to. It only needed to kill one small group of 'dinosaurs'. The Universe had crafted Life. Life had crafted The Galaxies. The Galaxies had crafted solar systems. One of those solar systems had crafted the Earth. The Earth crafted a weapon with which to kill Ghidorah. But the Beast had sensed it, with the help of misguided followers on now-dead worlds. That living weapon was called Gojirasaurus.

In a remote valley, a hybrid of stegasaur and allosaurus rose up, it being the perfect being to counter the endless power of The Ancient Destroyer. Were it to live, foolish humans would, through the use of atomic weapons, raise it up to the status of a grim god. But it would not live. And Ghidorah's power would grow. By 2250 AD, most of the Universe would be dead.

The three-headed obscenity cast a great shadow on the valley. Shrinking to 300 meters, it lost the form of The Ancient Destroyer. Now, all three heads were gold. But still the damned thing was like a mountain. It was still the strongest being in the universe, its energy-absorption feared even by The Q. But strength is not everything.

Hungry and literally drooling, Ghidorah landed in the valley. It began to eat everything in sight. Three heads snaked out, and whole hills were gnashed between gigantic rivers of teeth. But there was no sign of its targets. Wailing its eery stop-and-go wail, the creature plunged one head after the other into the valley's great lake. It intended to drink the lake dry.

This was a mistake.

Screeching, Ghidorah pulled out of the water suddenly, two of its heads bleeding profusely. Two creatures emerged from the water. About 100 meters in height, they were the male and female Gojirasauruses. The parents had already destroyed their children, to spare them Ghidorah's wrath. All but one. A freak, this child was more mammalian than reptilian. It would mate with proto-mammals and be among their ancestors. Some humans would bear these genes more distinctly than others. Even some human hybrids.

If Ghidorah saw an easy victory in this valley, it now saw nothing at all. Moving like raptors, The enraged Gojirasauruses tore out all six of his mammoth eyes. The male was like a meteor shower at crest, never ceasing. The female moved with surgical precision, making every single blow count. When blinded Ghidorah's teeth would find them, those teeth would shatter. The two were like Rocks.

Ghidorah felt its wings tear off, at the shoulder. Three times their size, and possessing energy weapons, and King Ghidorah was about to taste his first defeat. To his horror, the pair used their teeth as drills, then as sawblades. His one remaining head was being mercilessly pummeled by the other two, bludgeons wielded by his righteous foes. Worse, Ghidorah had the least protection from his own substance.

Below him, he felt the male rip off his legs with talons that only seemed useless, but were actually great for digging. Digging in the ground. Or digging into Ghidorah's spine.

The female went her mate one better. Using the horns on the two severed heads, she found Ghidorah's heart and jammed the horns into it. She then stuffed one head into the wound, while the male shoved the other one down Ghidorah's remaining throat. King Death died choking on himself. The corpse fell into an exposed magma pit and dissolved entirely. The two Gojirasauruses roared in a loving crescendo of triumph. For they had beaten King Ghidorah.

They just hadn't beaten The Ancient Destroyer.

Above them, a great and awful shadow was cast. Power straining to the ultimate, King Death lived again. He was once more a megameter large.

The male and the female looked at each other, not in despair, but in joy. Their freakish child had gotten away, unnoticed. Their line would continue. Ghidorah would one day be destroyed by one of their own, wearing humanoid form. At least, this was their hope. Each remembering the fierce mating and impossible comfort they had shared, they roared and jumped straight into Ghidorah's opened mouth, now as wide as the Amazon River would one day be. Their time was done.

Immediately after they were digested, Ghidorah shrunk to a mere 120 meters. Like a punchy fighter who gambled on his haymaker, he had left himself wide open--and very weak indeed. He now assumed a local form, two gold heads and one middle Mecha-Head. Afraid for the first time, he left our galaxy and would not return til 2000 AD. Luckily for him his eternal nemesis, The Doomsday Machine, never found him in time to exploit his temporary weakness. The term 'Pyrrhic Victory' was far away from being coined. Had Ghidorah sensed the freakish whelp's survival--his rage at being defeated would have been even greater.

Yet still the mechanism for his defeat had also suffered damage. Time was a balancer, but only on its own harsh terms. Never those of its players.

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USS ENTERPRISE, 2286

Saavik awoke as her husband Peter started.

"Another nightmare?"

He smiled, and kissed first her chest, then her lips.

"Not...precisely. Kind of an old memory of you and me, way back when."

"Ah. An extremely pleasant one, then. Husband, if you cannot sleep, access Sam Kirk's database of 20th Century selections. It always calms you."

"Wife, you are a genius."

"Thank You. I get it from Spock, when he's not acting like a complete fool."

"Night, honey."

"Peter?"

"Saavik?"

"Were I not pregnant and coming off my second consecutive shift, I would put you against that wall and take you with an incomprehensible fervor. That is all."

So she went back to sleep.

"Computer, access Sam Two-Zero, Selection 9713."

And he heard, and his calm calmed his wife still further as he did.

"And so it seems that we have lived before; We looked at each other in the same way then; But I can't remember;  Where Or When; Some Things That Happen For The First Time; Seem To Be Happening Again; But Who Knows  Where Or When?"

"Husband?"

"Wife?"

"I have rested---enough."