Chapter Text
On March 1, 1954, the US military, in cooperation with the early generation of the Monarch organization, prepares their first-ever dry-fuel hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, disguised as a test called Castle Bravo. Their target is a massive creature known as Gamera. He battles a monster known as the Shinomura across the Pacific for several years, bringing fear into the hearts of men of his very existence. Various records would be pulled up when studying him at the time, from myths of the World Turtle to the Black Tortoise of China--he has been here for a long time and his size, his power, is more than enough to scare the US military into having no other choice but to immediately destroy him with the available firepower at their disposal. Using their recent discovery of the Shinomura being attracted to plutonium, they lure it out to the test site with the USS Nautilus, an american nuclear submarine, and Gamera follows the beast to the site. They both engage in a colossal battle near the test site, just as the Shinomura was halted from consuming the bomb and the nuclear submarine. Just as the military begins the countdown, Gamera is supposedly battling him until the countdown reaches its end, and at the last second, he grabs the Shinomura and pins it over the bomb. Then, the bomb detonates and engulfs them in a mushroom cloud of radioactive fire and smoke, supposedly saving the world from the two beasts at the cost of several lives lost and infected in the Bikini Atoll. The Shinomura is destroyed and Gamera vanished following the detonation, leading the United States to cover up all evidence of their existence. A scientific organization, known as Monarch, had been formed to study Gamera and any gigantic creatures like him in secret, continuing to search for him in the following decades.
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In 1999, Monarch representative Dr. Ishiro Serizawa is called to the site of a mining disaster in the Philippines with his assistant, Dr. Vivienne Graham. The mining operation involved strip mining for minerals, but after they've gone deeper, deeper than they should've, they caused a cave-in and hundreds of people sank into the dark abyss below. Laborers were sent down there to rescue survivors, but none of them have ever came back up. So Dr. Serizawa and his assistant were called to investigate the mining disaster, and they would be greeted by Universal Western Mining Superintendent Oscar Boyd, who is anxious about the scientists' investigation. He takes them to the only survivors who didn't fall into the sinkhole, as they were irradiated and traumatized from the incident. Dr. Serizawa and his assistant visits one of the survivors to inquire about their experiences. A translator spoke for the irradiated man, who spoke in Filipino, "People like you... You came here, you raped the Earth.... You tore holes in her flesh... Now she's given birth to demons... Hungry Demons."
Dr. Serizawa and Graham lead an expedition into the sinkhole, which reveals a deep and massive cavern underneath. Down below, the radiation is low and unaffected, as the half-life began to dwindle once in contact with the open air. However, as they investigate the cavern, Dr. Graham comes across a batch of corpses of laborers sent in to retrieve survivors. Oscar Boyd reports most of them should've left the cavern alive with the radiation being far from lethal to give them immediate, lethal effects, but they were all killed before they could even turn back--they were all drained of their bodily organs and fluids, reduced to mere husks of their former selves. Next, they uncover a colossal, fossilized skeleton and batches of giant, human-sized eggs nearby. A batch of eggs have already hatched and the team is concerned when they uncover a burrowed tunnel that led to a beach on the surface--whatever has hatched from these eggs, have went out to sea.
Days later, a nuclear power plant at Janjira starts to experience unexplained anomalies of seismic activity. Nuclear physicist and plant supervisor Joe Brody and his wife, Sandra, arrive to the power plant on the same day Joe finds out it's his birthday. While his wife assembles a team to perform a damage check, under Joe's supervision, Joe discovers that the seismic activities are starting to grow exponentially and the power plant may be compromised. Soon, the power plant is breached by a supposed radiation leak, which causes most of the personnel to evacuate, though Joe goes down to the lower levels to find his wife when she and her team are still down there. In Sandra's perspective, the power starts to go out every minute or so and the core interior of the facility starts to rumble. Sandra has her team fall back when she hears about an earthquake, but then an earthquake occurs and her team gets split up. She tries to look for them, not knowing something had breached into the core room. And the second she manages to find one of the personnel, all she sees is a man being attacked. He was held several feet off the ground by a giant winged beast with a flat head, draining his blood like a giant mosquito by the neck until his mass thinned to show a shape of bones and dry, vacant skin underneath his suit. She saw the life leave the victim's eyes while the beast itself, suddenly notices her when the power goes back down and its eyes flare up with a primal, inhuman drive to feast on her next. She could only mutter the following words under her breath, "Oh my god...!"
She was so horrified, she was snapped out of it by Joe calling for her on the radio, who told her to get out of there, believing it was only a radiation leak. She flees for her life just as the beast opens its jaws to drop the drained body and shoots out a spear-tipped tongue at her. It misses and hits a pipe, buying Sandra time to run for her life while the beast supposedly tries to pull its tongue out of the pipe. She tries to warn Joe via radio that something is down here, killing the personnel and now going after her. Joe is warned to seal off the lower levels, but he hesitates and tries to get Sandra to come back as soon as possible. He's waiting by the gate, refusing to seal it down until she gets out. She tells him to seal it, knowing everyone will be in danger if he doesn't close off the doors now. She tells him she's not going to make it, as she can hear the beast is closing on her. Everyone else is dead and she's next, but so will the rest of the city if he doesn't seal the doors. So just as the radiation starts to leak out, he is forced to seal the doors but the only person he sees behind the door is his wife. She warns him to get their son out as soon as possible and to take care of him, just as Joe sees a shadow of a winged beast closing in on her in the radioactive fog.
He pounds against the door, trying to get her out but it is too late when the bulkhead separates them both, just as the beast reaches her and Sandra says for the last time, "You have to live, for our son! I love you-!"
He is horrified and distraught as the radio suddenly shuts out from the pounding noises behind the bulkhead, but soon finds out the rest of the facility is starting to collapse as well, while the power also starts to shut off and on. In the perspective of their son, Ford, who was once trying to set up a birthday party for his father with his mother, watches from his classroom as the cooling towers collapse. The Japanese government evacuates and quarantines Janjira, attributing the disaster to an earthquake.