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Chapter Text

27th of September, 1972
Terra Indígena do Vale do Javari, State of Amazonas, Federative Republic of Brazil

News crosses the Mother-Serpent-of-the-World’s belly very slowly. Especially when they attempt to move against the current of her blood flow. But the news does travel. They travel in the songbirds’ calls, in the pulses of the mycorrhiza and in the cycles of life and death. 

It is not complex news, a new wound  to attempt to scar and heal. Its nature is not unknown or alien to She-Who-Breathes. She has burned a thousand million times. Be it by the hand of the ozone’s luck or the fire of man. She is accustomed to pain. She dies a million deaths every turn of the globe. But she is likewise born a million times every day. She devours herself constantly, be it flesh or leaves. Pain does not yolt her any more than the moon’s pull, the churning of the underworld or the calls of the gods within and without.

And yet, this pain is noteworthy. Pain is supposed to be shapeless and constant, numb and unchanging. Pain is not supposed to be like the stinger of a scorpion skewering a frog. Pain is not supposed to be like two jaguar cubs tearing a monkey in twine. Pain is supposed to wash over the enormity, not attempt to break it.

And yet, the pain is instant. What are two revolutions around the warmth-giver of sundering pain for she who is a hundred and twenty million moon old. She is old enough to remember back when her mind only spanned a single continent. She has survived two becoming one. She will survive this. She is unbothered.

And yet, what to her is utter nothingness -a prick to the proverbial finger- is very different to one of the motes of existence among the billions who make up She-Who-Breathes. That being is one of billions of mammals, one of millions of apes.

In her tongue she doesn’t have a name. They do not have names, her people. The people of the west would call them Isolados. The Isolated. She and her own are many things but they are not isolated. They are connected to the world. Or at least they believe themselves to be so. They drink and eat, breed and breathe, and hate and love like all others of their humankind, their lack of technology or industry doesn’t make them beings of purity. Their philosophy doesn’t mean their eating of flesh is more moral than of the cattle ranchers. 

And because of that, no matter how deep their understanding of the world around them may be, she -her mind and soul- reacts the way all humans would react by tapping the incomprehensive.

Her people’s rituals are ancient and complex. They call upon what imprint their ancestors left on She-Who-Breathes for advice and aid. They call upon greater and more unified components of She-Who-Breathes for greater questions and respectful requests.

On the day the body and concept of the Trans-Amazonian Highway is born she is connected. She is connected to that greatest pain when the construction becomes a thing . 

What to She-Who-Breathes feels as a passing and momentary pain, the inexperienced chaman-girl trying to contact her ancestors feels like the anguish of every tree cut, every blade of glass stepped on, every piece of moss and fern torn, every animal killed, harmed or scared.

In as much time as it takes for a single of her heartbeats to occur, her mind and soul are broken. She screams. She screams as much as a human being can physically scream. And then she screams some more. Her people may not be perfect, but their connections are no less real for it. They feel her pain. Like an atom falling down its decay chain one becomes two. Two becomes three. Three then becomes six. Then nine. Eighteen. Thirty Six. Seventy Two. Two hundred and sixteen. Five hundred and-

Her people are broken. Their pain will kill them all to the last. From elder to newborn. None will survive.

But their pain does accomplish one thing. One single thing.

Much like her demise, the humble beginning of a chain reaction. The pain of her people will ripple across the great web of the mycorrhiza. Far beyond even She-Who-Breathes.

Their pain, fainted and echoing, will reach many creatures. But only a single one will have its slumber disturbed enough for the sounds and smells of the world to truly awaken it.

Somewhere deep below where mankind threads, the Chief of the Mpinguari is roused from his slumber.

29th of September, 1972
Pico do Tinguá, State of Rio de Janeiro, Federative Republic of Brazil

The 9th Military Police Platoon is a lackluster unit. Specifically, it is lackluster by international standards, as per the standards of the Brazilian army? Most of its failings are often attributed to the fact that it is a training unit, sparring it of most of the criticism that fully trained professional soldiers would be subject to.

But that is only an assessment of competence, something which can be -properly or lazily- graded and accounted for. If one were to make a moral assessment, the answer would both be much easier, and much more dangerous, to obtain. The men of the 9th Military Police Battalion are exactly what their names say they are.

Military police. During and under the uncontested rule of a military regime. Again, it takes little but very dangerous deduction to realize that the two men of the ninth currently climbing the slopes of Tinguá peak may not have the best moral characters. 

“God what a fucking bullshit assigment.” Curses one of them, a soldier by the name of Silvio Jardim, as he lags behind.

“It was this or drilling and marching, Silvio.” Answer the other soldier, Mauro Fernandes, who is slightly more athletic.

“I’d rather be drilling!” Silvio laments. “At least we get to drill on the pavement. Pavement is flat!”

“Well I’m not the one who suggested this fucking route!” Mauro attacks.

“You agreed to it!”

“BECAUSE YOU SAID IT WAS A GOOD ROUTE!”

It was, in fact, not a good route. Barely a route at all. A couple glances at a map had allowed Silvio the confidence to assume that cutting across the mountainside in a couple of sections would save them kilometers of trekking following the footpaths up the mountain. In turn, theoretically saving them hours of walking. As it turned out, men trained mainly for raiding houses and arresting innocent civilians don’t do well when faced with a mountaineer's job.

So there they are. A man stupid enough that he will not admit that he can’t read maps and a man stupid enough to trust the first one. Climbing up a mountain of a thousand and six hundred meters in elevation fifty kilometers away from Rio de Janeiro. And why?

“Did-” Silvio huffs before he manages to finish his question. “Did the  lieutenant mention why the fuck they needed someone to climb up here?”

“The weird tremors, they need someone to check and they come from here?”

“What do they want us to check, we are soldiers not geologists. Am I supposed to shoot the rocks until they stop tumbling downhill?”

“The officers just want someone to say they investigated and found nothing.” Mauro explains. “Since we are here, they can just write down that they sent the military police to investigate. The report is already written.”

“Wait!” Silvio shouts, incredulous. He even almost fails to keep his balance and avoids tumbling downhill. “Couldn't we just… Have stayed at a bar down there until evening. We have our uniforms, no one of the locals would have asked what we were doing and we wouldn’t have ratted eachother out!”

…

“CARALHO!" They both shout in unison.

It bothers a couple birds, who take off. 

Then more birds take off. The undergrowth rustles as small animals of all kinds scamper off. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that their frustrated swearing is not the cause of the sudden flight response of a mountain slopes’ worth of wildlife. The world begins rumbling around them, like standing on top of a washing machine which has had a cinder block thrown into it’s tumbler mid-cycle. The both of them lose their footing, already having stood on a steep slope. 

Silvio topples backwards with a scream, praying that his head or neck won’t strike first, killing him. He is lucky in that regard, the fall leaves him dazed but his backpack catching onto a thick surfacing root keeps him from continuing to tumble down into the forestry below. Mauro falls as well but gets up quickly, crouching behind a boulder as if it would offer him any measure of protection.

They are a few hundred meters down and away from the Tingua’s crest. Which still leaves them just outside of what befalls the place. It is not a landslide as a consequence of a tremor. Firstly because, as far as they know, the shaking under their feet cannot be an earthquake, never in Brazil's history has an earthquake struck Rio de Janeiro. Secondly, because as the two men watch in fear, the rocks and debris don’t fall down the hill.

They fall inwards .

It’s as if the mountain had been a barn of brick walls but a wooden roofing eaten into by termites. The Tingua collapses inwards from the very top outwards. At first like a deformation, a deflating balloon. Then, the dome of the unknowingly hollow mountain collapses.

Both men back away, terrified and by fits and starts, having to manage both the advancing nothingness of the chasm before them and the steep mountainside behind them.

Only one succeeds. With a startled scream, the constantly growing and collapsing ledge of earth and stone under Mauro’s fit simply ceases to be. His terrified scream is barely audible with the rumbling of the dying corpse-mountain and quickly becomes inaudible as his shape disappears into the pitch darkness below.

Silvio is luckier, he stays low and accepts scrapes and bruises in exchange for every meter of safety he manages to eke out.

Soon enough, as fast as the collapse began, the geology stabilized.

Silvio Jardim finds himself standing before a sinkhole as wide as a stadium. Below him, once he dares look, a cavity fit for a lord’s throne room. A clear question reaches his mind. It’s not one that worries for his fellow soldier’s fate. It’s a much simpler one. If the mountain is empty, where is the thing that used to fill in the chamber below?

29th of September, 1972
Copacabana Neighbourhood, Rio de Janeiro, Federative Republic of Brazil

Francisca doesn’t lead her children into the beaches of Copacabana because she wants to treat them to a day out. She does so because as unfamiliar as earthquakes are to the people of Brazil’s no-longer capital, she is wise enough to understand that there’s no safety to be found inside the derelict buildings of her home and neighborhood. 

By her side, panting on the white-sanded beach is her sister Antônia, holding onto Eliane, her youngest. Francisca’s other two children, Fábio and Edson, cower and hide behind her legs. As if she could do anything more to keep them safe than pulling them out of their home the moment the plaster had begun to crack.

Then the world breaks, and the thousands of terrified locals taking refuge from collapsing buildings in the beaches of Rio see as the Corcovado explodes .

The mountain, a good seven hundred meters tall piece of granite dominating the very geographic center of Rio, explodes as if a fire-less volcano near its peak. Francisca’s mind is filled with questions. It truly can’t be a volcano. A bomb? What would be the purpose of bombing the peak of an uninhabited mountain?

And then a single shadow drives all questions away. For Francisca, like all of Brazil, is today introduced into the age of monsters just like how the Japanese across the world were not too long ago.

Asia, Europe, North America and Africa have all had their turns in being welcomed into the Age of Monsters with a bath of blood. Today, by the bad luck of a young woman who history will not remember, is South America’s turn.

The Behemoth calls with a bone-shaking trumpeting cry as it digs itself out of the Corcovado. It makes Francidca think of one of Africa’s great apes at first, with its massive knuckle-dragging forelimbs and sloping back.

But elephantine-like tusks jut downward from his cheeks, a short trunk snorts where a normal snout should be. Strands of shaggy and light brown fur, as long and matted as a transatlantic ship’s docking ropes, cover its body. Greenish vines and wet mats of growth, dozens of meters long, hang and cover its tusks. 

Spikes are visible running along his back, as it shakes itself free of the rubble it's covered in. Boulders as large as motorbikes are thrown off  into the neighborhoods of Lagia and Laranjeiras. 

An artillery strike in the form of an animal shaking itself like a wet dog.

The monster calls. It calls for a challenger that isn’t there to meet him. He has been awakened. And with fury realizes he has been awakened for naught.

Until he notices the foe.

Cristo Redentor, with his arms open in a welcoming shape ready to embrace, has his back turned to the behemoth. The beast is taller than the stone image of the son of god, by a wide margin. But the Corcovado is steppe, so it is forced to look up at the soapstone nape of the son of god’s neck.

 It moves forth with world-shaking stomps, each time its knuckles strike the Corcovado pieces of granite the size of cars break off the sheer walls of the mountain. 

It attacks Cristo Redentor like an ambushed opponent. First its tusks surround the statue’s chest as it headbuts the structure’s back. Then, with a furious howl that resonates across the entire city, it raises itself up until it stands on its back limbs. And by doing that, it raises its tusks in a goring motion. It rakes the sides of the statue until tusk meets stone arms.

The left arm is torn at the wrist due to the attack’s angle. The right explodes at the shoulder. The steel superstructure underneath offers no resistance as the attack's momentum ends. But not before the tusk that destroyed the right arm smashes into the lower side of the jaw on the same side, turning the face and much of the head into an unrecognizable mass of stone and metal.

Hands armed with sloth-like claws dig into the chest and rip off the structure. A second later, a statue weighing more than six hundred tons is torn off its pedestal and upturned like a cheap plastic table.

People scream and run across the beach. When Francisca turns to look at her sister she isn’t there anymore. When she looks behind herself, she finds only one of her sons.

Corcovado, the hunchback. Named as such due to how its north face resembles a massive hump, while the southern face is a sheer fall of more than six hundred meters of sheer granite. That face is the one all see from Rio’s largest and central neighborhoods.

The beast leaps . Chunks of the redeemer still held in its hands as it braved the fall with no fear whatsoever and another thundering roar. This time, the rage at being awakened is enhanced by the further fury of knowing himself tricked with a false pretender to his throne.

This slight will not go unpunished.

Francisca’s last child cries. She hugs her little boy in an effort to protect him. 

She will fail.

Today, A Marabunta Nacional has begun.

Chapter Text

25th of April, 2012
Somewhere in the St. Johns River, Seminole-Confederate Border

Val Payne has never had a big interest in botany, the only vegetables she cares about are the ones that her hometown’s Japanese restaurant deep-fries into tempura. And the only gardening she’s even done consisted of playing sword fights with her brother by way of picking up the pruned branches of her uncle’s orange orchard back when she was still a kid.

And yet, as she lays low on her designated hiding spot -protected from any coming or going patrolling boat- she wishes that she could know the name of whatever species the bush she is hiding under. Mainly because she wants to curse its name to a slow and miserable extinction.

The offending piece of flora in question is one of those big grasses, the kind where all the blades are at least as tall as a person, dropping enough that many of the blades’ tips almost touch the ground around it. Val had picked it mostly because of that, since the arrangement makes it impossible to see anything under the mat, near the point from where all the blades emerge as a dense circle of stalks.

Of course, Val had understood her terrible mistake the moment she had tried to adjust her position after entering the hiding spot.

As she looks up once more, at the blade hanging just between her eyes, she sees the way in which the entire length of the edges of each and every blade of swampgrass is serrated. Making it so -to touch- they are completely unremarkable when touching tip-to-base.

But an absolute nightmare when grazed in the opposite direction.

Which means that Payne has fucked herself over big time . Every time she tries to adjust her position -which isn’t exactly comfortable, laying on her belly at the edge of an embankment- it means that her skin and clothes get scraped, and her backpack even more entangled.

Is she exaggerating? Maybe. But she’s also stuck with her own thoughts under a bush at the edge of a river, so who can blame her?

Val checks her rifle -a heavily modded AR-16 inherited from her father- for the fifteenth time, using her jacket’s sleeve to clean off any mud which may have covered it in the last ten minutes since she last checked it -ergo, none- and tinkering with the attachments. At least she has a good reason to do the latter, there’s a couple knick-knacks attached to it that she still has no fucking idea what function they serve.

Is that bad? Probably. But all they ask for in the militia is that you join with your own weapon and that it can work with the ammunition they get supplied with from the Mexicans. And in any case, she’s already quite the good shot without knowing those little details, so it’s not like she’s hurting anyone.

‘I should probably still ask dad when I get back home though.’ She mutters to herself as she carefully lets it rest again and readjusts her position.

In front of her -through the blades of grass- she has a very clear view of the St. Johns River. The river -legendarily lazy- flows with little energy, creating a three mile-wide stretch of open waterway which she is supposed to keep constant watch of.

Well… Sort of?

The St.Johns represents another stretch of nebulous borderland between her homeland -the State of Seminole- and the enemy, the Confederate States of America. While the river’s eastern bank is firmly controlled by the militia (well, only the lower half of the river’s eastern bank… Upstream things are even more complicated, the actual river and its western bank are a much more prickly situation.

The dixielanders’ control of Jacksonville and the river’s delta means that they can use their coastal ships from Georgia and South Carolina to patrol and terrorize the locals as far south and inland as Palatka and Lake George. Which isn’t good. And that’s precisely what necessitates people like her spending their entire morning hunkering down behind some downed tree or bush. A single militia riflewoman can’t do much against a patrol boat. But an entire unit can. And her's -stretched over about five hundred meters of the eastern riverbank- certainly would be up to the task. Especially taking into account the heavier weapons some of her fellow soldiers carry. Three machine guns and a mule carrying six bazookas -that’s not what they are actually called, but it’s not her job to know their names- if memory serves her well.

And then there’s the crossfire which the -in theory- equally large unit on the opposing bank could make possible. Any confed ship would be turned into mincemeat if it fell for such an ambush.

Except Val hasn’t seen a single shit larger than a local civy inflatable outboard since she planted her belly in the mud. And there’s only so much she can hype herself up about one actually showing up. 

After all, it’s her third day in a row guarding such a stretch of river, and she certainly didn’t see no shit during the first two.

Finally, blessedly, her walkie-talkie crackles and beeps, letting through the warbly but perfectly understandable voice of her commander.

“Tango-One, Tango-Leader here. Tango-Two is advancing, pull back to camp. Repeat, Tee-Two is advancing, pull back to camp. Everyone, T-2 is advancing. Over.” Dumms out the voice of one Nathan J. Heidel.

‘God, finally.’ Val groans.

Then, with a deep breath, she steels herself and…

Jumps back up, choosing to take in all the scrapes and abrasions at once over trying to be slow and careful on her way out. Around her, but not close enough to see, dozens of other militia riflemen and riflewomen crawl, jump or awkwardly wiggle out of their hiding spots.

Then, as Val moves to find the foot trail nearby, she finds her arms grasping on emptiness.

“Oh… Fuck me.” She groans once more, closing her eyes and begging up to the sky.

Then she turns back around, and steels herself to jump back into the sandpaper bush in order to grab her father’s rifle.

The campfire is big enough that a good third of T-1 Company can sit around it as they all eat the meager lunches provided by their mix of assorted KDF ready-to-eat meals. Today Val enjoys a simple can of pasta salad, the main dish of her MRE. Nothing to write home about, but the chunks of tuna are better than she would have expected.

The bulk of the rest of the company mills about camp, with many having already taken to their sleeping bags and tents. However unfun spending the day guarding the riverbanks might be, at least they don’t have to suffer T-2’s fate of doing it during the night.

Still, most of the people who aren’t tired enough to already have fallen asleep eat and talk in nervous but hushed tones. 

They all know how to read maps, the pace at which they and their twin units across the river bank have been moving up north, and they all know what their mission is.

Tomorrow, they will be close enough to Jacksonville.

But today -tonight- even a stronger reminder of what is to come exists.

Off to the edge of the camp, illuminated from the inside by portable fluorescents, sits Commander J. Heidel’s command tent. The light it gives off also betrays the shapes of the five silhouettes inside. Only three of which are part of the militia.

No one is stupid enough to try and listen in, especially since nothing secret is being spoken. 

Still, the hushed conversation does die down once the tent’s flaps open, and four people emerge. Two are familiar, Heidel himself and his third in command, one communications “expert” Jose McCain. Neither -unlike Val herself- are seminoles, which speaks volumes as to how different the situation in her homeland is compared to those of the Sioux up north and the Sequoyans out west.

But still, they are good at their jobs, that’s all that Seminole can ask for.

“Ok everyone. I’ll make this quick. Tomorrow we will be close enough for contact and you know your jobs. We have confirmation that our allies are in position and ready to spring. Remember what we are there to do. The units on the western bank hope to use the chaos to penetrate the city-” The snickering is unavoidable. “-deep enough to hit the Westside and the prisoner camps there. We are here to draw as much force away and towards the eastside as we can. We will attack first and once the surprise wears off.”

“Mama will join in on the fun.” Speaks one of the other two people who very clearly are not members of the Seminole Militia.

The two figures, tall and lanky, and tall and broad, walk forward enough to be illuminated by the pallet-fueled campfire.

The both of them are clearly Scale Necks to a painful degree. Utterly bizarre, standing out against a sea of militias wearing old army, navy and state guard uniforms and civilian camo jackets with the Seminole cross and sun velcroed to them.

Tall and lanky is male, dressed in a mud and algae-stained wifebeater which might have been white a lifetime ago, cargo pants and is barefoot. His neck is covered in half a dozen necklaces made up of dog tags and bits of bones. His skin is red, while his eyes and head full of matted hair are both a dark brown, fall covered by a beret which Val can only assume must have come from some Cuban expeditionary’s head.

Tall and broad is even less covered than lanky, and female. The woman -their hair and eye colors make it easy to guess that they are close relatives, and not far from Val’s own age of 22-  wears boots, yes, two sized to big for her and accompanied by booty shorts of the kind only created when one butchers a normal set of jeans. Her lack of any covering beyond a sports bra and a bandolier of grenades reveal the thick musculature of a laborer.

Lanky had been the one to speak, but now it's Broad who picks up.

“Once she hits Buckman Bridge she won’t be stopping until we hit the three ones in the middle of the city. We wanna take her to see the big stadium but Mama does what Mama wants so no idea how much it’ll take for her to head back home.”

“Yeah. When you start hearing the big stuff breaking, do a big push and then just head back home. That way we don’t leave you behind.” Lanky speaks again.

No one around them speaks. Scalenecks aren’t a rare sight, especially in areas bordering the stateless collection of clans and families known as the Everglade. But what they lack in rarity, they have weirdness in spades. They are eclectic in their races, their views and how they express their faith in their matriarchal Kaiju god.

Instead, everyone gives them a wide berth, with a good chunk instead gathering around their commander to receive whatever specific orders he might have for them.

Val doesn’t, she stays locked in the log she had been using to sit while stuffing mouthfuls of pasta salad down her gullet.

Which leaves her completely unready when Broad walks the bonfire like a roundabout and stops just before her .

“Hey!” She smiles, at least three of her teeth are golden. “Name is Becky. Nice grenade launcher you got there!”

…

“Uh?”

“Your rifle, haven’t seen one of those attachments in a while, you good at it?” Becky the Scaleneck gestures with her head at Val’s/Val’s Dad’s rifle.

“Oh,” She speaks without thinking as she looks at the tube-shaped mysterious attachment under the rifle's barrel. “Is that what it is?”

Becky, after a few seconds of confusion, begins to laugh. “ Oh mah gaud !” Her accent becomes audibly tucker. “That’s so funny!” She continues laughing, drawing attention to the both of them and making Val want to become a mollusk and hide behind a shell.

Eventually the fact that no one else is laughing and that Val is a blushing mess makes her new “friend” Becky stop, notice what’s going on, and go red as well. “So… Uh… Anyways… Here! HavesomegranadesIhopeyouhavefunusingthemokbye!!”

And then, just as she had arrived, Beckly the Kaiju-cultist disappears. Leaving behind a…

A small pile of grenades at Val’s feet?

‘ What. ’

25th of April, 2012
Somewhere in the St. Johns River, Seminole-Confederate Border

“So, what do you think they asked for in exchange for this whole thing?” One of Val’s fellow militias asks as a dozen of them walk one of the many unkempt roads leading up to the I-95.

“What do you mean?” Another one asks.

“I heard that way back when, they agreed to helping kill Cubans because we agreed they could keep Central Nuclear Turkey Point-”

“The power station near Miami?”

“Yeah. Isn’t there one north of Jacksonville?”

“I think so. But they wouldn’t be sending us if a nuclear power plant is going to be getting eaten.”

“Who knows these days.”

“Can we please not focus on that today?” Val grunts.

“Ok, ok…Not like today isn’t already meshed up without the radiation, anyways.”

“What do you mean?” A fourth person asks.

“I mean, come on.” The agitator says. “We are shaking hands with a bunch of inbred kaiju-junkies, and our plan is to hope that they will throw their pet monster into a city full of civilians in the middle of a holiday.”

“Come on,” Val tries to be the voice of reason. “We are talking confeds for god’s sake. They are celebrating Confederate Heroes Day . Hello? That’s the day when they all throw a party about their slave-raping grandpas.”

“Not everyone there is a dixie.”

“Sure, but half of us are here to get those people out.” Val reasons.

“I still, don’t like it.”

“Well I do.” A new voice speaks.

Not the voice of one of their own.

The entire squad turns around.

There, standing nonchalantly, is Lanky. “Good morning y'all.”

“Holy shit how long have you been following us for.”

“Enough.” Lanky catches up to them. “And for your information, my parents ain’t related.”

“What are you doing here? Why are you following us?”

“You? Nah, I’m waiting for-”

The crackling of radios and walkie-talkies takes over. “Tango-2, Tango-Leader here. Dixies sighted upriver. One gunboat. Everyone pull back. I repeat, everyone pull back. Don’t engage. I repeat, don’t engage.”

“-that.” Lanky finishes as they all scramble for the treeline. He, meanwhile, remains in the river-edging path.

Val is the first to hit the ground, jumping over and behind a dead cypress’ trunk and quickly unholstering her rifle. After a moment, she decides to pick up one of her new grandes and loads it too.

“What are you doing?” She hisses at Lanky.

“Oh hey, you are the one sis wanted to get fucked by right? Name’s Chuck. If you survive, look for us at Whittier. I promise she’s more smooth when you get her drunk.”

“WHAT?!” 

“Anyways, nice meeting you, but I gotta wake Mama up.”

And with that, Chuck walks off towards the water’s edge.

And b ellyflops into the murky duckweed-covered water. And doesn’t emerge.

Before Val can ask any other befuddled questions, or her militia-mates can say anything about a Scaleneck having the hots for her, the sound of engines overtakes the soundscape.

Seconds later, the shape of, indeed, a gunboat decked out in the colors, stars and stripes of the confederacy, comes into view. The thing is at least a hundred and twenty feet long with some to spare and bristling with anchoring points for machine guns protected by scrap metal shields. Astonishing, the shapes aboard seem to be… Partying?

Val scrambles to grab her binoculars -and old pair, from back when her mom was a prolific birdwatcher- and barely has time to look through them before the river explodes .

It’s a thunderous movement, a rising wave of water so tall that -as it expands outwards like a shockwave- it inundates the area Val is hiding in up to her thighs. And then the explosive mountain of water takes waters, spikes as tall as men peeking out of it.

And a jaw made up of rings of teeth as tall as trees opens like a cavern, slamming around the gunboat and crushing its front third in a mere second. The screams and shouts are almost as deafening as the groans of the twisting metal.

“WELCOME TO FLORIDA, YOU SONS OF BITCHES!” A voice roars with a laughing cadence from amongst the greenish frothing waters.

And then?

Well then, with a half-naked figure standing atop a tusk as long as a bus, the leviathan of teeth and armor begins to roll around .

By the first complete turn, the screams have ended.

By the second complete turn, the ship is no longer shaped like a gunboat.

By the third complete turn, there’s two distinct pieces of mangled debris, and a third one locked within long reptilian jaws covered in teeth. A diminutive shape, a tick on an ox’s back, remains hanging from one of the massive tusks growing just below the crocodilian monster’s jaws.

“COME ON BIG MAMA, THERE’S SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND LIKE THOSE ONES UP AHEAD.”

And a monster, the Queen of the Everglades, fully emergers, her body so massive as to obscure the river’s opposing bank.

A massive tail -tipped with a brutal mace- slams into the water creating a second explosive wave. Giving the Kaiju a starting shot to the destruction of an entire city.

Chapter Text

18th of December, 1807
Somewhere on the Shoshone River, Louisiana Territory, United States of America

John Colter is no fool, but he is on the other hand the kind of man to be prone to making the casual catastrophically foolish decision. Like the time had agreed to following Meariwether on that transcontinental expedition of his.

Still, he can’t really pity himself, that foolish decision ended up being quite the payout for him, earning him an almost four hundred dollars -a veritable fortune for a mountain man like himself- on top of the kind of fame that had been produced by indeed managing to chart a route all the way from the mighty Mississippi to the -at the time unclaimed by civilized man- coastlands of the colossal and frigid north-pacific.

But no, he is no fool, there’s no fools who are mountain men, or if they are, they all die early enough that none others come across them. Plenty of madmen though… That’s the strange combination so many of his fellow trappers are made up of: Madmen without a single drop of foolish blood.

And much like on that fateful day less than five years ago, today John has made a foolish choice. The choice of leaving his meager camp in the middle of the upper Louisiana winter. It’s not as if he has a good excuse, either, he did the same thing with a good excuse -that of needing to hunt himself some food- a few days ago, and came out of it cold but successful enough to not necessitate leaving camp for a few more days other than short hikes to gather firewood, which he could do without even walking out of sight from the camp due to the location he had chosen.

So, why on God's untamed earth, had ventured out this morning despite the winds and clouds telling him all he needed to know that it would be a bad idea?

Well, once more, mountain men are not fools, but they are plenty scrambled in the inside of their heads, and in that way the legendary John Colter is not different from any of his peers. Plenty of proof is the true reason why he left his camp in the middle of the Great Plains' winter, with no humans around him in a week’s worth of travel distance, and a nascent storm on the distant horizon?

Why, then?

Because, to put it simply, instinct called him to do so. He had simply woken up feeling a sad and queer little feeling in his heart, one simple yet hauntingly dangerous.  He wanted to go downhill and look upon the mighty boiling Soshone, no amount of logic or caution is ever going to stop him. Neither is any human being, for there are none around to do so.

And so he has indeed spent all morning, a good five hours since he woke up with the sunrise and instantly made up his mind, making the trek while covering head to toe in furs -again, foolish decisions, but not being made by a fool- many of which he hunted, prepared and put together himself. The trek has only become harder as he has gone on, not because of geography -in that aspect, moving downhill and into the more open plains has only made things easier- but because of temperature.

At this point, it very much feels as if every step of his has led him into colder and colder ground, the vapor clouds around his exhaled breath only becoming more visible and billowing with time. Which is a most bizarre thing, considering how the direction he is walking in is also the front upon which the blizzard behind him is advancing. Indeed, despite having a freezing cloudfront to his back, he is somehow also simultaneously advancing into the cold.

As he does so, he notices more strange things. Such as the fact that the ground he is walking in is far from covered in a deep layer of snow. Usually he would be happy to somehow have avoided wadling his way through knee-deep snowbanks. Instead, what he is faced with is somehow much more worrisome by virtue of the fact that it is something he has never encountered before.

John Colter is a mountain man, there’s very few things produced by nature that he has not seen before. 

The land, stretching for as many miles into the horizon as the settling fogs allows for, is covered by a thickening layer of hoarfrost. Every last loose pebble and blade of wheatgrass is decorated on its surface with a thin white film of ice, from every edge grow diminutive ice crystals which give every last thing he comes across something akin to an old man’s white beard. With every step he takes, the hoarfrost crackles and shatters like sugar-glass into spider-webbed shards finer than any man-made wafer.

Indeed, a phenomenon that the life-long outdoorsman has never seen before, and that only becomes stronger and stronger as the cold and fogs become more and more apparent to him, all of it, as he comes closer to the…

Shoshone River…

John comes to a complete stop. Usually, the view of it here should be breathtaking and capable of drawing his full attention. A section of furious rapids framed by two sheer cliffs hundreds of feet tall, the raging river below alongside dozens of chimneys and hot springs he had jokingly baptized “Colter’s Hell” after his own enjoyment of an area otherwise quite full of all that fire and brimstone his father had loved to scream about back when he had been a kid at Stuarts Draft. 

None of that matters now, because instead his neck cranes and cranes further up and back, staring at the sight slowly moving out of the wall-like fog, every last step from its locomotive-sized hooves shaking the ground enough to force John to step back, lest the loose rocks on the cliff’s edge lead him to a sudden end to his lifetime of voyages.

At first, the outline is vague and barely more than a shadow, a shadow hundreds of feet tall, but a shadow nonetheless. But then, the closer the stomps become, the more rockfalls start happening on the river’s opposing side, the more definition the shape obtains.

Colter is a man of the wilds, and as large as it is, there would never be a world in which he does not recognize that massive and broad head leading to a downturned muzzle, that humpback back, that…

It’s a buffalo, one big enough that as it comes closer, it does not descend into the river bank, it creates a riverbank. The massive horns hanging to either size of its head -each so wide that a man could run down their length and not slip- are cooped in thick and razor-like hoarfrost, seemingly cracked and splintered at the tips, from which billow clouds of the purest vapor. With every step, an entire blizzard happens under the animal's belly, as thousands of pounds of ice and snow fall from its flanks, where it had condensed into massive drifts upon its pelt.

Daikaiju Tatanka.

The animal -whose head is broad and massive like a glacier carved into a battering ram- snorts, the air that comes out of its nostrils is so cold that it makes John’s lips chafe, hoarfrost grows so quickly that he can feel it forming on his unkept beard. 

Finally, the frosted-over buffalo plunges its snout into the Shoshone.

And drinks so much and so deeply that it stops its flow .

“People are never going to believe this.” He mutters. The animal does not even notice him as even the most minute twitches of its musculature sends icicles the size of palisade stakes flying down.

Then, once he starts feeling the ice climb up his boots? He starts to run.

John Colter does foolish things, but he is no fool.

18th of April, 1903
Yellowstone National Park, State of Wyoming, United States of America

“Mr. President I promise you-” The man continues to explain as the two of them climb the hill.

“You can explain as much as you want, sir.” The President of the United States answers, having much less trouble with the incline when compared to his guide, a young geologist employed by the Department of the Interior. “But you have yet to show me this unique wonder of yours.”

“It’s- Mr. President, I simply don’t think you will believe me until you see it. And I’d rather you take me for a fool than a liar.”

“In that you are correct, boy, at least you have the gumption to make all this effort to bring me out here!”

“Well sir,” The young man crests the hill, suddenly stopping to watch something the Hero of San Juan Hill can’t see yet. “I believe it will very much pay dividends.”

The two men had been climbing a hill to one of Yellowstone’s dozens of geyser springs and rainbow-colored hot springs, with the older of the two very much expecting that he was being taken to some newly discovered wonder of the local geology.

And he is, in fact, only halfway wrong. Because he instead comes to a stop at the hill’s crest, becoming able to survey an area very much taken up by a crater-like lake with layers of bright orange, yellow and green bands arranged in layers around the entire rim, the surface of the water itself milky and constantly letting out wisps of steam. But that is not what either man cares about. Instead, their attention is directly drawn to the massive horn sticking out of the boiling lake like a massive redwood, in fact it is so tall that they can both easily see the many birds nests which have been dug into and built on top of the curving piece of monumental ivory. Its tip is cracked, and from it rises a plume of white smoke akin to what one would see in an east coast factory.

“What in damnation…”

“The natives, sir… They call it the Great Tatanka, but it-it wasn't here when the area was surveyed during Grant’s presidency… Whatever it is, it’s moved .”

“And here I was, thinking that that brown bear would be the crowning anecdote of this trip!” President Roosevelt laughs, slapping his own knee. “And look at this!”

“Mr. President, a find like this is… Utterly unprecedented, a recently dead animal of these proportions, the scientific implications!”

“Oh give it a moment, son.” The president waves off as he takes off his cowboy hat. “We are standing in front of a hero of this nation, show some respect.”

“... Mr. President? I’m not sure I follow-”

“Come on young man, don’t tell me your father never told you the tales of Bunyan!”

“Bunyan?”

“Paul Bunyan!” The president answers as if bringing up fairy tales made any sense when facing a geological and biological wonder. “Paul Bunyan the giant lumberjack! And Babe The Blue Ox, his trusted companion!”

“Mr. President, I feel you are not taking in the full severity of this situation!”

“I wonder…” Roosevelt starts side-walking his way down the crater, closer to the water’s edge. “If we could get a team of workers out there to the middle of the lake, Just imagine, we would have to build an entirely new wing to the smithsonian to house this beast. Although, to be honest, I feel getting congress to approve of the budget would be the real challenge.” He says, fully ignoring the young man’s words.

9th of August, 2014
Bozeman, Republic of Montana, United Republics of America

At some point the city of Bozeman must have been a bustling one. Obviously, one hit by the continent-wide disaster of the collapse of the US of A, and much more locally by the famines which once ravaged the United Republics of America… But all in all, Bozeman had for a long time been a winner of the great gamble of human civilization in the Twenty First Century, one succinctly summarized as “What are the chances of a Kaiju coming across this of all places?”

Turns out that for Bozeman Montana and its post-collapse population of thirty thousand people, the first loss on that civilizational gamble came in the early August of two thousand fourteen. It does not come as a surprise, long before the actual city is trampled, the signs are already there. Some Kaiju are -in a way so twisted that it forcesf0rces humans to be thankful- as predictable in their paths as hurricanes in the way that their movements are stable and can be projected while also being slow enough that that information can be put to any use, good or bad.

Some, in fact, are nice enough as to actually carry climatic events with themselves at all times, making themselves so much easier to detect! Because of this, it stands to reason why Bozeman would be as eerily quiet as it is right now. Of those thirty thousand souls, less than a tenth of a tenth remains across a sprawling city with a footprint of a good hundred square kilometers. What remains is little more than the forgotten dregs of human society, those too stubborn and too stupid to leave, and those who have come here to observe, decked out with vehicles and recording equipment the likes of which would be at home amongst the thrillseekers of the Tornado Alley.

The former two are in for the worst day of their lives, the latter -alongsiders the KDF personnel deployed locally to protect a mobile Monarch outpost- are in for a spectacle.

The first piece of news had been that of Tatanka beginning to move northwards from the Yellowstone Exclusion Zone. A rarity, that the Kaiju would leave his preferred home range alone, instead of escorting any of a number of the massive buffalo herds roaming the Great Plains. Dropping temperatures literally marking his path like a dashed line.

The second had been a much more pressing event, for it had blocked the possibility of using Route 90 to evacuate the city, putting a much heavier load on the other official escape routes. Because Abbadon was moving west .

In Bozeman, surrounded by the Bridger Mountains to the north-northeast, the Tobacco Root Mountains to the west-southwest, the Big Belt Mountains and Horseshoe Hills to the northwest, the Hyalite Peaks to the south and the Spanish Peaks…

Bozeman was -is- in the middle of a massive ring… A fighting pit, if one wills.

One upon which, on the ninths of August, two Kaiju converge.

First to arrive is Tatanka, and the Kaiju makes himself noticed, as an entire blizzard arrives to the city’s southern suburbia, covering the sky in gray clouds which almost instantly begin raining down for hail and snow. The Kaiju slowly makes its way into the city, hoarfrost climbing over streets, building on abandoned vehicles. The temperatures change so quickly and so dramatically that windows implode and tires explode as the growing ice crystals rupture everything they grow into. In a matter of minutes, every abandoned pet and plant in public parks has died and become entombed in ice. Hundreds of “remainers” succumb to hypothermia inside of their under-prepared basements, while others have until Tatanka’s massive horns toppling their particular building, or his hooves crashing through whatever roof they had hoped to be enough.

But then, of course, the Kaiju starts pacing in agitation, digging its hooves and menacingly shaking its battering ram-like head, snorting with such strength that roofs are ripped off by the gusts of freezing wind his nostrils produce.

Tatanka is here, and he expects something else to be here too, to challenge the bringer of ice ages.

Abaddon does not make him wait for long, but is also much less heralded as he makes his own entrance through the city’s easternmost edges. Usually, the volcanic Kaiju would make himself known by way of the massive columns of ash constantly being emitted by his volcano-like snout horn, but today the black ash, smoke and volcanic gasses simply mix with Tatanka’s billowing storm into a single layer that will bloat the local skies for weeks. 

Instead, as the world under the clouds becomes darker and darker, what heralds Abbadon is the furnace like nature of his body, his horn acting like a proper volcanic crater glowing with infernal like rivers of sweat down an athlete's back until they collect in his slightly less armored underbelly, dripping down into the ground below like droplets of molten glass the size of buses. He is but the sight of a demonic steed climbing out of the underworld’s depths.

Each drop instantly explodes into sizzling pools of lava wherever they drop, often coming into contact with the frozen terrain in ways that produce explosions of compressed steam. Elsewhere, buildings catch on fire where the tarmac of streets is melted through, further causing explosions as the lava melts its way into underground gas and water pipes. Snorts from his barrel-like snout carbonize trees and set the petrol inside car wrecks instantly on fire.

The Kaiju acknowledge each other with land-shaking snorts and territorial groans, sizing each other up and shaking their massive facial ornamentations, one sending massive icicles flying in all directions from two horns -one notably chipped, but very much not as sawed off as a long-dead president would have wanted- and the other sending out splashes of lava that subsume entire city blocks.

The Kaiju walk in circles around each other, by the time they finish their first rotation, Bozeman has already become something out of the landscape one would imagine a battle between the mythical ice and fire giants of norse mythology would produce. Here and there, rivers of lava flow down melting buildings framed by shards of ice as tall as the buildings themselves.

But, soon enough threatening displays and mutual sizing-ups aren't enough. The Kaiju of ice and fire have come here to do one thing, and battle they shall. Their mutually facing charge is a short one despite the sprawling nature of the derelict Bozeman, their proportionally short legs propel them forward at brutal speed, both lowering their heads to maximize the damage they may cause.

The shockwave sent out by the Kaijus’ crash into each other is so strong that every last vehicle’s alarms -those that have not been melted into puddles of metal or frozen into solid chunks of ice, that is- are instantly set off. 

On the mountains  that surround the city, observers of all kinds wince even from their supposed safety as the city is engulfed by the explosion of steam produced by a magmagic rhinoceros slamming into a buffalo covered in ice. For a few thrilliring minutes, all they can see is the occasional massive hindquarter turning or pieces of lava flying like flares, framing slamming shapes as thundering calls issue out.

But eventually, it's the two Kaijus’ own constant turning and slamming against each other that swats away the boiling fog, revealing the sight of two titans locked in battle like raging bulls.

Tatnaka attempts to impale Abaddon’s flanks with goring shives, his ice-bladed horns often digging into the seams between Abaddon’s pieces of volcanic armor, often actually striking true, something easily seen as further explosions of steam are produced every time  the constantly-growing hoarfrost blades around Tatanka’s hors make contact with Abaddon’s spilt magmatic blood.

Abbadon, for his part, does his best to overturn Tatanka by hooking his massive singular horn under his opponent’s belly, attacks which are met with punitive kicks, but which burn fur and skin and rake across his enemy’s belly as the ice growing down from it thetatend to gouge out Abaddon’s eyes.

After every such encounter of either kind, the Kaiju disengage, both covered in fresh wounds after leaving a new section of the city completely flattened, both stepping over pools of lava and icy spike traps. Then, they circle each other and boast, only to once more attempt to side-check and slam into each other at just the right angle to deliver the killing blow. Often they are so brutish as to even slam face to face, rattling their own massive craniums in mutual shows of animal fury.

And yet, neither gains the upper hand, nor deals the decisive killing blow he seeks, the battle merely goes on, and on, and on… Their freezing blue and burning orange bloods cover their own skins, their breathing becomes ragged, their attacks stumbling and clumsy.

At some point, after one particulate crude slam, both of their limbs and armaments become entangled so much so that they both almost collapse into a mess of freezing and burning flesh. Because of that, both Kaiju do start limping away after a few more half-hearted shows of bravado.

And when that becomes clear, the human observers resent the sight with abject disappointment. It’s not disappointment over bets made about the battle’s outcome -although many have indeed lost much to them- but over the fact that in mankind’s eyes, the worst possible outcome of a duel between Kaiju? It is the survival of both.

Today has sealed the fate of the people of the northern great plains, they will not have to spend the next decade worrying about the routes of Tatanka or Abbadon. Instead they -and tens of thousands of refugees- will have to worry about both .

1st of March, 2021
Somewhere on the Yellowstone Exclusion Zone

“Up ahead boss! The rest of us can’t move no further!” Shouts out one Johona Mosi from the shotgun seat of her militarized snowtrack as the group of five snow-ready KDF vehicles come to a stop. She speaks directly out of the window because she’s speaking to the single humanoid shape somehow keeping up with the team despite the meter thick layer of snow he’s treading on.

Wrangler’s only reaction is to keep walking, raising his arm in a lazy wave to acknowledge her words as he quickly disappears into the maelstrom that is the blizzard they have almost reached the heart of.

“Hey big guy, how are you holding up?” The Wrangler greets nonchalant as he comes to a stop a few meters in front of a colossal shape obscured by its own power, which responds with a sad and low groan as the man stares up into sad eyes of the purest blue.

“Yeah… I miss Paul too, I think we all do, those used to be the good times…” Wrangler soberly nods. “But… We both know that’s not why I’m here, do we?”

Tatanka’s tail rises, sending dozens of missile-like icicles flying behind himself, and he begins to claw and snort, as if reading for a charge, but soon after he stops… His heart is not into it…

“I know, I know…” Wrangler rumbles, his own low and growling voice almost as subsonic as the bone-trembling huffs and puffs of the colossal buffalo. “You woke up, took care of your girls and boys, showed the humans whose boss, even got to tussle around with Abaddon…” The Kaijin sighs. “And now? You want to go back to sleep…”

The grunt the bison lets out is so cold that icicles start forming on the silhouette of the tall humanoid, his coat becoming covered in the finest film of hoarfrost. The icy layer cracks and breaks up as he moves, but plenty stays, pooling around his large boots enough that they begin to bury him.

“But… Look… Things are different these days… I, we can’t really afford having you go back to sleep under those geysers of yours, not yet.”

Tatanka, all multiple floors-worth of height of it, angrily snorts, pawing with his hooves and digging massive furrows into the permafrost in the process, shaking his colossal head around in a way that send sword-size icicles flying in multiple directions.

“I-I really get it!” Wrangler effusively nods, as if comforting a drunk friend over a recent breakup in some dingy Albuquerque dive-bar. “But… Things aren’t like they used to, big guy! In some ways I would even say that we are even worse off than during the Mu times!” He starts to pace.

The words make the Kaiju let out an offended snort.

“No, I mean for real! They may not be going around slaving you guys but… Look at the world around you! Every time you’ve woken up in the last five centuries there’s been fewer of your boys and girls around, and when did that stop? When did the great herds start coming back?”

Tatanka lets out a single snort.

“Exactly! When you decide to stay around this time!” Wrangler claps at his own progress, who knew a buffalo kaiju could be so hard-headed? “Look, I’m not saying that I want you to stomp and freeze out every last human village from the Rockies to the Mississippi… But you have to admit that this new batch of humans? A lot less slavery, a lot more overall damage . And that’s not something we can fix with a few wake up calls here and there. Not anymore, not with the efforts they are making. We need to teach them that this planet isn’t just theirs, that they have to play nice and fair or there will be consequences. And you staying around here where they can see you? It does wonders! Like, I could give you the numbers, just how many species they have driven to extinction since Mu got stomped, and how many have started recovering now that the message has been delivered. I won’t, because you literally won’t understand them, but still! God almighty have they done some long-lasting damage…” He whistles. “You staying around, active and visible? Wonderful effects on the local humans.”

Tatanka starts moving, shaking the ground as he does so, Wrangler follows along as best as he can with his near-human-sized legs.

“Just… A few more decades, a short century. That’s all I’m asking for, herdlord.”

Tatanka does not respond, and Wrangler ignores the sound his radio makes when the team asks what is going on.

“Herdlord…?”

They pace for a while more, leaving a massive trail of churned snow which the thousands-buffalo herd makes great use of, as it makes hectares of grass available.

Eventually, though, Wrangler does receive a single, slightly longer than usual grunt.

“Yes! Thank you thank you thank you!” Wrangler slaps the Kaiju’s hoof, and begins to walk backwards. “Promise it’ll be worth it, frosty!” Soon, he’s jogging, and then turns around with a pirouette, making his way back to the gathered offroaders through the calming-down blizzard. “And hey, I got news recently about the bull moose up in Canada! Might be fun to hang out with him right?” 

But soon, he exits the extremely localized blizzard and returns to the open world where it’s supposed to be a mild Wyoming spring, already thinking through what explanation he might come up with for the sake of his “superiors.”

Chapter Text

29th of January, 2016
Naka Cave, Phu Langka National Park, Bueng Kan Province, Kingdom of Thailand

For an adventurous couple like the one made up by Lamon and Sunisa, today of all days makes a crazily interesting opportunity. Naka Cave is not precisely their homeland’s greatest monument or traversable wonder, but it has certain traits which makes it a hundred times better than what something like the Grand Palace at Bangkok, with its royal architecture, or the idyllic beaches of Phuket, with its white sands, could offer. 

Firstly, and purely as a matter of practicality, it’s cheap and nearby to the Korati young adults, as it's well-within their home region of Isan. After all, the both of them are twenty year old members of a generation for whom international leisure travel and tourism are little more than a troupe in movies set in decades prior and trashy romance novels. As far as they know, the only people out there willing to travel across countries are the super wealthy, the super powerful, those with everything to gain… And those with nothing to lose…

Yeah, no travel across the entire country to enjoy the vistas and beaches for these two liberated lovebirds. As far as they -and their wallets- care, any place where they can enjoy some privacy and leisure might as well be the best resort on planet earth.

Which, under normal conditions, would not include Naka Cave. Why? For the simple reason that Naka is, by any normal estimate, a tourist trap. The cave itself is little more than a series of ground-level and open-air (which by many people’s definitions wouldn’t even count as a cave) crevices dug by a few thousand years of waterborne erosion carving away at the terrain. 

The true -and sole- visitor-attracting feature of the cave is what appearance that erosion has left it with alongside some help from the sun. For the star’s heat has -over a period of ten thousand tears- forced the stone to expand, contract and crack, only to be smoothed by the water into…

Well, the cave’s name is earned, isn’t it? Thousands of years of natural processes have left the winding cave covered in a pattern that makes them look as if they were the scaled coils of a massive snake, the kind that -on the eyes of locals- had earned itself the name of a Naga serpent.

In fact, as the couple continues giggling and jogging their way through the muddy footpath crossing the land of Phu Langka National Park, they are excited second-most of all to see the Nākhā head, a particularly large rock, carved out of the wall and resting by the cave’s entrance, shaped in a way unmistakably like that of a restful serpentine giant.

What are they most excited for? Well, the fact that they will have a chance to make out on top of it, of course!

For, you see, that very National Park’s ranger service does a lot of things besides advertising the natural and touristy wonders within their stewarded land. Things such as advising visitors when they should not enter the park. Events such as wildfires or seasonal flooding could very well ruin a trip at best or put lives at risk at worst. And today’s prohibition to enter the park is much more pressing than even those would usually be. For, you see, the national park and the provinces it's found within the bounds of also happen to be quite close to the Thai-Laotian border.

And just across said border, within the bounds of communist Laos, an earthquake strong enough to be picked up by the pertinent siamese authorities had been detected. Lamon and Sunisa had not stayed in their hotel room watching the news for long that morning, but they had picked up enough to believe that the area had been and still would be safe for their day-long trip, as the tremor in question had in fact been weak enough that the epicenter had not even been successfully triangulated yet, and no communities at either side of the border had reported economic damages or human loss of life.

Still, the national park -well known for its massive network of isolated and interconnected caves, chambers and canyons- had decided to be cautious overall, dreading the possibility of further tremors, or the original damage being just enough to eventually trigger wall collapse or cave-ins.

Hence, the park is closed, and the young couple are very much trespassing its boundaries. And they had pounced on the chance provided, their first and sole opportunity to have a palace as beautiful and famous as Naka Cave solely for themselves! A privilege they would likely “waste” in doing what young, full of life city-dwelling couples like themselves are wont to do…

They plan on making out on top of the “snake’s head” boulder, purely for the excitement of it and for as long as they felt like it.

Of course, had they been slightly more cautious or slow to get ready to sneak out of their hotel, they might have caught wind of the breaking news. Breaking news such as that the earthquake had been finally triangulated, with newscasters issuing corrections and explaining that, in fact, the quake had happened on Thailand’s side of the border. Or the alarming news that KDF forces, of all things, had been mobilized in a column heading out of Sudsakorn Base. Or the fact that Laotian helicopters had been sighted scouring their own side of the border… Looking for something.

Instead, the two simply walk, walk and walk, enjoying the beautiful sights offered by the local geography and flora, occasionally and excitedly pointing at some animal. A monkey here, a beautiful tropical bird there, an iridescent insect on this leaf or a basking reptile over on that sun-kissed rock. Oddly -although neither of them is bothered by it, or even notice- they don’t catch sight of even a single snake, no vipers half hidden under rotting logs, no racer making its way through the muddy path before they can thread on it…

And so, they only grow more excited at the idea of having the area all for themselves as they hurriedly walk the few hundred meters to the cave, frustrated by the fact that the forestry is so thick as to make it impossible for them to actually see anything before they-

Lamon’s boot steps on a mud-caked rock.

The rock gives, tumbling down a gorge.

A gorge, a massive trench, which hadn’t been there before. One they don’t see because, with their field of view reduced, the continuing track being intact on the other side of it had created a visual illusion of normalcy, like a car’s hood obscuring what may be just in front of the vehicle from the driver’s sight.

Lamon lets out a terrified scream as his foot follows the rock down and he almost plunges down alongside it, only saved by his girlfriend’s reflexes as Sunisa grabs his backpack and falls back, the both of them falling backwards in quite the painful heap, but ultimately spared.

Their confusion and apprehension is sudden, but they are not as stupid as their horned-up trespassing may indicate. Much like how they have lived their entire lives in a world in which international travel is prohibitively dangerous and/or expensive, they also live in a world where the reason for that death of globalization is large and at large…

Kaiju.

The couple lay there, petrified in fear for long enough that the KDF spearhead arrived at the park to actually catch them before they could leave. When they are taken in for questioning, their testimony will be leaked to the media.

A testimony which will include, of all things, recollections of a folktale heard in their respective childhoods.

19th of February, 2016
Somewhere in the Pindar River Valley,  Kumaon Province, Kingdom of Nepal

Madekh Tauqi, fool of fools, had once thought himself clever for fleeing up north with his betrothed. And to be honest, he had been. Fleeing Lucknow, a large and heavily populated city, had made sense to him, seeing how those insect monsters had been obsessed with hunting every last scrap of meat down, getting as far from large as possible had made all the sense to him. And so, against his and her family’s wishes they had packed up and snuck out of one of the many blockers set up by the government to very much avoid the possibility of a chaotic race out of the cities. 

At the time, even that government policy had felt sensible, evacuating every large city in northeastern India would have been a nightmare, likely outright impossible, and they had not yet exhausted all other solutions to the Meganula swarm which had set shop in Jaisalmer after killing every last human within its walls.

But his paranoia had prevailed, and they had snuck out, heading through back roads towards the north as fast as possible. During planning he had suggested Uttarakhand to Sheza, citing that the state's sparse population, mountains geography and cold weather would make the Kaiju disinterested in it. 

To think that, down the line, that consideration would become horrifyingly irrelevant.

Because Madekh has no trouble remembering the spectacle that followed. 

Long before the Meganula swarm had a chance to rend their way out of the Thar, the missiles had already started to race across the sky, like the chariots of bloodthirsty fire gods. What followed… The end of the world as they knew it, and the beginning of a new one heralded by dozens of sunrises and sunsets occurring across the horizon, sometimes sporadically, sometimes so often they felt like a nuclear lightning storm.

News wouldn’t reach them for days. And actual, properly sourced news and figures? Those never came at all.

“Lucknow doesn’t exist anymore!” The burned refugee screamed as Madekh grabbed hold of him after hearing his broken-spirited beginnings in hindi. “None of the cities are there anymore, they are gone, erased from the earth’s surface!” The man had died days later under the care of another local family. When the Nepalis arrived, they forced said family to abandon their home and burned it down.

Oh, what a sad thing, that being invaded by the Nepalis meant a salvation for the people of Uttarakhand, when compared with what the next decade would have in store for the peoples of Bharat.

Even themselves, lucky as they were to have fled the Ganges basin before it was too late, did not have an easy time. Food and medicine were sparse, what little trickled in through Nepali government programs and Tibetan donations. And specially for Madekh and Sheza who, as Urdus, had to wait an entire decade before the Nepali annexation’s promised citizenship and rights for locals -the very Garhwalis and Kumaonis who had given them charity- became real for refugees like themselves. After all, not even their new rulers were cold enough to send them back to the lowlands, where sometimes humans could be so monstrous in the civil war that even the roaming Kaiju could become a secondary concern.

But rebuild they had, painfully and slowly, bathed in the unforgettable knowledge that they were each the last living members of their families, the pains of becoming just another faceless number in Bhararisain’s massive refugee neighborhoods.

But they had survived, gotten married and slowly built a life for themselves. If nothing else, broken as they were, they could mend each other. And mend they did, until they were repaired enough to actually build something together at last. Three little lights, two boys and a girl, who would grow up as some of the few Uttar Pradeshi Urdus left alive in the world.

That is, until today.

Madekh’s body hurts all over, sore and bruised beyond belief or what a conscious human body should be able to handle. The last thing he remembers is running, pulling his children out of the -extremely old and beat up- family car.

They… He shakes his head, continuing to crawl forwards.

They had spent hours on a traffic jam in one of the new highways connecting the region to actual Nepal, where they were heading to for a hard-earned family vacation. The highway, despite its name, had vast sections of it which were little more than widened local roads connected with new bridges or tunnels. And as such much of it had long been prone to landslides. 

That was the excuse the officer had given, a rock had fallen on the road a few miles beyond the wide curve the segment of road they were on, and while a team was already working on it, it may take a few hours more to remove.

At least the sights of the beautiful Pindar River Valley below them had helped keep the kids glued to the car’s glass windows.

Then the running people had started, making their way between the stopped cars, many not even bothering to carry their belongings.

Then came the roar. And Sheza pointed at something far far ahead of them, climbing the mountainside like…

Like a snake.

They had run for… He shakes his head as he fails to get up and continues to crawl, around him a field strewn about with entire segments of destroyed highway and vehicles warped beyond belief, amongst them large boulders, sticky to the touch and shaped like rough and uneven cones. After the first few times trying to use them to pull himself up on his feet, he had learned that -even though cool to the touch- his hands would become stuck, peeling at his skin and burning his cuts like fresh cement.

The last thing he remembers is a great crashing shockwave behind himself and the crowds of fellow fleeing humans, trying his best not to lose track or line of sight of his loved ones, but being unable to do anything as the shockwave caught up to them all, massive tail cracking the highways like a boot stomping on a paper bag full of egg cartons, only to then drag itself outwards, sending everything in its path flying in a wide arch.

He remembers getting caught up in it, literally sailing like a ragdoll over the only people left in the world of the living who he could ever care for.

His lungs burn with the smoke of burning tires and petrol.

He can barely raise his head, but he knows he… He knows that he needs to keep crawling back to where he was thrown off them, he knows…

He knows.

His head, occupied until now with crying as he crawls forwards, staring into the blood-stained mountain soil, gaining a new wound as it smacks into one of the columns. It is hardened enough that -while his hair painfully  becomes stuck in it, forcing him to pull them out of his head to let go- his actual head doesn’t become stuck.

As he grunts in pain, he looks up.

His throat is raw enough that not even a maddened whine of pain leaves it.

This column… Its shape is less rough, more defined, as if whatever it had been made with had applied more pressure. It is not very tall, but it's much broader, like a…

It looks like… Three smaller columns before him, with a taller one arching behind them, trying to conceal or protect them, a halo of horizontal stalactites creating a horrifying contour. All of it made of that foul smelling cement-like substance… All… Of… Them?

Madekh looks back, his heart pumping in fear, all the structures he’s crawled by.. Why…? Why did they…?

Why did they look so humanoid?

He looks back at the three-tipped column, their heights… Their heights matched .

Before his mind can actually make his heart understand, another roar sounds out.

A shadow, taller than a mountain and coiled around one.

“Na-Nagaraja…”

The beast roars once more, having arrived at the mountain peak all the way from a valley where it expected to find something other than… Other than…

Filthy, lowly, miserable humans.

Exhaustion takes Madekh, his foggy mind shutting down before it can even begin to mourn the last of its kind.

Above him, a king mourns too. As, even though this king is far from exhausted or dead… It can’t help but feel the same sorrow as the lowly and miserable human.

24th of March, 2016
Hyderabad Capital Territory, Federated Kingdoms of Dravidia

Until a few hours ago, Navaya Pasala reckons, Hyderabad may have been the largest and single-most prosperous city in all of the Indian Subcontinents. Which isn’t much of a win, considering that every other competitor had been destroyed or heavily diminished out as victim to Daikaiju rampages or have become the battlegrounds for half a dozen different civil wars and border skirmishes.

And it seems, as Navaya dodges a piece of falling debris the size of a hound, that the “Fortunate City” as it was once called, has ended its run as such.

She doesn’t dare look back at what she is fleeing from. She knows very well what Nagaraja, the King Cobra, is, as the young woman had spent the last few months constantly hearing of the monsters’s rampages across the Land of 400 Craters. The moment she saw that massive dark-blue hood emerge out of the waters of the Hussain Sagar -the heart-shaped lake at the city’s center- by means only the gods of the underworld may know about, she knew that the city was lost.

She’s heard of the Kaiju’s fighting retreat through Thailand and it’s rampage across the Burmese anarchy, she’s seen the footage of it arriving to Bengal-Assam and choosing to crush down every last riverine settlement on its way up the Ganges into western Nepal to carry out what media had dubbed the “Pindar Hecatomb” only to return to the Ganges valley… To instead continue its rampage across the messy borders of Indian civil war, destroying entire democratic and fascist divisions on the way to slaughter Bhopal before it reached the Ajanta Range… The gateway to the Deccan Plain.

Her compatriots had awaited with bated breath, terrified yet needing to know where exactly the monster would enter Dravida, and where they should accordingly flee. The Air Force had, instead, lost track of it shortly after entering Dravida Nadu, hiking in some forest she had not memorized the name of…

‘Well,’ She continues to run. ‘At least now I know where it is.’

And that where, precisely, is coiled and reared up around the man-made island of Gibraltar Rock, which had minutes ago been host to the Buddha Statue of Hyderabad, massive source of pride for the city, now rubble under the spiked coiled of a serpent so large that its’ flattened hood and hissing visage towers over the city’s skyline.

Navaya does not stop running, not even as shouts, screams and cries -alongside a mighty crash that leads to waves lapping at her heels- indicate that King Cobra has started moving by slaying down on the aforementioned lake, likely having chosen to head south, attracted to the shape of the Charminar, city’s pride.

Straight south, precisely the direction she is fleeing in too.

At least her death, alongside those of dozens of others, is swift, as the massive cobra barrels down the wide roads of the city in a winding path.

25th of April, 2016
Some Forest in Kongu Naadu, Federated Kingdoms of Dravidia

Once upon a time, Cadaver reflects, the vast land of India had been known to exist under something called a caste system, attired society, where each caste had a role to play, all had their place. Having a place in society, even the most miserable and lowliest of them all, Cadaver reflects, must have been nice.

But that system is now broken. Because it was a society’s system, and those don’t tend to survive when the society around them itself is burned into radioactive ash and trampled under the hooves and claws of a new pantheon of gods.

He remembers there being a people, the dalits, a caste of untouchables and outcasts. If the caste system still existed, he’d put himself even under their dirty feet, he and his fellow walking corpses would have a caste of their own. Maybe they should call it the Uṇavu Caste, because that is all they are…

Food.

Cadaver -or more precisely, the person who Cadaver had once been before becoming Cadaver- had once been a devout hindu, just like another almost one thousand million people across the Bhārat Gaṇarājya . Then he saw almost half of those people -and of all other peoples across the subcontinent- perish at the whims of bloodthirsty dogs of war, and he knew that he had been wrong to believe, to believe in castes, to believe in gods, to believe in anything .

Except…

There is one thing that he believes in, one last thing as he, a body with nothing left to live for, stumbles his way deeper and deeper into a nameless forest.

He had once believed the Nagarajas to be serpent kings, dauntless servants of the gods…

Shesha, the snake who held up the world at Brahma’s behest

Vasuki, companion to Shiva, always hung around the God of Destruction’s neck.

Takshaka ruler of the Khandava forest,slayer of kings.

They may not have been real, but there was a firm reality behind them, one covered in scales of midnight-blue and bloody-red, one with a belly full of the Cadavers of mankind.

For Cadaver is one of many who have lost all, all their beloveds, all their chances, all their opportunities, all their willpower, all their lives…

Now, as Cadaver walks the forest, his senses notice that the trees slowly become less and less common, and something else becomes more and more common.

Fellow Cadavers, frozen in place to be eaten at their new god’s leisure

Cadaver collapses on the ground, his week-long staved body can’t move anymore, but that doesn’t matter because he is close enough, he must be close enough.

Indeed he is, for, before him, trees part like blades of glass in a clearing, moved aside by a cobra so large that it can -and often does- swallow elephants whole.

Cadaver opens his mouth to issue a prayer, a thanks for King Cobra giving him one last purpose, one last reason to live and die in a world that is no longer being part of.

The chance to feed a god manifest.

But he doesn’t even get as far as the first syllable.

King Cobra’s cavernous maw opens, and from it sets forth a jet of searing venom of a grayish green coloration. It crashes into Cadaver like a firehose and collapses him, the acidic substance burns his skin and enters his lips and nostrils.

Before he can move, before he can writhe in instinctive pain, it’s already begun setting, hardening into mud, into tar, into stone.

What kills Cadaver isn’t the pressure, although it very much makes even his heart incapable of beating.

It’s not the lack of oxygen, even though his lungs become instantly filled with specks of cement-like venom and stale air.

It’s not his blistering skin and eyes either.

No, what kills Cadaver is the fact that… Well, he’s already there isn’t he? He’s been dead for a long time. Just like how lovers are dead, families are dead, communities and entire peoples are dead.

India is long dead, and all King Cobra is doing is conserving it for a latter supper.

Chapter Text

20th of September, 1988
Rangoon Central Station, Rangoon Division, Union of Burma

Private Htut Bo is, with all earnestness, a kid. Oh, he may be old enough to serve in the Tatmadaw, the armed forces, but that means little, had he been two, three or even four years younger, he would have still and most likely been able to get his paperwork stamped in the training camp which had been within walkable distance of his home village.

In truth, he is but a boy who had been looking for a stable way to make money. Just enough to save a little bit for himself while assuring his parents that his younger siblings would have more of a leg up than himself. The pay isn’t even that notable, with him being a recruit freshly out of basic training and being of the lowest rank possible. But stable it is, if nothing else, and that’s already quite the advancement for a son of rice farmers whose income depends more on the clemencies of weather and the hunger of neighboring countries than their own hard work.

Altogether, the boy is very much in over his head as to the events that are currently unfolding around him. Because being a grunt in the military, necessarily, means that if high command does something, then Htut Bo is very much going to find his hands full.

It had been months ago, when his unit -one of many- had been reshuffled and ordered to move into the population centers to quell unrest, all at the orders of the Burma Socialist Programme Party’s minister for internal affairs. Htut Bo’s unit had ended up being deployed to the capital, Rangoon, also marking his first ever visit to the city, even if he’s obviously been reprieved from the kind of sight-seeing a tourist would do.

Luckily, so far he has been spared from actually being involved in actually policing the protesters, instead being one of hundreds of infantrymen kept guarding the city’s --the whole country’s- main railway hub. That being the case, however, doesn’t mean that he’s not learned about the protests themselves, and the demands of the protesters. Apparently it had all begun with the removal of certain currency notes for circulation with the objective of fixing the economy -it had bothered Htut Bo getting such a pay cut, but not enough to complain- and then only snowballed further with students and trade unions complaining about the economy being mismanaged, corruption and wanting democracy. 

Htut Bo had paid it all little mind, he is not the kind to stick his head where it doesn’t belong. And, as far as he cares, the Chinese up north don’t have any democracy and are as socialist as Burma, and no one there complains about corruption and made-up stuff like that.

Of course, the situation had certainly changed when, after the government acquiesced to one-too-many demands, the military had seen itself forced to intervene. Details are hard to come by besides the orders his unit had received on the eighteenth to fully shut the train station down. As far as he knows, the military -still loyal to the socialist ethos- had simply removed unruly elements of government, and gotten going along with restoring peace to the country. He has a good feeling about it, the military is nothing if not organized, who better to steer Burma back in the right direction than them?

Still, while he has no love for the alleged million -probably just made up numbers to scare the government party- Burmese-strong army of protesters who make up the “People Power Uprising” he is happy to be posted at the train station and nowhere else. He’s in the army for the pay, and wouldn’t be particularly enthused if he was ordered to start kicking and shooting them all.

He would still do it, orders are orders after all, but that doesn’t mean that he would have fun doing it. No, he’d much rather stay at the station, checking papers the way his officer had told him to, accepting bribes whenever offered (only on the still-legally circulating kyat notes, of course), keeping an eye out for passengers in or out who might look suspicious and infrequently escorting officials.

Of all of those, right now he’s doing the second-to-last one as he walks around the stockyard behind the station itself, the place where old trains and rail cars would be kept before being sold to a scrapyard or repaired, or where active trains would stop in case of the station being overloaded or another inconvenience.

This train looks different, however. Instead of the -usually overloaded- passenger cars, the old-seeming locomotive has a dozen or so boxy cars with louvered wooden walls and no light within them, no sounds of people either. A brunch of the stock cars have paint-brushed birds on them, they look like monocolor-peacocks and are quite shoddily done, but the animal is such a recognizable symbol in the country that Htut Bo has no trouble recognizing them, probably the logo of some state-owned rail entity.

“Hey! Hey!” He calls out. “What’s going on here?” He calls out to the small group of civilians milling around the locomotive, of whom one raises his hand and walks up to him. Clearly not the conductor or head engineer, as he looks to be a guy right about Htut Bo’s age, from his build and complexion, a fellow rural Bamar, not unlike the private himself.

“Hello sir!” The stranger comes up to him, upon closer inspection he seems to be older by a couple years, which makes it strange for Htut Bo when he calls him sir of all things.

“This is not a passenger train.” He states the obvious, although he can’t avoid his words having tinges of confused questioning.

“No sir, these are cattle cars. We come from Kachin State, to unload for export at the city’s port.” The train worker explains.

“Rangoon Central Station is meant for people, not animals or cargo, you should back out and get going.” Htut Bo adjusts the strap of his rifle, not to threaten, but merely because its strap is digging into his neck as the gun hangs from his side.

“Ah, well sir, we know that. They never make us stop here. But with the protests and all going on here we were told at a checkpoint before entering that we should stop here to make sure we are allowed to enter the port.”

“Ah… Well…” Htut Bo fumbles, he’s not been told about that, but then again things have only gotten more gambled as the protests have gotten more heated up. Plus, he may really get into trouble if anyone finds out that he didn’t check out something he was supposed to. “Okay, one of you!” He shouts for the rest to the milling-around men. “Get me your papers so I can stamp them.” He then turns to the explainer. “Do you have any keys so I can-”

“Here, sir.” He pulls a cord of keys out of his pocket.

“Good, follow along.”

Usually this is when he’d get his bribe for not checking out someone’s luggage or stamping a permit with something missing or wrong on it. But he has no idea about the etiquette of getting bribes from cattle-movers and his morning has already been boring enough that he might as well just do the job and get them moving as soon as possible.

As they approach the first car, he gets a whiff of smell that reminds him of home. Manure, but of a much fresher and stronger smell than he’s used to. “We usually get some guy from the stations we stop at to hose them out for us while we load them up with food. But there’s no one to do that job here, obviously… Sorry sir.” His companion explains as they finish their approach that the noises of snorts and hooves stepping on shit and wooden flooring become apparent.

“I’ll bear with it, you are the ones dealing with them all day long after all.” He looks the fellow up and down as he unlocks the cattle car’s padlock, seeing that his overalls are far from clean, especially below the knees. 

Instead of pulling the sliding door open, he then flicks a latch, making it so only the upper half of it moves aside, letting Htut Bo pull himself up to the door’s edge without actually opening the way for any of the animals to escape. 

Indeed, the car is full of cows all about the same size and of seemingly the same race. He doesn’t recognize the breed, as his family comes from a rice-farming area where water buffalo are the only real common ruminants.

He guesses there to be about twenty-something to thirty of the animals, and jumps down after giving the space a good second look.

“How many are you moving?” He asks out of casual curiosity.

“Three hundred and sixty-eight.”

“You know the exact number?” Htut Bo’s eyebrow raises.

“We better, it’s deducted from our pay if any of them go missing.” 

“That happen often?”

“Not since they started deducting it from our pay.” He winks, the both of them sharing a laugh as the padlock is closed again and they move onto the next car. This one is much of the same, as smelly and as full of semi-silent cows.

“Shouldn’t they be making more noise?”

“Oh they do, they spend the first day or two of travel really scared and noisy, but by the time we reach the port of the other stations we leave them at they usually have calmed down, only for it to start back up when we make them leave the cars.”

“Interesting… Well, let's move on.”

The next car is much the same as the repeat the padlock-opening, jumping up, peering in and then closing for the next one. It’s only on the fourth cattle car that the trend bucks. This one is one of the bunch with the logo of the peacock painted on it, but is also less smelly, with less animals blocking the light entering and exiting it through the wooden slits.

“Oh, this one, yeah.” The worker nods as he catches the soldier’s confusion. “We move the calves in this one, separated. That way we don’t have to worry about the cows hurting them with how packed up they can get.” The explanation is simple enough. “They usually huddle around the back end, no idea why, you’ll have to walk in if you want to see them.”

“Fair enough, but won’t they get out?”

“They are calves.” The worker laughs. “I wouldn’t have this job if I couldn’t handle them on my own. Now, feel free to go in sir.” This time he doesn’t touch the window latch, sliding open the large wooden piece that is the door. Indeed, there’s almost no shit, meaning that Htut Bo doesn’t have to worry as he jumps up and puts his hand on the threshold. The hay is also actually visible, covering the wooden flooring.

‘Uh, they look much larger when there’s no thirty cows crowded up on it.’

“I didn’t know we exported calves, people eat them that young?” He cranes his neck to look in the direction of the cart’s back end.

“They don’t.”

Then, he feels a boot slam into his lower back.

As he falls on his elbows and knees onto the inside of the cart, giving a cry of startled pain, he hears the door slam shut, suddenly showering him in darkness.

“Apologies…” The tone of the worker suddenly changes as Htut Bo scrambles back up and tries to pull the sliding door just as it is locked again. “I hoped to spare my subjects from the bulk of the violence, but sacrifices must be made.”

“What?! Open the door right now or I-I will shoot.”

No response comes as the shape of the young man beyond the louvers steps down and jumps back, he stares back at the soldier he had been calling sir until just a moment ago. 

Instead, the answer to his threat, even as he fumbles with his rifle, comes from within.

THUNK

He looks, once more, onwards to the back of the stock car, this time with eyes much more adjusted to the darkness.

Eyes, hundreds of blue-green eyes, stare back at him, unfurling in a shuddering arc.

The last thing he sees is the massive beak that lunges for him, like a heron spearing a frog.

A few gunshots do go off, as his hands and legs seize up at the fact that the head they are controlled by has been crushed like a grape, but they do so to the side and harmlessly.

The young man outside barely blinks as blood splatters his overalls, only speaking when he turns to look at the expecting crew still milling about the train’s locomotive. “START UNLOADING NOW!” His voice booms in command. “WE CAN’T AFFORD TO WASTE TIME, THE SHOTS MAY HAVE ALERTED THE REST OF THE GARRISON!”

Behind him, the rest of the painted stock trains open up from the inside . Armed men jumping out by the dozens. 

People's Assembly Building, Rangoon Division, Union of Burma

General Saw Maung, if he were a lesser man, may be excited. But he is not that, Saw Maung is a devout Buddhist, a dedicated career officer. And through both of those, he tempered his mood. He has not spent the last fourteen years of his life serving the communists and their so called “Burmese Way to Socialism” only to waste their final death throes in gloating instead of in actually fixing the country. 

A country that he, by way of a perfectly implemented coup, now rules. Sure, it may have taken a good three thousand deaths so far, with as many as necessary to come in order to pacify the urban centers, but that is what armies are meant for, and he has full confidence in his.

Even right now, as news spread across Rangoon of the State Law and Order Restoration Council’s dethroning of the socialist government, he can already see the outcome in his own head. Within a year, he will be the prime minister of a nation, he can already see it…

But for now, there are pressing issues to deal with. Burma is far from a unified nation, history and geography having led to many people’s living within its borders. He knows that well, having spent a good chunk of his early career fighting ethnic rebels along the Thai border.

And so, even as he rebuilds his government among the shot-out building that used to host the People’s Assembly and directs his fellow generals and officers to their respective stabilizing missions, he can’t take his mind off such possible potholes in the road to healing the nation.

The Kayins, Shan and Mons on the west, easily led astride by Thailand or the communist of Vietnam and its puppets. The Kahine, Rohingyas and Chins to the west, always embroiled in their own little massacres, happy to pull the government in, to the detriment of all. Even the Kachins, so far harmless but always a possible source of pain with the appropriate amount of prodding at the hands of the Maoists.

It is no wonder then, that he has been happy to allow the ranks of the SLORC to swell with Bamars -true Burmese, if such a thing exists- of his own religious inclinations.

“Sir! General Saw Maung!” A man behind him shouts as he traverses the massive hallways of the government complex, reading to what is to be his office for the foreseeable future. 

When he turns around, he sees the distressed face of a man whose name he does not know. A colonel, something made obvious by his uniform, who approaches him in a rush.

“What is the matter, colonel?” The wide neuralgic hallway goes silent. Few men would dare approach the Council’s chairman, after all, just two days after his successful coup without something important to say. 

“Sir!” The man salutes. “Colonel U Ko, of the 2nd Infantry Brigade! My men-” The man stops to breathe. “Sir, my men are reporting active fighting around the central railway station.”

“The protesters?” He asks back, blood freezing in his veins. Could it be that those civilians have found their way onto some armory? Elements of the military somehow still loyal to the communists?

“N-no sir! My men… The opponents, they are uniformed sir, and equipped with Type 81 rifles and dhas , sir.”

‘Chinese rifles and swords?’ The general doesn’t respond, astonished. He truly has no idea what could be going on, disloyalty could be sadly expected during a time of turmoil, but not two days after a perfectly executed coup having proved itself willing to deal with descent the iron gauntleted-way.

Who, then, would be insane enough to attempt and carry out an armed uprising against the military in the middle of a militarized Rangoon.

“Sir, my men… They claim that there is a K-”

It is then, of course, that the building’s tiled ceiling collapses, and the September 20th Massacre begins. 

General Saw Maung himself isn’t directly under the section of the building that collapses, instead being thrown back by the shock of the bursted building. Colonel U Ko and a dozen others aren’t as lucky, instantly being killed by the rubble crushing them, but also by the thing creating the rubble.

Because the dust doesn’t take long to clear -the hole isn’t that large- and gives the general a chance to see many of his army’s other high-ranking officers and staff members crawl and run away in fear, many clutching limbs or otherwise bleeding and limping.

And in the middle of it all, standing with a proudness and majestic pose greatly contrasting with the blood and gore that coats its massive claws…

The Khut-Daung, the fighting peacock. Burma’s will made manifest, the symbol of a nation of almost twelve hundred years of history.

‘No…’ the General composes himself. What stands before and above him, taller than any bird should ever have the right to be, is a monster, some kind of mockery borne out of the nuclear materials that his homeland’s neighbors produce and use so willfully. What stands before him is a Kaiju, a monster, a mutant parody of his nation’s majestic symbol sporting a massive tail of feathers barbed like razor-wire, claws closer to those of an eagle than a peafowl, and a serrated and received beak, all of it surrounded by feathers of the purest and most vibrant hues of blues and greens.

Khut-Daung, Viceroy of the Irrawaddy Basin.

The man pulls out his gun from its holster, not doubting himself for even a second as the avian monster’s crest unfurls itself and its head rears back, most likely to stab down upon his comparatively diminutive shape.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

The bullets bounce off the teal plumage covering the monster’s lower neck and chest, and it turns its head again, as if inspecting him. Then, with an ominous rattling sound, the monster’s tail feathers begin to unfurl.

And the moment those hundreds of golden eyes fall upon him, the most powerful man in Burma becomes a statue, paralyzed just for long enough that the Kaiju simply pecks down on him, biting his shoulder and shaking him like a shrike would do to a mouse.

His still-paralyzed and mangled body hits the ground, missing an arm, he cannot even scream as the monster's talons pin him down.

And the feast begins.

Kandawgyi Nature Park, Yangon, Fourth Burmese Empire

By the time night falls upon Yangon, with the peacock banner proudly waving from the city’s most relevant buildings, it is clear that neither protestors, communist or militarists will have what they want.

Bands of hundreds of young men roam the streets, happy to kill any who will not swear their loyalty to the man who they call the Ka Daung, proclaiming their loyalty to a king who doesn’t belong to any dynasty, earning the blessings of Buddhist monks at gunpoint, all of it, of course, supported by a monster happy to gorge itself with any concentration of humans that it is pointed towards.

And yet, even monsters must rest at night, and so does this one, even as the violence across the city continues, and Burma becomes something both dark and new.

The monster in question has chosen no place but the Kandawgyi Lake, befitting, as such a name means nothing but "Great Royal Lake", framed by pagodas and a series of garden built by a long-gone empire, the artificial lake’s waters rest with stillness unnerving when compared to the events unfolding across much of south-central Burma. 

And in the midst of it all, floats an island of gold.

Karaweik Hall, a massive palace built upon a barge shaped like royal swans in its entirety. A gold-foiled monument of fifteen tiers of pointed pyatthat-topped and green-tiled roofs. Despite its ultimately modern nature, the palace-pagoda is but a symbol befitting a king. 

Karaweik Hall, home of the Ka-Daung and Khut-Daung.

It is then, quite obvious, that the thirteen meter long Kaiju has chosen it as its roost for the night, pushing itself up to the roof of one of its main walls with the force of mighty wings, ready to spend the night surveying a city that it very much rules, even if its brain is not meant to understand such concepts.

“If you like this-!” A voice shouts from below the peacock Kaiju, drawing the roosting mutant’s interest. “I can’t wait for you to see Toungoo!”

When the monster realizes the voice’s source, a singular human being stands at the barge’s edge and looks up with a satisfied smile. it lets out an elated thrill.

Long gone are the overalls of a false train-worker, even longer gone are the simple and ratty clothes of a farmer’s son lucky enough to find a strange egg in the forest many, many years ago. Now, sharing with the Karaweik Hall stands a young man dressed in clothes “stolen” from the city’s own national museum, literally the drapings of royalty, which he does not consider stolen, as they are rightfully his.

For what else could the young man who calls himself Ka-Daung -the Dancing Peacock- be, he that holds mastery over a creature that is an envoy of the sun, a beast that is the nation personified at his beck and call.

The monster lowers itself with a mighty crash, letting the human scratch its neck. before extending a wing for him to climb atop it. 

“You did well today, my son.” The crazed man congratulates the elephant-eating peacock once more flies up to the very tip of the structure, so they may survey their new realm. “But the job…? The job is far from done.”

Chapter Text

40.000 B.C.
Somewhere in Insular Southeast Asia

One could be forgiven for failing to understand scale when a lanky and emancipated arm claws itself ashore, pulling along the body of a half-drowned and desperate mixture of a death-row inmate and an exile.

Of course, when that very same arm -the twin of which remains clutching a series of deep abdominal gashes to stem their bleeding as salt-water paradoxically helps prevent exsanguination- finds purchase on a beachside boulder and almost pulls it from its sandy base, it becomes evidently clear that the thing that’s only barely survived from drowning at sea is neither man nor human, albeit not too distant from both.

Sparse and reddish fur-covered arms of gray skin dig their elbows into the shore as whimpers of pain as loud as engines alert every last example of native fauna away from it. Not even the most voracious or largest of this land’s predators would ever smell the source of this fresh blood and consider trying their chances. To this thing they are but insects, even more so to the one that has left it in such a worrisome state.

The colossus remains cognizant enough that it refuses to simply collapse belly-first onto the sand, lest the lacerations and bitemarks leaving his chest pockmarked become soiled with sand, something not even a giant like him would ever enjoy, even if he may survive it. 

Instead, just as those skeletal arms -so long that they would reach the creature’s knees- fail to keep it crawling forward and into the not-so-unfamiliar green of the inland treeline, he manages to shove himself into a roll.

There, breathing jaggedly, but thankfully still breathing at all, the beast lies, much of its lower body still beyond the surf. 

It will lay there for days, too large for the tides to dislodge, too pained and tired to even awaken as seabirds crow valiant enough to try and peck at the crab-sized lice clinging to his patchy fur, or to even notice when bands of strange and diminutive pale-skinned relatives of itself fairly cling to outcrops as they spy his presence.

But exhaustion is as finite as its sources, and wounds -even if slowly- begin to heal enough that hunger and thirst are able to take control, both of which are only solvable by a grudding and pained awakening.

And so, this thing, this exile who has only even beholden a world where stone and storms are the makeup of the heavens, beholds the eternal blue expanse that is the sky for the first time. 

It is a terrifying sight, both in of itself and the aliens of it, but also in what it tells the exile about his fate.

A sun brighter than everything except The-Monster-Who-Ate-a-Star beams down on him, and the Scarred Usurper cannot help but let out a cry of anguish and pain that will be heard as far as the throne of the one who bested him.

13th of October, 1973
Somewhere in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Republic of Indonesia

“Sorry!” The driver of the four-wheeled cargo truck apologetically shouts after the men seated in said truck’s bed are juddered around by yet another pothole in the dirt road. Although, to be honest the men are quite lucky, in Luk’s experience some of these kinds of inland jungle roads can be more hole than road, and they are lucky if the holes are not also filled with mud and stagnant water.

‘At least,’ Luk comforts himself as he keeps a tight grip on the metal frames that make up the walls of the truck. ‘It’s the dry season and we don’t have to worry about that kind of stuff.’

Luk Benakat, one of a dozen-and-change men seated facing each other in the truck, is really used to this kind of experience, he’s been taking these kinds of trips to logging camps since he was a kid paid a penance to do small-jobs around the encampments. And now, as a married man of twenty four, he is still taking the same kinds of trips, just with the added benefit of actually earning a wage for it.

He’s not a year-round logger, obviously, few men are. Instead he just takes jobs here and there, when work in the plot of land he and his wife own nearby to his parents’ own is less demanding on a daily basis and he can afford to leave Nermala and their son on their own for a few weeks or a month or two. Otherwise… Well otherwise he wouldn’t be making any money to take care of them, would he?

Luk looks up into the sky, finding it as blue and as clear as usual for this time of year. Logging is so much less of a hassle in the later half of the dry season, and not just for him. Beyond the obvious fact that one is spared from contending with the torrential downpours of the wet season, there’s also the actual wood itself. Dry weather means dryer wood, and drier wood means lighter wood for him and cheaper transportation for the camp and mill-owners. Everyone won, which meant that the men who hired guys like Luk would be happy to offer slightly bigger daily rates if it meant filling up the logging camps 

One of the other men pulls a little carton of cigarettes from his vest, good-naturelly offering it around as two other men accept with nods and muttered thanks. Luk respectfully declines the offer and instead keeps himself busy by staring at the landscape before and behind him as the truck keeps moving.

It’s all trees, obviously, but that doesn’t make it monotonous. Because every now and then they’ll come across the exit to another road heading towards another logging camp, or will ride by a small village or a section of jungle replaced by farmland, grazing areas of plantations.

Plantations of teak, which is the kind of plantation tree Luk and loggers like him cut most often, overwhelmingly so. Although, the camp they are heading to today is not at the edge or center of some teak plantation.

Almost as often as teak, loggers like himself will simply land at some section of Sumatran jungle at the dead-end of a logging road -sometimes land bought by the companies who hire them, sometimes not, it’s not their job to care- to cut down as much as they could for as long as their contracts last.

Such is the case today. Maybe the landowners want to use the area for planting teak afterwards, or selling parcels of it to farmers. Or maybe they just want to sell the usable logs to mills, the rest as firewood, and be done with before the next wet season destroys their roads. Yet another reason for Luk to be glad to have found a contract this October.

The trucks slow down not much later, not coincidentally as un-jungle-like sounds become noticeable, those of people loudly talking and shouting, or working motors, the beeping of vehicles and the revving of chainsaws.

Indeed, the jungle around them -in a stark and sudden manner- ends and suddenly becomes a cleared landscape of stumps surrounded by moved earth and sun-dried litter which weeks ago might have been covered by the canopy. The road widens, too, to allow for both trucks like theirs but also much taller ones carrying hundreds of logs to move parallel to each other without having to stop in what can only be described as the stretched roundabout that the operation’s camp is built around, leaving just enough space in radiating roads for the actually trucks and other vehicles to move closer to where the work is being done.

And it is not light work, that is for certain! The operation is far from the biggest that Luk has worked for -those would be the teak plantations, the kind that would pay much better, and would be owned by foreigners constantly walking around with their button-up shirts and hardhats- but it is also far from small. Luk can guess that -counting the batch of new arrivals that he is part of- the camp homes a few hundred men. 

Homes is quite literal, considering that the camp’s tents and food will be the sole things that their employers will be giving them other than pay. Well, that and petrol for the equipment, but it’d admittedly be stupid to expect guys like Luk to somehow carry two month’s worth of fuel on their backs.

Speaking of, he grabs his quickly from the truck’s bed as it comes to a stop, jumping down first of the group as a man approaches them. A foreman, obviously, who guides them to the only empty area of the tent oval. Quickly enough, they all set up their cots, some just using blankets and towels, others pieces of rolled-up foam. Following that, they all start gearing up. Most of them just have the basics, machetes, chainsaws, shirts they don’t mind irreparably dirtying or damaging, and pants as heavy as they can. Some have protection too, Luk himself has gloves as most of them do, but some also put on heavy boots or helmets, or strip their pants off to put on overalls. 

‘I should look into getting some of that kind of stuff.’ He considers as he grabs his beaten-up chainsaw. He certainly thinks he can afford to, wages have only been rising for the last year, since whatever happened in “Brazil” made buying wood from Sumatra a better option. It’s not like he lacks a helmet out of carelessness , he’s very aware of what an accident involving a human body and a multiple-ton tree’s branch can look like, and he’s got a growing family to take care of.

Maybe he can haggle or buy one from one of the guys whose contract is ending this week, that would probably be much cheaper than a brand-new helmet.

“As soon as you are done with leaving your things,” The foreman calls out as they finish gearing up.  “Head out to the west edge of the field, you’ll hear me use the megaphones for your midday break. Otherwise just do whatever the drivers tell you to!” He gestures but otherwise leaves them to their devices.

Luk doesn’t waste much time and starts walking in the indented direction, surveying the large open field created by the logging operation. Not two such places are the same, there’s the landscape itself and the local trees, of course. But even more important is where the camp is, and who owns it. The larger teak ones -the very ones owned by foreigners- would often be organized in neat rows and “sectors” with the bulk of the log-moving and striping being done by machinery and vehicles. Then, the smaller and deeper into the jungles the camps would get, the less that would be apparent. Big feller-bunchers, harvesters and loaders would be replaced by just sheer numbers of loggers and skidders pulled by oxen, donkeys or buffalo.

This one seems to be in the middle ground, with no real feeling equipment but loaders coming and going to arrange the logs on the trailers of log-trucks. Men come and go constantly from the edge of the treeline, shouting out as their chainsaws cut trees down for other men to strip and cut branches off and saw the trunks and larger branches into the intended lengths. 

“Hey, keep your eyes out for the trees, okay?” One of the men walking alongside him speaks as they all walk across the open and stump-scattered area.

“We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t know how to move aside when a tree starts falling.” Another man comments, annoyed.

“No,” The first one speaks again. “I mean, keep an eye out for animals in the trees.”

“Why?” The annoyed one gruffly responds again. “Tigers? Haven’t heard of any attacks lately, not in the middle of camps.” 

As far as Luk knows, the man is right. Usually even a tiger would be spooked away by such a large number of men suddenly appearing in such a concentrated area, and would only attack out of hunger if the logging had been preceded by a clearing burn, which the lack of ash and blackened trunks and abundance of cleared-away leaf litter proves isn’t their current case.

“No, no, It’s… I live in a village very close to here, some of the other camps actually pay people from it to cook for them… My sister told me the other day that they just saw Orang Pendek near the edge of one of the upland camps.”

The man clearly hopes for some kind of hushed reaction at the creature’s mention. But there isn’t, since the creature’s story and description is well-known to the region and only became even more well-known during the decades of Dutch rule. Luk would rather see the legendary ape for himself than a tiger, that’s for certain!

“Oh come on,” Luk is the one to react this time. “I thought you were going to say something important, like there being militias around here, or some bull elephant in rut!” He laughs.

“Hey, Orang Pendek is real!” The man protests. “Just like the monsters the Japanese are always worried about!”

“Yeah,” The gruf man responds. “But Orang Pendek isn’t a fire-breathing monster!”

“They said it was taller than a bear standing up! Tried to steal food off their camp and ran off when they turned the lights on, the entire camp saw it!”

“Now I know you are lying for real!” Luk answers as he elbows the angry man, who smirks in response.

“And why’s that, smartass?”

“Because, idiot,” The other man answers. “Everyone knows that the Orang Pendek is small, its name literally means short person . And what’s the chance of us seeing one, anyways.”

“And, hey!” Another fellow joins in as they all reach the treeline and start inspecting it. “Orang Pendek or Orangutan, do shout it out guys. You don’t have an idea how much people will pay for one of those back in Palembang!”

The work begins soon after, and the flurry of activity combined with the loudness of machinery and entire old-growths being felled pretty quickly kills any chance of further small talk. He remains on the backline, waiting for the massive and straight trunks of trees to fall before they are pulled farther into the cleared area to process them. 

That means that while he really isn’t stopping at any given time -since there is always a trunk arriving from somewhere nearby- he is very physical  going from flurries of activity to minutes of just milling around, which gives his mind time to wander.

Initially, he just thinks about logging itself. Wondering how long it would take to actually cut down all of Sumatras trees. Probably centuries, he reasons, since not only is the island mostly covered in tropical jungle, but simply because Sumatra is one of the largest islands of Indonesia, of the entire world, really. Not even if every single login camp was outfitted with the best tools available to the industry, he can’t imagine any amount of people truly putting a dent to such endless greenery.

His mind also wanders to his chainsaw, hooked onto his belt and waiting for its ripcord to be pulled and its motor to be revved up. He’s fond of the tool, even if it is a tad old and the plastic parts of it are faded, or the ones held by some of his current coworkers are newer and objectively better… It is certainly better than what would have been available to his father during the colonial rule: An ax, a whip, and a prayer.

But whatever his in-between-logs thoughts start as, his imagination always ends up running, specifically, running into the treeline. He ends up letting his imagination run, and constantly keeps an eye out on the treeline. The area he comes from doesn’t really have any history of tales about the Orang Pendek or any other rare animals or folk creatures like it. For him, a rare animal is something like a rhino, but that’s a rare animal everywhere as opposed to something so unique and localized that it’d make generations of Dutchmen attempt to find it inbetween raping Sumatran women and stealing everything the island had to offer.

Then again, he’s also heard that the creature may just be the result of people -confused, scared, drunk or some combination of the three- seeing orangutans walking along the undergrowth and assuming them to be some kind of strange monster by way of being unaccustomed to the animals being anywhere but nestled between branches. If that were the case, then he’s very much seen multiple of the creatures during his life, and he’s just simply not fallen for the trap.

And it is like that, as he stares into the treeline while he rests with a foot upon a stump, that he suddenly becomes covered in shadows . He only has a second to notice and look above himself as it happens, and by the time his neck -and those of dozens of others around himself- cranes up, the shadow is already gone.

CRASH-BOOM

And that’s when the screams start. Behind him.

Like a flock of birds, they all turn to look back at their camp, and then even further back, to the very opposite edge of the deforested area. It is not hard to miss, that’s for sure, considering that what they are looking at is an excavator, large, painted in bright yellow… And crumpled into a smoking heap framed by trees shattered into the shape of a vertical crater.

People around Luk, hardened loggers, start to run. The majority start to run towards the crash site, intrigued and confused by the very sight of something like that having happened. Luk, for his own part…

‘If an entire excavator flew over me and landed all the way across the camp… And there are no other camps nearby…’

That can only mean that something must have carried it to them. Thrown it at them.

It is seconds after he makes that realization that he turns back around, his eyes locked into the vision-impairing treeline, and starts walking backwards. Which all gives him a perfectly unblocked view as it strides into view.

It is… It is a giant. In all senses of the word. A gaunt shape cast in fire and shadows, as it blots out the low morning sun, which makes the reddish fur that covers its body look as if it were aflame. More than fifty meters tall, it must be, considering how the tops of the trees barely scrape the halfway point up its body.

A body which is lanky, gaunt and skeleton and naked, one of arms so long that -where the giant’s arms not raised in the manner in which a pit fighter’s would be- they hands at their ends may be obscured by the trees.

And it is then, when it roars.

The sound, warbling yet deep and savage, is uncomfortably human, making it impossible for a single soul gathered at camp to miss it. 

The running starts almost instantly, in all directions and with little concert, some drivers even abandon their vehicles, while others are incident to drive by men climbing over their frames. Those close to the treeline run for it, those who aren’t instead race towards the only open road out.

The giant does not give either route a chance, as -in a knuckle-stomping manner- it explodes into the clearing. Luk in its path.

A piece of debris, a chunk of tree the size of a surfboard, explodes towards him, and Luk is only spared of it crushing him against some stump when another thing slams into his back and throws him into the ground.

“GET UP! RUN! IDIOT! RUN!” The shape scrambles him up almost as fast as it makes him painfully eat dirty. The angry man, he realizes, has saved his life, and he doesn’t even know his name.

Still, he follows, only looking back for the second that it takes for the hunch-backed giant to grab a truck and its log-filled trailer, and fling it towards the logger’s road like one would a flat stone across a pond. The vehicle and its load slam squarely into the first of the fleeing vehicles, crushing it and the men within like a can while also becoming a sudden roadblock that two others frontally slam into.

Luk increases his pace as the giant slams its fists into the ground and swerves around, letting forth a second furious roar. The treeline.. The treeline can only be a few meters ahead, after which creatures as small as them would become invisible to such a monster.

Something catches the angry man’s foot, making him stumble and almost fall, only for Luk to slam into his back when the same happens to him. They both fall on the ground side by side, their escape tripped by the gnarly root attached to a half-dislodged stump.

A second, Luk is staring into the angry man’s eyes as they both try to get their bearings back.

He doesn’t look so bad-humored anymore… Just… Just scared.

A second later, and Luk suddenly finds himself staring at the side-view of an index finger as tall as himself, one of gray skin. covered in sparse red fur and… And gore. Just like the entire front half of Luk, who finds himself laying in the soil with much of the nameless man’s body smeared across his face and chest.

The giant has crushed him like a rotting fruit, and as the fingers begin to move again, Luk can only scream. Scream, scream and scream as the man-swatting palm begins to move, closing into a fist that digs furrows into the ground around Luk with nails the size of shovels. Luk’s attempt to escape by crawling isn’t fast enough, and moments later he finds himself held in a hand alongside all the dirt and shattered wood crushed within the monster’s fist.

Before he can scream again, he is very high up, tall enough that he can see the canopy by just looking forward.

And higher, the canopy is just under him.

And higher, the canopy is well below him.

The fist opens, but Luk does not fall like the debris down, his foot instead pinched between an index and a thumb. His fibula and tibia splinter straws, when he screams again, his tears and spittle fall on his forehead as his crushed leg’s blood joins piss and shit in sullying his body.

Luk looks down in between whimpering tears.

And it , with its simian face, blue eyes bleaches into an almost milky whiteness and chest covered in scars, looks up . And the last thing the young logger sees, is the jaws that he is simply dropped into, like a morsel .

Somewhere under Mount Kereinci, Sumatra, Republic of Indonesia

When the red viceroy reaches the entrance to his lair, he is tired. It has been a long time since he ventured into the surface -and that’s considered that the cave system he lives his shameful exile in is already considered the surface by his people- and his eyes sting from the power of the sun. It must have been a good few hundred rotations around that blasted ball of flaming gas since he last ventured out…

Still, arms and legs evolved for the task make it easy for him to approach the chore of reaching his nest, a particularly large cave in a particularly large mountain… A pittance compared to the realm that should be rightfully his.

But it is… Enough… For now, it is enough. It must be enough. Not for him… But for…

The diminutive shape -barely twice as large as the humans that he just finished punishing for their transgressions- pokes its head out of an alcove in the cavern’s wall, and the tired old rubricated monster stretches his arm to greet it, upon which the one that the humans call Suku, Child, crawls up his arm.

The little thing, the one good thing to come out of his last attempt at breaking his exile, is a timid one, far smaller and weaker than his father, but prone to exploring the world of jungles and blue skies. Prone to be threatened and hurt by those bald and diminutive little monsters.

‘Not anymore.’ The Scar King thinks as he greets his son with cooing sounds that promise that monsters have been vanquished. 

The giant ape comes to rest in the cavern’s throne-like ledge with his son playfully climbing up his shoulder and unto his back, surveying a throne room of bones and walls painted in human blood by hands the size of elephants depicting great wars older than continents and monsters who exile rightful kings. ‘Not anymore.’

He smiles. ‘Not anymore.’

Chapter Text

26th of January, 2005
Rohtak, State of Haryana, Republic of India

The cage is mostly dark, with the light of an open window on the other side of the larger room filtering through the thinned and punctured parts of a loose blanket that has not been cleaned in years, maybe ever. “Gabara” knows that -since the cage’s wireframe gaps are wide enough for him to squeeze his arm through- it’d be really easy to grab it and pull it in, maybe to have something to lie on top of or against that isn’t cold bare metal or a night’s worth of feces.

He really wants to grab it, but he won’t, everything ends up hurting when he tries to grab something that he isn’t allowed to grab. Still, he really wants to, to bury himself under it no matter how bad it smells or how many holes there are on it. Because at least that way he could close his eyes and imagine that the world is just himself and the blanket, maybe that would quiet the feeling down.

He is anxious, every fiber of his rickety and shivering body much more high-strung than usual. It is a feeling that he has never felt. One that should tell him to run for the hills, for the cover of the densest tree-line in view, to flatten himself and make himself as easy to miss and as silent as a thing with a heartbeat can be. But even that is but a hazy pulsation at the back of his mind. He doesn’t know hills other than steppe roads, or forests other than wooden furniture. And while there are plenty of places to hide in the rooms where his cage usually is, he has never been able to reach them without the choking lease stopping him.

Sound. The door opens, he doesn’t move as two sources of noise make themselves present beyond his sight.

“-I’m just worried, boss. The reports out of Gandhinagar look like a fucking horror movie, Ahmedabad is not much better. They are trying to evacuate a third of fucking Gujarat. And if those things keep heading in the same direction, then it’ll be Rajasthan… And then…” The voice is new, or at least not familiar. And while Gabara doesn’t understand the meaning behind a single sound, he has an easy time reading anxiety, fear, distress. Once more his own instincts flare up.

“Us?” The mocking voice of the master answers, drawing a terrified wine out of Gabara, he sounds angry, frustrated, that’s when the pain happens the most. “Come on, Dinesh, don’t tell me that some bugs have you spooked.”

“I mean… Yeah, boss, they have me spooked. I’d rather not be in whatever direction the news says that things are headed towards.”

“Bah, and here I thought that you had a backbone, where’s the guts your brother spoke about when he begged me to hire and take you in, mh?”

“Don’t be like that, boss…” The new voice whimpers. “I’ll pull a man’s teeth out his mouth any day of the week… But Kaiju are Kaiju.”

“Ah, I know, I know… Well, I still need you to do collections in tonight’s fights.”

“I-I understand boss, It’s just that…”

“I wasn’t done speaking.” The master cuts. “As I was saying, I need you here tonight. Everything is already set up and I’m not losing out on profit just because people can’t afford pesticides. But You can do whatever the fuck you want this weekend. After all… I don’t own you, unlike THIS-!”

BLAAM

“Guy over here!!”

Gabara screams in abject fear as a sudden kick is delivered to the side of his cage, sending him flying as the rectangular cage falls on its side and himself falls alongside it. He scrambles up as best as he can, but the metal floor suddenly being a wall from his perspective forces him to look up to try and get his bearings as his fingers grasp through the wireframe cage.

Fingers which are almost crushed when the master stomps his foot down on the cage, delivering as much force as he can short of denting the whole thing.

“Good morning Gabara, thought I had forgotten about you, little guy?” Master looks down on him, showing off his fangs and gums in a way that a human would understand as a cruel smile, but which to him is just the daily display of undeniable dominance.

“So, yeah.” Master turns back to speak to the new voice as Gabara stays silent. He has learned to do better than to make noise when Master is making his own noises. “If it’ll calm you down, head out for the weekend after you are done with collections this friday. That’s what my friends in the City Council are doing, in any case.”

“And doesn’t that worry you, boss?”

“What? Like the government is going to go telling random municipal corporations to evacuate early? Nah, people would eat them alive. No matter how bad things get you can bet your ass that they won’t evacuate even a single village in the National Capital Region. No way.” Master moves away from Gabara’s cage, and the sound of creaking leather makes it clear that he’s sitting down behind his desk. “Fix that thing up, won’t you? And sit with me after that.”

“On it, boss.”

A second set of hands comes to grip the cage, and starts tilting it back into position, the blanket is left behind in a crumpled heap of faded white. That feeling remains, becoming stronger once more as the immediate threat of master’s attention is lessened. The moment Gabara’s fuzzy eyes are able to discern that these hands don’t belong to master, he jumps forward, slamming his head against the side of his cage and trying to snag and bite down on the new person’s fingers.

“AH! FUCK!” The new person recoils, not having lost any fingers but with a couple lacerated, leaving the tastes of blood in Gabara’s mouth.

“HAHAHAH…!” The Master laughs, it’s the good kind of laugh. “When will you people learn not to give him openings, I swear…”

“Yeah… Really funny boss…”

“Get over it, you big baby, I just offered you a free weekend, I think I’m allowed my fun too.”

Gabara’s eyes remain locked in the newcomer, his mouth slobbering and stained by pinkish foam.

“O bencho! That thing looks a lot worse than the last time I saw it, boss…”

“Oh, the scabs? Yeah, I think one of the dogs he killed last month infected him with mange. But the bald spots have been there for a while. He starts pulling his hair out when I forget to feed him for a while. It’s the one bad habit of that monkey’s I’ve never really managed to train it out of.”

“That doesn’t include biting people?” The newcomer answers as he gets back up and -grasping his hand to stem the bleeding, looks for something to clean himself up with. 

“Nah, why would I? The only reason I bought that baboon is because I like how it tears other things apart. It wouldn’t make me nearly as much profit if it didn’t try to kill anything that touches it. Oh, that drawer over there should have some wound alcohol and a bandaid.” Master directs, as he does, he pulls something out of one of the drawers in his desk.

The stick. The stick that makes blue lights and hurts so much. Master likes fiddling with it even when it’s not punishment time. “Now, the whole point of the interview was you telling me about how collections are going on your assigned slice of the pie.”

Even as Master becomes distracted from him, the feeling grows even stronger. All that Gabara wants to do is get out, and bite, or maybe get out by biting, but mainly he wants to get as far as possible from whatever makes him feel so bad, it’s only been getting worse and worse over the last night and the entire morning, not even his water ration and half-a-can of dogfood has been enough to distract him.

“Ahhh, well… It’s going to sound like a broken clock, but I’m pretty sure that this whole firefly situation is affecting business.”

“Really?”

“For the better, boss, for the better.” Newcomer quickly placates. “The dogfight and cockfight rings are seeing a lot more activity even in the middle of the week and on busy days. I think that a lot of people are having the same thoughts I have, but don’t have the spare money to really travel half-a-country away out of nowhere. So I’m pretty sure that a lot of people are trying to bet their way into financing that kind of stuff.”

“Well I’ll be damned. If we end up coming out of this shitshow with a profit you all scaredy fools really are going to have to eat your words.”

“Well boss, you aren’t going to see me complaining about money either, I’m not that worri… Hey, do you hear that?”

Gabara hears it too. It is a really loud buzzing noise, accompanied by a lot of general loudness from outside of the window that his cage rests under. Loud buzzing sounds aren’t rare in the big cities, they are made by the strange flying things that Gabara sometimes cranes his neck up to see. Neither is humans being loud. Humans are the only thing he knows louder than dying dogs. He hates loud humans…

But… No, this noise isn’t exactly like that… It is more… More like the buzzing of the flies that he often has to pick at to avoid maggots appearing under his wounds… But it is loud like the big gleaming and flying things…

“What in the…?” Master gets up, walking closer to Gabara’s cage and making the monkey recoil and ball itself against the opposite corner of the cage. Master opens the window, the sounds become louder, Gabara really hates loud humans…

Then, Master screams.

Something slams against the office building’s facade, shaking the entire structure and sending master tumbling back. The man’s shiny leather boot gets tangled in the dirty rag that is Gabara’s blanket, itself also pinned under a corner of his cage.

Sudden movement once again. This time the cage even catches airtime. When it slams back against the linoleum floor, something becomes clear. Everything Gabara has ever been around, for as long as the monkey has memories, has been dirty, rusty and half broken, spoiled food and many dogs in blood-stained fighting rings.

Including his cage, as it slams against the ground for a second time in a few minutes, something in the latch or hinges of the cage’s door snaps. The door swings open. Gabara scurries out, unnoticed as something just outside of the building tries to get into it, like fingers pulling at a scrap at a can’s button, except chitinous, bladed, and the size of a bull.

Gabara doesn’t think for a second, Master’s electric baton lies abandoned on the floor. Gabara pulls his own bleeding gums back, exposing chipped and yellowed teeth…. And lunges for Master’s face.

15th of February, 2007
Somewhere in the Thar Exclusion Zone

Rare is the day when Anvi Dholakia doesn’t question her decision to flee Daman. Then again, worrying about decisions that are already made is the only thing that can realistically occupy her mind these days. That, and keeping her children fed.

The arguments she thinks up to both convince herself of her decision being good or bad isn’t exactly circular logic, but does feel as choking as a snake biting its own tail.

On the one hand, there is the obvious fact that at the time when she had packed up her meager belongings -and those of Jannat and Ronak- those monsters of the Bharat National Army had been a week away from surrounding her home city. They had been among the few thousands lucky, smart or fast enough to escape the encirclement and avoid a siege still going on months later. Really, in that sense her resolve is steady.

It’s on the following steps that her trust in her own judgment collapses. Soon after her family’s arrival in Ahmedabad, they had all been swept up by the news that the Republican Army had stopped the BNA’s advance in a line running from Baruch to Indore, and even had pushed them back inland. Kaval had even managed to find work by way of the country-wide efforts to rebuild the railway system, thus skirting the draft many other male refugees had been “pushed” towards.

Her decision to, ultimately, flee India altogether. It had not been an easy decision, the argument with Kaval alone had been doubly as traumatic as leaving the city she had spent her entire life in. But she… She simply could not see herself raising her children like that, constantly ready to flee at the barest chance that the BNA’s next advance would not fail and that her two children would be consumed by a Civil War that seemed almost like a living thing, a monster that saw somehow topping the bloodshed of the Four Hundred Craters as its only goal.

How could they raise their children in a region where any day a bad wind or newly dug well could expose them to lethal doses of radiation? At that point, just a mote of dust in a refugee camp of overcrowded thousands in the edges of Ahmedabad, she had made the choice that she regrets every morning and remakes every night. She would use her husband’s savings as a springboard, and flee to Europe.

The decision had been made in a loving and terrified embrace, the two of them crying while their children slept in the next cot over. But it had been one with finality. Then again, the choice had afterwards become the root of a hundred more branching choices and decisions. Ones that she had made always tried to focus on saving her two little ones the most pain while expediting the voyages as quickly as possible.

The first hurdle had come simply in fleeing to the western borders of the Second Indian Republic, little more than fish in the middle of the great shoals doing the same thing. After that, an impasse.

Crossing into Sindh by way of braving the salt marshlands known as the Rann of Kutch, or reaching Khalistan through…

The Thar Desert.

Anvi looks up from her own lap, where little Jannat rests nestled between her legs on her seat in the rusted insides of the tarp-covered truck rapidly coasting down a non-existent road braying the low dunes at the Thar’s edges.

The smugglers in both routes were equally abusive and monetarily demanding, but eventually she had decided against the Rann of Kutch, having heard for days tales of the Sindh Salvation Government's heavily guarded borders and strictly enforced policies. Any Indians found illegally crossing would be deported by plane to the capital of the Indian government. And the Sindhis recognized the Nationalists as the legitimate government of india. Getting caught by them would mean ending up in some airport in Maharastra or even worse: Near the irradiated crater that Delhi had become, either way, she and her two children would find themselves on the wrong side of the frontline, with none but themselves to shield them.

The Thar Exclusion Zone, with its legends of radioactive sandstorms or desert-dwelling monsters, had somehow ended up being the more appealing option.

‘Jaisalmer’s ruins, that’s where we’ll shelter tonight.’ She repeats the itinerary in her own mind as Ronak plays with her sleeve in the seat by the one she shares with his little sister. ‘Then we’ll have to scrounge up for one of the barges crossing the Indus. Then Afghanistan or Persia, it does not matter, they both have refugee treaties with Europe, it may take years but we’ll get there, we’ll-’

She feels the truck slow down, when she looks around, she realizes that it is actually the entire convoy stopping, all seven trucks. There’s a commotion up in front. Before the vehicle has even come to a full stop, the armed men trafficking them start jumping off it. She’s too far into the truck to follow along, but that is not the case for many others in her own predicament who try to follow behind them, only to have the smugglers shoot at the sand at their feet as they themselves do their best to climb upon the one stolen military jeep that they had used to lead the column, which had been cresting a hill just before it had turned around.

It starts as a roar, not a roar an urbanite like her would recognize, but a bestial roar nonetheless, only to taper into a warbled sound half-way between a laugh and a cry of pain.

She knows it before she sees it, she wraps her arm around Jannar, and pulls Ronak behind herself with the other as the truck’s inside becomes a one-way current of people just trying to flee.

Crossing the Rann of Kutch might have been a one-way ticket into a place she’d never willingly step into. Crossing the Thar Exclusion Zone is, by contrast, playing a lottery.

A lottery that hundred are simultaneously losing together, as the jeep kicks up a cloud of sand and leaves them behind. 

Sharanga has found them.

Many would consider the beast -of which no tangible records exist- a boogeyman, a myth meant to scary civilians away from contaminated zones, a lie made up by the Khalistanis to stifle the usage of the desolation that is the Thar as a route for smugglers, refugees and dogs of war.

The dunes are all around them, even if they could escape, they would succumb to the heat or dehydration in a matter of days. Their only real option would be to command one of the trucks.

A shadow that roars like a madman crests the dune, standing upon it like an ogre of crooked back. Anvi looks up, and for the final time in her life, she comes to the definitive decision.

Leaving Ahmedad was a mistake, her children… Her children are going to die.

The green-scales monster, its skin covered in mushroom-like growths of bone, lets out another jarring roar, its jaw destenting so wide that a man could stand on its tongue without touching the mouth’s roof, lips and the raw internal musculature of the jaw pull themselves back and reveal rows of yellowed and greenish teeth.

The beast charges down the hill, lowering the rhinoceros-like horn on its forehead as its knuckle-dragging mash explodes downwards and directly into the side of one of the trucks.

The people inside don’t even stand a chance as the mother and her children stumble back, watching helpless as the thing keeps moving -mauling truck and all- towards the dune on the “road’s” other side, slamming it against it and crumpling the truck into a sideways-flattened mess of wrapped steel and soil. 

The monster then uses its massive forelimbs to wrench itself free off the truck, senselessly pummeling it even more, before it turns to choose a target once more. This time, its victims are the dozens attempting to crest the hill and disappear from its view.

Anvi shoves her children back, back towards the truck, and under it, blocking their views of the carnage as best as she can, without moving her own sight off it even once. Some people are grabbed and crushed like rotting fruit, or smeared into the sand like swatted flies. Others are shivered into the beast’s moth, their heads or upper bodies crushed or cracked apart in the way a thug would bite a bottle cap off, or like how a farmer might snap a chicken’s neck.

The monster even uses its tail to overturn trucks as other people try to climb aboard them and drive them off, in one case outright biting into the cabin of one, and pulling out the halves of two men, shaking them like gorish chewtoys.

The carnage continues for minutes on end, until she manages to shove and pull her children under the aforementioned truck, keeping them still as the voices of hundreds grow dimmer, those who aren’t killed immediately or mortally wounded fleeing into the Thar to a fate perhaps worse.

And eventually…

Wel… Eventually, the only sound that remains is the beast’s labored breathing, and her own children’s quieted sobbing. 

Not quiet enough, she eventually realizes, when the beast’s strange gait starts lumbering towards one of the three empty trucks still intact. Anvi plants her psalm on her children’s mouths, one last fruitless effort to silence them before-

Ape-like hands with reptilian claws grab on either sides of the truck bed around them as she covers her children’s bodies with her own. Like a giant holding up the sky, the kaiju raises to its back limbs as it holds the entire truck aloft, its gaze turned down on them.

Sharanga’s eyes are bloody and a sickly white, its lips peel back only more to reveal jagged teeth. There is only hate in those eyes, abject hate. Anvi screams. The Kaiju roars back.

Sharanga. Does. Not. Like. When. Humans. Are. Loud.

The Daikaiju slams the truck down upon them with a final and horrid roar.

Chapter Text

15th of April, 1981
Somewhere in West Azerbaijan Province, Iraq-Occupied Iran

Really, Emad should have guessed that he’d inherently be fucked when -shortly before the war’s start- the 4th Division had been reconstituted as the 4th Mountain Infantry Division. Because, really, if there ever could be a single word to define the Iraqi-Iranian border, it’s “mountain.”

The Zagros Mountains, to be precise, the very ones he is traversing right now alongside the rest of 16th Motorized Brigade. They are an unforgiving place even at this time of the year, marginally -if thankfully- better than the frigid temperatures and constant snow and rain of winter, but still a tiring landscape of endless peaks of cracked limestone only occasionally broken up by arid mountain forests.

And, again, Emad is aware of his relative luck even as he readjusts his heavy backpack’s straps. The mountains make moving quickly impossible, especially being part of a motorized unit tied down to a number of usable mountain roads and a few wider passes. Which means that he’s so far stayed far from the bulk of the fighting down southeast, where the plains around the Shatt al-Arab had allowed both his own homeland’s and Iran’s armies to clash in much more brutal and open battles. 

The mountains also help stay safe, being as everywhere one looks he can find a natural ridge to use as a trench or to hide from air strikes and artillery alike. At this point, he is pretty sure that the limestone has done more to keep him alive than his own equipment.

But none of that really is enough to get him -and every last one of his fellow soldiers and officers up the line of divisional command- what they want, which is to actually get out of the Zagros. Almost coinciding with the secular new year, the war to liberate the Khuzestan and other rightfully Iraqi fringelands had stalled. And the only thing one can do on a mountain front during a stalled war is digging in or sending out patrols to make it harder for the other side to do the same. 

Considering the obvious fact that he is holding his rifle instead of a pickaxe, one can easily guess which one of the two options Emad’s unit is currently saddled with. Something that has happened often enough that his internal clock has started keeping tabs on how much of a patrol route there is left for the day by way of remembering specific details of the landscape around and above him, all of it without having to make use of the wristwatch that he traded a supply of cigarettes for two weeks ago. A notable peak over there, a unique-looking outcrop out there…

‘Couple more hours and we should be done.’ He assesses as he walks along the rest of the column. These days they walk ahead of their wheeled elements, to keep tabs on accidents of the terrain like landslides or new crags, or landmines and other traps laid down by the persian opposites of whom they see so little.

They very much are there, the private knows as much, considering that he’s been shot at by them thrice in the last thirty days, and that the aforementioned man-made traps are a multiple-days-a-week affair. 

To be fair, a lot of those traps could very much be the product of the Kurds living on the side of the border he is currently standing on. It’s not as if the ones back home are anymore forthcoming or trustworthy.

“Private Mahawi!” His Mulazim -Lieutenant- shouts for him from a good few paces, where the column seems to have been stopped in its tracks by a… Herd of bezoars?

Indeed, the mountain goats are by now familiar to them, if less likely to use the same dirt roads that their domesticated cousins would often be led across by the locals. It’s enough of a common sight for none of his fellow soldiers to be alarmed beyond stepping aside to avoid the trotting animals’ horns.

“Yes, lieutenant?” He salutes as he reaches the officer, failing to stand at attention properly as he quickly goes back to looking down on the dozen or so wild goats.

“Something must have spooked them.” Lieutenant Abdelhossein speaks, and it takes a moment for Emad to realize that the older man is both commenting on the animals and giving him context as to the orders that follow. “They are not trusting animals like normal goats. If they are moving through us something might have spooked them. I want to talk with command.” The man needs not imply what might have spooked the animals. 

An entire column of motorized infantry wouldn’t be ordered to stop its patrol over a pack of wolves the next valley over, after all…

“On it, sir.” Emad nods, lowering himself to the ground and taking his backpack off in order to start pulling out and setting up the unit’s bulky radio-and-antenna, a necessity in a landscape as harsh as this one. On top of that, he actually feels happy at the order he has been given, for two reasons. Firstly, it means an extra stop for the column other than the official ones, a chance to rest his sore legs. Secondly, if the officer’s hunch is right, it might have saved them all from the bad luck of stumbling into yet another firefight. Or worse, an ambush.

The setup always takes a few minutes, no way around it. He’s seen some radios small enough to simply be the backpacks of specialized officers, but in Iraq it's up to guys like Emad to set them up on the go. The extra weight is worth it, though, since the machine’s value usually keeps him put well behind the most immediate danger.

He occupies himself with that and other musings as he mechanically continues with the setup’s steps, all the while the rest of the column comes to a halt while the bezoars go off the ledge to their right and start climbing down the valley’s inclined slope. His few soldiers use the stop as as much of an excuse to rest their legs as he does, all thirty men -including the drivers of their armored personnel carrier and two armored cars.

Which is why Emad doesn’t crane his neck when a shadow flies overhead of them all. He doesn’t see it, considering that he is looking directly under himself. Even if he had seen it from the corner of his eye, he might still not have reacted with worry. After all, the kind of scary flying things that he’s grown to fear in Iran are too fast to create such kinds of flagging shadows.

However, Emad does notice other signs that something other than goats -or perhaps the ibex themselves had been a sign- should also be heading for the relative safety of a valley’s bottom.

The alerted and incredulous shouts are what finally helps him realize it all, however, and that is already too late.

As he turns his neck from his crouching position, he finds his sight blocked by the bodies of fellow soldiers, some pointing up at the sky as they continue to shout in alarm, others walking and stepping back, many doing both things, few have the presence of mind to do so with their rifles held up at whatever worries them so much. Not like they would do much on their own, but thirty-ish riflemen are not an ignorable amount of riflemen.

It is then, of course, that the flying shadow decides to be something other than a shadow, and a mass of green scales and yellow membranes obscured by their own speed slams onto the roof of their APC. The entire vehicle flattens as the suspension is overwhelmed, while the roof caves in and the chassis’ bottom crash into the ground in quick succession, axel snapping and tires exploding out due to the metal digging into them and the sudden pressure. 

That, if nothing else, ends their chances to kill what perches on top of the destroyed vehicle. Because -in the neglect borne out of spending three months patrolings in the middle of nowhere- the entire unit had opted to leave their heavier weapons and extra supplies and munitions inside of the vehicle, instead of carrying it along while a selected few would ride inside. It would be more fair, they had collectively decided weeks ago, for everyone to walk lighter, than for a few to not even have to walk while many others would have to carry everything on their own.

Men run as the dust and gravel cloud created by the impact dies down, and Amed becomes privy to the sight of a monster’s tail lashing out, striking three men on their chests in an arch. The one slammed against the milestone wall to their left goes limp as his torso and head slam against the rock, splattering them red, another simply screams as he is thrown to the right, arching out of view as he falls down the valley until a sickening crunch silences him. The luckiest one is simply thrown back down the road, skidding across the dirt of it until he comes to a stop and another soldier grabs him and starts pulling him back in the direction the vivisected column had come from, where Emad can already see some men running downhill and back to their camp, and others hiding behind rocks to starts actually leveling fire at the…

Sherdal -gryphon- or at least a monstrous approximation of one that reminds him of the monsters seen across the world for the last thirty years. Its body is like that of a svelte feline, and its two-horned head sports a hooked beak, but beyond that, the green beast is reptilian from claws to snake-like tail.

The sound of much heavier fire stuns him and makes him fall down, the heavy machine gun mounted in one of the scout car’s dome-like turrets starts firing into the animal’s flank like a beating drum. Some of the rounds ricochet off like they would against rock or sloped metal, while others clearly wound the animal, to which it reacts with-

Emad shuts his eyes and covers them with his forearm, blinded as a cry of pain from the thing’s beak turns into a hot-white burst of flame that engulfs the scout car.

And alongside it, the men who had been using the vehicle as their own cover, what follows is gruesome, as -smell of searing flesh suddenly unmistakable- the poor souls in the driver’s seat hits reverse and as metal becomes singed and everything else starts to melt and pop, reversing into the suddenly-on-fire men while the flames start licking away at the armored car’s interior until it all becomes little more than a mass of burning metal and charred corpses tumbling and dragging down the cliff.

Emad tries to get up as any semblance of order fully collapses, making a damning mistake just before he starts a desperate run forward, trying to leave both help but also the kaiju behind. On robotical instinct, he straps his backpack back on again as he runs by the catatonic Lieutenant, even if leaving half of its electronic components scattered on the ground behind him. He runs as much as he can in hopes that the animal’s roars, the abating gunfire and the shouts and screams will lessen.

The sudden beating of sail-like wings, the breeze at his back. More screaming and less shooting as men duck aways.

Something yanks at Emad’s backpack, one of four massive talons grazing the side of his face. And suddenly, he’s not in the middle of some nameless mountain road in the middle of the northern Zagros.

Suddenly, the Zagros Mountains and their average elevations of four and a half thousand meters are under him as a roaring monster retires from a battle it confidently feels it has won. 

Thankfully, it’s now that Emad’s body and mind give up, and he blacks out with aid from the suddenly thinner air.

Or maybe not. Maybe what is in store for the invading Iraqi is much worse than shaking his backpack off and falling to his death could ever be.

16th of April, 1981
Sabaland Volcano, Ardabil Province, Imperial State of Iran

When he wakes up, it is the biting cold creeping up Emad’s leg that actually does most of the work, aided by the uncomfortable feeling of wet gravel against his cheek. And -as if the cold shock weren’t enough- when he opens his bleary eyes, it is to a landscape that can only be described as a white bowl and a clear blue sky. And, oh yes, the fire-breathing monster perched on said bowl’s edge, that’ll wake any man up.

He scrambles up and out of the lakeshore, planting his military-issue gloves on the… Lakeshore? And scrambling up until the black gravel becomes snow, and he starts connecting the dots. He’s on some kind of high-mountain lake’s bowl, explaining the snow and freezing water despite the lack of wind and clear sunny sky.

The next thing he does, his eyes still glued on the monster’s shape, is palm himself for wounds or -more importantly- his equipment. He is lighter than usual, and indeed finds his destroyed backpack a few paces, both radio and his actual personal equipment scattered about. His tariq pistol is still holstered from his hip, while his AK has clearly seen better days, but the strap keeping it attached around his chest has at least kept it with him.

He isn’t sure how much good it’ll do him, considering that the monster -which so far hasn’t moved from its perch- had handled being shot at by a mounted heavy machine gun pretty well, but it is better than nothing, as he keeps his eyes trained on it, simultaneously raising his rifle up to be able to use the iron sights while slowly walking backwards.

‘Can’t kill it… But if it stays steady and I manage to pop its eye…’ He starts planning, adrenaline coursing through his veins making sure that there’s none of the awestruck shock of beholding a Kaiju in person anymore. ‘Yeah, maybe that’d give me enough time to run for the crater’s lip, if I do that and run downhill, I could find a cave, or a patch of trees to hide under.’

Still, as he observes the animal, he can’t help but let his trained eye wander a little bit across the six-limbed monster’s shape. Which is when he notices its flank, and the clear lack of bullet wounds across it. ‘It can’t have healed this fast, right? How long was I even out for?’

He gets an answer to the former question a little later, just as he starts noticing the obvious differences in proportion, such as larger wings, but a lighter body.

The growl that keys him in   y way of making his gut turn against him is, appropriately, as if someone had mixed a crocodile’s growl into the rising screech of a bird of prey. And it comes from his left, almost behind him. He utters a small prayer when, upon turning, the first beast doesn't react to his sudden movement.

Another beast more than ninety degrees around but perched on another section of crater wall just like the first one. Larger, clearly wounded, if not bleeding anymore. There are two of them.

The way they are both positioned, he is fucked. They are like an arrowhead and he’s at the tip of it. The chances of him popping one’s eye across the crater-lake was already slim. The chance of him doing it to both, or tripping them up in any other way.

And it is just as he internalizes that realization, of course, that he hears something crack behind himself. He freezes in reaction, his heart beating so hatred that he can’t even feel the possible onset of hypothermia on his leg.

‘Well,’ He eventually decides. ‘Not like me pointing a gun at them is going to actually dissuade them in any way.’

And so he turns around, and finds something in plain sight. Just as the first Kaiju had produced tunnel vision on him, the both of them together had made it easy for him to overlook the one part of the alpine crater that isn’t covered in snow or lakewater. A mass of lumber and curled branches, peeled off their bark yet unrotted by way of the cold but dry climate. All around it, an ossuary. Deer, goat, ibex, boar, sheep… Somehow, the fact that he doesn’t recognize any human remains among the dozens of picked-clean skeletons doesn’t give him much confidence, neither does the thing poking out of the ring of branches roughly the size of a jacuzzi.

It looks excitable, with the oversized eyes and nubby horns of a hatchling and the excited disposition of a pup ready to be picked out of a cardboard box bound for a new home. Except it's the size of a tiger, has roughly tiger-sized claws, and a beak that would make an eagle feel like a show pigeon.

A hatchling.

Emad is food, a worm brought back to the nest for the chick to feed on while it's too awkward and fumbling to fly or feed itself. A chick, large enough to down a horse. Once more instinct takes over, just in time, for as he gives an alarmed shout the animal leaps out of the woody next and towards him. He has at no point lowered his rifle, but shaking hands and fear start creeping up as even adrenaline runs short by way of tiredness and hunger. The shots he fires almost all miss, sending chips of wood and puffs of snow flying. The one bullet that grazes one of the animal’s limbs just before he is barrelled over doesn’t seem to stop the animal.

The leap pushes him back into the edge of the freezing lakewater, landing back first and with the animal on top of him, It tries without delay to bite down on his head, or perhaps neck, but he doesn’t let it by placing his rifle on the way. The bite chips the AK’s wood and bends the metal, but doesn’t get through, giving him a chance to use it for leverage in pushing the animal off him. Somewhere on the back of his mind, he hears the sounds of crunching snow and cracking rock as the adults move down into the crater, letting out more of their chimeric roars.

But he is too focused for that, the strap around his neck snaps as the much heavier hatchling is pushed away and falls beside him, keeping the rifle with itself and forcing him to start scrambling from his pistol, still in its holster.

But he can barely pop the button, keeping it secured. A pungle into the water hasn’t done anything good for his already-struggling body, and his shivering starts getting bad enough that he decides to instead just try and get up before he just gets pinned down again and just drowns to dead before the damnable thing can even get its bites it.

He never even gets that far. The hatchling, curiously observing him, also begins to twitch, not shivering, but with muscle spasms so obvious that even he takes pause at them. 

What follows? Well, Emad has never been tested before. But he does remember the nasty surprise born out of touching a couple peeled cables by mistake, back when electricity had been halfway-added to his family’s home in Baghdad a few years ago, the result of his brother doing the work himself and leaving one of the appliances half done before leaving to buy outlets from a nearby store.

This feels like that, except the shock occurs all over his body, starting at his feet in the ankle deep water and then spidering up his full body until he is a barely-cognizant piece of meat writhing and drowning in a freezing lake.

After that -albeit from some help from its parents pulling them out of the lake- the hatchling has little trouble dispatching the latest in a long list of “training prey”.

1st of January, 1981
Khorramabad, Lorestan Province, Imperial State of Iran

There’s something mythically cool to riding towards battle atop the fuselage of a chieftain tank, Farzad believes, and he’s very much willing to fight anyone who disagrees. Of course, being the fresh recruit to the 16th Royal Armored Division that he is, he understands that the novelty may run out if at some point someone starts shooting at the tank while he’s on top of it. But he feels that he is owed the right to have some fun now that he’s a few days from the actual combat lines.

He knows little more than the fact that the unit that he is attached to is meant to be striking at the Iraqis besieging Dezful sometime within the week. But at the speed at which the unit is traveling -and the fact that they usually take a couple days to muster before the actual shooting starts- keeps him quite confident. Plus, they haven’t had to worry about airstrikes for a while now with how better the Shah’s planes are to the Baathists'.

Well, and there’s things other than planes patrolling the skies these days, too…

“Farzad! He’s here! Look!” One is his fellow recruits, Kamram, kicks him in the hip as he continues his day dreaming nap. “You idiot! Wake up, you are going to miss him!”

“Uuh-Uh! What! I’m up! Are they shooting at-?!”

Kamram grabs his head and neck, and literally points him up and to the north like a telescope. There, a sight that now lines a hundred propaganda posters and a million decals and kit decorations.

The Gappa , at least one of them, named so by their KDF allies from their Tehran office. A massive, flying and glorious set of beasts that have spent the last few months making life a living hell for Iraqis from Ahwaz to Erbil, as if the monsters somehow intended to aid them in vanquishing the invaders.

Just as quickly as it plunges down the clouds to make itself visible, the flying Kaiju lets out an echoing roar, and bats its wings to once more rise beyond sight.

Really, riding a tank to battle while a gryphon flies along and overhead, Farzad could be telling all about this to his family back in Shiraz and they wouldn’t believe him, he is sure of it.

Chapter Text

9th of October, 1995
Somewhere on the German Coast, Dixie-Afrikan Border

Of the four people manning the PBRs -literally meaning “Patrol Boat, River” as one ought to expect from the no-longer existing US of A- serving in the New Afrikan Navy, of which there are a good few hundred refitted from Vietnam War-old mothballing, one would have been hard pressed to find a crew as picturesque as the one lead by Chief Petty Officer Buron. In truth, the only real common denominator between the four people -including herself- patrolling up the section of the Mississippi known as the German Coast is the fact that all of their “uniforms” have patches of the New Afrikan Republic’s green-red-black on their arms.

That’s it, really, and it’s obvious enough that even a woman like herself, with little more than three years on her service record, understands how unorthodox that is for a force in North America. Then again, the on-and-off state of constant civil war across said continent for those same three years have left very few with the free time, resources or even regard for such a thing. 

As far as she herself cares, uniforms are only necessary insofar as they keep you from shooting your sisters and comrades, and that’s not really a concern in her theater, since everyone holding a gun and -or- being white on the east bank of the Mississippi is the definition of not-friendly.

Indeed, she doesn’t find herself overly concerned about the getups of the three crew members assembled across the slightly cramped fiberglass hull. A fiberglass hull as un-uniform as the people commanding it, considering the snake’s head that its bow is painted to resemble, and the collection of signatures and short messages painted in white across its green-brown sides.

The ship is moving at a low speed, both because it makes their job of spotting suspicious activity on the enemy’s side easier, but also because the Mighty Mississippi isn’t exactly the widest or straightest of rivers around these parts, and trying to navigate its shape and the thousands of tributaries, swamps and oxbow lakes attaches to it at full speed is a reliable way to find oneself an early grave.

And so, as unadvisable as it is, Bernice finds herself relaxing and looking around. The local scenery doesn’t draw her attention, not when she’s been surrounded by it her entire life. Obviously, her gaze ends up landing on the people who’ve been under her command for little more than a month, the result of a battlefield promotion.

The first is Seaman Constantin Lebasque, “Basque” for short, just in front of her, sunning himself and shirtless, lounging with his feet over the lip of the shielded tub that is the boat’s main armament, a turret armed with a twinned set of M2HB machine guns. A Louisiana native, like herself, albeit an obvious white Cajun, and a young recruit at that. Being a “veteran” she’s well aware of the shift he represents. Back, during the first months up to the first year fighting the confeds, one would have needed to be going through a psychotic break to find a white -Cajon or of any other kind- fighting under the RNA.

Nowadays? With the monsters across the Mississippi putting anyone but their own wives to the whip? The Cajuns had not exactly flooded recruitment offices, but horror stories about the fates of their fellow catholics across the river had been a recruitment drive in of itself.

As such, Basque is a rarity that is becoming less rare by the day, a young Cajun willingly serving under a military of near-only colored officers, some, like herself, female colored officers.

She’s professional enough not to stare for too long as the soldier a few years her younger as he suns himself like a pale gator. She might not discriminate as much as some sisters do when drawing up her suitor pool, but she’s already seeing a guy in Baton Rougue, besides Basque is a bit too scrawny for her.

“Hey! Acadian!” She calls out, to which he opens his eyes and cranes his neck back to look at her, even if upside down.

“Yes, ma’am?” He asks back.

“I sure do hope you plan on spending some amount of our patrols awake, seaman.” She smirks down at him.

“Worry not, ma’am, I’ve heard getting shot at does wonders even with the heaviest of sleepers!” He salutes -again, upside down- with a joking tone of his own. But while he does remain in a lounging position, she’s happy enough to catch that he doesn’t go back to sleep, instead fiddling with his camo jackets or a brownish pattern that doesn’t fit their environment at all for most of the year. As mild as Luisiana autumns are, they still get their fair share of cold and leaffall, even if today’s mild heat doesn’t exactly prove it.

The next of Bernice’s wandering senses to pick up something interesting is noise, the conversation being had between the remaining two seamen of her crew, as they simply lean back on the ship’s fiberglass stern, one on each side of the M60 machine gun mounted on it.

“Look kid, all I’m saying is that it never hurts no one to pick up a book and read up on his political theory.” Argues one Oghenekaro Cisse, Black Panther Party “veteran” and what could only be described as a self-appointed soft-commissar. The man is around three years her senior, an immigrant among the thousands of militant BPP members and their families who had started flocking towards the deep south as soon as the republic had been proclaimed, among the first to pick up arms when the shootouts with the slavers had started.

Usually a shoe-in for her rank or one much higher, but political connections or ideological pedigree mean little in the hot border that is the Mississippi, and she’s got him beat by a sadly large margin in the “having been involved in deadly river skirmishes” category. Besides, as obnoxious as the Springfield-bone mechanic may be in the realm of politics, he’s never not been a good sport about her position. Comes with the womanism coded into the BPP, she supposes, even if she finds herself annoyed to realize that she only knows the term through him.

“Look, I’m sorry boss, but I didn’t enlist to read no books written by Karl-fucking-Marx okay?” Answers the last -and youngest- member of their merry crew, Seaman Trevor Banks. 

“Marx is hardly the only author I’d recommend, as truncal Das Kapital , I understand that his work could hardly be appealing to someone who is offended by the idea of reading.”

“First, rude, I do read. I buy the newspaper whenever I have a chance, including the party one you nag me so much about.” The Georgia-born black represents yet another segment of the RNA’s eclectic makeup, the son of refugees who had spent two years fleeing the deep south at any cost, a kid who had gone as far as to tell them that he’d had his eighteenth birthday inside the false floor of a barge manned by activists of the underground canals, and who had enlisted as soon as his family had been settled down in one of the refugee-ladened communities up in the northwest. “Second, I don’t think I’d read much Marx or whoever else even if I was into it. Don’t have the time.” The young man busies himself with trying to keep his cigarette from getting blown away or ruined by the speed and humidity of their context.

“My proudest victory with you, the newspaper has been. And I actually was hoping to recommend some more publications to you. But now I need you to tell me what exactly keeps you so busy, considering that you and I work in the boat, and I’m the only one constantly getting grease up to his elbows trying to get this old machine to keep getting us where we need to get.” Even as he says that, a vague hand gesture tells Trevor to share his cigarette with the older soldier, something he does readily as he answers.

“Kill confeds, what fucking else?” 

“I’ll say amen to that.” Cisse smiles. “Amen to that!”

The comment -and the shared smoke- devolves into their argument becoming much less heated, as both end up sharing in the struggle of not wasting the tobacco.

Bernice’s focus, instead, returns to her actual piloting, as she catches a glimpse of some kind of movement on the side of the river, ripples on the water under the opposing riverbank’s trees, large enough to be picked up among the usual perturbations of the flowing brown water. Exactly what they are meant to be keeping an eye on. The first thing she does is lower speed and start a very wide turn, but that’s already enough for the three Seamen to pick up on the change and indeed alter their demeanour.

She might be the most experienced of them all -her purposefully nameless PBRs long history of patch-ups can attest to that- but that doesn't make rookies out of any of them. The most obvious one is Basque, who indeed retreated into his tub-shaped turret like a 3rd Amendment-loving hermit crab. Banks, for his part, checks his hull-mounted machine gun, even if he doesn’t make any moves to aim it yet, while Cisse moves the most, killing the cigarette against the hull, pocketing the rest of it and moving to lean out starboard-side while grabbing hold of his AR-15, positioning himself to be the one with the easiest eye into what might have caught her attention.

“Something spooked us, ma’am?” Basque is the first to speak as his turret noisily starts to swing.

“Not sure, yet. Keep your eyes peeled.” She answers, raising up the binoculars slung from her neck. “Didn’t see any glint of metal or glass or plastic, could just be an animal.” She offers, slowing the boat down further without even looking. 

She certainly hopes it's such a thing. These days, the Underground Canals have slowed down -mostly, because almost all the colored people and other such people in danger who could get out, already have, fleeing from the nightmare that are their nextdoor neighbours- but one could never know. And if it’s a case of fleeing refugees, they’ll need to move them out fast , even if they will do so even if they will be happy to do so.

Or it could be worse, could be a hiding counter patrol, and that’d inevitably end with a patrol boat joust of the kind that usually meant total casualties for one or both sides. Or it could be the worst case scenario, the one involving them catching some stage of confederate preparations for a cross-riverine raid, the kind that’d end up with a trail of blood covering multiple parishes if the people on solid ground aren’t warned soon enough or fail to check.

She’s only ever met one of those, the survival of which -by the skin of her teeth- being the reason she commands a boat at all.

“I’ll be happy if it’s an animal.” Trevor mumbles. “As long as it's not a gator, I hate gators, one ate my aunt’s dog when I was a kid. I loved that dog.”

“Tastes great, though.” Dryly adds Lebasque.

“Dog or Gator?”

“Well-”

“I don’t want to hear the answer to that.” Oghenekaro interrupts, making Bernice chuckle.

“Gators…” Trevor continues to mumble. “Have you all been hearing the rumors?”

“About them eating people?” Oghenekaro responds. “I hardly would be surprised by a carnivorous reptile eating carrion floating in the river it lives in.” He assesses.

“Yeah, but I mean-?”

“The part where people think they’ve developed a taste for blood and are going around actively hunting people?” The officer herself answers. “Yeah, I’d draw the line at serial killer gators. This isn’t Florida.”

“Yeah.” The Cajun agrees, all four of them talking as they keep their eyes peeled on the opposite side of the river. “We don’t need radioactive gators here, we already got Uktena for that.”

“Not that again.” Oghenekaro huffs. “Superstition is half the reason why our people have struggled so much, we ought not to further spread it.”

“Come on, the natives all know about it, and us Arcadians have been seeing it ever since we settled around these parts. Besides, you were okay with me painting its face on the hull, weren’t you?”

“Decorations raise morale, it’s not the same thing.”

“Sure, whatever you say. I still say that, with the kinds of Kaiju people keep talking about all over the world, a big snake with horns shouldn’t be that hard to believe.”

“Talking horns.” Bernice interrupts the squabble. “I think what I saw might have been a deer, I’m pretty sure I saw antlers just a moment ago while you all were arguing.”

“Coast is clear then, ma’am?”

“Sure hope so.” She lets the binocular hang once more and rubs her eyes. Remembering that it is indeed not late enough into the year for such animals to shed their antlers. “Let's get going, we still have a whole day’s route to go through, I don’t want to waste daylight on false leads.”

Her words are met with various sounds of affirmation. Minutes later, the snake-faced river patroller is already once more making its way up the Mighty Mississippi.

“Wow, that was close uh? Wasn’t it, pah’?” An over-eager Rusty Sammons says for the fifth time today.

“Yeah, yeah…” His father waves as he unties their small rowboat. “Now come over and start helping me push.”

The teenager does as ordered, still extremely excited about not only what has already happened to him today, but the prospects of what is to happen soon. Who would have told him that he’d be dodging nigger patrols like a freaking ninja! He’d even done that cool thing of wading under water and hiding under some floating weeds. Sure, his father had still slapped him hard across the back of the neck for getting himself smelling like rank riverwater, but it had still been cool, and things would only be getting cooler from now on.

“Come on, boy.” His father, the coolest ex-marine ever, grumbles as they push the boat all the way into the water. “We got a short window before the night patrols start.”

“The ones with the big flashlights mom always complains about?”

“Those ones.” His father grunts, not stopping as they both start hauling their kits into the boat and setting the oars up. “We need to have the boat hidden on the other side before they start looking around, and crossing the Mississippi without an overboard isn’t exactly fast.”

“Then why aren’t we taking the one with the motor, pah?”

“Because they’d hear us, RR.”

RR, or Rusty the Retard, a nickname that his siblings had started, and that he’d hoped his father didn’t find so funny.

“Ah, uh, sure. Yeah that makes sense.”

“And remember,” His father lectures. “We gotta be inconspicuous. Just as I told you from before the reds ruined the marine core, we go in, find out as much as we can about the local settlements and get back. If anyone talks to us…?” The man leads him on to answer as the boat starts being pulled downstream while they mainly try to just make sure they go downstream and across at the same time.

“If people ask, we visiting family that we lost contact with when we crossed the river. We ask around for the Sammons, nicely, and say thanks whatever people tell us.”

“And what else?”

“No calling anyone coons, shitskins, gator bait, slaves, Jim Crow, negro, nigger or nigglet, or-”

“Atta boy. I know it's hard mingling with escaped property like this. But the boys back home really need good intel on the runaway property if they want the mission they are cooking up to work well, and people like us are best for getting it. We blend in easy, since we sound just like the enslaved whites just across the river.”

“Will we get to kill any niggers?”

“Hopefully not.” His father chastises. “We will if they make us, but we want to go unno-”

Rusty is seated closer to the stern, facing his father and the opposing riverbank. Which means that when the explosion of blinding light occurs behind his back -accompanied by the sound of the grand shocking sound a log would make while splashing into the water- he friendly goes from being shrouded in total darkness other than the light of the scars, to being able to see every last detail in his father’s face, cast in white light and harsh shadows.

Rusty freezes and remains locked in looking at his dad, hoping for guidance even as the man swears, squints and covers his eyes. His immediate assumption is that they have been indeed found out by an specially sneaky nigger patrol and are about to be riddled with holes -eaxctly what his father’s friends in the militia would do, where things to occur the other way around- and as such, Rusty remains frozen in fear, only proceeding to piss himself.

It is, of course, as the light dims slightly and his father’s neck begins to crane upwards, that he starts thinking that the case may not be as simple, but no less worthy of pissing oneself about.

“What… What on God’s blessed earth…?” The man audibly gulps.

Finally, Rusty turns around. Into a facefull of scales as wide as rubber tires and shining a light as white as the most powerful LED’s, all wrapped around the underside of a neck -no, a body- the width of a tree trunk and the length of a…

Rusty’s neck -taking after his father’s- cranes up, up and up, until he finds what he’s looking for. The massive head of a snake drooling something that makes his nose bleed, shaped like a rattlesnake’s but bigger than the largest gator he’s ever seen, all of it crowned with a set of seven-tipped antlers that would put an elk to shame.

And Rusty doesn’t get to observe much else, for the animal lunges downwards, cracking the boat like a twig and shredding and pulling both father and son alike for a ride to the bottom of the Mighty Mississippi

Maybe, one ought to realize, one of the reasons why Uktena remains a cryptic myth in a place as clogged with patrols as this river, is that -much like the men and women using the waterway- it knows better than to leave survivors

Its patrols are much more fruitful than anyone else's around these parts, that’s for certain…

Chapter Text

1st of March, 2115
Somewhere in the Cilo-Sat Mountains, Colemêrg Province, Kurdish Soviet Socialist Republic

The Berkar sisters are an ambitious duo, or at least that is what the news articles about their burgeoning mountaineering career like to say. If one were to ask the girls’ family, or the sisters themselves, they would much more readily use descriptors such as “hothead” or “idiot.”

After all, dedicating themselves to an “outdoorsy” career such as the certification they are trying to get as mountaineering guides and instructors is not a safe one. In more ways than one. There’s the economics of it, for once, it is not as if their fellow Kurds are a people who would ever treat mountain-climbing as the extreme or exotic sport many foreigners see it as, foreigners which have never been especially plentiful, those from abroad aren’t exactly the most keen on visiting a soviet republic, and tourists within the Warsaw Treaty Organization’s sphere… Aren’t exactly camping at the bit to visit a country so close to the Destroyer’s wake.

But there are also, the more obvious and physical risks. After all, the girls aren’t trekking some scenic route weaning through mountains and into picturesque villages. They are slowly progressing up the rocky slopes of one of the Taurus Mountains' highest peaks. 

Mount Cilo awaits for Yekta and Estere to conquer it, just as they have twice done to its even taller sibling, Armenia’s own Mount Ağrı. Then again, both of their summits of the five thousand meters tall peak had been done as part of a much larger group made up of dozens of members of their home city’s mountaineering association. Today, even if they still wear their “Amed Summiters” equipment, the sisters are very much attempting the summit without any other members of their party-sponsored club.

It’s all part of the demands for their certifications, the proven capability to summit a certain amount of the Caucasus and Taurus peaks without any guide other than their own preparations. It’s been grueling so far, a challenge only made harder by their insistence to set out at the earliest opened window of opportunity. The sisters are certainly not doing themselves any favours by attempting the trip so early in the year, when the cold and snow still clings to the heights of the Taurus peaks and valleys.

As said, hotheads.

“You know.” Yekta, the older of the two, speaks up as they come to rest in the shade of one of the many human-heighted pieces of weathered stone which dot the landscape like cracked pyramids and shattered cones. “I wonder if they'll change the permit requirements any time soon. Like, come on, I love this place, but having to summit Cilo in a team of three or less is the only mountain-specific requirement, and it really stands out when the rest are just about hitting a certain amount of hours, route difficulty levels and minimum heights.”

Estere doesn’t answer instantly, pulling her metal aluminum canteen out and taking a couple deep gulps. She only starts to answer as she wipes some stray droplets from her corner of the lips, and offers the canteen to her big sister. “It’s a rite of passage, sis, not just a tick in a box. It’s like Armenians with Ararat.”

“Nah.” She shakes her head. “You know I don’t care about all that religion crap grandma cares so much about. But even I know that Noah’s Ark is much bigger of a deal than some PKK soldiers from more than fifty years ago.”

“Sure, okay,” Estere’s eyes roll. “Just don’t come complaining to me when you get your certification denied for being a revisionist.” The younger sister starts walking again, the both of them hoping to make good time with the remainder of their afternoon’s section of the twosome’s expedition.

“Revisionist?” Yekta’s eyebrow rises as she gets up and follows along. “Do you hear yourself talking? Have you been watching dad’s old movies again? I haven’t heard that word being used unironically since we were in school.”

“Whatever!” Estere raises her arm in a gesture that does a great job at conveying a wordless ‘fuck off.’ “You coming or what?”

Soon enough, the bickering siblings are back on track. And track is a very loaded term in this context, as they are progressing up one of Cilo’s least friendly routes. And yet, as tiring as it all is, the sisters can’t help but enjoy themselves.

The craggy massif of which Cilo is the highest peak is a breathtaking place, specially when beheld under an early spring sky of clean blue dotted by dozens of pure-white clouds. The topography is extremely rugged, yes -the sisters wouldn’t be here otherwise- but not without its wonder. High-pointed summits and sharp and jagged ridges flank them as they march, some are steep and nearly-vertical cliffs of limestone that lead into deep gorges and glaciers kept chill by the very same geography’s shadows.

“Hey, remember that old turkish guide from the 2000s?”

“Oh, yeah, that abridged Taurus Mountains book?”

“Yeah… I think I recognize a few of the pictures it had of glaciers. It’s kinda nice, they looked so much smaller back then. We’ve passed by some that might not even have been there back when grandma was in the guerillas around here.”

“Well, I’m not sure about nice . I’ll grant you they look beautiful, but I think a lot of people sure as hell would have traded a dozen glaciers for the kaiju that made them come back.”

“Yeah… That is far. Still, not a crime to notice how pretty they look now.”

“Oh, for sure!”

They continue to enjoy the aforementioned picturesque sights -of which neither sister takes photos, as they have inherited the Berkar family’s inability to take good pictures- for a couple more hours as they progress, sometimes walking along faint -almost imaginary- trails, other times having to use their equipment and acuity with ropes to climb and perch their way along and around challenging obstacles.

That is, of course, until the tremor interrupts one of their last scheduled refueling -food cramming- stops for the day. The earthquake catches them off guard, but not unprepared. Anatolia -and the people found in the peninsula- are quite familiar with the range and plateau-covered land’s propensity to spasms and snap like a knotted and old rope. The sisters have grown up in a country where fire and earthquake drills are equally common, and while being caught by one in the middle of the mountainous wilderness isn’t ideal, it is also not something they are unready for.

The sisters are mountaineers, they are here to get professional certifications for which they’ve already passed theoretical exams. They remain low, and carefully start moving in the direction that affords them the highest elevation the soonest possible. They put their helmets on, as -instantly- their sole concern becomes debris and rocks falling down hill. No sense in worrying whether the rock or ground under their feet will collapse, whether they’ll become mashed meat inside of a rockslide or not, that’s fully outside of their control, no amount of harnesses attached to bolts that aren’t there to begin with would even save them from a rockfall the size of a horse.

They are lucky, the sisters slowly make their way up a gentle slope facing a particularly large set of cliffs, a large gorge separating them. The slope is separate enough from surrounding ones to be a bubble of safety.

Only…

The earthquake doesn’t stop. And yet again, the sisters are knowledgeable on such things.

An earthquake that lasts seconds is normal, those that last up to a minute are recorded rarities, and aftershocks can be felt for weeks after, yes, but not consecutively .

The world shakes, and continues to shake. The massive cliffs before them begin to crack and sag and collapse as they expand like eggshells being broken from the inside.

At first, the monster is hard to make out among the clouds of pulverized limestone, the jagged stone of the massif being barely distinctive from the equally harsh shapes that dot the monster’s colossal exoskeleton. But, eventually, eyes of clouded amber hexagons become visible, and a six-limbed creature of insectoid proportions starts pulling itself out of the hollowed mountain, its chittering -as loud as engines- overshadowed by the sound made by exoskeletal plates that can only be described as geologic inform rub against each other, shattering still-attached clumps of rock and ground the size of vehicles, releasing even more of the creature’s body.

The creature raises one colossal front limb, like a mantis’ in form, like a mole-crickets in function. The colossal limb drags entire hills alongside itself as it slams down, finding purchase with which to aid in pulling the massive body out from its geography coffin.

It slams down upon the two sister’s promontory. 

Both humans and stone cease to exist.

Not even noticing such a thing, the insectoid Daikaiju finishes releasing itself, antenas like bridge cables moving like flagstaffs as they taste the air. Within minutes, the monster's massive limbs are easily pulling it downhill, downriver, in the direction where the smell of death overrides everything else.

Towards Mesopomatia.

Towards the Destroyer’s wake.

3rd of March, 2115
New Erbil, International Mandate of Southern Kurdistan

New Erbil’s name betrays its nature almost as much as the ring-shaped neighbourhood's aforementioned shape and the appearance of its buildings do. In truth, the “town” of prefabricated buildings built around what once had been the city’s international airport, now a literal international military base, is nothing but the slow evolution of what once had been the only entryway for international aid across the entirety of “Iraqi Kurdistan.”

So much so that to this day, most of Old Erbil -from the ancient citadel at its center, to the hundred square kilometers of urbanized land around it- is even two years after the war’s end little more than a home from ghosts and construction equipment. Half the standing structures in the city are due for demolitions or renovations too expensive to undergo for a decade to come, the other half are not much younger than New Erbil’s walls of white sheet-metal.

Not too long ago, the shanty towns and slums around the renamed Joint Base Saladin had been nothing but a prison of misery, a place not even the most desperate would venture for, fearing the Destroyer’s wake. Where would they have headed? Iran and Iraq had been as razed as their own lands on the Zagros’ foothills, and the Kurdish SSR in the north had grown bloated with other refugees long before the people of the region’s south had had a chance to even try to flee up north.

These days…

Things are better, an outside observer -of which there are many, seeing the nature of the region’s current rule- would have been proud of the visible aid that has reached the city. There certainly are no children roaming the streets while bloated by malnutrition, or half-dead shadows pulling along exsiccated limbs in dire need of amputation. But soviet war hospitals cannot heal irradiated families, and dutch rations cannot fill a nation whose culture has been atomized.

No, the people who refuse to leave Mandatory Kurdistan are not desperate or on the brink of death. But they aren’t flourishing either. A fact that Generals Kaledin and Galanas are well aware of.

Albeit, one can forgive the cossack and the greek for not focusing much on the daily management of their shared mandate, right this very moment. After all, they have a Daikaiju on their hands.

The two commanders do not share an office, even if it is custom for civilian and military officers of the Kurdish Mandate to share spaces in the labyrinthine governmental compound that straddles the main gate between JB Saladin and New Erbil. The many mandatory offices and directorates that make up for a lack of a native government or bureaucracy are staffed in equal parts by Kaiju Defense Force and Warsaw Treaty Organization staffers, with the lower positions only very slowly being replaced by local Kurds month by month.

Hopes are that, by the time the five year mandate ends, and both international pacts leave -at the same time, as diplomacy is wont to seek performative symmetry and in their place will remain a fully local interim government who will decide what the region’s fate will be.

Annexation to the Kurdish SSR? Statehood? A union with Iran or Iraq? No matter, Kaledin and Galanas are well aware that it is not their mission to care about that.

What is their mission, is worrying about recent events. Events which could delay their hopes to de-ruin southern Kurdistan in a timely manner.

Which is why both generals find themselves in the most private of meeting rooms in the entire complex, the one that can only be reached from either of their separate offices.

“Our spy planes, having been keeping track of it. Thing’s moving slowly, after all.” General Olena Kaledin, as purebreed a cossack as one can find in the 22nd Century, grumbles. “And the Iraqi Air Force carried out two more airstrikes last night.”

“Airstrikes?” General Yannis Galanas’ greyed eyebrow quirks. “With what? Kites?” The man speaks candidly, two years of having to share a position with a communist will do that to you.

“The Egyptian bombers that have been doing it so far. They have been fully transferred to the new Iraqi Air Force.”

“Would have been nice of them to tell us.”

“They are scared of your Persian friends invading Khuzestan. This Sargon is only serving as an excuse to shift reconstruction funds from civilian to military.”

“I’m sure your Kurdish friends don’t inspire any confidence either. And besides, a second Daikaiju within the decade, after Destoroyah ? They’d be justified in even deploying their assets in the Suez of Trucial Shatterdomes to Kuwait to Bashra.”

“Let us hope that will be enough, then.”

“Talking about your friends in Kurdistan again, how are the casualties looking?”

“The Taurus are vast, it’ll take weeks to find exactly how many missing reports are actually missing, and how many of those are real casualties. As per the villages…”

“International press has them as two hundred and twenty seven.”

“Closer to five hundred, that number is staying between these doors.”

“Sure, sure… Now, what the fuck do we do?”

“You? I don’t know. We are mobilizing assets in the upper Caucasus in case the thing doubles back.”

“Is that a signal that you won’t get bristly when we do the same thing in Luristan? The Afghans are chomping at the bit to get involved.”

Olena neither says or does anything, and yet, at this point things are clear enough.

“We have to remain vigilant, if the thing does change course, our response has to be identical.”

“I’ll have my chief of staff share with you what we are planning. So far, the thing looks too tough for airlifted artillery to be efficient.”

“You’d need the Arab League permission to use their shatterdomes.”

…

“Sappers?”

“Sappers.”

Both generals take a few moments to note down their shared thoughts, before they turn to the last of the meeting’s loose ends.

“The diplomatic feelers, any indications that they will accept foreign observers?” He asks.

“We believe they are in talks with the Israelis through the Syrians. But us? No chance, so far, they are probably hoping to prove that they can deal with things without either of our interventions this time around.”

“Destoroyah killed millions, a beefy grasshopper hardly feels equivalent to that.”

“Says the one whose bathroom is the exact size as mine for diplomatic reasons.”

“Fuck you, commie.”

“Shut it, capitalist pig.”

As it turns out, both’s invites from the Iraqi Minister of Defense to visit the country arrive exactly a week later, when Sargon’s outline starts peeking out of the horizon as seen from Baghdad’s outskirts.

18th of March, 2115
Ruins of Baghdad Governorate, Republic of Iraq

Baghdad is a ruined city the likes of which there are few in the world. Not coincidentally, if one were to connect those few cities in a map, the dotted line would be a trail of tears from Lhasa to Jerusalem.

The scale of the destruction can only truly be appreciated from the vantage point with which the Iraqi Air Force is “gifting” the two foreign observers. From ground level, it’d be easy to assume a given street or neighborhood to just be the bombed-out ruins of some recent urban combat or the brawl between two kaiju.

But from the sky? From the sky one can understand.

That that is the totality of Baghdad. Skyscrapers list, and mountains of rubble have collapsed into hills under their own weight, the air that blows through abandoned streets is stale and choked with dust.

Some would have called Baghdad a ghost city. They would be wrong. Baghdad is a graveyard city. Ghost cities are dreary in their emptiness. Both generals have seen plenty of the photographs and documentary footage, Baghdad had been anything but empty after Destoroyah’s wake.

Almost eight million emaciated corpses, mummified and dry-scorched within hours. The funeral pyres and mass graves had burned for weeks straight after the Daikaiju’s demise. Eventually, the Basrah had simply elected to abandon the ruined city altogether. It would take generations for people to start returning, generations for the city to even begin to be a home for the living at all.

Seven and a half million bodies, there hadn’t even been any stench, the microorganism that would have caused them to decompose had all died too.

And yet…

“We expected it to simply barrel through the city, as it’s done through other ruins, we actually had teams readying explosives to topple some of the ruins over it… But…” Their guide, an equally-ranked Sudanese of the Arab League contingent helping the Iraqis return from the brink, explains. “But as soon as it entered the city’s outskirts… It started doing that.”

“It’s…”

“Shifting through the rubble, sorting it, like those crabs that eat sand and then puke filtered balls of it.”

The comparison is fitting, but doesn’t really convey scale .

Sargon, as it has recently been named, is a brownish and colossal presence standing out even over the kicked-up plumes of dust that now cover large sections of desecrated Baghdad. The insect’s third set of limbs resemble a grasshopper’s, cartoonishly long even as they remain anchored amidst massive pieces of concrete. The first pair is even more specialized, a half-way cross between a mantis’ pincers and an excavator's arms. Almost knuckle-walking, Sargon raked furrows the size of canals towards itself, up to its face and second set of limbs.

And it is those two features that do the astounding task, as the much smaller second set of limbs and clamoring mandibles that triturate, sheave and pulverize sections of roads and entire upturned flats.

Leaving behind, the creature’s wake are anthills the size of trailers, each made of sole materials. A hill of warped and flattened copper water pipes here, a mountain of sand and cement-turned-dust, brambles of rebar, plains of shattered tiling, coral reefs of broken glass, and thickets of stripped clubbing.

“There’s some buildings it’s not touching.”

“The more stable ones, the ones we were hoping to make use of if rebuilding ever happened. We have no idea how it tells their structural integrities apart, they don’t look or smell any different.”

“Maybe it's being signalled around, pheromones?”

“It’s more likely than pure guesswork, but no one has been observed trying to communicate with it, the local militias are patrolling areas upwind from the city. The people in the nearby refugee camps have already started entering the city to pull out entire trucks of the more resealable stuff, but that is pretty much it. Every few hours it’ll move over to the Tigris to clean itself up and remove debris dams blocking the river.” Their guide continues to say. “You’ll be able to talk with local officials later today, they are trying to get the Basrah government to regulate the scrappers and secure some monuments and abandoned museums, otherwise the city will just not be there in a few years, we reckon.”

“You have given up on killing it, then?”

“Killing it? We’d pay it a salary if we could, if this thing doesn’t stop, we’ll have the city cleared for reconstruction in a couple years. The original plans accounted for a fifty year process.”

“Are congratulations in order, then? A new friendly Daikaiju for the history books, those are always good to find.” The greek notes.

“Well, I think the locals would have appreciated it showing up sooner. The Cossack chastises. “But it is… Heartening, at least?”

“Heartening?” Their guide grumbles. “We are already hearing rumors of a cult springing up around this thing, the shitshow never ends.”

“Amen.”

“Yeap.”

And so, as helicopters buzz around it like flies, Sargon of Akkad continues cleaning his homeland up.

Chapter Text

3rd of February, 2032
Somewhere on the Coral Sea

Lieutenant Wiremu Acton hadn’t joined the Royal New Zealand-Aotearoa Navy out of a sense of duty or patriotism; he had mainly done so because he had wanted to make his father -and his father’s entire family line, considering their long history as Tainui fishermen- proud. And because between joining a fishing crew and going to a naval academy, the latter had much better long term prospects in terms of being able to live comfortably. 

Besides, a teenaged version of himself had decided long ago, if he was going to have to make a career at sea, he might as well choose the option which entailed the option of doing target practice with a 127 mm artillery gun. Teenage him had also felt very vindicated by that -and a bunch of other testosterone-drowned experiences- eventually becoming reality, even if the current sea-sprayed version of himself isn’t as sure about the worthwhileness of the deal.

Then again, in his untimely reflections, he is also aware that he wouldn’t have expected his years in the academy to actually nurture a much more personal pride than what heritage could have ever given him. Without those years in the naval academy, he also understands, he would also not have found himself a cute guy with whom to spend his shore-leave nights in Napier.

He wouldn’t have married his eventual husband, either, or that such a partnership would have inexorably led them both towards the parenthood of three beautiful children by the age of thirty five. None of those are things that the cannon-horny teenager would have even fathomed, and yet days ago he would have been in a place in life every last one of his peers would have envied. 

An envy he has long exploited much to his husband’s amusement. Lt. Acton is a lot of things, which includes “bragger” as it seems. Something he’s not done in a while, and something that -very soon- he’ll either never be able to do again… Or he’ll get something incredible to add to his list.

‘Mmmmh, the things you remiss about while getting chased by a three hundred meter long sea dragon…’

When the news had reached him -well, the entirety of his homeland, really- that a swarm of Megagulon had been stopped north of Sydney, he had done so over an emergency broadcast while driving to pick his children up from school.

He’s seen the footage, of course he has. Of cities turned into empty shells, picked clean and covered in the papery nests of long-gone swarms. He’s read the history books and documentaries. He’s seen what the Indian subcontinent looks like, still a corpse-like land more than a quarter of a century later. He knows as much as any human being who hasn’t dealt with them what those horse-sized dragonflies do to people, to entire nations.

 Other Kaiju and Daikaiju? They are like natural disasters, survival as long as you get enough warning or good-enough preparations. If one gets out of their way? Well, no shark chases after a lone anchovy. 

But not with the Meganulon, vicarious seekers as they are. The only thing that’s ever stopped one from chasing a human down would be death.

By the time he had been called back to his naval station, a sixth of northern Sydney’s population had already been considered lost to the world. 

New Zealand-Aotearoa -itself historically spared from any land-trekking Kaiju so far, and aware of its national luck- hadn’t stayed idle either, so while Wiremu had still made sure to take his kids home, duty had called him away little after a family hug and one last goodbye hug from his dear Felix.

It had been… Less than twelve hours by the time an air force flight had landed him in Plymouth with the barest of explanations of one of the navy’s highest-rated helmsmen. Only then, and under the secrecy of a command building he didn’t even know had existed before, he had been made recipient of a plan from the hands of his homeland’s highest ranking KDF-attached officers. 

The Australians themselves, busy with arranging large-scale evacuations from the Sydney-Canberra megalopolis and with containing the bugs in the former city’s urban core, had asked for any and all available help from their immediate neighbours. Evacuating six million people could go wrong six million different ways, and that was if the devil’s steeds were actually contained, and Australia’s much more recent inland settlements were saved.

As for actually destroying the swarm? There was only so much an airforce could do against a swarm of meganula that outnumbers them ten to one. Artillery would only delay their nest.building. Mechs would be as ineffective as sending soldiers to destroy a wasp nest one swat at a time… And nuclear weapons? Only would make things worse in the long term.

But there was, is , one terrifyingly reliable way of dealing with swarms, be they meganula or gyaos. 

Bigger things.

Hungrier things.

None of them are heading towards Queensland, obviously, Kaiju would never be that intentionally helpful… But…

“Operation Dunkirk” had started with Wiremu once more being shuffled away as soon as he had agreed to attempting it. To the nearest Australia-facing port he had been sent, escorted in a way fit for kings.

The first time Lieutenant Acton had laid eyes upon the vessel he was supposed to command in New Zealand-Aoteroa’s insane attempt to take some pressure off Australia had been… Underwhelming.

A simple, small and absolutely gutted patrol boat, the kind that would usually look much more at home keeping an eye out on an usually full beach than in a military operation to save millions of lives.

The word “Tohora Patu” had been shoddily painted into the ship’s front, a reference to the fact that it had been gutted of everything other than the required essentials to make it capable of carrying the country’s sole experimental ORCA sonic device fast enough not to be swallowed by the monster it was supposed to entice.

Considering the fact that he’s been told that his counterparts in Australia had merely dangled theirs of a helicopter to tease the monstrosity that is Jirass into following them around Canberra like a teased dog? He actually feels both luckier and more sane for getting onto a boat hot-wired to purposefully almost outspeed a marine Daikaiju.

But, well, even if that insane plan worked, Jirass would never get to Sydney fast enough. It’d be able to destroy the swarm, sure, but not soon enough to contain it before even more loss of life would happen.

But something else would be able to, fast and close enough. Powerful enough, as well. For, somewhere in the Tasman Sea, the Coral Sea’s Viceroy had recently been tracked.

The ORCA would work like a homing device, one that would -if he survived long enough- send Manda crashing against Sydney harbour like a living torpedo. A living torpedo with a penchant for strangling warships.

In less than ten hours. A ship -one that wouldn’t even produce a blip on a radar’s screen- exits North Island’s territorial waters. And yet, to the Scourge of Mu, it is as if the greasiest of baits had been laid out in the middle of its territory.

The man aboard isn’t exactly sure why he does what he does. It’s not fully a sense of service or patriotism, he loves his home archipelago, and likes the Aussies well enough, but enough to end his life for them? Not really. He’s risking everything, he knows, not just his life, but a life with the best man he’s ever known, a lifetime of seeing his children grow and flourish. He might as well be trading a chance to eventually retire and grow old for… An unmarked seagrave? An end inside the gullet of an uncaring leviathan?

Except.

Of course he knows why he is doing it. Because he knows that if he doesn’t, someone else -someone worse than him at piloting a ship- would do it. Because there’s millions of lives at stake. Because Lt. Wiremu Acton is a good person.

At twelve hours, Manda catches up to him, and the sleek and long emerald dragon breaks the horizon and makes itself known with a roar out of time so ancient they predate humanity’s ancestors by millions of years. He picks up speed, and miraculously, Tohora Patu weaves its way out of the dragon’s plunging bite.

For the next two hours, as they rush across an uncannily calm Tasman Sea, it tries to rush him, so he pushes the motors to their limit and manages to evade more than one attack by such close marking that he could have brushed Manda’s scales with his outstretched arms, had the monster’s own wake not almost upturned the vessel as many times.

By the fifteenth hour, Manda has miraculously not lost interest, and instead switched to  a much more direct chasing, the monster is so close behind that its open jaws are like a seamount’s cave, its breathing strong enough that -paradoxically- it helps push the vessel forward.

At sixteen hours, exhaustion starts threatening to be the end of him, rather than Manda. His bloodshot eyes and chapped lips just painful enough to help stave off unctuousness whenever adrenaline wavers.

It takes an hour before he crosses the halfway point, he hears congratulations over the radio earphones thankfully still on his head. The words don’t register in his mind.

At eighteen hours, the engine almost fails. Wiremu prays to a god he doesn’t believe in. When that fails, he starts to swear. The machine responds much better to that.

It takes one more hour for true desperation to kick in, his leg wavering as he ponders kicking the smoking ORCA overboard. Then, he remembers one sleepy conversation, the one in which Felix had brought up the idea of adopting another kid. That had been months ago. In his addled brine, it is happening right now.

Twenty eight hours in, he manually rerouted to compensate for treacherous currents that seem to want to help Manda get its meal. Not for nothing, the monster is a monarch of a domain he is trespassing,

The last lunge comes soon after, the ship almost capsizes, he dislocates his arm and breaks two ribs. Somehow, when the cloud of seaspray dissipates, the Tohora Patu is still moving forward, a maniacally screaming human still attached to it, teasing the dragon with a mixture of hakas and deeply childish insults.

Not soon after, land comes into view, Wiremu cries without tears, robbed by dehydration. He is close enough to Sidney Bay to see the swarms flying over the city, clouds as dense as those created by the burning buildings below.

He turns off the device, he kills the engine and jumps overboard just as the vessel thunks against the side of a much larger and listing cargo ship, probably one whose crew have long been devoured.

Manda’s monstrous and serpentine form races past them all, the dragon’s wake so strong that its wake lists the vessel further by just moving close to it, enough that Wiremu can desperately claw his way up its now horizontal hull. He can’t help but scream in elation as the monster that’s spent a psychological decade trying to eat him crushes Sydney’s piers and sends entire wall-clings swarms into panic, with a single bat of its massive tail, hundreds are crushed into insect paste.

By the time Jirass arrives -and it indeed does, heralded by the most obnoxious remix of Black Betty a helicopter-mounted sound system can produce- the swarm is already on the collective backfoot.

And man , is it going to be a sight he’ll enjoy bragging about for his wonderful husband’s amusement…

Chapter Text

25th of January, 1943
Somewhere in the Huon Peninsula, Territory of New Guinea, Commonwealth of Australia

Lieutenant Wakayoshi Akinori resents a long list of people, things and intangible concepts, and so do the bulk of the men of the 51st Reconnaissance regiment. The list starts roughly at his immediately superior officer and ends at the 785,753 square kilometer island of New Guinea. The list also happens to include items such as every mosquito on earth, the Gaijin torpedo boat which has recently sunk the ship carrying his Type 94 Tankette, the Japanese Imperial Navy which failed to sink said torpedo boat, the mud that fills his boots up, the idea of patriotism, the entire population of Australia, and the ulcer in his ass.

Of all those resentments, the most vivid one is the one he currently feels for the men currently sitting and perched on top of the chassis of one of the few tankettes of the 51st Division which has even made it to said god-forsaken island. If he were one of those men, at the very least his legs wouldn’t hurt, he’d have a chance to stop chafing his ass, to dry his feet, and to have arms not so leadened by exhaustion as to become mosquito runways.

He'd joined the Japanese Army under the motive that volunteers - as opposed to conscripts - got posting slightly better than your average china-trawling infantryman. And that he had gotten, eventually becoming the commander of his own armored vehicle, followed by posting in one of the Empire’s mainland-defending district armies.Then had come Manchuria, and he’d resented the cold and the heavy drilling.

Then had come Guangdong and Hong Kong, and he had learned to resent the filthy Chinese.

For a while, the women had comforted him.

Then came the shipping to Rabaul, and he had learned to resent the sea and all the things within it. He does not know who in hell “Bismarck” is, but he sure resents his American-infested sea.

And, having “enjoyed” the cramped filth of Rabaul, he now resents the very soup-like ground he walks on.

And, as already grumbled, he really hates not being among the few to have been quick enough to climb up the fuselage of one of the few modes of transportation not-currently breaking down during their unit’s trek towards a town called Wau.

Wakayoshi feels an inkling that he may soon come to resent Wau. And this time, he knows he’ll fail to find comfort among the disgusting local women.

By his side and more-or-less managing to keep up with the spite-fueled Lieutenant is the marginally younger Senior Sergeant Arata Jomei. While the two of them haven’t exactly grown apart over the last few weeks of constant misfortune, they have also failed to maintain a single coherent conversation ever since the day they learned that their tankette “no longer exists in a suitable state for combat”, which had been a beautiful way to describe a lump of metal inside a larger lump of metal at the bottom of the Bismarck Sea.

Despite that, Wakayoshi doesn’t bat his driver’s hand away when the young man grabs onto his shoulder and makes him stop. For all the things he resents, Arata isn’t on the exhaustive list, a privilege only afforded to one other person, his daughter.

“Look!” The thing Arata points at it a white-ish light coming from the top of the ridge the regiment is trying to snake towards the top of. It’s impossible to miss, as it is late enough in the afternoon that the setting sun is obscured by the tree-covered ridge’s own shape.

“Probably returning scouts.” He responds. “They’d already be shooting at us otherwise, and we’d be shooting back at their very obvious searchlight.”

“Yeah… But… Why does it keep getting brighter?”

Wakayoshi squints his eyes. The light is indeed getting stronger. It is also slowly going from a clean white to a wavering white-ish one that flashes with the colors of a faint rainbow. Within moments, it gets bright enough that looking directly at it becomes painful, so he half-covers his eyes with the sleeve of his heavily deteriorated uniform.

That spares him the blindness that suddenly sears Arata and many other’s eyeballs, as the lightsource suddenly bursts towards them.

Suddenly, hundreds of men are screaming in pain or firing towards the now-gone light source. Wakayoshi’s mind goes to some sort of hellish new weapon or plan cooked up by the enemy. Some kind of flashbang-like weapon, maybe.

Then he hears the sound of collapsing metal, the agonizing pleas for death of men, the smell of seared flesh. And as his watery eyes finally refocus themselves to the natural darkness, it is not hard to find the source of it all.

The tankette whose driver he had resented, the dozen or so men riding on top of it, who he equally resents…

The entire chassis is a shagging and slagging red mass, with a barrel-wide hole burned through it in the way a magnifying glass would do to a piece of paper. And as to the men… Their bodies burn so fast that their melting skin fuses with the metal as it charts, leaving honey-like imprints as the bodies burn like matches.

Then and there, Wakayoshi pukes what little food he’s eaten in the last four days.

The white light returns. Closer now, and shows itself to actually be six half-obscured light sources that climb higher and higher until they become taller than the ridge that the men are now fleeing down the slope of.

Six massive crystal-like spikes, attached to the back of a greyish beast whose silhouette melts into the dark blues of the sky around it.

Wakayoshi turns around and screams for Arata. He finds his driver’s corpse rolling downhill and becoming caked in mud. But not enough mud to obscure the fist-sized cauterised hole smoking through both sides of his chest.

Wakayoshi’s legs fail him. They wouldn’t have gotten him very far anyways, one of his feet is already in an early stage of living-rot, after all. And yet, he doesn’t get to fall his way backwards down the snaking mud road. That -breaking his neck against some rock on the way down- would have been a mercy.

Instead, something slams into him. Something pink. Something slim. Something glue-like and spongy. Something that his failing mind still has enough strength to begin to resent.

It’s the tip of a chameleon-like tongue. As fast as it has struck him, it retracts into a gecko-like face armed with three massive horns, his body folded up and broken as reptilian teeth shred him just enough to shallow in a single gulp.

Come morning, the bulk of their force destroyed, the 51st Reconnaissance Regiment will be written off by divisional command as having been destroyed by a well-laid ambush. What few survivors escape the Rainbow Valley Beast will be picked off by native Papuan militias, who -not even knowing Japanese- will lack the strategic acumen to keep any prisoners alive long enough to inquire as to the fate of their comrades.

With a belly full of japanese corpses, akin to the way a gecko would gorge itself in termites, Barugon will disappear back into his realm.

9th of May, 1996
Mapenduma, Papua Province, Republic of Indonesia

“All clear!” Shouts out Operative Ridwan from his position behind an abandoned car near to the village’s entrance. As he does so -and while the rest of his counter-terrorism unit advances- he keeps his eyes still trained on the area before him. Over the last two days and with the aid of readily supplied satellite photos, the man has deeply familiarized with the Papuan village’s layout. 

Mapenduma is far from the first village-raid he’s participated in in Papua, and while no two are identical, those found this deep into the rainforest-covered highlands tend to follow similar trends. Very small footprints -owed to the general lack of flat areas to build the, in- and usually with a single road-sized entrance, often overall obscured by the jungle itself, but with huts cleared-out enough that -with enough experience- one could figure the layout by looking at them and is willing to cram.

Sound buzzes in his earpiece, one of the four helicopters slowly circling around the village and the wider area reporting in. Reporting nothing, specifically. The village, Ridwan and his fellow Kopassus have learned, seems to have been deserted.

Which has only made them more cautious.

And not for nothing, ever since the Battle of the Timor Sea -it’s half-a-decade anniversary looming closer and closer- separatists and terrorists have only emboldened their activities further, making use of an Indonesian Navy’s torpor-like and painful recovery and the coast guard’s stretched resources to smuggle weapons in and out of their respective areas of operation. 

And the Free Papua Movement, with their friends in east-New Guinea and impossible to patrol borderlands? Even Moreso.

Using a hollowed village to stage an ambush is far from beyond their capabilities, even if all reconnaissance so far has pointed at this one village being truly empty, there is no telling as to improvised explosives or landmines sold to the FPM by their christian friends in Dili.

None of the locals to other nearby villages have talked so far, no matter how hard the Kopassus may have applied their skills, they do seem to be complete unaware as to the whereabouts of their neighbours or the group of five Australian foreigners Ridwan’s unit is theoretically here to rescue, much less about any terrorist force daring enough to have kidnapped the foreigners, daring the counter-terrorism units stationed at Jayapura to respond, distract them from their usual schedule of of training and agarwood smuggling.

And all of that for a clearly abandoned village.

“They must have cleared the place out days ago.” One of his fellow commandos speaks up as, methodically, they enter the village, carefully using the walls of houses and huts as cover. They are not bothering to be silent, however. There’s a good hundred operatives on the ground right now in and around the village, with three helicopters circling above, they aren’t exactly doing covert work here.

“Days?” Another one answers as he raises his rifle. “Look at the cobwebs, this place looks like it has been abandoned for years.” As if to be punctual, he moves the weapons muzzle around a low roof’s edge, collecting the clumped-up bits of broken spider web.

Indeed, most surfaces around the village are covered in clumps and wind-waved pieces of spider web, the old and abandoned kind that has become grey with dust particles and has lost all semblance of their makers’ hexagonal patterns.

“The chicken coops in this one look broken into, so do the pigpen thataways.” Another speaks up as he walks out of one of the abandoned huts. “Whoever left, they left in a hurry.”

“And yet none of the motor scooters or vans got their fuel siphoned out, they always do that first.” Ridwan speaks up, thuddin his fits against one such flimsy motorbikes and audibly pointing out the sloshing within. The FPM isn't exactly a rich organization, and fuel has only become more lucrative over the few couple years. The profitable fields on the islands’ Doberai and Bomberai have only made exports outsize local consumption. Ridwan knows that well, himself acquainted with the relevant segments of the black market.

“So, what?” The one that pointed the broken animal pens out speaks up again. 

“Maybe the locals became scared when the kidnapping happened and fled with what they could carry through the jungle, but then the FPM didn’t even set up shop here?”

“No, they must have, we have eyewitnesses of them moving into the area.”

“Yeah, besides, have you ever tried to herd a pig through the jungle?”

“Uuuuuuuh…” A voice speaks up from another one of the huts. It’s door ajar. The voice of the nameless operative within wavering in… Fear?

‘Oh fuck, boobytrap?’ Ridwan grimaces, those aren’t rare either.

When another man voices their communal concern and asks for a description, the answer they receive worries them even more. “N-No, I’m safe… I think… I-Just come in, quick, I need someone to make sure I’m not crazy.”

Ridwan is the first to push aside the already broken door and come to stand by his confused comrade. At first, the image that registers in a trained mind is that of struggle. There’s personal belongings and furniture thrown about in the way only a physical altercation could result in. And yet… There’s even more cobwebs here than outside, maybe protected from the elements, yes, but not to the degree that so many could have been made by local creepy-crawlies over just a few days, there’s a cracked plate of spoiled food in the ground, but not months old spoils.

And it is because of that trained eye for detail, that he misses the forest for the trees.

He gasps and takes a step back, into another operative’s chest, when he finally picks up the man-sized shape hanging from the ceiling. It’s a sack , one made up of hundreds of layers of white and greyish of the same sticking and translucent material all around them. 

It’s a cocoon.

A cocoon made of spider’s silk.

Ridwan shouts in alarm as one of their ranks moves to poke it with the bayonet affixed to his assault rifle’s tip. The blade is already cutting the surface strings before he can grab the gun and push or pull it away.

The cocoon’s contents explode out, reddish and watery gore full of half-digested lumps of other colors and consistencies. All of it splattering against the floor and making them all recoil as they are blocked by it up to their high waists. The acidic and rotting smell explodes in their nostrils as embrittled bones clatter against the ground.

Ridwan isn’t some expert biologist, he’s never even touched bases with the rule-followers over at Indonesia’s KDF-attached units. But he knows the basics of how spiders work. The reddish mess that now coats much of their uniforms…

It is nothing but a spider ’s liquified meal.

5th of June, 2092
Port Moresby, National Capital District, Republic of Papua

In the Age of Monsters, one will have a hard time finding a coastal capital -an insular capital, at that- that has not been massively changed by the necessities, fears and scars brought up by the many beasts which have risen from the waves, crushed treelines underfoot and split the skies. And yet, the mostly-evacuated Papuan capital of Port Moresby shares only the most general of them.

In some places, where once skyscrapers precariously rose from coastal hills or reclaimed floodplains, now would stand mostly memorial parks in renamed boroughs. However, in a city like Port Moresby, where such towers of Babel were never constructed, the Spider of Irian finds itself lacking in structures tall enough to construct its webs between. Instead, the Daikaiju known as Kumonga, child of irradiated winds, is forced to simply scitter about the city with the forty five meter tall stilts that are its arachnid legs, solely turning the city’s hills and apartment buildings into a sea of sheet webs.

In other places, megacities would have sprawled into obscenity, leaving yellowish-grey night skies and seas of smog in the wake of their growth, cities so heavy that the ground under them would sink and that landfills would become hills. Cities where entire neighbourhoods would be abandoned, government and private authority both relocated to the much safer and less population-dense inland. Port Moresby? The much younger and smaller capital simply afforded itself the luxury of ceasing growth instead of the pain of withering. Because of this, the crawling reptile that is the Dragon of Irian lacks the sprawling industrial districts and massive gubernatorial offices that Barugon would have dearly loved to poke its spear-like nose into, seeking to lick warm human bodies out the way an anteater would after cracking a termite mound wall’s opens.

Instead, both monsters, coincidentally starved during the season despite their incomparable metabolisms, have found themselves drawn to a city that -no matter how much their senses tell them should be choking with food- is emptied of most human life. Human life that now hides far and wide across the island country and its outlying archipelagos, safe in the short term.

Instead, both predators, deprived from the morsels which they hoped to snatch, can do only one thing as their weights flatten trails through the hilly but obscuring city.

Kumonga’s eight orb-like eyes meet Barugon’s chameleon-like ones, even if the latter's feature makes full visual contact impossible.

But spot each other they do. How could they not? One is a spider that towers above the cityscape with its bands of orange and brown chitin, the other a drake with rainbows glowing out of its back.

One seeks energy, the other seeks flesh. Neither is a truly appetising meal to the other, but the island’s co-viceroys are far from allies or acquaintances. When threat displays fail to register in the opponent's alien brain, the monsters can do nothing but clash.

Webs are set aflame with such intensity that entire sections of the city become engulfed by wildfires. Venom is injected and spilled in enough numbers to kill every last living animal within the bay Port Moresby is constructed upon.

By the time the local humans are given permission to return, they find their quant and supposedly unique capital as ruined as any other. And yet, what distresses them most is an even more obvious sight.

For amongst the ruins of their homes, they find neither the acid-bathed bones of a dead reptile the size of a warship, nor the charred remains of chitinous limbs tall enough to be monuments.

Wounded and unsated, the monsters fail to kill each other.

And their shared terror-grip over Papua remains.

27th of October, 2092
Port Numbay, North Papua Province, Republic of Papua

As opposed to Port Moresby, its opposite city on Papua’s western half certainly fits the description one would give to the once-bustling capitals of the pacific rim. Port Numbay -once known as Indonesia’s Jayapura or Netherlandish Hollandia- is but one of dozens of the links that make KDF operations viable across the south pacific.

Which is why it is no coincidence that Papua’s ally, the Philippines, has sponsored the construction of the country’s first and sole Shatterdome, protected by Humboldt Bay. It is also obvious that the industrially poor country has gladly accepted said Shatterdome being staffed by a Jaeger-Mechanismus on lease from another one of their major allies, the Kirishima Shogunate of Japan.

What is, perhaps, slightly more jarring, is the sight of said gigantic machine being toppled over the Youtefa Bridge that connects both sides of the bay. Obviously, the red-black-and-yellow painted mech collapses a large segment of the bridge under itself.

Paradise Keeper isn’t the most modern of Jaegers in the KDF’s collection, even if its two pilots -siblings Jūki and Mei Izumo- have only helmed it for the last two years. No matter how much the machine may have stood out against the local green and blue landscape, the terrified onlooking population of the city can all see quite an obvious reality.

Papua’s reigning Daikaiju are tearing it apart, and the civilians are soon to share in its fate.

The machine’s design -dreamt up in a boardroom far from the prying and annoying eyes and tongues of grounded technicians and veterans- should have led to an exact opposite result.

For Paradise Keeper has been designed specifically to kill Barugon and Kumonga once and for all.

Something increasingly unlikely, as the former reptile bites and tugs at its legs, while the later spider uses its slink strands as resilient as steel wire to capture the mech’s right limb against its chassis.

Said limb houses the cracked and bent remains of what had once been a massive shield made up of hundreds of mirror-like ablative hexagons. In theory, it should have been strong enough to deflect even the most powerful of Barugon’s photonic and rainbow-like attacks. A tool wholly useless against the skittering and quickly dodging Kumonga and its fangs dripping with acid, perfectly capable of bypassing a shield not actually meant to bear the brunt of physical attacks.

Its other main weapon hasn't fared much better, as the mec’s left limb has been fully rented from its body where a human’s fleshy biceps would be. Instead of blood, it bleeds thousands upon thousands of liters of incendiary fuel into the bay. What once had been a mighty gauntlet covered in miles of flamethrower piping is now a smoking wreck resting against the hills that make up the city’s edges. Such a weapon would have been easily used to destroy Kumonga’s hectare-spanning webs, ruining any and all advantage afforded to the creature by them. But against Barugon’s chameleon-like tongue and dozens of fangs, its piping had crumpled easily, its flames failing to scorch tough scales. 

As such, a massive weapon of war designed to defeat either Kaiju, but wholly incapable of fighting both at the same time, falls into the shallow waters around Port Numbay, its pilots encased by denting steel and unforgiving silk. 

Barugon and Kumonga are not allies by any means, but both monsters are nonetheless born of mankind’s failures -one of the atom’s corrupting harnessing, another a living weapon of a long-dead civilization- and have no love for a thing that looks like a feast of human flesh but carries not even an ounce of it. Their alliance is one of instinct and practicality.

One that, sadly, continues to enforce itself as the downed mech’s whirring death throes cease… And a meal the size of a city becomes available to Papua’s co-viceroys…

Chapter Text

20th of December, 2091
Royal Palace, Oslo, Kingdom of Norway

The Oslo Royal Palace is boiling with activity. Beyond his office’s thick doors, the old man can hear dozens of people coming and going, be they staff, security or any of a dozen other options. However, the activity is far from what should be expected this time of the year. Instead of preparing state Christmas dinners, the kitchens are cold. Instead of decorators rearranging last-minute details, staff from the Nasjonalmuseet and half a dozen other institutions are carefully removing every valuable artwork and archived material found within the palace’s walls, to be carefully moved off to bunkers and vaults designed half-a-lifetime ago precisely with the day’s events in mind.

By train, by bus and by car, everything that makes Norway Norway is being dragged off to the deepest and most inland of refuges, hoping that sooner or later there will be something outside to return to.

Everyone but the most essential staff are being evacuated, and so are more-than-a-million people who call Oslo home. Of course, there is only so much that can be done to protect the actual city itself, same for the Palace or any of a dozen other landmarks within Oslo’s bounds. Which explains why the windows that give him a sight of the palace’s snowy gardens have not been boarded up. They may be, later on, if there is time. But when the oncoming threat could equally burst a window or step through an entire building, such things are not given priority.

It would usually be a nice sight. Built atop a hill, any and all of the palace’s windows offer beautiful cityscapes of the Upper Oslofjord. Not today, the city is alive with activity as hundreds of thousands struggle to find safety and tens of thousands work tirelessly to achieve it.

Even among all the ruckus within and without the castle, the sudden and sharp sound created by a cast-iron knocker being slammed against his office’s wooden door manages to startle him, making him jump in his seat. Still, he composed himself quickly, turning off the radio decorating his desk -which had been playing the continuous coverage of the situation by NRK Nyheter- and to stand up. 

The double doors are opened and quickly closed by his two guards, giving just enough time for two individuals to step through. One, he’s quite familiar with, Chief of Court Rikard Sinding, the most experienced man in the royal family’s staff, one as familiar with the Monarchy of Norway as a surgeon would be with the organs of the human body. Including all the unpalatable information one would need to keep either alive and healthy. A man whose appearance could only be described as similar to that of an ancient library.

The second, the old man has only privately interacted with a couple times, even if they have both been participants to the same hundred galas. Unlike himself and the Chief of Court, the woman dresses in a military uniform that he has never fully been able to get accustomed to. It is not that of the Royal Norwegian Navy, which he’d -decades ago- expected to take the helm of such a crisis. Instead it is that of the distinctive Great Northern Navy. Counter Admiral Kristina Westrum, chief liaison between himself, the Council of State, and the Northern Pact’s unified military. Despite the woman’s competence, her role had made any appearance into a dark omen, for obvious reasons. An omen fulfilled today.

The king stands as tall as he can with his sixty year old bones, and as both advisors bow, he gives them a nod that implies permission to speak with full liberty.

“Your Majesty. We have received radio confirmation that the Jan Mayen Outpost has been lost. The count of detected Daikiaju has risen to twenty five. Evacuation efforts continue in the Faroes, both our own and those of civilians with ownership of seaworthy vessels. While Scottish civilian authorities have given permission to land to any and all vessels, we still expect the bulk of refugees to arrive in Bergen within the next few days. All intelligence points that we should expect the same in the case of the Shetlands, sir.”

“The Icelanders…?” He attempts to ask, tactfully.

“We… Your Majesty, we can’t do anything but hope that vessels with their flags will arrive within the following days. All forces stationed in the island -those we still have contact with- have refused orders to retreat, your majesty, they will continue fighting what delaying actions they can for as long as they can.”

“God save their souls.” The Haakon gulps, shuddering as he contemplates what must be the most honorable mutiny in the history of mankind. “What of Svalbard?”

“Efforts underway, Your Majesty, but the local ports are overwhelmed. The Finnish government has formally requested permission to use the Port of Murmansk. We are awaiting a Soviet response.”

‘The best we can, all we can…’ The King ponders as he circles around to one of the few decorations still remaining in his office, a reproduction of a map of Scandinavia published by one J.M. Ziegler in 1864. “Sir Sinding, have a letter of gratitude be drafted post-hates. To be sent to the premier’s ambassador’s office as soon as I can sign it.” He hopes, if nothing else, that he can do his own part by applying some pressure. 

The Chief of Court bows in recognition of the order. But does not yet leave, which can only mean one thing…

“Your Majesty.” The Counter Admiral speaks up once more, much less steady despite all her previously flawless deliveries of grim news. “High Command has convened with a vote of eight-to-two. Hereby, I formally extend their recommendation that His Majesty should order the activation of Plan Jötunheimr.”

It is strange to hear the words, having been raised in a world where his role, that of monarch, is more cultural and symbolic than politician. Men like himself, monarchs at the helm of proud liberal democracies, aren’t used to enacting what privileges they maintain through their bloodlines.

And this one, especially, he does not relish the power of. But the power is very much his, for it's through his veins that flows the blood of the Saint who dealt the killing blow.

“What stage of readiness have the forces reached? Will we be able to meet all the beasts?”

“All military districts have been mobilized, your majesty. Swedish and Finnish troops are already crossing the border. Your own divisions -obviating the airwings and naval groups already in combat- will be fully readied within the next two hours.”

“And it still won’t be enough.”

“No, it will not be, your honor.”

“What casualties are we expecting?”

“A sharp spike during the first forty eight hours. As many as three hundred thousand. We expect numbers to plateau and stop within two weeks, by then those already neutralized and geographical traps will have put us in an advantage.”

‘In other words,’ The king interprets. ‘Our best scenario still leaves entire cities ruined.’ He takes a deep breath. “No matter what the revealed truth will mean to people. Said people are to be our sole priority. If there is anything I can do that will mitigate damage against even just a singular city. It is my utmost duty to do so.” When he turns back to the two, the Chief of Court has already produced the necessary document.

Signing it takes seconds that feel like his entire reign compressed into a few brush strokes. “Make it be known, then,” He recites words he’d hoped to never utter. “That I, King Haakon VIII of Norway and Sapmi, by the authority conferred upon me by both Almighty God and the people of Norway, order that all actions necessary be undertaken to release the Mountain King, as is my royal prerogative.”

20th of December, 2091
Foothills of the Dovrefjell Mountains, Innlandet County, Kingdom of Norway

The 12th “Hans” Field Engineer Battalion is a rarity among the ranks of the Great Northern Army. For one, they are a combined unit, not a national one, meaning that among their ranks can be found Norwegians, Swedes, Scanians, Samis, Icelanders, Greenlanders, Fins, and even the odd German. 

Another point of interest, however, would only be easily picked up by those familiar with military organization, for the 12th is around one hundred and fifty heads short of the number that makes up the average Battalion.

And it is not as if combat casualties had slipped away at their numbers. For another one of their bizarre traits is that they are one of the very few units not being moved towards what is soon to be a frontline against the onslaught of the Daughters of Ragnarok.

So, why is it, then, that this odd unit of more than eight hundred engineers and mountaineers lay scattered about the Dovrefjell Mountains? A mountain chain, one might add, devoid of the kinds of bunkers and defensive complexes that their officers might deem worth bolstering the defenses of? 

The answer is quite simple, actually.

They are here to-

“WE GOT THE GREENLIGHT!” A man screams as he opens the door of their mobile command center with a kick that actually sends the lock flying. “HIT IT!” His crazed enthusiasm -both alien and all too reasonable, considering that Major Kari Halonen is Finnish- is infectious among the men and women under his command, who instantly go for their own radio operators, and relay their own personal versions of the command to their own underlings, themselves scattered across four thousand square kilometers of mountains.

It’s pragmatism, really. They have never fully known where he is to be found, imprisoned and asleep. But it's hard to miss a target when you blow the entire prison up.

And so, relayed by way of radio channels that only the strange unit is privy to, triggers are flicked, pushed, pulled and clicked. Chargelines the size of those used in quarries are detonated, bombs roped into the bottoms of ravines and mineshafts are exploded, wells filled up with decommissioned artillery pieces and civilian explosives are shelled from the safety of distant hilltops, and all manner of other insane methods of detonation -the kinds only conceivable by military engineers with too much free time- are employed across a hundred different sites.

Soon enough, the immensity of the Dovrefjell Mountains becomes spotted with smoke plumes, pockmarked by craters and scarred by landslides. What otherwise would be a grand act of eco-geographical terrorism without comparison is, instead, the result of years of work carried out by a small army of heathens and the godless.

For, obviously, there is one last queer feature to the Hans Field Engineers. For such a multicultural force, they are, from first to last, all equal in one aspect.

Not a single one of them is a Christian. Certainly none are baptised within the embrace of the Lutheran churches of Norway, Sweden or Finland, nor are there any catholics or other forms of protestantism counted amongst their ranks. Instead, the majority of their numbers is made up of the godless, with a minority who loyally follow their folk faiths, be they Sami or heathens. Even sights such as Jews and Muslims can be found among them, and of many others.

But not a single christian.

Everyone knows that Trolls have a knack for the smell of Christian Blood.

And none of the soldiers hereinfound have an interest in becoming the first meal in a thousand years for the monster they have released.

For, drawing away the breath of the subunit lucky enough to have won a strange lottery, something can be seen pulling and shoving out of a great mass of rocks dislodged from one of the mountainsides by a massive landslide.

A massive arm with skin of stone and hair of moss.

A roar bellows out of the collapsing mountain. So loud that every last human still on the surface of Innlandet County will be able to hear it as the wail of rage echoes through hills, valleys and dwells, the warcry of a king no longer held in bondage.

Dovregubben is free.

21th of December, 2091
The Trollveggen, Møre og Romsdal County, Kingdom of Norway

The helicopter “lands”, as best as its pilot can manage, for just a few seconds upon the closest thing to flat that the landscape of the Trolltindene can offer them. Just enough for the old king to step off as he hurries away, hunched and huddled inside his parka.

The landscape that he suddenly finds himself alone in isn’t alien, it wouldn’t be to anyone in his homeland. It is inhospitable, with its windswept elevation of more than a thousand seven hundred meters. The Trollveggen, the Troll Wall, the tallest and steepest rock wall in all of Europe.

‘Of course he’d come here, first of all.’ The king sympathizes. ‘Of course he’d come to meet his kin’s last battlefield.’ The man continues walking up the hill that opposes the legendary geographical feature. Knowing that, where he was standing atop the actual Trollveggen and not the smaller cliff opposing it, he’d not be standing on rock.

Or, more accurately, he wouldn’t be standing on just stone.

Usually, such an expedition would see him surrounded by dozens of staff, guides, local figures and his security staff. Instead, the man continues to trundle along in his lonesome, overcast skies above him. It takes a good fifteen minutes before he crosses paths with the two human souls waiting there for him.

“Doctors Tidemann?” He speaks up, both figures turn in unison, momentarily distracted from the spectacle he cannot see just yet.

“Your majesty.” The younger one, Doctor Nora Tidemann, paleontologist by studies and Kaiju expert by experience, offers him a bow that’s little more than a respectful nod in their heavy winter clothing. Her eyes are wide with awe, but he’s quite sure that it’s not directed at him.

“Took you long enough.” The older one, Doctor Tobias Tidemann, addresses him much more casually, as if offended by the distraction. The man, a controversial ethnographer, is much less heavily covered up than his daughter, his long beard speckled with snow.

“My apologies, doctors. I set out as soon as we knew he had come here. I am not much of a mountaineer, I always fancied the waves much more.” The attempts to add some levity.

“You are lucky, he’s not exactly waiting for us.”

“Let us not waste any time, then.” The king nods, walking up to them. “Doctor,” He looks to his left, making it clear that he’s speaking to the senior Tidemann. “Are you ready to translate?”

“Hopefully.” The hermit shugs even as he takes the microphone that his daughter offers. A few meters ahead of them, covered in tarp and plastic bags, are a series of large speakers and the large battery keeping them alive.

And then, a few hundred meters further, he stands.

It is strange how a monster almost fifty meters tall can look so small. An optical illusion created by the proportionally colossal geographical feature that it stands at the base of, neck craned upwards, as if it were a pious parishioner gazing up at the gold-gilded facade of a cathedral’s altarpiece.

The illusion fades away soon enough, however. The king swallows his own breath. Reality dawns on him.

He is standing before the Dovregubben, the Mountain King. The King of the Trolls. The last of the living Jotunn -for the rest of its kin’s bones lay broken within the foundation’s of Norway’s castles and rock faces such as the one before them- and ruler to what few trolls still stalk the Scandinavian wilderness, be they bestial or folk.

From the back, he resembles a heavyset yet powerful man, a strongman with a long tail that ends in a donkey’s tuft made from tree roots. The giant’s skin is stone, his ruddy hair branches of greenery.

It gives the king pause. What he is about to do could very well mean his death.

And yet, he rises out of the freezing fear as soon as memory serves him segments from the official reports and unofficial journalistic coverage that has been unavoidable -and it’s not as if he’s even tried to avoid it in the first place, such a thing would have been a dereliction of his duty- and daunting to hear, read and see .

the thousand of refugees clogging every port, the plane-taken footage of what has become of places such as Reikiavik or the Orkneys. Every last testimony, every last gruesome prediction…

“I…!” He starts, his words becoming mist in the cold December air. “I am King Haakon of Norway and Samland both! Eight of my name! And in the name of Almighty God! I demand audience with the King of all Trolls!”

But a moment later, as his words echo,  Doctor Tidemann raises the microphone to his own lips, and translates the words into a language that resembles a mixture between the most archaic forms of Old Norse and the sound of stones grinding against each other during an earthquake. The sound is instantly amplified by the speakers, becoming an echoing roar across the valley.

The first thing that happens afterwards is that the Dovregubben’s shoulders grow tense, his fists close with a metallic groan. The monster then turns its bald head, giving them a partially view of a beard where every strand of hair is the color and length of a pine tree, of pointed elven hears, of a massive nose that scrunches with the smell of Christian blood, and of the fangs that poke out of a cavernous mouth that grows into a furious grimace.

The roar that belts out as the creature fully turns around needs no translation.

“I have come to parley.”

“YOU HAVE COME TO YOUR DEATH! YOU WHO IS OF CROOKED OLAF’S BLOOD!” The monster answers with deafening roars, somehow the younger Tidemann translates unknowable words, with cupped hands, into his ear.

“In that case-!” He jumps in place as the troll’s massive hands slam on either side of the three humans, so forcefully that their speakers almost rattle off the hill. “I have come to grovel and beg, King of all Trolls!”

“GROVEL AND BEG ALL YOU LIKE, IT WILL NOT MAKE YOUR FLESH ANY MORE SOUR!”

“You speak of sour blood! I speak of tainted winds!” As if punctuating his own words, the weather picks up, clouds of steam and mist enter and exit the troll’s chamber-like nose. “You must have sensed them, when my men released you! The dragons that gnaw at the world’s roots! They come, they come for us all!”

“GOOD, ALL THOSE WHO ESCAPE MY WRATH WILL COME ACROSS THEIRS, THEN!”

“What of your people, then?”

“MY PEOPLE ARE DEAD, YOU MURDERED MY CHILDREN!”

“Your people yet live, King of the trolls. In the deepest and darkest recesses of the land they still live as they did in your day! I will take you to them, if you hear my plea!”

For a second, Haakon sees in the Daikaiju’s face something perhaps no human before has seen in such a visage. A flash of hope, of longing, one that quickly is replaced by anger yet again.

“ LIAR!”

“I swear I speak the truth. I swear it in the name of every soul I hope to save today!”

“YOUR KIND DO NOT SAVE, NOT SINCE YOU SACRIFICED YOUR GODS TO THE NAILED MAN!”

“Do you smell lies in my words, then? Mountain King? For I know that is well within your power!”

The stone-skinned giant pauses, and Haakon sees his opening.

“I pledge to you, Mountain King, that the monsters that swim the seas towards your and mine realms both will not leave those last havens untouched. They will burn and eat all. And unlike my ancestors, there will be no remorse to their acts, for that is not something their minds can fathom! I pledge to you this, Mountain King, that the actions of my ancestors -of my people’s ancestors- were deplorable, unbefitting of any who claim to be good, christian and otherwise. I pledge to you, that if tomorrow comes and both our peoples still cling on, I will do everything within my power to atone for our national sin!”

“YOU SUGGEST ALLIANCE, THEN. AS IF ANYTHING YOU COULD OFFER IN EXCHANGE FOR MY AID WOULD BRING THOSE I CHERISHED BACK!”

“I suggest alliance because I must! Because my people are suffering a fate equal to those we imposed upon your own. Because it is my duty as king to do whatever I can do to defend them, even if it costs me my life!”

Silence takes over the overcast valley yet again, the troll that looms above him as still as the lithic graveyard that stretches behind them like the terrible reminder it is.

22nd of December, 2091
Trondheim, Trøndelag County, Kingdom of Norway

“Captain Holm, sir.” One of his lieutenant, Rustad, rushes to Kristoffer’s side as the artillery unit leader maintains his watch by way of binoculars, having commandeered the top of Storheia hill -less than seven kilometers away from Trondheim’s urban core- gives him a good look into much of Trondheim Fjord’s narrowest passage. The one place through which he knows the approaching monstrosity will have to push through if it intends to attack the regional capital. “Target has been spotted at Brestad. As ordered forces there have stood down. ETA five minutes, sir.”

“Are all batteries ready?”

“Ready, sir.”

“Good. Make sure everyone hears it again: No one shoots a single shell until I say so.”

“Yes sir… Uhm… Sir… Some of the men are worried that-”

“Tell them that it doesn’t make a difference whether one or the other kills us if the plan doesn’t work. Now go, I don’t want to miss any of this.”

Rustad takes their leave, and Kristoffer returns to his dutiful watch, resting on his belly at the hill’s top, binoculars propped up with his elbows as supports, and starts counting the minutes down.

In the end, it turns out that the spotters had been high-balling the monster’s speed, as the great greenish shape of blue fins that starts breaching the water’s surface like a submarine arrives around a quarter of an hour later. Internally he wonders what kind of monstrous purpose would have evolved a creature whose first instinct is to seek out the largest, and not simply nearest, settlement it can. It can’t be hunger, as the massive dragon-like animals being fought across the North Sea aren’t capable of doing something as absurd as gauging meal sizes based ona city’s footprint. No, it must be something more malicious that has driven that “Octofin” so deep into Trondheim Fjord.

Internally, he grimaces at the name. He’s been hearing a lot of informal names being paired up with standard KDF codes lately, every one sillier or more painfully literal than the previous one, as if they had all been named by children’s authors. Then again, then again, that may be the point, to try and make fun of the monsters that would otherwise just be a gnawing presence at the back of their national zeitgeist.

But a name like Octofin …? Not even he can stop himself from letting a smidge of a smile out. A smile that quickly dies when the monster comes upon a slightly shallower section of the Fjord -or perhaps finds itself needing to take a breath of fresh air- and is forced to reveal itself.

It is crocodilian and covered in semi-translucent bluish fins. And yet, strangely, it seems to paddle its way forwards, using long limbs ending in webbed arms and claws to push itself forwards as if they were oars. Its tails -for there are nine of them- seem to be too thin to be used in aiding the locomotion, and decorated with frond-like sub-tails that would only make it less effective at aquatic locomotion.

A monster, one badly designed by whoever was in charge of the project somewhere within the hellish depths under Iceland.

 And, yet, Kristoffer’s smile starts coming back soon after, as he tracks the monster’s slowed-down swimming, and how it fails to notice that as it arrives, there’s already certain buildings that have been torn down in the villages and towns of the Fjord.

Equally, it seems, the Octofin fails to pay attention to the rocky outcrop that flanks one of the narrow passages of the Fjord. One that the watchful man himself had seen walk up to the spot, pick it, and settle down until the seams and shapes of a humanoid body had melted away under a thin dusting of fresh snow.

The aquatic dragon seems past it.

And then, it rouses with a roar that makes Kristoffer’s bones drum. And jumps atop the dragon. Dovregubben is a brawler, no way around it, and the way the colossal troll wrestled the crocodilian dragon very obviously reminds him of seeing television shows of men doing the very same thing with alligators.

The Ragnaröksdatter, obviously, attempts to fight back and to throw the stone-bound giant off its back. But it fails to do so as Dovregubben plants his elephantine feet on the Fjord’s bottom and simply heaves it upwards.

The dragon, clearly and continuously confused, lets out a massive roar as rivers of black ink start pouring out of where gills should be. At first Kristoffer assumes it to be the blood of some wound inflicted by Dovregubben, until he realizes that it is actual literal ink that is becoming a cloud of darkness in the Fjord’s waters. Quite a dangerous ability, were the monster able to release itself and disappear into the darkness.

Luckily, the close struggle continues, as Dovregubben refuses to let go. He doesn’t let go even as the Octofin’s strange tails start whipping about like tentacles, attempting to construct and pull away at his choking arms.

Kristoffer raises his radio to his lips, but does not speak yet. Letting the dragon further and further tire itself as Dovregubben punches and stabs with hands turned into bladed implements by way of the dozens of pressed church bells held within them, leaving sections of skin bleeding and bare of scales as tentacles do their best to wind him down.

Kristoffer waits, and waits, and waits until -with a mighty heave, Dovregubben attempts to fully throw the dragon against the Fjord’s shoreline. The dragon manages to keep itself affixed to the troll as its crocodilian jaw bites into his stony shoulder. But the awkward position does leave its belly exposed.

“NOW!” He shouts into the communication device, and within a blink, the landscape on either sides of the Fjord explodes into gouts of flame as dozens of artillery and rocket batteries, their mutations mercilessly slamming into the green-bluish shape awkwardly coiled around the troll, almost managing to pull him into the water.

Their brawling doesn’t end, however, as both monsters are engulfed by an explosion-dotted cloud of smoke, not even as geysers of oil-like blood erupt out of the dragon’s underbelly.

No, it only does so when -with a reaping crunch that will echo for years in observers’ minds- a colossal crocodilian jaw is ripped from the skull its should be attached to, and is send flying until to slams down a few hundred meters to Kristoffer’s left, its teeth digging trenches into the forested hill.

“I want our lookouts to keep tabs on where he moves off to next. As soon as we know which Ragnaröksdatter he is intercepting next, I want a communication link established with that Fjord’s local command.”

Cheering erupts all around Kristoffer as he stands up, dusting his pants off and grabbing Lieutenant Rustad’s uniform. He does all that, obviously, without taking his sight away from the Troll King, as the celebrating beast throws its hands up like a victorious boxer.

“Of course, sir!” The solder runs off, following the command.

His attention is soon back to the troll, as he continues to deface the dragon’s corpse by smearing it against the Fjords wall, blood mixing with ink in the waters below. The monster that has saved Trondheim clearly has a lot of anger to work through, and Kristoffer cannot be happier knowing that he’s amongst those who’ve been present for the most violent therapy session of the 21st Century.

Chapter Text

20th of November, 2033
Ruins of Ende, Flores Island, Greater Komodo Exclusion Zone

Yunus tries to remain as silent and as unmoving as he can even as his hand remains wrapped around his crying daughter’s mouth like an iron vice. It is not her fault, he knows, how scared she is. She can’t control her emotions, she’s barely five years old.

His other arm remains wrapped around her body. Partially in an instinctual desire to shield her, partially to keep her from flailing around. His mouth rests against her little forehead as they lay on the cracked road, weeds growing between the chunks of asphalt poking at him through the holes in his ratty shirt. 

He whispers little nothings to her, hoping to calm her down enough that he can let go of her and start doing something other than just watch . It’s the one mercy he allows himself to give her right now. Thankfully, of all the senses it has, hearing isn’t the one that currently has him worried they might get found out.

The ground quakes around them, jostling them both and bumping his shoulder against the cold metal of the abandoned car they are hiding under. It -she- is repositioning as she scrapes and digs away at the ruins of what moments ago had been a two story building, he can see the shadow of her waving tail undulating like a snake.

No matter, his sight is focused on one and one thing only.

If he looks straight ahead, over his daughter’s dirtied hedge of hair, he can barely see her as he squints. Keloré, his wife. She’s huddled against the wall of a cornering building across the street from his and his daughter’s car, her back flush against the concrete and her neck turned a sharp ninety degrees to look him in the eyes.

He knows what she is thinking about almost instantly. She is doing the same thing she did when she convinced him to try and make the trip to one of the ports. What she did when she started forgoing buying food for all three of them as they walked Flores’ dirt roads towards Ende, what she did when she traded much more than their belongings in exchange for medicine when their little Yudit had grown sick just a few weeks ago.

She is going to risk and trade everything for the barest chance that their daughter will be on one of the boats about to leave Flores Island. It doesn’t matter where to -even if they would much rather board one bound for the catholic-majority Timor- because any of a dozen refugee camps in the surrounding area would be a thousand times better than seeing their daughter grow up in the shadow of Queen Ora.

No parent would want that fate for their child, a lifetime of fear, fear that the monster who prowls the jungles and ranges of Flores will make its way to their village, eat all their livestock and destroy their livelihood. Or even worse, that the thing the humanitarian workers call “Komodithrax” will find them too quickly or too suddenly, before they can flee and hide, and will take something even more precious than their ability to make ends meet or their homes.

No, Yudit must leave Flores. Today. They are just shy of within eye-sight of the docks, where the ships are waiting for the last moment before the massive reptile -currently busy searching for bodies among a wreck she just created, fellow and yet less-lucky refugees- will taste the paint of their hulls with her tongue. Just enough time to set sail and put enough distance between themselves and the shore to outrange the monster’s poisonous green flames.

Both parents agree on the goal. Ynus merely grows pale at the idea of even trying it without his beloved wife by his side.

And so, as the monster continues to rummage and its clawed feet throw other abandoned vehicles, he wracks his brain, looking for a solution without ever even letting go of his little princess.

‘Think, damnit, think!’ He seethes, knowing that he has precious few moments before the love of his life makes a final decision that he will have no voice on. He’s always been a problem solver. Back in his village, his childhood tinkering had landed him the role of fixitman in regards to generators, old radios and guns. A skill which he had applied to fund their trip. Just as he had made use of it to build small snare traps along the way during their march to freedom, closing the gap left by rations. Just as he had, when he had convinced that doctor to accept fixing his village’s water pump instead of the payment his wife had agreed to.

He’d spent all his life fixing little things. Why can’t he fix the first big one, the first truly important one?!

Another step, rubble cascades as the massive monitor lizard snaps its neck back as it shallows, something Yunus does not want to think about. Quickly follow flickers of a forked tongue long enough to weigh more than the full weight of the next largest animal in the island. Another stop jostles them. This time, something protruding digs into the man’s upper arm.

It is cold, but not cold in the way shaded metal is.

Yunus snaps his neck up. There, sticking out like a sore thumb is a plastic cap, one that clearly doesn’t belong in the vehicle the model is supposed to be off. A disparagingly normal thing in a place like the Lesser Sundas, where not a single modern vehicle has been imported since the establishment of the Greater Komodo Exclusion zone.

A plastic cap, like the kind that one could easily replace a lost engine oil drainage plug with.

Oil, engine oil.

The monster’s tongue flickers again as its monitoring head begins to swivel, its body turning around much more slowly.

Hopefully their smell is masked by that of the people clamoring to board the ships. But he has no time to waste on that theory, and so he begins gesturing wildly -with both arms, awkwardly holding onto his daughter with his elbows- for his wife to rush towards them.

Keloré is too far to truly read her expression. But he would like to imagine that she smiles in the way she always does when she realizes he’s come up with some quick-fix to save the day.

He gets up and rushes across the street, using the blind spot created by the Daikaiju’s raised neck and backside to get to them across the avenue, running at full tilt and making him wince in commiseration when she basically stops herself by just slamming against the car’s door as she awkwardly scoots under the chassis.

They hug, obviously, silently crying as they squish their daughter’s frame between them. But even as Keloré speaks to precious little Yudit, Yunus finishes formulating his plan. “Okay, okay!” He scream-whispers, gathering both’s attention. “Listen closely, we don’t have much time. I am about to unscrew that plug. When I do that, close your eyes, your mouth and try to plug your nose, and then try to smear as much of the oil that will come out into your head and clothes. I… I think it can camouflage our smell.” As he speaks, he scoots back to get a better angle at the drainage plug.

His wife nods, already maneuvering their daughter to do the bulk of the work for their Little Princess, and kisses him. “I love you.” They say to each other. Nearby, a car is flattened under the irradiated varanid’s splayed foot. It makes Yunus wince, but at the same time it only strengthens his resolve. It’s now, or never.

He pulls, and the oil pan’s contents begin spilling down, just in time for Komodithax to begin lowering her head in search for more food. The oil is old -which makes sense, for the last few years Ende has hosted only arriving refugees and leaving ship crews, neither of which stay long enough to make use of a random compact car- but that only plays in their favour, as he degraded motor oil easily stains his daughter and wife’s clothing, globs of it standing their hair. Within less than a minute, the pan is emptied and they are laying, muddied, in a small puddle of oil. 

The car begins to list, it is pushing it aside.

“NOW! RUN!”

His wife hauls their daughter up with strength and speed, shocking and yet completely expected out of a woman of her stature and exhausted body. After all, she is running to save her daughter’s life.

Surprisingly, Komoditrhax doesn’t follow, or lower her head to burn them into a crisp. As adrenaline flows through her blood, Keloré somehow finds the mental focus to actually wonder why that is. And only then it is that she notices that there is no one gasping for breath and running by her side. The street is silent by anything other than her daughter’s sobs, and the bellowing breathing of the monster they are leaving behind.

She knows, she doesn’t even need to turn her head back to know. She continues looking forward, spotting the distant and diminutive sight of the masses and ships moored on Ende’s long-abandoned fishermen’s piers.

She can just imagine it. The brownish monster’s long and elegant neck turned to the side, distracted by a sprinting sight whose smells are not masked by oil, who runs for the city’s back-alleys and maze-like narrow streets.

And Keloré, who has never failed to be willing to sacrifice anything at the feet of her daughter’s chances, is left stumped, when her husband manages to one-up her for the first and last time.

Chapter Text

27th of July, 2008
Road Connecting Kijŏng-dong and Joint Security Area,
Korean Demilitarized Zone

He had fled.

Of course he had fled.

Ye Yong-Joon isn’t a coward, or at least doesn’t consider himself one. He’s simply one of millions doing his best to navigate the rigid and demanding structures of his homeland, he has always been a cautious man, a rule-abiding citizen in his younger years, and a good soldier during the last few. 

And just as thousands of his fellow rule-abiding citizens and good soldiers, he had deserted and started fleeing south as soon as the opportunity to do so without being sent to a reeducation camp presented itself. 

It’s not an aspiration he had ever had, that of “escaping” to the decadent south. As far as his plans for life had gone until a few hours ago, he’d only wanted to finish his service in the Korean People’s Army and then find a posting at a factory back in his home city of Kusong. Hopefully in the process courting a fellow coworker and finding himself a wife. Nothing big, nothing worth writing a memoir about, a simple and honest life like the one his older siblings had already attained. The kind of exemplary life the party wanted for him and his compatriots..

But in order to have a modest life, he had reasoned to himself, one must first and foremost stay alive long enough to actually attain it. Military pensions don’t do much for dead soldiers, after all. Which is why he had thrown his rifle aside as soon as the explosions had started. Soon after he had climbed up into the trunk of the first truck to almost run him over, itself filled with like-minded individuals. 

“Thieves and deserters, cowards deserving of summary execution.” His commander would have shouted at them. He prefers not to think about it. After all, said commander is either doing the same thing as he is, but towards the Yalu river, or a pressed-flat corpse.

They -Ye and the other thirteen people mounted in the truck’s back- hadn’t really spoken about their destination; there had been no reason to do so. With the monstrosity to their north, blocking any road or railway line to Pyongyang, their only realistic options had been to start moving south, either to find refuge among some still-functioning army unit, or all the way to the Panmunjom . It was a slim chance, they all knew that, but it was better than trying their luck by heading into the desolate and mountainous east. Obviously, none had even bothered to mention the psychotic idea of trying to stand and fight.

Ye had seen that monster out of a grandmother’s fairy tail eat a Pokpung-ho tank in a couple of bites with the same finesse as a dog shredding a tough piece of meat. What in the world could a bunch of men with assault rifles made out of wood have done to it?

The men in the truck -most without their rifles, a few even out of uniform- hadn’t been the only ones to share in that realization, of course. In the hours after the beast had escaped its earthen bindings a veritable avalanche of terrified civilians and fellow deserters had made their way south to the demilitarized zone by any means necessary. All converging in the same point of crossing, of course, the last fifty years had been ample enough time to turn the rest of the two hundred and fifty kilometers wide stretch of land into a veritable sea of minefields and barbed wire.

The few roads and bridges connecting the two halves of the peninsula are peppered with abandoned vehicles, their drivers abandoning the state-owned machines as soon as they had started running out of fuel. Ye would bet his eye that the Imjin River’s estuary would be filled with fishing boats, dinghies and rafts doing the exact same thing.

Ye and his fellows abandon their truck as well, having been unable to find anyone with fuel they could have threatened to steal. Within mere minutes, they all melt into the teeming crowds of civilians pulling elderly and children along, within a blink of an eye, he is alone again, likely to never again see the men he has shared the last few hours of his life with. It doesn’t upset him much, firstly because he’s got much larger demons to worry about. Secondly, because the drifters had truly not known each other at all. Ye tries to worry for their safety or care for their plights, and monumentally fails to do so. 

The one thing that bothers him is not having had the chance to thank the driver. And even that is forgotten when he and thousands of others enter a place real yet mythical.

Ye had heard a million stories about the DMZ, no matter the fact that his unit had never been assigned to guard any sectors of it. Chiefly, he had heard of how southern deserters were shot on the back by their cowardly comrades while their side did likewise to punish traitors to the revolution. All he cares about is his hope that said guards have also chosen to flee.

The crowd only grows more dense in the badly-maintained road, few willing to brave fields seeded with mines meant to turn armored vehicles into mincemeat. Still, that general show of self-preservation doesn’t mean he doesn’t also see hundreds of examples of decisions driven by desperation. 

After all, some do wander off-road to hide in the forestry of the DMZ. Others stop and start shouting, likely in hopes to find loved ones they have become separated from, regardless of the visible reality that the refugee column would swallow and spit them out without a thought. Some collapse, crying from exhaustion. The lucky ones are avoided like islets in the current. The others are simply forced to start moving again by the striking of feet and knees. A few carry their meager belongings, which only slows them down, even if Ye must admit that his stomach growls at the sight of those few who carry provisions. His belly isn’t the only contracted one, and fights and beating sporadically start between those wanting food and the fools who have shown themselves to carry it. 

As it were, the mob only makes its way closer and closer to their target. Panmunjom, the Truce village. There, where two armies meet, they hope to find safety. The Armored trains of the Soviets are too far away to offer any kind of protection, but perhaps the “imperialist automatons” of the KDF could provide some measure of protection. There is a “shatterdome” in Incheon, is there not?

Regardless of how much safety the mob may find as it makes its way closer and closer to their target, little more than a small area dotted with buildings straddling an imaginary line men like Ye had been taught to hate since his birth. It’s close enough that he can see it if he jumps in place to look above the crowds.

As he comes back down from such a jump, however, his eyes find something else, something that -for once- puts a stop to his fleeing, suddenly enough that a few people slam against his back and complain before they start walking around him.

A woman, short, carrying a little bundle in her arms. One of her shoes is missing, the foot bleeding. The crowd jostled her with much more ease than it ever would to him. After a few more seconds of staring, he realizes that -with her features colored by grime- he hadn’t realized how young she must be.

The bundle starts to cry, just like hundreds of others he has come across. 

Ye goes to reach for her, attempting to move perpendicularly to the crowd’s direction. At least he can try and pull her along, unwilling to just let yet another face be consumed by the pushing crowds.

Then he feels it , a rumbling so deep that bones notice it before the sound reaches his ears, a deep, bull-like bellowing that echoes as if it had been amplified by a massive metal pipe. For a second, the crowd of shouting and screaming people is silenced.

A second later, all hell has broken loose.

Bulgasari, a monster more at home in his grandfather’s bedtime stories than in the real world.

It has followed the same route. It is behind them. Close enough to make itself heard, even if Ye refuses to look back, dreading what he may find in the northern horizon. Memories of bunkers stomped through and artillery crushed like blades of grass propels him forward.

He forgets about the little girl and her little brother, and just runs.

He doesn’t know how long it takes, it certainly hadn’t felt like more than a couple minutes had elapsed, but fear is strangely proficient at altering one’s perception of time, stretching and compacting it at will. And yet, here they are, himself somehow at the column’s front, a few meters before him stands one of two concrete bridges leading to Panmunjom, he couldn’t give less of a shit about which one.

People keep pushing from behind, some already moving into the bridge, and yet he remains locked in place. Soon enough, those who had advanced beyond his stop also came to a halt. Against his will, the crowd behind keeps pushing. 

Pushing and screaming, terrified. He knows why all too well, but cannot bring himself to move even a single step forward. Before them, on the bridge’s opposite end, stands a line of men, shoulder to shoulder.

Men of the enemy’s army, their rifle’s raised. On instinct drilled into him by months of grueling training, his hand goes to his belt. It doesn’t matter that he was never issued a handgun -never enough of those around, but plenty of artillery shells for Kaiju to eat- and that his hands reach for emptiness.

Across the bridge, his eyes meet those of a man of his equivalent rank, both of their faces covered in a sheen of sweat. One by exhaustion, the other by anxiety, both of their eyes equally filled with fear and confusion, the private holds his rifle in a white-knuckled grip.

“There’s soldiers amongst them! It’s a trap!” Someone shouts. Perhaps the officer standing at the far right of the firing line. Are they talking about Ye? Or about one of hundreds of fellow deserters intermingled with them.

It does not matter, the words echo clearly in the language they all share. 

Just as the monster’s roar has made his insides quiver, the bullets that slam against his chest do a good job of scrambling his innards.

Ye’s body collapses back into a crowd of fellow dying “comrades”, his body a field of red stars.

Final moments of Ye Yong-Joon, by Randi .

Dongjak District, Seoul Special Metropolitan City, Republic of Korea

Tam is trying his best.

Of course he is trying his best.

Tam isn’t an idiot. Back when he was a kid, his history class had dedicated an entire semester to the last fifty year’s history of Kaiju attacks, starting with Tokyo’s Conflagration and ending with events as daunting and apocalyptic as the Fall of Hindustan. The unholy creatures -combinations of terroristic acts and natural disasters in their nature- had become  the greatest threat to the mode of life of any and all humans on earth.

And yet, in his youthful ignorance, he had never considered the possibility that Korea’s time would also come, and that it may happen with him alive to bear witness.

He is no expert on the subject -his mother had always told him that no man his age could be an expert on anything- but even he knows that roars and explosions so loud that they can be heard all the way from Pyeongtaek’s port can only mean one thing. Fifty kilometers away, is where their source is, and yet the monster makes itself easily known in the forest of skyscrapers that is Seoul.

Footage had started flooding social media almost instantly, grainy and shaky footage of some enormous shape standing astride a tanker ship, tearing into it like an eagle upon a hare’s broken body. Photographs of the bipedal shape rampaging through some kind of industrial complex went viral seconds after being posted in forums and blogs, courtesy of Incheon sailors who hadn’t fled yet.

People post all kinds of things about it. One moment, many are saying that the monster is moving upstream towards Ansung, a second later a news organization’s account states that the monster is battling Dancing Tiger near the city’s Shatterdome. And yet, others post about the monster somehow being as far north as Pocheon, posting photographs of landscapes shrouded in fire and smoke as proof.

All Tam knows is that it had started while he had been waiting to grab his sister from kindergarten. Suffice to say, he had pushed his way through the rabble of worried parents, grabbed Mok, and hightailed it. His mother forgotten, he knows she would rather he get his sister to safety than even consider going looking for her.

Even as social media implodes, government agencies keep broadcasting -be it by direct messages or the blaring alarms meant to announce the long-waited war with the north- that it had set up an evacuation hub in Incheon airport. Tam had tried the subway there. A big mistake.

Subways are all closed or repurposed entrances to bunker networks. The roads are even worse, pure chaos, so no bus or taxi are options either. So, hoisting Mok on his back, Tam had simply started running west through the streets, following the Han river as it bisects the city, knowing that once he reaches the coast, all he will have to do is follow the crowds into Incheon. He had hoped that at least one of the bridges he would need to cross would have still been standing.

The siblings end up not getting that far, actually. Whatever the Kaiju is, it is fast.

It is as Tam is running through Dongjak District that the monster barrels into view, its neck showered by a hail of glass shards as it side-checks an entire apartment building. Within its jaws is being held a tanker truck, which, suddenly, like a crane would a fish, it swallows.

Its appearance is terrifying by way of size and the psychological impact of seeing a Daikaiju in the flesh for the first time in Tam’s life, but  the specifics of its appearance are less of a shock. Like many creatures of its ilk, it looks distinctly dinosaur-like, a long, hulking shape standing on two avian legs, with relatively short clawed forearms and an enormous head adorned with tusks and a single nose horn. The bump in its snout is already taller than five men.

Tam freezes for a few seconds before Mok’s crying reboots his brain. He rushes towards a sturdy looking store-front, as it is already filled with terrified bystanders, he is initially forced to huddle just behind its shattered glass doorway. 

Even as the store’s owner notices them and shouts for his customers to let them move deeper in, the siblings maintain a privileged full view of the beast’s following actions.

It trots up to the wide highway which closely hugged the river, each gingerly step causing the world around them to shake. As itt does so, Tam notes that its tail sported four stake-like spikes, like those of armoured dinosaurs. 

Then it begins, not by snapping at the shapes fleeing between its legs, but by plucking cars -granted, some with people still inside- off the road like a chicken plucking bread crumbs off the ground. It methodically tears the vehicles apart, biting and shaking them until entire chunks tear off and go flying, slamming against buildings like massive pieces of shrapnel, or by clawing at the sturdier parts with its forelimbs.

It tries to only eat the back-halves of the cars, often ignoring the trapped victims altogether. The fuel tanks are what it wants. It drinks the diesel and gasoline, ignoring the plentiful electric vehicles.

A bellow echoes out, so loud it forces the boy to cover his ears with a wince.

It comes from across the river.

An equally colossal shape starts making its way out of the long shadows cast by the skyscrapers. Quadrupedal as it is, it barrels through the Asterium skyscraper, demolishing the building with a heart-stopping crash and a cloud of smoke and debris so large that it obscured the view of the northern bank in its entirety.

Except, of course, for the massive shape moving towards the riverbank, tall enough to outsize the debris cloud it has just created. At first, Tam can only really differentiate the beast’s massive horns from the rest of its bulk, obscured by the clouds of atomized concrete and glass, but as it nears the riverbank, it makes him wish it had stayed inside the dust cloud.

What at first had looked like a bull’s head, clearly is more like a bull’s skull someone had welded the teeth of a crocodile to. Its strange gait only adds to the demonic appearance, while its hindlimbs are hoofed like a buffalo’s, its longer forelimbs end in a pair of oversized, two-clawed fists, forcing it to walk on its knuckles like a gorilla. A mace-tipped short tail waves lazily behind it, like a cow batting flies away.

But what truly steals the boy’s breath is the beast’s “hide.” 

It looks like -no, it is - metal. An interlocking structure of scale armour, plates of gunmetal steel and blue iron cover its back while shining, copperesque metals cover its belly. It looks more like a cast metal sculpture than an animal, like a war horse's armour given life and dark intent. The fact that it moves with the fluidity of a flesh-and-blood beast only makes it more off putting.

It stands on the urbanized riverbank, a van-sized chunk of the skyscraper’s steel frame on its maw, being ruminated, slowly tearing it apart into manageable chunks.

Tam holds his breath, the two Daikaiju stare at each other from their respective sides of the river, unmoving and shocked by the mutual interruption of their meals. If they were to fight there’d be no chance to survive, much less flee, amongst the chaos and destruction they would cause. 

‘We are as good as dead.’ Tam grimly realizes.

And yet, the clash he is dreading and preparing for…

Never comes.

The monster on their side simply picks up a new vehicle -an ambulance- to dissect. Only the screams of the driver, still stuck inside, break the silence with horrifying speed.

The metallic colossus on the other side simply elects to bite into the bridge crossing the river, separating the structure’s steel frame from the cement and asphalt, like a bone being split so one could reach the marrow. Massive chunks of it fall into the river, muddying its waters.

It takes time to gather the courage, but they eventually manage to sneak out of the area, the gluttonous beasts too focused on their plentiful meals to bother with what to them are ants.

Tam and his little sister boarded a plane two days later, headed for one of hundreds of refugee camps built across Japan. By then, Tam can spy from the heavy-loaded plane’s window how Seoul’s skyline has visibly shrunk, and the Han River’s Bay has become an archipelago of torn ships.

The siblings never do find their mother, either.

Chapter Text

25th of April, 1609
Mount Yae, Island of Okinawa, Ryukyu Kingdom

Chura’s naked feet hurt, the stones of the mountainside dig into the sole of her bleeding left foot, and the right one isn’t going to end the night unbloodied either, of which she feels painfully sure. And yet she continues to walk up the slopes. As if her sorry state wasn’t enough, the darkness of the night should have made it impossible for her to navigate a hillside made up of a patchwork of low and dense forests mixed with gravelly and rocky slopes. 

And yet, despite the darkness of the mild spring night, she can easily see before herself as she tries to navigate a nonexistent path. In that task she is accompanied by her own long shadow, one which melts into the natural darkness higher up the mountain. All thanks to the massive pyre burning behind her, all the way at the mountain’s roots near the shores.

Nakijin Castle burns, and does so with mighty and angry flames fed by a day’s worth of combat. The entire fortification resembles a fire pit, its stalwart exterior stone walls being baked from the inside as the structures and wooden castle they are meant to protect blazes away into nothingness. If she were to look back -which she forces herself not to- she could very likely see the figures walking, running and doing all sorts of macabre things around the slowly collapsing and carbonizing structures. 

The Japanese, and those who hadn’t perished during the previous day of battle.

They had come by sea -a painfully obvious fact, considering that Chura’s homeland is an island- and landed upon Unten Harbour, according to the messengers who had arrived at the castle, completely unopposed after their crushing victories up in the northeast. Their lord had decided then and there not to foolishly meet them out in the field, when with such a short distance -and hence, so little time- any preparations would have been futile.

The attempt to shore up defenses, as Chura had watched them develop, had only been marginally less hopeless. The Satsumas, the Japanese Shogun’s lackeys who had simply been given permission to invade her home, had arrived with more than three thousand men aboard their ships, more than what the entirety of the RyuKyu Kingdom could have mustered even if they had had any amount of forewarning.

And yet, the men of her liege’s garrison had fought valiantly, leaving the attackers bleeding and tired after an entire day’s worth of battle, certainly a more noble end than what a grueling siege imposed upon them would have meant.

Only when it had become clear that their defenses would not hold into the second day, while the Japanese had been busy with the first of their night assaults, she and a few other women had been escorted out of the castle by way of a hidden tunnel.

Most had been the daughters and wives of the men who had stayed to die -who are already dead, from Chura’s point of view- but she herself had had no blood relation to those men. No, the young woman had been asked to flee with the rest on the grounds of her status as a Noro Priestess.

Whatever ought to happen to the realm, her liege had said, the idea of knowing a kamichu’s -a god person’s- blood being spilt had frozen the blood in his veins. The islands would need the service of worshipful women and men like herself for generations to come, no matter under whose banner they would be ruled.

And yet, she is not fleeing with the rest down south to the stronghold that is Naha, is she? No, she is climbing a mountain in the middle of the night, And not just any mountain. She is climbing up the slopes of Mount Yae. For she knows something that her liege had not known, what the invaders do not know.

Yes, she is a Noro priestess, one who communicates and channels the ancestors, the local gods or even the powerful deities of the sea. And just as no two spirits are equal, no two Noro or Yuta priests or priestesses are the same.

Chura knows things, knowledge shared by the woman who trained her, and the woman before her, as far back as the oldest legends, older than the reign of first king Shuten himself. Legends of guardians with skins like walls and eyes like hoards of treasure.

Legends of the greatest of all lion dogs, of the true first king of Okinawa.

He who slumbers under Mount Yae, whose shrine is sealed by a mighty stone only a Noru could find or breach.

She can find it, she remembers the faintest memories of her mistress taking her to the sealed rock just once in her childhood, more than a decade ago. All she needs is time, time, and the energy to continue searching. If she finds it, surely the great guardian will look down upon the fiery tragedy that is Nakijin, and will in his fury save her homeland from bondage.

All she needs is ti-

The distinctive sound of steel sliding out of a wooden scabbard. Chura’s blood freezes in her veins, and yet her heart begins to beat as fast as a drum.

‘I… I only needed a bit more time…’

Yet again she doesn’t turn around, the sound of shifting gravel tells her that the one who has somehow found and followed is too far downhill for her to have noticed sooner. But not far enough to escape, not when she hasn’t found the stone yet.

“And where do you think you are going?” He, it, says.

All Chura can do is just run.

She doesn’t get very far.

13th of April, 1945
Mount Yaedake, Okinawa Prefecture, Empire of Japan

Colonel Oki’s hand hurts, it hurts because he’s gripping his pistol’s handle so hard that the metal of it is digging into the palm of his hand and the insides of his fingers. And the reason his pistol’s grip is bare metal is the simple fact that for the last three days he and the men of his unit have been forced to spend their nights hiding at the bottom of tidal ravines and half-flooded caves. The wood of it had simply started to get soft and give up. And rather than have a weapon component that could slip between his fingers or waterlogged enough to rust the rest of the weapon with its spongy wateriness, he’d simply taken his knife to it, pried it off, and gotten on with his mission.

A mission that he would be just on the cusp of completing, if it weren’t for the fact that the woman he is holding by the neck -the very same one that his trembling hand is holding the barrel of the gun to the side of the head of- is too much of a stubborn and traitorous whore to do as she is told.

“YOU WILL TAKE ME TO IT!”

The young woman continues to babble incoherently, her nails digging into Kenjiro Oki’s forearm. All he does is press down on her neck harder. If she won’t speak, at the very least he won’t suffer to have her screaming into her ears.

“I KNOW WHAT YOU FILTHY RATS WERE PLANNING!” Suddenly, the IJA officer goes from digging the muzzle of his pistol into her head, to wildly waving it towards the rest of the people standing inside the main room of the half-blown-up house.

Three of his men stand at the back of the room, briefly flinching as his erratic movements leave the gun pointed at them, before he points it lower, towards the three figures kneeling in the middle of it all. The father, mother and five year old brother of the focus of his interrogations.

“CONFESS!” He screams. “TWO DAMNED YEARS! I HAVE BEEN ON THIS ISLAND FOR TWO DAMNED YEARS! YOU HICKS THINK I HAVEN’T NOTICED YOUR SCHEMES! WE SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN RID OF YOU ALL THE MOMENT THE YAMATO STEPPED FOOT ON THIS HELL OF AN ISLAND. TRAITORS!”

His accusations are fully rational -at least within the narrative he has built inside his dehydrated skull- and he knows it well. The Ryukyuan are not just an offshoot of the pure Yamato, but a halfbreed mockery of his people, fully incapable of showing the loyalty and honor so natural to his kin. For days, almost since the naval battle around them had begun, the barbarians had plastered the island with leaflets covered in the grating local dialect. Calling on them to “surrender” under promises that they would be shown mercy.

Lies, surrender could be nothing other than betrayal and revolt against the soldiers doing the emperor’s will. And the kindest mercy under barbarians would still be tenfold worse than an honorable death in the emperor’s name.

And yet, Kenjiro can’t bring himself to just order all four killed. For he has stayed in the island for much longer than the fresh-faced recruits who had been sent to serve under him instead of the battlefields of China and Burma. And he has heard the locals speak amongst themselves, of their personal business, of their worries for their sons recruited to serve far beyond the sea, of things as mundane as the rising price of rice…

And, of their legends.

“I KNOW YOU INTEND TO WAKE IT, YOUR DEMON GOD, TO WHISPER LIES AND DECEIT INTO HIS EARS SO THAT HE MAY BETRAY THE SOVEREIGN OVER ALL OF THE WORLD!”

The girl, finally, gives an approximation of a proper answer. Of course, it comes in the form of further lies, as she denies her kind -the monks and priests of the island, of which she is a novice having planned anything of the sort.

“The mother.” Is all that the colonel responds with. Within a few seconds, one of his three soldiers raised his rifle, and placed three shots upon the older woman’s back. The smoking holes visible through her blackened clothes. Obviously, the shock and the screaming and crying as her husband and son cradle the dead body, and the crying and squirming of the girl, are so deeply annoying that they almost make Kenjiro give the order to kill the other two.

But, no, he is too close. Too close to finding such a wonderful treasure, one that could, if the hushed myths of the locals are to be believed, tear the entire fleet surrounding the island into ribbons of steel.

“Listen closely, and listen carefully.” He whispers into the crying girl’s ears, by now his mind has blocked out the wailing of the little child. “You are going to take me to this shrine the old people talk about. And after you take me there, you are going to show me how your kind awakens this Great Shisa. Once that is done, and he is made aware of the affront that both the barbarians and you mongrels are on this island, and only then, I will let you go, so you can spend the last days of your pitiful life with those two miserable wrecks. Now, nod if you understand.”

The girl’s eyes, stained with sweat and tears, stare unblinkingly into his own. He expects -almost wants- defiance or contempt, more likely fear or defeat. Instead, she gives him the worst thing she ever could.

Her stare is heavy with mocking amusement, as if there was some grand joke that he has not been made aware of.

“Okay then,” He cocks the gun’s hammer. “Kansuke, Sadakuno. On my order, fire.” He smiles. 

“One…”

The man hugs his little boy, trying to shield him.

“Two...”

The men cock their rifles.  The girl closes her eyes.

“On-”

“Sir!” Screams a voice from outside. One of the few other remaining men of his scattered unit, his face covered in grime and his own dry blood. 

“WHAT?” Kenjiro shouts back, offended. “CAN’T YOU SEE I’M BUSY HERE?!”

“Sir! The soldier's face looks pale even through the filth. “Incoming!”

“INCOMING WHAT YOU IDIOT?”

Then he hears it, no longer muffled by the boy’s crying. A sound he’s very recently gotten used to fleeing from.

The sound of tank threads, ripping and scratching the ground as they make their way up a hill. Accompanied by an even more telling smell, the smell of exhaust and burning wood.

Napalm.

The men under his command had not been holding any formal positions within the maze of caves and fortifications the Udo Force held in Motobu Peninsula. Under his rousing speech, they had been inspired to carry out a desperate search among the ruins and villages, looking for any signs of the local folk spirit-talkers.

Which, now that they have spent the last hour in the open trying to pry the key to victory from the mouth of the nameless girl…

Has left them fully open to all kinds of attacks.

Including those of flame tanks.

The rifle and machine gun fire starts hitting them first, ignoring the wood-and-paper walls of a building already half-destroyed by a mortar round days ago. They arrive as soon as the enemy infantry crests the hill.

And then, like a roused beast, so does a greenish monster of smooth metal join them, one that within seconds engulfs everything before and under it in a napalm-fueled inferno.

The last thing Oki Kenjiro’s senses tell him before the burning pain becomes his entire world, is the weak words that brush against his ear.

“Sorry,” She says, seemingly and suddenly unconcerned with her own mortality. “Looks like you only would have needed a bit more time.”

2nd of July, 2093
Kin, Ryukyu Kingdom, Shogunate of Japan

“Oh,” Dr. Taira, in her ruffled Monarch field clothes, gasps with a smile as she reaches the KDF command post. “Looks like we got here just on time!”

The man she is speaking to is, of course, her direct superior, Vice Admiral Tam Kosaku. The man barely turns around to glimpse at her, having caught her as little more than a shadow in the periphery of his vision. The half Korean -just one of many children of refugee families who had never seen a point in trying to return to a decimated peninsula- certainly would have never heard of her. Just as most people in the command post, he is wearing a heavy duty military headset, partially to maintain communications with the forces spread across the island, over it and around it.

Partially to make the constant music being played through the island-wide alert siren system more bearable. The song is of a singular verse, which must have repeated itself by more than a few hundred times across the island in the last two hours. Dr. Taira gleefully guesses that most of the Okinawan locals may be genuinely considering just letting the incoming Trespasser eat them to make it stop. She herself is simply elated that her team’s last-minute recording of Miss Kunigami’s beautiful singing has come out so crisp despite being played through literal repurposed bombing raid sirens.

Eventually, however, her military superior is forced to acknowledge her existence, and does lift one of his black plastic earmuffs as he turns to look at her. “We are keeping close track of Daikaiju #0002T, we expect it will become visible to us any minute now.”

“Still with the database name? I would have thought that they already had given it one.”

“Oh, your fellow’s theater office is probably voting on it right now. My radio operators have heard the name ‘Onibaba’ might be winning the election by a tight margin.”

“A charming name.” Dr. Taira snorts as she grabs a pair of offered binoculars, both herself and her superior -and almost everyone else- turn their sights from the seafront, under their feet, they can feel the ground shaking. 

“If your plan works, they will be naming a corpse.” The vice admiral points out.

“My plan will work, thank you very much. And trust me, the footage we will be sending back to Tokyo is probably going to distract them for a good long while.

“Mh,” The general nods. “It does make one wonder. It has been nearly one hundred and fifty years, and we are still finding them.”

“Finding them? The reason that music is playing is because my people have known about him for longer than recorded history.”

“And yet, you finally figured out the right way to awaken ‘him’... Eight hours ago?”

“Folklore only gets you that far, Tam. All I needed was some extra time.”

“Admiral Tam for you, Dr.Taira.”

“Oh, honorifics now?” She smirks. “Well then, let me do the honors.” She smiles as widely as she can, just as his shape crests the mountain range that makes up Okinawa’s diagonal length.

“I have the honor of introducing you, one and all, his majesty, the Guardian Deity of Okinawa… King Shisa.”

Indeed, cresting the hill is a creature that is the spitting image of the very same guardian stone statues that have covered Taira’s homeland since her very oldest memories. Well, not fully , after all, she has never seen a fifty meter tall lion-dog statue, certainly not one covered in a golden mane made from real fur or… Well, moving like a real, living being.

King Shisa is a majestic creature, advancing as it does across the island upon digitigrade legs, his eyes -made of what must be the largest rubies in the world- gleaming with their own noticeable light even against the sunny sky. And his eyes are not the only things that give King Shisa away for the supernatural entity that he is, for his skin has the color and texture of orange baked bricks, and from his body grow pieces of golden metal in the shapes of crown and chestplate both.

Upon the top of the crest, the Daikaiju lets out a roar that would put the mightiest of flesh-and-blood lions to shame, so loud that it momentarily silences the hundreds of constantly-playing sirens. His long floppy ears stiffen, making the Kaiju only seem larger.

A challenge, one that is quickly met by a sight that finally unglued the collective’s attention from the stone-borne guardian.

The thing breaches the water’s surface a few miles east of Okinawa’s eastern shores, first like an iceberg of bluish chitin as the two massive horns that grow on either sides of Onibaba’s shell are first to make themselves visible. But soon enough the rest of the crustacean-mimicking trespasser makes itself visible. The creature is crab-like in an uncanny way. Instead of ten limbs, it possesses eight. Two stilt-like sets of legs raise it up over the waves, while a set of arms equipped with thick pincers clacks with the sound of thunder, and a smaller set of two other pincered limbs remains closer to the thing’s uncannily stubby neck and flat face.

Onibaba doesn’t make any audible response to the challenge, instead simply charging towards the largest target it can find. King Shisa meets the challenge, leaping down the mountain as a human would down a ledge, and racing towards the island’s beaches to meet it at the shoreline.

The monsters slam into each other with a  force that leaves both the navy man and the ethnographer reeling. Onibaba is heavier but shorter, and attempts to use both to its advantage by working to pull the Daikaiju into deeper waters. King Shisha, meanwhile, shows himself to be a much taller and limber fighter, dodging the pistoning claws and clawing and biting into the trespasser’s armor, managing to make it bleed its toxic oil slick-blood what few times he manages to puncture the weaker flesh that seams together the segments of chitinous shell.

The battle continues as such, Onibaba seemingly untiring, King Shisha showing no signs that his centennial slumber may have rusted his ability to deliver kangaroo-like kicks.

Still, the humans well below them take no chances.

“Just one last check.” The admiral asks as they both hide behind the concrete of their coastal bunker. “Are you absolutely sure this will work? If it does not, we may leave ourselves open to Onibaba’s full attention. Or worse, we may change this ‘Caesar’s’ supposedly benevolent opinion of humans.”

“Come on, Kosaku, when have I ever led you astray?” Taira answers, her eyes remaining glued onto the brutal seaside combat.

“The amount of catastrophes heralded by such words…” The vice admiral resigns himself as he grabs his radio yet again, uttering a long-dreaded command. “All maser batteries… Fire!”

As one would have expected, the KDF had not put all their hopes on one of their scientists being able to locate the lair of a supposedly human-allied Daikaiju in case of emergency. In fact, long before the current generation of decision makers, outer islands such as Okinawa had begun being outfitted with permanent defenses.

Permanent defenses such as the disk-muzzled maser canons that suddenly emerge from hidden bunkers and false cliff sides across the island.

With the accuracy only a bolt of artificial lighting could ever have, dozens of blue bolts of electricity set off at once.

All of them, towards a singular target.

The back of an unaware King Shisa, as he attempts to hold Onibaba’s claws off from grabbing and squeezing his neck.

The explosive release of energy flashes hot enough to temporarily blind all onlookers.

And when they manage to clear their visions and focus on the battle again, they find themselves staging into a new source of light. That of King Shisa’s newly glowing eyes, each burning so hot that they create the discomfort of looking into an eclipse.

The lion-dog shoves Onibaba back with newfound strength, but keeping hold of its two main claws, shoving them to the sides with the smaller set attempting to savage his chest, creating little more than clouds of sparks as they rake across his armor.

With a roar even louder than the previous one, the glow of King Shisa’s eyes becomes twice as unbearable. And, like a flicked switch, they suddenly fire off. Directly into Onibaba’s thorax.

The red beams of light slam into the trespasser with some kind of physics-breaking force. And begin to burn it alive. Within a few seconds, however, the beams begin to peter off, the maser’s energy quickly exhausted.

And yet, as Onibaba’s steaming corpse falls into the pacific waters, it is clear that it had been enough.

“Uh… Smells like boiled lobster.” The Vice Admiral and the doctor say in unison. Before either can make a quip about it, they are yet again treated to the sight of the ancient guardian roaring up into the skies, clearly glad to remind the world of who he is, where he is, and of the ante-diluvian compact he has, yet again, fulfilled.

Chapter Text

21st of September, 1979
Somewhere in the Skeleton Coast,
Territory of South West Africa, Union of South Africa

The offroading jeep comes to a sudden stop at the top of the barren hill, the small cloud of dust and sand formed by it quickly dissipating in the wind as two men step off the vehicle. Their driver and bodyguard remain on the driver and shotgun seats respectively. After all, they hardly could be expected to fear attacks from enemies of state here, of all places, in a corner of the world so desolate that not even the natives will dare touch it.

Desolate enough, however, to fit their plans…

One man is dressed as one would expect out of a high-ranking military officer. His chest is decorated with an admirable collection of ribbons, even as he currently dons a field uniform meant to help him cope with the local weather conditions, his eyes shaded by his officer’s headwear.

The other man appears much more illsuited for visiting an area that has earned the name of Skeleton Coast , as he is wearing the politician’s quintessential uniform: A not-that-well-fitting suit, the only noteworthy decoration upon it being the blue-and-orange ribbon of the political party the man not only is loyal to the precepts of, but actively leads. His bald head covered in a sheen of sweat.

Both men look down upon the basin before them, one that -even if rain were a thing in this region- would never leak even a droplet of water, a place of isolation in a region of isolation. And yet, despite its sterile nature, for once in a thousand years of history, this singular depression in the vast landscapes of the Namib. 

Below them, far enough that they resemble ants clearing an anthill’s mound, hundreds of men and vehicles work tirelessly to get the area ready for a momentous event that will not accept any delays. Tonight, both men have been informed, will offer the best possible weather for the test in months.

The bulk of the work occurs at the roundabout that marks the end of the only winding dirt road which enters the basin, itself built around what one at first mistake for the most strangely placed high-tension electricity tower in the world. Upon closer inspection, however, the structure reveals itself to be much sturdier, with bare foundations of white concrete laid down only a few months earlier. The structure is outfitted with cranes, pulleys and massive chains which hang taunt just under itself, leading to a borehole drilled precisely under it.

“How deep is the well?” Asks Pieter Willem Botha, a man none other than the prime minister of the Union of South Africa himself. The man proudly at the helm of one of the most unjust political systems on God’s barren earth.

“Three hundred and eighty five meters deep. One hundred meters deeper than the bare minimum the engineers demanded for the yield we are expecting the artifact to have.” Answers the prime minister’s highest military commander, Chief Magnus Malan of the South African Defense Force.

“The ‘artifact.’” The prime minister scoffs as they both keep watching the coming and going of personnel, the laying down and securing of the equipment meant to measure and record what is soon to happen. “Do you hear yourself? Call it what it is, a bomb.”

“It is not just a bomb, is it P.W.?” The chief answers, raising the pair of binoculars hanging from his neck. “It is a game changer. Depending on what happens tonight. Our position in the regional and global stage will be irrevocably changed.”

“Will it?” The politician answers, entranced by the ongoing work, his eyes squinted in reaction to the harsh winds. “I doubt we will be more of a pariah state. Today we are pariahs because we recognize the fundamental danger of not keeping ourselves apart from the kaffirs . Of deluding people into thinking they have the ability to manage a nation.” The man easily slips into his mother tongue of Afrikaans. “Tomorrow we will be pariahs because we understand that we are surrounded by enemies, and that no one will come to our aid when the communists or some misbegotten beast crosses our borders. We need weapons that can deter the former and slay the latter.”

“And the risks involved?”

“You are backtracking now, Malan? You of all people?”

“Not backtracking, no. Healthy scepticism, that is all. Someone has to ask the uncomfortable questions, seeing as to how your cabinet won’t, it falls upon me to do so.”

“They are busy enough, trying to keep this country functioning, your job is to keep it safe.”

“And is that safety assured, when we are painting a target upon our backs?”

“A target to who? The UN is so eroded that any day now countries will start breaking off with their inane sanction plans. The communists are not capable of hating us any more than they already do, and I certainly will rest easier knowing that, if push comes to shove, we will be able to lob a few kilotons-worth of fire down the gullet of one of those things.”

“Mmmmh…” Malan acquiesces. “You are right. At this point, delaying the test would just be a waste of money. Still, you cannot fault me for worrying, it is what the treasury pays me for.”

“Of course, of course.” Botha waves of, visibly ready to get back into their ride to be driven somewhere less exorbitantly harsh. “And not all worries are unfounded. Our enemies will use this against us, I know that. I already have Kruger and Le Grange preparing for the public’s reaction. If the ANC doesn’t call for a general strike I’ll eat my weight in dung. They’ll probably make some insanity up about us wanting to nuke the coloreds out of existence."

Of course, both men leave it unsaid, there is the fact that -as Boer nationalists at the helm of the apartheid state- neither of them would be strictly against the idea of their country having a smaller percentage of coloreds or blacks within their nation’s borders. They simply are not cruel enough to think doing so with proactive violence would be a palatable way to go about solving the issue.

“The working group will have a preliminary report on your desk tomorrow morning.” The general nods, gesturing for them both to get back into the vehicle. “They are especially interested in seeing how the fallout will interact with the local climatology, but I assume the yield and affected area concern us more, so I will wrangle them in that direction.”

“Good, I want you in Pretoria by the twenty third, we need to figure out how to break the news out to the world with Pik’s team.”

“Assuming we aren’t found out. We are detonating a nuclear warhead.”

“In the middle of Namibia? While the rest of the world is glued to their television screens about that Biollante fiasco? I doubt it, every spy plane and satellite available is looking at that thing.”

13th of May, 1995
City of Windhoek, Khomas Region,
De Jure Union of South Africa/ De Facto Namibia

“I mean… I am not complaning… But I think we are entitled to an explanation, and it better be a good fucking one.” Izelle whistles as she slaps her palm against the side of the offwhite plastic container, roughly the size and shape of a butane barrel. The liquid inside, slightly thicker than water, sloshes, the surface of it frothy like saliva. The color of it is hard to tell with the harsh yellow light that illuminates the basement, but she can guess that it’s some kind of soft green color.

“You don’t want to know.” Answers Commander Arno, Izelle isn’t particularly familiar with the man -none of them are- since he’s not actually a local. The Windhoek cell of the Neu Afrikaner Volksfront is a particularly small one, as it’s made up of the majority of the few hundred boers who have not fled the Southwest African capital after its takeover by the People’s Republic of Namibia. Izelle is, in fact, childhood friends with everyone currently in the basement except Commander Arno Uys.

And that is no coincidence, for just like his unbelievable cargo, the man comes from far down south, where the Volksfront are still much more powerful and connected to the ailing union’s government.

“Actually.” She clicks her tongue. “I do want to know. Because if what you are saying is true, then we should handle this stuff with the same care as a crate of angry malarial mosquitoes. And if what you are saying isn’t true, then you are asking us to go out there and commit an all bark and no bite terror stunt. And guess what happens to us if we do that?”

“You will be following orders,” The commander says in a patronizing voice. Thankfully, the glances that her fellow guerillas share with Izelle tells her that none of them are buying into his mysterious persona. “And serving your race.”

“Last time I checked.” Izelle’s hand goes to the gun holstered at the small of her back. “The way we serve the race is by having kids and by protecting our land from the kaffirs and the race traitors. So. Start. Talking.”

If the commander is taken aback by the lip the much younger woman gives him, he does a reasonably good job at hiding it as he glides his arm over the top of one of the plastic barrels. The lettering and markings embossed into it whenever it was manufactured has all been filed flat with sandpaper, all stickers have also been scraped out. Likely the only way the man could have hid the shipment.

“Back when the first reports of the ants started propping up in the northwestern Bantustans, the traitor Botha assembled a taskforce before we got rid of him. Some light elements of the army and a team from the Ministry of Environment and energy. Back then, the ants were much less numerous, and they actually managed to destroy one of the nests before the Portuguese could start snooping in and leaking secrets to the UN. They captured some for study, moved them to a facility south of the capital. This, is the result of those couple years of work.” The man palms the canisters again.

“Giant Ant juice…” Izelle answers, deadpan. “Really?”

“They hoped to use it in a trap. douse an area with a fumigation plane, then call in an incendiary airstrike once enough of them had gathered. Then… Then this Bush War of yours started, and the research was paused, since they never did manage to synthesize more of it and nowadays kidnapping an ant would be...”

“Idiotic.”

“Yes. But… What they hadn’t used for research was frozen for posterity. And is now here.”

“And you want us to use it? Here? Assuming we believe you -and I don’t- what would we do? Bathe ourselves in it so the ants think we are friends, retake the city on ant-back? Don’t make me laugh.”

“No, the leadership back home had a much more grounded idea.”

“Oh, well then,” She sarcastically answers. “I can’t wait to hear it.”

“The ants aren’t like larger Kaiju. They don’t tear up streets or crush buildings, at most they shatter doorways or break vehicles while looking for food. You have seen the documentaries, they leave ghost towns behind. Theoretically, if you were to douse the pheromones across the city…”

“Once they left after eating all the blacks, the city would be free for the taking.”

“Windhoek is a large city, you could resettle here thousands of the boers who have fled south, in just a few weeks.”

“And the ants will just magically spare us?”

“The nearest nest is… What? Two hundred kilometers away. If we time it correctly and release the pheromones on a windy day, you would have ample time to make it to a city still controlled by the SADF.”

“You are insane, you actually want us to feed a city to the ants?”

“Worst case scenario, you send me back packing to Pretoria after I make you waste your money on a few dozen fumigation sprays.”

…

“I mean…” One of Izelle’s guys pipes up, not shutting up even as she fulminates him with a stare. “I’ve seen them back when I still lived near Walvis Bay… The kinds of things they could track with those furry antennas… It could work.”

“If this fails.” Izelle sighs. “I’m not sending you to Pretoria, I’m just going to shave up one of those barrels and make you drink it to death.”

4th of January, 2024
Rehoboth, Hardap Region,
De Jure Namibia/ De Facto Cape Republic

“Gotta say…” Presley slaps the metallic hood of the Ratel he is sticking halfway out of as the satisfying sound of a mass of chitin the size of a horse getting crushed by an eighteen ton infantry fighting vehicle. “Those boers? Really knew how to design a good ride, hot damn.”

“Really, praising Afrinakers, in my ride?” Barks out the voice of the squad’s designated driver, Zoe Maart grumbles from the cavernous insides of the combat-ready vehicle. As she does so, Presley can’t help but laugh, leaning out a bit to see the vehicles’s six wheels and their rims coated in the greenish ichor that the Giant Ants had for blood. 

“Come on, you know what I mean. Being a horrible person who thinks everyone else on earth is inferior doesn’t incapacitate you from doing a good job at bolting a machinegun to a chassis!" He laughs, reloading the aforementioned machinegun and looking around himself. Specifically, at the fifty or so assorted combat vehicles doing the exact same thing as themselves.

That is, slowly retreating into Rehoboth. Fast enough not to get swamped by the three thousand or so giant ants before them. But just slowly enough to cover the collective ass of the thousands of refugees behind them. “Hey, Maart, speed us up a bit, the others are leaving us behind.”

“Override that.” Speaks up their actual commander from the shotgun seat, a wounded Commander Clemens. “We can’t afford to have the ants disengage at this point, not two hundred meters from the designated fireline.

“Do you want to get chewed up by pincers a second time the same day, boss?” Presley grumbles, chambering his bullet belt and getting some potshot into the foremost of the things .

Presley will never get used to the sight of them, not even after six straight months of deployment in the Namib. The way the thing’s legs would always move easily yet perfectly coordinated, the shaggy fur-like strands of fibers that would hang from their undersides, making their movements even harder to predict, their clacking mandibles… And those massive and unfeeling compound eyes, their component hexagons as large as his thumb.

Seeing them by the hundreds upon hundred, like an advancing wall of black and sand-stained grey chitin eating everything on their path. Whenever he shoots, they simply let him do so, the bullets that go whizzing by their antennas scare them none, and the geysers of dust that explode out whenever the bullets slam into the shady soil don’t cow them either. Only the true-strikes have any effect. And even then, only a good headshot right through one of their eyes will do the things in. Almost anywhere else will still let them run forwards. Having six legs, at the end of the day, does raise the amount of legs that something needs to get blown off before it loses the ability to run.

And worst of all? At least in Presley’s opinion. It is how silent the things are. Sure, the thudding of thousands of legs against the ground, the rubbing of chitin plates against each other, the snapping of mandibles… Those all make sound. But the beasts themselves do not. No panting, no growling, no hissing and certainly no roaring. Just an advancing wall of darkness.

For some reason, the gunner’s mind decides that it’s a good moment to dredge up the memory of being told about the Windhoek Massacre by his instructor back in bootcamp. Of how the things had dug themselves a series of tunnels all the way to the city’s outskirts and its sewers without making much of a sound. Of how people had been alerted of the devouring monsters by the crying and screaming of others as the things had burst out of cellars and from under roads. Of the survivors speaking of an entire city, consumed by silence and abandoned forever, as a young queen of the horrid insects didn’t waste more than a month or two before deciding to set up shop somewhere under Windhoek Railway Station.

That had been a game changer, even such a long time ago. It had made it clear to the Union of South Africa and the Namibian rebels that they would all be seen as equally digestible by the colonies. For years, the only communications between the two forces have been the coordinates of nests. A relationship eventually inherited by the Cape Republic, which is -not coincidentally- the nation whose army Presley serves in.

Case in point, having taken the city of Rehoboth mere weeks before, the armored unit they are part of is currently trying their best not to defend the city from a counter-attack, but from the army roused by the retreating Namibian column.

Just their luck, only a couple days before, their engineers had finished clearing all the minefields around the city. 

“I don’t think we are getting out of this one.” Maart winces with every bounce of the vehicle, driving backwards means she basically has to plow through all obstacles instead of avoiding them, a problem the insects seem not to have, not even as the gunner continues to cull down the ones at the front of the approaching force. 

“We just need to get close enough to the city for the artillery-” The wounded leader tries to reign him in once more.

“We all know they don’t have enough fragmentation shells to kill these many.” Interrupts their ever-dour driver.

“THEN WE DO AS MUCH AS WE CAN SO PEOPLE CAN ESCAPE.”

The shooting continues, the driving continues, the silent horse advances and the fleeing masses continue to run. And yet a tomb-like silence takes over the Ratel’s insides.”

“It was an honor, riding with you.”

It does not matter which one of them said it. In a couple of hours, they’ll just be a burned out wreck. But at the very least, it’ll be a wreck drenched in ant guts.

Chapter Text

“28th of May, 326 BC”
Palace of King Porus, Satrapy the the Hyphasis, Macedonian Empire

Avereas of Dion has never not felt like an outlier among his fellow hypaspistai infantrymen. He’s simultaneously much too young and slightly too old. He remembers still working on his father’s farm when news of the grand victory at the fields of Gaugamela had reached the ears of the families of Macedon. Just a couple years ago, when he had been a few months shy of being of eligible age to join the armies of the Hegemon. 

The tales of returning veterans, men too old or wounded to pursue the foe to the ends of the Persian dominions, had filled his heart with a longing for such a voyage, and he’d crossed the Hellespont aboard a ship full of his fellow fresh recruits as soon as the opportunity had made itself available.

Only… Instead of grand battles against the routed remnants of Darius’ armies, he’d found himself patrolling the endless country of Chorasmians long after the country had been made to bend the knee by the General of All Greeks. And later on, he’d found himself doing the same thing, but in the even less welcoming geography of the valleys and ranges of the Hindu Kush.

Still, Avereas had worked hard, dedicating to all postings the hard work he had felt was deserving. And eventually it had all paid off. While other recruits his age had remained in the pezhetairoi , he had been handpicked by one of his commanders to join the ranks of the shield-carriers. The retraining had only lasted a few weeks dedicated to getting him used to fighting while carrying his new and massive aspis shield, and soon after he had been thrown into the ranks of men on average half a decade older than him.

Far too young to truly fit among those grizzled and battle-hardened men. But just too old and drilled to fraternize outside of his unit.

Until just a few days ago, that is. Finally, the Hegemon had decided to set forth in a new campaign to put the lands beyond the Indus under the mantle of Macedonian and Greek civilization. The armies had been gathered, and months of preparations and active campaigning had led to Avereas’ first bloodying against something other than bandits or wolves.

The armies of the Macedonian had met those of the man named King Porus upon the banks of the Hydaspes river. Tens of thousands of men against each other. Thousands of cavalrymen charging and flanking and countercharging. The enemy himself had faced Alexander’s Companions with a force of a thousand chariots and more than a hundred elephantine warbeasts.

It had been all Avereas had hoped for. The euphoria of battle, the fields of muddied blood, the sight of phalanxes standing their ground against beasts that he had only before heard of in whispers. And the celebrations afterwards? His body still shivers in recollections of the bacchanalia.

And yet… As Avereas walks across the halls and gardens of the defeated king’s palace… A weight not borne of food lays upon his stomach. He’s heard his fellow soldiers spread the news, that the Hegemon had received the King’s surrender personally upon the battlefield, as the man had knelt by the side of his downed elephant. 

And Alexander had rewarded him. Made him satrap -governor- of the land he had been monarch of, and had even granted him some more slivers of territory to compensate him for the loss of his son, and to show respect for his “fierce resistance.”

A defeated foe who had lost more than fifteen thousand men, and he was being rewarded with land? Not a Macedonian general or -at the very least- a lesser Greek officer, but a knee-bending Pauravian?

If Avereas had been a couple years younger, he might have even risen up to voice his anger. But as things stand? All he can do is pace uneasily across the width of the “satrap’s” palace, wishing and praying that the campaign will continue soon, so that he may face enemies again, and truly prove himself of laurels besmirched on the brows of lesser men.

“My emperor-” Avereas overheads, his sandals coming to a stop just before the threshold of a doorless room. He does not recognize the voice. But only one man could ever be referred to with that title. “-I urge you to reconsider. The river’s swelling will only last a few more weeks. And then you will be able to cross the Hyphasis here with ease.”

He has stumbled upon a meeting of the Hegemon and his trusted generals and companions.

“Nonsense.” Speaks up the Basileus of Macedon, the Ruler of the Hellenic League, the Shahanshah of Persia, the Pharaoh of Egypt… The Lord of Asia himself. “Your men have more than made up for the losses they caused. And I will not wait for weeks or months when the upland floodplains will make the crossing easier within days of travel.”

“Think on it, Alexander.” Another voice speaks up with a familiarity that makes Avereas shiver. “Porus would not exaggerate on something his subjects have reported about for years. I need not remind you that boars and lions have cost us loyal men in hunts. Why would we risk ourselves by marching through the territories of even mightier beasts?”

“Greater beasts, general,” Speaks who can only be the dethroned king. “Would be an under-appreciation. For years now have my people come to this very palace speaking of the monsters that have belched from those caverns near the river’s mouth, their entrance dislodged by a quake I felt on my very bones just as long ago. I have lost entire patrols to them.”

“There is no beast that can best my armies.” Fiercely claims the conqueror. “Or do you fear that lions and river dragons could best your phalanxes, or the stampeding cavalry units you head?”

“I cannot stop you, my emperor. All I can do is warn you, as a humble servant would, of what I have seen with my own eyes.”

“What have you seen, then, that would make a man who faced my own armies fear wolves and tigers?”

“Elephants, my king, would you agree they are not the mightiest beast you have found upon the field of battle?”

“Of those with four legs, certainly.”

“Well then, with my own two eyes I have seen, their backs raked with the scars of claws. Must I point out, then, what dimensions a monster would have to grow to, to fall upon an elephant the way a bear would upon a wolf?”

The shield bearer can’t help but scoff at the tall tales. Beasts so large they could hunt elephants? What a joke. Clearly some lie meant to stall the army’s progress, perhaps part of a larger betrayal to an enemy force across the Indus’ tributaries.

Still, his scoffing does remind Avereas of the fact that he himself is an eavesdropper. And as such, he decides to be cautious and take his leave. Missing out on what he wholeheartedly assumes will be the War Council’s tongue lashing of the local. Whether he is a superstitious fool or a traitorous rat, it will not matter. Nothing will stop the hellenic army.

“3rd of July, 326 BC”
The Land of Terrors Beyond the Hyphasis

Avereas of Dion can't help but let out a gasp of exhaustion as he finds a tree to slam his back against, letting his own weight pull him down until his tunic-covered arse reaches the ground. Once he is done catching his breath and drinking from his waterskin, his first action is to undo the leather straps keeping his arm connected to his large shield, inspecting the bandaged arm beneath.

The bandages do not seem to hold any suppurations or pus as he squeezes it, and the bloody spots are smaller than they were when compared to yesterday’s dressings change. The mangled hand still obviously hurts with a constant and throbbing pain. But infection seems to not have taken, which means that his remaining three and a half fingers may still serve him after the nightmare ends.

It had all started days after the army had set out of Porus’ Palace. In the end, the Hegemon had divided his forces into fifths. Three fifths had stayed to await the lessening torrents the Satrap had promised alongside his own recovering army. Another fifth -the most severely trashed- had returned to Alexandria -specifically, the one in Arachosia- to await reinforcements and replenishments. 

And then, a final fifth led by the Hegemon himself and made up of light elite units had moved northeast, seeking the crossings Porus had warned them against. Their leader’s plan -Avereas had heard through the grapevine- had been to catch their would-be opponents across the Indus unawares, by marching down its left bank towards their strongholds.

Then, the horrors had started.

For the first few days, they had been forced to march through an unnaturally sandy wasteland, so sandy that even the river had grown brownish and sluggish for an entire day's worth of marching. Pontus guides had become unreliable, claiming that the landscape had been that of a normal river valley mere weeks ago, and no ammount of torture had supposedly revealed their master’s betrayal. Water -or at least water that wouldn’t make a man shit mud to death- had become scarce, and boiling it into a potable status had forced units to range farther and farther for wood.

Then they had come across a veritable castle or fort-sized mass of reeds blocking the river, upstream from it crystalline and sweet. The mass had been so dense that some men had considered whether it could have been used to ford the river.

As such, the Hegemon had sent a couple of local Indian auxiliaries out to attempt as much.

They had been devoured by hippopotamuses before the entire column’s eyes. 

The heavyset animals had exploded out of the red-logged waters and mauled the men quickly, disappearing from view seconds later. The beasts -according to the men who had entered Egypt during their service- had definitely been the aforementioned water-horses, despite claims by all learned men that the animals could only be found in the Nile. However, the beasts had also had reddish and pinkish skins, and twice as many tusks and fangs as they should have. Again, according to those who had seen them out west.

Not far later, the column had been put to the move yet again. Making camp far enough from the mass of reeds to sleep without fear that the broad-headed beasts would seek them out when coming out of the water at night.

That’s when Avereas lost half his thumb.

According to the night’s lookouts, the nearby waters had bubbled softly at first, dislodging silt and mud, only for boulders to rise out of said siltbeds and eventually reveal themselves to be the shells of riverine crabs, each the width of an aegis, the animals had snapped with their massive pincers, cracking spear-shafts in half and crumpling the bronze greaves of men, their lower legs alongside them.

The monsters had marched into camp as quickly as the lookouts had been able to warn the army about them, skittering into tents and setting upon the sleeping men. 

Avereas himself had only barely awoken to the sight of one such creature, its black beady eyes looking at him unblinkingly from their stalks as its pincers had moved towards his arm.

He’s only barely rolled out of the way, instead of his entire arm, the thing’s pincer had only managed to snap shut around one of his fingers. The crustacean’s pulling and his own fleeing had acted like a fingular force, crushing his thumb and stripping the bone still attached of its flesh. So much so that one of the army’s medics would later be forced to remove the meatless phalange by snapping its tendons with a set of pliers.

In the end, men had been forced to hack at the creatures' limbs with axes and crack their shells with clubs, long after the camp had fully been thrown into disarray.

Some had tasted the crab’s flesh for breakfast. Most of those had grown sick within hours, and the Hegemon had ordered men to dig a ditch and dump the rest inside. 

Shaken, the men had marched for another day, even more wary of the waters. The snakes had not come from the water, however.

As thick as tree trunks, the legless reptiles had struck out of bushes at midday during a urinary stop, wrapping themselves around some large dozen horses tied to a post and crushing their bones without even piercing their skin by wrapping themselves around the poor animals. Some were hacked to death by the swords of the cavalrymen, others had merely slithered away, unnervingly fast despite their distended bellies.

A day later, Avereas would lose his pinky finger.

The attack this time around came as the army dismantled its camp, and it came in the form of great bounding shapes, as white as snow, leaping down the rocky sides of the hills to the army’s west.

Lions, white lions. As large as oxen and maneless, with eyes the blue of sapphires and great drooling maws. They had leaped down upon the army, crushing men with their weights, ripping chests and bellies apart with their claws and cracking skulls open with their bites.

Like most other men, Avereas had formed up a shield wall to defend himself. Which had worked well and downed most of the animals by way of archers and javelins. But some monsters had chosen to leap over the shield wall and into the thickness of men.

One moment, Avereas had been facing one of the beasts. The other he had been turning around and barely managing to raise his arm to protect himself from a  metal-shearing claw strike.

He had not been fast enough, and the lion’s claws had cut through his already-bandaged arm like cheese, ruining his pinky and ring finger along the way. Verdict is currently still out as to whether just the already-amputated pinky will be enough to stave necrosis off.

But he still has a working arm. He may not be able to hold onto his shield’s leather straps, but he can have other men wrap them so taunt as to make up for it.

Still, at the end the great felines had fallen to the blades of men. And Alexander had even ordered that the pelts be conserved to make capes, saving the largest one for himself, and awarding the rest to those who had dealt killing blows.

Suddenly, Avereas isn’t so excited about the Commander of all Greeks anymore. Voices demanding or begging for a retreat grow louder and louder.

Then had come the giant hogs, feral and with backs bristling with quills. Goring horses and men alike with their tusks. Oh, and the bats, unseen and silent in their attacks, but leaving behind corpses strewn about camp with torn throats and cold pale skins.

At least, Avereas sighs to himself. Tonight they may rest partially safe. Finally, the army has found a relatively safe area of the river to use as a crossing. A wider section of river with a gently-sloped island in the middle of it, an area of clear water only as deep as a man’s ankles and with a pebbly riverbed.

Tonight they will rest upon it. Safe in the knowledge that any terrestrial beast would warn the lookouts in advance by splashing in the water, and that nothing large enough to threaten them could actually swim in such little depth or burrow in such a rocky substrate.

…

And, of course, it’s when the camp is almost fully pitched, that the screaming starts.

…

Avereas runs, like most others, to the rallying cries of their Hegemon. Who stands upon the northern tip of the islet with his blade drawn. His changing opinions notwithstanding, he and all other men arrive to help, aware of the risk they also face.

What Avereas finds himself staring at is an image out of legend. There, Alexander the Argead, Basileus of Macedon, Hegemon of the Hellenic League, Shahanshah of Persia,  Pharaoh of Egypt… Standing with his sword drawn, his glinting laurels of gold and his cape of tyrian purple.

Standing before the rising frame of a beast which could absolutely hunt an elephant in the manner that a lion would down cattle.

The beast, drippling with river water, has the long face of a horse, but a maw bristling with teeth, and three asymmetric horns growing out of its forehead like a crown, the claws of its powerful upper limbs digging into the ground, curved like an eagle’s talons. Its pelt short and mottled, its tail shaggy but short. The entire beast is certainly as tall as the largest elephant any of the gathered men had ever seen.

Men unsheathe their swords, ready their bows and raise their spears. Somewhere among them all, Avereas of Dion takes a step back. No one is going to notice him and his mangled arm skipping this one. Not with a creature born of Tartarus itself snarling down upon them.

Twenty six men die bringing the “Odontotyrannos” down. Avereas can see their mangled bodies arranged in rows on the island, their mangled bodies covered by tarps. 

At least three or four dozen have been wounded as well. Most are likely not going to make it. Not when they have been thrown about and ripped into with the ease of a dog shaking a ragdoll around. Avereas can see the tent for the wounded, and those constantly leaving it with their arms covered in bloody rags, and entering it again with pails of water.

From his resting spot, he can also see the team of men failing to carve up the giant monster’s body. The hundreds of broken spears sticking out of its thick skin give it an even more alien appearance. 

The body’s belly is broken, its ribcage visible and large enough to be used like a hut. But not by the means of butchers. Soon after the beasts’ downing, Alexander had ordered the body pulled ashore, and the men doing so had been recompensed with a horrible sight.

In just hours after its death, the creature’s belly had already grown distended like a week-old corpse, and had burst soon after. From its ruptured guts had flowed a wave of stomach acid and half-digested fish the size of pigs.

Oh, and hundreds of scorpions. 

At least eight men had had their feet burned by the acid, and twice as many had had their arms swell with the insects’ stings.

At least, Avereas wonders, the worst is over. At this point going back would only expose them to as many horrors twice over. And none of the locals have spoken of such beasts on the opposing banks. Only of men, and those scare the no-longer shield-bearer a lot less.

And yet, as he looks back at the land of Horrors they are soon to leave. He can’t help but squint his eyes. Something stands upon the hills yet again. 

Not a pride of white lions the size of oxen. But something much smaller, skittering and scampering up and down the hills like… Like rats.

But, if they were mere rats, they would be too small to be visible at such a distance. And their long muzzles would sport many less teeth.

Shrew-like, the things are. Jackal-sized, the things are. Attracted by the smell of a fresh carcass, they likely are.

Avereas should likely sound the alarm. But all he can do is look up and sigh, thinking back of his sheep and his hills back in Macedon. Above him, gathering in the hundreds, gathers a storm of carrionbirds with feathers as red as rotting blood.

Chapter Text

12th of February, 1859
Somewhere in the Northwestern Territory, British North America, The British Empire

People always think the dogs bark.

They tend not to, in Leopold’s experience.

Sled dogs -be they those of the eskimos or the Scandinavians- are working animals, at the end of the day, and Leopold is yet to meet a draft horse that will waste its breath whinnying as it tills a field unless something is wrong.

Still, sled dogs are dogs nonetheless. Which means that as soon as they are allowed to slow down and eventually stop, they start doing the things dogs do, even dogs tired from hours of sled-pulling across the North American arctic.

They bicker and playfight even while still tied up to each other, some rest in the snow, others beg for food or water or start sniffing at the ground under their paws of the frigid air that ruffles their thick coats of fur.

But that is something for the handlers to concern themselves with. Captain Leopold McClintock of the British Navy has a singular issue to deal with. An issue that rises before him like the foreboding wooden grave that it is, weathered by years exposed to the seemingly cold squalls and the coming and going of ice chunks as sharp as knives and as large as boulders. Its sails long-turned into shredded streamers that would likely have rotted from the humidity if it weren’t for the area’s below-freezing temperature for much of the year.

Her Majesty’s Ship, the Erebus. Fifteen years ago, give or take, it and its sister had left alongside her sister, the Terror, in an expedition in search for the theoretical Northwestern Passage. Both ships outfitted with the best the navy had been able to provide, and under the command of a man as experienced on such missions as Captain Sir John Franklin.

Leopold can still remember as if it had been yesterday, yet it has been a long two years since Sir Franklin’s wife had expressed her intention to sponsor a new expedition -the fifth one- to find her husband, either of the ships under his command or even any survivors who could testify as to its fate. Leopold had ended up volunteering himself as leader, something easily accepted by the fact that he’d been part of two of the previous four. Partially out of his own desire to bring some closure to Erebus and Terror’s fate, partially out of morbid curiosity, and partially out of his own love for the region.

A harsh beauty it is, even as he looks up at what it can do to even the best of men. Some part of him thinks he should be excited. Based on his own inquiries -and those of men who came before him, like Dr.Rae- he has finally found one of the lost ships. 

And it could very well contain the answers to all the questions many have been asking for years. It could put to end conjectures about savage eskimos -in his travels aided by them, he has found them nothing if not helpful and agreeable people- attacking the ship in the middle of winter to raid its supplies. 

Ludicrous hearsay about packs of man-eating polar bears -fierce beasts, to be sure, but not enough so to coordinate the killing of dozens of well-armed men- or wolves which he knows do not travel this far north.

Or, the worst of it all, spoken off among the least courteous of social circles and most disreputable of publications: Claims that men and officers of the British Navy would have resorted to cannibalism. As if.

Survivors? An equally fantastical proposition, even if not offensive. But before him stand the means to shut them all up. To give good men proper burials, to give wives, sons and daughters at least closure, if not the belongings of their loved ones. And to cash in parliament's five thousand pound reward, but at this point that would barely cover the costs of his expedition aboard the HMS Fox so far, not to speak of what may occur during their return trip.

And so, Leopold walks forwards. Some of his men follow along, equally if not more amazed by the sight. Some of them are young enough to not even have been sailors when the twin ships under Franklin had departed. To them Erebus and Terror are no less fantastical than lost cities of gold.

The looming shape of the broken and battered Erebus, its wood blackened  by rot and waterlogging. But he doesn’t manage to get too close to it, feeling as a hand tugs at his fur coat’s sleeve.

Turning around, he finds himself staring at the face of Uglu, one of his guides. The older eskimo’s face is tanned and wrinkled, his eyes hidden by strange ivory glasses his people tend to make, barely slits, yet effective at diminishing the glares created by the reflective ice.

The man speaks a few short phrases, but of course Leopold doesn’t know his language, and has to wait for the guide’s son, Nauja, to translate for him.

“Sir Captain.” The younger native speaks, his eyes quickly moving between the two of them. “Father says that… We should not approach it any closer. We agreed to show you the area and help you look for men or graves. But the vessel is an accursed thing. We should move on, to where it is known that the men who left it behind made camp. It is on this very island, not very far.”

“Nonsense.” Leopold speaks, knowing that he is speaking with superstitious men, yet unreached by god or science. “That there is the scene of a tragedy, it could very well be the grave of men I’ve been tasked with finding. I have not come this far not to inspect it.”

Nauja translated back to his mother tongue as Leopold continued inspecting the area. The ship seems to be beached against a series of greys and jagged rocks, its hull showing -as one would reasonably expect- the damage of years being clamped by the coming and going ice sheets. Somewhere behind them, the sled dogs have quietened down, likely having accepted that it is time to rest and feed.

“Captain Sir, my father says… Kigutilik guards this place. It may not have been it who broke the ship. But it surely won’t take kindly to the vessel being disturbed, we could-”

“Really, boy? Your father thinks tales of dragons and ogres will scare me off?” Leopold scoffs, now incensed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he is divided between feeling pity for such backwards and fearful people, or being offended at some kind of attempt at misguiding him.

Whatever the case, he can only do one thing. He turns back to the long-lost ship, and begins walking down the long and gently sloping hill towards it. Which is the moment when the dogs suddenly become very loud.

The ground begins to tremble under the arctic explorer’s booted feet. The water on the shore agitated.

And Erebus begins to rise out of the water, so doing much of the island it is shipwrecked upon. Within a few moments, the creaking mass of wood lists off to the side and collapses into the crushing waves, its already unrepairable structure simply disintegrating as it falls a hundred feet into the water.

And cold, blue and unfeeling eyes stare down upon the men of the HMS Fox.

9th of March, 1987
Umiujaq, Nord Province, Republic of Quebec

Christine feels a sudden jolt as her partner presses down hard on the brake pedal and twists their patrol car’s steering wheel, instantly bringing the vehicle to a neck-snapping stop.

As Officer Dumoulin yanks on their Chevrolet Caprice’s handbrake, Christine herself raises the vehicle’s radio to her lips. “Officers Bois and Dumoulin reporting, we have reached the end of Rue Kitulaq. How are things at the airport?”

“Children and elderly are out for the most part, a few families refuse to be separated but the tower says that enough private planes have answered the distress call to get the rest of us out in a long-half hour. Come back as soon as you have visual confirmation for the military, we’ll save you two seats.” Answers their diminutive police department’s chief. 

And Christine hadn’t been exaggerating, as she exits the car marked with the Sûreté du Québec badge she realizes that they have skidded to a halt at the diminutive roundabout that marks the end of Rue Kitulaq, which is placed at the tip of one of the two breakwaters made up of tons of crushed rock which protect the small inuit community’s small harbour, barely large enough to be used by a couple small ferries and half a dozen modest fishing boats. 

If she were to take more than five steps in any direction right now, she'd simply fall into the water. And that’d be the second worst thing which could happen to her today. Instead, however, she focuses on the first one.

But Dumoulin beats her to it, quickly climbing up the car’s hood and up to its roof, palming his chest as he goes. “Fuck, the binoculars, where did I-?”

Christine quickly scampers into the car, finding her partner’s discarded set of camo-painted binoculars under the driver’s seat, where the man had dropped them once he realized how awkward it is to drive through gravel roads at illegal speeds with such a chunky instrument slung from your neck. “There it goes!” She shouts, throwing it up and into his waiting hands.

And then comes the dreaded wait. Of course it does, the first alarm had come from a Quebecois naval patrol ship well beyond Giles island, which Christine can barely see through the dissipating fog despite it being only five-ish kilometers away across the calm waters. And that already makes Umiujaq extremely lucky. If the thing’s marching across Hudson Bay had been missed they would have had no way to evacuate in time, owing to the relocated inuit community’s lack of roads connecting it to wider Quebec and its dependency on a single gravel runway airport.

All Christine can do is wait around, looking back to the town she’s been stationed in for the last 6 months. Six blissfully uneventful months away from the endless activity and trouble of Montreal, a quiet little native town in need of an officer willing to take a few Inuktitut lessons at the provincial government's expense and to share a room in the mayor’s in-law's family home. The perk of spotty phone service making it hard for her parents or any of her six siblings to reach her had been an unspoken but key advantage as well.

And now it is all… Empty and cold in ways it shouldn’t be. The airport is too far south down the road for the crowd’s worried cacophony to reach them, and those who have chosen to stay have mostly taken to the hills further inland. Within the span of an hour, Umiujaq has become a ghost town.

Hopefully, once the Daikaiju moves on, they will all be able to come back to their homes. But one never knows when-

“Fuck, I see it.” Grunts Dumoulin, his gloved hands keeping the binocular tight to his face. Without thinking, Christine scrambles up the hood and grabs her own much more portable set of binoculars from their place in one of her pockets.

She finds it easily, a shape of white fur the size of an iceberg, so tall that as it wades through Hudson Bay, most of its hundred-and-twenty meter tall body is still visible.

Mastodon.

She’s seen it before, footage and pictures of it have been news-casted and used in documentaries for decades thanks to the thing’s disinterest in however many helicopters and camera crews may have steered too closely to it. But seeing it in person, even through binoculars and at such a distance, steals her breath.

The Daikaiju’s tusks push through the water like massive nets, churning hundreds of metric tons of water every time its flattened tines -like those of a moose, but far broader- swing about. While half of its body is hidden under the water, Christin can easily picture its gorilla-esque and knuckle-dragging gait, as shoulders the size of buildings roll and move forwards.

Concept & Art by Gugenheim98

From the top of its back protrude greyish chunks of armor that many sailors have mistaken for seamounts when the creature has decided to rest in deeper waters. But the thing that takes her attention the most is Mastodon’s actual face, with its elephantine trunk and eyes that shine with cyan light.

Uncaring and cold eyes of pure cyan.

“Christine!” The shout snaps the younger police officer out of her wonderment, and she realizes that Dumoulin has been shouting at her for a few times already. “Get the engine going, and grab the big yellow.”

She does so, almost falling off the car as she gets down, turning the car’s ignition key with one hand as she unlocks the patrol car’s trunk with the other, squeezing half her body through the driver’s side window.

When she steps back behind the vehicle, it only takes her a few seconds to dig Big Yellow out, the affectionate name most rural quebecois police departments use to refer to the brick-sized radios, of much further reach than their own, and meant to be used only in case of contact with a Kaiju.

The radio’s yellow plastic casing, the emblem of the Pacte de Saint-Georges printed into its molding. Christine pulls at its retractable metal antenna as she turns it on, waiting for the small screen on it to give the desired symbols. “We are on!” She speaks up. To which Dumoulin nods grimly, and starts relaying the message.

“Umiujaq Police Department. Mastodon spotted at fifty six degrees, thirty two minutes and one second north. Seventysix degrees, thirtyseven minutes and thirty seconds west. Evacuation underway.”

Wordlessly they both get back into their patrol car, and without even turning the car around Dumoulin starts speeding them back out of the waterbreak, ready to pedal-to-the-metal their way to the airport.

They do not want to be anywhere around Umiujaq when Mastodon reaches it. The creature may not be seeking to destroy the place Christine has come to call her new home, but it surely will not bear the annoyance of changing its trajectory, certainly not for the sake of the livelihoods of hundreds of meaningless humans.

Those cold and unfeeling eyes will stay in her mind for a long time, the footage does not do them justice.

29th of July, 2092
Somewhere upon Baffin Island, Gronland Exclusion Zone

The Viceroy of the Arctic Archipelago stands upon the shores of an island, its bare stone landscape mostly uncovered by the short window of “warmer” weather which his domain experiences once a year. It is not something that particularly bothers him. During the harshest winter months, his fur makes the challenge of the cold an afterthought, during the rare days of summer when the sun beats down with impunity and not even wind can alleviate it, a bath in the open sea does nicely.

But today is not one such day. Today the heat is easily bearable as Mastodon stands upon the very edge of the domain he rules in the name of the King of All Seas And All Lands. From there, he surveys the waters beyond it.

There is nothing much that he cares for in them. After all, there are no forests in them for him to maintain, and by definition nothing there is an intruder which he ought to remove. Or at least, not yet.

Before him, far in the distance, he can see the blotch upon the world created by Her and Her’s Children. The churning clouds of ash and smoke, so towering that they have been carried across land and ocean towards his territory, spewed by Her’s unsustainable innards. 

Her ought to be dealt with. But yet again, that is not his prerogative. His sole task is to defend that which he has been given the privilege to defend. And to fulfil this duty he stands upon the very edge of his domain, breathing in Her’s indignity, his snout trying to find traces of Her’s Children among the smells of the burned and the burning.

And that he has found, the slimy and reptilian smell of Her’s Children mixed with the rest of her refuse, maybe it is coming carried by the great gyre of winds that exists even further north. Or maybe it truly is one of Her’s Children heading for his domain.

Or maybe it is both. Maybe whatever may lie within the smoke clouds or below the polluted waves is real, but not actually meaning to enter Mastodon’s domain. After all, the lands around and beyond it, to the south, are covered in the great gatherings of humans that he has seen grow since they crossed the land bridge. They are not of his concern, but he could see how something that hungers for flesh would vehemently disagree.

If that is the case, then Mastodon will have to do nothing. After all, the protection of invasive species is as much within his purview as their eradication. He supposes it would be a net good to gore one of Her’s Children upon his tusks. But even that is likely unnecessary if the thing is heading for the great massification of the rivers and shores. Since his last great slumber, the diminutive apes have grown more and more competent at identifying that which is not welcome upon the face of the earth, and at accepting that which they once misidentified to be as such. 

Mastodon will stand upon these shores for as long as the moon’s next turn, perhaps a bit longer. But eventually, if nothing of many claws and wings passes the threshold, he will simply wander off. He has much land to cover, after all.

Chapter Text

23th of December, 2091
Ruins of Urquhart Castle, Scotland,
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

‘It is not fair,’ Dougie pants. ‘It is not fair.’

STO-TOMP

And of course it isn’t fair. The world is a badly told fairy tale where the author added in all the monsters and then forgot the knights who are supposed to slay them. Or worse, perhaps the author remembered that knights and saints are meant to slay dragons, and simply didn’t add either, consciously.

STO-TOMP

First their parents. Unceremoniously drowned and gobbled up alongside the rest of a ferry to the mainland they had tried to use to reach them, the waters churning with the shapes of an entire pod of those twisted whale-ish things. It had been a so crude and sudden end. One that he had had to swallow alone and explain to his two siblings. Siblings that he had instantly become the only guardian to, both legally -as the oldest member of the family left alive- and practically. Dougie is pretty sure that foster care isn’t really a priority while all of Scotland is getting gnawed at.

STO-TOMP

An eighteen year old shut-in with the social skills of a potato for anything outside of tabletop roleplaying. And he’d been saddled with explaining their parents’ death to a sixteen year old on the spectrum and a fifteen year old who had lost access to her antidepressants. He couldn’t even give them a chance to mourn surrounded by the rest of their family, part of the deal of being orphaned and lost. And the idea of getting to say goodbye to bodies which had been eaten is a joke to even ponder. His parents would have wanted a funeral with a burial and all the old-timey trappings, too. And knowing that only makes it all hurt much worse.

STO-TOMP

‘Go forth, young lad!’ The police officer trying to control the crowd of onlookers at the port had said with his eyes that day. ‘Go forth and do something no human being should ever have to do, much less with no preparation or help whatsoever!’

STO-TOMP

Truly, it had been a wonder that Dougie Douglass -known as Double D to his own D&D club- and his two siblings had even made it safe and “healthy” for as long as they had. Tenacity, responsibility, resolve… Buzzwords used by the real adults they had come across for those last few years. The same ones who had chosen to flatter him as opposed to actually helping him shoulder the burden in any meaningful way. Although he can’t really fault them, they all had their own people to try and keep alive.

STO-TOMP

Three jobs. He had juggled three jobs just to keep his siblings well fed and clothed through their later adolescence. With no aid from a failing Scottish government and active neglect from the Londoner pricks. Full time at a bunker construction company and two technically illegal jobs, one as a bouncer at the backdoor to one of Inverness’ seediest clubs -kept well stocked by coastal and islander refugees- and another as a handyman at the boatyard, fixing the touring boats which had long been converted into fishermen’s vessels to attempt to bandage the wound of food scarcity.

STO-TOMP

Then again, he’d literally pay his right hand right now to be able to go back to slaving away at any of those jobs. Anything would have beat having to wheeze and sprint his way up a snow-covered hill with something resembling the monstrous child of a boulder and a pug trailing him.

STO-TOMP

He can at least console himself by knowing that whatever happens, the car he’s left behind is intact, the solar panels are almost done charging, and the road ahead is now empty.

STO-TOMP

The A9 had been clogged and saturated with unmoving cars as far as the eye could see, they would have been sitting ducks. And he sure as hell was not going to drive down the coast through the A96, not as the entire north sea had become a blistering warzone. 

STO-TOMP

A warzone “his side” was losing pretty badly in, a detail worth mentioning.

STO-TOMP

So their only option had been the A82, heading down southwest along the northern shore of Loch Nis all the way to Fort Augustus. South and west, exactly the opposite direction those things were beaching and landing on Inverness from.

STO-TOMP

He had kept the radio on, against better mental health judgment and his own siblings’ vocal distress. Live reporting? His hunch had been right. Those kaiju had hit the pathway of the A96 at three different cities. Elgin, Fraserburgh and Peterhead were all getting demolished. And who knew how many more were landing at smaller towns and going unreported? How many were simply climbing empty cliffs and crawling inland through ghosted beaches. It wouldn’t take any of those too long to reach Aberdeen, and then what? Across the Cairngorms Perth, Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh would be close by from their colossal points of view.

STO-TOMP

And that’s without thinking about all the ones who might just fly or swim directly towards…

STO-TOMP

Anywhere, fucking anywhere.

STO-TOMP

Dougie loses his footing, some small depression or molehill hidden under the snow making him fall to his knees. His arms disappear up to his lower forearm in the white snow. The snow does cushion the unexpected stumble, but it also slows him down.

STO-TOMP STO-TOMP

He does not want to slow down. So he awkwardly jumps forward without even bothering to get up, awkwardly climbing the steep hill using his arms, like a little kid climbing a staircase on all fours.

STO-TOMP

The thought that he’s trespassing does not pass Dougie’s mind as he reaches the bridge into the keep and pushes himself forward using the simple iron bar railing. The government literally doesn’t exist anymore. The gatehouse is an imposing structure, but Dougie doesn’t dwell on it, literally or figuratively. It’s not a good place to hide in. Neither is the wide but short bailey. Its walls are not tall enough considering what he’s fleeing from.

STO-TOMP

He can literally see the shape of the sluggish thing over the curtain walls as it clambers up the hill, shaking the ground with each step as it chases after him. But not after the now silent car hidden under the shade of the snow-covered trees lining the visitor center’s parking lot. 

STO-TOMP

Their relative positions make it easy for him to see it through the haze of bad weather. It’s not as bad as some of the things he’s seen in the news or in history documentaries, it’s not as bad as the monsters in some of his adventure books… But it’s still a gargoyle-like monstrosity currently trying to eat him and possibly his two younger siblings.

STO-TOMP

It has a craggy and hideous hide that looked like volcanic rock long-weathered as part of a seaside promontory. It has a rounded body with a huge dragging tail, big enough that the hill’s incline makes it impossible for him to see. Large leathery wings stick out from its back, and yet Dougie would bet both of his hands that it’s nothing more than a for-show set of atrophied limbs. Why? Because the thing’s head alone -a round and mace-like thing with the underbite of an inbred bulldog-  is as large as the rest of its body. And it’s not a small body to begin with! Tucked on its sides are arms so small they blend into the torso as if they were just slightly bigger than usual rock-like growths. The only reason Dougie is even sure they are arms is that he’s seen the thing use them to lean down to sniff after him.

STO-TOMP

He can’t very well lose it by just running into a courtyard. He’d just be a shock of flannel and red hair in the middle of a snowfield. If he wants to actually make it back out, he has to lose the damned dragon-like cunt.

STO-TOMP

The chunky and spiny lobes covering its back and what he can see of its tail shudder and limply hang with each lumbering step that its flat-footed elephantine legs take. With every step it takes, snow is shaken off the broken walls of the castle.

STO-TOMP

Dougie can tell how fast it's moving even as he again focuses on running across the courtyard. He vaguely remembers the layout from a childhood trip, and runs towards what he knows to be some kind of kitchen or dining hall on the lake-facing side of the figure eight-shaped castle. That section is only partially walled. But that’s not what he cares about. It also has a ceiling he could hide under, but he’s not going to do that either. He doesn’t even care about the Great Hall they should be connected to.

STO-TOMP

He doesn’t give a flying fuck about what a glorified stone living room might offer him. He wants to get to the fucking lake. Not to the old stone buildings the mossy-stone skinned monster who wants to eat him can probably just chew through.

STO-TOMP

All he cares about is that last time he visited Urquhart Castle -back when he was still under the care of two loving and living parents- there had been a massive opening of collapsed wall from the kitchens into the steep slopes which lead into the lake. 

STO-TOMP

There’s no fucking point in hiding in a forest from something that slobbers lava. The muddy banks of a lake agitated by strong winds? If it’s good enough to fool a bloodhound, it’ll have to be good enough to fool a fucking Kaiju.

STO-TOMP

He leaps forth and unceremoniously into the aforementioned kitchen, and sure enough there’s a good fifth of the wall that’s more like a suggestion than a wall would have been there a few centuries ago.

STO-TOMP

Dougie makes for it like a man possessed, picking up speed thanks to the lack of snow on the inside of the derelict stone structure. It’s also the barest bit warmer without the winds battering him. The fact that he doesn’t simply kill himself by stumbling down the snow covered, pebble-strewn and almost sheer lakeshore is the kind of miracle that will make him reconsider his opinions on religion if he even manages to make it out.

STO-CRASH

Well, there goes the gatehouse to an almost eight hundred year old castle. He’s sure the historians of Scotland will weep. If they survive the world’s ending, of course.

STO-TOMP

The water shocks him the moment his boot hits the lake’s edge, and then shocks him again when he slides further down and the frigid water soaks into his pant leg and socks. It’s as if all the adrenaline that’s been letting him power through the nightmare run he’s just ended leaves his body, leached by the dark waters of the Loch Nis in the amount of time needed for a fly to bat its wings.

STO-TOMP

The energy might be gone, but the fear isn’t, the fear is electric and tasers him to keep moving, now parallel to the lake’s shore, every nerve in his body screams for him to keep going despite the cold and the exhaustion, only aided further by the explosion of movement of some other part of the castle as it is batted into smithereens, stone and mortar falling into the lake to his left like hail or shrapnel.

STO-TOMP

Dougie keeps scurrying forward like a rat even as it becomes clear that the thing isn't going to have a hard time reaching the lakeshore either. Unlike himself, it doesn't need to find a caved-out piece of castle. It can just make its own.

STO-TOMP

Eventually, just as it breaks through another wall, he does find a spot that’s good enough for his flight response to give control over to freeze. It’s a rock, probably a boulder which rolled down the hill just shy of the water’s level hundreds of years ago. Much of it is clearly buried under the steppe hill’s side, anchored on tightly. It stands almost horizontally, jagged and showing the layers of a sedimentary stone. The rock sticks out enough to leave a space beneath, a space a man could use to hide.

STO-TOMP

And hide he does, it does force him to stand, silently and unmoving, in a place where his boots sink into the mud and the waterline reaches his thighs. The waterline of a Scottish lake nearing the heart of winter. And so begins the waiting game. Does the Kaiju find and eat him? Or does hypothermia kill him for the Loch to claim?

STO-TOMP

It doesn’t matter. Either option ends up with the thing distracted long enough for his siblings to hopefully see they should just book it the fuck out of there. That’s the only thing that matters.

STO-TOMP

Kennith and Bethany. They are the only thing that matters.

STO-TOMP-BOOM-CRASH

Dougie never gets to learn who might have won. Because the universe soon -minutes later, to be precise- shows that it has very different plans for him. The sound of the Kaiju crashing across the walls of the castle and tumbling down into the lake is thunderous, like a great bomb hitting a dam’s face. The shockwaves of water reach him quickly and almost take him under.

But the rippling waves do something else, something that garners his full attention even as a monster with skin made of a monastery’s walls attempts to find its footing with no help from its four atrophied limbs, the water sizzling as globs of spittle-like magma bubble off its bulldozer mouth. 

A shadow, hiding under the water, yet so close to the surface that he can see it through the darkness. At first it looks like a log to Dougie, it’s not like there’s a shortage of floating logs on lakes like Ness.

Hell, there’s enough of them that they’ve become part of the whole host phenomena which people have conflated into the legend of the lake’s legendary monster. Even those shady Monarch types have been forced by public opinion to look into the matter.

And then he looks a bit closer at the weirdly curved and ondulated-looking log.

Then he notices the curious eyes staring at him from one end of it.

‘Uh, turns out Monarchs can be wrong, and water is wet.’

And his sanity shatters a little bit.

It has a long, tan, serpentine body with a lighter underside, a darker tan dorsal fin -small and gnarly- runs down its undulating backs, brown patterns and spots covering a body with an elongated diamond-shaped tailfin at the end of it.

It could easily be mistaken for a log covered in stringy algae and musty leaves after days in the water, he admits to himself. Enough so to fool both the people denying it exists and those trying to prove it does.

Then it sticks its head out of the water, chirping as it cocks its head. The dewlap hanging from its neck and the two barbels sticking out of its chin drip with water. So do the two ear-like fins on the sides of its head, and its nostrils, and the edges of its mouth. It’s a big wet noodly thing.

Dougie gives out a confused scream that the massive Kaiju in the distance doesn’t even notice. But the “tiny” one before him -it’s as long as the largest constrictor snake he’s ever heard of- certainly reacts with a scared chirp of its own as it also backs away. 

“Great, fucking great!” Dougie utters to himself as he continues to shiver. “I’m going to get eaten by the mac-fucking Nessie!” His back hits the rock’s damp underside. There’s icicles on the edges of it for god’s sake.

And yet, the Kaiju doesn’t attack, it just… keeps looking at him. Looking at him with those big orange eyes. Big orange… Innocent eyes. The kind of big eyes you find on a baby, or a kitten. The kind you find on…

“Are you a bloody hatchling!?” He whisper-screams.

It takes his words for an invitation to swim closer. A wild kick from Dougie shoos it away for a bit. But unwilling to leave, this time it doesn’t shy away as much.

STO-SPLASH

And just like that, Dougie realized why. The other kaiju, it scares the much smaller one, just as it scares him. Enough so that it is trying to hide deep under the rock with him, ignoring every instinct that probably tells it he’s food or that swimming to deeper waters would be safer.

STO-SPLASH

Dougie should be kicking it out. Just get the bigger one to eat it so there’s at least one less of those things for mankind to suffer under. Would make for a great distraction, too. It’d give him a great avenue of escape back to the car. Back to his siblings. Something he hadn’t thought possible moments ago.

STO-SPLASH

But then the serpent-ling keens again, fearful, terrified, in need of some kind of aid. And Douglas Donald unthinkingly moves further back and to the side, so it may crawl closer under the rock’s protection. It’s just a baby, it’s just a kid. They are both going to die, why deny it one last comfort?

STO-SPLASH

The animal moves quickly, crawling and snaking up the bank with its many finned limbs even as the draconic kaiju continues lumbering towards them. Not close enough to have truly noticed or found them. And yet close enough that Dougie can see its chameleon-like eyes, covered in sealed eyelids of dark rock. Those eyes, producing light by way of the incandescent veins underneath, move independently of each other, looking for him. For them.

STO-SPLASH

One eye finally locks on target. Every muscle on Dougie's body locks down. Is he about to bolt? Or is he just bracing for death? Not even he knows. The Kaiju youngling is as frozen as a statue as well, curled around him.

STO-SPLASH

The massive maw lined with blunt teeth opens. It opens wide, letting out the kind of searing light one would get from staring into the open gate to a blast furnace’s core.

  And then Loch Nis explodes. 

The entire lake explodes as rings of cold dark water are shoved aside by something ancient, massive and very, very angry. All it takes is a blink for the ram of it all to slam into the draconic kaiju. 

The blast of molten rock it had been gathering in its palate flew off wildly, missing the hiding pair by a long shot and skipping messily into a swirling mass of breaking-up shards of volcanic rock more than halfway across the lake. As that happens, open jaws ram into its side and slam it into the lakeshore. The sudden force of it reminds Dougie of the times he’s had to slam drunks and creeps into alley brick walls.

He hopes the monster feels twice as much pain as those guys had.

Quickly, the massive set of water-covered coils moves back, shaking itself and rising high, high into the snow cloud filled sky like a rearing cobra.

“Is that… Your fucking mum?!” He mutters as the “tiny” kaiju happily thrills beside him.

The invading kaiju raises itself up again, having fully forgotten about them, and squares off before the Loch Ness Monster itself. Both open their maws almost in unison, both making their intentions clear.

The roars contrast greatly. One is deep and rumbling, devoid of any kind of emotional depth. But it is quickly drowned out by the massive parent’s. Its roar is shriller, yes, but also longer, furious, menacing not only for what beast it is attached to, but for what that kaiju clearly intends with it as its coils twist and turn with grand splashes of water. It is not a warning to back away. The dragon has attacked its offspring. Only death awaits.

After that, the world becomes a blur of plumes of steam, lacustrine tsunamis, fire and the smashing titanic bodies. And yet it’s not even a proper fight. The aquatic beast is larger, it is angrier, and it is in its elements. They bite, they slam and shake and tear. But in a matter of minutes the kaiju are tangled like a boar caught in the coils of a python. 

By the time the parent begins tearing the still living opponent apart, Dougie has long fled back up the shore. The hatchling certainly doesn’t need him to protect it anymore. But he doesn’t leave, his sight and mind snared by the gory show of protective strength. So much so that he doesn’t even think to flee when a muzzle stained with black blood lowers itself to his height. Sunken-in eyes of a toxic orange glow can look at him. Just the head is as large as a lorry-carrying truck.

It stares down on him for what feels like an eternity. 

It stares deeply. 

Not at him. 

Into him. 

The staredown lasts long enough that the monster’s much smaller offspring has plenty of time to crawl up the riverbank, towards him, after helping itself to a few mouthfuls of the still-warm sundered foe.

Eventually the mouth opens, dark ichor falling from the lower jaw like rain from gutters. Somehow Dougie’s guts don't relieve themselves of their contents -upwards or downwards- for his mind is quickly captured.

Captured by the dim glint of a blood-soaked circlet of metal embedded into one of its pillar-wide teeth.

Bethany and Kennith Donald are little more than a shivering mass. A mass made up of two skinny teenagers bundled up in the oversized spare clothes of their older brother. Without the car’s heater to keep them warm -and they are too paranoid to turn that on right now- all they have for warmth is each other in a car old enough that it stops as much heat from seeping out as a sheave would. They can see each other's misty breath whenever the roars and colossal thrashing noises don’t force them shut in fear. 

Bethany hates the noises, they remind her of cracking shellfish, shattering bricks and splintering bones. Kennith squeamishly writhes and uncomfortably whimpers whenever the sizzling returns. It’s the sizzling of something really wet being hit by something really hot, like fish in a drying pan.

Neither of them want to think of the noises or what they may mean for Dougie.

And then there's a lot more noise. The noises of rock walls being battered aside and crumbling. The sound of entire patches of trees being snapped and uprooted. The roars, some deep and rumbling, some shrill and furious. It goes on for what feels like hours.

But it does end, and as the snow starts falling again, silence overtakes everything else. Somehow, that’s worse. Because it gives their brains -even as hypothermia hopes to begin claiming them- the chance to start worrying about the person who should be in the empty driver’s seat, or about leaving. 

They do not want to leave. Leave him behind, no matter how much he would want them to.

They could move, crawl across into the front seats and turn the car and heating back on. It should be safe, since they can’t hear the kaiju anymore. But theirs are cold and terror addled minds. Neither moves, they continue holding onto each other's hoodies with iron-cold grips, with pale and trembling fingers forming bunches of cloth.

Then the world, or at least the small and miserable part of it they hide inside of, shakes. It’s a violent shake. They are mice, and whatever just happened is an old oak tree’s trunk collapsing in front of their burrow.

Kenny whimpers, Beth screams and begins crying anew. Has it come back for them? Have they wasted their brother’s knightly sacrifice?

They are too scared to hear the steps, but they certainly don’t miss it as a figure dressed in flannel yanks the car’s door open, bathing them in light.

“Beth! Kenny!” The figure shouts, wrapping them up with his arms and crushingly hugging them against his chest. The two teenagers can’t help but wail in relieved anguish. Their brother is there, everything will be ok. And his strangely warm body certainly is not something they want to complain about. They sob into his chest for minutes on end.

Then Kenny raises his sight, he notices the strange jagged thing around his brother’s head. It looks like a crown, or a diadem, although it also looks like the kind of muddy and rusty thing a magnet fisher might pull from the water running under a bridge in a busy city. Its tines are rusted, blunted and bent. There’s clear spots where gems should be inlaid where there’s just empty sockets. Some parts are so rusted-through that they look like he could snap them with his fingers, it looks wet and seems to be covered in… Slime?

Kenny is about to ask about it, when movement in the monochromatically tan background catches his tear-blurry sight.

Tan… Background? Isn’t everywhere supposed to be snow-covered?

Then, with a few blinks and a few more rubs of his face into his brother’s shoulder, he manages to clear his sight.

And screams, Kennith screams with an intensity he shouldn’t have had the energy to scream with. Because there’s a dragon around them. Not close to them, not moving towards them. No, there’s a seven-limbed serpentine dragon’s body wrapped around the whole parking lot, its axe-like head peering down on them from a stories-tall neck.

Four orange eyes -two massive, two smaller and perched with a curious gaze atop the larger one’s forehead- peer down on the three hugging siblings, of whom now two are screaming in distress. Bethany Donald, alerted by her sibling’s distress, has followed his eyeline. She needn’t have, looking in any direction would have brought her to the realization of exactly what had slammed into place around them.

“It’s ok! It’s ok!” Her older brother holds tighter onto the both of them. “We are safe! They protected us. Look! Look at the other one? It’s dead! They killed it, look!” Her brother points at something far over the distance, a smoking mass of boulders on the shoreline. Still smoldering globs of magmatic spit splattered all over the area as as willowing smokestacks on the lake’s opposing shore. And then she notices the hatefully familiar shapes of the pile of boulders. That they are torn apart and covered in blood and gore. Not boulders, a corpse. A smouldering and fresh corpse.

With a snort dripping with cool lakewater, the sea serpent regains the siblings’ attention. “Kenny, Beth… Meet Loch Uilebheist and her son.” Her brother tries to introduce, failing to calm them down by way of how strangely calm he is.

“Dougie what-what is going on?” A fearful Beth mutters.

“Well sis I think… I think they’ve made me king of Scotland?” He flicks at the rusty metal contraption in his head, the water in it dampening his hair and covering his forehead like sweat. “Like the books and stories, you know?”

“...” The girl is left stunned.

“Does that mean we get to be princes? Or prince and princess, I guess…” Kenny mutters.

“What?!” A scandalized Beth asks.

“You know?” Her older brother starts answering with the laugh of a man possessed. Possessed by many things, mainly the elation of survival and the safety of kin. “I think you might be! Actually!” Possessed, possessed is the right word indeed.

The comparatively diminutive monster perched atop its mother muzzle chirps with a friendly thrill. And somehow, that’s enough for Beth to start to laugh as well. Knowing you aren’t about to die will do strange things to a person’s mood.

A baby Kaiju is greeting her with the equivalent to a kitten’s meowing and her brother says its parent has crowned him King of the Scots. But hey, at least they are all still alive and together. So it can’t be that crazy.

Chapter Text

1st of May, 1979
Brigadeiro Velloso Testing Range, State of Pará, Federative Republic of Brazil

The testing range seems abandoned, only adding to the eerie appearance a site built deep into the wilderness of the Smoking Pipe Mountains would have naturally had. As the dense nighttime rains -each drop of water as thick as a thimble and cold in a way someone wouldn’t expect from the tropics- slam into it, the uneven and cracked surfaces of its runways become puddles and flowerpots for the landscape’s weeds. 

The gutters of square-like military buildings, the roofs of massive hangars with half-moon roofs of corrugated steel, and the cement-embedded doors of bunkers all become man-made gullies and waterfalls, leading down into the long-overwhelmed stormdrains. Clogged and packed up by the way in which they connect with the disgusting sewage of the base’s latrines, workshops and cantine. 

Thanks to this, water only further pools in any depression it can pool into. Considering the time of the year -the aptly mentioned rainy season that allows for Brazil’s most legendary geographical feature- all this water only falls into puddles and seasonal ponds already filled to bursting by months’ worth of previous rains. It is so high in some places, that the testing’s range’s trenches and moats have become home to spawning fish and singing amphibians, and that the waters within the base’s paltry chain-link fence have begun connecting into the drainage basins without, effectively connecting Brigadeiro Velloso Testing Range to the vastness of Mother-Serpent-of-the-World.

And yet, as lightning makes the raindrops glint like chandeliers and animals hide from the water’s incessant weight, the base deigns to remind the world of the fact that it is not abandoned with light and sound of its own.

All across it, windows are alight with the cold whiteness of fluorescent lightbulbs, and shapes moving within show lively celebrations. The celebrations of men -and a few women, locals hoping to make a living- who consider the beginning of the year a few hours prior worthy enough of an event to break out all their catches of beer, caipirinha and pinga. 

The sound of music softly echoes out of those builds which have seen such meager maintenance over the last few years. And it is not because the music itself is being played at moderate volumes, but because of the sheer and incessant drone of the hours-long rains. The watchtowers which surround the base have their searchlights on -well, the ones which have burned out without replacements in sight- and created spears of silvery light into the humid landscape around them. But no men man them, the base’s commander lacks the actual authority to make any of them actually stand out there doing so.

And why would the man in charge of such a facility lack the authority to command something that basic? For the same reasons that the base is in such a state of disrepair.

Because it has been six years since the Federative Republic of Brazil began to collapse under the assault of the monsters which dwell at its heart, and a country that is losing entire cities as often as the full moon makes itself visible isn’t the kind of soil a functioning army can be farmed out of.

Case in point, a base which should have been the beating heart of Brazil’s nuclear program has been gutted. Its experimental munitions and every last air-worthy plane or pilot sent off to the airfields far beyond the Brazilian Highlands, where the country’s great coastal cities lie, and so does lie the Behemoth who tramples and shoves them aside.

And when a country begins to collapse, and its military goes from unready to unwell, other -darker- events begin to befall. An easy example would be the flagstaffs of the very base currently being pounded by rains. One would expect their flags, water drenched as they are, to be those of the Federative Republic, of its Air Force, or even of the specific units which call CPBV home. And these do fly. But they are made to fly alongside others, flags which replace the Brazilian yellow, blue and greens with blacks, reds and yellows. Flags whose firmaments fly alongside hammers and sickles or lonely red stars.

The flags of “soldiers’ syndicates” and of political parties which grow like gorging maggots upon the rotting flesh of a crumbling republic. Some other bases would be infested by the maggots of revanchist and monarchist subspecies, the ones here just so happen to be tinged red. Within the confines of the Testing Range, the ringleaders of the local Guarda Vermelha are as powerful as any officers reared among Brazil’s military cadres.

Men without purpose, far from their suffering families but forced to remain in this base if they want to keep earning their worthless salaries of depreciated reals. Many of whom await for a revolution which may never come, and in which they would have to trek for a week before finding their closest enemies.

And so, those hundreds of men who might have, in a different version of history, been part of a monstrously large endeavour of science and warfare, are instead busy drinking, singing and fucking the new year away. Knowing that tomorrow they will be waking up to fresh news of yet another Kaiju attack upon yet another Brazilian city or town. Maybe half a dozen will desert, if their hometown is the one mentioned. Or maybe they will join the organizations claiming that a better version of the country will arrive.

So busy are they, engaging in vices to preventively drown their sorrows, that none of them will know.

None of them will know that the fencing has gone months without being checked and fixed, that the flooding has been so great that at some points the listing fences can be swum over, that hangers have become white with the guano of birds and bats nesting and shitting within them, and that the doors to munitions bunkers have not been locked. Some have not even been fully closed.

And so, when a great slithering thing -more than six meters long- swims into the base, her gravid weight unhindered, none are there to notice her. Not even as she swims on the water’s surface and crawls through the mud, her green scales and the black blotches decorating them shiny under the eyeless watch of the searchlights.

Usually, anacondas aren’t picky with when or where they give birth to their neonates, to whom they give no succor or care. 

But this one? For reasons that no human will ever be present to speculate on, ends up crawling through the half-flooded doors of one such bunker. 

Perhaps an instinctive interest in the heat emanating from within drives her. Or perhaps an intelligence the size of a rainforest pulls at spidersilk strings.

It does not matter, either way, the anaconda swims into a bunker holding nearly all of Brazil's enriched uranium. All its vault doors left ajar, all its alarms sort-circuited by water, all its containment procedures long given up on.

A mother to warlords, she will be, even if her reptilian brain is far too small to understand such a thing.

23rd of October, 1983
Somewhere in the Amazon River, Amazonas Basin Exclusion Zone

The two-tired riverboat, the name Coruja painted with bold and flowing letters across the portside of her prow, slowly continues its advance up the Amazon River’s mighty course. For hundreds of meters on either side of her extends the width of the Solimões -the Upper Amazon River- with its pale and sandy-colored whitewater course. 

Waters heavy with mud, silt and sand from as far as the Peruvian Andes. Waters which could hide anything. Which could hide them.

‘But,’ Monica thinks to herself, half-resting upon the ship's wheel with a lazy posture. ‘If water could scare me off, I wouldn’t be here, would I?’ 

Indeed, the woman has been driving boats since she was a toddler, back when her father would hold her up and sit her on the wheel itself during longer stretches of travel. While back then the work had been mostly about ferrying locals between riverside villages -making some money on the side by carrying the occasional tourist or hardware- the river itself has not changed in her course. 

And she very well could have, Monica has heard plenty of tales about what Kaiju can do to geography over the radio broadcasts she tunes in for whenever they are back home in Manaus.

“Slow down.” Her father speaks up, with a grumble. Monica doesn’t need to look back to know that he’s resting back on his chair, feet propped up over a part of the console that hasn’t worked in two years, tarp hat covering his face.

“If I slow down any further it’ll be nightfall before we reach Coari.”

“If we keep going this fast you’ll run us out of fuel before we get there.”

“Ugh…” Monica grunts. Angrily, she indeed takes their speed down a notch. Boating the Amazon is a complicated affair, even for people like them who know all the channels and stems of the river. Especially nowadays, when the cost of fuel only makes their profit margins narrower every year.

Still, the young woman isn’t particularly worried. business with Coari is good and has been so for a few years now. The city itself isn’t particularly productive, certainly not compared to bustling Manaus. But it has something very valuable: An airport.

An Airport means that people and goods can get in and out of the Amazonas Basin EZ -usually by making a stop at some packed dirt airstrip controlled by some friends of whoever controls the departure airport- that doesn’t involve sailing into the Atlantic or crossing the jungles or Andes by foot. An airport means a place through which to get contraband in and contraband out. Which coincidentally is what Coruja’s hold is full of.

But what really matters to the father-daughter duo is the simple fact that -by Amazonia's size- each such airport or important production center is controlled by a different gang or militia. Each with different bosses abroad who trade in different segments of the black market. A degree of specialization and monopoly which made riverboats like theirs a necessity to the people out there in need of anything from buying medicine to selling their coca to the right buyer.

And there’s the forty or so people also aboard. They never have enough stuff to move that they can’t also keep offering rides up and down the river between both cities. It is always good to diversify one’s income, after all.

Monica slows the ship down a bit more as they come into a bend in the massive course, not needing to hear her old man’s lessons. But even as she does, instinct tells her there’s more to keep an eye out for.

The riverside trees, often alive with the moving of animals and the calling of colorful birds, have gone silent.

“Dad. Up.” She says simply. And while the man grumbles in response, the thudding of his sandals on the wooden deck tells her that he’s taken her tone as seriously as she meant it. 

“Oh yeah…” He rubs his forehead and looks out just by her side, his gaze fixating on the same as her. A certain frothiness, small rivulets of bubbly water. The sign that something up river and beyond the bend is upsetting the water as much as their own wake. There’s no rapids ahead, and they would have already heard the engines of another ship. Meaning…

“I’ll get going down.” The man speaks, quickly turning around and exiting their cockpit, walking down the stairs to the main deck.

No engines, indeed, but sound does reach them soon after as the boat crosses the curve’s halfway point. Hissed grumbles loud enough to rattle the bobblehead glued to the console by her wheel. Churning like that of massive logs being thrown into water by a logging crew. Telltale sounds, for someone like her.

Cobra Grandes. The warlords who control everything between the villages and towns. The reason why the rest of the world has deigned to shut Amazonia off aid or even exploitative contact while Brazil continues killing itself.

Titanoboas, two of them, fighting.

The massive snakes twist and coil around each other, showing and strangling and bashing each other. They do so in the middle of the river, meaning that -at irregular intervals- they disappear under the cream-colored waters only to explode out yet again, each monster heavy and powerful enough that as their boat stops moving forward, it starts being rocked by their movements.

Each monster alone must be longer than all of their vessel, even if not by a great margin. And Monica is honestly glad for that, she's heard of some titanoboas twice as long, longer than thirty meters. And she’s seen what hulls look like after encounters with them… Little more than masses of crushed wood.

These ones… These ones are manageable. Just two males -or perhaps a male and a female- fighting over territory. Fighting over the right to… To do what her father has gone down to prepare.

They are easy to tell apart, their scale patterns almost inverted and easily comparable as they coil like strands of DNA. One is yellowish with black diamonds, while the other’s markings are blotchy, but of inverted colors.

The former seems to have horns, made only more obvious by the gashes on its opponent’s face. While the latter’s eyes seem to glow with their own light more and more strongly as nightfall comes closer and closer.

Closer and closer, like the serpents.

Distracted as they are, the current is slowly pulling the animals downriver. Closer to the vessel. And as that happens, the ’s passengers unavoidably grow louder in their amazement and fear. Hopefully enough of them have travelled between settlements before to avoid any foolishness. And if anyone wants to jump ship? They are her guests to do so, they already paid.

But it won’t come to that. Of all the ways to encounter titanoboas, the middle of a fight is actually quite good. It leaves them exhausted. And an exhausted anaconda, no matter its size, is much less prone to attack. Which is another point that calms her. While massive, neither snake is outright massive enough to upturn or crush the riverboat without looping itself up and down it, and tiredness also plays into that possibility.

The battle doesn’t last much longer, however. No animal fights to the death unless it's forced to, and there is always more jungle for the loser -the one with the horns, as it turns out- to find its own fiefdom farther from the popular routes.

But the winner, with her glowing and piercing eyes, remains, and finally takes note of Coruja, swimming towards it lazily as if nothing of note had happened. 

“Papa,” Monica speaks into the ship’s megaphone. “We got her attention, drop the taxes.”

“On it.”

Monica can’t see it. But she can picture it, most trips they take turns with their tasks. She can picture her father just by the loading ramp at the ship’s back, covering its stopped engines, and lowering it with one pull of a lever, while his other arm pulls at two animals.

Well-sized cows, the snakes won’t accept anything smaller than a hog as payment.

She can picture him pulling them away from the rest of the livestock the vessel carries. Part of it meant to never reach port. There’s a good eight fiefdoms between Manaus and Coari. Almost twenty animals per trip. A price everyone who makes the routes pays unless they are willing to make themselves a target aboard a small and fast canoe. Most people don’t.

She can picture the animals stumbling down the ramp and falling into the waters with big splashes and sounds of distress, always the best part. She can picture her father rising the ramp and stepping back as the massive shape of the snake would lurch forwards.

Both cows were swallowed whole by horrible distended jaws.

And then, the wait. The exchange of nothing more than a glance with reptilian eyes housing an alien and uncomfortable intelligence. The eyes of something judging whether the price paid was good enough. Some demand more, and no intelligent captain haggles or tries to call the bluff.

In Amazonia, you pay the gang bosses for the right to sell and buy anything in their cities. 

And you pay the Príncipes Cobra for the right to move it across their domains.