Author: Kristian Zatkoff | Banner: Stephanie Hughes

Crimson red eyes opened. Dagahra got up on his hind legs and yawned. How long had he been sleeping? Mere minutes? Hours? Days? Maybe even weeks? Was it daytime or night? He couldn’t tell, curled at the bottom of the sea where the light never reached and things barely changed. The sea dragon climbed out of the muddy floor, shaking the muck off of himself. No matter, he was too hungry to care all that much. He swam up to the surface where he spotted an oil rig. The demonic sea beast sped up and slammed into it like a rocket, sensing the crude oil within it. The rig was torn asunder in seconds, as he began drinking the leaking oil. Only a handful of the workers survived the attack while the rest who were not so fortunate, the sea became their watery graves.

Dagahra didn’t care as he kept drinking up the oil. That is, until one of the workers accidentally fired a flare gun in his panic, causing the oil to ignite across the sea. Searing hot flames licked at his fleshy wings, causing the Nilai-Kinai beast to stop and howl, more in rage than pain. He wasn’t even full! He would have to look somewhere else to find more food. The fallen sea guardian rose out of the literal sea of fire and flew west. After more than half a day of soaring, he found himself in the jungles of South America. He sensed a large amount of pollution. Circling around, he soon found a small lake where it must be and landed on the shore not too far away.

It didn’t take long for him to notice something was wrong. While the rain forest looked fine for the most part, all the plants and trees near the lake were dead and several animals lay dead nearby, their skin slowly melting away. Some of them were still alive, but their heavy breathing made it clear that they would not make it. The air was slowly filled with an awful noise that grew louder and louder as the sea dragon glanced into the smog filled sky. A large object landed in the heart of the jungle some distance away with a thud, its three heads screeching like harpies from the depths of hell itself. Trees and plants that were not already dead started to wilt away at an alarming speed as the thing that landed sucked up their life force to feed itself. Desghidorah stopped in its tracks as it saw Dagahra and all the destruction that was already wrought.

Had he caused this? Did the bottom feeder eat the life force of plants like him? Desghidorah was not one to share food with others and was about to attack, when the water started bubbling. Both monsters watched with curiosity as the pollution on the lake’s surface began to converge to the center. The cause became crystal clear to both monsters as they saw a large, black blob slowly rise out of the surface. What was that? The water’s surface exploded as the real cause for this destruction lifted itself out of the water. The strange, disk-shaped object fired twin, jagged red rays at Dagahra’s front legs, causing him to fall over with a screech, the disk landing several meters away. Desghidorah was downwind from the gas the thing expelled causing him to choke and wheeze, as eyes and faces burned like fire, tears falling out as his eyes watered in a way no hellfire had ever made them. The biological weapon surveyed the wounds on his legs and got up to see where that thing went. He didn’t know what it was, but after feeling the burning sting of its rays, he wanted to know where it was at all times.

Both monsters heard a sickening laughter, aimed at the expense of their pain. They both located the source easily enough as the disk glowed and bubbled before changing its shape into a vaguely humanoid form, sporting what looked like arms, legs and a long tail. She turned around to stare at them with two large red eyes. Hedorah waved her arms up and down as if excited that she had two monsters to fight. Dagahra saw an all-you-can-eat buffet as he jumped headfirst into the Smog Monster and bit down, only to let go and scream in intense pain, spitting, pawing at his mouth to try to get the sludge out of his mouth. The thing’s skin nearly burned his jaws off! The vile leviathan fell over as the smog monster kicked him in the face. Desghidorah shot several plasma rays from his mouths, each one hitting the walking pollutant, who warbled out in pain, as the recovering Nilai-Kinai monster shot several Barem from his shoulder cannons, completely covering her. As the sea beast got back to its feet, it could only watch in horror as the mutant starfish melted into nothing and were consumed by Hedorah’s toxic body.

The devil dragon slammed into the blob, only to scream bloody murder as his legs burned. Jumping back, the demonic Ghirdorah ran in circles before the pain finally subsided. All the skin and bony armor was gone from his front legs, red muscle tissue glinting in the light of the setting sun, crimson liquid falling everywhere. The thing made him bleed. It would pay! Dagahra watched as the hellfire hydra blasted the giant blob with more of his Lava Gout bolts and joined in by opening his maw and firing a lavender-colored beam. Hedorah screamed and thrashed about as she fell to the ground. The two ancient beasts realized that the thing can be hurt. That means it must be killable, too. Where physical attacks had no effect other than getting them burned by its acid, energy attacks seemed to cause it harm. Noting that parts of Hedorah had dried up and fell off, they decided to stop firing and prolong the smog monster’s suffering.

It was a mistake they would regret. The toxic invader rose up and grabbed two of the three-headed demon’s heads, pulling them into her body. Pain as white as a thousand stars burned into two of the necks, the heads were in too much pain to try and fire. All they could do was scream as their skin was burned off. The middle head looked down at its captor with complete and utter hatred. Dagahra was about to open his mouth again to fire, when a small blob fired off of Hedorah and splattered onto the left side of his face, causing him to scream out yet again. His left face was badly burned, missing huge chunks of flesh. The left eye became blind, his right eye had some of the acid splattered into it, but while it burned, it wasn’t blind. Distracted by his pleasure at the four-legged one’s pain, the slimy alien felt pain shoot into her body as Desghidorah’s middle head fired a stream of fire into her face, the unholy flames causing the outer layer of sludge to begin to dry and flake. The living sludge let go, staggering back, as the two free heads joined the middle head in the assault. Even more beams joined in as Dagahra’s shoulders shifted forms and fired. Falling to the ground, Hedorah looked up at the hydra. Its two heads were blind, skin falling off. Then something happened that made it feel fear for the first time in their life. The fiend began absorbing energy from the trees that had somehow managed to survive, the life force healing some of his wounds.

The Smog Monster shifted to its flying form and took off. At first, the two dragons thought that she was leaving, but then they saw that it was circling the area and killing off all the plants with her toxic cloud. Both monsters couldn’t breathe. Their eyes once again felt like they were on fire. Hedorah slammed into Desghidorah, sending both kaiju into the lake. Almost instantly, the monster of toxic waste was at maximum power. The great hydra tried to free itself, but she refused to let go and any attacks used to dry it were rendered useless by the water. The unsealed demon had no other choice. The toxic tadpole wailed out in pain as the skeletal Ghidorah used the energy in its body to create a pulse of intense heat that slammed his foe onto the nearby shore.

The inferno dragon fired a barrage of his energy bolts, each blow pushing the Hedorah farther away from the water. Dagahra had finally regained his sight. He knew that if they were going to beat this thing they were going to have to dry it from the inside as well. Taking a big gulp of air, and bracing for the pain, he closed his eyes and held his breath as he jumped head first into the polluted body. Ignoring the intense pain and smell, he fired every energy weapon at his disposal. Shrieking in pain, Hedorah panicked as she felt her body dehydrate from the inside out, grabbing the Barem master by the wings and dislodging him. As soon as he fell to the ground, the dragon gasped for air.

Desghidorah performed his most dangerous attack: Fiery Pyre Road. He reared up on his hind legs, then slammed his front legs into the ground, causing a fissure to open up. As the water poured down the fissure, drying the small lake in mere seconds, fire shot up out of the ground. It was as if the gates of hell itself had opened! Hedorah quickly changed into its flying form, but was engulfed in a tornado of lightning and red starfish. When it stopped, she was too disoriented to fly away. As she fell closer to the fissure from the sky, the smog monster heard the two dragons roar out in victory, causing her to cry out helplessly as the pollution creature slipped into the fiery ravine that started to close behind it. After that, all it knew was the intense heat and pain.

Back on the surface, the two dragons clutched their faces. True, they had beaten impossible odds, but they really just wanted to find something to eat and instead had almost gotten killed. And to top it all off, they smelt horrible! Hedorah was gone, but this area still stunk of sulfuric acid. Knowing that if they stayed any longer they would end up retching, the two took to the sky and went their separate ways.

Winner: Dagahra, Desghidorah