Author: Kristian Zatkoff | Banner: Stephanie Hughes

Kaijuologists were stunned. Something strange was going on. Recently, a program was put in effect to place microchips under the skin of the creatures on Monster Island so that satellites could keep track of them, should any escape. They tested this new system for a week and it seemed to work fine. But then something unprecedented happened. Two of the monsters, Varan and Manda, were missing from the island’s complex. Even stranger still, the satellites meant to track these two were giving readings that said they weren’t even on Earth any more. After hours of checking their instruments, they confirmed that they were working correctly.

But where were they? According to their data, they were where no one would have ever thought to look for them: Mars. Several satellites sent by NASA years before to study the red planet had confirmed it. Everyone was in shock. The two monsters were photographed on the red plant, near the icecap. How were they breathing? How did they get there? Pictures taken even showed that some of the ice had melted just enough to make a small lake. What was going on? Everyone’s questions would be answered when NASA would record the epic struggle that was about to play into these strange events.

Varan landed on the shore of the lake and growled. He had been spending the last four hours searching his surroundings. He didn’t know where he was, but he didn’t like it. It was far too cold for his taste. Manda was curled upon on a cliffside, watching the lizard. The guardian serpent didn’t see the point in wasting his energy looking for a way out. They were stuck and there was no way out of it. He didn’t know where they were, but his instincts told him that they were far away from home. Two objects in the distance caught the sea monster’s golden eyes. As they got closer, the triphibian stopped rampaging long enough to see that they were really four objects. Two UFOs hovered towards them. Below them, being carried by the twin craft, were Gigan and Megalon.

After a few moments, the UFOs unleashed the two kaiju and flew off. Before either monster hit the ground, a napalm bomb hit the mountainside, causing Mu’s defender to fall in a heap. Varan charged, attacking the Nebulan menace barely a second after he landed. Sparks flew as the squamate’s claws slashed across the metal armor. Caught off guard by this sudden attack, the cyborg toppled over. Megalon raised his spaded arm, about to strike, when something wrapped around his legs and caused the Seatopian god to fall on his back. Manda hissed as he lifted his tail up, the squirming insectoid in his coils, and twisted his body to throw his foe headfirst into a mountain. When the dust cleared, the drilling demon was missing.

Gigan slammed the unbelievable kaiju in the face as hard as he could with his scythes, blood pooling on the ground around the alien assassin. Varan’s face was bloody but he refused to stop his assault, slashing between hammer blows, but just then, the ground exploded as a drill slammed into his scaled side. The monster monitor stopped his attack and howled in pain as blood splattered everywhere. The space monster continued the onslaught as he blasted him in the face with his cluster beam, causing the beast to fall over. The fowl fiend called out to his ally just as the scarab beast popped out of the ground. The two slammed their arms together and laughed. Manda hissed at Megalon, only to be blasted in the face by his horn lightning, just as his armored ally shot out his grappling hooks.

Varan felt his neck get tighter as the sneering extraterrestrial pulled him in closer. The royal serpent lashed out, wrapping himself around his foe’s armored torso, trying to squeeze the life out of him. Megalon couldn’t move his arms as he struggled, already he could feel his body being crushed! The harder he tried to break free, the harder Manda squeezed him. The snake-like kaiju had his face dangling just mere inches away from his horned head, taunting him. Left with no other option, the subterranean terror spat a napalm bomb in the dragon’s face, causing an explosion. His grip loosened enough for one drilled arm to break free and slam right into the fanged face, forcing the reptile to fall to the ground. The underwater menace looked up and hissed only to have a two clawed foot slam into his teeth. Manda rolled away, while Megalon shot a volley of horn bolts and napalm bombs, each explosion causing the prone creature to roll farther away, making sure wasn’t going to get close to him again.

Gigan, meanwhile, was wailing on the beast once known as Baradagi with a flurry of scythe swipes. Varan was covered from head to toe in wounds as he struggled to avoid the onslaught. The war machine turned around and jabbed, impaling the spiked beast on his tail anchors and flying several meters before swinging his tail around. The poor reptile slid off the tail blades and smacked headfirst into the same mountain Megalon had before. The lake creature had just shook debris off of himself as the intergalactic monster opened his chest ports, firing his razor discs. Varan opened the membranes that ran from under his arms to the sides of his legs and quickly scaled the mountain, barely avoiding the discs, before gliding into the sky. He looked back and saw that they were following him, then spotted Megalon as he kicked Manda into the lake. He nose dived at the giant cockroach, pulling up at the last second. One of the spinning discs couldn’t pull off the maneuver and slammed right into the giant bug’s back. The god of Seatopia screamed as the disc dug into his flesh, greenish-yellow blood splattering everywhere. He turned around to fire at Varan but ended up blasting the other disc by mistake. Shrapnel flew everywhere, tearing into the flying kaiju’s back. The sadistic avian shot another red beam from his cycloptic eye, explosions blasting across the lizard’s body as he fell from the air.

Megalon turned his attention back to his emerald foe and jumped in the lake, ready to drown the overgrown snake. What the oafish terror didn’t know was that he was now in Manda’s home turf. The serpentine kaiju slowly crept up behind his foe, following patiently, waiting for him to get in deeper water. With the speed of lightning, he shot forward and wrapped all around his foe’s grey body and dragged him underneath the surface. The great insect’s arms and legs were tied up as he sank to the bottom, the royal reptile tightening his grip more and more. Megalon, in his futile attempts to escape, shot a barrage of lightning from horn and napalm bombs from his mouth, but Manda was wrapped too close for the weapons to find their target. After a while, the defender’s movements slowed down as he lost the energy to fight back. Within mere seconds, the Seatopian god was crushed, his guts flowing out of his corpse and filling the lake.

The Mu guardian slithered out of the lake covered in Megalon’s innards when it heard Gigan shriek. The cyborg flew directly at the serpent, but Varan dropped out of the sky and landed right on top of him, clawing and kicking. The intergalactic terror’s eye glowed red, but the triphibian delivered a headbutt hard enough to shatter it before the energy could be discharged. Now blinded, the fair weather fiend panicked, jumping right back to his feet. Manda leapt up and wrapped his serpent-like tail around the space monster’s arms and forced them behind his back. His tail snaked around the machine’s neck and pulled hard, exposing his throat. The unbelievable creature turned around and slammed his tail into the cyborg’s neck. Again. Sparks flew. Again. More sparks flew and this time he could see the neck was tearing. He turned around and bit down, his teeth punching through the metal. He put his claws on paldron covered shoulders, pushing with his hands while pulling with his jaws. Gigan let out one final shriek before his head was torn clean off.

Blood and oil poured out of his neck. A spark caused the oil to ignite, Gigan’s neck looking like a fountain of fire in seconds. Manda roared and Varan shrieked. A warning to anyone who dared to attack them.

Back on Earth, everyone was stunned when they realized that this whole thing could only be the result of one thing. Aliens were kidnapping their monsters and using them as weapons. The fight with Gigan and Megalon was just a test to see how useful Manda and Varan were. It was only a matter of time before they would invade the Earth, with the victors becoming victims….

Winner: Manda (Universal), Varan (Universal)