Author: Hayes A. Jones | Banner: Jackson Morris

A predator was stalking the jungles of Monster Island. Creeping through the thick forest with unnatural silence, eight great, spindly legs carried a killer high above the ground.

Kumonga.

Emotionless eyes scanned their surroundings for potential prey. The gigantic spider’s usual food source, a strain of giant mantis known as Kamacuras, had disappeared, already fallen victim to the hunter or migrated to a safer area. The island was also home to many other equally huge creatures, but most were many times more deadly than any giant insects. It could be extremely dangerous for the arachnid apex predator to try and take down one of these beasts, but that was a risk that the invertebrate would have to take. An intense hunger gnawed at the mammoth’s spider’s insides, threatening to completely consume the predator. He needed a good meal and soon, or it would surely perish. The sinister giant was desperate. It had to eat and it was willing to take on anything to do that. It would even attack Godzilla, King of the Monsters himself, if the chance presented itself.

Fortunately for the Solgell terror, it wasn’t the island’s leader that appeared, but the second-in-command.

As the titanic tarantula prowled through the jungle, the shuffling of rocks from somewhere above caught its attention. Four pairs of eyes turned upwards. Perched atop a mountain ledge was Anguirus, Godzilla’s most trusted ally and closest friend. The ankylosaur’s crocodilian jaws were split by an unfriendly snarl. Kumonga was in his territory and he wasn’t in a generous enough mood to share. To the ancient relic’s surprise, the goliath spider didn’t back down. Instead, it actually began scaling the rocky slope, stinger flashing from between the predator’s mandibles with a “choo-choo” sound. The Fierce Dragon’s hard eyes narrowed. The spider meant business. The dinosaur’s fierce grimace parted, unleashing a long, unearthly wail. As the cry ended with a sharp honk, the spiked saurian charged, barreling down towards his new foe.

As Anguirus thundered downward, the sinister spider lunged to meet the reptile, made fearless by his hunger. In a dull crash, flesh and bone clashed with a hard exoskeleton. A writhing mass of limbs and scales, the two giants tumbled to the forest floor below, flattening countless trees under their combined mass. With a cry of effort, the Angillasaur threw Kumonga from him, the invertebrate landing on its back several hundred yards away, legs flailing. Rolling to his feet, the horned hunter flashed his conical teeth and lunged. The massive spider was suddenly crushed into the ground as it cried out in distress, the radioactive reptile pushing down on its cephalothorax with powerful forelimbs. As the arachnid’s clawed legs batted pitifully at his carapace, the prehistoric throwback grabbed one of the thrashing limbs and bit down. Bone-white teeth scraped against the predator’s outer shell with a dry scratching. Anguirus growled and spat out the leg bitterly. Kumonga’s exoskeleton was almost impenetrable, like an organic suit of armor. The quadruped grumbled in thought. Maybe he could pry the leg off at the base…

But he would never get the chance to try. The very leg that he had just held in a bone-crushing bite snapped back, plunging its tip into his eye. The dinosaur fell back with a pained scream, a squirt of blood arcing from his eye socket. Unbeknownst to Anguirus, the squirming eight legs had not simply been trying to dislodge the spiked beast. They had been exploring his body, mapping it out, letting the spider know exactly where to strike. As the Killer of the Living pawed at his bloody face, Kumonga flipped himself upright.

Scuttling to face his fanged foe, the enormous invertebrate angled itself upwards and fired a stream of liquid web into the air. The white material gently rained down on a spiked shell, hardening on contact with the great reptile. As the webbing built up, the saurian brawler’s struggling began to weaken, his movements restrained. By the time Kumonga stopped, Anguirus was encased in a cocoon, the very same structure that served as a coffin for numerous creatures in the past. Clicking his pincers together in anticipation, the horrific hunter crept forward, stinger shining from its shaded maw. The ankylosaur gritted his teeth. He was in trouble. The spider’s web was monstrously strong and its venom even stronger.

Luckily for him, he was just as strong and had the willpower to match.

Pushing with all his might, the determined dinosaur broke free from the webbing, ivory spikes tearing through the white blanket that held him down. Seeing that its web had failed, Kumonga rushed forward, legs working with mechanical precision and stinger emerging from his hideous mouth. Before the deadly needle could be plunged into his flesh, the spiked beast hooked his nasal horn under the spider’s head and heaved upward with a wail. The eight legged terror could only “choo-choo” in a feeble argument as it was flipped over again.

The hulking arachnid swiftly righted itself and sprang backwards, landing a safe distance from his foe. One honking and snarling and the other unsettlingly quiet, the dinosaur and the spider circled each other. With a long, wispy stream of webbing still clinging to his carapace, Anguirus looked like a wandering, Mesozoic spirit. With a sudden burst of motion, Kumonga pounced. The great invertebrate soared across Monster Island’s skyline, legs flexing and mandible chattering. With a wailing battle cry, the prickly beast whipped around and caught the airborne tarantula like a world-class baseball batter, his spiny tail slamming into the spider with a wet crunch of a rupturing exoskeleton. A trail of foul liquid marking its path, the arachnid sailed from the ancient scraper’s tail and landed in a bleeding mess, legs curling against its broken body. Anguirus inspected the spider with a single narrowed eye. Any thoughts of the invertebrate being dead were dispelled when its mandible began to twitch.

With a long battle cry, Anguirus bound forward into an excited gallop, his remaining eye burning with the need to dismember his opponent. But before the ankylosaur’s outstretched claws could tear into the damaged outer shell of the downed creature, a stream of webs shot from between the spider’s pincers. The sticky liquid struck his horned face and hardened instantly, stealing the dinosaur’s already crippled vision. The titanic reptile jerked back with a yelp and began thrashing wildly. As the Fierce Dragon struggled to regain his sight, Kumonga weakly righted himself. With a small “choo-choo” of triumph, the spider reared up and launched more webbing. The spiked saurian managed to tear the webbing from his face and was immediately faced with a downpour of the white material.

He may have been strong enough to free himself from the webbing before, but a good deal of his strength was now gone. Realizing the gravity of his situation, the quadruped gave a hearty wail and charged through the rain of webbing in one last, desperate move. The titanic tarantula began crawling backwards in panic as the dinosaur closed in. The webbing began to hold the Angilasaur back, long strands of the stuff tethering the spiny reptile to the ground. Finally, the dinosaur collapsed, sprawled just before Kumonga. The arachnid ceased playing the part of an intimidated coward and resumed the role of predator, moving forward on his long, hairy legs. Anguirus closed his eyes in defeat.

He was done.

Or was he? Something similar to a plan had suddenly formed in his simple head. The ankylosaur did his best to look pathetic, which honestly wasn’t too hard by this point. As Kumonga drew closer, the seasoned fighter tried to judge the spider’s position based solely on the vibration of its movements. No… it was too much of a gamble to base such a critical move – literally life-or-death, in fact – on sound alone. The ancient beast risked cracking an eye open. He barely suppressed a honk of surprise as he stared into his own reflection on a venom droplet hanging from Kumonga’s stinger. In almost the same moment, Anguirus and Kumonga lunged, both intent on killing the other.

Unfortunately for the Solgell Spider, the Killer of the Living was a fraction of a second faster.

Twisting his head around the spider’s lethal stinger, the dinosaur snapped his jaws shut with a gush of foul goo. Fatigue overtaking his worn body, Anguirus collapsed and let the mashed remains of Kumonga’s head ooze from his mouth. Following the quadruped’s example, the late arachnid’s body fell as well, legs curled in death. And this time it was no trick. The ankylosaur struggled to keep his eyes open. He was tired, so very tired. The fight had drained all his energy. He needed to sleep. Sleeping too deeply on Monster Island could mean never waking up, but the determined saurian trusted both his reputation as Godzilla’s best friend and a few of his fellow giants to keep him safe. As the gentle hand of sleep slowly pushed down his eyelids, the spiked hero swore that the first thing he would do after regaining his strength was to drain the nearest stream and rid his mouth of these vile juices.

Nose to nose with the corpse of a giant spider, missing an eye, and covered in webbing, Anguirus slept…

Winner: Anguirus (Universal)