Author: Matthew Freese

1946, Bikini Atoll

A great flash of light, a rising cloud in the shape of a mushroom, and walls of pressure and fire billowing out in all directions. In that great conflagration, currently turning sand into glass upon a tropical island, invisible particles traveled. They pierced all matter, breaking down organic tissue they came into contact with. 

An atomic bomb, tested by the United States of America in a display of hubris and power. The most destructive object ever crafted by human hands. The two unleashed upon the nearby land of Japan was not enough for the nation responsible, not with another enemy demanding their war-drum beating attitude. 

Somewhere in the cataclysmic blast, an ancient beast of the ocean. A dinosaurian colossus, with brown skin cloaked in armored scales. Fire rushed past him, burning him deeply, the radiation flowing next to blanket him in its wicked embrace. As the one known as Godzilla screamed and boiled, a change began deep in his body.

If all were as it should be, he would be the only one here. But for all the boorishness and coldness of the current United States, it paled in comparison to the seething hatred that would blossom like a flower in the far future. When the nation that as of right now was a flattened wasteland eventually climbed up and over all its competitors, the centuries kind as they rose. For jealousy was worse than any other emotion, and such was the jealousy of a select group in that 23rd century America that they broke the sacred laws of time to plant the seeds of death and destruction.

For on the other side of that tremendous blast, three minds became one in a grotesque slurry. Golden scaled bodies were melted by the heat, their small forms smashed into one another by the force, and there they were granted a most ungodly blessing by the radioactive particles saturating them. The physical pain was utterly blinding, the mental pain somehow even worse. Three beings cultivated to be pets, to comfort and brighten life with blissful smiles and soothing calls, became an engine of genocide. 

Unlike their unseen brother in metamorphosis, the Dorats could not even cry out. 

***

1947, Ginza District of Tokyo, Japan

Terror. Japan’s people, despite their best efforts, did not forget the feeling. They had been subject to it only two years ago, thanks to their government thrusting them into a conflict that had swept the whole world off its feet. But this was a more primal sort than that caused by guns and bombs, a fear billowing up from the deepest parts of the brain. 

Of prey meeting a predator.

Each heavy footstep of the saurian shook the city, tearing apart the concrete beneath the cracked skin of the clawed feet. People screamed for their lives as the wild eyes of the leviathan looked over them, pale yellow windows to a wrathful soul. His brown skin stretched as he reared his head back, letting out a bellowing roar like the bomb that had mutated him. It made people cover their ears, fall to their knees in weeping terror. Many had already seen their fellow man be sent flying by the thunderous stomping of Godzilla, and it horrified them. 

One particular set of eyes, so far away and behind glass that offered no protection, felt her soul twist up. Noriko Oishi could only watch in abject horror, her dark hair and fair face locked in fear reflected in the glass of the train car, as the colossus marched ever closer. It felt as though the world had been upheaved from under her feet, everything she thought she knew wrong. Unbeknownst to her, this was the exact same feeling that her close friend, Koichi Shikishima, had experienced two years ago and had been subjected to again just recently. 

And unbeknownst to everyone, this was only a fraction of the true horror awaiting.

Something cast a gargantuan shadow over the city, making even Godzilla stop. A horrid, high-pitched shriek filled Ginza, making everyone’s eyes shoot up to the sky above. The beast that had just roared and struck fear into every heart could only let out a pathetic yelp when it came down upon him, feet first. 

A golden leg like a pillar compressed his skull, eventually making it shatter. The rest of Godzilla’s form was crushed as the muscular body, also coated in gold scales, continued to come down. Gore rushed out like a tidal wave as the leviathan was treated like an overripe fruit cast to the ground, his bones reduced to powder as the dragon that towered over him hit the earth. Fleeing civilians closeby were drowned in a sea of red, their broken bodies adding to the viscera filling the streets and crashing through windows. 

Twin tails, ending in spiked bundles, smacked the carnage-soaked ground. Colossal wings like sails stretched out from the sides of the dragon, framing his three heads upon serpentine necks. They surveyed the area, their cruel crimson eyes taking in the sight of all the helpless people. Straight horns extended out of each skull, forming a terrible crown.

King Ghidorah, at the command of his unseen masters from a far-flung future, began to beat his wings. The massive limbs soon kicked up a windstorm, sending the gore before him flying down the streets, alongside all of the people and vehicles on the roads. An avalanche of horror began, especially as buildings failed to withstand the hurricane-force winds being generated by his beating wings.

Noriko braced herself, putting her arm before her face, as the winds sent her train spilling off the tracks. Screams filled her ears as all the passengers panicked, their vessel being shoved away and dragged across the ground alongside so much debris, both human and inanimate. She was screeching as well.

With another shriek that shattered windows, King Ghidorah took to the air. Ginza was so small from his lofty perch, the people little more than specks. All three maws opened wide, an organ deep within shifting and activating. 

Golden bolts of energy, like sustained lightning, spewed forth from each mouth. As one went straight forwards, carving through the street with molten power and incinerating everything atop it, the other two heads flailed about into the masses of buildings on both sides. Brick and concrete became vapor, hellacious explosions ripping apart the buildings like fragile glass. 

Dumbfounded reporters atop a distant building, desperately trying to let the whole world know what was happening, became dust in the cruel winds as a Gravity Beam erased them. 

King Ghidorah then began to fly forwards, still releasing his beams. Somewhere beneath him, Noriko was torn asunder by the horrid power leaving his three maws, alongside everyone else on the train. An instant of searing pain all across the body, and then silence forevermore. But he did not know, nor did he care. He did not care about Koichi Shikishima watching in the distance, throwing up from the overwhelming horror unfolding before him, knowing that the light of his life which he had never gotten to confess to was doomed, even if he could not confirm it at the moment. The golden serpent had neither knowledge or hesitation about the young girl they had been raising like a daughter despite belonging to neither of them, how she would soon be orphaned. 

For she would die too. For their story was only one among the millions in Japan, which he would too be ending. In fire and blood, the golden wyrm would desolate the totality of the Land of the Rising Sun. His masters had given him this dark task, and it was impossible for him to say no. It was impossible for the madness swirling in its mashed together consciousness to have anything resembling rebellion or empathy. 

From the splotch of gore left on the streets, muscle began to bulge upwards. Regeneration, a natural function of his body only pushed to the next level by his mutation, would not let him die. Godzilla grasped desperately to life. 

Only to be snuffed out as three Gravity Beams speared into his developing body, the effect akin to taking fire to paper. Ash without life rose upwards into the wind, spiraling off and breaking apart. One child of the atom bomb was dead, the other stuck forevermore in its deluded haze of guided bloodshed by hands that cared not for its well being. Victims of the futuristic atrocity, just as the poor souls of Japan were. 

Smoke blotted out the skies of Ginza. It was only a portent of the nation’s fate, and of any other nation that the bloodthirsty people of the future would set their sight upon. For there was not a single thing that could be done against King Ghidorah, not if the whole world stood before him. Such was the power of the future, of the gnashing teeth of an artificial god.