Hello. Can't believe I'm posting this today- I feel sick as hell. This was inspired by an issue of Ultimate Spider-Man I read recently, but the idea wouldn't go away. I submit to you a reinvented origin for Biollante, and the setup for something VERY big. Basically, this oneshot is a condensed and also heavily altered… well, you'll see.

PLUS: Guest appearance by the abandoned Toho character Deutalios! WOOT!

Godzilla is © Toho.

CONTAINMENT PROBLEM

Hokkaido

"This is a nightmare."

Lt. Sho Kuroki leaned back on the leather seat of the G-Force SUV and rested his head in his hands. A complete, total god-damned nightmare. The assignment was supposed to be a simple one: six hours ago, the white-and-black-spotted rodent with fish-like flippers on its sides had gotten it into its head to eat a farm in Hokkaido. G-Force had become aware of it almost immediately. As far as they knew, there was no civilian knowledge of this creature- grimly enough, everyone on the farm was presently inside the rat-fish-whatever-it-was' stomach.

The job: track down the creature codenamed Deutalios, do it quickly, do it quietly, and try to get as few men as possible eaten.

Unfortunately, right after they found out where the thing was, Godzilla had turned up, ripped his way through a small seaside town and made a beeline for the same spot Deutalios was in. But that wasn't the nightmare.

The nightmare was that the Godzilla Prediction Network- a loose gathering of storm-chasers that chased monsters instead of storms and led by some Godzilla-groupie named Shinoda- had released a video of the attack. In return, the entire thing had become just about the biggest media circus imaginable, especially when Shinoda himself pointed out the remains of the outer wall of a laboratory that didn't show up on the map.

Intel had reported that the place was an off-the-records research lab and, presumably, where Deutalios had come from. That meant someone had made this thing- and doing so was illegal in just about every country. Having things like Godzilla running around was one thing, but G-Force was damned if they were going to let anyone make more. Unfortunately, there was money in it, and it was part of the human condition to, when a sign on a door says "do not open", to open the door.

Anyway, Godzilla and Deutalious had just come across each other, and were currently trying to rip each other apart on every major news network. Deutalios was a fast little freak, and even if it could eat a farmhouse, its size was nothing compared to Godzilla's. In fact, in just about every way, the fifty metres of charcoal-grey muscle that was Godzilla was generally more intimidating.

It was easy to think of these things as just big, dumb animals, but what Godzilla's burning eyes held was intelligence- just one that had nothing to do with human beings. It was an intelligence that didn't seem to have any understanding or knowledge of the arts of diplomacy, and a great deal of knowledge of the arts of ripping things to pieces.

"Have we got General Gordon on the phone?" he asked ruefully.

"Already got him," Captain Goro Gondo reported from beside him, covering the mouthpiece of the phone. "He says that he wants that thing brought in yesterday or someone in this unit's gonna be pumping gas for a living."

Kuroki groaned. A year ago, he'd volunteered for the position as head of Department-3, responsible for dealing with illegal and unnatural mutations. It was amazing what could seem like a good idea at the time.

The dark SUV finally pulled off the old country road to the gathering of reporters and civilians. Godzilla was already moving away with a lumbering grace, his spinal plates bristling as the trees folded before him. Reporters and cameras buzzed around Deutalios' upper body- its lower body was several hundred feet away, with a few body parts in between the two.

Well, at least this made the capture job redundant.

"You people!" Kuroki barked to the gathering of reporters. "Get out of here now," he ordered, flashing his badge, "Lt. Kuroki. G-Force. Now move."

"G-Force?" a slightly-portly man with a black beard stared. Oh, Jesus, no. "Yuji Shinoda," he introduced himself excitedly. "Did you see that? What is that thing? It looks like some kind of…"

"Get. Away. From. The. Mutant." Kuroki snarled before walking away.

"Well, how about a few words about the legality of the laboratory-"

"No comment."

"Do you know why Godzilla…"

"No comment. Somebody get these people out of…" Kuroki looked over, his face falling, at one of the reporters. "For the love of God, don't touch the thing!"

"I'm doing my job!" the reporter shouted back sarcastically. Oh, please not… "Yuri Tachibana," the redhead introduced herself, smiling. "Digital-Q."

"I don't freaking care," Kuroki snarled. "This is a classified Military operation, and what you people are doing here is illegal. Now get the hell away from the giant rat! Move it!"

Finally, the G-Force soldiers appeared to be having some success in moving the reporters away from the corpse. Gondo was contacting HQ and calling in a clean-up crew, and a Hazmat team to be on the safe side. God knew what a rat that size could be carrying.

"Clean-up's on its way, and Godzilla should be back at sea before long," Gondo reported. "Not much sense taking a shot at it now; not nearly enough firepower here."

"And the lab?"

"Gordon says to get anyone we can spare and check it out."

Underground

Five armed soldiers tailed Kuroki and Gondo as they moved into the facility- or the shattered metal corridors, dangling cables, ripped consoles and torn metal that had at some point been a facility. Someone in Intel had transmitted the blueprints to Gondo's PDA. Surprisingly, most of the place seemed to be working- Deutalious seemed to have gone for the surface in a relatively straight line and seemed to have mercifully missed most of the generators.

"Main lab's straight ahead," Gondo nodded. Kuroki and the soldiers, there weapons trained and ready, followed.

An automatic door slid open…

Three scientists- two male, one female- were huddled around a console that appeared to be displaying a news broadcast of the cordoned-off corpse of Deutalious.

"Think it's safe up there?" one of the scientists asked nervously.

"You wanna poke your head out and look?" The other man replied bitingly.

The young woman looked up. "Dad?" she said nervously.

"Erika, check the readouts," the second scientist, who looked to be in his fifties, replied absently

"Dad."

"Just make sure the feeds are still working."

"Dad…"

"Freeze," Kuroki ordered, squarely aiming his standard-issue USP as his men trained their guns on the scientists. "G-Force. You're under arrest."

"You don't understand," the old man insisted, "we have to regulate the feeds."

"Nobody's regulating anything. Outside. Now."

"Please," the scientist begged, "we have to keep it sedated!"

Kuroki lowered his gun. "Keep what sedated? Who the hell are you people?"

"My name is Genichiro Shiragami," the scientist introduced himself. "This is my daughter Erika, and my colleague Seikun Okouchi-"

"No comment," the portly scientist barked.

"Okouchi?" Gondo parroted, "of Okouchi Research and Development?"

"Are we supposed to know this guy?" Kuroki asked.

"Some egghead, apparently. We've been investigating him for months. Germ-warfare. Military contractor."

"I am a private businessman," Okouchi snapped.

"Who hangs out in an illegal underground genetics lab?" Kuroki repeated, eyebrows arched. "Quite a career move."

"We can't leave the experiment," Shiragami cut in.

"What experiment?"

Shiragami gulped nervously and pointed to one of the windows.

"Don't you dare," Okouchi snapped. Erika glared at him. Kuroki approached the window slowly.

"W… what the hell is this?"

The thing was… monstrous. Even by monster standards, it was a hideous thing. At first glance it looked like a plant, coloured a deep green, but then Kuroki saw that a drooped, crocodilian head, with closed eyes and curved teeth that overlapped on its jaws and thick, curved tusks on either cheek, rested on top of what looked like a bulbous stem, on the front of which sat some kind of pulsating red sack. It seemed to be attached to a matted bed of writhing vines and roots that filled the rest of the massive holding room, all covered in thick spikes. Some of the vines ended in thick points, others in open pods containing dripping, curved teeth.

"T-the codename for the project is Biollante," Shiragami stammered. "We were researching genetic splicing- Deutalious was the prototype- it used cells from a rodent and an amphibian. This is the final product. It's…"

"Do not say it," Okouchi snarled.

Shiragami ignored him. "It used DNA from various plants- roses, thorn bushes- and…"

"And what?" Kuroki demanded.

"Don't you dare tell him!" Okouchi shouted.

"Shut up!" Erika snapped at the businessman.

"And G-Cells," Shiragami confessed. "Godzilla DNA."

Kuroki looked back at the writhing mass. "You are kidding me," he breathed.

"Some of the equipment was damaged when Deutalios escaped," Shiragami went on, "we had to keep the tranquiliser feeds working, because if this thing wakes up…"

"Be quiet!" Okouchi roared. Shiragami gulped and silenced himself.

"No," Erika insisted, "they need to know. Whenever Biollante was awake, it…" she shuddered, "last time, before it was tranquilised again it killed everything in the room. And that was when it was about six feet tall. Now it's about a hundred and fifteen metres. That's more than twice as tall as Godzilla himself."

"Can you keep it asleep?" Kuroki checked.

"If we keep the feeds up."

"Lieutenant?" Gondo asked from beside the window. Kuroki turned back to Biollante.

Its glaring red eyes were wide open.

"Everybody down!" Gondo roared as a wave of tendrils smashed through the reinforced glass as though it were made of paper. Kuroki hit the floor hard. There was the noise of ripping flesh and grating metal. As he rolled onto his back, one of the fanged vines spat forth a stream of acid. He heard one of the soldiers sizzle and scream. Then the chaos stopped as abruptly as it had started.

The containment room was just gone. Nothing but a hole remained, leading up to…

To the surface. To the untouched earth. To somewhere to take root. Kuroki wasn't a man of science, but it didn't take a genius to realise that the prospect of this thing planting itself somewhere was a bleak one.

"Everyone topside!" Kuroki bellowed, "Now…" he trailed off. "Gondo?"

He was addressing a misshapen lump of human flesh draped over a control console. "Shit… of, shit, Gondo…"

He looked around. Two of the soldiers struggled to their feet. Their was only one more living thing left in the room: Shiragami was kneeled over something and crying.

"You," Kuroki ordered the soldier, "Radio General Gordon, and tell all forces topside to shoot that thing until it dies or they run out of ammo, whichever comes first. Shiragami!"

Shiragami took a ragged breath. "Erika," he breathed, shaking like a leaf, "My daughter… forgive me…"

"Shiragami!" Kuroki pulled him away. The man had just lost his daughter- he sympathised. He'd just lost a friend and partner. But there was a mutant monster fresh on the loose, and he had no idea what it would do next. Grief could come later. "Shiragami! Can you stop this thing."

"I," Shiragami gasped, "I…"

"Can you kill it?" Kuroki shouted.

Shiragami nodded shakily. "I-I think so. Possibly. Maybe. I don't know."

"Any kind of failsafe or backup you've got, get it. This thing is not getting away from here."

Above Ground

Kuroki reached the ground, looked out, and froze.

At that moment, he realised that he had lost any and all control he may have had over the situation.

As it turned out, Godzilla had not left the area, the main evidence for which was that he was currently entangled in a mass of vines, ripping them apart in his claws or gnashing them into bleeding lumps of acid in his teeth as Biollante howled, showing its entire massive mouth to be filled on top and bottom with row upon row of acid-dripping teeth.

The remains of the dispatched G-Force unit were strewn around the field.

A cluster of flailing tendrils caught the bottom of Godzilla's jaw. The massive saurian reeled from the sheer force of the enormous blow, his arms and legs restrained by the vines as curved spikes stabbed at his feet-thick skin. He lashed out, cutting through another set of vines, before a sharp point jabbed into his palm- and, in a burst of blood, came out the other side.

Damn. This thing had actually just punched through Godzilla. Kuroki had never really been sure if anything could break his skin. Godzilla bellowed furiously as dagger-like points jabbed into his chest, stomach and thighs.

Godzilla snarled. His star-shaped dorsal fins began to bristle with heat and blue light, and the vines attached to them burst into flame. A lance of blue fire shot forth, straight into the pulsating sack on the front of Biollante's "stem", and the entire organ burst into a flaming, acidic shower as Biollante howled in pain, tightening her grip on Godzilla in turn.

There was a flash of green light. Something struck what looked like the base of Biollante's skull. It let out a shrill, primal screen, then went limp. The vines holding onto Godzilla seemed to instantly rot, as Biollante collapsed into a writhing, green mass.

To Kuroki's side, Shiragami was holding what looked like a hi-tech bazooka.

"What was that?" Kuroki asked.

"A genetic destabiliser," Shiragami breathed, "Biollante's cell structure is unstable. This delivers a concentrated burst of Maser energy to overload it. It's how we stopped it when it nearly broke out once before."

Kuroki looked over at the writhing mass. Godzilla leaned down and sniffed at it. "You're under arrest for illegal genetic experimentation," he said levelly to Shiragami.

Then the ground shook.

It exploded.

Biollante rose on a sea of vines, roaring to the heavens. Kuroki ducked, and heard a pointed vine stab through a mass of flesh. When he looked up, there was a spot of blood where Shiragami had been standing, and the weapon was in pieces.

Godzilla looked up as Biollante's head swivelled atop the sea of vines, spreading out to fill the entire field as the crowd of civilians turned and screamed as one. The massive jaws, opened wide, shot down and clamped around Godzilla's head.

Kuroki looked in, wide-eyed. It sank in during that moment, that if this thing killed Godzilla, there would be nothing capable of stopping it.

The jaws tightened. Blood leaked from Godzilla's neck as Biollante prepared to bite the saurian's head off.

The back of Biollante's head suddenly started to glow. A blue light seemed to fill the cavernous mouth. A gleaming red eye widened in shock and fear.

And Biollante's entire upper body exploded.

There was a burst of brilliant blue flame and a wave of flying, burning tendrils. The charred top half of Biollante's head crashed to the ground. Every vine went limp and crashed to the ground.

The smoke cleared.

Godzilla, his entire body covered in blood, bits of burning plant and smoking points of contact with the acid, pulled back his head and roared in triumph in the middle of Biollante's flaming remains.

He looked up, and smouldering orange eyes fixed on the single, tiny shape that stood amidst the burning remains. Eyes that held an instinctive knowledge older than any human being rested on him for a second, and then the king of the monsters turned and lumbered away.

Twelve Hours Later

G-Force Japanese Headquarters, Tokyo

"And that's what happened," Kuroki finished.

The officer on the other side of the interview room put down his pen. "Thank you, Lieutenant," he said without emotion. "You're free to go."

Kuroki glanced to the door. Some alien feeling of righteousness welled up inside him.

"Before I go," he said, "I'd like to make a statement for the record."

"If you wish."

Kuroki took a deep breath. "This is a mistake," he said.

"What is?"

"This. We keep taking what we don't understand and meddling with it. We have Godzilla and Rodan and Mothra, and that's bad enough, but then these kinds of self-destructive idiots, instead of leaving these things- these unbelievably destructive things that we cannot hope to comprehend or control- alone, they keep poking at them to see what happens. And all we have to show for it are horrors like what happened today."

"The act of illegally experimenting with DNA in that manner is already prohibited by international law," the officer reminded him like a talking textbook.

"Seikun Okouchi is a Military contractor. G-Force has been experimenting with Godzilla cells for years," Kuroki seethed. "I checked the files," he said disgustedly. "Okouchi was working for us, wasn't he? I don't know the particulars, but I know the Saradian government was involved too."

The officer paused. "It was deemed necessary by the G-Force summit in Geneva."

"Don't you tell me it's necessary!" Kuroki roared. "I lost thirty men today. Thirty! That's more men in a single day than I have lost since I took this job! And even after my closest friend was killed by what you had Okouchi and Shiragami make, I did everything I could to try and stop it, and so did Shiragami after his only daughter was melted by that thing's acid. And it's people like me and Shiragami, and hell, it's Godzilla- the very thing we are supposed to be fighting- that have to clean up your messes."

The officer slammed his briefcase shut. "Your statement has been recorded, Lieutenant," he said blandly. "You can go at any time." He stood up and walked out.

Kuroki walked out and slammed the door shut behind him. There was the sound of footsteps. He looked up.

"Who are you?" he asked bitterly.

The man in the black suit held out his hand. "G-Force Research and Development," he said. "I represent the American and British divisions of G-Force. We're considering expanding an operation to include the Japanese Division, and we would appreciate your cooperation."

Kuroki blinked. "What operation?"

The man gave a dry smile. "What do you know about Project: Hawk?"

Ooh! Project: Hawk! If that sounds familiar, you'll remember it from my previous Godzilla story, "Feral". What is it? Only time will tell. No, it's not a giant robot or a genetically engineered monster.

All Reviews Welcome!