Metamorphosis

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Pain made the dinosaur convulse and vomit blood. His chest hurt, his bones hurt, even his eyes and ears hurt. Flies buzzed around his gaping wounds, one of which exposed his viscera, and he couldn't do anything to swat them away.

The wounded Godzillasaurus watched the tiny pink animals walk away. He didn't understand the leader's mouth sounds. All he knew was they were leaving him. Leaving him alone to die here in pain. Didn't they care how frightened he was?

He saw the sky darken and brighten several times, and each time the sky brightened he weakened with hunger. Fear that a larger predator might come along weighed heavily over his mind.

Finally, a day came when the sun itself exploded and a cloud shaped like a mushroom rose high into the air.

Fiery agony stabbed the Godzillasaurus' eyes and skin, and his world gradually went dark. Terror gripped him when a horrible rumble filled the air. The air itself battered him, tearing at his wounds and rolling him over in the flaming grass. He felt his flesh burning, he was burning alive! The fallen dinosaur screeched and howled, trying desperately to crawl away from the source of pain. He didn't understand that his skin was burning, he just knew that everything hurt. His skin slowly burned away, exposing his muscles and bones to the elements.

As the wounded Godzillasaurus collapsed again, he felt odd snow fall all over his burned body. It stuck to his muscles, stung his eyes, filled his lungs with every breath and entered his stomach each time he swallowed his own blood. He even felt it coating his still-beating heart like dust.

The Godzillasaurus closed his burned eyelids, waiting for a death that would never come. Instead, the radiation reacted to his DNA. Unbeknownst to the dinosaur, his DNA began to transform. Particles were ejected and rearranged into something entirely new. Double helixes twisted again and again, telling his body to heal. The changes happened so rapidly that his cells began to grow, and his body grew with them.

He felt his skin tighten and thicken over his bones. It grew so thick that it formed pits and ridges just to maintain its integrity. His muscles grew harder, stronger and thicker. He didn't know what was happening to him anymore. He could only lay there and gasp while rows upon rows of sharp, boiling hot spikes shot one at a time from his back with sickening cracks. They were limp at first like the wings of a butterfly fresh from its chrysalis, but soon they hardened into jagged spines that glowed silver blue.

The wounded Godzillasaurus felt heat building in the pit of his belly. He felt his stomach contract. The heat crawled through his back and shot up his throat, and he vomited something so hot that he screamed. He screamed and screamed until consciousness finally left him.

A day and a night passed before the Godzillasaurus regained consciousness. He awoke to a new world where he could see more colors than ever before, hear sounds miles away, smell the odd snow that gave him new energy and feel the new strength coursing through his body.

He stood up and instantly blinked. Those trees shrank! Then he looked down at his feet, noticing they were different. He looked at his hands and finally staggered to the water's edge to see his reflection. His own face terrified him.

He...was no longer a Godzillasaurus. He would never belong again.

Godzilla tilted his head back and howled. He screamed his rage to the exploding sun and the little pink animals who left him to suffer this pain alone.