Godzilla (c) Toho Co., Legendary Pictures, and Warner Bros.
Gundam Seed/Seed Destiny (c) Sunrise Inc.
In the year of 73 of the Cosmic Era, it was two years after the Bloody Valentine's War ended between ZAFT and the Earth Alliance.
However, the peace everyone fought and died for was beginning to fracture as the Earth Alliance conducted a treacherous, covert op with the Phantom Pain Unit stealing three Gundam-Class Mobile Suits created by ZAFT's military complex. Thus, in response, the new Assault Carrier Ship created in inspiration from the Archangel of the first Bloody Valentine War, Minerva, quickly joined the fray as Captain Gladys attempted to stop the three second-generation Extended pilots from stealing off with their newest line of Gundam prototypes from Armory One. Shinn Asuka, piloting the ZGMF-X56S Impulse Gundam, Lunamaria Hawke and Rey Za Burrel, with the red-colored ZGMF-1000 ZAKU Warrior and white-colored ZGMF-1001 ZAKU Phantom, pursued the runaway Extended pilots and the stolen ZGMF-X24S Chaos Gundam, ZGMF-X31S Abyss Gundam, and the ZGMF-X88S Gaia Gundam further beyond the boundaries of the military ZAFT colony, Lagrange 4. Following suite, Minerva tracked them to the fringes of ZAFT's extraterrestrial borders where they had a brief battle with the Earth Alliance's Second Generation Extendeds. It was during the battle in space that they encountered the Zala extremists, who attached the Flare Meteors to the ruins of Junius 7 to send it on a collision course towards Earth.
Minerva and some of ZAFT's forces only managed to stop some of the fragments, but not all of it thanks to Phantom Pain interfering. The fragments of Junius 7 struck Earth and brought untold devastation to most of the major cities on every continent. A new conflict was born, but it wasn't just between Naturals and Coordinators. No, rather the devastating impact of the Junius 7 fragments have also awakened something else entirely.
The Titans.
Ancient, titanic megafauna that were Earth's first and rightful rulers long before Man even existed. Each of these creatures were descended or evolved from different prehistoric species, developing into gigantic sizes along with their biology transforming into something new that would mostly defy the laws of physics to a larger degree than biologists could ever comprehend. With that, these creatures would gain new abilities and powers not found in their ancestors; powers that many people would be considered extraordinary and supernatural. They have long ago sent themselves deeper underground, going into very long periods of suspended animation after the surface world was no longer radioactive eons ago.
However, the First Bloody Valentine War and the Fall of Junius Seven have disturbed them from their slumber and they were far from happy of having been awakened rudely. Worse so, when they felt that the Earth that they grew up with changed so radically for the worse that they began to stir, causing seismic tremors and volcanoes, some extinct, or previously dormant, to become active. At first, most people thought of them as anomalies or aftereffects of the war or the recent Junius Seven Incident, but they would be in for a rude surprise when the Titans emerge, returning to the surface world once more.
C.E. 73, Berlin...
The clashing sounds of energy swords echoed in the midst of the gloomy and dark skies. Shin kept gritting his teeth. Despite the poor visibility of his screen in combination due to the falling snow and smoke coming from Berlin being attacked, Shinn kept pursuing the Destroy Gundam in front of him, piloting his Impulse Gundam. The battle with the Destroy had exhausted him and drove his Gundam's power to its limits.
He had to be fast because he knew it was now or never to stop the Destroy from destroying Berlin any further.
He accelerated his Gundam's speed by putting the boosters on overdrive.
"Stop it!" He yelled, firing another shots of his MA-BAR72 high-energy beam rifle, "Stop it! You're burning the whole city; you're killing these innocent people!"
However, it seemed his plea fell on the Destroy's pilot's deaf ears so he unsheathed his Vajra beam saber, and swung it into the direction of the Destroy's cockpit. He barely made the strike as a small explosion occurred on the Destroy's torso. The Destroy reactively fired one of its Scylla Cannons, almost hitting the Impulse.
Shinn cursed as he backed Impulse off a bit. He approached the giant 184-foot tall Gundam again, flying around it when he suddenly saw the weakpoint thanks to the wide open blank spot close to the Destroy Gundam's pilot.
Without any hesitation, Shinn drove his Impulse closer to the Destroy. He almost reached the cockpit when a red and green Windam charged at him, forcing the young pilot to retreat.
"Stop it, kid!" Neo Roanoke's husky, masculine voice sounded through his radio, "The pilot of that unit...is Stella!"
The revelation shocked Shinn to his core as he stopped abruptly in the middle of the air.
"Stella...?" the word tasted so bitter on his tongue.
As he was stunned on the spot, the ground shook. No, the entirety of Berlin shook with massive seismic quaking as something big was stirring underneath the earth.
"What the hell?!" Shinn hollered.
"Aaaahhh!" Stella screamed hysterically with the earthquake so powerful and severe that she was starting to lose control of the Destroy Gundam's standing.
"Stella!" Shinn and Neo gasped when her giant Gundam looked ready to topple over. It wasn't just limited to her, Neo, or Shinn. In fact, everyone was struggling to keep control of their bearings as the earth rumbled violently with citizens tripping and falling over themselves with ZAFT soldiers that were conducting relief and evacuation efforts faring no better than them. People went into further terror and panic as the seismic rumbles also caused buildings and debris to haphazardly fall onto them.
"Oh no! The Archangel!" Kira yelled on worriedly as he turned his Freedom Gundam around to see the Archangel being literally shaken up by the catastrophic twist of events with the mobile assault ship's crew doing their damnedest to hang onto anything to keep them from being tossed about.
"What in God's earth is happening to Berlin?!" Captain Murrue Ramius yelled, struggling to hold onto her commander chair.
In ZAFT's Minerva battleship, Captain Talia Gladys, her aide and deputy captain of the ship, Arthur Trine, and the rest of the ship's crew were having an equally bad time with some of them already being tossed about.
"Someone get me the readings on whatever is causing this earthquake!" Talia growled as she almost fell off her own commander seat.
"Ah, Captain! The mountains!" Meyrin screamed out of admonishment when she saw high levels of radioactivity coming from the mountainous area outside of Berlin on her radar screen!
"What about them, Meyrin?!" Arthur asked her urgently with some fear as he was also trying not to be tossed around like the others.
"The earthquake is coming from them over there!" Meyrin pointed as best as she could to the front viewing widescreen where a lone mountainous range 25 miles away from Berlin's outer limits were shifting back and forth with the snow and boulders being shaken off as they plummeted off from cliffs. Flocks of birds launched themselves from the trees, squawking in alarm and panic.
Athrun and Rey tensed up at the ominous signs and more when they could clearly see even from afar, large swaths of trees shaken about and some toppling over as the earthquake intensified.
"I knew there was something off about those mountains being too close to Berlin!" Rey pointed out how far away they were from the actual mountain ranges that were further south in Germany.
"And the suburbs and the towns near them are affected the most. Probably a bad idea to set up shop there in the long run!" Athrun shouted amidst the chaotic rumbling witnessing the surrounding towns destroyed by the growing rifts in the earth.
Then the whole chunk of the land with the giant mountains, swaths of forests, and grass lifted itself from the earth, upending all of the towns and suburbs in an abrupt, horrific manner killing all of the inhabitants in one swoop, much to everyone's horror.
In the Archangel...
"Oh my God!" Miriallia gasped with her hands covering her mouth. "All of those people...wiped...out..."
"This is so unreal! Are we in a disaster flick or something?!" Arthur Neumann commented.
"This is much worse than that, Arthur." Murrue said grimly.
Parts of the stone separated themselves, revealing to be four limbs of an actual giant creature!
Cagalli, piloting her Strike Rouge, along with Orb's veteran Murasame squad rejoined the Freedom Gundam as they watched the Titan reveal itself from its slumber.
"What the hell is that?!" Cagalli roared frustratingly.
"How should any of us know?!" Kira sweated profusely with the earth Titan rising higher and higher into the sky with its limbs slowly straightening out.
Then from what looked like a large boulder with large inward-curved horns growing down from the top to bottom; joined by a thick neck composed of boulders and rock-like scales, a large eye opened wide.
"That's no mountain..." Ledonir Kisaka said seriously with his skin losing color when he finally saw for what it was.
What happened shook everyone to the core as the boulder opened wider a large gap that were actually its jaws, revealing the Titan to be reptilian in nature, and a thunderous, grinding roar came out that shook both the air and the ground.
"Incredible..." Neo was flabbergasted for the first in a long time.
Shinn muttered weakly, "No...no...way..."
Stella whimpered with tears of fear falling from her face at the bestial appearance of the awakened monster that towered everything with its large shadow casting over all of Berlin.
"Holy shit," Sting, in his Chaos Gundam, had his mind blown away by the surrealism of the Titan that was not only enormous and so outlandish, but ancient and powerful in its nature with the numerous cracks and scars evident on the Titan's body.
"Holy shit! You got to be kidding!" Vino was wetting himself, stumbling onto the floor of the hangar, clearly shocked that the "mountains" turned out to be the back spines of the monster's carapace. "That thing has the entire mountain on its shell!"
"How is that even possible?" Yolan gulped hard.
"It was hiding in plain sight...all this time," Malik, Minerva's pilot, said in astonishment.
Talia and Arthur stared at the newfound monster in gobsmacked awe as their minds struggled to comprehend the otherworldly surrealism of earth meshed with flesh and the sheer greatness of the creature born from time long forgotten.
Meyrin was starting to feel short on breath as she mentally measured this creature to be as tall as 550 feet, counting the tallest mountain spire on the monstrous Titan's shell.
The Titan itself was a quadruped with the mountain, the forests, and the grasses growing on top of its armored shell for a long period of time it was in suspended animation. It had a short, stocky reptilian snout with toothy, heavyset jaws and blank white eyes with pupils barely being visible. Its front limbs were armed with sharp, long heavyset claws while in contrast its hind limbs and feet had hooves.
Methuselah was yawning with a deep baritone growl when the sounds of battle had awoken him from his long sleep. Shaking his head and neck off the soil and the human settlements from his back unawares, he had returned to the surface. However, it became quickly apparent to him that this world was not the one he had grown accustomed to. Instead of ancient forests and lush grasslands, he was greeted with a strange, larger-than-usual human settlement that extended for miles as far as his old eyes could see. Then there were these weird, outlandish steel humanoids with strange spines and tubes all over their shoulders and bodies, metal beasts scurrying about, and flying giant steel birds that he had no familiarity or grasp of the mere absurd concept.
Confused and perplexed, Methuselah sniffed the snowy, winter air and it even smelled funny to him with the smoke and pollutants that irritated him instantly. He sneezed with his nostrils spurting out lake-sized globs of yellow snot that ricocheted right onto houses at the city limit. The globs burned and melted the houses and any stragglers into a goopy, jelly-like substance that would make even the toughest of men churn in their guts.
"Ulp!" Martin DaCosta was gagging when he, Lacus Clyne, and Andrew Waltfeld saw the shocking live news feed of Methuselah's sudden appearance and intrusion into the war in the Eternal up in space, which they placed the pink, winged battleship behind a large floating asteroid away from the PLANTs. Unfortunately, the spurting of the acidic snot that melted an entire neighborhood into a disgusting melty slime of organic and inorganic matter was also shown, which had persons with weaker compositions the urge to vomit. Feeling on the verge of throwing up with his face currently sickly greenish, DaCosta pulled out a tissue from his breast pocket of his uniform and quickly floated to the nearest lavatory to puke his lunch out.
"I am going have to be hard-pressed to even muster up the courage to eat a decent meal after seeing that," Andrew said, clearly grossed out and had lost his appetite. Lacus was the most disgusted as she clutched onto her stomach, but she was more worried about her boyfriend and her friends on the Archangel that were in dangerous proximity to the newly awakened Titan.
"Oh Haumea...Kira...!" Lacus whispered fearfully.
As for the said Ultimate Coordinator, Kira felt astonishment and nervous collide and snake down ever inch of his fibers at the titanic presence of Methuselah. The brunette didn't know exactly how, but deep down he knew just looking at the Titan's size alone that this god-like beast would be nigh impossible to take down, let alone try to stop it. In spite of Methuselah supporting his mass with his calloused, hardened knuckles, the young Japanese man could clearly see the sharp long claws that would easily shred Gundams and give a Mobile Assault Ship a nasty deep slash that could take many months to repair.
Kira Yamato could tell this beast, though momentarily groggy and lumbering, was not to be messed with.
Methuselah wiped away the snot with the brushing of his right arm up against his nostrils. He turned his attention onto inadvertently postponed battle with everyone tensing up at the ancient, elder Titan's scrutinizing gaze onto them.
"Ma'am?" Arthur gulped subtly.
Murrue saw that the crewmembers were extremely anxious and she could also see at the corner of her eye, Dalida Lolaha Chandra II was very twitchy with his fingers involuntarily, on the verge of punching down the key modules to have Archangel's Lohengrin cannons hot and blazing.
"Stand down." Murrue said, which shocked everyone in the command bridge with Miriallia Haw looking at her aghast like the captain grew a second head.
"Captain! You can't be serious?!" the light brown haired brunette yelled in disbelief.
"Do it." Murrue's serious, stern tone left no room for argument as she said, "Contact Kira, Cagalli, and the Murasame squad and tell them to stand down."
Internally, Miriallia was screaming at how idiotic or suicidal this was when there's a 500-ft tall monster with mountains on its shell about to stomp into Berlin. However, she could only obey and she reluctantly did what Murrue ordered.
"Kira, Cagalli, and all Murasames, power down your weapons and stand down for now." Miriallia spoke into the intercom.
Kira's purple eyes widened with his jaw slackened and he did a mental double take on the order just issued to them.
Cagalli was more vocal about her displeasure when she voiced it with agitation audible in her voice, "You gotta be joking! There's a monster with mountains on its back ready to level Berlin back into the Stone Age and you want us to do WHAT?!"
"You, Kira, Kisaka, and Amagi need to stand down. That's an order." Murrue's voice sounded through the intercom.
"We need to keep our guns trained on that thing! We don't know when it'll attack!" Cagalli argued.
"I know it's crazy, but we need to let it know that we're not a threat to it." Murrue pointed out, "It may not be an animal we're used to seeing, but it's still an animal regardless because animals react provocatively whenever they're threatened and our battle may have spooked it. The last thing we need is to have it go on a rampage through Berlin because of us."
"We understand that, but-!" Kisaka was cut off when Kira interjected.
"Cagalli! Mr. Kisaka! Mr. Amagi! Murrue's right! We have to stand down!"
"Master Yamato?" Amagi questioned, caught off guard that Kira would choose to follow a rather highly risky order.
"Kira!" Cagalli was flabbergasted that her brother would go through with this as he would not be the type to let a monstrous danger go unchallenged.
"I am not a fan of this either, but unless we want this city to be our tombstone, for Haumea's sake, everyone stand down!" Kira's voice rang throughout from the intercom.
That shocked everyone else even Neo, Sting, and Stella on the opposite side of the war.
"Kira! What is he...?" Lacus stammered seeing this unfold.
"What in Haumea's name is going on with the Archangel?" Andrew said, confused.
"Have you lost your damned mind?!" Shinn roared out from the Impulse.
"I know who that voice belonged to! But more importantly, has she gone mad?!" Arthur recognized it from the handy woman he and Talia had met back then when the Minerva was undergoing repairs in Orb.
Then the thunderous stomp of Methuselah's front knuckles forced them to see the Titan approaching Berlin in their general direction at a slow, deliberate rate.
"Ma'am! The monster is on the move headed for us! What are your orders?!" Meyrin stated urgently. Everyone onboard the Minerva had more or less their eyes on Talia, looking to see what their move would be in response to the drastic twist of events.
Talia pondered through her options, going through each of its pros and cons at a thousand miles per minute. Each option didn't have many pros, but more cons with each possible scenario ending in disaster at the claws of this new giant lifeform that they had no way of knowing. Plus, the Methuselah was five times bigger than the Destroy Gundam and ZAFT forces could barely hold on its own against the giant Gundam even with extra major firepower of the Minerva and her rival Mobile Assault Ship added into the mix.
Another series of stomps came from the Methuselah arriving into the city limits where he simply strolled through a city block, destroying and crushing everything underneath its shadow: buildings, homes, automobiles, and people without much thought. The despondent citizens screamed hysterically with the ZAFT soldiers shouting in panic trying to simultaneously help evacuate them while attempting to avoid being flattened by the falling boulders and avalanche from Methuselah's body or by his mountainous limbs and clawed hands and hooved feet. They had to crane their necks up to see Methuselah's massive muscles ripple underneath the scaly underside about thirty stories above them.
"Ma'am! What do we do?!" The younger sister of Lunamaria Hawke said with her nerves closer to the edge, which was what everyone has right now, even the usually calm, collected Rey za Burrel.
Talia stared at the monster slowly, but surely lumbering towards the Destroy, Impulse, and Neo Roanoke's red Windam with the size discrepancy becoming more apparent as Gundams look more like ants to the earth-based, towering goliath that was the ancient Methuselah. The Destroy's full height only reached up to the forearm of Methuselah just barely, furthering illustrating how outsized and severely disadvantageous they were should the beast go aggressive on them.
"Captain? We have to hurry! What are your orders?!" Trine said with his anxiety starting to take hold of him with every quaking stomp Methuselah made.
Talia's mouth frowned further with her teeth grinding each other as she knew she had no choice. She pressed, turning on the intercom as she spoke.
"Have all weapons stand down," Talia ordered grimly, which caused every crew member of the Minerva to gasp in horror of what she had just ordered.
"Captain Gladys! What are you doing?!" Athrun ran up to the Captain, shocked, angry, and concerned for not only Shinn Asuka out there, but for his other best friends on the Archangel.
"I am ordering the Minerva, the Impulse, and all ZAFT forces in the area to stand down and lower our weapons," Talia answered.
"You can't!" Lunamaria protested, not believing what had just transpired. "With all due respect, Captain, what you're ordering is absolute BS!"
"Sister!" a shocked Meyrin hollered.
"Watch your language, young lady!" Arthur said crossly but was stopped when Talia raised her palm to shut him up. She turned to Lunamaria, Athrun, Rey, and the rest of the crew that had their minds blown away with an understanding, yet firm look on her expression.
"I understand what you're feeling and I am the same as you are, but the captain of the Archangel and the Freedom pilot have made a good point we can't ignore with this creature. That thing just popped out from the ground, basically out of nowhere and we have no idea what it is, what it's weak points are, and whether we can even injure it with due to its very durable composition."
"I get that!" Shinn's voice sounded furious and in utter disbelief from the intercom, "But that's no excuse for us to turn tail hoping it would leave us alone!"
"Lest you provoke the animal into annihilating Berlin and take us out with them by shooting our guns at it when we have accidentally disturbed it in the first place!"
Talia raised her own voice, which caused Shinn to zip up his mouth and him to snarl frustratingly.
"There has to be another way other than lowering our weapons, Captain! For all we know, that could just incentivize the monster to harm us and the innocents that are still down there along with our forces!" Athrun pleaded with Rey joining to help him make Captain Gladys rethink their strategy.
"I am with Athrun on this one, ma'am. We're begging you to reconsider that this could place Shinn, the girl piloting the Destroy, and Berlin in dire straits if we allow that thing to do whatever it wants. We don't know enough about its temperament to know if this will even work."
"I have reconsidered every other option, but the likelihood of them ending in catastrophic failure for all of us supersedes any chance of us coming back out of this in one piece at least." Talia said solemnly, clearly disappointed as much as every person onboard was.
Everyone was rendered silent at the horrific predictions, not liking how the monster had drastically turned the tide against them with its awakening.
Next, Neo Roanoke was heard broadcasting his own decision upon the matter with Methuselah encroaching closer into the center of Berlin.
"All Phantom Pain and Earth Alliance units within the vicinity, power down your weapons and don't move from your positions!"
"No way he just came to that decision, did he?!" Kisaka was flabbergasted at the Earth Alliance commander's response given how the Titan could easily trash their mobile weapon of mass destruction with probably a minimum of effort.
"This is so weird. Am I dreaming here?" One of the Murasame pilots mumbled.
Kira narrowed his eyes.
"Don't tell me you're serious about us giving a pass to a giant, dumb animal with mountains on its back?!" The captain of the Hannibal-Class land battleship roared into the intercom with rage mixed with disbelief etched into his face.
"Either that, or we suffer a humiliating curb stomp with that monster killing all of us, which will serve the Earth Alliance nothing!" Neo sounded.
"And giving that monster a wide berth without us shooting back isn't that the case already?!" The captain's face was piping hot and redder than a tomato as he was grew more infuriated at the thought of having to let a giant beast have its way.
"I am not more concerned with your petty pride. I am talking about our very survival! You know as well as I do that our weaponry has no chance in hell of killing a living mountain, let alone putting a dent into it!"
"We can still bomb the damned bastard to drive it away!"
"And what? Hope it will not lash out at us and bury you into the dirt? Sorry, Captain. I am not taking any chances and neither will our enemies." Neo said with a tone that left no room for any more argument, which frustrated the daylights out of the Captain.
"So let me repeat this one time only! Stand down, lower your weapons and don't engage that beast! Anyone who provokes it, accidental or intentional, will have to deal with me personally and that's if the thing doesn't get you first. Is that understood?!" Neo said coldly, which chilled everyone in the command room making them think twice about going out there.
The captain gulped, and had to bite down his pride before stammering, "Y-Yes, sir! U-Understood."
"Good. Now power down the weapons and don't make sudden movements. Roanoke, out." The transmission ended and the captain reluctantly repeated the orders to his men with the pilot reserves now forced on standby and weapon systems having their power reduced.
"Stella? Can you read me? Are you alright?" Neo watched Methuselah as the earth Titan was now 400 feet away from him, Shinn, and Stella, and closing.
"Y-Y-Yeah...N-N-Neo...I'm...n-n-not...o-o-okay..." Stella said shakily as she was already scared of Methuselah's rocky, hardened appearance with the curved horns and scars making the Titan look more terrifying to her.
"I know you are, but listen to me carefully, Stella. Stay still, power your weapon down, and don't move the Destroy."
"Why?" Stella asked with her voice all trembling and teary, which pained Shinn right in the heart to hear her like that. Understandable, but still not easy to witness.
"Stella, you will have to trust me. Everything's going to be alright. I promise." Neo sounded more like a father trying to comfort his daughter than a commander ordering his subordinate. Stella tearfully nodded not unlike a terrified 10-year old daughter rather than the teenager she actually was.
Shinn glared at him for the broken earlier promise for not allowing Stella to be sent into another battle like this one, but he knew this was not the place for that as Methuselah was heard grumbling with a terrifying sound that sounded like the rumbling of an earthquake.
Methuselah was now 100 feet away with his giant horned head practically hovering above them as the Earth Reptilian Titan halted in front of them. He surveyed the devastated Berlin with ancient glossy white eyes, seeing plenty of the strange steel humanoids with stranger wings or shells on their backs. They were not moving, but he could clearly smell their fear of him with his senses sharply tuned to a greater degree than any normal large-bodied, multicellular organism on the planet.
"Damn...that creature is way bigger than I thought. I hope that thing will lose interest in them right now, or this will turn ugly." Andrew said cautiously.
"We can only pray that it will not devolve any further than it already has." Lacus clasped her hands, praying mentally to Haumea that he's down there protecting her friends, especially Kira Yamato. DaCosta, who had just returned from puking in the bathroom, floated back to the command deck of the Eternal. He saw what had just developed and he certainly felt the tension of the scene transferred right in here.
"Oh...this has just intensified." He whispered.
In the Committee Room within the ZAFT Space Colony Aprilius One, the PLANT Supreme Council also caught news of Battle of Berlin being suddenly intruded by the recent emergence of Methuselah from outside the city limits. The atmosphere of the room was unusually suffocating with tensions high as they witnessed the Titan survey the war-torn city. The council members, including Chairman Durandal himself were unsure of how the situation would play out as never in their lifetime of service had they encounter a gargantuan prehistoric lifeform that towered over mountains and casted a shadow over a major city.
Durandal had his brows furrowed out of stress and surprise that this Titan had suddenly awakened from its slumber out of the blue and had already put a wrench into his plans. He was trying to keep himself composed with his hands tightly clasped underneath the circular round table.
'Talia...I hope you know what you're doing. And...what in God's earth is that thing?' Durandal thought as he looked at Methuselah, noting that the body shape, shell, and tail were certainly reptilian, but prehistoric as no modern reptile looked anything like this monster. The logical possible explanations he could think of that this animal, if it could even be called one with the flora so deeply integrated into its body, was like a throwback. In other words, a living fossil to an older species of extinct reptiles. While the temptation would be to classify it as a last surviving member of the dinosaurs, yet it didn't sit right with him. From the looks of the scars that were visible enough, it looked way older than the dinosaurs and some things about Methuselah scream a much older lineage, possibly way back before the dinosaurs.
He would certainly need to look into it, but one thing's for certain was that this giant was armed and probably dangerous. Not to mention very difficult to kill with the mountains providing extra armor to an already impenetrable shell.
To say Lord Djibril was far from happy would be a huge understatement. He was not only mad, he was PISSED! In his secret, dark room chamber equipped with a high-definition screen in front up to date with the most recent news, he was sitting on his chair, not relaxed with his body subtly shaking as he could barely keep a lid on his growing, boiling anger. He barely touched the cup of wine after Methuselah rose up with huge mountains and forests grown on top of his shell for centuries, taking the combatants and the whole world by surprise. Not only that, but Methuselah towered over everything. Not even the Destroy Gundam, the largest Gundam built for mass destruction by the Adukurf Mechano-Industries, could stand eye to eye with the elder Titan as the Gundam was only up to the monster's wrist with giant hands armed with sharp claws that could rip through a Mobile Assault Ship with horrifying ease!
That's not mentioning, he heard from one of his agents that Neo Roanoke was telling Phantom Pain to stand down and give Methuselah wide berth in the hopes of that the reptilian, heavyset beast would not rile up into a destructive rampage that could demolish Berlin, allies and enemies alike.
"Roanoke...!" Djibril snarled in contempt of the deteriorating, unfavorable situation that has halted the Destroy from not only showing its full potential, but also prevented it from sending a message to the traitorous German government for trying to weasel their way out from LOGOS. "I should have known you didn't have the conviction to go through with the mission. And the timing couldn't be any worse with that dumb giant beast appearing out of nowhere and you all of the sudden..." he hastily drank his wine halfway before he slammed it on the chair. "...now all have become sitting ducks!"
MEOW!
His pet cat whined as she hid behind her master's chair, out of fear for both her master's bad temper and the monster on the screen.
"He better pray that thing does not trash the Destroy and add it to his growing list of failures. Otherwise, I'll skin his incompetent hide if that lizard bastard does not get to him first."
Methuselah let out a booming roar from his rocky jaws that shattered windows while slamming his fists onto the ground, drumming it with Berlin shaking. Then it swung its beefy arms into ruined pavement with claws scarring deep through the surface.
"Now what the heck is it doing?" Miriallia questioned.
"I think I know what it is trying to do. I've seen bears done this before whenever there's an intruder in their territory." Murrue explained with the intercom still on as Kira, Cagalli, and the Murasame pilots other than the crew around her could still hear her. "A bear would paw the ground and even leave scratch marks on the soil or trees while roaring to make their presence known to another bear. It serves another purpose..."
"To provoke a response from a potential intruder or prey." Kisaka answered.
"It's an intimidation tactic." Kira realized.
"But that would mean...!" Cagalli's eyes widened at another deeper implication from Murrue's surprising knowledge of animal behavior.
"The entirety of Berlin and beyond is the monster's territory." Talia inadvertently finished Cagalli's sentence as she spoke to her own crew and the ZAFT pilots that couldn't deploy with their respective Gundams still in repairs.
"No way! That's crazy! How can that be?!" Vino was mentally having a hard time processing with everything going on outside of what he was used to or had grown accustomed to in war.
"If that was the case, we, or at least the Germans would have known about it long ago and wrote about it!" Athrun said exasperatedly nearly slamming the map board out of sheer frustration as things were happening too absurd and fast for even a young veteran like him to comprehend.
"Except, that didn't happen. The ancient Germanic ancestors, by the time they got here, the beast was probably on the verge of sleeping and it had a lot of room to hide itself back then. So the Germans built their civilization right in the heart of the monster's territory out of ignorance. And it remained that way for a long time until the Junius Seven Colony, and Earth Alliance decision's to make an example of Germany woken it up." Talia said.
"So all this time we've disturbed its hunting grounds without even knowing it!" Lunamaria yelled with terror for her best friend that was now out there with a really ticked off Titan, whose territory had been transformed drastically that it was now throwing a destructive tamper tantrum!
"This is so messed up," Yolan palmed himself in the face as it sounded so screwed and ridiculous to believe.
Methuselah was heard roaring out loud as he grabbed a two-story skyscraper and threw it across two sections of Berlin haphazardly in his intimidation display.
"I don't know about you guys, but to hell with just sitting around and hoping that overgrown lizard would cool off!" Lunamaria was about to storm off to the hangar until Athrun stepped in her way with a steely look on his face.
"Look, sir! Can't you see that we've effectively put Shinn on a suicide mission?! I refuse to let him and even that girl piloting the Destroy face that thing on their own!" Luna yelled with anger and desperation with fear clouding her mind.
"With what?" Athrun's question stopped her as he asked, "We don't have any working mobile suit in the hangar with many of ours, including yours, damaged beyond repair."
"Shinn is out there with that monster that we have essentially pissed it off by fighting over its home! One that could easily tear that giant Gundam apart! Aren't you worried that this lowering weapon strategy would backfire and literally bite us in the behind?" Luna challenged him, but he didn't back down as he wasn't going to be damned to let a friend of his student die under his watch.
"You think I am not?! I have every reason to be more than worried for him and wanting to haul the Savior out to save him! But that would make the problem much worse not only for Shinn, but for us and the people still trapped down Berlin that are depending us to rescue them from this hellhole," Athrun said.
"Excuse me! I don't know if any of you noticed, but that turtle, lizard, or whatever on Earth that monster is, just chucked a skyscraper across Berlin! If that's not worse, then I don't know what is!" Luna hollered exasperatedly.
"And you probably don't want to know how much more worse you going gungho could cause the situation to spiral out of control."
"Why not?!" Luna was quickly losing her patience, her sister and her peers telling her outright to shut up and back off.
"Because that's what that brute would want exactly. In other words, the bear wants you to poke it so you will make it easier for him to maul you." Arthur interjected.
"Which is why my order still stands, even if all of the mobile suits could be salvaged. I will not risk the lives of million innocents just to slay a dragon. Lunamaria Hawke, stand down immediately, or I'll force you into the brig for talking back to your superiors rudely." Talia said, this time with a cold anger that was done so professionally with calm restraint that it unnerved Vino, Yolan, Meyrin and such.
Luna hissed, hating that she knew deep down it was the truth. Yet, it figuratively ached her to acknowledge the harsh reality they were faced with. Methuselah's roaring grunts and fist smashing emphasized it to the nth degree.
The bull-like reptile with mountains on its shell crunched two apartment buildings in its jaws before spitting out a hail of lava balls from its mouth that cascaded throughout the industrial section of Berlin with the factories exploding and fire splashing all over like napalm. Methuselah let out a dominating, powerful roar that sounded like the entire mountain groaning angrily at tenfold.
Stella could barely keep herself together. In fact, she could feel her grasp on reality was already slipping as she was starting to lose it. Her body shivering with cold sweat as Methuselah's destructive display slowly affected her with the world around her going into slow motion. Turning around, Methuselah set his pupiless gaze on her, Shinn, and Neo with all three doing their best not to give into their flee or fight instincts. His nostrils flared and flexed, snorting out bursts of hot steam. The blonde Extended pilot actually felt the hot, musty air. Stella whimpered as the Titan walked close enough to her and bent his knees forward with his knuckles supporting his massive bulk to further leverage his horned head lower. He looked down on with a cold, stoic glare, making Stella feel so pitifully small even when piloting the giant Gundam.
Shinn breathing hitched sligthly, noting how massive the head was. When Methuselah slightly opened his cavernous mouth agape, the raven-haired Coordinator pilot swore that each tooth in a long row of 70 teeth were as big as a small truck! Sharp, pointed, and slightly rounded at the base like giant railroad spikes that could easily make a scraphead out of a mobile suit caught in his jaws. Shinn trembled at such a horrific thought, inwardly cussing, doubting why the Impulse was even close to the jaws when the Titan could easily chomp him at any moment and he'd be a goner in seconds.
But the smell...
It was damned awful. It was like mud mixed with someone else's excrements and blood. Stella nearly puked and she became dizzy, almost delirious from the smell while trying to hold her breakfast in.
Methuselah let out another deep grumbling grunt that caused Stella, Shinn, and Neo's bones and their cockpits of their Gundams to reverberate.
"It's almost like being in a sound studio," Neo muttered.
The shelled Titan then raised its hand. Stella paled with both Shinn and Neo Roanoke sweating while their eyes widened. The claws were twice the size of a long bus! And powering them were earth brown, stocky digits that reinforced both pilots' assessments that nothing's safe from Methuselah should it grab some unfortunate sap unlucky to be in the same area as him. The terrified Extended girl shrieked in horror with her Gundam being shaken with its massive backpack being pierced by the Titan's sharp, scythe-like claws.
Sting Oakley, in his Chaos Gundam, transformed it into its Mobile Armor mode and sped towards Methuselah. Hearing Stella in imminent danger with his superior and the Impulse doing nothing to save her proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back for him.
"Stella!" Sting snarled, "Screw with waiting and doing nothing! If you guys won't help her, get out of the way!"
The Chaos Gundam unleashed all of its pods as they flew independently while firing lasers with some pods launching missiles at Methuselah's right side of his turtle-like face.
"No! Stop!" Shinn shouted in alarm.
"You idiot!" Neo roared out in horrified disbelief of his subordinate's utter disobedience, but it was already too late.
All of them struck their mark. And Methuselah retracted his claws away from the Destroy Gundam, leaving enormous gashes on its backpack, and blocked the ammunition thrown at him with his arm as they exploded against his scaly, rocky skin. When the smoke cleared, Methuselah pulled away his arm to reveal his white pupil-less eyes sporting the most venomous look possible accompanied by a low, angry growl that sounded like a mix of an angry elephant and volcano about to erupt.
Sting stopped his Chaos Gundam and transformed from mobile armor back to mobile suit to halt his momentum when he realized he had screwed up big time.
"Oh shit…" Sting gulped hard, withering under the demonic expression of pure fury.
Methuselah then glared at the three Gundams before him.
"Uh oh," Shinn felt his heart drop into his stomach when he knew they were now in deep soup.
Stella was hyperventilating when she could see murder in the monster's eyes.
Neo pursed his lips into a deeper frown with his eyes creased behind his masked helmet.
No one was prepared for what happened next when Methuselah puffed up his chest and then hollered the loudest, angriest, hate-fueled roar at the top of his lungs, creating an oscillatory wave that not only shattered windows, but leveled buildings and the very foundations of the earth around him within a 35 mile radius, pushing back and damaging the Chaos Gundam, Destroy Gundam, the Impulse Gundam, and the red Windam!
"AAAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHH!" Sting, Neo, Shinn, and Stella screamed with Methuselah's oscillatory roar punishing their auditory organs so severely with their brains already throbbing painfully.
Unfortunately, those further away like the Freedom, Strike Rouge, the Murasame squad, Archangel, Minerva and the Hannibal were not spared from the Titan's wrathful call as everyone screamed in agonizing pain from having their ears and their minds pummeled by an all-time high, unbearable volume of the roar. The air shook violently with the Gundams, grunt Mobile Suits, and Mobile Assault Ships swaying chaotically from the powerful sonic waves disrupting the air current around them. Many of the soldiers and stragglers had their heads and next their bodies literally explode into bloody chunks within the 35-mile radius of utter destruction. Those further away in Berlin had their ears bleeding through their hands in spite of them covering their ears hard from the unbearable godly roar of Methuselah.
Up on the Eternal, Methuselah was so powerfully loud with the oscillatory wave that even the battleship rumbled from the reverberations carried through the speakers. To make things worse, the audio reverberations had scrambled some of the ship's circuitry in the process.
"AAAAAAHHHHH!" Lacus floated chaotically, screeching in terror as the roar hurt her ears so badly that she was now having migraines. Andrew grunted with his teeth gritting so hard that they might crack under the growing pressure as the roar were like a sledgehammer pummeling his brain repeatedly. DaCosta had fainted with his eyes rolled up into white with his ears bleeding with blood flowing out. The crewmembers were nearly or were actually incapacitated with some having died from the auditory lobe having exploded from the sheer intensity of the volume.
The Committee Board Room was in no better shape with many of the members of the PLANT Supreme Council fainted and/or were rendered into a coma with one council member's ears leaking blood from the orifices.
"Grrrr…hrrrkkk!" Durandal was in serious pain with his eardrums on the verge of being destroyed and a growing headache that he would definitely feel for weeks to come. The pain was so debilitating that he hardly recognized that the building shook with some pieces from the ceiling already falling apart.
In LOGOS' clandestine headquarters, the roar impacted Lord Djbril so hard in the head to the point of extreme dizziness while vomiting his drink. The catastrophic reverberations caused his wine glass to shatter and other screens to shatter. He tripped onto carpeted floor hollering in sheer agony with what felt like knives penetrating through his skull. His pet cat screeched hysterically with her own sensitive ears on auditory overload to the point that she may become deaf.
The world all over felt the reverberations as the Oldest Living Mountain had announced his presence in his provoked rare state of rage.
When Methuselah stopped roaring as he ran out of all of his breath, the reverberations stopped as his oscillatory wave ceased. He landed onto his knuckles with his front strong limbs preventing him from toppling over in exhaustion. All around him half of Berlin was decimated with their foundations leveled into oblivion.
The Depths...
Godzilla woke up abruptly with great alarm as he felt reverberations rumbling through the ocean floor that nearly caused earthquakes to develop threatening to split the trenches a little. He knew it had to be from another Titan that was probably pissed off about something just as he was now. The reverberations created a disruption of the water currents that threw great swimmers off their game. And it irritated the hell out of Godzilla with his nice long nap being disturbed halfway. The abrupt change did not sit well with the atomic leviathan.
The King of the Monsters had to investigate because there was a possibility that the threat must be so dire to cause a fellow Titan to make such a ruckus. He couldn't allow that to fester as then it could stir more aggressive Titans to awaken and throw the ancient ecosystems out of whack in their wake. Godzilla felt more vibrations coming from the subtle, yet strange shift of movements from Earth's continents, which only fueled the archosaurian Monster King's fury.
Already other Titans had heard the angry roar of their fellow Titan. They were waking from their slumber. It wouldn't be long before they would emerge.
With his maple-shaped dorsal spines glowing ominously Chernokov blue in the darkness blanketing him, he swam on the hunt for the Titan responsible for the upset.
End of One-Shot 5