Creation began on 03-25-20
Creation ended on 03-29-20
Godzilla: The Planet Eater
Both Must Fall: Observational Learning
None of the files they had while aboard the Aratrum were anything like this. In fact, none of the files they had on the Aratrum were like this. Whoever this Monarch was, they had spent years, decades, gathering information on creatures that they hadn't seen much of with the sole exception of this Godzilla creature. Some of these creatures had been by the organization as benevolent creatures that served to maintain a balance that had existed on the balance long ago, with just a handful of them being dangerous to the balance.
"How could Godzilla just…go and murder these creatures that were actually helping the planet?" One of the women questioned. "It doesn't make any sense."
"It's a monster," went a man. "It doesn't make sense at all why it would do anything that it does, including kill other monsters."
"Uh, I think it does make sense when you look at it from a different perspective and widen the viewpoint," Adam expressed, looking at the images associated with the creatures. "I've kept trying to see some sort of reason, some mutagenic or logical explanation for why Godzilla is the way it is…and this is the only one that actually makes sense with this primitive information we're working with and our own knowledge of this Godzilla we're facing: What if this creature isn't what we were led to believe?"
"What do you mean?" Haruo questioned.
"I found a file that was dated about two years before Twenty-Thirty, one of the last pictures taken by Monarch. Look familiar?"
Taking up the whole screen, a creature that looked like a deformed version of Godzilla had emerged from the ocean, spitting a stream of water into the air.
"Hideous," Yuko expressed.
"You said it," another woman added.
"Based on the old files, Monarch described it as some sort of hyper-aggressive plant organism with a high diet in metal fibers that was highly radioactive," Adam informed, "but the creature didn't display any sense of higher reasoning, only acting on its needs, regardless of what was in its way. Then, a few days after being encountered, it fought with Godzilla and nearly lost…until it mutated."
He swiped to the left and showed an old video recording of the plant creature. Playing it, they all watched as it mutated into something that was close to what they were dealing with right now, and Haruo got the impression that this creature had enough sense to do what it did based on fear.
"Jesus, that's twisted," someone expressed.
"But this makes sense," Adam suspected. "Sometimes, in the animal kingdom, a creature that is preyed upon by a much stronger predator, will try to mimic it as much as possible. In insects, flies can look like spiders, caterpillars can look like snakes. Any organism can try to imitate something else as best as it can, and this plant tried to do just that: It mimicked what it perceived to be the ultimate predator it was facing at the time."
And in the video, they saw it face the creature they would've never imagined to be Godzilla…and blowing a large hole into its front, forcing it to retreat.
"How could we have not known about this?" Yuko asked.
"I don't think we would've back then," Martin explained, "not until it was too late to do anything about it. A creature like this that can remake itself into something that was viewed as benevolent…and then harm it afterward…and later use its image to attack other creatures as it adapted over the years… It just distorted our history and pushed mankind to the edge of extinction. A plant that only knows what it needs to know in order to survive."
"So all this time, we've been fighting a plant," Haruo realized. "A stupid plant that copied a creature that was, apparently, never a threat back then."
"Its appearance over the years kept refining itself to look as close to Godzilla as it could, but it's not Godzilla," Adam explained to them. "It's just a copycatting plant with metal fibers that's incapable of coexistence with other creatures…and isn't meant to be in a world that was inhabited by other organisms that had a symbiosis and maintained a balance."
"A false king," went Metphies in realization; that designation was perhaps the best way to identify this creature. A pretender to the throne, a twisted shadow that makes mockery of the actual ruler.
"Yeah, that's one way of putting it," Yuko agreed with him.
"Uh, everyone, we might have a new problem here!" Someone looking at one of the monitors gasped. "There's something out there!"
"What do you mean, something out there?" Adam questioned.
"There's…something in front of the sub in the water."
They looked at the monitor and saw what they were looking at. It was a large, dark red creature, identical to the one archived in Monarch's files.
"A Titanosaurus," went Haruo, surprised that one was still alive in this future.
"But…it was believed that this creature took dominance of the planet," said a woman, "wiping out all other forms of existing life."
"Life underwater is less-affected by changes made on the changes done on the surface," Adam explained. "Meteorite impacts damage the land, but underwater environments aren't affected as much, allowing for sea-dwelling organisms to continue thriving, such as sharks, coelacanths, turtles, even crocodiles. Maybe this plant creature that has been masquerading as Godzilla stopped spending the majority of its time in the water over the thousands of years we've been gone, allowing for some of these creatures to survive in secrecy."
"It's a possibility," added another man, "but the only way to know for sure…"
"Why isn't it attacking us?" Another woman asked, noticing that the creature in front of the sub was just looking at it. "It could destroy the sub without any effort. Why is it just looking at it?!"
"Because Titanosaurus isn't aggressive," Adam answered. "Monarch classified the species as inoffensive animals weren't a threat to humans. They'll eat sharks, whales, schools of fish, jellyfish, squids and algae, but other than that, they're completely harmless."
And then, as if true to his word on Monarch's past knowledge on the species, the aquatic monster just swam away from the sub. But then, just eight minutes later, it came back, swimming around the sub and away again.
"What does it want?" Haruo wondered.
"I think it wants us to follow it," Yuko suggested.
"Follow it?" Metphies asked her.
"Well, yeah. It hasn't attacked us and it keeps swimming back and forth between the sub and wherever it's going towards. It's gotta want us to follow it someplace."
-x-
Uncertain of whether it was following the actual energy or being led on a decoy pursuit, the creature the humans believed to be Godzilla pursued the ship in the air. As the ship went higher up, it began to charge its Atomic Breath to destroy it before it could escape completely.
"Fool," it heard something utter close by. "You're clearly too stupid to understand that you've been deceived. You never saw the deception because human beings are able to adapt and come up with ploys that cause trickery to an aggressive fiend. Your time on the throne will expire in due time…and you can't keep up the charade you've been holding onto for as long as you could. You're nothing more than a pretender to someone else's throne that can no longer pretend to be what you're not."
With that, the creature ceased its Atomic Breath charging and allowed the ship to escape from its grasp, realizing that it had been deceived…and the actual threat was now deep beneath the ocean where it would have to investigate as quickly as it could.
"Grr!" It growled.
-x-
"…My God," went Martin as he saw what the others had seen once the submarine had reached a considerable depth.
It was…some sort of city…made of stone…surround by several wrecked ships, either made from wood or from metal, covered by coral, seaweed and algae. By sending out three underwater drones and shedding light on their surroundings, the crew had discovered carvings of great significance that depicted large creatures, some resembling the very ones that they had known the Godzilla-like creature had killed. They could see indications that these structures and carvings were much older than the civilizations they once heard about, possibly predating every known civilization if they had carvings depicting giants that were practically gods to the people that once inhabited them.
"This place is similar to an underwater civilization that Monarch had found once before," Adam revealed as the Titanosaurus continued to swim ahead of the sub, leading towards an underwater volcano centered around the vast city. "Look at these carvings and statues. All the stories and legends we've ever heard about these creatures… They were all based on some sort of fact."
"And it looks like they were worshipped as deities," Haruo added, and then the sub ceased moving forward. "Why did we stop?"
"There's a large amount of radiation coming from that volcano," Martin answered him. "We can't get any closer than where we are right. The drones can get as close as they can before the radiation fries them."
And true to his words, at least two of the drones shorted out, leaving the third to travel further into the volcano through a hole.
"Damn," Haruo muttered.
"But…what's in the volcano that this Titanosaurus wants us to see?" Yuko questioned.
-x-
Crack! The egg that the Houtua watched over began to crack and rumble.
Maina and Miana, looking up at the egg, turned to one another and raised their hands for the others of their tribe to see. This was a sign that they needed to get back from the egg, and that its time had finally come.
Crack! Something had burst from the egg and made its presence known.
Mothra, the Goddess of the Houtua, an ancient being from a past long forgotten by the world…had finally returned to the present.
"Eeee!" She went, looking down at the Houtua below, recognizing them as her followers.
To be continued…
A/N: I promise you the next chapter will give you the true king's return. Since the anime trilogy never really had Mothra show up, except in a vision, it was the best moment to show her return in this story. And for the few that wondered why it happened, I had to have Brother Correction be the small hero for the people left in the ship distracting the fake Godzilla from killing them, even though they won't know that he was the one that saved them. Still trying to survive in the madness surrounding us all. Peace!