Godzilla 2000 - New Era Promo · 6:09am Nov 4th, 2020
The eve of the year 2000 is upon the world. Godzilla hasn't been seen clearly since 1995 but is known to exist. Monster attacks have gone global with the incident in New York City the year prior and rumors of something ancient found in the Philippines. But as strange happenings are afoot in the Pacific. At the same time, Godzilla sightings are becoming more common, leaving many to wonder what might happen next. Humanity, even those close to the individual who hatched in 1993, are wary. Is this Legend from Odo Island a new individual with a score to settle? Is it a grown up Godzilla Junior? And if so, what might have changed?
And caught in the middle are the Shinodas, a family scarred by the tragedy of almost 16 years prior, trying to understand just how much their world is changing. Was the parade of warring titans through the 1990s a closed chapter in the history of mankind, or a prelude to something far more expansive? One thing is certain. Yuki Ichinose is getting way more than she bargained for when she joined the GPN to get some good pictures!
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We had breached upon the trade winds south by south-east of Nipan when the storms came to a surge with the Triangle. As the wind whipped and seas roared, a strange manner of light became visible on the starboard. The sun had set and overcast blotted out moon and starlight, so the phosphorescence had come from the depths. The sea broiled and I ordered the men to row the ship forward, fearing the brightness to be from an undersea volcano. A form was spotted and a net was cast, but the fish ensnared was born of The Pit. The greater of their kind came upon us and destroyed the center mast. Harpoons and shot did little but force it overboard. The quartermaster was seized by the leg and we thought him perished when the demon dragged him into the depths from it hence came. It seemed as if a miracle later when he persevered below deck and we continued on towards port. But God in Heaven preserve his soul-
-Journal of António Mota, Portuguese Expedition to Japan, 1543. Remainder of the log censored by order of the Holy Office of Rome and King João III
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1984, Tokyo
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Vertigo, total vertigo. That was the best way to describe Yuji’s mind as he tried to stagger to his feet but was unable to because the orientation of the train kept changing. What was directly down kept changing. He could barely even hear with all the screaming, even as he futilely tried to call out his wife’s name; having lost his beloved amongst the sea of panicked passengers. The orientation of the train shifted towards the side and the young biologist was violently thrown up against cracking glass. Even as his head spun and he tried to get a bearing on any sign of his wife amongst the bodies thrown up against the walls and near him, there was one other site and one other sound that canceled out all others.
He glimpsed jagged teeth illuminated by the military spotlights, the charred and darkened skin, and the overpowering presence from his homeland. His parents’ legend and he had a fickle relationship. When he was a boy, born after the tragedy from 1954 , plenty of the old-timers at Odo Island were feeling both vindicated and adamant. Sadly vindicated their legend had been proven true, and that destruction had been wrought amongst the proud and the innocent near them. But every time he might challenge or question the needs for old ceremonies dating back to archaic times meant to satisfy a creature known to be dead decades ago, his parents and the elders were always very adamant Godzilla could not be so permanently dealt with. Even when he brought up the theories the creature was a mutant animal brought about by radiation; they were assured the sea dragon of destruction had always existed. It just mattered in how it incarnated.
In ancient times storms and lightning meant destruction, and so Godzilla arrived with storms and lightning. In modern times, what was more destructive than the nuclear bomb? So why wouldn’t such weapons herald Godzilla’s return?
And that titan of destructive legend, was real again. The creature separated from him only by a half inch of glass and a few dozen meters of air snarled.
It didn’t seem to care what rampant speculation the young biologist might’ve had previously. If it was somehow the 1954 creature back from the grave or something totally new. All that mattered was it was Godzilla. Destruction on Odo Island might mean a few houses smashed up or damaged from a bad hurricane. Destruction in a place like Tokyo might entail a body count in more digits than Yuji wanted to think about.
The enormous titan roared, bellowing so loudly everyone in the train was shouted to quietness. Across the roof and the sides, metal started to creak and groan from strain as the monster held up the train in its hand.
“STAY BACK! HANG ONTO SOMETHING!”
The first voice to cry out once the creature stopped roaring was instantly familiar. Yuji’s eyes darted to the side and down the train car’s length. Amongst the piles of shivering, bruised, and terrified people was a familiar span of metallic gray hair. Sprawled with her back against several seats, Asuka Shinoda was about to cry out some other survival tip when the Mysterian woman was cut off by the screech of metal.
The roof bowed inwards as if made of tinfoil, the tip of a massive claw stabbing through the structure and punching a large hole in the sealed train car. A streaking light soared overhead, the telltale sign of missile fire arcing over the train car and impacting against Godzilla’s torso with plumes of explosions. The leviathan treated it like chaff but treated it with hatred. Its dorsal plates lit up as it glared upon the source of the missile fire. A metallic platform resembling a bulbous plane with no wings hovered across the downtown district in row to intercept the creature. The Super-X’s bright floodlight clashed with Godzilla’s blue radiance for domination of the light and the demise of shadow.
Godzilla dropped the train and let loose his radioactive plasma beam. Before the light became blinding Yuji glimpsed the train roll during its freefall and let the blue plasma ray’s radiating light cast through the hole the claw had punched. Right onto Asuka’s petrified face as she cried out in pain.
They hit the ground hard, Yuji’s head whipping into the window seal hard enough to cut him. The last thing he remembered of the immediate memory was the Odo island nightmare roaring into the night, no doubt as it carved a path of destruction chasing the Super-X upon strides of thundering earth.
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1999, Central Pacific
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Storming seas roiled as waves crashed against the bow of the C.C.I. research vessel Eiko-Ryu, a repurposed shipping vessel. Crisis Control Intelligence was ever vigilant in the quest for new ventures and information, the past decade and a half of monster attacks only proved threats to mankind’s supremacy could come from anywhere. Even if that anywhere entailed investigating even areas that just happened to be in the urban legendary ‘Devil’s Sea’, the Pacific counterpart to the Bermuda triangle. Capt. Reinhardt was all too aware that the infamy of the area was more than a little inflamed by recent popular fiction. The triangle-shaped area did have disappearances, but they were largely small fishing vessels that rarely had the best radios, and the weather was definitely not ideal. This was typhoon alley for the Pacific, complete with numerous undersea volcanoes.
Regardless they had reason to be in the area anyway, investigating potential volcanic vents the latest Godzilla might be camping out at. C.C.I was paying him and his crew very well for this, enough that superstitious worries regarding the area and the possible prospect of one of the few remaining kaiju on the planet didn’t deter them. In a few years they would all be destroyed. This new Godzilla, the rumored second individual of that lizard that attacked the United States, and the new Mothra. Such leviathans came crawling back from the dead in the 1980s and C.C.I. had been there the whole way providing weapons to put them back down throughout the 90s. A few stragglers wouldn’t be too long for this world that they had no business in.
His brow perked when the radio went off.
“Satsuma 2 to Eiko-Ryu, we found something while setting up the beacon.”
Captain Reinhardt put the intercom to his mouth as he eyed several sonar screens.
“Eiko-Ryu to Satsuma 2, how is the beacon deposition going?”
A small screen flickered showing the very narrow field of vision the Satsuma 2 submersible bore, one of the many subs deployed to put down the long range so our beacons and light some flares. Within the field of view lit up by the powerful floodlights were largely what the captain would have expected. A few startled deep-sea fishes, crabs, with a rocky and sandy bottom. One curiosity however were the large white objects coming into view, stuck into this sentiment.
“Whale bones,” the Captain noted passively, recognizing them from experience in his years mapping out the deep-sea.
Whenever the big creatures, big as proper animal should get, passed on out of the mortal coil their bodies would eventually sink. It was a smorgasbord for the scavengers and seeing bones on the bottom wasn’t anything unusual as those were the hardest breakdown for nature's cleanup crew. Judging from the size it was some kind of medium-scale baleen whale, possibly a humpback.
“Yes Captain, but… look.”
The camera panned aside and revealed something that made captain Reinhardt visibly double take. The skeleton was there, but past a certain point it looked…. Scrambled. Bones were twisted at odd angles, it almost look like it had three tails sprouting off the spine at strange positions, and there seem to be bony fins protruding from the dorsum.
The captain clicked the intercom back on, “Swing back around to the head.. And get closer, put more light on it.”
Satsuma 2’s crew obeyed, and Reinhardt was greeted to a sight not seen in any of his nautical books. The skull was still visibly that of a baleen whale, with a very long and pointed cranium that had no teeth. The hair-like plates of baleen which should have been there in life had probably long since rotted away, so its absence wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was the grizzly, anglerfish-like teeth protruding from the lower jaw that got revealed when the floodlights were firmly placed upon the skeleton. On closer inspection of the eye socket, the presence of another bony fin protruding from the head, and the strange warping of the bones made no sense. Whales and dolphins had flippers, but the two main ones were obviously modified arms if one had a passing glance at seeing the hands like bones within. The dorsal fin was entirely tissue, there shouldn’t be any trace of it on the skeleton; and the same can be said with the tail flukes. Whales don’t have bony fins like fish. And no humpback ever had fangs.
“Captain, we have movement!” Satsuma 2’s pilot yelped as the screen shoot.
Reinhardt refocused his attention on the now shaking screen, the seafloor being vibrated violently as if there was a undersea earthquake or volcano. Sediment was being shaken away, revealing more mismatch skeletons buried in the sands as well more than a few broken ship hulls. Everything from dinghy-small fishing vessels to things that looked downright archaic.
“Ascend, ascend now! Drop the beacon and get out of there!” Captain Reinhardt barked as he started to put the ship in reverse, hopefully to get out of the way of any potential undersea volcanic vent that was opening up.
The view from Satsuma 2 shuddered as it started to comply, but the pilot kept the focus looking downward at the sundering seafloor. The mishmash whale skeleton split in two upon the bow of a previously buried sailing vessel, snapping the preserved mast and pushing the vessel aside. The actions scraped free the seafloor and revealed a large patch of something shiny previously buried in rocky concretion. The metal almost seemed to flash and pulse from the floodlights put upon it. Then something rammed into the Satsuma 2. Captain Reinhardt glimpsed a tooth before the feed.
Rain beat across the surface of the Eiko-Ryu, drenching anything the waves couldn’t reach. And yet even through the downpour Captain Reinhardt could hear the sonar pinging with excitement at the approach of a large object. Two of them, one far bigger than the other. The latter was several times the size of the ship. Reinhardt swore as he got on the intercom and did the nautical equivalent of flooring it with the engines. Satsuma 2, the smaller object, was still tethered to them and would have to put up with getting towed.
“Emergency, all hands brace. We are going all ahead full engines! Recovery crews on deck to reel in Satsuma 2. Get them back on board but don’t risk yourself!”
His crew scrambled, diligent and professional even in the light of this weather and situation. Even if he didn’t say it over the intercom, they all knew what might spur the ship to try and run away as fast as it could. Something the captain knew had big teeth and its kind had been destroying ships for almost half a century or more. The tether cables connected to the mini-sub were quickly reeled in by powerful winches as the research vessel powered forward. But if the awaiting crewmen expected to see the floodlights of the mini-sub starting to breach the surface, they were sorely disappointed when no such visage appeared. Instead all they got was a snapped cable.
Captain Reinhardt could see it from his deck as his brow furrowed. He glanced again at the sonar screen hoping against hope the larger object had been overtaken by the smaller one, the mini-sub, and that he wasn't going to have to send some flowers to family members for Satsuma 2’s crew. But instead the screen still registered two distinct objects. A much larger one that was heading straight up and a smaller but still significant sized mass approaching the deck. Approaching despite the fact there was no cable connecting it and they should’ve seen the subs floodlights by now. Approaching and not slowing down.
“Oh no… BRACE!-“
His yell over the intercom was cut short by the school bus sized mass breaching out of the water and crashing onto the deck. In doing so it knocked out multiple deck lights and the captain only could glimpse dark blue colored skin before all descended in a shower of sparks and shadows. There was shouting, inarticulate yelling in obvious alarm, and then there was nothing. Nothing but the beating of raindrops. Captain Reinhardt could feel his own pulse in his throat as he shakily brought the intercom to his face once more.
“A-all crew…” His voice was surprisingly quiet, “Stay below deck.. Repeat, stay… below deck.”
There were certain things expected of a captain. You were expected to know how to navigate the ship better than anyone. You were expected to know which men and women to put in which job. And you were expected to bring them all back home safely. That entailed a lot of responsibilities and Reinhardt was not new to them. He picked up a floodlight with one hand and a loaded pistol with another. With some apprehension, he opened the door to outside both to glimpse what had launched itself onto the ship and check in on the Satsuma recovery team.
Rain assailed his face the moment he exited cover, thick droplets that stung on impact. He pulled his hat down more to shield his eyes and swept the floodlight about. Aside from the storm the deck was eerily quiet, but certainly not unoccupied. A large mass wasn’t at all hard to spot, half emerged from the water and flopped onto the surface with several ruined light towers stuck under it. It definitely was a whale and to this sense of the extraordinary but normal did give Reinhardt a fleeting moment of calm. Whales would have been known to breach and accidentally fall on top of a vessel. The large mass could have startled it and collapsed on top of them in an attempt to get away. That still meant it might’ve crushed several crewmembers under its bulk, but it was something that should have been a possibility in this world. It didn’t entail nuclear leviathans rising from the depths to set cities on fire.
However, normality was killed the moment the whale fidgeted. Instead of the haggard breathing and panicked flopping a beached marine mammal might do in its death throes, the motion was controlled and steady. Sliding side to side with flippers braced against the edges of the ship almost like hands, it seemed to be searching. Reinhardt tasted bile when he noticed a body and at first thought the poor man had been crushed under the marine mammal’s jaw when it reached onto the vessel. Except instead of a pulverized or partially crushed body, it wasn’t separate from the whale’s mass. It was a part of it. A body partially stuck inside of it and being drawn in.
That’s when the whale seemed to notice him and homed in on the floodlight. It vibrated and fidgeted before its enormous mouth split open in three different directions. Eyes more like a big squid or deep-sea fish instead of the tiny pits of a marine mammal reflected back in the floodlight, as a cavernous maw was exposed and shown to be not filled with baleen, but writhing cephalopod tendrils and mismatched teeth that could’ve been anything from human to angler fish.
And unlike any deep-sea creature, it vocalized into the air.
“ArrrouuuuuuuooaaaaghaAAAAAAah!!”
Captain Reinhardt stumbled backwards after firing several shots from his pistol, blasting through a giant squid tentacle that lashed out towards him and blowing the tip off. He scrambled back into the enclosed captain’s deck and slammed the door shut, falling back on the back wall for a brief moment to catch his breath and realize how much he was heaving. Very little respite was offered when the crunching of shifting metal and the splattering of several cephalopod tendrils smacked against the glass, showing the bizarre chimera was trying to clamber its way onto the ship. Stumbling up to the controls, Captain Reinhardt threw the steering as hard as he could to one side while shutting off forward momentum as he put it in reverse. Maneuvering a big ship was not like steering a car, but some of the same laws of physics applied. After speeding up into the turn and then abruptly cutting off the engines to throw it in reverse, the chimera was yanked aside by its own inertia. The monstrosity gargled as it rolled off the deck and crashed back into the ocean, Capt. Reinhardt only waiting to hear the large splash before throwing the controls back into all ahead full.
Sweat was mixing with the raindrops spattered across him with the only noises Captain Reinhardt was able to hear being his own panting breath. At least until the door to his deck was opened.
He turned and would have fired immediately had he not seen it was just a man. But relief soon gave way to confusion when he saw the man’s attire and figure. It was not any crewman attire, nor any he immediately recognized. It looked downright ancient, with studded bits of metal and woven silks that curiously didn’t look wet. And the man wasn’t right. Captain Reinhardt was a pretty tall man at just under two meters, and yet this man ducked upon stepping inside. And his skin seemed… Perfect. Too perfect. No creases, no scars, no hair. It seemed more like a statue. It seemed…
Eyes blinked with horizontal lids and pure green orbs emerged from behind the eyelids. Silks turned into spines and a maw opened to reveal mishmashed teeth.
Capt. Reinhardt screamed as he emptied the clip into the figure that charged into them. In the storming seas outside, a gigantic mass burst out of the water and levitated into the storming skies.
After millennia dreaming, they had finally awakened…
Hundreds of kilometers away, the calmness of the night was shattered by a sudden eruption of living thunder. Staggering up from her bed, a Shinto temple priestess paced into the courtyard of the temple. Clearly in her advanced years with a hunched back and grayed hair, Hina nonetheless stood firm as she gazed upon the now silent ocean with a frown. She stood alone, having been alone since the passing of her husband, and before that the departure of her daughter-in-law on the island; which made returning there nigh-unbearable for her son Yuji. But even in such isolation, a presence was palpable.
One coming in with the tides, heralded by the seabound winds. Crying out with the same roar she’d heard in 1954 when a living mountain loomed over the hillside.
Special thanks to Lance-Omikron and CrystalMaster for lending me their aid. Now while the cold opening scenes are a bit dour, rest assured I am decidedly not making this a grim tale. Struggle with exist, but not without brightspots. 2020 has enough dourness for the lot of us.
Solid cold opening. It's definitely not going to be like in Canon if we can expect stuff like this.
5391874
Yep it's gonna be quite a different breed than Bridge. Familial drama will play a role as well as two of our three main human leads are a widower father and daughter after all.
Now I'm really excited to see this!
I just have to say go go Godzilla
Damn. Hell of an opening to this story!
I'm gonna be on tenterhooks waiting for more. XD
I read it last night, and re-read it just now. Hoyl hell it's going to be a whole new twist on what we've come to expect, finally seeing things from the human perspective in the middle fo the brawl!
It may have it's moments, but Godzilla 2000 is honestly one of the least memorable G flicks to me. So this project is an exciting prospect, spcing up the story with some horror elements, some history from the Am'verse and some good old fashioned Tarb penmenship.
As for the cold open itself, it's well done though fairly conventonal. Good horror with the crew, gave me versus Destroyah vibes, good use of the exceptionally bleak1984 as the backstory for our (presumed) lead. Nothing mind blowing yet, but solid and exciting start.