Before we begin this story, I know some of you are asking...
What is a Kaiju?
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A kaiju (怪獣) is a Japanese word that means "strange beast" or "monster". The Kaiju are creatures whose presence reshapes the land around them. They are not born from legends, myths, or untold stories, but from the deep parts of the Earth itself. They are older than the dinosaurs themselves, they are older than humanity.
The Kaiju are simply not animals, nor are they monsters in the human sense. They are forces of nature, existing beyond control or reason, and once when they awaken... Humanity will realize that they're no longer on top of the food chain.
And only one kaiju is capable of restoring balance to the planet.
Its name was...
ゴジラ
GODZILLA: EMERGENCE (BOOK 1)
ゴジラ:エマージェンス（第1巻)
We knew the world would not be the same.
A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent.
I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhavagad-Gita.
Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince to do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says,
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
-Julius Robert Oppenheimer (1965 NBC Interview)
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ODO ISLAND, JAPAN
AUGUST 12, 2005
MONDAY, 10:30 AM (JAPANESE STANDARD TIME)
The rhythmic, teeth-rattling grind of the industrial drill vibrated through the marrow of Hayashi's bones. It was a stubborn, mechanical scream against the weight of ancient stone. Dust hung in the stagnant air like a thick, gray veil, clinging to the sweat on the men's necks and turning their hair into brittle masks of silt. Portable halogen lights bolted to the uneven walls flickered with every surge of the generator, casting long, distorted shadows that danced like ghosts against the veins of minerals and petrified roots.
"We're almost through!" Hayashi shouted over the roar, wiping a smear of grime from his brow with a heavy, rubber glove.
He was a man built like the mountain itself, broad-shouldered and weathered by decades of subterranean labor. When the drill finally groaned to a halt, the sudden silence was physical. It pressed against their eardrums, ringing with the ghost of the noise that had preceded it.
Aiko, the youngest of the crew, adjusted the strap of her helmet. She stared up at the ceiling where the rock seemed to ripple in the weak light.
"It feels very strange here... It's like we're not alone..." She said.
Arato, the second youngest of the crew, chuckled in response, though the sound was hollow as he slung a heavy pickaxe over his shoulder.
"Oh please, don't tell me you're overreacting again." said Arato
"I'm serious," She insisted, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper.
"My grandmother used to say this island belonged to the gods themselves. The first beings to emerge. She always told me legends about giant monsters living under the land and sea."
"It's just legends," He replied, spitting a bit of dust onto the floor. "Almost every island in the Pacific has a story about what lives under them."
"She's not completely wrong, Arato," Yonoma joined in. "Not all old stories are fake. I've heard rumors about something enormous being seen in the South China Sea. The same place where old legends say a huge serpent once guarded that sea."
Hayashi snorted in derision. He wasn't a guy who was fascinated by legends, stories, or tales of monsters roaming the earth without humans knowing.
"Tsk. Gods... Monsters... Serpents..." He waved a calloused hand towards the rock face.
"Everyone, we're not digging for answers about an ancient monster that has the power to destroy the entire world. We're digging for ore. That's what we're doing. Now, get back to it."
"Yes, sir," They all said in unison.
The drill flared to life once more, its bit digging deep into the shale.
Then, the world gave away.
The resistance vanished with a sickening lurch. The drill bit spun into empty air, and the entire forward wall buckled, collapsing inward with a deafening, wet crack. A pressurized blast of freezing, stagnant air exploded outward, knocking the crew off their feet. Dust surged through the tunnel in a blinding white wall, choking their lungs and blinding their eyes.
"Cut the generator!" He shouted.
The generator groaned and died, leaving only the weak, bouncing beams of their flashlight to pierce the gloom. As the dust settled, Hayashi aimed his light towards the breach. The beam stretched out into the dark, traveling further than it ever should have. It didn't hit a wall. It simply faded into a vast, yawning nothingness.
"What is this place...?" Arato muttered.
They stepped through the jagged hole into a cathedral of shadows. The cavern was gargantuan, a hollowed-out rib in the earth where the air tasted of salt and ancient decay. Massive, petrified roots hung from the ceiling like the frozen tentacles of a dead god, and the floor was covered in a fine, obsidian-colored sand that had not felt a footstep in a thousand years.
Aiko's voice was barely a breath. "This isn't a cave... this is something else..."
Yonoma panned his light towards the far western wall, and the beam caught on something metallic and organic at once. He froze, stopping dead in his tracks.
"Do you see that?" He whispered.
Three towering shapes loomed in the darkness, fused to the rock wall by layers of hardened sediment and translucent, resinous webbing. They were colossal, oval structures, each easily twenty feet high. Their surfaces were ridged, pulsating with a faint, rhythmic bioluminescence that looked like a heartbeat beneath a frozen layer of frosted glass.
They were cocoons.
Aiko took a trembling step back, her boots crunching loudly on the gravel.
"This has to be a joke..."
"Is it just me or the one on the right is broken?"
They all pointed their flashlights on the third structure. The side of the shell had been forced outward, it looked like it was torn open from the inside. The edges were sharp and jagged, and a slimy-like substance came out slowly out of the cocoon.
It was empty, meaning something hatched.
The cavern fell into a silence so absolute they could hear the blood rushing in their own ears.
Then...
A shadow detached itself from the obsidian wall, a silhouette that was tall, angular, and impossibly thin. It unfolded with a series of wet, chitinous clicks, like a nightmare stretching its limbs after a long sleep. The creature stepped into the light, its body armored in reddish-brown plates. Its head was triangular and featureless, tilting with a bird-like twitch as it studied the small, soft creatures before it.
Long, raptorial forelegs, tipped with hooked blades the size of scythes, lifted slowly into the air.
"...走る."
The praying mantis-like creature moved with the speed of a falling blade. It crossed the cavern in a blurred staccato of movement. The spiked limbs snapped shut around two miners, the force of the impact silencing their screams instantly as they were hoisted into the air. Their helmets clattered against the stone, the beams of their lights spinning wildly across the ceiling.
"Help me!" A miner yelled.
Hayashi turned, his instincts screaming over his fear. He shoved Aiko towards the exit.
"Hurry! We have to get to the exit!"
They scrambled through the dust, their breaths coming in ragged, sobbing gasps. The ground shook with a heavy, rhythmic thrumming as the creature gave chase.
Hayashi felt a sudden, crushing weight clamp around his midsection. He was yanked backward with such violence that the air was forced from his lungs in a single, pained wheeze.
He screamed, his fingers clawing uselessly at the cold, hard segment of the limb that held him.
"Stop! Somebody! Please help me!" Hayashi called out for his comrades on desperation, but they didn't look back. They just ran.
The creature pulled him upward into the dark. Its mandibles clicked together, a slow and deliberate sound of hunger.
The surviving minors didn't look back as he screamed.
They ran until the cavern was now but a memory, until the narrow tunnel walls felt like a sanctuary, and until the blinding light of the sun finally broke through the dust-filled air.
Only three survivors burst out of the mine into the humid August heat.
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END OF PROLOGUE
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TOHO STUDIOS BRINGS YOU...
A WATTPAD/WEBNOVEL SCIENCE-FICTION STORY
WRITTEN BY NEMESIS_PRIME_456
INSPIRED BY GODZILLA (2014) BY DIRECTOR GARETH EDWARDS AND GODZILLA (1954) BY DIRECTOR ISHIRŌ HONDA
I PRESENT TO YOU....
GODZILLA: EMERGENCE!