The Golden Nothing

"The Golden Nothing" is the first episode of Godzilla: Into the MonsterVerse.

Plot
Former Japan, Earth, 22,XXX A.D.

Captain Haruo Sakaki watched helplessly as three golden serpentine strands dropped down from the sky. The Aratrum, aboard it the only 4,000 humans that even still certainly existed, was gone. Everything he had fought for, for which he had sacrificed everything he had, was wiped from existence in an instant. And now these things, writhing tentacles of spikes, were snaking down onto the planet's surface and about to finish the job. In a few moments, not even the Earth would exist anymore. Maybe Haruo would have taken some solace knowing Godzilla would be obliterated as well, but in this moment all Haruo could feel was exasperation. Metphies, the closest thing Haruo had to a family anymore, had betrayed him. He had betrayed everyone for the eldritch horror which now illuminated the sky with a hellish golden glow. The ends of the three spiky strands snapped open like claws; Haruo realized these were the mouths of this abominable thing. They began emitting shrill ringing noises which sounded almost like the giddy laughter of a child. Hearing this sound coming from the monstrosity before him was a surreal experience.

Godzilla, having noticed the phenomena and turned his gaze skyward, roared a challenge at the thing before him. Godzilla had slain innumerable foes, all of them weaker and inferior than he. But this thing baffled even him. Never before had Godzilla faced a living foe so large and otherworldly. To say Godzilla was afraid might not have been accurate, but he was more uncertain than he had ever been in his long live. As if answering his challenge, the three draconic heads turned to Godzilla, as if observing him. Their many bulbous eyes stared without expression for a few moments before the three necks launched themselves forward at blinding speed, shrieking horrifically. Godzilla fired his heat ray, which glanced harmlessly off of one of the creature's necks. Before he could react to this, the first of the heads clamped its jaws onto Godzilla's shoulders. The other two followed suit, and began sending electrical shocks into Godzilla's body through their bite. Godzilla's shield, something which no enemy had ever pierced before, may as well have been nonexistent. While surprised to be sure, Godzilla was not afraid. Mechagodzilla City had found a way to shut down the shield and overload Godzilla with electromagnetic energy only days before, but he had a countermeasure that protected him from suffering the fate of his servant. Godzilla's skin began to crack and emit a reddish glow as his internal organs exchanged the excess electricity for heat. As Godzilla emitted lethal amounts of heat, the demon restraining him did not even seem to notice. Suddenly, the glow faded from Godzilla's body. The heat diminished. This creature was absorbing the heat faster than Godzilla could produce it. As Godzilla felt the electricity run wild in his body and the three-headed beast lifted him into the air as if he was weightless, Godzilla finally knew fear. Godzilla was in an unprecedented situation. He never experienced death, in fact he had only known the concept as something he inflicted on lesser beings. As he felt the energy tearing his body apart from the inside, Godzilla desperately channeled the power into his dorsal plates as quickly as he could. He had only held this much energy inside his body once before: 20,000 years ago, he stored up his power for five years so he could unleash a heat ray powerful enough to obliterate the oncoming celestial body which would have destroyed the planet he knew as home. With possibly only minutes left to live, Godzilla spewed forth a pillar of crimson fire into the sky above. The golden glow of the sky was replaced with an apocalyptic orange glow. This blast struck one of the black portals from which the golden demon's heads were emerging, and appeared to travel through it. Godzilla continued firing the energy as fast as it was produced, as a deafening noise rang through the sky. The portal was literally torn open, a monstrous impenetrable blackness filling the sky above. The three-headed monster quickly released Godzilla, dropping him thousands of feet to the ground below. The impact split the Earth open, triggering tremors that stretched for miles. The three heads turned their attention to the sky and shrieked even louder as they watched the void spread infinitely above them.

Metphies, who had been thrown off the rocky overlook where he was standing by the tremors, regained his footing and was shocked by what he saw. "This is unprecedented," he spoke in an uncharacteristically panicked tone. Haruo, haven fallen not far from Metphies, jumped up and tackled his former friend to the ground. He grabbed Metphies by the throat and demanded to know what he had done.

"I have done nothing except bring forth the Golden Demise. Godzilla, this King of Destruction, has unleashed destruction even Ghidorah would never have anticipated. The gates between Heaven and Hell have been torn down. Angels and demons alike will run amok and their battle will end this universe as we know it. May God have mercy on me, for I have failed."

After listening to Metphies' speech, Haruo looked up and saw there was no longer a sky. There was only blackness. The three golden necks retreated into the darkness and vanished, while black portals of varying sizes appeared on the ground. One of these opened near the crater where Godzilla now lay, and his motionless form was almost instantly pulled into it. Second later one such portal appeared right before Haruo and Metphies. Before they could react, they too were pulled into the black abyss.

Tokyo, Japan, Earth, 2018

The clock on his desk registered 6:30 pm. Rando Yaguchi had been sitting in this office for well over 12 hours. He leaned back in his chair and sighed, wondering how he found himself back behind a desk every day after the crisis which had demanded his constant attention two years ago. Sure, Yaguchi was putting together a bid for Prime Minister and would be on the campaign trail in a few years, but until then he was Rando Yaguchi, Deputy Cabinet Secretary. These thoughts made Yaguchi feel restless, so he stood up and pulled out his cell phone. He dialed the number of Kayoco Anne Patterson. The phone rang and was directed to voicemail, unsurprisingly. The greeting was in English, so Yaguchi didn't really pay it any mind and immediately began leaving his message in Japanese.

"Kayoco. It's Yaguchi. You still remember me, right? You said you'd call me about joining the International Godzilla Task Force. That was almost two years ago, and I was wondering if you'd forgotten. I know you're probably busy, I just wanted to make sure you remembered. Please call me back if you can. Thank you."

Yaguchi hung up. He paced for a while before opening the blind, bringing some faint light from the sunset into his dim office. In the distance, beyond all the construction cranes still putting most of Tokyo back together, he saw the facility. A colossus of a building, white with no windows, standing on the exact location where Godzilla was frozen two years ago. He was in there, Yaguchi was sure of it. He didn't know what they were doing to Godzilla in there, but he wanted to be there too. Kayoco had promised him he would be part of it, and he wanted to be on the front lines of finding a way to protect mankind from Godzilla. But now Kayoco was in charge of that facility, and she had no time for bureaucrats like him anymore. Just then, Yaguchi's phone rang. He looked at the number and was in disbelief: Kayoco Anne Patterson. Without hesitation he pressed the talk button and held it to his ear. "Hello? Kayoco?"

"Yaguchi, it's me. The facility, meet me there in an hour."

Despite all the traffic and construction, Yaguchi was at the security gate in 55 minutes. Hustle and public transit had served him well. He had to squeeze his way through the usual wall of protesters and Godzilla-worshipers, but the armed guards were sufficient to keep them at bay. He waited by the gate for a few minutes before Kayoco, clad in a white hazmat suit and flanked by two armed men similarly garbed, passed through the gate and approached him. She informed him they had no time to for greetings, handed him a white hazmat suit, and led him through the gate, bypassing countless security checkpoints before they reached the door to the facility. Once there, she instructed Yaguchi to put on the suit, then leaned in closely.

"What you see in here, you mustn't tell anyone about. Not yet," she told him. "It could start a panic or worse."

Yaguchi nodded, and Kayoco swiped a card that opened the armored doors. The inside of the facility was something out of a science fiction movie. The frozen Godzilla stood in the center of the building, surrounded by countless catwalks and with scaffolding running up his entire body. Dozens of hazmat suit-clad workers moved across these catwalks and between various computer consoles and cryogenic tanks on the ground floor. He turned as if to say something to Kayoco, but she started speaking anyway.

"We've been analyzing Godzilla for almost two years. He hasn't moved yet, but his radiation climbs every day. The coagulant is wearing off, and he is going to wake up and destroy this facility. Once he breaks free, the United States government will resume the countdown, and a thermonuclear warhead will be dropped on Tokyo before anyone can evacuate. And there's a strong possibility Godzilla won't even be killed."

Kayoco led Yaguchi to a cryogenic tank. She told Yaguchi to wipe away the fog on the glass. He peered through the clearing on the glass and inside saw something that caused him to jump backward. Inside this chamber was a man. Well, not exactly a man. It was approximately eight feet tall and skeletally thin. It had black and red skin, with exposed bone on several parts of its body. It possessed a singular eye on the center of its face and sharp inhuman teeth. Most startling were the black and red growths on its back. Yaguchi rubbed his eyes and looked back inside, and saw that they were the unmistakable dorsal plates of Godzilla himself. Since Yaguchi was too stunned to speak, Kayoco addressed him.

"We pulled it off Godzilla's tail as soon as we walled this area off. There were about ten other ones too, but this was the most fully formed. We flash-froze it and had it put in this chamber, where it has been for almost two years. The most shocking thing is that it's still alive."

"What the hell is it?" Yaguchi finally mustered.

"It's Godzilla," Kayoco told him dispassionately.

"This thing, the things you found on Godzilla's tail... they're part of him?"

"More than part of him," Kayoco replied. "You know that Godzilla has a remarkable ability for cell reproduction and could potentially propagate around the world simply through severed tissue; in fact it was your team that discovered that. Godzilla seems to be aware of this too, that's why he is evolving into an army."

"An army?" Yaguchi asked. "Wait, that makes sense. Godzilla evolves to counter any threat he perceives. He saw he was being beaten by a collective of humans so his next evolution is... a collective of humans."

"Our scientists believe that once Godzilla thaws, these things will break off of his tail and run loose. Even if the nuclear warhead blows Godzilla up, there is a high probability at least one of these things will be able to hide from the explosion. And since Godzilla feeds on radiation, the fallout won't affect him at all. These creatures, and any samples of Godzilla's flesh that remain intact after the detonation, will survive, evolve, and spread before they wipe out humanity and take over the world."

"My God," Yaguchi said. "You said there were more of them. Why haven't you killed them yet?"

Kayoco replied. "Our scientists think these may be the key to communicating with Godzilla."

"Communicate with it?" Yaguchi asked. "Are you out of your mind? Godzilla isn't a person. He's an evolutionary anomaly. He's imitating us. He somehow knows how to alter his genome at will and is creating these things as his interpretation of humanity. He's not consciously trying to become one of us, he's just taking a form that he instinctively thinks can counter us."

"That is our only option, Yaguchi." Kayoco responded at last. "We can't stop Godzilla from thawing. We can pump his body full of blood coagulant all we want but it won't be enough. He's still evolving. His body will find a way to counteract the coagulant and become immune to it. And when that happens, we all die. You said you wanted to teach Japan to coexist with Godzilla, Yaguchi. Now I'm giving you that chance."

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, almost in disbelief.

"We are going to thaw out this Godzilla-Man," Kayoco replied, "and we're going to try and communicate with it. We want your help. I didn't ask you here because you're somehow more qualified to communicate with Godzilla than anyone else. I asked you here as a favor to you. You wanted to be part of the Task Force, and now you're on the front lines."

Yaguchi stood and looked at Kayoco dumbfounded. He turned his head to the chamber holding the Godzilla-Man and finally said "Alright, I'm in."

Pacific Ocean, Earth, 2018

A black portal opens underwater in the middle of the Pacific. Through it swims Godzilla, so rudely ripped away from his slumber in an underwater trench just moments before. Godzilla looks behind him and sees the odd vortex fade, then wades to the surface to get his bearings. He seems to be roughly in the same location where he was moments before, in the great body of water between the continents he has called home for most of his life. But he senses something he hasn't sensed before. Something on the archipelago where he was born 200 million years ago. Food, he wonders at first, sensing the same energy he has subsisted on his entire life. But as he swims further west, he realizes that it is something different. Something like him. Godzilla begins to swim toward Japan, intent on discovering whether this other being is the kin he has been searching eons for, or another threat he must put down. Whichever the case, Godzilla is instinct-driven to find it.

Next Episode: "Godzilla vs. Godzilla!"

Kaiju

 * Godzilla Earth
 * Ghidorah
 * Shin Godzilla
 * Godzilla (Legendary timeline)

Characters

 * Captain Haruo Sakaki
 * Metphies, Exif Oracle
 * Rando Yaguchi, Chief Cabinet Secretary
 * Kayoco Anne Patterson, Head of the International Godzilla Task Force