The GNP Presents:
Godzilla: Final Wars
Adapted from the Screenplay by Wataru Mimura and Isao Kiriyama
Novelization by Daniel DiManna
“Ah ne’er so dire a Thirst of Glory boast,
Nore in the Critick let the Man be lost!
Good-Nature and Good Sense must ever join;
To err is Human; to Forgive, Divine.”
– Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism: Part II, Line 525 (1711)
“Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending.“
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Elegiac Verse, st. 14 (1879)
PROLOGUE
Wars.
Pollution.
A relentless progression of conflict, death, and environmental destruction.
These were the sins that awoke the mighty beasts of the Earth. Beasts of tremendous size and seemingly limitless forms. Giants of scale and hair, of claw, fang, and wing. Some came from deep within the very crust of the planet. Others came from the sea. Still more seemed to simply appear from nowhere, as if summoned forth by divine retribution. Time and time again, the monsters came. Time and time again, they burned, crushed, and toppled everything in their path. Cities fell, were rebuilt, and fell again. Millions of lives were lost. And still, the monsters came.
At long last, mankind came to a collective decision: if the beasts were to fall, it would only be by the collective hand of a united humanity. Centuries of differences were cast aside. Alliances were forged in the name of survival. The senseless wars waged between the many factions of humanity ceased at last, replaced by a new kind of conflict.
Henceforth, men would war solely against monster. The Earth Defense Force was born. And the beasts they’d awakened began, at last, to fall.
But mankind had not achieved these tentative first victories alone. For amongst their kind, a growing number of anomalies had suddenly arisen. With no explanation or clear catalyst, humans with enhanced physical abilities had begun to appear around the world. They could move with shocking swiftness, react faster than even the most well-trained athletes or soldiers. They were agile, strong, focused. Human, and yet, something more. Something different.
They were the first mutants. The dawn of a new race of humans on Earth. An evolutionary leap that defied clear rationalization. But mankind has never needed to rationalize or explain what could, instead, be so easily weaponized.
And so, the Earth Defense Force sought out these mutants. They were gathered, trained, turned into soldiers for the cause. Almost immediately, the EDF’s newly founded M-Organization would turn the tide of mankind’s monster war. New weapons were developed. Guns, tanks, and Maser Cannons gave way to massive flying warships. The mutant-led attack squads began to win. Soon, no monster could hope to stand long against their collective, superhuman might.
None, that is, save one.
Amongst the pantheon of Earth’s towering beasts stood a King. A monster against whom no man or mutant could hope to emerge victorious. It had emerged in 1954, descending on humanity as a wrathful god upon a sinful people. In its arrogance and quest for ever-more destructive power, mankind had enraged this god beyond any hope of forgiveness, and its vengeance had been nothing short of apocalyptic.
In the times since, this beast – this “King of the Monsters” – had risen to threaten the world many times. It had become the single the greatest enemy of the EDF and its mutant peacekeepers, regarded as a force of nature long feared undefeatable, unknowable, indestructible.
Its name is…
………………………………………………
Godzilla bellowed, back arched and eyes skyward, into the snow-shrouded Antarctic night.
Through the thick blizzard, the beast’s shape could be seen in flashes, illuminated by the unrelenting blasts of mankind’s weapons. Ineffective weapons, soon to be charred into scrap and left to rot and corrode within an icy tomb.
It didn’t take long for the blasts to cease. No tanks or Masers remained to light the skies with the horrific shine of war. All that remained was the silhouette of the King, massive and unwavering as always.
And the beast would have one more opponent to topple before the battle was through. One last addition to the graveyard of vehicles that surrounded his massive body.
The sound of shattering ice split the frozen air, soon joined by the low hum of giant engines and the whirring of mighty machinations. From the glacier opposite Godzilla, the gray and muddy-red hull of a tremendous vehicle burst forth. It appeared for all the world to be a submarine, albeit with a size comparable to Godzilla and the necessary rockets, thrusters, and gliders needed for powered flight. Its front end was dominated by a massive, spinning drill, and on its top rested multiple missile launchers and a massive conning tower.
The craft slowed as it neared Godzilla’s position. The monster’s eyes were firmly locked onto the sub, staring it down as a predator might stare down its prey.
Inside the conning tower, the eyes of Commander Jinguji – acting Captain of the EDF warship Gotengo – were staring back with equal intensity.
The bridge of the warship was intense and silent amidst the chaos of battle. The face of every officer and technician was trained on the screen in front of them, focused on their living mountain of a target. They’d arrived too late to save the brave soldiers within the tanks, and they knew their chances at avenging them were narrow at best. But there was no other choice: they would make their final stand against the beast here, far away from civilization, and they would defeat it… or die trying.
“The target is in range. Ready to fire.”
Commander Jinguji did not break his focus on the screen as he gave the long-awaited order.
“Fire!”
A bevy of missiles sailed from the Gotengo’s forward launchers, splitting the frozen air as they slammed into Godzilla’s hide with deft precision. The sparks and smoke cleared. The monster remained.
Retaliation was swift and effective. A brilliant blue light began to illuminate the detritus in the air, and Godzilla’s atomic ray ripped forth like thunder to strike the Gotengo. The craft was more than capable of surviving a direct hit from such a weapon, but not without side effects. The hull began to list starboard, then port, rapidly rocking back and forth as precious altitude was lost. The ship pivoted, dipped, and finally collided with the ice, coming to rest 50 meters or so from Godzilla’s position.
The crew on the bridge had braced for the rough landing, but their focus on the fight had been broken. As sparks shot from compromised controls, the Commander roared his next command.
“Fire again!”
Orders flooded the small room from every direction. “Prepare to fire!” “Reload the missiles!” “Give me a damage report!” Personnel scrambled to control any damage and prepare for the next assault. As they prepared, Godzilla stood unmoved before them, defying them to make their final stand.
Then, a rumble.
It started subtly, then gradually began to increase in its intensity. The ground beneath the Gotengo was shaking, and shaking violently.
Outside the ship, the sound of fracturing ice assaulted the night. A massive split had begun to form within the ice, splintering like an opening zipper as it carved a jagged path along the ground. Perhaps it had been the strike of a stray missile against the nearby mountain. Perhaps the weight of Godzilla’s tremendous body had proved too great a burden for the landmass to support. Perhaps it was an act of God, or of nature, or of luck.
Whatever the cause, a great chasm was beginning to form as the split continued to advance. Its path soon converged with Godzilla’s position, and the ground gave way beneath the monster’s feet. His focus on the Gotengo broken, Godzilla let lose a cry of confusion and shock as its body flailed upwards, then gradually began to descend into the chasm.
Jinguji watched as the creature disappeared from the Gotengo’s viewscreen. He knew exactly what needed to happen next.
“Target the mountain! Fire now!”
Heeding the Commander’s order, a young man clambered into the operating seat of the Gotengo’s missile control panel. He grasped the firing lever, let out a defiant yell, and pulled backwards.
A dozen missiles shot through the night sky, arcing over the battlefield before plummeting back down and striking the frozen mountain. The avalanche of ice and earth was immediate, sweeping like a wave toward the chasm and tumbling into its open maw. Through the chaos, one final roar echoed from the depths. And then, silence.
Jinguji finally broke his gaze away from the screen. The sound of cheers began to fill the bridge of the Gotengo. Against all odds, after so many battles and so much destruction, they had achieved a victory. There would surely be many more monsters to come, but none so terrible as the one they’d just entombed.
Come what may, humanity could now take solace in one thing: Godzilla was gone, and it would take nothing less than an act of God – or madness – to bring him back.
NEXT CHAPTER COMING SOON
The Godzilla Novelization Project 