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Description

Anguirus

Intro: Nature inherently seeks balance. One of the most easily observable aspects of this truth is the relationship between predator and prey. No matter how efficient a predator may be, there will always be some creatures with nigh impenetrable defenses. Yet no matter how strong these defenses may be, there will always be points of weakness which the most skilled predators may breach. This evolutionary arms race has resulted in many natural adversaries in Earth’s history. For the Leviathan, Godzilla, one of the most powerful and persistent of these adversaries is the Behemoth known as “Anguirus”.

Story: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, secret expeditions to remote areas revealed the past and possibly continued existence of orders of life that hadn’t even been guessed at. One of the most profound of these discoveries was a massive kaiju bonebed in Antarctica. The fossils were extraordinarily ancient, and consisted of various undescribed species. Two types, however, were most common. One, a serpentine, small-armed form, is now believed to have been an ancient precursor to Godzilla. The other, a spikey quadruped, is presumed to have been ancestral to Anguirus. Almost all specimens of these “Godzillasaurs” and “Angilasaurs” bore bite and claw marks from each other, and several were even preserved locked together in mutually destructive combat. Both showed evidence of feeding primarily on radioactive material, and evolved over hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, of years in direct competition with each other, leading to the creation of the most fearsome and powerful beings the world has ever seen. Needless to say, these sites were kept a highly classified secret until the revival of one of these said beings…

After the defeat of Godzilla, and later Rodan and his mate, the Pacific Rim continued to increase in volcanic activity. Over the next couple years, there were numerous reports of strange activity within the fiery calderas. Both research teams and more daring civilians claimed to see massive objects moving about within the active lava, starting in northern Japan, and gradually moving southward. The activity came to a head when, in 2020, a huge, spine-covered creature erupted from Mount Fuji, and dragged itself towards Osaka, causing numerous fires along the way with its’ superheated skin. Once it reached the bay around the city, it curled into a ball and formed a sort of spikey chrysalis. Its’ body cooled while processing all the nuclear elements it had amassed into a new, thicker hide. All attempts at breaking the armor were ineffective.

Meanwhile, to the world’s further horror, Godzilla himself arose once again from the very volcano he’d fallen into. He made short work of the still-under-construction containment facility and escaped into the sea, heading directly for Osaka. Upon his arrival, Anguirus reactivated and engaged in battle. However, as the quadruped’s armor had yet to fully form, he was easily crushed by Godzilla’s onslaught. As a last resort, Anguirus detached his tail, which burrowed into the earth and escaped.

Over the next couple weeks, Anguirus regenerated while moving beneath the Earth’s crust. He resurfaced in Hawaii, now with stronger, more complete armor, and gorged on the energy of the island’s volcanoes. Godzilla was quick to pick up his trail, and the two monsters met once again in Honolulu. After a long battle, during which the city was utterly devastated, it was Anguirus that found the advantage this time, disemboweling Godzilla before caving his skull in with a blow from his tail. Before a killing blow could be delivered, Anguirus was successfully drawn away from the island with infrasonic sounds mimicking his own.

As the spiked monster moved south, Godzilla lay in a coma in the ruins of Hawaii’s capitol. He was found to be regenerating via a secondary brain in his hip region. Now a conundrum: Either take advantage of Godzilla’s more vulnerable state to rid the world of his menace, and then merely hope that somehow the same can be done to Anguirus despite him being potentially even more durable. Or allow Godzilla to heal and let him take on Anguirus once more as the one known creature best evolved to do so. A compromise was struck when a series of remotely activated bombs were placed inside Godzilla as he healed to be detonated when/if he was victorious.

Anguirus was eventually drawn to the Antarctic fossil bed, partly out of the infrasound signals, and partly out of instinct. Godzilla soon caught up, and the two kaiju battled once more among the bones of their ancestors. After nearly a full day of uncertainty, Godzilla eventually began to get the upper hand. After draining Anguirus of almost all his fiery blood, and crushing his spinal column multiple times, the great Behemoth finally slowed, then halted visible activity. The bombs within the victor were activated, but not to the desired effect. Godzilla’s internal radiation had rendered most of the bombs nonfunctional. The damage was still enough, though, to force him to cease activity to regenerate. Before anything more could be done, the ice shelf upon which the kaiju’s battle had taken them to sunk beneath the freezing waves, carrying both ancient combatants into the depths…

Abilities: Anguirus is more durable and heavily armored than almost any other known being, including Godzilla. In combat, his tactics are brutally simple. He forces opponents to the ground with his shear weight, and then mauls them with his extremely powerful beaked jaws, which act like a set of giant shears that can slice through stone and metal alike. He can also charge into enemies with unexpected speed for his size, and gore them with his nose horn. His tail, too is a deadly weapon, able to be swung about like the world’s biggest mace/club.

Anguirus has come to be known as a “Biolithic” organism; a kaiju whose physiology is composed of over 70% mineral matter. A very literal embodiment of the term “living fossil”. He consumes mostly radioactive elements within active volcanoes, and travels by swimming through the magma beneath Earth’s crust. He is a poor swimmer, and can only crawl along the seabed, though he won’t drown. When in need of rapid over-land travel, he can curl his body into a ball of stony horns and spikes and roll across the terrain. His armored hide is composed of various mineral alloys, only slightly more vulnerable at the relatively softer joints. This armor is metabolically regrown on a molecular level, essentially making it a single giant molecule, extremely resistant to damage.

His system is regulated by a series of ganglia throughout his body. The three main brains are located within his skull, his anterior dorsal region, and at the base of his tail. Only significant damage to all three brains will begin to slow his movements. His regeneration is comparable to Godzilla’s. He can also occasionally generate high temperatures across his body surface to ward off attackers.

Character: Anguirus, though highly dangerous when angered, is an otherwise simple kaiju. He spends his time travelling to viable feeding areas, grazing on volcanic rocks, seldom minding other beings around him. When agitated, however, he is every bit as relentless as his old foe, Godzilla, whom he now seems to regard with an odd kind of respect. His shear perseverance is often enough to ward off would-be aggressors, and he won’t hesitate to make meals out of smaller kaiju should their presence prove annoying. Despite his territoriality, he is sometimes seen howling in apparent attempts at long-distance communication, which to this day have gone unanswered. Though professional agencies warn against anthropomorphism, the fossil beds do seem to indicate that his species used to travel as herds…

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Anguirus is copyrighted by Toho

————
EDIT:
Sorry folks, but due to technical circumstances, I will not be able to upload the next installment of this series tomorrow, and maybe not for the next few days. It will be published as soon as possible, though, and will something of a two-parter. Something to do about an ancient arthropod goddess...

Description

Anguirus

Intro: Nature inherently seeks balance. One of the most easily observable aspects of this truth is the relationship between predator and prey. No matter how efficient a predator may be, there will always be some creatures with nigh impenetrable defenses. Yet no matter how strong these defenses may be, there will always be points of weakness which the most skilled predators may breach. This evolutionary arms race has resulted in many natural adversaries in Earth’s history. For the Leviathan, Godzilla, one of the most powerful and persistent of these adversaries is the Behemoth known as “Anguirus”.

Story: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, secret expeditions to remote areas revealed the past and possibly continued existence of orders of life that hadn’t even been guessed at. One of the most profound of these discoveries was a massive kaiju bonebed in Antarctica. The fossils were extraordinarily ancient, and consisted of various undescribed species. Two types, however, were most common. One, a serpentine, small-armed form, is now believed to have been an ancient precursor to Godzilla. The other, a spikey quadruped, is presumed to have been ancestral to Anguirus. Almost all specimens of these “Godzillasaurs” and “Angilasaurs” bore bite and claw marks from each other, and several were even preserved locked together in mutually destructive combat. Both showed evidence of feeding primarily on radioactive material, and evolved over hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, of years in direct competition with each other, leading to the creation of the most fearsome and powerful beings the world has ever seen. Needless to say, these sites were kept a highly classified secret until the revival of one of these said beings…

After the defeat of Godzilla, and later Rodan and his mate, the Pacific Rim continued to increase in volcanic activity. Over the next couple years, there were numerous reports of strange activity within the fiery calderas. Both research teams and more daring civilians claimed to see massive objects moving about within the active lava, starting in northern Japan, and gradually moving southward. The activity came to a head when, in 2020, a huge, spine-covered creature erupted from Mount Fuji, and dragged itself towards Osaka, causing numerous fires along the way with its’ superheated skin. Once it reached the bay around the city, it curled into a ball and formed a sort of spikey chrysalis. Its’ body cooled while processing all the nuclear elements it had amassed into a new, thicker hide. All attempts at breaking the armor were ineffective.

Meanwhile, to the world’s further horror, Godzilla himself arose once again from the very volcano he’d fallen into. He made short work of the still-under-construction containment facility and escaped into the sea, heading directly for Osaka. Upon his arrival, Anguirus reactivated and engaged in battle. However, as the quadruped’s armor had yet to fully form, he was easily crushed by Godzilla’s onslaught. As a last resort, Anguirus detached his tail, which burrowed into the earth and escaped.

Over the next couple weeks, Anguirus regenerated while moving beneath the Earth’s crust. He resurfaced in Hawaii, now with stronger, more complete armor, and gorged on the energy of the island’s volcanoes. Godzilla was quick to pick up his trail, and the two monsters met once again in Honolulu. After a long battle, during which the city was utterly devastated, it was Anguirus that found the advantage this time, disemboweling Godzilla before caving his skull in with a blow from his tail. Before a killing blow could be delivered, Anguirus was successfully drawn away from the island with infrasonic sounds mimicking his own.

As the spiked monster moved south, Godzilla lay in a coma in the ruins of Hawaii’s capitol. He was found to be regenerating via a secondary brain in his hip region. Now a conundrum: Either take advantage of Godzilla’s more vulnerable state to rid the world of his menace, and then merely hope that somehow the same can be done to Anguirus despite him being potentially even more durable. Or allow Godzilla to heal and let him take on Anguirus once more as the one known creature best evolved to do so. A compromise was struck when a series of remotely activated bombs were placed inside Godzilla as he healed to be detonated when/if he was victorious.

Anguirus was eventually drawn to the Antarctic fossil bed, partly out of the infrasound signals, and partly out of instinct. Godzilla soon caught up, and the two kaiju battled once more among the bones of their ancestors. After nearly a full day of uncertainty, Godzilla eventually began to get the upper hand. After draining Anguirus of almost all his fiery blood, and crushing his spinal column multiple times, the great Behemoth finally slowed, then halted visible activity. The bombs within the victor were activated, but not to the desired effect. Godzilla’s internal radiation had rendered most of the bombs nonfunctional. The damage was still enough, though, to force him to cease activity to regenerate. Before anything more could be done, the ice shelf upon which the kaiju’s battle had taken them to sunk beneath the freezing waves, carrying both ancient combatants into the depths…

Abilities: Anguirus is more durable and heavily armored than almost any other known being, including Godzilla. In combat, his tactics are brutally simple. He forces opponents to the ground with his shear weight, and then mauls them with his extremely powerful beaked jaws, which act like a set of giant shears that can slice through stone and metal alike. He can also charge into enemies with unexpected speed for his size, and gore them with his nose horn. His tail, too is a deadly weapon, able to be swung about like the world’s biggest mace/club.

Anguirus has come to be known as a “Biolithic” organism; a kaiju whose physiology is composed of over 70% mineral matter. A very literal embodiment of the term “living fossil”. He consumes mostly radioactive elements within active volcanoes, and travels by swimming through the magma beneath Earth’s crust. He is a poor swimmer, and can only crawl along the seabed, though he won’t drown. When in need of rapid over-land travel, he can curl his body into a ball of stony horns and spikes and roll across the terrain. His armored hide is composed of various mineral alloys, only slightly more vulnerable at the relatively softer joints. This armor is metabolically regrown on a molecular level, essentially making it a single giant molecule, extremely resistant to damage.

His system is regulated by a series of ganglia throughout his body. The three main brains are located within his skull, his anterior dorsal region, and at the base of his tail. Only significant damage to all three brains will begin to slow his movements. His regeneration is comparable to Godzilla’s. He can also occasionally generate high temperatures across his body surface to ward off attackers.

Character: Anguirus, though highly dangerous when angered, is an otherwise simple kaiju. He spends his time travelling to viable feeding areas, grazing on volcanic rocks, seldom minding other beings around him. When agitated, however, he is every bit as relentless as his old foe, Godzilla, whom he now seems to regard with an odd kind of respect. His shear perseverance is often enough to ward off would-be aggressors, and he won’t hesitate to make meals out of smaller kaiju should their presence prove annoying. Despite his territoriality, he is sometimes seen howling in apparent attempts at long-distance communication, which to this day have gone unanswered. Though professional agencies warn against anthropomorphism, the fossil beds do seem to indicate that his species used to travel as herds…

--------
Anguirus is copyrighted by Toho

————
EDIT:
Sorry folks, but due to technical circumstances, I will not be able to upload the next installment of this series tomorrow, and maybe not for the next few days. It will be published as soon as possible, though, and will something of a two-parter. Something to do about an ancient arthropod goddess...