The reptilian giant was unprepared for such an attack, and it also wasn’t used to any force on Earth being capable of piercing its nigh-impregnable hide, let alone so easily.
Blood spewed out of the four gaping wounds inflicted upon Megadrak’s lower arms in thick spurts, and the pain was incredible. The dragon-esque beast roared in outrage as it felt the strength of its grip steadily weakening.
The kaiju instinctively understood its fast regeneration capacity could not seal the wounds or halt the blood loss if its limbs remained impaled in that manner. It thus displayed its propensity for swift tactical thinking to slam Kyowama’s head down against a rocky portion of the beach. It repeated this bashing of the worm’s cranium a few more times, and this successfully stunned the giant annelid.
Megadrak then exhaled a stream of its acidic mist upon the gripping tendrils, which inundated Kyowama’s polypodia with an intense burning pain. This severely weakened the ersatz tentacles, forcing them to withdraw from the reptilian’s flesh. The giant reptile continued holding down the head of its angular opponent with one hand while it began repeatedly pummeling with its other fist.
The monstrous worm realized even the thick layer of yellowish-green chiton covering its head couldn’t withstand such an intense thrashing for long, so it too responded with a surprise maneuver. The tubular creature revealed an extendable tooth-like spike from within the tip of its tail and lashed out its posterior region in a backwards curling strike. The tail spike sunk into Megadrak’s forehead, and was harshly retracted just as suddenly. That move tore out a piece of flesh and caused a fountain of blood to spew out of the resulting head wound.
The scaly kaiju leapt back with a roar of startled agony, an involuntary movement that forced it to release its grip and cease the punishing blows it had been raining upon Kyowama. Megadrak instinctively moved one of its hands over the wound to staunch the blood until its fast-regenerative ability could seal the deep cranial perforation.
The giant worm was quick to press the offense by lashing out with its tail spike again, this time slashing open Megadrak’s throat rather than inflicting a puncture wound. The bipedal kaiju jumped back even further, its roars of pain echoing across the breadth of the island and causing large flocks of frightened birds to flee their arboreal perches and take to the sky.
Megadrak would prove capable of resisting pain just as well as meting it out, however. The dragon-like kaiju took a cue from its tubular adversary by swinging its powerful tail and slamming the long whip-like appendage into Kyowama.
The worm was sent sailing through the air by the blow, its flight halted when it crashed into and bounced off a large rocky hill about a hundred meters distant. The monster coelomate wasn’t seriously injured upon hitting the ground, but the move did provide its adversary with a momentary respite, allowing the reptile’s fast healing ability nearly two extra minutes to do its work.
Upon recovering, Kyowama resumed its attack and slithered towards its reptilian prey with surprising speed. The giant annelid swung its posterior spike at the colossal reptile’s face again, hoping to pierce one of its eyes.
Megadrak once again demonstrated its superior reflexes by catching the worm’s lower section in its vice-like hands. It then punctually bit its massive jaws down around the end of the tail that contained the spike, and with one mighty heave, tore the offensive posterior fang clear off. The worm-like kaiju emitted a shrill shriek of pain as dark reddish ichor spewed out the gaping tail wound where its retractable tail spike used to be.
Megadrak took the offensive further by maintaining its grip on the worm’s posterior, and then lifting and repeatedly smashing the mutant organism repeatedly against the rocky ground in every direction. After doing this several times, the reptilian kaiju slammed its foot down on its stunned adversary and used the sharpened talons of its toes to tear four deep gashes in the worm’s chitinous flesh. Kyowama again screeched in agony while its long body wriggled in violent spasms. Ichor flowed like dark crimson rivers from the multiple tears in its yellowish-green, roughly textured hide.
Megadrak was satisfied that its foe would soon bleed out, so it turned and sniffed the air in search of its main prey again. It swiftly caught Koji’s scent, which it was able to trace back into the jungle, at the base of a mountain that dwarfed even the fifty-meter kaiju. The reptilian beast loped off in that direction, its severe head and neck gashes already having ceased bleeding and more than halfway healed.
This would prove to be an error on the monster’s part, as no sooner did Megadrak smash its way back into the foliage of the jungle than Kyowama began moving again, its horrendous wounds also rapidly healing.
The giant annelid was undaunted in its single-minded quest for food, and it began following the trail left by Megadrak into the floral verdure of the jungle. It moved in a manner more resembling the slithering motions of a snake than the slow, forward movement of a worm or caterpillar. Trees were casually broken in half and knocked aside before the tremendous weight and powerful undulations of the giant worm.
The final confrontation for all involved, human and kaiju alike, was about to commence.
***
After a lengthy jog, Koji finally found himself standing at the base of the towering mountain. I am going to name it Mount Koji, he mused to himself in the hope of breaking the extreme anxiety he felt while he waited for whichever of the kaiju would next appear. He refused to entertain the slightest notion that both would perish in battle, presuming either of them did.
It turned out the young man did not have to wait for long, as he soon felt the distinct rhythmic tremors of Megadrak bounding steps rumbling towards him. Within several seconds, the bipedal dragon came crashing through the trees to step into view. Why am I not surprised that you were the one to emerge the victor of that battle?
Koji quickly sent a message into the AVF microphone transmitter around his neck. “Megadrak is heading towards the mountain! I am leaving right now and heading for the beach on the other side of the island. Do what you must do, and please make sure it is the two of you and not this monster who joins me on the sand! Oyasumi, Itaru-san! And you also, Asuri-san!”
“Rest assured we will do our best to bury that monster under the mountain,” Asuri responded through a background of crackling noise.
“If we should not succeed,” Itaru chimed in, “then I preemptively apologize for failing you.”
“Much obliged for keeping my hopes up, friend,” the young man remarked as he raced back into the jungle towards the beach on the other side of the atoll.
Megadrak broke through the last line of trees in front of the newly named Mount Koji and again sniffed the air to catch the scent of its target. It was immediately distracted from this task by two simultaneous but unrelated sounds, both of which signaled an approaching threat: the whining roar of the two remaining F-51s descending from the sky, and a thrashing through the foliage that marked the fast approach of the still-living Kyowama.
Before the reptilian kaiju could react, the giant worm darted out of the surrounding flora like a projected arrow and slammed into Megadrak’s armor-plated sternum. The speed and force of the blow knocked the dragon-like beast back against the mountain, and its incredible weight triggered a violent landslide.
Kyowama pressed the offensive by darting forward again and successfully sinking the fangs of its extended proboscis into the lower throat of its prey. It then launched another sadistic offensive to bind its prey while it fed.
This was accomplished by piercing each of Megadrak’s arms to the side of the mountain with the extracted fangs from its polypodia, this resulting in an act that resembled a bizarre form of crucifixion. Kyowama next extended the already regenerated spike from the end of its tail and thrust it completely through Megadrak’s left foot and into the ground beneath it in a further effort to anchor its prey in place.
The giant reptile released a loud cry of anger and pain, immediately after which it acted by turning its head towards its left
arm. The draconic kaiju projected a stream of acidic mist over the two polypodia, and the sizzling corrosive fog quickly burned through the piercing tendrils faster than the worm’s regenerative ability could cope with the bombardment. The reptile then pulled its bleeding wrist out of the detached spike, which remained embedded in the rocky mountainside.
Megadrak next grabbed the two polypodia that tacked its other arm to the mountain and pulled them towards its jaws. It bit and tore the tendrils in half, thus freeing its second upper limb from impalement to the wall of granite.
After extricating its arms from the skewering clutches of its opponent, Megadrak used its newly freed hands to grasp the neck of the annelid. The reptilian kaiju attempted to wrest the teeth of the worm’s extended bowel from its lower neck where they were deeply embedded.
The hook-shaped teeth held tight, however, and Megadrak felt itself rapidly weakening as its opponent extracted large amounts of blood like soda through a straw. It was a fluidic feast that wouldn’t last for Kyowama, though, since the giant reptile sunk all eight of its razor-sharp fingernails deep into the worm’s yellowish-green hide. The deep red ichor of the monster polychaete began pouring out of each wound, and this prevented it from receiving the full benefit of its radioactive hemoglobin consumption.
The pain of the crushing grip and penetrating talons caused Kyowama extreme pain, but the worm-like kaiju was determined to hold fast and finish feeding no matter how much of its own life fluid was lost in the process. Megadrak realized the supply of mist in its oral sacs was running low, but it needed to risk another several second spurt if it hoped to fully free itself before its opponent sucked it dry.
The reptilian giant therefore opened its mouth and spewed its acidic fog over the middle of the worm’s latching proboscis, causing the tissue of the exterior intestinal track to rapidly break down with a foul-smelling sizzle. At the same time Megadrak pulled the worm away from it with all its remaining but still formidable might.
Kyowama remained resolute with securing its grip, but the searing pain from the combined assault of Megadrak’s talons stuck into its neck and the corrosive mist burning away at its extracted bowel were quickly proving to be too much. The spongy tissue of the proboscis exponentially weakened to the point where the reptilian kaiju could tear it in half and rip the worm’s body away from it. This left the severed bowel hanging from where its fangs remained sunk into Megadrak’s hide.
The giant reptile pulled the injured worm towards its face and bit deep into the annelid’s neck. Kyowama was unable to bring the penetrating spike from the tip of its tail to offensive use because it was still stuck through Megadrak’s foot and embedded into the ground beneath. The kaiju-sized worm could only struggle to free itself from the reptilian’s crushing jaw by pugnaciously wriggling the musculature of its segmented form. The crushing pressure of the dragon-like beast’s jaws held fast, though, and with a sudden jerk of its head, ripped the equivalent of its opponent’s throat out.
Kyowama screeched in dreadful agony as a huge percentage of its circulatory fluid gushed out of the cavernous bite wound like a crimson geyser. It writhed about in Megadrak’s vice-like grip for a few more seconds before suddenly going limp and showing no more signs of movement. The gargantuan reptile held the giant annelid’s insensate tubular body in its left hand while it reached down with the right one and ripped the worm’s tail spike out of the instep of its foot.
The great Megadrak next reached up and tore the hanging severed portion of the annelid’s proboscis from its lower neck.
In both cases, a chunk of flesh was ripped loose, but the monster endured, confident that its fast healing ability would quickly coagulate the blood near the wounds and seal the deep breaches in its scaly hide. The reptilian giant then tossed the unmoving body of Kyowama away, where it landed with a resounding crash somewhere in the middle of the jungle. The draconic beast released a great roaring hiss of triumph before returning to the task of catching Koji’s scent.
That action was also to be interrupted as Itaru’s and Asuri’s jets descended from the sky and into visible range before Megadrak could complete the effort.
“Lieutenant, the kaiju still has an open wound on its neck from where the worm attached itself,” Itaru said.
“I am thinking the same thing as you,” the Asuri replied. “Fire at will! Before the wound can heal!”
Both jets launched a pair of rockets, which they targeted directly at the location just above Megadrak’s torso where the still open wound was located. All four projectiles struck the epidermal breach, and the resulting explosions blasted larger portions of flesh from the kaiju’s nigh impregnable but compromised hide.
The monster bellowed in pain and fell back against the mountain. It placed both its hands over the enlarged wound to try and contain the massive amount of blood gushing from the gaping wound.
“Now, Itaru-san!” Asuri shouted. “While we have it on the ropes!”
The pilots made another close strafing descent and fired four more rockets. This particular salvo was not aimed at the kaiju directly, but rather the granite of the soaring mountain above it. As anticipated, the powerful multiple explosions triggered a massive landslide, which began speedily burying Megadrak in thousands of tons of rocky debris.
The kaiju still refused to give up its formidable resistance, and it began flailing its arms and tail about, smashing the larger pieces of falling rock into relatively harmless bits of rubble. The majestic beast thus began digging itself out of the collapsing debris faster than the landslide could bury it.
It summarily became evident this plan would not work unless some additional drastic measure was taken. And within a few moments, one such measure came to mind for Itaru.
“Lieutenant, the monster’s oral mist is very flammable, correct?”
“Hai.”
“And the reports suggested it likely has venom sacs in its mouth where the substance is produced. Is that also correct?”
“It is. But what exactly are you planning?”
“If I were to smash my jet into its open mouth and detonate all my remaining bombs at the same time, it could ignite the sacs which the monster uses to produce the mist.”
“Itaru-san, that is extremely risky! You would likely be killed, and…”
“And this monster needs to be stopped, or many more people than I will be killed.” His voice trailed off for just a moment. “It has been an honor, Lieutenant.”
“Itaru-san, wait! There must be another way!”
Before Asuri could make any further protest, the former island constable turned his jet directly towards Megadrak’s face, hoping to bait it into releasing another exhalation of its oral mist. He also hoped the kaiju’s natural cunning wouldn’t anticipate the extreme move he was about to make.
As he had hoped, the wounded monster steeled itself against the intense pain of its lower neck wound and opened its mouth in preparation for a lethal exhalation.
Itaru responded by accelerating his jet while simultaneously opening the platform on the bottom of the fusillade and releasing all remaining bombs at once. At the same moment Megadrak began spewing its lethal stream of mist, the high-speeding F-51 smashed into its mouth.
The released bombs detonated en masse, and the gaseous fog still inside the kaiju’s cavernous mouth was ignited by the flames. The mist-producing gas within its gullet sacs immolated, and a tremendous explosion ensued. Megadrak’s entire head was enveloped by the blast and appeared to be blown to bits.
The force of that explosion caused an even larger landslide, which Asuri augmented with another launched rocket. The kaiju’s struggle to resist had ceased, and its enormous form was soon buried completely.
The sole remaining pilot circled the area several times just to be certain, but nothing ever stirred from the thousand-plus tons of fallen rubble. It now seemed to be truly over.
The fighter pilot thus reported what had occurred back to his base, and requested that the naval transport ship t
hat was awaiting word from a location several miles distant from the island now begin its approach to the western shore of the atoll.
***
Several minutes earlier, Koji stood at the beach on the island’s western edge with a startled expression as he heard the huge explosion that occurred at the center of the island. He turned to witness the entire front section of the central mountain collapse. He prayed this indicated that the plan was carried out successfully.
His reverie was soon interrupted when a crackle of static erupted from the receiver around his neck. “Koji-san, are you there?”
“Asuri-san? I am here.” He closed his eyes and prepared for the worst, since he knew Itaru would have been the one to signal him if he had survived.
“It is over,” Asuri continued. “Megadrak killed the giant worm, and then its head was apparently blown up when… Itaru crashed his jet into its mouth and used the remainder of his bombs to ignite the flammable gas in the monster’s oral sacs. I then saw to it that the monster was completely buried under the mountain.”
“So… Itaru didn’t make it.”
“My sympathies. He sacrificed himself to save us all. He ended his life as a hero, and he shall be honored as such. Now please remain where you are. I signaled a naval vessel in the vicinity to approach your side of the island. I will continue circling the atoll until it arrives, and the vessel will transport you back to the mainland. I thank you for your invaluable service to the country, and for the great risks you took on its behalf. Over and out.”
Koji was no longer listening, however. He was instead on his knees crying, as he had incurred many losses over the past several days to mourn, with Itaru’s demise being the last of these.
Megadrak: Beast Of The Apocalypse Page 29