Nightmare Fuel / The Atomic Time of Monsters

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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In a universe full of giant monsters and aliens, it's only a matter of time before one finds some rather nasty surprises that it has to offer.

Volume 1

• The Superquake of 54. For one thing, it was triggered by nuclear testing, which means that it's our fault. But more than that, this thing spread across every land mass neighboring the pacific ocean and shook it to its core. It's measured as having a magnitude of 9.6, maybe even greater. To give you an idea, that's almost more than the Valdivia Earthquake of 1960, the biggest earthquake in our time. This one led to the deaths of around 4,000 people, and practically reshaped everywhere it touched. And on top of everything, THIS is what triggers the kaiju crisis.
• The build-up to Ahuul's appearance, with Collins bringing up a series of cases involving disappearing cars. The ones that were found were torn to shreds with no explanation, their drivers missing. It's only later in the part that we learn what did it.
  • The scene in which he attacks a young couple. He lets out his horrible screech, breaking the car windows, before swooping in and getting the car into his jaws. The couple can barely scream as he crunches the vehicle with them in it before spitting it out to feast on the viscera.
• Lerna nearly getting eaten by a Man-Eating Plant that looks like a cross between a venus flytrap and a pitcher plant. Collins isn't so lucky, though he manages to get out with his knife.
• Lerna and Collins having a collective Oh, Crap! when they seal off the Hollow Mountain cave...and keep Ahuul outside. At that point, the vile pterosaur decides that it's a sign for it to raid the human nest (the nearby town), and feast.
  • Ahuul's attack on Genriton. In less than a minute, he's able to eat about thirty people, and every line of defense fails against him. Had Tyrantis not shown up, he would have left the entire town a mass grave.
• The way J.C. Clark is able to make almost everyone he initially comes across reel in fear. He's outright called someone who looks like a new-age personification of death, and he's enough to make even General Sherman cower for a time. Even Lerna thinks that he's killed plenty of people in the past just by looking at him. Much later, we learn that there are plenty of other reasons to be wary of him.
• The attacks on humans led by the Myrmidant colony. All of their victims are mauve shirts, making it all the worse.
  • The first is the military officer. He hears a horrible shriek and sees tons of glowing green eyes in the night. It dawns on him that this is no ordinary situation right before the monster ants kill him before he can scream. Then they turn their attention to the nearby facility...
  • The next are a pair of scientists, Dr. Jacobs and Dr. Deemer. The latter is snatched up by one, which proceeds to eat away at his torso while the other escapes. After he contacts Area 51, he can only wait in quiet acceptance as the rest of the colony closes in to get him next.
• When General Sherman's army of tanks attacks the Myrmidant colony, they only manage to destroy one of them, and that's after it demonstrated the standard kaiju Healing Factor. Soon, the ants are all over the tanks, biting into them to get at the tasty humans within.
• After Clark has a plane drop a nuclear bomb right on the Myrmidant colony mound, it summons something far worse. A giant black scorpion named Girtabane. One of its first actions is to grab an attacking Ajaxant, and rip it into three pieces.
  • If one looks at her design, they'll notice just how similar its Nightmare Face is to the infamous b-movie monster its based on. The only saving grace here is that it doesn't have human-like eyes on top of that.
  • During her fight with Tyrantis, Girtabane injects him with her potent venom. It causes the retrosaur unbearable agony, and had it not been for his quick recovery, he would have been killed by the mutant arachnid.
• Once again, Ahuul is responsible for human death. That being the entire film crew that Gwen was working with. She's completely shaken when she recounts this to Lerna.
• Tyrantis and the Terror getting caught in a chasm rock collapse when the humans detonate the entrance. The jade kaiju is barely able to escape with his life while the Terror isn't so lucky.
• Mothmanud's first appearance. It shows up in San Modesto in its larval stage, and not only kills Mauve Shirt Mars Man Jackson, but almost everyone in the town. It's all gone by the time the beast is finished and ready to move on to somewhere else.
• One of the murals Lerna finds in Gorgolisk's temple depicts several Reptodites staring at a round shape surrounded by tentacles. It's the first indication that the kaiju have dealt with beings from space, and it won't be the last...
  • Also in the temple, Lerna realizing with dawning horror that the big statue of a large serpent isn't actually a statue. It's Gorgolisk, and sure enough, the beast doesn't stay sleeping for long. Thankfully, despite her looks, she's a good kaiju, and she goes after Mothmanud's scent instantly.
• Crustakra attacking the Ahab, tossing it into the air and getting Lerna thrown overboard. She would have drowned in the middle of a kaiju fight had Tyrantis not rescued her.
  • The fact that Crustakra, already an alien-looking Sea Monster, manages to beat Tyrantis and leave him heavily injured.
• Dr. Murnau implying to Lerna that because she knows so much more about the kaiju crisis than her designation allows, Clark might actually kill her.
• The monsters of Green Hell are extremely hostile to any and all intruders. Though Bobo is the exception, the other two, Chlorespa and Mantiresia, go on the attack as soon as possible. The worst part is that they're in fact being controlled by Dr. Murnau, who's using a special sound frequency machine to manipulate their actions. At one point for a demonstration, he summons them just to both make them feel horrible pain and then fight against each other. And he plans on using this technology on other kaiju.
  • He also casually implies that Crustakra has killed people that came to the island in the past.
• The Terror is revealed to have been converted into a cyborg monster known as the Thunderchild prototype, or as it is later known, MechaTyrantis. But when we first see it, it's in a state of complete and utter mental agony. The Terror feels as if he's in a nightmare from which there is no waking, and he can actually feel the places where his parts were replaced with robotic ones. And when Ludlow pilots him, he hears a secondary voice slowly overriding his own and taking over his very consciousness, and there's nothing he can do about it (for a while) except survive off of his hatred of Tyrantis. And I Must Scream has never applied so hard to a non-human.
• Ahuul ambushing and chasing Tyrantor with the intent on killing him and emotionally destroying Tyrantis. If it weren't for Tricerak, he would have succeeded.
• Ludlow going Drunk with Power as he ruthlessly beats up every Retrosaur he comes across while piloting MechaTyrantis. By the time his actual target Tyrantis shows up, he's beaten his mate down (with some admitted difficulty), along with many others.
  • It's heavily implied that Ludlow's losing his mind because his thoughts are merging with the more sadistic mind of the Terror.
• Just when it seems like MechaTyrantis is brought down, the Terror's consciousness wakes up, and finds itself filled with rage upon seeing how successful Tyrantis was at starting a family. At that point, he rips control away from Ludlow, and then demands that he exit the picture...with words.
  GET.OUT.
  • The Terror then blows the cockpit on his chest up with Ludlow in it, tackles Tyrantis, and flys him up in the air while strangling him with his teeth. When his flight capabilities are taken away, he lets himself drop into the sea with his rival, content that he's suffering too.

Volume 2

• While on the Pacific, Lerna and her team end up getting jumped by Old Meg, a massive great white/Dunkleosteus hybrid that's twice as big as Tyrantis. Speaking of which, she's able to drag him away from Lerna to an unknown fate. How our green hero managed to escape, we'll never know.
• Perry reveals to Henry that Japan's known about kaiju since even before the Superquake. But that's not the bad part. The U.S. government knew as a result. But since nuclear weapons were involved and they wanted to keep testing bombs for more world wars, they kept it a secret. It just goes to show how political rivalries can obscure the truth until it's almost too late.
• A massive and intelligent squid kaiju, Kutulusca, delivering The Worf Effect to the USS Atherick, a Destroyer Escort battleship meant to take on anything, by splitting it in half with all of its occupants inside.
• Karamtor is a rather freaky alien. She's twice as big as Tyrantis, has a proboscis for a mouth, and two of her four arms are silicon-based whirring chainsaws. And she uses them, too. Also, because she lives off of extreme heat, she's able to No-Sell Tyrantis' fireballs.
• Dr. Murnau hijacking Herakoschei's radio to talk to our heroes. He reveals that not only did the Spooks Organization design the robot they're in, but there are divisions separate from the main U.S. one, and they're around the world convincing governments that they're the only one of their kind and gaining funding and power as a result. A global conspiracy, this one is.
  • He also reveals that he wasn't hired by the Spooks Organization, he was found. More specifically, he was abducted by aliens when he was only ten, and they "altered" him in some way. He came back to Earth eventually...six years later, after which he was taken by the Organization for interrogation. Worse, they gave him the option of either joining or being executed for knowing too much. Lerna's obviously dismissive of this, but we eventually learn that he was telling the truth. We are never told exactly what the aliens did to him, but it's not hard to believe that he's the genius maniac he is because of precisely that. After all, it's later revealed that it was the Beyonders who took him and made him their spy.
• Gorale, despite being mostly darkly comedic in design, is still the result of two kaiju merging into each other by a freak accident. It's a little unsettling to see a baleen whale's head and torso haphazardly grafted onto the lower part of a Yeti.
• We've learned up to this point that A. kaiju have an amazing Healing Factor and B. nuclear weapons empower them instead of killing them. Well the U.S.S.R. didn't know that, and they dropped an atomic bomb on several of them. They took the hit, their healing went out of control next to each other...and they all merged into the Body Horror-incarnate abomination known as the Writhing Flesh. Even without an illustration (you can find it in the Characters page, it ain't pretty), this THING is horrible to look at or even read about. It's basically a walking mound of malformed limbs and appendages aware of its pitiful existence. And oh, its eyes are located within its mouth. The entire Siberian Monster Zone was created just to house abominations like it and Gorale. Frankly, it's a miracle it's such a Gentle Giant. Which is more than we can say for...
• ...PATHOGEN. Made from a combination of a part of the Terror's corpse and the infusion of a special strain of a fictional virus known as the Langsuir, it's not just horrific to look at (and there IS an illustration for it in the book proper) with it having a belly mouth full of tentacles and More Teeth than the Osmond Family, it's actively evil, oftentimes sporting a wicked Slasher Smile and even chuckling maliciously at times. The virus is in control, and it seeks nothing more than to spread and destroy everything in sight. And that's not even getting into how it can heal even from the worst injuries. For example, take an arm off? It'll just spawn a new one full of bony spikes. Try and hurt it at all? Prepare to see it turn into an unholy mishmash of teeth and tentacles just to eat and/or kill you.
  • The build-up to its appearance isn't bad either. Up to that point, after Dr. Murnau leads everyone to a certain location, they find the Writhing Flesh and assume that's the monster they were called in to take care of. It isn't. At that point, Murnau reveals that he was originally hired by the Spooks Organization to research reanimating viruses. The Langsuir was HIS creation, and he tested it on the Terror's corpse until it was to his liking. Sure, it could no longer infect other creatures as a result, but in the end, he gave rise to what he considers to be the perfect abomination. Wish granted.
  • Perhaps most striking of all is how this horror is so awful, so wretched in its appearance and power, Tyrantis is terrified of it. Tyrantis, that Fearless Fool. It's only due to his Heroic Willpower that he doesn't try and run away when facing it. And even then, it nearly kills him and his friends before the Writhing Flesh and Glypton intervene.
• After MechaTyrantis is revealed to still be the Terror on the inside, Ian Grant is blown up just like his predecessor.
• Pathogen is defeated, but then Dr. Murnau unleashes plan B, causing an earthquake right below everybody that results in a total cave-in. Tyrantis almost escapes, but then MechaTyrantis, ungrateful for his predecessor's assistance, gleefully blasts him so that he ends up buried.
• It's minor compared to most other things, but Kraydi, a giant monitor lizard, was given psychic powers by the experiments done on it by the Spooks. According to Dr. Praetorius, he can sometimes feel the creature probing through his brain. Just what would Kraydi want to do with any other being's secrets?
• The most horrifying experiment in Area 51 is not any of the inhuman beasts they have housed there. It's Asset Athena, AKA Minerva. At first glance, she's not all that bad, as she's simply a woman as tall as a building, but no less empathetic and intelligent. Nothing scary there. No, what's awful is WHY she exists in the first place. Clark made her from Lerna's DNA so that he could have a near-perfect clone of her at his beck and call. This man was so incapable of accepting the idea of Lerna not being her loyal employee that he made a clone just to feel like he could control her. Of course, Minerva doesn't' comply, but still, imagine if YOUR boss did that just because you weren't exactly how he wanted you to be?
  • It gets worse when you read how he says "I own you now" with such maniacal glee. Suddenly, Clark is less Man in Black and more Control Freak ex-lover looking to reclaim dominance over the woman who dared to have an independent thought over him. Altogether, it's every horrible misogynistic belief of the 50s taken to its grand extreme.
• Furious at how Minerva wasn't the loyal subject he wanted, Clark unleashes his most deadly ace in the hole; Asset Prometheus, AKA Promythigor. Originally, this beast was a Sasquatch, a peaceful cryptid ape, until it was captured and experimented upon by the Spooks (it actually made an Early-Bird Cameo in the last part of the previous volume while on an operating table). The result made him into a great giant capable of creating and manipulating fire. But what they did to him also drove him mad. Once the mind-control device on his head is destroyed, he doesn't stop fighting Tyrantis and Minerva. In fact, he turns out to be completely and utterly insane. He doesn't just create fire. He loves it. So much so that the tips of his burnt fingers can't heal anymore, and have been reduced to nothing but charred bone. His goal throughout the ensuing fight is less beating his foes and more igniting everything in sight.
  • By the time the arthropod kaiju show up, Promythigor hasn't slowed down, his foes are losing, and the entire arena they're in is covered head to toe in unyielding flames. Then the mad ape unleashes a shockwave of flame that causes a flurry of explosions to go off across the canyon, until one ignites a gas line. What follows instantly is a gigantic explosion of fire and destruction that leaves all of Area 51 a wreck and the battlefield, oh the battlefield, it's described literally as "a hellish vision of a world on fire", with Promythigor its flaming Laughing Mad ruler. If it weren't for Kraydi showing up at the last minute, every kaiju there would have been incinerated.
• Clark shooting Dr. Praetorius in the chest while just sighing in disappointment.
• Ullawdra is the first of the Martian kaiju to come to Earth, and she's not a good introduction. For one, she's an animalistic red flower beast whom's landing nearly hits Crocogon, Metringar, and Tricerak (coming extremely close to killing the leviathan). Then the alien beast emerges and starts immediately seeking water. It begins sucking up the entire lake it's near, ensnaring Metringar in its vines while doing so. If it weren't on the Martians' side, it would have been a greater threat than ever.
• Dr. Murnau attacking Typhon Island with a Killer Robot that Gwen names Frightron. It's an appropriate title, considering how many sharp weapons it utilizes, like a chainsaw-esque blade for an arm. After making Bobo reel in agony with his pain frequency, the doctor has the bot quite litterally Kick the Dog by kicking Tyrantor across the trees. And while it takes no effort at all to bring the robot down...that's not why it's here. As it lays there defeated, it plays a signal with one good translation: "Awake and destroy"
• Read that last line, and for a moment, take the time to remember Mothmanud. It was clear as day that the beast was an alien. Of course, the Beyonders must have sent it. But then the Beyonders show up to trick Rockwell into playing a signal what will supposedly make the kaiju all retreat into the Earth. He and almost all of America take the bait, hook line and sinker. The signal is played across the country, with Rockwell playing it in the White House...and the ground starts to shake. Suddenly, it's not just another larval member of Mothmanud's species that rises out, it's an entire ravenous f**king horde of them!!! In no time, the army of alien worms, just one of which was able to practically erase an entire small town the last volume, is tearing all of Earth's major cities and Typhon Island apart. Rockwell ends up getting eaten by one of them just as the horror of his mistake dawns on him. The Beyonders have begun their invasion, and there doesn't seem to be anything that can stop them.
  • The Beyonder Alliance in general is quite terrifying to behold. It's a whole army of tyrannical aliens whom destroyed Mars after they deemed its civilization too unfit to take care of themselves. They plan to do the very same to Earth, all because we spooked them with our nuclear weapons. No wonder the Reptodites called it devil's fire. The kaiju were bred precisely to take on this menace, and even then, both the Reptodites and the Martians have to rely on hope that it'll pay off.
• Commander Gat threatening to end Lieutenant Gray when the latter states his discomfort watching the Mothmanuds destroy civilization.
• The Beyonder Alliance and their kaiju descending upon Typhon Island to wipe out Earth's guardian monsters. One way or another, the planet's not walking out of this one unscathed.
• As the final battle seems to be turning in our kaijus' favor, the Beyonders realize they're out of options, and they release Murnau's monster. In other words, PATHOGEN IS BACK! And when the Great Beyonder starts bossing it around, it just stares at him, and bites down on his head, killing and absorbing him. Now more powerful than ever, Pathogen proceeds to shoot bony spikes at the Beyonder mothership, sending it crashing down to where the abomination can grab it and bite down on it, causing it to explode. Then it turns its attention to the monsters below it.
• The absolutely savage beating Pathogen unleashes on Tyrantis, flinging him around like a ragdoll until it smashes his head on a sharp rock, resulting in a Sickening "Crunch!" that leaves our big hero limp and tossed into the jungle to die.