Read up to 15 chapters ahead on Patreon - patreon.com/Light_lord
-----
New Jersey
The earth split apart with a deafening "RUMMMBBLLEE!"
Skyscrapers toppled like children's toys.
Highways twisted into broken coils of steel and asphalt.
Thousands screamed as the ground heaved, then cracked open like the jaws of a great beast.
From the abyss, the MUTO Prime clawed her way into daylight.
Her massive form blotted out the sun, forelimbs slamming against the shattered street.
Her body still bore the gaping scar from Godzilla's atomic breath, but nuclear ichor no longer poured from the wound.
Already, the damage had begun to regenerate.
"GAAHHHHHH!!"
Her roar shook the city's ruins, sending flocks of birds scattering.
This time, she wasn't here for reactors.
Not for submarines.
This time, she had come to find her blood.
The MUTO Prime's ruby eyes glowed, her body humming with electromagnetic pulses.
The air sizzled with static as she unleashed a long, piercing sonic call that rattled the windows of every building still standing.
For a long moment, nothing answered.
Then, from beneath the cracked earth of a ruined shopping district, something stirred.
"RUMMMMMBLLLLEEEEEE,"
The ground convulsed.
Pavement split open, swallowing cars whole.
The ruins of the mall collapsed into the pit.
And then, from the depths, she rose.
A colossal figure, larger than any female MUTO that had walked before her.
Monarch had never discovered her existence until she appeared in "Godzilla 2: King of the Monsters" when King Ghidorah awakened all the sleeping Titans.
Her carapace was jagged with battle scars, her body nearly one hundred meters tall, weighing over eight thousand tons.
Her back was lined with fresh spines, her forelimbs bristling with spiked growths.
The MUTO Queen had awakened.
Her shriek split the sky, sharp, commanding, alien.
Dust and ash blew away from her emergence pit as she unfurled her limbs and towered beside the MUTO Prime.
For a heartbeat, the city seemed to hold its breath.
Then, slowly, the Queen lowered her head, mandibles clicking.
Submission. Recognition.
The MUTO Prime hissed in return, lowering her own skull until their armored brows touched with a resonant CLANG.
Sparks of electromagnetic discharge rippled across their exoskeletons like lightning.
The ancient bond between ruler and heir was renewed.
-------------
POV – Monarch Outpost, Newark
"Jesus Christ…" Dr. Serizawa's protégé muttered, staring at the live satellite feed.
"It's not just another female. This one… It's bigger than all the others. Monarch readings say she's nearly Alpha-class."
Colonel Foster shook his head in disbelief.
"One was bad enough. Two of them, working together?"
The scientist's face paled.
"No… not two. She's telling something."
-------------
Back on the battlefield
The MUTO Queen clicked her mandibles, her red eyes flashing with remembered instincts.
She projected a cascade of pulses, frequencies too deep for humans to hear, but precise to the MUTO Prime.
Images filled her alien mind.
A cave of ice.
A clutch of eggs.
Dozens, hundreds, gestating in the shadows of Siberia, feeding off uranium ore buried deep beneath the permafrost.
The MUTOs had always been a divided species.
MUTO Prime, ancient and cunning, was a hermaphrodite.
Its method of reproduction was unnatural: parasitic spores.
Few in number, they demanded incredible amounts of nuclear energy to gestate, often embedding themselves in the reactors of atomic titans.
They grew slowly, but when they hatched, they were unmatched in strength.
From this line came the mighty MUTO Queen and the first pair of MUTOs that challenged Godzilla in 2014.
MUTO Queen, however, was purely female.
Unlike the Prime, she required a male partner to fertilize her clutch.
Once mated, she could lay hundreds of eggs at once.
These eggs did not demand such rare sources of energy—uranium, plutonium, and even nuclear waste could sustain them.
The incubation time was shorter.
But there was a tradeoff.
Her offspring were not as powerful as the Prime's parasitic line.
They were smaller, less durable, more akin to swarming insects than apex predators.
And yet... they were many.
If the Prime's lineage was like forging a single great sword, the Queen's was like raising an endless army of daggers.
MUTO Prime's entire body thrummed with fury and joy.
Her spores were burned away by Godzilla.
But now, here was renewal.
Here was vengeance.
"GAAAHHHHHHHHH!!" she roared, rearing onto her hind limbs.
The Queen shrieked in unison, her cry merging with hers, their combined scream shaking the city ruins into rubble.
Together, they would raise an army.
Together, they would bring the Earth itself to its knees.
-------------
Deep beneath the Siberian tundra – Uranium Mine
The elevator rattled as it descended into the bowels of the earth, carrying Emma and her team down into a tomb that should never have been unearthed.
Frost clung to the steel cage, and every breath condensed into white mist in the frigid air.
When the doors groaned open, the smell hit them first.
A foul, metallic stench, like rust mixed with sulfur, that cut through the filtered air of their masks.
And then they saw them.
Row after row, hundreds of colossal eggs lined the frozen cavern walls, fused into the uranium-rich stone like tumors.
Some were half-buried in frost, others glowed faintly with sickly red veins, pulsing as if something inside still dreamed.
Each was the size of a small car.
The cavern stretched so far into the dark that their lights couldn't touch the end. It wasn't just a nest.
It was a hive.
Miles' voice broke the silence, shaky but hopeful.
"These things… they've been here for decades. Look at the shells, they're frozen solid. They can't still be alive."
For a moment, the group allowed themselves to breathe.
Relief flickered across their frost-bitten faces.
But Emma didn't move. She knew better.
And then it began.
A low hum rippled through the cavern.
At first, it was faint, like wind whistling through cracks of ice.
But it grew louder, resonant, vibrating through their bones.
The Geiger counters on their belts went berserk, clicking and screeching.
"...Oh no." Emma whispered.
One of the eggs shuddered. Then another.
Then a dozen more. Cracks spiderwebbed across the frozen shells.
The cavern shook as hundreds of eggs began to tremble in unison, their glowing veins flaring brighter, beating like synchronized hearts.
'CRACK,!'
A jagged fissure tore open across the nearest egg.
Something wet and black pressed against the split, straining.
'CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!'
The sound echoed through the mine as the eggs began to split open all around them.
From inside, a distorted chittering cry echoed, alien, hungry, and impossibly loud.
"They're hatching!!" Miles screamed.
The first hatchling erupted from its shell, a grotesque silhouette of armored limbs and glowing red eyes, slick with black ichor.
The creature screeched, its cry answered by a hundred voices still clawing their way free.
Emma's stomach twisted.
She knew the truth.
MUTO Prime and MUTO Queen weren't coming here to awaken the eggs.
The eggs had been waiting for them all along.