Gee. And I thought that by the time I started a new Godzilla story, I'd be finished with all of my main other ones, including Godzilla vs. the Zillas, so that I'd be able to concentrate on just one story at a time. And now it looks like this is my fourth one , and none of the others I've been working on are finished. Weird how that kind of things works, huh?

Alright, explanation time - what is this supposed to be? Well, as many of you probably know, there is an extremely talented artist over at deviantART that goes by the name of GodzillaSamurai - known on this site as simply GSamurai - who has been redesigning each of the Godzilla kaiju to make them more modern, realistic, and/or just plain cooler in a series called Godzilla Neo. With each of these pictures, he also posts a detailed biography for each of the that updates their origin stories and events from their movies to make them more plausible or tie in better to the rest of the movies; if you can spot all the references, he does this very cleverly in more than one instance. And so the idea, which I credit to ProudZillaFan, was born: If he's improving all the designs, why not do the same for the entire Godzilla series? So now, as you can see in our Forum, we have gathered up many authors and formed the Godzilla Neo Writers Group. Go to the Forum for more info on that.

But in the meantime, guess who got dibs on the rewrite of the original movie? That's right - me. I guess it's kind of a good thing that I'm accustomed to writing long Author's Notes, then (though I don't think they'll be quite as long for much longer), so that I can explain this whole thing to you guys. Anyway, I've got some really nice ideas in which I'll sort of be "reimagining" the dark tone of the first movie. In fact, I'm kind of aiming for this to be even darker than the film itself. Steep goal, I know, and the question of whether I succeed or not will probably vary from person to person, but I will at least be doing my best. Also, you guys should know in advance that this story is like a fusion of Gojira and Godzilla: King of the Monsters, so it'll still have Steve Martin in it and all while keeping the impact of the original version unaltered.

Okay, you guys have waited long enough. Let's actually start the story. Oh, and just so I won't have to say it again throughout the story, I own absolutely nothing.

Kaiju-Oh Gojira Neo

By GodzillaGuy

Chapter 1

Calm

It was calm. Too calm.

It was not the calm of any kind of genuine tranquility. It was not the relaxing calm that follows an outbreak of chaos. Japan had had its share of chaos; the deep, fresh scars, physical and psychological, inflicted on both the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on the citizens of their mother country testified to that. But this calm came from another source. This calm was the moment before the volcano erupts. This calm was the quiver of the bow as the archer nocks an arrow, aiming for his enemy's heart. It lay in the air itself, invisible yet tangible as if, by its presence, the air had become thick as mud.

The night was dark, and a cloud of fog hung over the eerily still waters, creating the disconcerting effect that it shrouded whatever secrets the ocean had yet to reveal to the outsiders who liked to believe they knew all of it that they required, but in reality guided their pathetic ships across it in haste for fear of encountering something that before then they had thought impossible. The sky was clear enough to see the stars and even a traveling airplane headed to the Japanese mainland, but the feel of the atmosphere was such that none of the sailors of the Eiko-Maru could scrape any hope or reassurance from it.

None were unaffected by the inexplicable feeling of impending dread that closed in from all sides and pressed inwards like the crushing depths of the ocean floor. Many of the sailors were gathered together on a corner of the deck, murmuring darkly about the dark omens that seemed to be scattered everywhere. Most of the rest tried to shake off the dread by playing their instruments together; yet this could not lighten their spirits, and the tune came out moody and depressing. A few had stationed themselves at the top of the ship, manning the searchlights and constantly scanning the waters, convinced that something horrible was going to manifest itself at any moment.

A sailor named Kurata glanced at the surface of the water and turned away again with a gloomy shake of his head, as though unable to cope with staring at it any longer. "I'm telling you, it isn't right," he said. "Look at the ripples the ship makes. They disappear too quickly, like they're being absorbed. Not natural. There's something wrong." The rest nodded in agreement. "And what about fish? We haven't seen any fish for days. Like they've all been eaten, or like they've all swum away from something."

"I'm more concerned about the feel of things," murmured another one, Osuko. "It's just how I felt before..." His voice trailed off and his lower lip began to tremble slightly, apparently in response to some memory he was currently keeping to himself. "Just stop and don't think for a moment, and just get a sense of the atmosphere." He paused, and many of them grimaced, as if the gloomy feel was amplified by the fact that one of them had pointed it out. He continued. "I've seen more than one lousy fishing season, but gut feelings like this aren't something you can just dismiss as coincidence or imagination. Not really. And right now, something is telling me that something is indeed very wrong. Like any minute, something's gonna happen-"

"What's that?" came a voice from above. They all looked up to see one of the sailors on the top of the ship, pointing frantically at the spot his searchlight was aimed at. The muttering cut off and the sounds of instruments were extinguished as everyone dropped what they were doing and ran to the side of the boat to get a look. The beam of light illuminated what appeared to be a dark, oily substance on the surface of the water.

Instantly, the murmuring returned furiously, and it was joined by more than one cry of fear. Many of the sailors backed away from the edge of the rail, holding themselves tightly and rocking back and forth in place as though fearful of losing their arms.

"Get us away from that!" yelled some. The rest of the cries were similar.

"It is an omen of death!"

"A dragon! It is the shadow of a sea dragon hiding under the water!"

"Change our direction!"

"Enough!" The crew turned to see Captain Ryuhei Akihabar looking at them sternly. "We are going in to take a closer look."

The babble of the sailors once again began to fill the air, but the captain cut them off swiftly. "This is no time for superstition. If this is another oil spill, they'll want to know about it back at the mainland. Now get ready to investigate." He glanced at the substance, gave a visible shudder, and turned away. "We'll make it quick," he yielded, then turned and went to go navigate the boat closer.

The spotlights swept the area around the apparition as the sailors on the deck nervously watched it and the Eiko-Maru steadily drew closer. The sight of them scanning the waters like a set of watching eyes made it seem like a prison break, further aiding the sense of anxiety. And all the while there was that dark, amorphous shadow sitting there in the water, and although it very well could have been a simple oil spill for all the sailors knew, none of them believed it to be anything less than a mortal threat. The level of creeping terror increased with every foot closer they strayed to it.

"So what do you think?" Kurata asked seemingly nobody in particular.

"I think I wouldn't touch that with a ten-meter pole," replied somebody else.

"Sorry," said Captain Akihabar, walking up from behind them. "The probe's only eight. Now, I want one volunteer on that and two more to prepare for diving-"

There was no warning. When one moment there was the blackness of night and relative quiet, the next a terrible light with the intensity of a nuclear blast stabbed into the eyes of everyone looking even remotely in the direction of the shadow as an unearthly bellow with the volume of a sonic boom shattered the air into fragments. Every sailor on deck screamed, reflexively slammed their hands over either their eyes or ears, and fell to the deck writhing, blinded and deafened all at once. A violent impact surged through the whole of the Eiko-Maru, and those who were not on hand to witness the event firsthand and had run up from the lower levels could see a huge, gaping chunk missing from the side of the ship, exposing the skeletal framework beneath as water rushed in to fill the space. Flames from out of nowhere clung to the ship's exterior like some perversion of decorations hung up to celebrate a momentous occasion, spreading over the hull like a breeding fungus.

Inside the main control room, the communications officer frantically but carefully and deliberately keyed in a message, ignoring the fact that his partner was lying facedown on the ground - unconscious or dead, he couldn't tell - as well as the steadily thickening trail of blood running down the side of his own face from where his head had collided with the sharp corner of the telegraph's panel.

Flash of light, he wrote in Morse code. Terrible sound. Whole ocean exploded. It's a hu-

Hundreds of gallons of water suddenly cascaded all at once through the shattered window, sweeping the man away from the control panel like a leaf tossed about in a hurricane before a combination of blood loss, head trauma, and lack of oxygen finally took their toll and wrenched the life out of him.

Outside, no more than one minute after the initial explosion of light, the entire ship was rapidly sinking. The entire middle section was already completely missing save for a few scattered wooden planks bobbing on the surface of the water, as if something massive had smashed right through it. What had but moments ago been an entire ship now resembled nothing so much as a large stock of battered metal and flaming wood that someone had carelessly tossed aside. The structure released one last belch of smoke as its fires were extinguished and the tops of the splintered pieces of the hull sank beneath the waves. A dark shadow obscured by the water and its own huge wake briefly swirled in a circular motion around the area where the Eiko-Maru had been seconds earlier, like a shark hungrily circling its wounded prey, before it too disappeared.

And then all was calm.

A/N: Other than what was mentioned above, I'll also be using some stuff, as I did here, from some abandoned ideas in some earlier drafts of the movie. This scene, for example, was inspired by an idea for an alternate opening that would have seemed more suspenseful, though I combined some of it with what was in the movie and added my own personal touches here and there to make it more detailed. Hopefully the end result was satisfactory.

So, please review!