Azuara Rises

   An inconspicuous rock jutting out from the sea, just one of many sited on a long list of possible inspirations for the locals of classical mythology and literature. One would never think anything of this tiny barely qualifies as an island rock off the South Western coast of Italy. A strange hum, like a song, unheard for thousands of years, causes birds to flock to the island. In the dead of night a yacht comes close enough that the drunken revelry on the ship fall into a trance steering the vessel straight into the rocks. If there are any survivors from the crash, there are none from what comes next. A blue circle of light in the form of some strange archaic symbol appears in the clouds above the tiny island; the birds flee as fast as their wings can carry them and all sea life is in a panic. It pulsates a moment and shatters like glass, tiny sparks of energy falling like snow upon the island. The island explodes and among the dust, debris, raging wind and waters a sound like the cry of a woman mixed with that of a million song birds singing in unison fills the air.

 

     The Italian Geological society reports it as a previously unknown volcano spontaneously erupting. The story makes the international papers, as a minor curiosity. A few lives lost and a tiny uninhabited island explodes. A few websites joke about it, a few groups add it to the long list of weird natural phenomenon in the world today alongside sink holes as the team discovered a massive chamber had been below the island that exploded out and then was filled in by sea water. Most papers would place the story somewhere in the third or fourth page well after the latest political scandal and celebrity gossip, mostly ignored and forgotten in the weeks to come.

 

 

   No one makes the connection to a strange rash of suicides and attempted suicides throughout the Mediterranean. First up the coast of the Adriatic several men, a few women, and even some sheep are reported to just walk into the ocean. One of these men who were rescued claimed he was hearing some kind of strange song and couldn’t control himself. Near Venice a super yacht reports that five of their patrons grabbed food carts and ran off the side of the yacht, life guards rescuing them reported that they were all trying to swim down, taking the food with them. Two of those patrons died later from water in their lungs as they weren’t even trying to hold their breath. Then nothing for weeks, as whatever hit the Adriatic seems to leave it, there are however unconfirmed reports of similar incidents along the Eastern coast of the Adriatic.

 

   An aerial survey studying weather patterns and oceanic pollution reports an odd soil plume spotted looping through the Adriatic and out into the Mediterranean as if something were on the bottom tearing up the ocean floor. Naturally conspiracy theories that few hear about or care about spread trying to connect this soil plume to the suicides. The closest thing to a connection is one scientist theorizing a chain reaction from the recent erupting island releasing gas chambers that affect some of the more sensitive to it individuals.

 

  After a few days the sediment naturally settles again and no signs of any gas are found in the water or soil. Nothing worth reporting happens again, that is until the Grecian Military goes on high alert, claiming some government has snuck a stealth submarine into their waters. Radar picked up something massive, over three hundred feet long moving almost completely silent between mainland Greece and Crete. What they don’t inform anyone of is that a submarine sent in pursuit was nearly lost as several hands on the ship went crazy and tried to open the hatches while underwater, one man even tried to climb out a torpedo tube. They were forced to turn away from the massive object, but not before radar could detect that the reason it was detected so late was due in part to how deep it was traveling and that it is making no mechanical noises, they picked up underwater wave motions indicating a form of underwater locomotion not used in large vessels only small robots designed to imitate living creatures, a slosh like water over gills or a jet of water, and a rhythmic sound like a heartbeat. Naturally the Grecian government just says, unknown submersible was in their waters.

   

     ******

 

     Strange things in the Mediterranean, but who cares right? So the search engine news stations have among a dozen stories some weird sediment plumes right there along with glowing algae elsewhere in the world, a rash of attempted suicides and actual suicides along Italy’s Western Coast? Most aren’t even reported outside their local towns, the incident near Venice? Drinking and a very dumb attempt to have an underwater tea party with Neptune’s daughter as one survivor put it blaming his behavior on the wine. No one has declared war on Greece yet, heck some even think they lied to get international attention or it was a USO (aliens in the sea), which has happened in Northern waters with local governments going all out, yet amounted to nothing after the object vanished and the rest of the world kept on moving on. This is the attitude of a young couple, John and Mary, just wed back in the states and taking their honeymoon in a far away exotic location, the Aegean Sea.

 

     John and Mary are scuba diving, leaving the boat in the hands of her captain they hired and his wife who came along to keep an eye on him with the newlywed foreigners; that and the two couples are friends thanks to business contacts. John and Mary are in the blue with their underwater camera taking pictures when a strange melodious hum, like something from an old sci-fi movie mixed with a strange exotic sound as though from some unknown wind instrument. Strangely the captain on deck and his wife feel tired and doze off to sleep; meanwhile underwater John and Mary start to dive down when the sound suddenly stops.

 

  John in still something of a daze notices something far below them moving, something massive. He takes out his camera and starts to take pictures. As Mary’s senses start to return she urges John to swim with her back to the surface, as they swim up, whatever the thing was below them dives deeper in total silence.

 

  “What the hell was that?” gasps Mary.

 

  “Some kind of whale I guess,” says John.

 

   ******

 

  “Dear God,” says Mary a few days later looking at their pictures on the laptop.

 

  “Is…is that…” starts John looking at what he knows are the digital pictures from the thing they saw underwater.

 

  “Did we see a mermaid?” asks Mary.

 

  The thing on the screen looks to be the back of a woman, covered in blue scales, the lower body hidden by a massive tail.

 

  “No…” says John zooming in, pointing at the tail, “It’s a tail, looks like her legs are under it.”

 

  The tail is long like a lizard’s, yet has spine like structures coming from its sides with a webbing between them, like some strange cross between a leaf and a fin with the tips of the spines extending just slightly beyond the webbing. It appears to have arms, they can make out shoulders but the arms are below her, in one picture they can make out what seem to be, relative to size wise, A-cup or B-cup breasts, between the arms; except there is an odd stiffness to them, the entire body is like that, more armored less fat and tissue like a human should look, like a gargantuan mannequin. They can’t really make out any facial details in the deep waters, but it does look like it has hair that is shoulder length, except it looks more like deep blue almost purple quills. It is hard to tell in the pictures, but it seems its method of locomotion is the tail undulating and quick paddles from the hands tucked up under it.

 

   “We…we have to show someone these,” says Mary.

 

  “No one will believe it,” says John, “I mean look at it…its huge, I mean we know it was huge but you can’t tell in the pictures, and it looks like a mannequin with scales and a tail. People will just say we hoaxed it.”

 

  Mary gives him a questioning look.

 

 “What?” asks John confused.

 

  “Just like what you said about all those bigfoot specials?”

 John shakes his head and rolls his eyes.

 

  They wouldn’t share the pictures, keeping the fuzzy depictions of the unknown leviathan a secret, especially after what happens, knowing that if they had shared the pictures immediately they would have been called hoaxers but it would be better than after the fact hindsight that could lead them to being accused of not warning the world of what was to come.

 

     ******

 

    Landfall!

  In the Light of Day All is Revealed.

 

   The waves bulge as the giantess of prehistoric stature swims into shallow waters coming upon the island of Cyprus. The local military forces as well as NATO forces had expected a submarine, nothing could have prepared them for this, as they see the back of the creature with the frame of a female athletic swimmer part the waters. It walks on all fours, bent of knee and elbow; her long fingers and thumbs sinking into the sediment under her massive weight and force, walking in a most unusual manner with her four fingers out in front and thumb positions behind the palm forming domes with her hands to support her. As she comes into even shallower waters she pushes off the sea floor, her tail clearing the water it sways about a bit behind her, its impressive length and fan like structure kicking up wind and waves forcing the NATO vessels to keep their distance. The she-demon of the sea (as the crew is starting to call her trying to come up with a name for her) does not stand up right as a person might expect from something so human looking, no, she is hunched over slightly, bent at the knee and walking on her talon like four toes, her arms are bent at the elbow slightly and her hands are turned towards each other palms facing with her claw like fingers and thumbs curved slightly as if holding something. This angle of the arms makes the three long spines on each forearm seem even more threatening.

 

      Her quill like hair moves under its own power rustling about, as she sways her head back and forth, her neck seems slightly longer than normal easily looking about in this hunched over position, her face is uncanny. It should seem attractive despite the dragon like scales and the three turned back violet spikes at the back of her jaws, but her oval eyes are too large and angled in such a way that it makes her seem menacing, plus the giant glowing blue eyes with cat slits doesn’t help. Her jaw relative to size seems a bit long and muscular, despite the smooth blue lips its clear her mouth is larger than the average human would be at that size; her features are just exaggerated enough to be in what pop culture refers to as “the uncanny valley”.

 

    Out of the water it can be seen that this behemoth of a female beast as a snake like underbelly, a lighter shade of blue than the scale of her dorsal side, although this pattern is only on her abdominals, under arms, inner thigh, up between her breast (which have the same scale patterns as her dorsal side only with larger scales and no signs other than shape of being even remotely mammalian), up her throat and the underside of her jaw.

 

   The awe striking presence this being exudes is short lived as it takes a few steps toward shore, and the order of “fire” is issued by the NATO fleet. Regardless of this thing’s intentions by its sheer size it could topple buildings, cause sewer, drainage, subway, and underground power cables to collapse, in fact the only reason NATO caught on to it moving underwater was from it severing sea floor cables near Egypt. The battle ship and jet missiles don’t seem to really phase the creature physically but they clearly irritate it. Many a person covers their ears as the being releases a horrific shrieking sound, every dog for miles runs in a panic. Blue dots of energy form in front of the being’s open mouth as its voice falls silent or falls into ranges humans can’t hear; her quill hair glows with a fiery blue energy. The dots converge into a single sphere and with what seems like a burst of breath from the beast it fires as a blue laser like beam, around it however is a shockwave like a continuous sonic burst. The beam cuts through several battle ships and the shockwave obliterates what is left; a blast that would come to called a Devastation Beam by experts comparing it to a concentration of plasma, light, and sound in one devastating package.

 

   The jets are ordered back to base as even without being hit the blast also caused a massive electromagnetic disturbance screwing up their equipment. Her attackers dealt with the being moves closer to shore, her feet sinking into the sand as easily as a human’s would through soft snow. Her saurian posture is short lived on land as the being stands fully erect and…sings. Not words, but a melodious euphoric sound. The birds land and fall silent, hypnotized by the sound, dogs and all other carnivorous mammals and reptiles fall asleep, the larger herbivores (goats and larger) fall into a trance and head towards the beach. The humans react to the eldritch melody in a most unusual manner, they fall into a trance, gather up everything that is edible, some even start cooking and baking things focused on nothing else, and not clumsily either, as easily as if they were fully conscious. A moment into this behavior and they start to chant, “Azu…ara….Azu…ara…” over and over in beat with a kind of rumble drum beat as the being is somehow making a whole chorus of sounds at once.

 

 

   Sheppard bring their flocks, bakers their goods, everyone else brings what they can to the beach leaving the foods and animals normally regarded as food at the beach but all separated like a flash faire. They bow and continued to chant “Azu…ara…” over and over even as the being stops singing. She returns to her saurian posture and bends down even further, resting her elbows on her knees, with thumb and forefinger like some massive crab she picks at the food stuffs popping them into her mouth, what must be like eating crumbs to a human. She seems dissatisfied by the “offerings”, and scoops up the beasts brought before her and consumes them as well. The tiny feast, barely even a palms full for her devoured she turns and returns to the sea.

 

     *******

 

   Epilogue

 

   In the time since this strange event, the public has come to call this Kaiju “Azuara” after the chant she causes humans to sing; some believing this to be her name regardless and by some psychic song power (dubbed the Siren’s Song) based on evidence of where she likely first appeared and its odd effects, is making people chant her name like some ancient forgotten god from the age when gods rose from the sea and were horned beings, theologians are having a field day with this, as are conspiracy nuts. There would be a scientific announcement on television, dubbed in various languages explaining that the Siren’s Song’s  effect changes when it passes through different mediums, passing through water caused it to change enough that humans would head towards it, in the open air having the oddly specific effect of making people bring Azuara offerings, even preparing foods.

 

   Some have claimed it a residual effect, others just human nature acting like a contest. However it seems that the places she makes landfall at least once every three to six months somewhere in the world (as she is not limited to the Mediterranean) the people under her “Siren’s Song” no longer just bring food to her. The people even when the song stops in many places have begun to create large dishes, giant pizzas, pasta, a whale carved up into giant sushi rolls (this hit international controversy), giant sausages, chocolate, BBQ, and many more. She has even returned to some places. Some cities have even begun making giant cooking ware and hope to find a way to attract her to try their local cuisine; as the Kaiju is oddly picky at times.

 

  It has been ten years since this Kaiju first appeared, while she does cause massive damage via her size and strength alone, and some nations have declared it illegal to try and attract her; some even putting bounties on her head, she has been officially declared a low threat, especially compared to some of the other Kaiju that have begun to appear around the world.