Following the disappearance of Hydra and the discovery of their secret base on the moon, and having been destroyed by Destoroyah, Monarch wasted no time in sending a team there to inspect the remains of the installation and recover everything what the terrorists were planning, especially regarding the ruins of the extraterrestrial civilization that created the cyborg Gigan and which they seemed to be studying carefully. Three of the four astronauts sent by Monarch on this recovery mission had entered the silent remains of the base, a veritable dismal graveyard now while the pilot stayed in the cockpit of the spaceship, remaining aware about the communications with the earth. Locked in their high-performance spacesuits, the three agents crossed certain corridors, lighting with their head flashlights, and headed towards the room that interested them the most: the laboratory.

_"This place gives me goosebumps. It feels like Alien." Agent Ash commented.

_"Shut up Ash, this is not the time with your remarks." Agent Ellen, head of the expedition, replied sternly.

Suddenly, the third agent, Dallas, gasped in fear as the corpse of a Hydra man, floating in zero gravity, appeared right in front of him in the beam of his flashlight. His scream of fear made Ellen and Ash turn around and also noticed, seeing Dallas leaning against a wall, heart racing and trying to calm down.

_"Don't give us a heart attack, Dallas. You'll do that when we get back to Earth." Ellen then said.

_"I'm... ok, ma'am. I'm fine, no problem" Dallas stammered a little, starting to follow the other two again.

The three agents finally reached the base's main laboratory, which like the rest had suffered a significant amount of damage following Destoroyah's attack. However, some of the alien artifacts and records recovered from the ruins had been spared, and Monarch's agents wasted no time in beginning to recover them for careful study on earth. While Dallas and Ash were busy storing the first alien artifacts in a containment box, Ellen focused on a Hydra holo-tablet, still functional and which contained several photos of extraterrestrial texts collected from the ruins' archives and which , visibly, Hydra, seemed to have succeeded in translating most. Ash, noticing that Ellen was immersed in reading these holo-files, joined her.

_"Something interesting?" Ash asked.

_"Rather yes." Ellen commented. "According to this text, this civilization was called the Xiliens and they were not from the Moon. Apparently, thousands of years ago, they planned to conquer and colonize Earth with their supreme weapon, Gigan, killing the planet's protector, Godzilla. But they didn't have time as a giant three-headed dragon, which they named Ghidorah, arrived and wiped them all out before they could activate their new weapon... and this text ends there."

Although never having seen him in real life, Monarch agents knew who this titan Ghidorah was, the latter having been killed by Godzilla in Arendelle several centuries ago during a battle. According to ancient engravings found in ruins or caves around the world, Ghidorah was described as a dragon who fell from the stars a long time ago, a usurping king who tried to impose his power on planet Earth and establish a new natural order. With the discovery of the existence of Ghidorah, then Gigan and SpaceGodzilla, it was now obvious that other similar forces to the titans existed among the vastness of the universe, which was not the most reassuring. Who knows what monstrosities could have been generated in this endless space?

_"And... if these guys, the Xiliens, don't come from the moon, then where?" Ash then asked.

Ellen looked at the other translated texts one by one and ended up discovering something else that was both very interesting and frightening.

_"Apparently, they came from a very distant galaxy, and had fled their home planet to... escape something..."

_"Escape from what?" Ash then asked, a little worried.

_"They reveal almost nothing, as if they were afraid to talk about it." Ellen explained, looking at the text, feeling uncomfortable as well. "They speak of it as something that spreads, like a virus, leaping from world to world and leaving nothing but desolation behind. They gave him several nicknames like "The Devourer of Worlds", "the Smog Monster", "The Black Scourge"... But they referred to him by only one name: Hedorah."

This name, although unknown to them, sent an unpleasant shiver down the agents' spines, as if just mentioning the name was enough to trigger a feeling of fear. If this thing, whatever it was, had been able to cause an entire technologically advanced race to flee, they had no interest in knowing what that thing might look like.

_"This will surely interest Monarch." said Ash, in quite a hurry to leave the place and looking around as if expecting something to jump out at him from the darkness of the corners. "Can we leave now?"

_"Yes, let's go." replied Ellen, also uncomfortable, then activated her communicator with the space shuttle. "Parker, can you hear me? We're going back to the shuttle. Prepare for takeoff."

But to her surprise, the only response that came was crackling and interference on the transmission channel. She tried several times to call Pilot Parker, but nothing worked, everything was garbled. But as they reached the outside through the enormous gap through which they had entered, something unexpected awaited the three agents and which left them perplexed when they laid their eyes on it. About twenty meters from them, in the middle of a small crater, was what looked like a black meteorite, quite imposing, as big as a car.

_"What is that? It wasn't there before." said Dallas,

Ellen and Ash could confirm, before entering the base, there were no meteorites and no vibrations from the crash had been felt and their area sensors had not detected anything. Besides, looking at their scans, the thing didn't even appear. Really strange. But most disturbing was the appearance of the meteorite in some places, which seemed almost like...organic? Again, Ellen tried to contact Parker or even Earth, but to no avail, transmissions still scrambled. Suddenly, the meteorite began to shake more and more, larger and larger cracks forming on its surface.

_"What the...?" Ash then whispered.

He was cut off from his sentence when a piece of the meteorite suddenly burst from within and a thick tentacle composed of a disgusting grayish-black mud-like material erupted with lightning speed. Ash and Ellen gasped in terror, paralyzed on the spot as they saw their comrade Dallas, not having had time to react, being violently seized by this monstrous growth which completely surrounded his head and had lifted him from the ground, the unfortunate man uttering muffled screams and shaking his legs in distress.

_"OH MY GOD!" Ellen yelled.

_"DALLAS!" shouted Ash in turn, who without wasting time grabbed Dallas by one leg to try to pull him out of there.

But in the next second, other masses of the same viscous, living matter emerged from within the meteor, gradually flowing onto the lunar soil and wiggling and extending, forming more tentacles. One of them rushed towards Ash and, with a sharp blow and prodigious force, decapitated the astronaut to prevent him from recovering Dallas who was still struggling. Ellen stood in shock, seeing her friend's head floating in the air and his body now motionless, not even falling due to weightlessness. Dallas was then killed in turn, the tentacle holding him crushing his head like an overripe fruit and then leaving the lifeless body floating. Ellen fled as quickly as she could despite her space suit and the weightlessness which slowed her down a lot.

_"PARKER! HELP!" Ellen shouted in despair, with tears in her eyes, into her communicator while fleeing, the monstrous pile of living and tentacular mud, almost as large as a man, launching itself in pursuit and seeming much less affected by the effects of the weightlessness.

It only took a few seconds for this thing to catch up with her, grabbing her by the legs and then pulling her towards him. Ellen screamed in pain, the mud the thing was made of having a burning effect like acid and piercing her spacesuit like paper. Trying in vain to scrape the ground with her hands to hold herself back, Ellen could only scream with all her fear as the thing dragged her towards him, revealing from its viscous mass some sort of globular inhuman eyes staring at her with frightening intensity.

Meanwhile, Parker remained in the cockpit, more bored than really paying attention to what was happening. He had noticed Ellen's various attempts to call on the dashboard, but each time the same interference prevented any communication, which frustrated him to no end. But finally, he received a signal from the shuttle's outer door and saw that now transmission seemed to be restored.

_"Ellen, is that you? I was starting to worry." Parker said into the radio.

_"Open the gate." then replied Ellen's voice, sounding a little strange, as if void of all emotion, but knowing his team leader to be a rather taciturn and usually rather closed person, Parker smiled softly, suspecting that she was tired of this mission and that she would still be in a bad mood.

_"Exterior airlock open." Parker warned, pressing the button in question, then left the cockpit to greet his comrades in front of the interior airlock door. Parker waited a few moments, watching for the small green light on the side that would indicate when the exterior airlock would be closed, the oxygen in the airlock had returned, and it was safe to open the interior.

Once the green light was activated, Parker activated the interior airlock opening system, the automatic doors of which moved apart very slowly and already began to return towards the cockpit, yawning, without a backward glance.

_"Well, not unhappy to finally come home." the pilot commented.

But as he walked and opened the cockpit airlock, Parker only heard footsteps, accompanied by strange noises, approaching behind him at high speed. The last thing he saw, barely having time to turn around and let out a cry of fear, was Ellen, or rather her torn body with dislocated limbs, manipulated like a living puppet by this living mud which covered her and let out a distorted and inhuman roar.

While the pilot was horribly mutilated and killed by the hands of the manipulated corpse of his own teammate, the creature had split into two distinct parts, the second having entered the devastated hangar of the Hydra base. Seeping into the conduits of a still-working space shuttle, the thing began absorbing and feeding on the polluting components that made up the shuttle's fuel, but its other half did not do the same with the Monarch shuttle's fuel. He needed it to be able to take off, because his next destination was already found... This little blue planet on the horizon... he felt it... A veritable new giant pantry just waiting for him. Eating, growing, surviving, quenching that endless hunger, nothing else mattered. There was nothing but HIM.