Slateport City. The Country of Hoenn. 1999.
At the airport of one of the most famous cities of Hoenn, the landmass that was half the size of Japan and was located to the east of Hawaii, A man wearing black and bright blue robes stood along with his men, waiting for his old friend and rival.
Soon enough, a private plane bearing the official flag of Hoenn, an Emerald loop encasing twin orbs of crimson and blue like a Yin-Yang symbol, landed on the strip, allowing its passenger to step out.
Elder Kaito of the Outer Tribe stepped out of the plane and took a deep breath of the pure air of Hoenn that was free of the pollutants found across the more industrialized cities of the world. His emerald scale-patterned robes stood out in the sun due to their shine and hue.
Stepping down from the airplane, Kaito spotted his friend and smiled.
"Damian. Looks like you made it after all."
Elder Damian of the Inner Tribe gave his friend an annoyed look.
"No thanks to you. I only left the communion because you told me that you had something important to discuss with the council."
A reverent look formed on Elder Kaito's face at those words, one that was shared by everyone under his command.
"So, it is true then? He really....?"
Damian nodded his head.
"He did. Even if it was a brief thing, as if he was testing the waters, so to speak. But it is still progress."
"Progress indeed. He has not descended on a human settlement for a long time now. Given that he was even willing to take a look at us means that our efforts to reconcile are finally bearing fruit."
Kaito and Damian started to walk towards the car waiting for them outside, while their men started the process of unloading their cargo.
Despite being one of the largest economies on the planet, right alongside the top countries, there was very little traffic on the roads of the city.
This was due to how the culture in Hoenn had developed thanks to their origins.
Unlike most countries, the people of Hoenn, no matter the city, do not depend too much on technology for their day-to-day lives.
To commute from one place to another, they usually use something like bikes, either purely mechanical or electric, depending on the owner's taste.
Powered vehicles were used purely for logistics and public transport.
And even then, they tried as much as possible to use vehicles that did not cause too much pollution to their environment as possible, such as their revolutionary bio-fuel based combustion engines that replaced regular crude oil based fuels.
To provide power for their homes, Hoenn had adopted the use of Geothermal plants across their land, along with Hydropower and Windpower wherever possible.
Their air force, navy, and military were also powered in a similarly sustainable way as much as possible.
In fact, Hoenn's military power was so advanced that they were already looking into 'powderless' weapon systems such as Railguns and Coilguns, and trying to make them mainstream in their military. Although the research into those topics was going rather slowly due to certain reasons.
All in all, nobody in the world could ever ignore Hoenn as a powerful nation, no matter what metric they used. Economically, technologically, environmentally, or any other way, Hoenn was a powerful nation.
And yet, despite these advancements in technology and improvements in lifestyle and their existence as a popular vacation spot across the world, the people of Hoenn had not lost their identity or their culture.
The native people still wore their traditional garbs and jewelry and maintained their ancestral culture.
They still liked to depend on the traditional approach to most things, including growing food and gaining water.
Even in terms of housing, the Hoenn people still loved to build their houses out of the local resources and their ancestral methods that had withstood the test of time.
And most importantly, despite the great efforts of the many missionaries and preachers from other religions and faiths trying to convert them over the millennia they have been living here, these people never lost faith in their own culture and religion.
After all, how could they be converted to believe in another god that they could neither see nor hear when their gods were only a telescope, a seismograph, or a hydrophone away?
As their car went through the usual security checks, verifying the stuff they were carrying and their identities as the Elders of the tribes, which they proved with their rings and a retina scan, they soon left Slateport City and headed deeper into the mountains, where they had a private tunnel that only the Elders of the tribes were allowed to use. A tunnel that cut down a several hour-long drive from Slateport City to the capital of Hoenn, Sootopolis City.
"Are all the other Elders gathered?"
"Yes. Kaito. They are. Although Elder Maya was not happy about being interrupted. She will rip you a new one when she sees you."
Kaito smiled wryly at those words.
"Well, she is one of the three main elders of the Inner Tribe and a priestess of the Moving Mountain. It makes sense that she shares his temper."
"By that logic, should I drown you in the ocean for pulling me away from the communion like this because I am the priest of the Healing Seas?"
"Oi! Don't shoot the messenger, alright?"
The two old men chuckled and remained in comfortable silence before Kaito spoke up again. This time, speaking with a serious tone.
"If we really are close to winning back the trust of the Green Sun, we should prepare for what is to come next."
"You mean prepare for the offerings? Already done. We have been working nonstop, pumping out as much wine as possible based on the old scripts of our ancestors that we reconstructed with the help of our scholars. The Skypillar is also calibrated and ready to be used. We have already connected state-of-the-art Lithium batteries and advanced Capacitor systems to it to store as much power as possible."
Elder Damian's eyes sparkled as he thought about the upcoming communion with one of their gods.
"As for security, the Outer Tribe has already been working tirelessly in your absence. They have already initiated the deportation of the foreigners from our land under the pretext of harsh storms and possible earthquakes heading our way."
"What about those who already saw him when he descended?"
Damian grimaced at the reminder.
"That was the hard part. We had to explain it away as a mass hallucination caused by a gas leak containing hallucinogenic byproducts from our refineries. While most of them bought the lie, given that it is easier to believe that the 900-feet-long emerald serpent in the sky was a mere illusion than to question your reality, there are some that are starting to dig a bit too deep into things."
"Any of them have good qualifications?"
"All of them do, in fact. Most of them are masters of some field of science."
Kaito nodded at those words.
"Send them to Serizawa. He will know what to do with them."
Damian sighed a bit and leaned back into his seat, looking at the beautiful land that he and his people called home for many generations.
"This forced expulsion of the outsiders and the 'gas leak' incident will no doubt put a dent in our tourist economy."
"What use is economy in the face of the possibility of regaining the trust of one of our gods?"
"True. So, what was so urgent that you called for a council meeting?"
"....Serizawa contacted me yesterday."
"Eiji?"
"His son. Ishiro. Eiji is no longer healthy enough for field work."
Kaito felt a pang of grief.
"His days are numbered."
Damian patted the man's shoulder with sympathy.
"It can't be helped. Everyone dies someday. Even us."
"Yeah. You are right. Anyways, Ishiro contacted me and informed me of a discovery that he and his protege made in the Philippines."
"What discovery?"
"A skeleton of the Godzilla species."
That made Damian raise an eyebrow in surprise.
"Fully intact?"
"Fully intact. Even the dorsal plates were there."
"That's rare. Godzilla's species rarely die with an intact body, which means that we hardly have any skeletal remains to study aside from a few fragments of bones here and there."
"Yeah, but given the cause of death that we are theorizing with Monarch, it makes sense."
"Well? Don't keep me waiting."
Kaito took out a dossier full of pictures and data.
"A parasite pair killed it from the inside. Currently, we are going with the name MUTO since we don't have an official designation for it yet."
Reading through the dossier, chills went down Damian's spine as he read one particular line.
"They are alive!?"
"Possible. We are not sure about the one we found dormant. But the one that hatched? That is definitely alive."
"Is Monarch tracking it?"
"Yes. I've informed our people in the organization to do so and have manipulated things in the Pentagon to grease some gears for Monarch, but the trail has long since gone cold. We don't know where it went off to."
"Kaito. You need to get on this case right now. Take this to Devon Corp's 'Internal Defence' department. You know what to do."
"What about the council?"
"I'll handle the council. This is priority number one."
Damian stared seriously at his friend.
"You are the Elder of the Outer Tribe, our first line of defence. You and your people are responsible for protecting us from every external and internal threat, so there is no need for me to explain why this is important."
Kaito nodded as the car made a turn in the upcoming split in the tunnel, heading to Rustboro City instead of Sootopolis, where Devon Corp's headquarters is located.
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