Dark Hours: Nerugal

Abilities:

-Organic Flute: Nerugal, as often depicted in old local legends, is capable of emitting and utilizing certain frequencies of sound in its flute-like snout, and these sounds can affect the human brain at a very primal level. Considered the source of the siren's song, it causes people to experience hypnotic euphoria the closer they are to the source, often leading them to blindly rush into the water, where they are drowned and sometimes eaten. This unique adaptation also serves as a powerful communicator, often used to summon his mate and child to him from across vast distances.

-Slip-Stream: When pressured, Nerugal can shoot out a high-pressure stream of seawater through its snout. Though not as powerful as his mate's, it is still capable of causing extreme localized injuries in kaiju sized targets. It was the subject of military study for many years by groups like PAKT before production of deterrence type weapons became the established norm.

Noted Weaknesses:

-Waterlocked: Nerugal has yet to display the ability to competently make his way across land, and this can often be exploited by those in conflict with him.

-Pressure Strain: Nerugal is not built to dive to the staggering depths most aquatic kaiju frolic in, forcing him to keep to the shallows. This makes escape from enemies rather difficult and hiding from human eyes even moreso.

-Pregnancy: Though currently not a factor, Nerugal has displayed markedly different, more lethargic behavior when carrying a child. He is more vulnerable to weapon fire due to physical strain, and often will be quicker to retreat. Granted it is only during pregnancy that he displays maneating behavior due to higher energy needs.

Description: The first of the many sea monsters now known to modern eyes, Nerugal is the second ancient monster on record in the modern day. Though now regarded as a minor threat, keeping to the Mediterranean Sea with his mate and child and rarely causing trouble, at one point he was surprisingly well established in the public eye.

It began one year after Atomoth and Solenara's battle in Miami, and the IDC, founded by a monster enthusiast and PI from Brazil, had established themselves as the frontrunners of monster discovery. Their efforts had uncovered decades of government cover-ups, conspiracies and mysterious locations the world had kept hidden. They would often organize expeditions out to such locations rich enough in local legend and accounts, and had grown into a somewhat heroic force in the public consciousness. But unfortunately, they were a short-lived enterprise. It started when the vast majority of their field investigators went to the British Isles, with hopes of discovering truth behind many of their more iconic phenomena. It was little more than a PR stunt at first, but they did in fact uncover something, and what they would find would ultimately spell their doom.

There had been a spike in lake monster sightings that year, and the locals seemed to always have a new place for them to go, jumping from lake to river to coastline, often having to split into separate groups. But no definitive sighting ever reared its head. That is, until they arrived in the myth-laden Shetland Islands. Old fishermen had plenty of information to give, (after being bought a few drinks) telling them even which beach to go to on different phases of the moon, and that that night, during the full moon, a true monster would appear around a small island less than a mile offshore. The IDC members, admittedly a little inebriated themselves, went out to the island and camped out for the night, leaving a message for the rest of the team to follow them out when they arrived.

It was days before the second splinter group arrived, and upon their arrival, they were met with emphatic denial from most of the villagers that any of the first group had ever been there at all. Eventually, one of the fishermen came forward in secret, and told them the truth. The first team had gone out to a remote island where a real monster was said to reside, and all likelihood, they had suffered a horrible death there.

Whether it was out of belief or denial, no one knows which, the group immediately chartered the confessing fisherman into taking them there, and found nothing but a bunch of abandoned tents and one tape recorder, containing the true story of the first group's fate. Almost immediately after arrival, their boat mysteriously vanished, and that was only the beginning of their troubles. They remained vigilant on the beach, all set to capture footage of the creature, but as the night grew deeper, some of the group had to give in to sleep. The recorder, a middle-aged woman named Julia Kaiser, was one of them, and the next morning, she was alone, the only sign of her companions were sets of footprints headed straight into the tide.

She spent the day searching for the rest of her IDC friends across the island, but to no avail. It sounded as though the sun was starting to affect her. As the night fell, she decided to leave her recorder on as she slept, and what followed was almost an hour of a supremely unsettling tone that caused the listeners to grow dizzy. The next morning she spoke of how the sound must have had something to do with the group's disappearance, and that she would be awake to hear it and capture the truth. Unfortunately, the tape had nothing after that point, and given her lack of presence in the camp, whatever had made them disappear affected her too.

To their horror, the new arrivals then discovered that fisherman that brought them there had snuck off and taken the boat with him. He left them a note that was later picked up by KRI member Tessa Gabriella, explaining that the beast was in fact the mythical water horse and that whenever it appeared the villagers would fall prey to it until it disappeared again. Whenever new arrivals came, the men would leave them there as sacrifices of sorts, if they themselves covered their ears and ignored the call the beast would destroy property, so they had little choice but to follow the macabre ritual. The fisherman wasn't happy about the practice, but he had a family to think of and this was the only way to save them. It was the only life the villagers knew.

The IDC members, unfortunately, did not survive their encounter, falling prey themselves to the kaiju hippocamp Nerugal. The IDC had to disband shortly after as a search organization, becoming a shell of its former self, something its founder never got over for the rest of his days.

It would be almost 10 years before proper identification of the creature was officially captured. PAKT forces, using edited versions of the original Nerugal song from Julia's recording, managed to lure the creature into a trap, where they buried it in fire for nigh an hour straight. Mankind had known ever since Megoki, perhaps even since Vosk and Dystrov's battle in Siberia, that kaiju did not go down without a fight, but Nerugal's aggression was bordering on the demonic, laying waste to millions in military equipment and escaping, despite grievous wounds, into the Atlantic.

There was a pursuit, but it was a doomed one. We, as a species, would swiftly have our world, and everything we understood about it, blown to pieces when the hippocamp's ember-red mate, Hippoli, would come to his defense, putting an end to the venture and starting a new family.

Nerugal, in the middle of the Atlantic and too tired to go any farther, gave birth, bathing the sea even moreso in blood, and bringing the first recorded kaiju newborn in history. Kelka, as she was named, shattered our understanding of monsters. These three were a family, naturally able to reproduce, which meant that, unlike our belief before of them being singular anomalies, monsters were capable of being a very natural thing. And ever since, things have only gotten weirder.