Marvel Monsters Unleashed: The Gruesome Gorgilla! Read online

  © 2017 MARVEL

  All rights reserved. Published by Marvel Press,

  an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Marvel Press, 125 West End Avenue, New York, New York 10023.

  Designed by David Roe

  Cover Illustration by Skan Srisuwan

  ISBN: 978-1-368-01038-2

  Visit marvelkids.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  Stats

  “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.”

  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  “If he lives, there’s no telling how dangerous he may be! I pray that we aren’t tackling something too big for us to cope with!”

  —Stan Lee, Tales to Astonish #12

  HAVE YOU EVER had one of “those days”? You know the kind. The kind of day where you’re off doing your own thing one minute, and the next, you find yourself soaring over the Pacific Ocean via repulsor power in a desperate race against time to extinguish an oil-rig fire?

  We’ve all had that kind of day, right?

  That’s precisely what Tony Stark was thinking from inside the Iron Man armor. Not an hour ago, he had received a distress call from the Coast Guard. Captain America and the other Avengers were elsewhere, engaged in a battle against a subterranean creature called the Minotaur. With the rest of the team busy, and with no one else available to handle the emergency, Stark donned his armor and took to the skies to fight fire with iron.

  Fighting an oil-rig fire may not be as fun as fighting the Minotaur, Tony thought to himself. But it’s not nearly as embarrassing as having to tell everyone that I fought a guy who calls himself the Minotaur.

  Up ahead, he could see thick black smoke on the horizon. The oil rig in question belonged to a company called Roxxon. Tony had dealt with Roxxon in the past—they were a shady corporation engaged in lots of shady business. They had even sponsored the creation of some Super Villains, like Orka and Manticore. For all Tony knew, the oil rig might not even really be an oil rig. Maybe it a cover for some ominous experiment? Nah, Tony thought. I’m just being paranoid. But remember what they say:

  Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

  Rerouting power reserves to his repulsors, Iron Man accelerated toward the billowing clouds of black smoke. Soon, the oil rig itself came into view, growing closer with each passing second.

  “Iron Man!” came a voice over Tony’s communications system. The sudden, unexpected sound startled Tony.

  “This is Iron Man, I’m not here right now, so if you could leave your name and number at the—”

  “This is the Coast Guard!” said the voice urgently. “We’ve taken everyone off the rig, except for one person! They refuse to leave! Can you save them?”

  Iron Man glanced at the ocean below, and saw two Coast Guard cutters loaded with rescued oil workers. They were heading away from the burning rig, which loomed ahead of the armored Avenger, flames burning brightly as the black smoke billowed upward. The centerpiece of the rig was a tall tower. Activating his visual scanners, Iron Man could make out the figure of a person at the top of the tower, waving their arms.

  “First stop, the tower!” Iron Man said. He flew through the dense smoke and cut the power to his repulsors, coming to a soft landing on a platform atop the tower. He saw a man wearing a white jumpsuit with a full head mask—it immediately struck Tony as odd. The guy looked like he should be working in a laboratory studying strange diseases, not working on an oil rig.

  “I hear you don’t want to leave!” shouted Iron Man over the din of the fire. “How about you tell me why after I’ve rescued you?” He extended his right gauntlet toward the man. To Iron Man’s surprise, the man backed away.

  “They left me!” the man said, nearly hysterical. “They left me! Now he’s coming!” He pointed beneath them.

  “Who’s coming?” Iron Man said sharply. “You mean there’s someone else? We’ve got to get them!”

  “They’ve set him free! We have to leave—now!” the man shouted.

  If you’re at all confused, imagine how Iron Man must have felt. “Set what free?” he shouted, as flames licked the bottom of the platform they were standing on. He moved to grab the man, but as he did so, something swiped Iron Man from behind.

  It knocked the Avenger off his feet and onto the hard metal surface. Shaking it off, Iron Man looked up just in time to see an enormous hairy hand reach for him!

  Before he could act, the hand grabbed Iron Man. The golden Avenger tried to break free, but the giant hand shook him like a rag doll, leaving Iron Man thoroughly disoriented.

  “What in the—” he said as he struggled to get a look at the thing that was giving him the worst case of vertigo since that time he rode the world’s largest roller coaster with Hawkeye.

  Catching his breath, Iron Man looked quickly at his helmet’s heads-up display. The HUD showed exactly what he thought. Whatever was shaking him to pieces was wreaking havoc on his armor’s systems. This had to stop, now.

  Iron Man fired a few rapid repulsor bursts at the hand, and he heard something shriek. The sound was booming. The hand let go, and Iron Man activated his boot repulsors to take to the air. He flew up and saw the man in white cringing in fear from the giant hand, which was about to grab him.

  I don’t know what that hand is connected to, Iron Man thought, but I’d rather not stick around and find out!

  In an instant, he was next to the man in white. He grabbed him by his jumpsuit just before the giant hand could swat him away! Another burst of repulsor fire gave Iron Man a little room to maneuver. He jumped off the platform with the man in white, just as his repulsors kicked on.

  Flying away from the burning rig, Iron Man headed toward one of the Coast Guard ships with the man in his arms. “I’m gonna bet there’s a pretty interesting story behind all of this,” he said to the man. “How about I drop you off and you tell me all about it after I put that fire out?”

  Hovering over one of the ships, Tony dropped the man onto the deck. The man was caught by a couple other people wearing similar white jumpsuits. That’s when Tony noticed something else. Something strange.

  The Coast Guard boats didn’t seem to have any Coast Guard personnel on them. The only people he could see on the ship were the men in white jumpsuits.

  An explosion from the oil rig drew Iron Man’s attention, leaving him no time to ponder this weird development. He double-timed it back to the oil rig and flew once more into the
chaos of growing black smoke and flames. He steeled himself for an attack as he prepped his armor to fight the fire.

  To Iron Man’s great surprise, there was no sign of the giant thing that had attacked him. It was like it never existed.

  How could something so big simply disappear? he thought.

  As Iron Man tried to wrap his brain around his circumstances, he activated his gauntlets. Thin streams of an oxygen-depriving chemical sprayed outward. Iron Man worked his way from the tower down to the oil rig proper, aiming for the source of the fire. Slowly, the flames began to die out.

  “Worst. Day. Ever,” Iron Man said. He tried to reach the Coast Guard boats on his communications system. There was no response.

  It was like they never existed.

  From aboard one of the Coast Guard boats, a man clad in a white jumpsuit watched the events on the oil rig via holographic monitor. He watched Iron Man slowly, methodically put out the flames on the rig.

  “Well?” said a voice over the computer. “How did our little test go?”

  The man in white shifted in his seat. “Iron Man didn’t know what hit him,” he said. “He thought this was a real oil rig. He didn’t expect to find a monster waiting for him.”

  “Brilliant,” said the voice. “We’re almost ready to unleash it on the world. Is it safe?”

  “Arrangements have been made,” replied the man in white. “It is safe. We’re en route to you, and will deliver it in a matter of days.”

  “Good,” said the voice. “All goes to plan.”

  Under the veil of night, you notice things you didn’t in the harsh light of day.

  Isn’t that odd?

  Like sounds, for instance. Perhaps precisely because we can’t see as well in the dark, our other senses compensate. We rely more on our hearing. Every little sound becomes a symphony to our ears.

  The forest overflows with sounds at night. Crickets. Animals. Wind whipping through trees. And anyone who found themselves walking through this particular forest on this particular night would hear them all. But they would be surprised to hear other sounds, sounds that weren’t so familiar.

  Like the horrible cracking sounds of a pair of hundred-year-old trees being uprooted from the ground. Towering giants that had overlooked the forest were now tossed aside like a child’s toys.

  Then another unfamiliar sound. An unearthly growl—low, deep. An animal? Perhaps, but no animal anyone had ever heard before. The forest itself rumbled as the growl reverberated through the ground.

  An enormous shadow moved beneath the night sky. Taller than the trees.

  THE TINY OFFICE was a hot mess. Papers were strewn everywhere, photographs were plastered to the walls, to the desk, to the floor—you name it. It didn’t seem like there was even an inch that wasn’t covered by something.

  Sitting on the floor in the center of it all was Amrita Lakhani. The office belonged to the school newspaper, the Weekly Caller. Amrita was the editor of the newspaper, and she took her job very, very seriously. She was hard on her staff, but no harder than she was on herself.

  Which wasn’t as bad as it seems, considering that Amrita was the staff. She was the newspaper’s sole editor, writer, and photographer. The other kids at Rosalind Middle School were interested in other extracurricular activities, like soccer, cool robotics courses, book clubs. Rosalind—or Roz, as everyone called it—had awesome extracurriculars. Amrita understood why the other kids liked those things. It wasn’t that she didn’t like them—she did—but she had been bitten by the journalism bug.

  On the wall hung pictures of her idols. J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the Daily Bugle. Betty Brant, reporter, and Peter Parker, photographer, who also worked for the storied newspaper. While the other kids in school were memorizing lyrics to their favorite songs or getting ready for sports after school, Amrita was busy reading online newspaper archives. Like her idols, she was obsessed with the truth, and the people’s right to know it.

  Amrita longed to live in New York City one day and have a job reporting right alongside Betty Brant. She wanted to be right in the middle of the big Super Hero battles, watching Spider-Man tackle Doctor Octopus, writing down every detail for the eager Daily Bugle readers.

  Becoming a newspaper reporter had been her dream since she could remember dreaming.

  Amrita sifted through a bunch of photos in front of her, until she finally found what she was looking for. She shouted, “Stop the presses!” to nobody at all. The sound didn’t even echo in the small, windowless office.

  There was a knock at the door. Amrita hoped she hadn’t been too loud.

  “Everything okay in here?” asked Ms. Malloy as she opened the door. “Did I just hear someone yell ‘Stop the presses?’ You must have a real scoop!” Ms. Malloy was the faculty advisor to the school newspaper. She was the only person at Roz who seemed as interested in journalism as Amrita. Ms. Malloy entered the small office, causing Amrita to shuffle to one side to give the teacher some room.

  “Yeah, everything’s great!” Amrita said, excited. “I found the perfect photograph to run with our front-page story!” She thrust the picture directly into Ms. Malloy’s face, so close that the teacher couldn’t begin to make out what it was. Ms. Malloy smiled, and gently moved Amrita’s hands back a little bit so her eyes could see the photo.

  “It’s…cheese,” Ms. Malloy said, curious. The photo showed exactly that: an individual slice of cheese in plastic wrap.

  “Aha!” Amrita said, jumping up. “That’s what they want you to think! But it’s not! It’s processed cheese food!”

  Ms. Malloy’s eyes widened, and she nodded, saying nothing.

  “This is what they serve to the students at our cafeteria! It’s not even real cheese! This is a scoop, Ms. Malloy! I’m gonna blow the lid off this scandal.”

  “Amrita—” Ms. Malloy interjected.

  Amrita kept going. “What do you think of this for a headline—‘Cheesegate!’” she said. She waved her hand through the air, as if showing off the headline.

  Ms. Malloy didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Amrita looked at her advisor. Her expression changed from excited to defeated. Her shoulders drooped. “It’s a terrible story, I know.” Amrita sighed.

  “It’s not exactly earth-shattering news,” Ms. Malloy said, putting an arm around Amrita.

  “When am I going to get a great story?” Amrita asked. “I know that every story isn’t going to be ‘big news,’ but I’d settle for ANY news! This school is so dull, nothing ever happens! Why can’t it be like New York City? They have Super Heroes in New York City. But I’m not there. I’m here! And I’m stuck solving cheese mysteries!”

  Ms. Malloy laughed. “Amrita, you are one of the hardest-working students I have ever met. And you care more about the newspaper than anybody! Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll get your story one day. And until then, you are on your way to becoming an excellent reporter.”

  An excellent reporter, Amrita thought. Just like Betty Brant. That’s all she wanted to be. But it seemed such a long way off. How was she going to become an excellent reporter in Boringville, USA, population Amrita?

  The bell rang, indicating that it was time to move on to the next period. Amrita gathered her books and smiled weakly at Ms. Malloy.

  “Don’t let it get to you, Amrita,” said Ms. Malloy. “You’re destined for big things.”

  THE BEST THING about the bus ride from school to home was that it had to end eventually, Amrita thought. She’d always been an optimist. The bus had so many strikes against it, it wasn’t even funny. To begin with, it was noisy and full of kids who didn’t seem to know that Amrita was even on the bus to begin with. Plus, it was either too hot inside or too cold, depending on the time of year. It was December now, and the cold of winter was on its way. There hadn’t been any snow yet, but you could feel it in the air and in the way the cold seemed to seep through the walls of the bus. Amrita sat in her seat, shivering, watching her breath escape her mouth.
/>   Amrita stared out her window as the bus bumped along the road. How the bus always managed to hit every single pothole was beyond her. Was the bus equipped with some kind of pothole finder?

  BUMP!

  She flew up an inch or two and landed back on her seat, which had about as much padding as a block of wood. Amrita sighed, and turned back to the window.

  What about the school paper? What was she going to do? Had she really tried to convince Ms. Malloy that a front-page story about cheese was a good idea? Sorry, processed cheese food? Yikes.

  BUMP!

  “Earth to Amrita! Come in, Am!”

  Amrita whipped her head from the window to look at the person seated right next to her. It was her best friend, Courtney. Courtney was a bit of an outsider, too, just like Amrita. Except it wasn’t journalism that she was into—well, not the same kind of journalism as Amrita, anyway. Courtney was really into reading about mysterious animals and creatures. She was always going on about some website that had a lot of monster facts.

  Amrita smiled at her friend. “Sorry, Cort,” she said, loud enough to be heard over the rumble of the bus. “Just thinking about stuff.”

  “Stuff. Like…let me guess…the newspaper?”

  “Yes! The newspaper! Cort, I tried to write a story today about cafeteria cheese! Do you have any idea how humiliating that is? What am I doing with my career? It’s going nowhere!”

  “Your ‘career’?” Courtney repeated. “Am, we’re, like, twelve. Our career is going to school and hanging out.”

  “So?” Amrita returned. “Age doesn’t have anything to do with it! I want to be a reporter so bad…a real reporter! Like Betty Brant! Like J. Jonah Jameson!”

  “Ugh,” said Courtney. “That old guy? The one who hates Spider-Man?” Courtney made an exaggerated frown, and held a finger over her lip, making a mustache. “Blah, blah, blah, Spider-Man!” she said, imitating Jameson. “Blah, blah, blah, menace!”

  Amrita started laughing, and soon both girls were cracking up.

  “Look, Am, you’re too hard on yourself,” Courtney said. “Just keep doing what you’re doing! If you don’t find a great story, I’m sure one will find you.”