The Bridge: A Godzilla-MLP Crossover

by Tarbtano

Chapter 54 Part 1: The Anemoi

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Downtown Canterlot
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Wallflower Blush groaned weakly, all of her senses feeling as though she was experiencing them for the first time all over again. Her eyes flittered, trying to open. The realm beyond her lids was constantly spinning and it made her nauseous, spurring little more than a weak gurgle from her throat. A sense of hot and cold together covered her face, and it took a moment to realize it was from sweating profusely whilst also shivering from head to toe.

Something, or someone, was dabbing her head with a cloth while saying something, but Blush’s hearing was still a droning ring. Out of her throat came a faint warble, a name matching a face that was the only concrete image in her mind. That of her only friend.

“T-Twiligh-”

Mrs. Cake started to say something, but what exactly she said Wallflower couldn’t make out. Instead she lurched up suddenly, the image of gnashing, jagged teeth and blackened eyes contrasting to frostbitten skin overtaking her vision. She glimpsed a face she’d never seen, that which was hunting her. Far behind the Cakes’ van, down the long road of evacuating vehicles, people started to call out. Many abandoned their slow moving vehicles to sprint down the road between the crawling traffic.

Even through the thick mist and snowy haze that obscured vision past a hundred meters or so, she could see movement. One of those cars at the back of the pack was thrown upwards, careening through the air before turning end over end and smashing through the side of a building. Another was grabbed and knocked over, sent spinning on its side. The rotation of the car offered glimpses of claw marks slashing through the sheet metal, and their source; the unnaturally tall and ungainly figure generating the mist. Every passerby that seemed to get near the cold fog emanating from the windigo fell into a near blind panic, screaming and running away as fast as they could, if they had the ability to even do that. Most others, including the Cake Family in the van with Wallflower, just dropped to the ground in raw terror.

With everyone who got close seeming to fly into a chaotic turmoil, the horrific beast paid them no heed. Eyes firmly affixed upon Wallflower Blush through the frosted back window of the Cake’s van, Australis stabbed her oversized right arm into the ground to vault forward into a sudden charge. Her run cycle, as with everything else, was unpleasant to look upon. Shattering and reforming ice gave her charge the constant grating chorus of snapping frost as she sprinted forward, the windigo half-running and half-hauling herself forward with her right arm.

The monstrosity launched itself airborne amongst a gout of southerly wind, only for an equal and opposite force to intercept her. A pair of hands clapped and a loud shockwave was condensed and redirected entirely in the frost demoness' direction, blasting the air right in front of her. Bursts of magic flickered and popped, briefly looking almost like confetti in the tassels of multicolored hues, before the strands popped and crackled with secondary explosions.

Australis recoiled and screamed after being ragdolled in the air briefly enough to go careening into the side of a building. The screaming and shrieking only intensified when the windigo ripped out of her confinement, exploding forth from the building’s front. Amidst a shower of rubble, her attention very briefly diverted to what had just attacked her. But only for a moment, her blackened eye quickly snapping back to Wallflower Blush.

Seizing hold of a chunk of rubble, causing it to flash-freeze upon contact as spires of ice forcefully ripped through the concrete, the demon let it loose in a volley like a fastball. Another clap of what sounded like giant hands smashed into Australis. The attack’s raw power was well represented in how the blast caused the combination of dark magic ice and building material to literally explode on contact. All while still having enough leftover energy to blow back the debris, else the shattered remnants of the fastball pitch would have hit the cars like a shotgun blast.

Australis sneered, her eye swiveling downwards to lock onto Pinkie Pie.

The Element of Laughter wasn't especially cheerful, even if she was maintaining a brave and warm smile in spite of what was before her as slow tears trickled from her eyes. Still, she held her ground, attire metamorphosed still into a short dress that was so flamboyant it ran the gamut of being gaudy only to circle around and become pleasantly silly once again. Like the attire of a clown, something meant to evoke cheer in others and be as non-threatening as possible. Whether that was the default of the transformation or if something in her own consciousness was altering it, no one could say.

What one could speak for was the type of bravery she was exuding. Not the righteous courage of smiting evil, but the desecration of that mental desolation that fear induced. The aura she gave off was notable. From the actual magic which was causing some of the frost around her to melt on every point of contact between her and the ground, such as the magical aura constructed hooves surrounding her feet.

“Sonata!” Her shout seemed abnormally loud, as if small bursts of magic were helping to propel the call out over the raging ice storm, “You ran away earlier instead of fighting, I know you’re still in there!”

Inside of the van, Wallflower Blush stared out through the now defrosted van window in shock.

Australis had run away before, back when taking a burst of magic had partially melted the mask of ice that covered part of her face. Some of the benign spellwork coming off the Element of Laughter had managed to reach inside and spur a frozen heart to beat just a few times. But it had been enough for that wrathful side of the siren, the windigo half, to redirect her attention away from the campground and towards the one who had slighted her most. The one inside that van behind Pinkie right now.

Wallflower Blush felt a chill shoot right through her as the monster glared down the road. The flickering image of a sobbing young woman they had ambushed behind a concert hall superimposed itself upon the unworldly monstrosity in front of them. Zephyrus’ taunt echoed through her mind.

-”Where do you think she’ll go?”-

Wallflower’s eyes widened as she was presented with the monument of her folly.

-I did this...She's here for me…-

And she could not move. Neither was the van with how the snowstorm had increased ten fold and seemed to infest everyone with primal dread. So strong most of the fleeing citizens fell to the ground were they were, clutching their heads and frozen in interwoven sadness and terror. All to the sound of Australis’ screams. Wallflower was stuck too, but she was forced to watch down the street.

Australis's right eye, which at the campground once showed tears and the quivering gaze of Sonata within the monster, was frozen over again. Cold mist billowed from between cracked and frigid fangs, and Australis threw her body forward and shrieked through distended jaws at the one who now was just getting in her way. She would not be denied her victim.

“Please, ‘Nata!” Pinkie Pie wept as she felt the roiling sting of having turned her powers onto the windigo offensively, “Don’t make me have to do it!”

Without any warning or heed to the plea whatsoever, Australis dropped and charged. Pinkie shed tears as fear forced her to act. She smacked her hands together to the sound of one hundred claps, the resulting shockwave smashing into the oncoming monstrosity whose advance could be reliably compared to a freight train. This time, the shockwave hit Australis directly.

Australis's icy protrusions cracked, the shockwave reverberating through gaunt and frostbitten tissue enough that it briefly caused her entire upper body to recoil. Her spine snapped backwards almost 180°, arching around so much her head was practically scraping against the ground. Pinkie Pie gasped and covered her mouth, shaking and trembling from seeing the impact of her forced attack. Tears still ran freely from her eyes as an ugly, hideous knot formed and twisted within her gut. The Element Bearer looked at her hands with fear and horror. And yet, despite the blow, Australis still bore an insurmountable conviction which drove the berserk hybrid to keep going.

Had the Element of Laughter blasted her father, with no body to serve as a barrier, Pinkie very well might have caused some serious damage. If not enough to destroy or dissipate it, certainly enough to cause lasting wounds or drive them away just as one would retract their hand from an open flame. The windigos' uncanny ability to survive was mostly reliant on them only having one weakness, that only a select few could harness in sufficient quantities to seriously wound them.

But, when Sonata’s predecessor and sire had done a horrifying thing that led to her birth under Zephyrus's plan to create more of their kind, there had been some unintended side effects. From the day she was born, her name had been decided for herself. Australis, daughter of the South Storm. Raw, uncultivated, and an enigma; there was something else about Notus’ spawn. By accident of her being a crossbreed with a powerful sea sorceress, or by design of her wrath-fueled dark magic having a target after being personally hurt by them; she had far surpassed her father. Notus had been driven to create spite and malice, but without the positive emotions in their life he could never have known anything else. Sonata had, and she felt a spite unlike any windigo before her due to losing that happiness.

All because of the one in the van.

Australis snapped back around and distended her jaw. The scream she unleashed carried the full force of the Southern winds, a combination of frigid air, mermare magic, and dark hexes all working together into creating a powerful cone of sound that ripped the frost and snow from the roadway. It blew with so much force that a car caught by the edge of the cone was knocked onto its side, its alarm blaring and beeping loudly as a death wail. Pinkie Pie crossed her arms and braced, trying to will and draw up every scrap of power her Element could provide.

Even with surprisingly above average strength helping ground her, even with the radiating energy of her Element dampening the dark magic significantly, even with her intentionally trying to push against the tide and call out to her out-of-control friend; she was still wrenched off her feet. Pinkie Pie cried out as she was ragdolled by the sudden wave of sound and wind force smashing into her like a barely visible fist; pinwheeling through the air and crashing into the back of the Cakes’ van hard enough to crack the glass. It was only thanks to some bolstering to her physical constitution, likely a side benefit of the magic giving her traits like her Equestrian counterpart; she was spared a concussion.

Still hurt like the dickens though!

Pinkie Pie grimaced as she slid down the side of the van, crumbling to her knees and trying to brace herself with her hand. Australis continued to scream, deafeningly so. The windigo grabbed at her own head and thrashed about, her constant uproar being pointed down and into the street. The dazed Element Bearer tried to stagger up to her feet, half braced against the van she’d been sent flying into.

Australis’ utterance was still going, impossibly so. Cold gales rushed past as the windigo continued firing straight down, sending wind and shockwaves in all directions even as she seemed to blow a hole in the street from the sheer magnitude.

-Is… Is she trying to avoid hitting me? Or is she just that much out of control?!-

Australis’ shockwave scream shrank, but less losing energy and more condensing into a singular ray of focused sound. The awful outburst of the ray of sound punching through dozens of feet of concrete and road was grating to the ears. Pinkie had to shield her eyes from the wind shear, just barely able to keep them open as she held her arms before them. Australis’ body was cracking, warping. More and more icy spires erupted from her skin and the growths across her gaunt form seemed to only increase in size and rate.

Somehow the Element of Laughter could tell it for what it was, through the changes in the body and the sheer cold growing in the winds. That brief glimpse of Sonata’s eye underneath the ice that grew over part of Australis’ face was evident enough. Whatever parts of her were still Sonata Dusk, still the victim of her uncle and father’s schemes and turned into this horrific abomination, were dying. The pieces of her friend that might have stayed the demon’s hand, or at least averted her focus onto someone else in a desperate bid to save her compatriots, were rapidly losing any control. Just as her body warped more and more away from Sonata, so too did their mind.

Soon, all that would be left was Austalis; and there was no telling how much time she had left before then. A disheartening prospect.

Instantly her chilled body felt warmed and Pinkie Pie shoved off the dread that tried to strangle her, breaking out of the shackle trying to freeze her in place both metaphorically, and quite literally in the icy bonds that had attempted to grow over her legs. She rushed up and held her arms up and out.

“Sonata! ‘Nata you gotta hear me!” She held her arms apart to show she wasn’t about to attack again.

Frozen drool slobbered from Australis’ maw as her head turned aside at an unnatural angle, the creaking and breaking ice scraping against itself sounding just like breaking bones. She pounced, heedless to who this interloper was beyond that she was getting in the way. Australis would kill her all the same.

Pinkie Pie braced as a set of lights showed upon the windigo and something managed to cry out over the storm. Screeching tires. In an instant, driving in from the side road leading onto the main street, what Pinkie recognized as Ms. Daisy’s car rammed into Australis at full force. The one-armed cyborg behind the wheel had only done it out of desperation, knowing Sonata herself would never want harm to befall her friends and she’d wish for him to stop her by any means. Megalon knew Australis was tough enough to endure the blow, much as he hated doing it.

He was not quite expecting her to be fast enough nor strong enough to instantly counter it. The icy mass that had grown over Australis’ right arm smashed down into the hood of the car, instantly slamming it into the pavement so hard the suspension snapped as tires blew out to the side like they’d had a wrecking ball dropped onto the hood. Though the car still had ample forward momentum, sending geysers of sparks into the air as its chassis was ground into and it skid across the roadway whilst chunks were ripped from it. Australis slid and leapt backward to maintain pace with the moving car, gliding along in front of it in an uncanny manner that seemed to break physics.

Megalon went through the windshield, hurled through the shattering glass like a bullet with his remaining drill-hand used as a bow to divide the glassy pane. As he sailed past and over Australis, the windigo seemed, at first, to have her full attention on the car. But in the millisecond-by-millisecond perception that such an adrenaline-fueled state provided, the cyborg caught the frost demon’s eye swiveling around to lock onto him.

She gripped the car by the hood and spun around, ripping the vehicle from the ground and slashing the air with the half-crushed car like a club. It was only by the glow in the cyborg’s eye, and a timely lightning burst from his forehead detonating much of the car, that Megalon avoided getting clobbered. The electric flare hit the gas tank and kept going, blowing the back half of the car off in a gout of smoke and flames as it fell backwards. He still bit back a jolt of pain at the now smoking and on-fire first half of the car Australis held clipping him in the legs.

Megalon tumbled end over end down the street, before burying his drill into the concrete to stop his backward fumble.

“She’s gone berserk Pinkie! We gotta restrain her first!”

“But we can’t hurt her!-”

Megalon punctuated his point by letting loose a torrent of crackling lightning into the charging Australis' chest, which did very little but slow down the advance moderately. Electricity sparked and jolted as it arced against and conducted across the gaunt chest and frostbitten skin.

He grimaced while continuing the beam, hoping that she might have some nerves or functional systems he could shock enough to impede her. He was up against a magical entity that had only one weakness and he didn't have any magic, much less of the one he needed. All while still missing an arm. Slowing her down was the best thing he could hope for. Pinkie was the real crucial element if they were to do anything at all, based on the limited knowledge he had, and knowing what worked.

"And if we don't fight back as best as we can– AArrrh!" Megalon staggered, trying to maintain and amplify the torrent, but even after firing several napalm bursts from his mouth, the explosions that lit the roadway on fire didn't affect the ice demon at all, "We get hurt! You think Sonata would ever forgive herself for that?!"

Australis fought through the energy beam and grabbed for the kaiju, who intercepted her enlarged limb by uncurling his drill into a hand and grabbing onto Australis’ in a brawler’s lock. Just touching the sheer cold burned, frigid sensations gnawing at his body even where he didn't have fleshy tissue. Subzero temperatures without numbness, as impossible as that sounded. He felt his knees buckle and drop into the pavement, even as his feet dug into solid concrete as a normal human's would through firm dirt. It was a minor exhibition of just how physically powerful Megalon was even with just one arm, his stout frame potentially being the strongest in terms of raw strength of his team, aside from Kaizer Ghidorah. But it was also just as much a showing of how horrifically powerful Australis was.

Sonata was not a particularly large young woman in human form, in her true state she was the smallest of the sirens, and there was a distinctive gauntness to her windigo form that made it look all the part of a frostbitten corpse. And yet she wasn’t just able to match force with a kaiju. She was able to overpower him.

Her free arm grabbed Megalon by the face and tried to wrench him closer, uncannily huge jaws parting to expose razor-sharp icicle-tipped teeth that seemed jam-packed into the ravenous maw. Megalon cringed while trying to lock-on, still hating the idea of actually hurting his friend even if he had well accepted she wasn't in her right mind. This thing wasn’t Sonata, just a monster piloting her body.

“Sorry ‘Nata…”

The fangs drew close, poised to tear off his face, when the loudest clap anyone had ever heard sounded off.

Australis was struck with a shockwave that sent her flying down the road with her limbs limp and flailing to make her look like a thrown ragdoll. Oddly enough, aside from being blown down and floored by the shockwave, Megalon was completely unharmed. In fact, the dark magic frost that had been growing over him seemed to melt.

Footsteps rapidly approached, and a gloved hand was offered to him. The tearful frown on Pinkie Pie’s face was reflected in her compatriot, but so was her determination in how she squeezed his mechanical hand and didn’t show signs of backing down. The two heroes stood together, readying themselves as Australis ripped herself back to her footing and shrieked.

Between them and in the windigo’s direct focus, Wallflower Blush pushed her will to move further and further. And yet, she couldn’t budge.

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Camp Everfree
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Spiraling gravitons and crackling torrents of magic smashed into one another, both discharging from the eyes of either combatant who stood a dozen meters apart. Boreas and Battra Lea’s beam clash was creating shockwaves that blew back billows of dust, ash, snow, and dirt in a small storm. Even with Boreas as previously damaged as he was from fighting the likes of Megalon, Mothra, Australis, and now Battra; he was still literally, and metaphorically, kicking with wild abandon. No sense of true pain, no regard for the natural limiters to the body, and no heed to whether X’s body got hurt or not, meant any sense of caution was cast into the wind.

Even so, the stiff resistance the heroine was giving him, combined with the attempted mental attack backfiring–thanks to that annoying pink puffball meddler–meant he now had a very fighting-fit guardian demanding his full attention. Boreas put his back into the attack, lurching forward and amplifying the graviton flow. Lea still managed to hold her ground, the crackling torrents of purple streaming from her eyes struggling yet still managing to hold the golden devastation at bay.

And why was this witch from another realm smirking like that?!

Boreas’s current body had the physical force to easily pop a person’s head off, shrug off building-sized explosions, and hit hard enough to fire out energy attacks with that exact amount of force. But for all of its added durability, strengths, and abilities, it didn’t change the fact Monster X’s body was still human. Even with a much tougher constitution, he did not weigh all that much more than was expected, and only had two feet to ground himself with.

Which meant he only had marginal stability that instantly crumbled the moment something much heavier hit him. The speeding van Battra had seen coming up behind him did the trick. Forced to maintain the beam lock, with his attack coming from his eyes, Boreas hadn’t been able to turn his head to see it coming as she had.

A few thousand kilograms of automobile smashed into Boreas from an angle behind him, instantly wrenching him from his footing and throwing him almost a dozen meters from the transferred force. The energy beam clash was interrupted, and Battra let out a shout as she threw herself full force into the attack the moment Boreas’ onslaught was cut off. The windigo let out an eerie shriek like howling wind, an uncanny cry that should not have been possible with X’s vocal cords, as he was blasted across the grounds of the camp and into the partially frozen lake.

The van, now sporting a roughly Monster X-shaped dent in the front, skidded to a stop.

Figuring she had to be driving in the right direction when she spotted golden spiraling rays and crackling bursts of purple shooting into the sky, Sunset Shimmer had floored it as much as was safe down the mountain pass from the highway. Partially because of her rush to get there in time, and partially on account of having driven the whole way there... very awkwardly.

To compare the inside of the sirens’ van to a clown car would have been a gross understatement. Even with them having dumped out a lot of equipment on the spot just to be sure, it had been a tight squeeze fitting two above-average-human-sized transformed kaiju and six Rainbooms, almost all of whom were now sporting extra bits like magical hooves, horns, and wings, into a model of minivan only meant for four people.

Poor Irys had been clinging to the back of her seat as she had on the first trip; wide-eyed and hanging on to it and Sunset for dear life the entire drive, like a scared cat. Sunset grit her teeth, trying to work through Irys’ grip whilst also having half of Applejack’s foot shoved into her side, with part of who she thought was Fluttershy’s wing sticking out between the seats.

“ALRIGHT! EVERYONE OUT!” Sunset Shimmer squawked through her grimace.

The frigid water and jagged ice of the lake exploded outwards, erupting into a geyser as Boreas came exploding out of it. Launched into the air, the windigo landed with enough force to dent the ground with a small crater. The northern winds howled as they were whipped into a frenzy, exploding forth in multiple waves of frozen air and misery-laden mist to try and get some breathing room from the multiple threats he now detected. It did seem to force the new group to scatter, but he hadn't the time or focus to directly ascertain who they were. He huffed and snarled, chest still smoking from Battra’s attack. Boreas’s eyes started to crackle with golden energy while still trying to get his bearings as to what was upon him now.

Something quickly hit him again when a high-speed blur of blue rushed past him. He briefly caught the glimpse of cyan wings before a thick-heeled shoe came crashing into his cheek. Combat instincts stolen from Praetorian Guard 094 snapped into focus as he tried to turn with the blow and counterattack, only to have his fist strike a solidified force that barely offered any give.

Rainbow Dash might have lacked complete super strength, but for her legs to be able to withstand the pounding force of sprinting at the speed she was going, there was ample power to be had. And where durability fell short, Rarity was able to compensate by blocking Boreas’ blow. The shimmering energy construct in the shape of a diamond cracked under the force,, but did stop the hit as the gemstone flew into the irate windigo in a kamikaze run before shattering.

Boreas fumed. He’d always been a creature of personability. Always wanting to isolate and torment. Be it from his own sick pursuit of fulfillment through that isolation, or just flat-out lack of experience, he wasn’t used to getting hit from multiple angles. Not alone, and especially not with Harmony’s magic–to him a wretched taint that went beyond bordering on toxic–surrounding him with all of these powers.

The presence was suffocating, so it was time to fight fire with ice. There was still some lingering negativity left over from Notus’ demise, and he’d created plenty himself. Jumping backwards in a series of great bounds to clear some distance, whilst peppering the general area with quick-fire graviton bursts to get some cover, he drew in the cold and desolation of that which was near him. Northerly gales roared to power, cold mist beginning to encircle the cackling windigo as a means of both shrouding him and collecting his power. He spied a cyan blur zooming across the campground in a wide arc meant to build up speed before swooping around to come at him for another pass. Boreas flashed bloody teeth as the temperature around the campground rapidly plummeted with the roaring storm building up.

He unleashed the galeforce in a continuous burst. The sheer winds, that were strong enough to bend trees, struck Rainbow Dash, who’d been quick to pursue Boreas and was about to make contact, full force. She was sent skidding across the ground, grasping her head as the cold bit at her skin and the darkest of thoughts bit into her mind. The frost grew over her coat and body, adhering her to the ground and trying to choke her with dark magic. The magical wings granted to her started to flicker, like they were phasing in and out of existence.

“DASH!” Rarity cried out over the storm, the transformed girl sprinting to her downed friend’s side.

Her horn ignited and a glimmering crystal appeared in front of the downed Dash, blocking some of the wind whilst leaving Rarity exposed to most of the wind shear. It cracked against the force, but another was thrown up only to suffer the same fate. Another still came, Rarity braving the storm to get to her friend’s side. Straining with all the power she had, the Bearer of Generosity used herself as a windshield to take the brunt of the gales that now swooped around her barriers; all in an effort to buy Dash time to get free.

Even through the pain, she still looked at her friend with a smile and frigid tears.

Boreas grinned, focusing on the pair. They might bear the goddess’s blessing, but they were still frightened, scared children opposing him. And he’d crushed many of their age, younger and older, in his millennia of life. So what of their life and power? Alone they’d drown in despair and horror, just like he once almost managed over a decade ago.

Two Elements were in trouble, but two more were right on the heels of the conflict to stop it. A pair of yellow wings beat even against the storm to reach Rainbow Dash and Rarity, carrying another in tandem. Fluttershy helped to push Sunset Shimmer at the two pinned-down Bearers, a grateful Rainbow grabbing onto Sunset’s hand to form a chain linking them with Rarity and Fluttershy.

Rarity strained, trying to pull her friends closer whilst keeping one arm up and constituting the crystal barrier, “I-! Can’t!-... Keep it!”

The Element of Kindness’s eyes widened and her voice was audible even over the storm as she tried to push Rarity behind herself in an attempt to cover her, “Rarity?! You’re hurt!-”

A brief look at Fluttershy’s sympathetically fearful face, even as frost started to build up across it and sting the girl’s teary eyes, was enough motivation to push the Bearer of Generosity further. She grit her teeth and tried to focus. Her gemstone sparked, and a second gemstone was created to shield Fluttershy and Sunset Shimmer, the effort clearly taxing her in how she crumbled over. Three sets of hands caught her. Rainbow’s, Fluttershy’s, and overlapping either of theirs, Sunset’s.

The first two, the Bearers of Loyalty and Kindness, were the most affected by the storm. Both from their current condition, but also from the echoes of years past when they were in a similar situation. Cold without numbness, fear from all around, and pain that bit into the bone.

The North Wind cackled maniacally, amplifying the storm to try and keep any other rescuers at bay for even just a few moments longer. If he could just kill or disable one or two of the brats, he’d be that much more assured.

Through perhaps poetic chance or hubris, Boreas was laser-focused on three souls he tried so hard to freeze to death once when they were still little girls who stayed behind in an animal shelter. So focused in fact, that he forgot the fourth. All those years ago there was a “Tree Angel” to save them, the first Bearer of the Element of Empathy. Now, the second Bearer was doing the same.

A red gemstone flaring to life, Sunset Shimmer grabbed onto her friends as her empathic powers worked to project the three’s thoughts to one another even over the howling storm. It transmitted memories and thoughts between her three friends who also once braved a storm like this, speaking without words and showing with feeling why they were even in that kind of situation. The loyalty in a young Rainbow refusing to evacuate if it meant helping a friend. The generosity from a child-aged Rarity giving up her coat to swaddle a shivering friend. The kindness given by a small Fluttershy in doing all she could to save every critter and friend she could. Every one of them felt it and experienced it through empathy.

The five Bearers from Canterlot High had all been afraid of their fitness for the task before them. Wondered if they could be up to par with heroines of another world who were older, wiser, and had been gifted such amazing abilities since birth. They were just five young women in a band. But it was moments of steeled resolve and memory like this, where they might best realize they, too, had been heroes since they were young.

The swell of Harmony’s magic from so many Elements working in tandem re-energized all of them, even without a song to focus it with. Fluttershy’s magical wings erupted outwards and surrounded her compatriots, yellow brilliance physically shielding them from the storm while causing all the ice built up across them to instantly melt.

And no matter how Boreas howled, the power didn’t falter. Instead, Fluttershy’s wings grew even more before snapping outwards. They broke apart, forming into a glittering swarm of light. Boreas retched from the magic he sensed across the lights as they all took form. Hundreds of butterflies that raced through the gales of wind. The legions of magical creations condensed together as they flew forward unabated, coalescing and amassing as a single force.

Boreas’ eyes widened as the yellow, glowing outline of a bear the size of a truck came erupting forward and smashed into him. The magical construct exploded on contact and almost ragdolled the windigo, shouting out his storm before it could fully get going.

Staggered and sent sprawling into the mists he’d created, the only remnant of his storms a mere cold air devoid of magic, the irate windigo was offered no reprieve. The girls’ exhibition of power had given the others more than enough time to catch up. Boreas quickly spotted a dark mass rapidly approaching from a different direction than the Elements. Opting to not try magic again, but rely on his stolen body, the mass was met with golden torrents of power, the air distorting and particulates floating off the ground from the sheer pressure waves of distorted gravity. The graviton torrents streamed at the four figures rapidly closing in, spurring two sets of hands to grab onto a pair of arms in the middle of the formation as the fourth held onto them.

Thrown forward by two sets of enhanced strength, and the surges of thrust given by the one holding onto her, Irys had tears in her eyes, yet determination in her snarling, fanged, visage. Her eyes glimmered and the shriek she unleashed cast a field across her spread arms. The sonic shield resonated and flashed, deflecting off sparks and stray bolts. The graviton torrent split and fractured against the bow of the barrier, Irys’ forward momentum from being thrown at Boreas helping to keep her from getting thrown back. With the gyaos careening closer and closer, Boreas was forced to cut the beams off lest he end up blasting himself. Not for fear of X being harmed, but for concern of being knocked down and ganged up on.

The moment Irys was about to collide with Boreas, and the graviton beams were cut off, the albino silenced her shield and curled herself in a ball. Changed as her body was, Irys was one used to maneuvering whilst airborne, and some abilities carried over. She planted her feet onto Boreas’ chest at the same time the windigo brought his arms up in a memorized guard. The look of pain-yet-fury on her face was palpable. Though the smirk on her face was of equal strength when runes flashed across her skin. Very briefly taking on her true power, the gyaos let loose a shockwave of stored-up sound that was beyond deafening in the close-quarters range.

Boreas thrashed, throwing all caution into the wind and causing his powers to fly out of control. Golden energy flew from his eyes as the ground was split and torn under the graviton pressure waves. Deafened and dazed, he had no sense of how to aim and fired off erratically. It left him unable to strike Irys when she kicked away and bounded off him to get some breathing room.

Under the cover of their retreat, however, the follow-up came charging in with no room for respite. One of them was pouncing and whirling through the air, as if spinning, and the one more was bounding across the ground with supercharged leaps. Sparking and red hot, Anguirus shrugged off a stray graviton blast that hit him square in the chest, lunging downwards and yanking himself forward with two fistfuls in the ground. Still rotating from an adaptation of the thunderball, he slammed into Boreas’ legs with enough force to dent the ground and send the superpowered fighter sprawling forward. Anguirus grabbed onto Boreas’ leg with one arm, after frimly planting his other, and yanked forward, slamming the windigo flat into the earth and several inches into the ground.

Deaf, partially blinded, and knocked limp by the hit, Boreas was still blindly firing optic blasts when he was wrenched off the ground. Sailing upwards in an arc, with Anguirus still holding his foot, Boreas couldn’t get out of the way from the follow-up. The bounding force had closed the distance and Applejack had gotten some good pointers on how to put that extra strength of hers to good use. The last time she and X had clashed, a fist-to-fist lock had left her with a bruised hand. Even with her powers amplified, with practice and the crystalline Element around her neck, her sensei had gotten an idea based on her counterpart.

She planted a foot firmly into the hard-packed earth of the campground, threw her entire weight to the side to pivot and spin herself around whilst maintaining her momentum, and nailed Boreas right in the chest with a mule-kick. The magical aura, approximating a hoof, that wrapped around her foot struck home with a shockwave, blasting the air from Boreas’ lungs and sending the windigo careening through the air before crashing into the ground a dozen meters away.

No sooner than he hit the ground did the earth itself seem to attack Boreas. The ground, gripped in a purple aura of telekinesis, was separated to swallow the windigo’s body up to the waist. Twilight’s hands shimmered with an identical hue of colors as she struggled to try and hold down even more of the thrashing windigo. Considering Boreas was acting in a full adrenaline drive, with next to no regard to if he overexerted and harmed Monster X’s body, it was commendable she was managing to hold even part of him still with half-frozen dirt.

Boreas’ eyes flashed yellow as he snarled, taking aim at the wretch holding him down. He knew he couldn’t let himself get pinned down going up against so many opponents at once, especially given he lacked his previous storm’s cover. The young princess’s own eyes widened as the flare of golden energy, larger than most prior blasts, came exploding from Boreas’ glare.

A hand was placed on Twilight’s left shoulder, before another did the same on her right. Crackling rays of purple intercepted Boreas’ optic blasts, Lea’s prism blasts holding them back in a beam lock. Optic blasts overpowered and held away the manic throes of the windigo, long enough for the rest of the group to close the distance and mass together upon him. The powerhouses of the ground were the ones to get into melee range.

"Hold his head away!" Anguirus grunted whilst blocking a haymaker thrown in a blind rage, absorbing much of the hit and grabbing the limb to keep it restrained in a deadlock of his grip.

"Keep him from hurting X's body more!" a white blur spoke for Irys' as she pounced onto the other writhing arm, latching onto it with both of her arms and legs. The combination of her jerking all her limbs down, along with her weight, pulled the limb to the ground fully.

“Just-like last time! Get ready to purge him!” Applejack darted around the pair and grabbed onto Boreas’ head by the chin and neck, getting behind him and forcing the manic windigo’s face upwards as to deflect away any chance at optic blasts.

“Purge him?!” Lea shouted back as she perked up, “You fought another of these things already?!”

“Fought and destroyed. Ambushed us right after you left,” Twilight yelped as she tried to keep her focus and assist in keeping Boreas pinned down via telekinesis, “B-But we’d need a siren’s magic to get them out of X’s body!”

“We’ll have to try, Princess! He’s not staying down!” Anguirus roared in retort.

“But- We don’t have Adagio or Aria here! Where’s Sonata?!” Twilight Sparkle shouted as the other Bearers formed up beside her, the alicorn taking special notice of just how devastated the campground was with a wary eye cast specifically to Sonata’s cabin. There had been some hope Lea had been successful, until whatever happened here happened to change her, as Sonata was most certainly in no condition to sing when she left. But the full realization of something horrible having happened was biting at her.

The cabin represented that reality; completely destroyed, with claw marks obvious on some of the demolished timbers. A panicked grimace was shot to Lea, who seemed to be experimenting to see if any of her former sealing, barrier, or useful spellwork might still be functional.

Picking up on the grimness of the alicorn’s frown and her own failing to get her seals to work again, Lea looked aside painfully whilst still stubbornly trying to get anything besides optic blasts to work, “She has transformed into a windigo and ran off! Megalon and Pinkie went after her-”

“PINKIE WAS HERE?!” Fluttershy, of all people, belted out as her magical wings shut up and out in surprise that was similarly etched across every other one of the Rainbooms.

That momentary bout of dread, shock, and confusion was enough for the winds to kick up once more. Northern, frigid, gales started to intensify, and Boreas let out an otherworldly shriek from a bygone time. He managed to wrench the arm Anguirus was holding down upwards, causing the Guardian Beast to stagger and bash into Applejack. Boreas’ head jerked up and forwards, trying to get free of the grip enough to take aim as horrific, golden torrents spewed from his eyes, and bisected several distant trees.

Lea didn’t have time to explain everything and wasted no heed, rushing forward to put her only other asset to use; enhanced strength. Shoving one hand under Boreas’ chin to further force it back, and the other onto his arm to wrench it down, she put everything she had into keeping him physically locked down and restrained alongside Irys, Anguirus, and Applejack.

“We can’t hold him down forever, and Aria isn’t back yet!” Irys cried out, wincing from the bits of frost starting to creep up her arms from points of contact with X’s body. Her pink eyes directly locked upon Twilight, the closest thing they had to a siren on hand,“Eventide, you’re our best shot!”

Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Sunset Shimmer all formed up in Twilight’s midst, the alicorn’s mind working at a mile a second. There were so many moving parts flying around right now. Her heart was seizing up in dreadful worry for both Pinkie and Megalon being in such a situation as they were in, and writhing just as much for Sonata. The poor girl hadn’t asked, or deserved, any of this. And the phantom sensations of the promise Sparkle had given to help her was painfully brought to the forefront. And how was she supposed to substitute for a siren?! She’d been with them for a time, yes, but she’d only really gotten a grasp on her magic again in this world recently! They-They needed Aria! Or Adagio!- Sonata was- and she couldn’t step up to do-

Her pulse was racing, but slowed on contact. One of her hands was taken by radiating golden light, the other by a warming blaze of red. Fluttershy and Sunset didn’t convey some grandiose speech as they took her into their steadying presence, that wasn’t needed. Not with their power being conveyed as it was.

They were missing Aria, on account of her going to reclaim Adagio and Gigan with Godzilla, with the rest of the group having rushed to Everfree the moment they saw the explosions and lightshow. Enough to hear Gigan's brief ascension to his true form and declaration that spurred the evacuation. There were a lot of moving parts right now and they did not have all of the pieces. So, they'd just have to make the best of what they could do.

Aria's song had purged Notus out of Flash Sentry, so maybe something similar would work for her? Twilight had practiced alongside the sirens vigorously, and her talent was being a quick study of magic after all! The gemstone, this world's version of the Element of Magic, flooded her with power and presence that was bolstered by her friends. She felt just as emboldened and empowered as when she had first activated the Elements back in Equestria.

Was the power the exact same? Could she actually replicate siren or mermare song magic, despite not being one?...

-No time to question; it’s nothing ventured, nothing gained!-

Twilight Sparkle braced, feeling like two halves to a whole with the Element. The inherent talent and calling of the bearer being one part, that was complemented and accentuated by the physical talisman. If her counterpart in this world was also potentially worthy of the Element of Magic, that inherent magical tether might have been the exact reason Zephyrus had preyed on it.

“Applejack! Get him right between you and me!” Twilight called out as she started to hone her focus, joining hands with the rest of her fellow present Elements, “This world’s power likes to link up between Elements, get him into the crossfire!”

Lea nodded to her alongside her friends, as did Anguirus, Irys, and Applejack as the latter positioned herself directly behind Boreas to act as the path of least resistance for the magic spell. Boreas thrashed and snarled, trying to free himself as the northern winds howled in fury but not in victory. As powerful as his new body was, it had been worn down and overwhelmed. Restrained and unable to fight those pinning him down, he nevertheless continued thrashing to try and get free as the winds howled.

Twilight honed her focus, tethered to the others via Sunset Shimmer. She could feel all of them and they her, transmitting the message on how she might need their help to try and replicate the proper magic. Imperfect as he was, X was a good soul. Which meant he’d be acting as a sort of unwilling buffer against the Elements, if they just went to turning their power loose on Boreas wholesale like they had on Notus once Aria had purged him from Flash’s body. This hinged on her tapping into the full power of the Element of Magic, and using her skill and self to the best extent she could muster.

A slow hum seeped from her heart, beginning to take shape into song in her breath in emulation of the melody Adagio and Aria had so taught her; passed down from another princess of a bygone era. The Element of Magic upon her neck started to flicker with life, its fellow Elements embodied in her own group beginning to synchronize with it in similar fashion. She was the epicenter of it, the linchpin. Funneling every scrap of magic donated to her by her friends, funneled through her own voice, and then cast to the last remaining Bearer in close proximity in Applejack.

Boreas screamed in rage, feeling the magic begin to activate. Red mist started to channel out of almost everyone present and into Twilight, collecting and taking aim right at him. He recognized the melody, and felt nothing but disgust and spite. Despite everything he had done to her, horrors unspeakable, that sea witch Hymnia seemed poised to have the last laugh.

Twilight's song, an echo of Hymnia's own evil purging spell, was a ballad aimed upon the victimized X. Love could take many different forms, and while she most certainly was not romantically attached to X, the Princess of Friendship did have a bond with him nonetheless; as an honorable soldier. Even at the beginning, when she offered herself up to spare her friends, she knew he never meant lasting harm against them and would keep his word. Even as an enemy at the time, it was respectable. And upon finding his motivation was out of love and protectiveness, they did quickly become amicable.

Had he been one of the initial six kaiju who arrived in Equestria, she very easily could've seen him becoming a fast friend. And she would not be a benevolent heroine if she left such a soul, wayward as it was, to be bastardized like this. She would not let Boreas have her friend.

The salvo of magic was let loose. One part laden with benevolence and the blessings of the goddess unknown to both alicorn princess now, and the other part mermare princess from a millennia ago. But even as part of it flew towards the possessed X with the intention of linking up with Applejack, two things went unnoticed.

The first was that a very significant portion of the magic instead flew backwards, away from Twilight and away from camp. There was another Bearer it sought, one who needed the help.

The oncoming mass of cleansing magic very likely could have purged Boreas from X's body, reaching into his heart and playing upon the platonic bond of respect and friendship that had formed between the wayward dragon knight and magical royal. It would poison the well, forcing Boreas out just as Notus had from Sentry's body... if the mind within the body of Monster X had such a heart.

Instead, held captive by Boreas, the mind of someone who knew and had bonded with Twilight Sparkle, Eventide Hymn, was not present. The lack of bond, lack of tether afforded some protection. It was a shortcoming nobody could have predicted, no one present having seen what Gigan saw within the Memory Stone to have relayed the information. They knew of the memory loss and the fractured mind, but not in the way it was divided now.

Still, the magic was commendable and certainly could have done something severe even if the initial impact of benevolence's poisonous presence upon the frost demon was slightly diluted. Had a western gale not joined the northern howls of wind.

Cold fingers grabbed onto Twilight’s necklace and she only briefly glimpsed the source when she turned her head. In one instant she was forced to look upon the very visage of horror cast in her own likeness. Eyes with burst blood vessels sustaining them red, glaring at her through manically contracted pupils. Bits of frost and ice gouging out through the skin. And the disheveled hair that was swaying in the air and half frozen in a wild frenzy.

Then in an instant, it was replaced by ice cast in the exact same shape as a monstrous version of herself.

The Bearers fell backwards from a shockwave. Irys and Anguirus' mouths dropped in surprise and horror. Applejack cried out as the jolts of magic from her friends being blasted back, and their spell being cut off, conducted into herself. Lea tried to loose a blast of energy at the intruder, but only struck the now exploding ice sculpture.

Boreas grinned through bloodied lips, even as the explosion of magic from the equal and opposite ends of that sorcery born of clashing deities shook the entire campground. His captors managed to maintain their hold on him, but he didn't need to get free. He'd stalled for time long enough for the backup plan.

A voice of Twilight Sparkle gasped as she staggered, blood oozing onto the ground with a cough. But someone decidedly not Twilight, of any world, looked back up at the assembled heroes with manic and deranged eyes. Zephrus grinned wildly despite being heavily damaged through Twilight Sparkle's body, still smoking from the magical eruption of getting too close to the Elements. Had they not the meat-shield of a body to inhabit of a good person even if she wasn't Bearer worthy, had the Elements not been diverted into going off in two different directs with Pinkie Pie being away, had they not been the second most powerful creation Grogar ever made, that act alone would have killed them very easily. There had actually been an extremely high chance of it doing just that, but they'd come too far in their plan to have heed.

The real Twilight Sparkle, knocked off her feet and trying to get up, looked on in horror as she realized something was missing.

“.. NO! NO NO!” She flailed, clawing at her neck and bringing up only a broken necklace tie that Gloriosa had fashioned for her out of a vine. She looked up to see it in the taunting grip of her vile doppelganger.

Zephyrus tisked mockingly, shaking their head whilst wiggling the Element of Magic in his grip. The Element sparked and flickered with magic between dimming due to the sheer dark magical force gripping it. Without unity, it's power had been thrown off balance. Zephyrus' eye was drawn to the weakened Element knowingly and Twilight tried to kick her feet under herself as a means to rise.

“NO! DON’T!” Twilight screamed, reaching out for the Element as she began to run forward. An attempt to use telekinesis again was lukewarm at best, as having the crystal so violently ripped away so suddenly had her power on the fritz.

Others had already joined in the effort after realizing what had happened. A cyan blur was beginning to speed forward as amethyst energy was summoning crystals. A purple pair of prism beams lanced forward, and just about anyone who wasn't preoccupied holding down a windigo-possessed kaiju, was charging forward.

And yet Zephyrus was not moved, nor intimidated. There was a supposition to make that all of the ice demons other than himself were insane, crazy, or otherwise psychotic in some means or another. But the truth was, as good as he was at planning, there was no amount of misery he’d want to miss out on long-term. This plan of his hinged on several pieces falling into place where they needed to, with a lot of wiggle room in between.

Three windigos wouldn't be enough as it was, more were needed. And be it by converting their daughters he'd arranged the siring of for such a purpose, or by bringing back his greater and opposite number denied to them so long ago; there were multiple paths to reach that conclusion. But, all good plans were just as much about denying your enemy victory as they were enriching yourself.

The Elements and their Bearers were probably the greatest threat to them out of anything. That's why he had sought their demise several times now when it was doable. And with the Retainer having done her duty to give them these nasty talismans, denial was the name of the game now.

Twilight Sparkle, this world's foolish girl, would not last long doing this. Her body would be torn apart from the strain if it didn't take out Zephyrus himself first. But Zephyrus had never planned on using her long-term anyways. They just needed her power for a little bit longer, and there was a perfect way to also keep these pesky Elements from being as big of a problem as they could've been. Two birds with one stone, if this worked and didn’t rip them apart instantly.

The screaming was other worldly. It was a rare moment Zephyrus actually felt pain, let alone meaningful damage. The Element was fighting him with everything it had, even with the overpowering he'd given it earlier. Trying to stab through the comatose, dormant mind of the young girl he'd bastardized into using as a scapegoat and shield. It was a surreal experience as the agony clouded out any other physical sensation.

Zephyrus had lived long. Extremely long. Even he didn't know quite how much, other than it had been long enough to see mountain ranges change in size and shape. And all of it was flashing before his eyes.

The the downfall of one era, whether it was his purpose for being created or if he'd been reformatted from a prior entity he could not be sure. Times abyss was too long.

The shocks and convulsions caused black tar to erupt from the fissures across the arm holding onto the Element of Magic. It was killing him.

A call to arms. His weakest brother Notus had been summoned forth, and in turn brought out the second weakest of their number. But when Boreas hadn't been enough, the second strongest had entered the fray. Zephyrus could remember the amethyst eyes from the bearded unicorn the goddess had rallied alongside his fellows to face the windigos.

Otherworldly wailing, Sci-Twi's damaged body smashed into a hunk of debris and very briefly, the outline of an antlered figure seemed to burst out of her skin and shriek. Sonata's stolen gem, having siphoned magic for weeks and having been cultivated by the oldest dark magic user in existence; was rapidly being depleted trying to wear down the Element. Both were flickering on and off, warring as the Element tried to purge the corruption in the latter.

Zephyrus was dying. There was no doubt of it. The only question was, which would yield first. If he had a life and will to live for even a second more, or the will of the Element?

In some ways, the Western Wind never thought of themselves as a living thing. He'd never felt true compassion, joy, kinship, or the other mannerisms that emulated these Elements. Satisfaction only ever came from affirmation, be it of self or conquest. What irony it was, that only when it was flashing before his eyes and possibly because his essence was being infected by Harmony's magic; that he'd ever really thought himself as something alive and not an animate purpose.

If he was going to die, he'd fight for his life that remained. He'd killed an Element Bearer before.

Zephyrus stabbed themselves at the base of the neck with the Element of Magic and absorbed every ounce of magic that could be wrenched from it. Twilight Sparkle's body, inhabited by a monster of Grogar and infused with the magic of Harmony, would rip itself apart in about an hour from the contrasting energy and would take him with it. But what was left of her soul and ambient magic, would be fuel for this effort. And unlike prior attempts, this Frostbite was complete as the western wind shot up into the air. The explosion of magic radically reshaped the form. Initially similar to what Aria and Gigan had fought, an additional dark magic wing exploded out of the malformed, icy one to complete a pair with the other.

Twilight’s body grew in height and size, icy constructs twisting around her limbs into more orderly shapes in the manner of bracers and cloven-hooved boots. A crown of frozen antlers erupted from her head as dark aether encircled the malfested’s eyes. Pure black was all that appeared in their gaze initially, broken in span only by the flickering-on of dim, dead, blue light for pupils. Dark attire of dim violets and frigid icicles made up her garb, which alongside the antlered crown gave her the appearance of a dark echo of a sovereign.

Frostbite Sparkle’s eyes turned about to face the still restrained Boreas, and they extended a hand to them. The Element of Magic, flashing rapidly as if horrified by what was subjugating its power, dimmed as a darkness covered over it. Several spell rings of spinning energy formed over Frostbite Sparkle’s extended hand and arms, rotating in opposite and increasingly quick directions.

“Such a dear daughter of mine gave me a wonderful idea!" Frostbite smirked as they copied what Adagio had done to Gigan, sharing magic and power.

Lea's eyes widened in horror at realizing what Zephyrus was about to do, and she dove in front of Boreas just as the lance of magic shot free from the Windigo of the East's hand and towards the Windigo of the North. A flash and burst of golden graviton beams into her back caught her and everyone else off guard, and managed to blast her out of the way.

Boreas puffed out his chest as he accepted the magical infusion. The spell flux Zephyrus fired into them wasn’t dark magic, and frankly, that made it agonizing to endure. But, endure it he did, before cracking a bloodthirsty grin beneath blinding lights from his eyes. A pillar of light overtook Camp Everfree as Anguirus, Irys, Lea, and Applejack were thrown off.

Boreas could feel the sudden flood of power, morphing his body into a mass and strength of a god only eclipsed by his and his three brothers' creator. Subtle visions and flashes of a bygone time, some chapter in the life of his daughter's choice in mate, greeted him. Of a similar infusion, an ascension that combined the remnant power of something called a Plasma Spark and the ichor of a horrific dragon, with the body of a mortal man, an otherwise insignificant soldier. All for the purpose of trying to save a whole world, an empire of multiple worlds, but with a spouse first and foremost in their thoughts.

It was just about the extent of memory that remained in this body, and knowing it was a noble soul he had bastardized the form of by hijacking it made the victory only sweeter. His twin tails slashed through the air, cracking like whips.

Zephyrus finally let himself revel in success and loosed a victorious laugh, launching off the shoulder of the now kaiju-sized Boreas and taking to the air on dark wings. The powers of Twilight were still the key to enacting this plan of his, but having your remaining compatriot be as tall as a mountain, with more than enough force to level one, was certainly a huge plus.

The rising enormity blocked out the setting sun, casting a tall shadow with twin tails upon the assembled, until practically all that remained of the campground was swallowed up.

The force of the laughter, gusting free from jaws the size of a bus, was deafening, and the magnitude of the stomp that followed rattled bone and threw everyone back with the shock wave. Western and Northern winds billowed and coiled around the pillar of darkness the titan emerged from, leaving the ebony-skinned monster clad in bone armor to tower over the campgrounds. The winged demon perched atop Boreas' head shot into the air and into the growing blizzard swirling above, giving the execution order to the meddlers that had proven so troublesome thus far. Laughter cast in Monster X's gargantuan voice rattled the airspace for miles, brilliance overtaking his eyes. Within a second's notice, a torrent of gravitons, cast in an eerie deathly white instead of their typical gold, flew straight down at the small crowd.

Irys, Anguirus, and Lea all called out, both for the defense of their fellows for what they knew was coming, and to try and counter it. Magic was brought to bear and aimed, a strong testament considering the death staring the heroes right in the face. Cabins and foundations were instantly vaporized or shattered when the graviton flares made contact with the center of the campground, the resulting pressure waves and burning heat rocketing forward. Camp Everfree was entirely destroyed to the bedrock, with the resulting crater rapidly growing.

Anguirus felt his body surge with magic even as he struggled to keep standing from the pressure wave beginning to impact his skin. Battra Lea squinted and had to cover her face whilst light flooded her body. Irys shrieked when the shock wave and heat hit her, losing her footing and being blown back until Anguirus and Lea caught her by the arms. Elemental magic flooded their bodies, but the impact was dealt. A second further, and the larger wave would strike. They could survive it due to the transformation kicking in to even the playing field, but they'd be blasted backwards and leave nothing to protect those behind them. The very keys to the Windigos' defeat would be vulnerable to massacre by a monster of a bygone era possessing the body of a monster from another world.

But as he lost his footing and was thrown backwards, Anguirus glimpsed something. Or rather, someone he'd seen only once prior.

Burning light and pressure waves pushed forth harder and harder as the microscopic fractions of a second ticked by. Gloriosa Daisy ran in front of the group. It was a foolish gambit. No powers, no skills, no defense, and she was still bleeding out from her injury. There was nothing she could do against a human sized kaiju, much less a true to form one, as a mere human without any magic. And yet, she still looked back at the group whilst her arms were spread to try and absorb as much of the explosion as possible. Hair blown back by the shock wave that slammed into her, revealing simple tears running down cheeks that bore a brave smile. She looked at the shocked kaiju, the Bearers of the Elements, and beyond to two not present on the battlefield that had destroyed her home. Adagio and Gigan, who she prayed were safe.

She’d given up the Elements to the rightful Bearers. She’d helped organize a peace between factions against a foe which fed on strife. She wasn’t some destined heroine, but the safeguard to enable them to save the world. And she got to meet a lot of great people, a wayward sorceress and cyborg most of all.

If this was how the story ended, she could take pride in that.

Gloriosa Daisy never stopped smiling bravely as she took the hit and the light overtook her.

Pillars of purple, green, and orange light ripped through the blizzard; with a streak of green joining them to part the blizzard.

When a light overtook everything in her vision, Gloriosa Daisy was fairly certain she was dead. If it was death, it wasn't necessarily a bad feeling. Initially, there was nothing, which also meant nothing bad. But that which there was, no word to describe that said ‘nothing’ soon became ‘something’. There was a sense of standing on terra firma, a grassy span that seemed to stretch on into infinity under a pure white sky. A hilltop overlooking a beautiful verdant forest, and at its precipice was the most beautiful tree Gloriosa had ever laid her eyes upon. A brilliant, shimmering span that seemed to approximate the shape of an oak tree, but was instead cast out of crystal instead of wood and leaf. And upon the branches, seven jewels of various shapes and colors glowed like heavenly stars brought to the world. She recognized the sequence of colors, starting with magenta and ending in red. The hues of a rainbow, the seven Elements of Harmony.

Others joined her presence, flanking either side like they were forming a procession. Some tall, some short, forming every descriptor and description; all united in how she couldn’t clearly make out if they were flora or fauna. Many of them had the appearance of plant life in all of its forms chiefly, only approximating a human shape but not perfectly embodying it.

So many hands had borne a title and power, and yet almost all of them had departed themselves from humanity eventually while doing so. Living entirely in nature and for their calling. It wasn’t the wish of the Elements, themselves, that they do this, but the mantle of the Retainer tended to seek out the isolated or lost in hopes of giving them a calling. To let them be ever free, and find their happiness on their own, whilst keeping the secret. That was, until several decades ago.

A mass of flowers stood up from the hilltop, in the midst of the collected assembly. Like a small hill rising, it ascended before sharply turning aside. The mattress of flowers and seeds composing the floral cloak broke apart and floated across the breeze in a cascading glow, the dew droplets across each petal creating a shimmering display as they reflected the light of the brilliant tree. The dazzling display obscured her vision briefly, and yet she could feel a familiar presence even before she had a clear line of sight. Glowing green eyes, a gaze she very briefly witnessed as a child on a fateful night, stared back at her warmly with fondness of a parental love that touched at the heart. The last time she had seen those eyes like that was the night she lost her mother. And it was perhaps now, to the strange twists and turns of fate her life had taken to get to this point, in the company of sirens, the chosen of the angelic, and the titans of the stars; Gloriosa finally realized something.

In some ways, her mother had never left her.

Wysteria's spirit stood before her, her form was eerily beautiful as it was recognizable to her daughter. Wysteria had been the first Gaea Everfree called upon that didn't find peace in solitude. She had kept her bonds and proceeded to only make new ones. She kept no secrets from her spouse and that led to her successor being closer to her than any had before. Had she not marched into an unwinnable battle she still triumphed over, the passage of the mantle would have been done in a way never before seen.

Gloriosa sobbed and laughed as she smiled, fully aware of what had probably happened to her body, throwing herself in front of a kaiju attack even whilst already bleeding out. If this was the last thing she got to see before going out into whatever might be next or not, then her crazy life was worth living.

Wysteria mutually embraced her daughter as the other Gaea drew in to close ranks. She kissed her daughter's forehead and ruffled her hair as she would do if her child had acted silly tracking dirt into the cabin again. Because there were two things Gloriosa soon realized.

Rushing into unwinnable situations for a shot at triumph regardless? Managing to pull out a miracle when fate rewarded such heroism?

Like mother, like daughter.

The intensity of the white light increased and Gloriosa heard the sound of wind chimes from the tree. The light changed from white to green.

“No… I killed you,” Zephyrus whispered with widened eyes as he hovered far above.

The swirling masses of golden gravitons, crackling like thousands of thunderbolts, was stopped mid flight. The forest itself seemingly had sprung up for defense. Every tree in the nearby square mile had abruptly bent inwards and sacrificed their structure and root work to create a barrier. A mesh weave of timbers with green magic amassed across it as a shield. Zephyrus was forced backwards in a haste as Boreas, in his stolen titanic body, screamed an enraged roar of hatred, disgust, and fear at who he saw through the woodwork.

Zephyrus and Boreas saw a dead woman, an echo from one of the worst defeats they had ever suffered. With not a single Element on her neck, Gaea Everfree smirked as she held up the shield.

The assembled Element Bearers' crystals had flared to life with a brilliance unseen before, creating a rainbow of glowing masses that instantly melted all of the assembled ice and burned away at parts of Frostbite Sparkle's dark magic form. Anyone present could instantly feel the amount of magic and benevolence therein magnified from what it was before.

What had been originally intended as a retainer to help safeguard and distribute the artifacts to the chosen had evolved. The process started when Wysteria befriended the lonely goddess and proved herself worthy of a heroic trait thereunto unknown. And by being fully willing to give up the first taste of power she ever had and act well outside of the originally intended parameters to help bring peace between conflicting factions, Gloriosa Daisy had continued and added to that legacy of the Everfree. If the forces of evil were going to break the original intended rules of engagement by unleashing horrors from a bygone time on this world, Harmony saw no reason why originally intended rules couldn't be bent.

“NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!” Zephyrus screamed, feeling an agonizing burning on their chest from the stolen Element of Magic that was actually causing their body to steam and smoke, and yet their bloodshot dark eyes were more hyper focused on the repowered Element Bearers and Gaea Everfree.

Finally taking notice of the scalding they were getting from their own power source, Zephyrus grabbed at their throat and concentrated everything they had in their malefic power to stifle the uprising from the stolen magic. It took flying quite a distance away from the Bearers and Gaea to do it, but they did manage to very painfully refreeze the top of their chest as a form of shielding.

He caught Gaea and the Elements glancing aside at Irys, Lea, and Anguirus after taking notice of Boreas' titanic form.

"WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THIS! BOREAS!” Zephyrus called out as he drew up the same portal spell he’d once used to try and bring the last of his kind into the world before Starswirl and his company put an end to that effort. Skilled as they were in such magic, this would be a monumental effort to do on the fly.

The possessed kaiju reignited their eyes with flashes of gold and forced the heroes to rapidly act. Another barrier was put up, this time reinforced with Rarity's crystal projections with the other Elements concentrating their magic into both her and Gaea. Even just doing this on the fly, their powers seem to work perfectly together in tandem.

The graviton torrent was blocked with a blinding flash, but preparations at a counter attack were abruptly canceled. When the flash of light cleared, both windigos were gone. In their place was what looked like a tear in the air itself. A brief glimpse of the city of Canterlot was visible before an enormous foot matching Monster X's abruptly stopped down in front of the perspective. The portal slammed shut and there was nothing left, as the winds died down and relocated to another place.

The Bearers and company watched the space the portal was once a part of for a time before looking to their fellows.

“We all saw that right?” Rarity called out as she glanced about.

Fluttershy’s magical ears lowered slightly as her wings beat steadily to keep her airborne, “Our town, they’ll destroy it…”

“Not if we can get there to stop them!” Rainbow Dash wound up to start sprinting, only to get grabbed by her jacket collar and kept from sprinting off.

“Wooooah there sugarcube! Not all of us got superspeed!” Applejack griped as she hoisted her friend back around to ground level.

Gloriosa, quite casual about having joined the ‘currently glowing with magic’ club let her poise and confidence from earlier slip slightly and lower her neck into her shoulders at the sight of the blackened crater. Boreas had blasted clear into bedrock and anything of those cabins or nearby have been vaporized beyond the point of even leaving debris.

“Pretty sure that black smear on the ground used to be Adagio’s van,” Gaea Everfree muttered, not wanting to think about insurance at a time like this.

“And we got another problem,” Rainbow Dash worryingly griped, her grimace widening as her eyes darted to a knocked-over form Fluttershy and Rarity were helping up.

Twilight Sparkle was suboptimal, but not critical. Sparks of energy arced across parts of her body as five gashes, the remnants of icy talons, cut across her shoulder and collar. Shallow as they were, it was enough Gaea Everfree wasted little time putting her hand to the wounds, an emerald-hued glow conducting between Bearer and Retainer, or whatever her new title may be. The wounds started to close up quickly, helped by not being too deep to begin with; and the magical shocks abated slightly though were still present.

“I-I’m alright,” the Princess and Element of Magic assured even as she winced and twitched slightly, “Just some kind of feedback shock from having the amplying nature of the Element geode get ripped off when my focus was elsewhere. I-I’ll be okay just…”

She shook her head to clear the stars in her vision, her magic-born wings, ears, hooves, and horn dissipating. Such dismissal of power likewise tied into the rest of the group caused their transformations to flicker slightly, before reinvigorating themselves. Joining hands, the Bearers closed ranks around their friend and held her. Fast friends or not, the camaraderie was real as it could have been. This errant princess had first helped them realize some of their potential, and catalyzed Sunset Shimmer turning her life away from the spiral she'd been on.

Early on, especially when Dash was ambushed and threatened due to a misunderstanding, fear and anxiety had plagued the group. These new abilities were seemingly just as much of a curse rather than a boon with how it had painted targets on them. Then right as Twilight returns to help out things straight, it led to the first time about half of them try to do anything with them to stop her kidnapping. Only to be left with quite a few bruises on the outside and a lot of grief leaving bruises on the inside at their failure.

Celestia, Godzilla, and to an extent Lea had trained them, but the end goal had always been to get Princess Twilight back. For these anxious, out-of-their-depth young women, some half a decade the junior of their Equestrian counterparts, it was a grounding goal to chase.

And they were not giving up.

Power conducted into Sunset Shimmer and from her to Twilight via their clasped hands. The shocks from the energy surges subsided, and while Twilight’s transformed state with ethereal wings and her horn didn’t return; a residual glow to indicate some of that power remained yet. The former alicorn breathed in deeply and exhaled in relief, patting at her collar where the missing element once was as Gaea melded some small vines to reconnect and repair her necklace.

Twilight gave her friends an appreciative nod and let them help her up to her feet.

“So what kind of crazy stunt did they just pull there?” Rainbow Dash grumbled as she frowned at Twilight’s missing Element.

“A desperation move if there ever was one. They’re using the Element like a blunt instrument. The windigo nor my counterpart here are a Bearer for the Element of Magic, but they are able to use it as a raw power source to some extent or another,” Twilight frowned as her attention was diverted to Sunset Shimmer clearing her throat.

“Right, saw a bit of a resemblance to a certain raging she-demon, like when I forced the Element of Magic into use for me.”

“Only you didn’t have the lightshow an’ wind up screamin’ in pain,” Applejack interjected.

Gaea Everfree nodded as she looked at her transformed state with no small amount of surprise and awe still in her eyes, “When I and the Bearers got close to them, it almost seemed like the Element was fighting back. I could sense something like that was going on.”

Twilight rubbed her wrist across her chin in a subtle bit of body language only Sunset Shimmer, a fellow Equestrian, noticed, “And given the nature of these things, whatever of the other me’s consciousness or spirit there is to act as a buffer is only barely functioning as that. That windigo just gave himself a huge weakness and a limited time to work before the Element probably gets to them.”

“Which means whatever they are trying to pull off is worth the risk,” Sunset noted grimly as she looked to where the portal had been, “Twilight, can you still use your Element for another go at hitting him or the one possessing Monster X?”

Twilight Sparkle felt within, odd as that statement was, and could detect a sort of palpitating pulse within her that wasn’t just her heart pumping. Some type of tether that, even with her eyes closed, let her feel the other Bearers near to her even without her Element. It was akin to what she’d experienced when bearing and activating the Elements, if muted and dulled. Like trying to feel textures through a gloved limb rather than normally.

“I-I think, maybe. Two parts to every Element use, Bearer and the trinket, and I’m still me. Tearing that necklace off didn’t scar anything or disrupt my ability to sync with you all,” Twilight affirmed as she gathered her wits, “We have to get to town, pronto.”

“Only problem. I’m quick enough to get us there, buuuut I can’t exactly carry everyone, remember?” Rainbow Dash grimaced as she crossed her arms, ethereal wings beating to hover her a meter off the ground, “Plus we’re still missing Pinkie.”

“Pinkie has always had a knack for knowing where she’ll need to be,” Fluttershy interjected, “Her sense and all that, I mean.”

“Right,” Gaea Everfree deadpanned, “Like finding out I had a random 18-year-old in my basement for the past week.”

“Point being!” Rainbow Dash griped, “How are we supposed to get to town A-S-A-P?”

The ground trembled and a large, horned shadow cast itself across the gathered heroines. Two more soon flanked it, each bearing wings which spanned the campground crater. The mass emergence of magic Zephyrus had tried to avert in some form or another had come all the same, and bore fantastic results. Even at half their normal size, an odd trend this world seemed to have, the trio of kaiju were like living mountains. Anguirus snorted, mindful of his placement as he lowered down and put his snout close to the ground with his rugged scales and scutes ready to act as hand and footholds.

Rainbow Dash grinned ear to ear, “Oh… Oh this! Is gonna! Be! AWESOME!”

Not a minute late and they passed onto the freeway, which was thankfully empty on account of the evacuation going the other direction. Anguirus galloped along in a direct path to the city, keeping himself level to give the heroines some extra stability even as Gaea wrapped some greenery around his snout to effectively give everyone seatbelt at her insistence. Irys swooped down to flank her brother, briefly exchanging a knowing look with the elder Guardian Beast as he third member of their cohort hovered alongside.

The blizzard originating at the township had begun to blow upon the ground with force, but it was beaten back with a pair of dark wings.

Burning amber spanned across voluminous wings, creating vibrant patterns in the swirls of red, orange, and gold. The wings’ shape closely echoed her Mothra form with the three jewels still studding her forehead, though more angular and pointed with two trailing tassels to the posterior section of the wing resembling a swallowtail butterfly’s namesake. What had been a fuzzy, inviting body was replaced by the smooth, almost polished armor plating that made up the carapace. Her forelimbs had grown out and recurved into a pair of scythes, with a stronger set of hindlimbs and recurved spike arching over her back. The chitin covering her head was almost like a helmet, terminating in a crown of horns just above her jewel-like compound eyes.

Some cues echoed her father, such as the large tusks blanking her maw, but Lea’s appearance was still something all to her own with a body almost resembling something of a wasp and mantis as much as it did a butterfly. Generally she was more organized and armored in appearance, as opposed to the wrinkled and scaly look of her predecessor. Evidently the last Battra’s death to melee combat had come with a few generational improvements.

Battra Lea trilled over the oncoming blizzard, the patterns on her wings beginning to glow and flicker. It wasn’t the same as her own barrier spell, and would take more getting used to even now if she was back in her natural form, but the Battra were just as magical as their counterparts. And that magic of Terra still had a stubborn relationship with that of Equestria of any variety.

The blizzard that had overtaken the town was beaten back, unable to mix or occupy the same space as some of this foreign magic like oil and water and having less force behind it. Rainbow Dash whooped a combination of a warcry and burst of laughter like she was in the most epic roller coaster ever when Anguirus jumped over a housing development and was caught midair by the other two allied kaiju who airlifted him the rest of the way.

=============
A Ways Away
=============

Aria continued to flap her wings and recirculate currents of controlled gravity to continue flying along. It was faster than driving a car, much less through the windy streets and growing icy formations across town and they hadn't had much other choice than her airlifting everybody who could go. Gigan was out of commission and couldn't be moved safely and Flash Sentry still out cold from what happened to him earlier. She was the only one who knew how to drive safely but would have to go slow through the roadways. That left her in this rather ridiculous looking situation of the tiny Celestia hanging off one of her arms and legs, Godzilla doing the same to her other side, and Adagio piggybacking on top of her cousin whilst leaning to the side in an attempt to equalize the weight.

It was a blessing that taking on Kaizer's powers bolstered her durability and strength so much, and some constant gravity manipulation canceled out most of the weight as she towed them along.

“Gotta give you props on one thing," Aria shouted over the winds as she was conscious of the very light weight on one of her arms, "I'd have never guessed a half-grown runt like you would be Princess Celestia! You certainly fooled us, not even Twilight recognized you."

"Pink hair," Celestia, formerly Peachy Keen, sheepishly and awkwardly shrugged, "Everypony's used to my later look from using the Elements solo."

The echoes of what had to be a truly titanic struggle were audible even over the intense storm that otherwise made it near impossible to see more than a few hundred meters ahead at any given stretch. One particularly loud crash was definitely indicative of something very large hitting the seaside and throwing up millions of gallons of water.

"That confirms it," Junior noted morosely what was already a certainty across most of their minds but the possibility of them being wrong was too appealing to not verbalize what they were dreading, "Zephyrus or the both of them have granted Boreas X's true form. They must have found out the method from what happened to me at the docks."

"Is there any possibility you’re wrong and there isn’t a giant monster fight dead ahead we’re flying towards?" Aria grimaced.

"He'd know more than anybody what a kaiju fight sounds like," Celestia interjected as she looked to the siren, "Either Irys, Lea, Anguirus, or all of them are probably fighting him up ahead."

Aria frowned and tried to keep her brave face, empty eyes looking ahead. Part of her wanted to verbalize the dread and fear starting to rip through her veins at the thought of X getting hurt when her bastard of a sire had control of his body, alongside the very real danger and threat of somebody with her significant other's level of power running amok. She quivered and bit her lip painfully, thankful for the reassuring presence in the back of her head giving hurriedly some company and what was unsaid and thought. Kaizer Ghidorah really had come full circle with this siren, the power in her body intensifying slightly as if to give reassurance of their bond and commitment to saving X.

“Aria, Adagio, your song magic is our best shot at purging Boreas out of X’s body so the Elements can finish him off. We just have to reach his mind first, like what Sunset and the Elements did with Flash Sentry,” Junior shouted over the storm as it grew more intense with their approach.

“And currently it's in three pieces, remember?” Adagio called back, trying to squint and shield her eyes from the frosty winds, “Almost all of the recent stuff is jammed into Aria’s head, most of his time as a kaiju is inside that damn rock on Zephyrus’ neck, and what’s left was from well before he met any of us!”

That one of his most powerful foes was once something not that different than a human had been more than a bit surprising to the King of the Monsters, having been brought up to speed about X’s history via Aria where it might be relevant to saving him. But, that information did come with a possible key for strategy.

Junior perked up and looked the kaizer siren right in the eye, addressing both her and who else was there mentally, “You said Boreas was essentially piloting Praetorian 094 mentally right after he became a kaiju; everything else was purged so he’d have no ties to anyone but all of the combat skills and some of his life prior. Do you have anything from his life before ascending in your head?”

"Ye-Yes, about half of it," Kaizer Aria quickly nodded, “But I need my magic to purge his mind and I can’t get too close to a kaiju even with this upgrade!”

His resolve was not wavering, “And you won’t. We just need Sunset Shimmer with her powers of empathy and Aria. I have a plan on how to handle the rest.”

“Tell us the plan after we settle the big problem, because we can't risk taking off our necklaces. Not when we’re about to get into the thick of it and after what happened to Sonata! Remember, more windigos near each other multiply their power and we're liable to make the whole thing worse!" Adagio piped up, cocking an eyebrow at Godzilla, "If you're thinking of turning into a big gray goliath, we'll have to get you to a Bearer."

"I'd boost you if I could if it saves X, but Adagio is right," Kaizer Aria focused on her own power to continue wrapping a sort of subtle aura of magic around them as she carried them along to stave off the worst of the storm, "We'll have to get you to an Element Bearer."

"We already got one!"

The two sirens followed the kaiju's line of sight and it took a few moments for Celestia to realize Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, or Twilight hadn't been flying alongside them. Everybody was looking at her.

"B-But," her heart rate started to rapidly increase, palpitations pulsing inside her chest from long dormant memories that only cropped up on the worst nights. She could remember using the Elements. All six of them at once. The overwhelming flood of power could only be rivaled by the overwhelming misery and shame that gnawed through her body like ice water injected straight into the veins.

The flash of rainbow light that stained her mane and tail.

The mare in the moon staring down at her like some sick conquest she never desired.

The heaving screaming at the now useless crystals, begging them to take anything of her to bring her sister back.

1000 years was a lot of time to heal, but a wound that deep always left scar tissue. Celestia caught herself hyperventilating just as Junior reached out to help steady her with a hand on her shoulder.

“I-I… I can’t!...” Celestia panted and shook her head as she shivered, “I’m- not worthy. I can’t use the Elements anymore, so I have no magic here!”

“If she can’t use the Elements, she doesn’t have the mojo,” Adagio piped up with a frown, a bit of sympathy underlying her tone for someone she never expected to express it towards, “We heard she couldn't use the Elements anymore after Nightmare Moon. Didn't know how or why, but it gave us confidence that we could get our power boost working in Canterlot unimpeded…”

She glowered to herself whilst shrugging to Celestia, “No offense, not like we plan on conquering anymore."

Celestia grimaced and yet Godzilla was unmoved, looking at her very intently as he motioned to her, “Worthiness is based on the person, not the magic. Maybe there was some magical blowback from using them all by yourself, but you never stopped being you. You kept Equestria and all of its groups afloat for 1,000 years. You turned down being made Queen just to make others more comfortable around you. You and other heroes stared down and beat back threat after threat, and when the final one came from your own sister; you still mustered yourself to stop her as you were the only one who could. And you did all that, then 1,000 years later you know the qualities that make a Bearer worthy so well you can set the stage for the new blood to show what they got.”

He motioned from her half hidden necklace, the last piece of her regalia that survived the portal jumping, and instead tapped at her forehead, “And you did that, twice, with the second time working when fate seemingly left you no magic of your own to work with. Did picking up a magic glowing crystal make Applejack or Rarity the heroines they are?”

“No,” Celestia frowned slightly with pursed lips as her pulse started to quicken with uncertainty, “They’d… They were worthy well before that and that’s true in both worlds.”

“Magic from Equestria didn’t infest this world, it was already here and what arrived only helped to wake it up. That's what we've discovered. The Bearers from here had magic, even if they didn’t know it yet. And if they can be worthy,” Junior tilted his head slightly, knowing he was no magical expert but he was on a train of logic that made sense to him, “Why not you?”

“If you’re half as good as your proteges, you’re good enough as anyone who could hope to be to pull this off,” Aria called out as she focused on flying through the storm, “Sunset is no enemy of our’s and Twilight went above and beyond good to a degree we should have listened to her to begin with.”

“I’ll risk it if we absolutely gotta if Godzilla needs the boost, but I think he’s right. Plus, if there’s something physical or mental that messed with your Element tie,” Adagio interjected to weigh in herself, “It happened when you were a grown adult right? You’re not one now.”

Celestia was silent, eyes cast downwards and yet at nothing in particular as she virtually looked inwards. She opened her mouth to speak before her mind began to race up to the point he was making. Eyeballing her body now, she couldn’t be physically older than thirteen. It took heeled boots and attire to make her look old enough to pass for a typical Highschool Freshman. She was young again. Younger than the biggest breakpoint in her life. Back to an age where she embodied Magic, Laughter, and Kindness. She had no way of knowing just what impact this all might have on her. If somehow her connection was reliant on that age as much as it was her being. If it had any effect at all.

But, if it did…

Her broken bond to the Elements was something she’d long thought of as entirely physical, but there possibly being a mental aspect had been something she might have long suspected in her subconscious but never voiced. The reason she’d never gone looking for the Elements again back in Equestria, even if she knew exactly where they were, had been because returning to the old castle was too painful to her.

Part of the motive to do as much good as she was being praised for, directly and by proxy of influence to others, had been to atone for her tragic error that happened at that castle and the last time she used the Elements. Selfless pride and will to help her subjects, forever flavored with a sense of self admonishment and atonement to make up for her mistake.

Those circumstances, as with her physical age, had changed. She’d done a lot of good and her age had been rewound. What she’d lost in physical power, she might have gained in losing old wounds on her soul whilst moving on might have helped heal her mind.

Flickers of something, perhaps memory, were in her consciousness. Memory of bearing three great gifts. The thought of just wielding one of them seemed overwhelming, but the idea there was a chance to do so and do good by it…

“Two parts to every Bearer. The physical Element talisman to amplify that magic and,” the near magicless kaiju gently tapped on her brow between her eyes, “What’s in here. And those girls did a great job exuding plenty of magic even before they got their crystals. If they can do it-”

Within her realm, someone rarely taken by surprise had her eyes widen as she watched. Harmony’s focus pulled away from the viewing portal as Godzilla’s words echoed out.

“-why not one of the greatest heroes and magical teachers in history?”

The Goddess of Creation’s attention turned to the bundle of magic caught in the realms between worlds. When Celestia was transferring over, Bagan had ambushed her party. It happened so quickly that she hadn’t time to defend the alicorn and a portion of her magic had been sheared off. That bundle of magic, permanently linked to Celestia as part of her very essence, sought to rejoin with her but was stuck between realms. Unless Celestia traveled back to Equestria or a large enough portal was opened between dimensions, it remained stuck but under her protective care.

At first she’d thought it an attempt by Bagan to steal the alicorn’s magic, but the Extinction Deity had been extremely quiet about motives. One minute they were using the strands of time to glimpse a possible future, the next they were pulling that stunt before instantly backing off. Their actions certainly had had strange consequences. Lack of magic and age had changed Celestia’s intended efforts in helping the local heroes, going from a potential powerhouse to a support mentor.

But the lessened magic had provided some of its own benefits. Had Celestia kept her power in any form, the events of the concert might have happened differently and the wayward hunters and sirens would be forced to make amends and reconcile with the team rallied around the Element Bearers. The Bearers themselves might not have gotten the same magical instruction they’d gotten and be capable of wielding such magic, and who’d know if they’d have gotten their Elements quicker or later from the Retainer, Gloriosa.

There was also one other notable side effect. Celestia being diminished so much had left her magical energy and aura similar to the mortal Bearers at their age. Had she walked out of the gateway to that world with her magic fully intact, even if it might take awhile to get used to her new body enough to use it, she’d have been lit up like a beacon to the kaiju but also to the windigos. The slain windigo, Notus, didn’t even recognize her for what she was until the eleventh hour; even after being around her for some time in the host body of that poor boy.

And the moment Notus realized what he was in the presence of, he instantly tried to kill her.

-Had Celestia come into the world at full capacity, even if disoriented and weakened, she very well could have been targeted. It would have endangered her at most, thrown a wrench into everyone’s plans at the least…-

Bagan’s absence from her domain was noticed, as was her detection of their extension’s presence in the mortal realm. And how she could sense her fellow deity’s attention on her. Harmony could feel the compulsion to break her self-imposed rule and march through that viewing portal. Put a stop to this calamity and head off whatever it was Bagan was up to. The question is what stopped her.

-Why are you doing any of this?...-

Harmony stared off into the mortal coil with a stern, unsure expression plastered upon the frown on her lips.

-Are you doing this for someone else, or is this another attempt to prove something to me? Trying to goad me into crossing over or is something else your ploy?-

She could do it. As destructive as it could be, with her amount of magic forcing itself into that mortal coil, she could enter that world full force. She could smite the windigo in an instant, reveal Bagan and whatever it was they were up to; or try to force it out of them. The temptation was very strong. Just as potent as the bitter, sad memories of how that world took the only friend she’d had in centuries away. Being undying would usually make mortals think such spans of time would be seen as fleeting, a thousand years but a day or a century a mere hour. But she felt time just as much as any other did. It was, perhaps, one of the few things that made her like mortals, like more beings than just the two other gods she knew existed. And she clung to it.

Her motion towards the portal was stayed and stopped, Harmony perhaps realizing how close she’d unconsciously come to stepping through and crossing over. And she did not know if it was fear of being discovered again, and all the calamity that caused in the past, or if it was assurance and confidence in the heroes that kept her from stepping forward.

Bagan and Grogar, the only other two of her kind she had ever known, were extremely different in some ways. But there was one unity of commonality between them. Both of them had lost most or all of their faith in mortals to do the right thing, that they could conquer their demons and not be ruled by them be those demons literal or metaphorical.

She frowned at the lamentation that Grogar was very much not like that once. Once in a bygone era, many of the mortal races called him father and he was a kindly example of such if there ever was one. Bagan, especially in a time where they were called something else, was very much the same. Harmony knew she had effectively lost one of them beyond the event horizon for things to go back to how they were. One major difference between the two gods that had turned their back on civilization as it was, was that the door wasn't slammed shut with one of them.

Bagan's words about how their mortal hunters had faith in their master with a duty to continue their loyalty, and their godly master likewise had a duty to have faith in them as they repaid that loyalty; they echoed across her mind.

If someone like that, even if they denied it, could still have some faith in mortals and possibly civilization through them, she could take at least some comfort in that and have faith herself. Loyalty was one of her elements after all.

The Goddess affirmed herself, stepping back from the portal to watch on and perhaps further tilt the hand of fate as she had empowered Wysteria's daughter. One could call that last effort nepotism, though she would argue the power did not make the hero. It only enabled them to do more good. She would have faith the most heinous and monstrous of Grogar's forces could at last be destroyed. Both by an effort of young heroes rising to the occasion, turncoat villains of many varieties, wayward travelers who had no stake in the matter but chose to do what was right, and a sense of karmic justice that the very product of the horrible deed the windigos committed and plan to use in their ambitions might yet help strike the death knell for them.

They could do this, and she would be watching. Both in pride at the heroes proving themselves, and in confidence that her not turning out like her fellow deities meant she was not foolish to put her faith in those who once put faith in her.

And if something out of their means to handle emerged, especially by the machinations of another god, she would ensure they didn't fight alone.

==================
Downtown Canterlot
==================

Back at the roadway, the heroes were holding their ground but not gaining any. Megalon went flying into a storefront, causing a brief moment of distraction when Pinkie was forced to dive aside lest he be thrown directly into her. In the moment between her touching the ground and trying to roll to her feet, uneven footsteps were already rapidly approaching.

The Element of Laughter cringed and rolled onto her back, bringing her hands up and rapidly clapping whilst still holding back tears from the painful shrieks she caused when the shockwaves hit Australis. The gaudy display of benevolent magic surrounded and repeatedly struck the demon, fracturing ice and causing black ichors, like dead blood, to spill out from the cracks. One particular clap shattered the icy growth that covered up Australis' right arm, causing the windigo to recoil around with her spine bending at an unnatural angle that surely would've killed anyone else.

And yet either because of her true nature, her status as a hybrid, or just sheer hatred and determination motivating her towards who was in the back of the van at the end of the road, Australis persevered. She closed the distance and wrenched herself around. Her right arm, now free of the ice, looked like it was bent and broken in several places and her left arm had a piece of ice running right through it as if impaled. But if either of those detracted from her brute strength, it didn't show.

Even if getting close to the Element hurt her, Australis powered through it in a greater capacity than her sire ever could. Grabbing Pinkie by the shoulders, Australis pulled her from the ground and split her own jaws so wide she could have attempted to engulf the young woman's head entirely into her maw even with the oversized teeth.

Pinkie Pie stared at the abyss before her, the seemingly infinite cavern behind Australis’ jaws. She wasn’t really one to study mythology, but she did once recall something about frost demons with similar or the same names as windigos. There wasn't much, but there was a sort of concept that stuck with her as someone with culinary pursuits. That these were entities who were constantly starving, constantly consuming or creating such misery because they could never be full. Just an infinite cavern that only existed to cause more and more suffering. Whether it was just some sort of personification of what winter could do at its worst or if the ancient folk were on to something, she didn't know. What she did know was that even with her own magic and hope, it hurt like a knife to the heart seeing her friend become such a thing.

And yet, what had been kindled in her when she was a little girl refused to die out. Whether it was the song her grandmother had taught her, or the moral it imparted that she always lived to lift up others with her antics, the cold couldn't snuff out that one heat within her.

She didn't give up, she couldn't. Not on herself nor on Sonata. If this was how the crazy train rolled on, it was good to keep on rolling and not stop frozen in its tracks!

Rather than shy away and try to flee the abomination now inches away from her, Pinkie Pie rose to the occasion to face it. She grabbed onto Australis' sunken cheeks, ignoring the jagged fangs and building scream attack, trying to force the demon to look directly at her. The dark void of the windigo's single visible eye was met with the Element of Laughter's gentle smile as she held onto her friend’s face, unafraid. Even as Australis’ jaws parted and she began to take in a breath to let loose her strongest shriek yet, point blank.

A tear rolled down Pinkie Pie’s face as she stood still, trusting.

That was when fate turned.

A rainbow of light arched through the winter storm, originating far away in Camp Everfree from the other gathered Elements. That power had been amassed to put a stop to a windigo, and by accident and unknowing design they helped to do just that. The burst of power linking Twilight and her friends together had gone off to join the one Element who wasn’t physically present but needed the help.

The blue crystal around Pinkie’s neck sparkled and surged with life, and her entire body seemed to take on the same sort of glow. It seemed to build up before releasing, blowing across the nearby area in a blue energy bubble. The snow and ice formed across the ground melted away to a degree, the frost that had started to encase Megalon’s arm to adhere it to the ground dissipated and allowed the cyborg to rise. And it also caused all of the people behind the brave heroine to stop screaming in terror.

It also spurred someone who’d wanted to be a hero to finally be one, now that the frost on her body was too broken like severed shackles.

The door to the Cakes’ van flew open and a pair of legs beat the ground to run directly towards the horrific abomination of a demon. Everything happened in the fractions of a second, perceptible in slow motion as they went.

Megalon closed in from the left to try and save Pinkie from a point-blank scream attack by the windigo.

Pinkie Pie was stationary, instead holding Australis’ face assuring as her fingers started to melt through the ice at points of contact.

Australis looked upon the Element of Laughter with two eyes. One, a dark void of a demon’s gaze filled with wrath and spite at the very power she had. The other, visible through the melting ice, was of a scared siren who recognized her friend.

And Wallflower Blush was rushing up as fast as she could behind Pinkie Pie and with her arms outstretched.

An alien cyborg, a magical heroine, a horrific monster, and said monster’s creator. And every single one of them was crying when it all happened.

Wallflower grabbed and threw Pinkie Pie aside into Megalon, stopping the cyborg from intercepting them both and keeping both of them out of the way. Australis’ maw curled into a vicious snarl at finally catching sight of her quarry, as Wallflower closed the distance more. And the sky was divided by an ear splitting wail of pain, hatred, and spite at the fate dealt to her. It went on for almost a minute, deafeningly so.

Wallflower Blush was dead. She honestly thought she had to be dead and that’s why everything was just a void. No sound, no sight, no touch. What finally came to her eyes, through the void that was not pitch darkness nor bright white, was a face. Not of a horrific demon, nor initially anyone recognizable. But a face from a bygone time and another world. Blued skin, not human and yet with the same glint of awareness as seen in human eyes. The face of a mother who left the world so a daughter could be born into it. An act of love, in spite of what horrors befell her.

The echo of the bygone princess, who perhaps had never stopped watching over her progeny, changed to reflect that legacy. First in her natural state and then as Wallflower recognized her as. Somehow, Sonata Dusk stood before her, an ugly scar stretching across her neck with an outline of where her necklace had been clearly visible in the marking.

Tears were flowing from the siren’s eyes, and yet her expression was flattened and neutral. Staring right at, or perhaps right through Wallflower.

Blush could feel the chills. Inside and out. The bitter cold that gnawed at the skin and bone and yet never let the body go numb. A cold void that was just as much mental as it was physical. The presence of a windigo, bearing closer.

She could practically feel those ragged teeth and yet she could only see Sonata Dusk's face. The face of the young woman, slowly turning to sorrow and pain.

Blush was an extremely reclusive person. Both by how others treated her and eventually her own habits. It took chance fortune and the machinations of someone she now knew was the worst of the evil to get her to finally reach out and make a friend. And truthfully speaking, Twilight had done the majority of the work with genuine intrigue at someone else who found a magical source. And the Memory Stone hadn't even come to Blush by some miraculous feat or discovery, just a random incident digging in the dirt.

She was nothing special, the epitome of a nobody. Even her name seemed to reflect it and Wallflower knew this well.

And yet, she was compelled to act. Despite all of the fear, despite all of the bitter cold and misery. She had once thought herself inspired into action by Twilight, to do something meaningful into something good. Not just watch from the sidelines... She'd been wrong. This was her first truly good deed, inspired by the two heroes who seemed so poised to save her as much as they were anyone else.

She lunged forward and hugged Australis, not caring about the frostbite whose onset was caused by just contact alone. The pain was intense and yet she still hung on, tears falling and freezing around her eyes as she lit forth a spree of words that were mangled in the attempt to speak even if their meeting came through. About how truly sorry she was, about owning up to her sins, and how the demon wronged was free to take her revenge if it helped the others.

At last, she finally got to be the hero.

Australis' maw lowered and her ragged, clawed hands swept inwards.

The storm started to subside, and as Megalon started to pick himself up from the shockwave that had blown him and Pinkie over; he heard something. Pinkie did too, as she started to unfurl after being tucked into her friend's arms so the more durable cyborg could endure the hit of Australis' scream attack. The Element Bearer, dazed, blinked and tried to refocus herself. She saw her compatriot and instantly felt at his face with her hands to brush away some of the frost and make sure he was all right. He was doing likewise for a hot moment, before their eyes met as she also heard what he did.

Quiet crying. No longer baleful shrieking or reaching outcries of misery and wrath, but simple hitched breath of muffled sobbing.

Australis was crying, her long arms wrapped around Wallflower Blush as some of the ice across her face increasingly melted away. The painful sounds of scraping bones accompanied the demon increasingly decreasing in span and height. Shards of ice that were gouged through her body crumbled and the wounds left behind loosely stitched themselves shut. The transformation did not completely reverse, she was still gaunt and frostbitten, still agonizingly cold to the touch, and had shredded through any of her clothing between the transformation and battles. Only now her form was less uncanny and disturbing, more a sight of vulnerability and sympathy.

As she held one of those who had wronged her so much, it had been Sonata who’d beaten Australis back; now even more so than a fleeting moment at the campground where Pinkie could get through to her. The frozen mask in emulation of a deer skull and antlers melted, heated by a heart still warm with life that had resumed beating. Capitalizing on this, Pinkie looked her friend in the eye affectionately as an idea hit her after looking at both the scar on Sonata’s neck and her own, now brightly glowing necklace.

Pinkie Pie slipped off her Element crystal and, with some caution just in case of any signs implying a negative reaction, put it on Sonata’s neck. Instantly any changes from Australis to Sonata seem to be increased one hundred fold, the transformation reversing even more and the pain subsiding as the Element of pure good worked off the inner goodness the siren had. It wasn't quite a replacement for what had been there prior, but the substitution certainly seemed to help as long as she was right there next to it for the magic to work. Worries that somehow the opposite magic of the windigos would cause harm to the siren were quickly proven untrue. Nobody could have known it was because a certain goddess would never condemn one due to the circumstances of their birth or who had sired them.

Harmony loved those who loved, simple as that. And that, along with the capacity to truly feel, forgive, bond, and learn was what separated Notus from his intended successor. The very thing Zephyrus had been gambling on to make Australis more spiteful and dangerous than her father had wound up being her one weakness as a windigo; strength as a siren.

Sonata was still not entirely herself, but if there was any sympathy for her before it was only magnified now. And as she cried, her two friends moved forward to embrace her, Pinkie working to get some of the mess of frost and filth ridden hair out of her face and wounds as Megalon practically held her up and gave her something to lean on.

People started to exit their cars had they still been inside, or otherwise pick themselves up from the hiding places they had wisely ducked into. Many looked on sympathetically or even made moves for some things they thought might help. Mrs. Cake was out of the van as soon as she was assured her babies were safe, First Aid kit in hand.

Wallflower Blush only let go of Sonata to give Megalon an opening to take his vest and long sleeves off to put them on the shivering and wounded siren.

Pinkie Pie busily started applying bandages alongside Mrs. Cake to Sonata's arm, making sure the wounds from the impaling ice that had melted away stayed shut. The fact that she couldn't have been fully cured of her affliction was both painfully obvious and regrettably fortunate because she wasn't bleeding profusely from the exit wounds. In fact she was hardly bleeding at all, her skin having a dry and sickly visage and texture like old parchment.

"We need to get Nata her necklace back," Megalon noted with a frown, "Removing it put her in this situation, best guess is putting it back might be the only way to fix it for good."

"Sonata's necklace is…" Wallflower swallowed a hard breath, selflessly removing the overcoat given to her and helping put in around the still shivering Sonata to both try and offer some modicum of comfort and protect her modesty, "It’s inside Twilight's amulet. She was told to use it by Zephyrus as her power source to focus her magic."

"Then we need to get to where your Twilight is," Pinkie Pie piped up with a frown, constantly glancing at the still mute Sonata to reassess her condition, "You-"

Wallflower stiffened, still not quite used to anyone ever noticing her in any large capacity.

"What was that big meanie pushing you two along planning?" Pinkie Pie frowned as she leaned in to listen.

"I-.. I-" Wallflower swallowed, eyes darting back and forth as she tried to get a hold of her own mental bearings and memory.

The last couple of days had more than shaken her up and being terrorized by Boreas had left her losing track of both time and space. Just how long had she been running away for? Not even she knew.

"Ze-Zephyrus never really told me much beyond just depowering anyone with 'bad magic' and the focus on the sirens," Wallflower swallowed, gripping her head as she frantically tried to think of any good clue or sign to point her into the right direction.

"How was it you got wrapped up into all this anyways?" Megalon huffed, "Maybe it ties into how you're not exactly-"

"Because I'm an asocial vulnerable wreck who was easy to manipulate!"

Megalon blinked, "... I was going to say clearly stressed out and not thinking straight. Where'd that self loathing come from?"

Wallflower Blush fidgeted with a lock of her hair as a nervous tick, "I am that too.. And always have been. Seeing a bully like Sunset get her notice and second chance was what pushed me into this but it's no excuse."

She glanced at her neck where there was now nothing, but she could still see a small wear mark from having bore the Memory Stone so constantly for months, "I-I got lucky, or really unlucky finding that stone and became an accessory to what he had planned for Twilight. She was always the smart one, the one the plan hinged on and-and- I was the useless one! And-"

Wallflower sobbed, pulling at her hairs tightly as she trembled, "And Twilight was-"

She stopped when a pair of hands gripped her face. They were so extremely frigid that they jarred her senses, tearing her away from a mental spiral she was starting to go down. Her eyes locked with Sonata's in what almost seemed like a silent conversation conveyed in trembles and vibrations of the pupil. The siren, still clearly in a lot of pain and looking absolutely horrible, nonetheless gave her a look that was both sympathetic and pleading.

The jarring however, had another side effect beyond causing Wallflower’s heart to stop. A brief memory, one of the very few she could recall clearly, came to her sight in the blackness of Sonata’s pupils. The first time she met the only friend that she had ever had and where it had been.

================

Wallflower Blush had been having another crying spell in the last hour. Another day of eating her homepacked lunch on the sidewalk, rotating spot from the girl's bathroom yesterday and the garden the day prior. She'd thought herself having mustered some courage, but seeing the same face which ruined countless days of hers sitting, smiling, and laughing with friends she'd only dreamed of having was a cold nail in the chest. Chills and yet sweating on her goosebumped skin, she knew she looked as ugly as she felt having even a small panic attack.

It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair. She wasn't a stellar student but she wasn't a drag. She could like some of the things others did. She could try to talk, engage maybe. Her heart had pulsed with the hope to, only to be quickly strangled by an irrational fear. She'd practically run away from the lunchroom. Another painful stab of self-disgust at her lack of spine.

Which left Wallflower where she was now. She was shocked in some ways, disbelieving in others as he apple fell from her hand at the sound of a voice pointed at her. This, this felt like a dream. This couldn’t be real. Someone was actually talking to her. Someone actually wanted to hear what she said. And she couldn't force a single word out of her throat, having blinked multiple times to try and snap out of the cruely pleasant dream.

Yet, her company, a new concept in itself, didn’t seem to mind much and was happily rattling off her own verbosity whilst letting Wallflower tag along.

“So the device I invented was tuned in to pick up a very specific type of energy signature that, and this is for lack of better terms," Twilight Sparkle muttered a bit sheepishly, "Magic gives off. Like the stuff that led me to finding you because you’d been around it! Don't worry, it's not like those bogus EMS readers Ghost Chasers use. I swear, if I had a nickel for all of the times those bozos went running after a noise that was probably just wood creaking from a temperature change, I could.."

She paused and tapped at her chin before shrugging, "Probably not put myself through college with the rates these days, more like buy a good DVD player... But the fact I could says something!"

It didn’t matter to her that Twilight had done all of the talking. Nor that, in hindsight, she should have caught notice of the chilly breezes in the air to imply Zephyrus had been the one to nudge and encourage Twilight into introducing herself like this. The only thing that mattered to Wallflower Blush in this memory was that this was how she met her old friend. Her best friend, if that title carried more weight to spur on stronger feelings.

Somehow, she could know this wasn’t another false-positive. Not like the bullying Sunset Shimmer subjected her to when she’d been the first to take notice of Wallflower for even just a brief time. Somehow, Blush could trust.

Twilight was standing in front of the school statue, fiddling with her device as if she was scanning it, “Magic tends to move in pathways, I’m calling them ley lines. I hypothesize that different worlds, maybe some with more active magic in them than our own, move into ours through ley lines. It’s like a crossroads in a street intersecting! If I’m right, and I think the spikes in my reader tell me, then magical beings or objects like what you were exposed to are more likely to crop up around here.”

Twilight turned on her heel and tilted her head as she motioned with a thumb back to the statue, hiding a lot of awkwardness at talking to someone so openly like this, “Soooo you said found something not far from this statue, right?”

Wallflower Blush felt an enormous pit in her gut, one she’d experienced time and time again, countlessly, for years. It felt like jumping a crevice that was impossible to tell how wide it was, blindfolded, and not knowing how far away the ledge to leap from was. Rush it, you could just as likely go running off the edge. To try and make an effort was to court failure, and there were many times she’d just walked away. Actually connecting with someone was a dream, but a nightmare to try to take with a thousand ways it could go wrong.

And yet, maybe from all the crushing isolation and depression she’d been suffering from for years, she finally took that jump. Wallflower Blush pulled the Memory Stone from her inner necklace and held it out to the gawking eyes of Twilight Sparkle. For the very first time, she actually shared a smile when the investigator’s widened eyes and smirk proved infectious.

She felt herself take the jump, and felt Twilight’s hand grab her to pull her back up to safety. All in the shadow of the school statue.

================

“The-... The school. Twilight and I first met at my High School. Zephyrus had coaxed her into finding me, but she’d been tracking where the stone I had was. She told me the school was like a ley line, a crossroads! Magic from other places tended to come out around there because of how things flowed into our world! Zephyrus was there with us,” Wallflower yelped with a cringe on her face.

Megalon’s eyes widened as flickers of his own memory, one he wasn't sure if it was a dream or not, returned. He had also been around the high school recently and if any of what he remembered was true, Zephyrus came running the moment he almost damaged the statue in front of it in a desperate bid to call out to his master.

"The statue! If there's something making the school special where things from other places get drawn in, it's the statue!" he noted, looking at Pinkie Pie, "It's the same way my team and I got here. Zephyrus will be there!"

"Twilight, Princess Twilight, came from the pony place through there too! If these ghoulies came from that place as well, maybe they want to head back to get even?!"

"Or get something else. It's a dimensional weak spot. Maybe the magic does something weird there that makes world jumping easier?" the cyborg frowned, "But how exactly are we to get to it? I could try turning giant with your magic Pinkie and carrying everyone, but it's holding back Sonata from reverting."

Pinkie Pie cringed as she glanced at the burning wreckage on the other side of the roadway, “And I think Ms. Daisy’s insurance won’t replace that fast enough. Megs, how fast can you run?”

“Take mine!” a shout cut through the conversation before half a dozen more just like it joined in.

"Take my car!"

"I got a motorbike!"

"Mine has snow tires!"

"Take my truck!"

Dozens of completely random people, previously a chaotic mob of terrorized individuals risking insanity, all shouted out. Some were offering blankets or spare clothing, many of them had car keys in hand, all of them wanted to help even after just overhearing part of the conversation. What was going on was well above any of them, but even just a basic passerby could understand when someone needed help. And be it human nature or the magic of one heroine banishing terror to help them remember said nature, so many wanted to do what they could.

Mrs. Cake obviously was amongst them, but Pinkie Pie was quick to grab her hands and yank her mentor into a bear hug before separating.

"No! This could get really dicey and this would not be a place for any babies!" Pinkie Pie piped up.

"I-I wasn't going to take the kids along to get you kids where you need to go!"

"Kids? I'm 150," Megalon whimpered.

"We can move vehicles and you take the van," She was cut off by Pinkie Pie.

"And take the babies out? You know they love that van! They will be crying all the way out of town!" The Element of Laughter both frowned and chuckled at the same time awkwardly.

The relatively thin road and column of evacuation made other attempts at good Samaritans difficult. Most of the cars were too far ahead of the pack to turn around easily, and as well intended as the motorcyclists were, driving into a blizzard while carrying someone was not viable even with a sidecar. Which was why the truck behind and beside the group clicking on and beeping spurred everyone's attention to look back to it, then to who had turned it on.

A green skinned young man in camouflage pants jogged forward, having abandoned his vehicle to run ahead and join the crowds when the fight spilled too close and the temporary mania affected everyone. When the magic wave hit Pinkie and then spread out from her, he felt that icy grip on his consciousness. And like so many, he sought to help. Only difference was he was in a position he could easily do so.

“I can at least get you guys pretty close! Got snow tires!” he shouted, jogging up to his truck, a compassionate smile on his face.

Pinkie Pie squinted at him and tilted her head, recognizing his voice as he opened his truck door, “... Warhawk877?”

“Just Warhawk-.. Wait, PinkFrenzy999?!” his face contorted in brief confusion before his eyes widened.

Megalon recognized the name, as did a less expressive Sonata. Wallflower glanced at the trio as they made their way towards the truck.

“Those… sound like screennames, do you know this guy?”

Pinkie Pie, still sporting her hero outfit and a set of magical ears that perked up with her shrug, “On Rainbow Six!”

“Small world ain’t it?!” Warhawk chimed as he started the vehicle up.

Megalon casually picked up Wallflower with his surviving arm and carried her into the vehicle, “No time to explain, get in the truck!”

================
Back at the edge of town
================

Gigan didn’t know what it was exactly that caused him to wake up. It was such a surreal feeling in fact. Despite him lacking the part of mind to do it, he almost could feel that wispy sensation of recollections in fiction, spilling through his fingers. Enough to remember he’d been thinking, experiencing something, but unable to perfectly recall what it was. Sensations and sights, passing just out of grasp.

Was... this what a dream felt like? It had been so long he’d forgotten.

At least it felt pleasant.

He was seated inside of a van, even if he didn’t fully remember getting there. He must have gone unconscious shortly after speaking to Godzilla and Adagio agreed to go with the others. The sensations brought about memories of that often frustrating siren, and the camp director, frustrating in her own ways, particularly when the former swore to go and kick her father’s ass in his place. It caused his chest to tighten up. There was a trust that Adagio would get the job done, especially after she’d saved his life at least twice over in the last few hours.

That didn’t change him feeling useless for being here. Broken down and barely able to move. At least he wasn’t sparking anymore.

The cyborg, effectively blind due to the damage to his eyes and not wanting to risk a malfunction, nevertheless raised his head and tiredly looked about. There was something subconsciously pulling at his focus, like his senses could detect something but couldn’t quantify it. A tugging at the mind like how one could sense someone looking upon them, a faint scent in the air, or the tactile sense of a shifting temperature.

“Who.. Wh-h-h-h-o is…?” he slurred, his vocal box still damaged from the battle with Zephyrus.

There was breathing nearby, but that was coming from a different direction than the subtle sensing he was picking up. A very dim recollection of a young man with the group the Defenders and Element Bearers was with came to mind, both that time he came to bail out X from getting ganged-up on whilst he was pulling his punches and from word at the conference they arranged. Flash- Something. By the sound of his breath he was out-cold, something having happened to him.

-Looks like this expedition is wearing out everyone.-

No, the detection he was just barely picking up was coming from… Outside. He could feel the edge of the closed van door beside him, having been put upon and strapped into a seat.

Cold.. That was the only way to describe it at first. And that word alone nearly sent him into a panic attack. The frost on the window was almost palpable, spreading onto his skin.

-Windigo?! Was one of them coming here? Had they lost?! What of my team!? My promise!-

The flickers of his compatriots and his oathsworn, to Wysteria and Melpomene; they spurred him into action. He’d almost wrenched the stubborn seatbelt free, resigned to fight even with a broken body and no means of directly harming the damn things that refused to die. What stopped him was something that came when the door to the van was pulled open audibly.

It wasn’t what he felt, but what he didn’t detect.

Still blind, all he could do was feel and hear. Unlike every other time he’d gotten near the damned triad of demons, there were no howling gales. No gnawing frost biting to the bone, nor dread and misery that bit into the mind. It was cold, but a natural chill. One familiar. One he’d almost come to enjoy.

The windigo’s cold was due to absence of all. Just a void that sucked in everything positive, literally or figuratively in temperature as well as mind. This cold, it was virtually calming now; not drawing in but radiating outwards. In truth a normal human might still find it frigid all the same, but it wasn’t born of how the windigo’s magic was emotion based like most Equestrian magic. Because it wasn’t Equestrian magic.

Gigan was as stunned as he was relieved, slack jawed and weakly looking up at where they guessed the source was, “... M-My lor-d?”

The presence which had been observing the events that had hence unfolded, recently having paid witness to the incident at the roadside with Wallflower and Australis, or rather, Sonata. They’d had a bet with Harmony about how that one would turn out, and though it was technically still ongoing, that judgment had already spurred them to act.

Bagan’s human eyes idly glanced to the sky, at no one place in particular but perhaps knowing a pair of eyes were upon them from the beyond. They both had been watching, only difference being Bagan was not afraid to get a closer look under cover. The goddess still refused to leave her realm directly for her own reasons.

Pity.

Their bet had been about how things would turn out between the girl cursed into being a monstrosity, and the other girl who’d turned her into that. With as out of control as Australis seemingly was to who’d wronged her Bagan had bet on vengeance, while Harmony had chanced fate upon forgiveness.

The sky was silent, and yet Bagan could detect Harmony’s eyes upon this form. Great in power as it was, Bagan had put much into concealment so as not to let the Mothra know of their presence. Which of course, left the question of why it even came here. They could remain in the realm beyond with the goddess, watching without witness to them in any chance. And that was without mentioning them dampening much of their powers hiding so much of it like this. In a state like this, Harmony could potentially sucker-punch them and cause a dire wound while their defenses were still down; break the tie of a deadlock they had…

-No… She wouldn’t do such a thing. I know her too well.-

Bagan looked back to Gigan, seeing the cyborg was trying to lower downwards whilst putting their heavily damaged and mangled arm to their chest. The poor, half-dead fool was trying to bow or kneel as they always did.

All while Gigan's wounds were fatal.

-His fate was to die here, in quiet company after doing all he could. After centuries as a slave weapon and killer of many, to save just a few from the very demon that sired one of them… such change in such time… -

Gigan's fading mind was flooded with questions. Why was his master even here, in tangible form? Why come to watch up close at all the inconveniences? Had his failed in his efforts and mission as to spur this? Why… did they quickly reach out and hold the cyborg by the shoulders and ease them back into their seat?

“My- lord… I cannot act for you any longer- I am-” a million more questions, concerns, and thoughts were flying through the cyborg’s mind. What to say and maybe what not to say in equal measure.

Oil leaked from his broken eye like tears, "I have fa-fa-failed, your mission…"

When he had first found himself summoned by a being he unironically identified as a god, Gigan had partially only given his loyalty out of fear for the sheer, overwhelming power he could physically feel coming off of them. The majority had only been out of concern for his brother and teammate, later teammates when Irys joined the squad. But after his life had been saved by the patronage of his master once after Kaizer Ghidorah’s final rampage; after he’d experienced thoughts and emotions he didn’t even know his heartless body could after all the things he done and went through, there had been change.

Gigan loathed his own creators. How they disassembled and reassembled him time and time again. How he’d spend weeks, years forced to be inactive as they invaded his body and tried to tamper with his mind. They’d mangled him, threw him as a slave soldier at their foes so he’d come back damaged and get mangled some more. Making peace with his body constantly changing under someone else’s whim, whilst fighting for every scrap of his mind he could preserve from what could have been insanity or alteration destroying it; it had been his life.

All of which changed when he’d been taken in. He once saw his abduction and service to a new command as trading one loss of agency for another. Gigan never expected to have faith in his leader, and loyalty in their faith in him.

And to his surprise the voice that responded to him, the first time they heard it without the overpowering presence and force behind it, was quiet, soothing even.

“Rest… I know of your dedication, and your loyalty,” Bagan nodded slightly, in a way that the cyborg could detect even without sight. Which loyalty exactly they meant was vague without having specified. Maybe they meant somehow the cyborg’s sacrifice was still within their mission parameters in loyalty to their master? Maybe they meant loyalty to their team and compatriots was approved of? Or maybe it was some mix of both.

Gigan felt a hand touch their forehead, “You are damaged heavily. Do not speak more than you can.”

Flash Sentry’s eyes fluttered open slightly. Through their delirium, he happened to turn his head just enough to happen to look over towards the source of the cold and subtle noise that roused him from exhaustion born rest. He saw someone he recognized, and someone he didn’t; though it was vague and blurry in vision that lacked fine detail. The towering, imposing form never turned to look upon him; their sole focus on their loyal soldier.

“You will say the magic mended the wounds, when you arrive,” Bagan, in the form of a human and yet radiating such a presence all the same, said quietly as a rune was scratched into the air by their finger.

“Arrive?” Gigan whispered.

“I know where you will go, to save whom,” His master noted before pausing with… perhaps a bit of uncertainty in their voice, “I-”

They closed their eyes, feeling Harmony’s focus on them once again and judging them. They’d been observing emotions, bonds, and change up close during this brief jaunt alone. They’d seen the absolute worst in sapience in the windigos, and seen the purported best standing counter to them. When they’d recruited their forces, they’d looked through both history and minds to find many of the worst; or at least the most destructive.

The intention was, at one point, for them to be disposable pawns. The worlds and biosphere would not miss the likes of the King Ghidorahs or Hedorahs. Big powerful distractions to turn loose when the time came to cause as much damage as possible before they were either destroyed by the defending groups or Bagan would wipe them out themself. But pulling in a group that had such honest loyalty, platonic love, and camaraderie had been unexpected. Let alone one that adapted and changed to recruit more blood into the ranks as with Irys then and perhaps even the sirens and associates now.

They’d been their most loyal, most dutiful, and most successful. When this very same cyborg, Gigan, was on death’s door through they and Ghidorah’s own ploy; Megalon had practically prayed to their master to save his dear brother. That devotion to each other, it was infectious and not in the same way those civilizations on Terra wound up like down the line. This team, their soldiers, they’d infected their master with their loyalty.

Civilization still needed to be destroyed, it was inevitable. Sapience was still a mistake in that form with such widespread numbers, in the misery and damage it caused. A pestilence to be cured before it ran rampant on the worlds like a cancer would through a body. But Bagan was nothing but patient. The machinations of closing this brief chapter in the history of life, the dominion of the sapient, could be forestalled if absolutely necessary. Actions were still to be taken, the end set in stage to come. But Bagan would not let the lives of those under its liege to end abruptly or be risked.

Their master would let their hunters enjoy this kind of life for a while longer, perhaps to their natural lifespans, much as this realm was a mistake that Harmony hadn’t yet realized yet. These humans Bagan could see them wiping themselves out, and who knew what else given enough time. A few decades, centuries, millennia; all short spans of time to a life measured in the billions.

But for perhaps the first time in what would be a long, long while for a mortal; Bagan felt compelled for a mortal, not against them. These hunters, they were theirs. And their master was theirs as well. If their master could have such faith in their capability, they needed to have faith in their master as well. That is what loyalty was, and Bagan would reward it. Not because of feeling that they had to, but because they wanted to.

That Bagan caught themselves finding Harmony right once more was not as annoying as it should be was another matter.

“I-,” Bagan resumed, finally realizing their word had gotten stuck in their throat. It had been over 100,000 years since they'd last said it. That should seem minuscule, that they should live for over four million thousands as to make that span of time insignificant. And yet, it mattered to them in their own strange set of values as might the life of the first, tiny, insignificant mammal once had to their living mountain of a form.

Bagan placed a hand on their loyal soldier's shoulder, speaking in a voice so plain and quiet, “... I am proud of you.”

Gigan tilted up slightly, mouth agape in the all too familiar visage of both awe and surprise.

-You will not die today, warrior.-

Bagan could hear Harmony giggling, and they remembered well a remark she noted when they first debated at length about the nature of gods and mortals. Them thinking faith went both ways was one of the very first things they agreed upon. It was also something Grogar had apparently totally lost in some ways, something Bagan intended to investigate more.

For now, extinction chose to ignore the giggling and focus. Runic markings covered Gigan’s form, and what was his form itself began to shift.

===========
???????????????
===========

There was no color, no light. Blackness as it could be seen implied some sort of hue. This was entirely the absence of all, a near limitless void. And yet, there was motion. For the first time in over a millennia, distant winds carried the promise of release. The sorcerer and his fellow heroic pillars had forestalled his return last time when they managed to close the portal just as the Western Wind opened it. But now, with Zephyrus' machinations felt even across the rifts of space and time that divided them; like distant ripples in a pool the size of a world itself, there was at last an end time.

A horrific, roaring scream that seemed like it could shout out all in existence called out through the void as a form that seemed like it could engulf the sky itself and cast its shadow upon the lands stirred. Eastern gales from the God of Destruction's most powerful creation, stronger than the West, North, and South put together; ripped into the void in anticipation.

Eurus waited no more.

Author's Note:

Proofread by LanceOmikron and SkyLark
Illustrations by Faith-Wolff

Comments

[NavratofWenter]

Great Chapter!

[Booster Spice]

Just like Verlax, Bagan got Warp Chaosed?

Continue thinking lik that son, and you cant complain when so called mere mortals work out ways to destroy gods.

[Vman-0]

If there's one thing I'm hoping for, it's that Australis has the piledriver pulled on 'em by Junior...

EDIT: That'd probably be cruel and unusual under current circumstances.

[mjadino8823]

This was very much worth the wait. Chomping at the bit for the next part.

[hydra30]

Great update, can't wait to see a major kaiju smackdown in the heart of Canterlot City. Hope Godzilla wipes the floor with Zephyrus and wretches the stolen magical necklaces of her.

Wallflower and Sci-Twi need a good smack to the head after all this, if they survive. Learn how to recognize a Faustian bargain already!

[Temnizziv]

First impressions.

I like the scaling of the Australis roadway fight.

The Boreas X scene still holds up well from the preview.

I wouldn't call Wallflower a hero for what she did. But I don't mind the general idea for how the Australis fight ended.

The Bagan scene was poignant.

And the ending with Eurus was ominous.

[The Voice in the Water]

Well damn, just when I think the stakes can't go higher, you prove me wrong.

I was honestly expecting Wallflower to get her head bitten off near the end, but I'm pleasantly surprised it didn't happen.

Eurus is coming out to play? Well, that's going to be a bad time, now isn't it?

[KRMebius]

Gigan is get an upgrade and who ever is eurus better be on our side because if what godzilla is plan bodys are going to hit the ground hard

[Seraphem]

I freaking loved it! Yeah there are some parts I can't say I was super happy with or don't think could have been done better, but overall...this was amazing! The one overarching issue I'd say is, like I've been saying and agree with Crystal on (Don't worry, there is plenty on their take I am not agreeing with, we aren't seeing a sign of the End Times here.) the narration massively over explaining things, especially in fight/action scenes. Let the characters actions and the results of those actions speak for themselves, we don't need to take time explaining the physics of why an action had the result it did, it really messes with the flow and pacing of the scenes.

Now for more specifics The rewrites for the teaser scene were great, it very much hammers home that this is Zephy pulling a "Well I'm fucked no matter what, but I'm going to do my best to take some of you with me because fuck you!" move. I really do love Harmony bending the rules a bit for Gloriossa. She's earned it and it was just, so wonderful, while also playing into the running theme of Bagan and Harmony influencing each other to change. Harmony to be less hooves off then she has been and Bagan.... we'll get into that. But it was a lovely scene and Gloriossa has earned it, wonderfully done.

Celestia tapping into the Elements.... okay I seem to be like the only person who doesn't take it as canon that it was her using them to banish NMM that broke her connection to them. It just, always irritates me when this pops up constantly as if it's self evidently true. The clear implication and intended meaning in that speech in Return of harmony was that it was the Mane 6 taking up the elements that cuase her bond to them to be lost, otherwise why was it only after that that Discord got free? Anyway yeah I just, do not get how that became the de facto assumption.

Now here? Ohhhhh I really like how you did this, not actually saying that at all. Leaving enough wiggle room that it could, theoretically be the case but with much stronger implication that any issues here was entirely in Celestia's head and her simply refusing to even try wielding them for, very obvious and understandable reasons to the point of convincing herself that she simply couldn't even if she did want to. Very well done.

And as an added bonus The image of them having this deep, emotional talk and Celestia realizing all this about herself and having this epiphany... while looking utterly ridiculous as Aria tries to carry all of them through the air.

Okay lets get to the part that, yeah can't say I just plain loved. The way the fight with Australis went. Now, I can't say I find Wallflower all that bad at this point and not saying she could never be a hero etc... she always has meant well, she's just been an idiot (And maybe after spending all year getting through Wheel of Time my threshold for unforgivable idiocy has shifted because compared to the she amount of utterly incompetent morons that are so smugly superior about everything while failing to be anything but a group of petty bullies that are the Aes Suckateverything and they aren't even the worst group in the story for this!) So her getting a moment to shine, to do the right thing.. I like that and damnit, the way the story handled it and described the build up about her actually made me glad for her to get that chance and to do something like this. SO her throwing herself onto Australis to save Pinkie, A+ very well done.

Where it loses me is That being what snaps Sonata out of it and wins the fight. While I did end up being glad Wallflower got a moment to do the right thing and help, her completely ending the battle like she did felt really unearned and kind of anticlimactic for this. Would have worked far better if this just at most made Australis pause a moment or something to give Megs and Pinkie a chance to break through to Sonata. The Wallflower caused a crack in the armor that those two were able to break through. Wallflower doing this all on her own with a single hug just... yeah it felt way too pat and unearned for her to get that big a win like that.

Still The everyone rushing to help out soon as they could? Wonderful!

And one final scene that..... was just the chef's kiss. The earlier parts of the chapter were a bit hard to get into a flow with for the aforementioned over explanation issues. The Wallflower bit could have been handled better but that final scene? Oh... oh yeeeees is that so good! Bagan slowly coming around to caring about the Hunters, even mentally shifting his plan to end all life (Which I do notice has shifted from ending all life at all, to just all intelligence that is able to form societies large enough to be a threat to others) till the hunters have had their full lives. Going out of his way to save Gigan simply because he felt it was the right thing to do, acknowledging Harmony has some points, if still holding to his core belief about needing to at least set in motion the end of advanced life.

Just, he's pretty much shifted to full Anti-Villain and I love the progression here! Does make me winder how he's going to be causing trouble going forward, given pitting the Hunters against the Defenders will be tricky, he's willing to wait and not just do a full on attack to end everything any time soon. He does have quite a few dangerous things but they are a bit too mindless or brute force to really prove a major issue at this point beyond, as he noted, a distraction. But there is still the plan to free Grogar. So yeah the way this is going I'm more thinking Bagan isn't the BBEG but Grogar is. Bagan manages to get things in place to free Grogar, who then proceeds to screw over Bagan and become the real final threat.

And speaking of a final threat We have the fourth Windigo ready to break free. Which..... could seem like an "Oh come on!" bit of adding yet more trouble, but it does make sure that we have put an END to all these fucking assholes. Also.... if this goes where I'm thinking it might it would be really, really awesome. It felt kind of odd and out of place for Harmony to jus, suddenly go off on a expository tangent about the power the Celestia lost while going through the portal and how it's just hanging out there waiting for her to come back through but can't really do anything now. But also slipping in that, it is out of the story until she comes through the portal..... or something causes a large enough dimensional breach for it to slip through and return to Celestia. A large enough breach like say the one that brings in this final Windigo? I am all for this final bastard showing up just to get his face melted by Celestia going full Sol Invictus on his as

[Moongaze14]

This chapter was very much worth the wait. I love the fight scene between Australis, Pinkie, and Megalon as it’s two groups of friends trying to rescue Sonata from her Windigo ancestry. Boreas getting jumped by most of the heroes was amazing and cathartic after seeing him torment the cast. Furthermore, Zephyrus being reduced to a screaming mess as Harmony intervenes by turning Gloriosa into Gaea Everfree was my favorite part after all of Zephyrus’ Machiavellian plots. Wallflower helping Sonata reclaim control was cute as was Junior inspiring Celestia to transform him into his Kaiju form with her Elements powers and Bagan finding compassion within himself to help Gigan. Overall, amazing chapter and can’t wait for the final fight.

[Late_Night]

oh joy, here comes another fucking hatesink baddie to prolong this already seemingly interminable arc
as a related aside, Tarb, you ever hear of Darkness Induced Audience Apathy?

[diverseinterests47]

11390537
Knock. It. Off. Now.

This is the last fucking chapter. Whatever happens next, the arc will be over soon. So either come up with something constructive to say, or shut the hell up.

[SuperSaiyanGodzilla]

Hope part 2 will come soon cause with Bagan repairing Gigan, a Kaiju(plus Wendigo possesd girl) rumble and Eurus seemingly coming I can't wait.

Also what does Bagan’s human form look like again?

[redandready45]

Oh man, this chapter was well worth the wait.

A few thousand kilograms of automobile smashed into Boreas from an angle behind him, instantly wrenching him from his footing and throwing him almost a dozen meters from the transferred force. The energy beam clash was interrupted, and Battra let out a shout as she threw herself full force into the attack the moment Boreas’ onslaught was cut off. The windigo let out an eerie shriek like howling wind, an uncanny cry that should not have been possible with X’s vocal cords, as he was blasted across the grounds of the camp and into the partially frozen lake.

The van, now sporting a roughly Monster X-shaped dent in the front, skidded to a stop.

Figuring she had to be driving in the right direction when she spotted golden spiraling rays and crackling bursts of purple shooting into the sky, Sunset Shimmer had floored it as much as was safe down the mountain pass from the highway. Partially because of her rush to get there in time, and partially on account of having driven the whole way there... very awkwardly.

To compare the inside of the sirens’ van to a clown car would have been a gross understatement. Even with them having dumped out a lot of equipment on the spot just to be sure, it had been a tight squeeze fitting two above-average-human-sized transformed kaiju and six Rainbooms, almost all of whom were now sporting extra bits like magical hooves, horns, and wings, into a model of minivan only meant for four people.

Poor Irys had been clinging to the back of her seat as she had on the first trip; wide-eyed and hanging on to it and Sunset for dear life the entire drive, like a scared cat. Sunset grit her teeth, trying to work through Irys’ grip whilst also having half of Applejack’s foot shoved into her side, with part of who she thought was Fluttershy’s wing sticking out between the seats.

“ALRIGHT! EVERYONE OUT!” Sunset Shimmer squawked through her grimace.

This has got to be one of my favorite parts of the story: equally cathartic, with that monster Boreas getting what he deserved, and somewhat humorous, with the crowding of the van adding an odd bathos to a normally awesome moment.

It is good to see Sunset, while no longer evil, isn't above vehicular assault to defeat a foe.

The oncoming mass of cleansing magic very likely could have purged Boreas from X's body, reaching into his heart and playing upon the platonic bond of respect and friendship that had formed between the wayward dragon knight and magical royal. It would poison the well, forcing Boreas out just as Notus had from Sentry's body... if the mind within the body of Monster X had such a heart.

Instead, held captive by Boreas, the mind of someone who knew and had bonded with Twilight Sparkle, Eventide Hymn, was not present. The lack of bond, lack of tether afforded some protection. It was a shortcoming nobody could have predicted, no one present having seen what Gigan saw within the Memory Stone to have relayed the information. They knew of the memory loss and the fractured mind, but not in the way it was divided now.

Still, the magic was commendable and certainly could have done something severe even if the initial impact of benevolence's poisonous presence upon the frost demon was slightly diluted. Had a western gale not joined the northern howls of wind.

“A desperation move if there ever was one. They’re using the Element like a blunt instrument. The windigo nor my counterpart here are a Bearer for the Element of Magic, but they are able to use it as a raw power source to some extent or another,” Twilight frowned as her attention was diverted to Sunset Shimmer clearing her throat.

“Right, saw a bit of a resemblance to a certain raging she-demon, like when I forced the Element of Magic into use for me.”

I like your take on the Elements not being some Deus Ex Machina, but weapons that need certain things to go together in order to work, as well as the idea that their power can be abused, whether the wielder is good at heart or not. Although it might be seen as prolonging the story, it adds to the suspense and requires the heroes to be on their toes.

The ground trembled and a large, horned shadow cast itself across the gathered heroines. Two more soon flanked it, each bearing wings which spanned the campground crater. The mass emergence of magic Zephyrus had tried to avert in some form or another had come all the same, and bore fantastic results. Even at half their normal size, an odd trend this world seemed to have, the trio of kaiju were like living mountains. Anguirus snorted, mindful of his placement as he lowered down and put his snout close to the ground with his rugged scales and scutes ready to act as hand and footholds.

Rainbow Dash grinned ear to ear, “Oh… Oh this! Is gonna! Be! AWESOME!”

A battle between the Kaiju Defenders and a Windigo-possessed Dark Hunter makes me excited this is going to be a two-part chapter.

Wallflower Blush fidgeted with a lock of her hair as a nervous tick, "I am that too.. And always have been. Seeing a bully like Sunset get her notice and second chance was what pushed me into this but it's no excuse."

This version of Wallflower is far more likable than canon Wallflower. Like with Sci-Twi, her one good deed doesn't automatically make up for the mayhem she caused. What makes this Wallflower likable is she is aware of that. Whereas Wallflower in Forgotten Friendship gets an easy path to forgiveness, this Wallflower knows to be a good person, she has to work for it. While her moment of awesome is a bit contrived, she does prove she has the capacity and the will to be better, not to mention take control of the situation rather than run away when things get hard. Giving the person she hurt the love and kindness she needed is a very good first step.

[Vman-0]

11390537
You ain't got a horse in this race.

[Dragon-from-down-under]

11390999
We never saw Bagan human form, but we did see enjin human form. If I had a guess Bagan human form would take traits from all 3 aspects

[Supersonic]

Top Gear style recap 54 Part 1 (from Goji's POV):

Tonight, the girls take a mountain sized joyride, Bagan surprises everyone, and a crowd proves that the spirit of good still lives on.

[Supersonic]

11390537
Have you ever heard of constructive criticism, because it seems like you haven't.

[megabyte97]

11392879

Uhhh... really? Dude... that comment is over a year old by now. Yes it was a misunderstanding. The author cleared that up for me.

I'm... honestly more baffled than anything that you took the time to reply to such an old comment... you might want to check dates posted next time. But thanks for bringing that comment to my attention so it can be deleted.

Have a nice day, I suppose.

[sonicandmario826]

Bagan placed a hand on their loyal soldier's shoulder, speaking in a voice so plain and quiet, “... I am proud of you.”

Awwww, Gigan got the thumbs up from daddy Bagan… too bad he’s still planning to kill everyone.

[Dragon-from-down-under]

Things are getting interesting, Bagan being proud was something everyone didn’t see coming, though the only one to have officially seen Bagan is flash albeit dazed a bit, but it’s going to flash’s word against Gigan

[ScourgeofLightning]

Bagan development is really, really cool. I'm relieved to see it, in fact, because I was beginning to get concerned that Bagan would be too mysterious for too long to be effective. But this is a big step in Bagan's development, and shows extremely well that all sides are learning here, not just the characters who are on-screen more often. Beyond that, a pretty good chapter, definitely has the feeling of bringing things to their close.

That said, I didn't really enjoy the big "what-if" digression in the Boreas battle. It was a bit distracting to be honest, and so the Boreas part of this I think suffered a bit in pacing. The choreography was still good though, actual effective teamwork that is't just taking turns beatin on people is great to see.

[redandready45]

11390337

Wallflower and Sci-Twi need a good smack to the head after all this, if they survive. Learn how to recognize a Faustian bargain already!

Um...

I'm not trying to say that Wallflower and Sci-Twi should walk away with a slap on the wrist.

But...saying there were embarking on a Faustian Bargain implies that they were two wannabe school shooters who wanted power to take revenge on their tormentors. Zephyrus came to them acting as the saint, not as the sinner. He pretended to be a good guy trying to lead his "charges" toward a heroic goal. The two, not having any other frame of reference for what a good or bad magical creature should be, kind of went along with what they believed was a benevolent soul.

I think the two, especially Twiggles, have been slapped around enough to know not to trust a total stranger. What they need is a combination of discipline and a path to be better.

And let's not forget the Dark Hunters, our favorite anti-villains, are working for a literal devil too!

[Godzillawolf]

Wallflower wakes up to find herself still being pursued. I like the showcase of the sheer power here. Highlights how terrifying these things can be to a normal one.

Fortunately, Australis is stopped from doing anything worse when the heroes arrive. Always love a good dynamic entry.

Really love that description of Pinkie Pie and how Laughter is the Element most connected to Courage in a way.

I like Wallflower's reaction to all this and Pinkie Pie still being willing to fight Australis, but still horrified by what she's capable of doing.

I also like the fact being capable of positive and negative emotions makes Australis, and by extention the Sirens as a whole, superior to their proginators.

I also like that Sonata is still in there, even she's not entirely in control.

And Megalon adds another to the 'save someone by hitting someone with a car' count...I find it hilarious that it's happened enough times for that to be a thing.

Do like his justification for doing so. Shows he's a true friend.

And I like him being the one to remind Pinkie of that. Of course Megalon being SERIOUS is a sign things are...serious.

I do like the fact Pinkie's Element power has Friendly Fire Proof. Always nice to see a power like that.

Don't have time to finish right now, but solid start to the chapter.

[Tarbtano]

11394808
Thanks for the inside buddy! Duly noted on the kerfuffle involving Boreus. Felt a bit awkward about the pacing but just wanted to be sure all the details were put through. Still, could have truncated things and I'll keep that in mind for part two. Fight scenes are something I always like to pay close attention to because it can seem deceptively easy to have all of the detail blur together into "and then they punched for a bit".

Good to see the general reception to the Bagan sequence has been pretty good. They're definitely a character I wanted to give a more nuanced and varied take to, if among other reasons to differentiate them from the super mega hype death machine in line with DBZ Broly characterization they often get saddled with. So showing that change was important, glad it seems to be a good time to set it off.

[Tarbtano]

11394484
Bagan is a character I've always rather liked the idea and design of, but especially in hindsight my often find many of the fandom interpretations very lacking. So this was a sequence meant to show off something hopefully quite distinct about this version and that things are changing.

[Tarbtano]

11392050
Next time on Top Gear!

The crew gets stuck in a blustery situation! Things get very chilly at the school. And someone finds they have to misdirect to go straight!

[Tarbtano]

11390999
I would imagine a bit androgynous given no biological sex and the aspects having varying degrees of femininity or masculinity.

[Tarbtano]

11395206
No rush friend, thanks for the memo!

When the comic relief is not cracking jokes and is being deadly serious about hitting former friends with cars (seriously I'm going to go back and see what the count was), things have definitely gotten real.

Call it me being a bit of a sap but since those specific elemental powers were specifically made with protective and benevolent purposes in mind, I would imagine a proper bearer of using them in the right context would have enough control consciously or unconsciously to avoid causing harm. Such magic I wouldn't have potentially dangerous applications, but I would like to think this is proof she is of using that power responsibly as she has already proven.

Never thought I would get to use some memory reference to 2008 Incredible Hulk in context of Pinkie Pie.

[Godzillawolf]

Do like the fight at the camp continuing, including another addition to Vehicular Impact Rescue Counter.

"The van, now sporting a roughly Monster X-shaped dent in the front, skidded to a stop."

This thing has always made me laugh.

I do really like this fight, shows how much the Humane Six have grown over time and together they nearly beat Boreas...when his big brother bails him out.

Zephyrus transforming into the completed Frostbite Sparkle is terrifying, but also does a good job highlighting the fact this is a serious Hail Mary play and he's going to die. Design is great.

Boreas Kaijuing Up is terrifying, and I think is the first proper villainous kaiju transformation, given we didn't see the others transform while they're evil. Giranbo was less this and more shapeshifting.

And Gloriosa evolving Gaea Everfree from a retainer to a genuine superhero. Definitely a highlight to me, as I enjoy all her heroism being rewarded. And it's nice to see Zephyrus have a legit 'Oh Crap' moment seeing it as well as a Villainous Breakdown.

I like that the group instantly decides 'we're going after them' after the Windigos flee and don't hesitate for a moment.

And I like the reveal the kaiju transformations for the others DID go off and Rainbow's reaction is perfect. I do like the group charge.

Big thing here is first appearance of Battra Lea's kaiju form. Really like the design, something familiar to Battra, but unique. I think I see some influence from Legendary Mothra in there with the mantis attributes and maybe some of GMK Mothra in there. Nice.

Once more, sorry I can't do this in one go, but more will be coming. :)

[Godzillawolf]

Meanwhile, Aria is having to play taxi service to the rest of the party, which probably is making her wish she could turn into her full Siren form. That is hilarious.

I like Junior's just knowing exactly what's going on from the sounds alone.

Aria's reaction is also well done...and I like the sheer irony it's freaking Kaizer Ghidorah who's doing the comforting.

It's really nice to see Godzilla Junior in the leadership and strategizing role. It suits him and shows being King of the Monsters isn't just due to sheer power.

Also like the heroes being somewhat annoyed at how many pieces X's mind is in right now.

I really love Junior's 'You're Better Than You Think You Are' speech to Celestia. Shows he understands the people around him well, and I also like the fact that it shows he's grown a lot, given it reminds me of his mother's speech to him.

I also like Celestia's emotions, going through the trauma but slowly coming around to Junior...and taking Harmony off guard.

I like the implication Bagan's motives for stealing that piece of Celestia's magic may have been more than just that, but it still being left open ended. As well as Harmony's thoughts on Grogar and Bagan...and the implication Bagan isn't beyond redemption and maybe, just maybe, could become Reijuu again some day.

Meanwhile, Pinkie and Megalon are still fighting Australis, and I like the little introspection on Pinkie Pie remembering the Wendigo story from the human world. It shows that personality aside, she's smarter than often given credit for.

I like how the power boost from the camp certainly directly helps, but it's biggest impact is giving a nudge of courage and quelling fear, allowing Wallflower to finally do the right thing.

That's the thing about heroes: they inspire.

And I like that it works. Forgiveness defeats hatred. Joy defeats fear. Laughter purifies.

Personally, I like this resolution because forgiveness is as much the kryptonite of hate as love is. Perhaps more.

I like the Element of Laughter recognizing that Sonata is a good person and thus not harming her like it would her father.

I like this act also inspires the rest of the people around them to show compassion and empathy, even though unlike our heroes, they are under zero obligation to.

"Megalon blinked, "... I was going to say clearly stressed out and not thinking straight. Where'd that self loathing come from?""

I kinda love how much wisdom Megalon is showing this chapter. Intelligence might not be the best, but he definitely has Wisdom.

I like Wallflower's full admission of what she did and Sonata returning the favor.

"“So the device I invented was tuned in to pick up a very specific type of energy signature that, and this is for lack of better terms," Twilight Sparkle muttered a bit sheepishly, "Magic gives off. Like the stuff that led me to finding you because you’d been around it! Don't worry, it's not like those bogus EMS readers Ghost Chasers use. I swear, if I had a nickel for all of the times those bozos went running after a noise that was probably just wood creaking from a temperature change, I could.."

She paused and tapped at her chin before shrugging, "Probably not put myself through college with the rates these days, more like buy a good DVD player... But the fact I could says something!""

That made me legit laugh.

Funny thing is I can legit see EG Ghost Story going ghost hunting with EG Sherlock.

I do like the flashback to how Blush and Sci-Twi met, especially given the For Want of a Nail nature of things.

And again, Megalon proving he's smarter than people give him credit for. It's fun to see him and Pinkie having a big brain moment together.

I like Megalon just casually saying he's 150, as well as once more, heroes inspire. Call me a sap but I love that.

I like the difference between Bagan's cold and the Windigos, and that once more, they care about the Hunters. I like that even without being present, Bagan gets the sense Harmony won their bet. And like the fact Bagan takes note of the fact Harmony could take advantage of their situation, but won't. They know Harmony by now.

And Gigan...has genuine loyalty for Bagan. Something he's never had for his creators. In fact, the utter opposite of that. Gigan despised his makers, and if Terra could've upkept himself and Megalon and X would've ever agreed, probably would've jumped ship at the drop of a hat. But here he is genuinely loyal out of respect and gratitude.

I like that Bagan in turn doesn't relent on their views of sapientkind...but is willing to delay its destruction for the Dark Hunters' sake if need be because they're genuinely the first creatures in thousands of years they've come to genuinely care about.

Harmony might just win them over after all...but it'd be the Hunters that make it possible if it does.

However, the chapter ends on Eurus, Grogar's mightiest creation, stirring. Yikes.

All in all, a very good penultimate chapter and I do like the character growth.

Oddly enough, I think Megalon and Pinkie's section managed to steal the show a bit, which is good as it's a capstone on that character arc, but the birth of Gaea Everfree the Superhero, not merely the steward, was also great.

[Arcane Howitzer]

Wait, I'm confused. I thought Notus was the East Wind? Is this Eurus guy just filling the empty slot since there's now a vacancy and someone took South before he could get there, like the world's worst game of musical chairs? What would he have done if Notus hadn't kicked the bucket?

[Tarbtano]

11400252
Easy error. Notus was South, hence why his progeny Sonata's windigo name is Australis (which means 'of the south', hence the southern lights are the Aurora Australis). The brief instances of eastern winds prior was from the still trapped Eurus. Boreas is the North and Zephyrus is the West respectively.

Had Notus lived, Eurus might have been unleashed quicker. They need all three of the other winds to most easily summon them. Hence why the sirens were sired as back ups.

[Eurvos Morgenbrise]

Don't, Tarb.

Don't give me hope that Reijuu can be saved.

[Charedfirescale]

Prior to this newest chapter’s publication I happened to be rereading the story. There was much I’d forgotten and I am glad somethings were put into a new perspective.

I thought Eventide Hymn was Glorosia Daisy-Sentry for example. Also I sorta ship Adigo with Twilight due to the almost make out session that occurred at the cabins.

Finally if you ever do another crossover with Friendship Souls, perhaps have those characters come to the Bridge.

[THE_NERD]

Some cues echoed her father, such as the large tusks blanking her maw, but Lea’s appearance was still something all to her own with a body almost resembling something of a wasp and mantis as much as it did a butterfly. Generally she was more organized and armored in appearance, as opposed to the wrinkled and scaly look of her predecessor. Evidently the last Battra’s death to melee combat had come with a few generational improvements.

Is this based off the 2019 Mothra?
images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/c6704316-0c21-4b65-99cc-904d14e4d2d9/dddh2oj-8a8a31d6-c16d-4836-b622-0db53e4aa2a9.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2M2NzA0MzE2LTBjMjEtNGI2NS05OWNjLTkwNGQxNGU0ZDJkOVwvZGRkaDJvai04YThhMzFkNi1jMTZkLTQ4MzYtYjYyMi0wZGI1M2U0YWEyYTkucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.4gH9YmSD0nuqmaofu_6Tzs6CqQ-Casi9PZ8R1TQBcaQ
Plus some attributes from Battra?

[Tarbtano]

11407389
Yes indeed, wanted to give it her own flair.

[THE_NERD]

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c8p9p3e5.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/funny-big-brain-meme.jpg

[Apprentice_of_Mysterio]

Any chance you'll incorporate this stuff into your story, like a Psycho Rangers-type squad of clones created by Gigan's creators?: https://youtu.be/ObDeGGRH-PY

[SkekSil the Chamberlain]

Finally read it all. Now for the withdrawls and agonizing wait for the next chapter.

[Temnizziv]

But, when Sonata’s predecessor and sire had done a horrifying thing that led to her birth under Zephyrus's plan to create more of their kind, there had been some unintended side effects. From the day she was born, her name had been decided for herself. Australis, daughter of the South Storm. Raw, uncultivated, and an enigma; there was something else about Notus’ spawn. By accident of her being a crossbreed with a powerful sea sorceress, or by design of her wrath-fueled dark magic having a target after being personally hurt by them; she had far surpassed her father. Notus had been driven to create spite and malice, but without the positive emotions in their life he could never have known anything else. Sonata had, and she felt a spite unlike any windigo before her due to losing that happiness.

I feel like this comparison explanation is a bit too long winded & slows the fight scene down. It'd be better to be more succinct during a fight scene.

Between them and in the windigo’s direct focus, Wallflower Blush pushed her will to move further and further. And yet, she couldn’t budge.

I love the physicality of this fight scene. Really shows off how truly powerful Australis is, and how dire this situation is.

Had he been one of the initial six kaiju who arrived in Equestria, she very easily could've seen him becoming a fast friend.

I mean. He has a thing for purple, as we've established before, Tarb.

Within a second's notice, a torrent of gravitons, cast in an eerie deathly white instead of their typical gold, flew straight down at the small crowd.

I've noticed this is the only instance I've seen you mention this detail before the beams revert back to the gold color for the following scene. Is this some holdover from an older draft, an idea that got forgotten about, or is this sort of thing something that'll still be relevant for the next part?

Even at half their normal size, an odd trend this world seemed to have, the trio of kaiju were like living mountains.

And here I shall take a moment to remind y'all that Tarb loves his 50 meter scaling.

The blizzard that had overtaken the town was beaten back, unable to mix or occupy the same space as some of this foreign magic like oil and water and having less force behind it. Rainbow Dash whooped a combination of a warcry and burst of laughter like she was in the most epic roller coaster ever when Anguirus jumped over a housing development and was caught midair by the other two allied kaiju who airlifted him the rest of the way.

Fml, this was a big ass scene. Now, where to start? So, I liked how the Rainbooms' powers worked off of each other for this fight scene. Our heroes pummeling down & trying to purify Boreas honestly gave me the same vibe as the Exorcist scene in Boondocks.

Rainbooms: Is this even an exorcism? We're just shooting him with Fuck Off Rainbow Laser Beams.
Twilight: In my experience, there's not much difference.

As for Zephyrus nabbing the Element for a power boost; I know some people weren't happy with it, but I'm personally fine with it. And Boreas X had a cool entrance for the Kaiju form.

I also didn't mind Gloriosa keeping the Gaia powers. Yeah, she stood out great contributing to the team with her grounded perspective as a relatively normal person. But all the character development of accepting her changes would've gone down the drain if she had been completely depowered from this point on.

That said, I do understand Crystal's criticism of moving the Kaiju Fight to a city in light of how often the setting has been used for the genre. And especially given at the time, you had recently finished writing the finale for New Era which was set inside of Kyoto. So it might've been for the better to keep it at the campground, but this is still fine with me.

Aria continued to flap her wings and recirculate currents of controlled gravity to continue flying along. It was faster than driving a car, much less through the windy streets and growing icy formations across town and they hadn't had much other choice than her airlifting everybody who could go. Gigan was out of commission and couldn't be moved safely and Flash Sentry still out cold from what happened to him earlier. She was the only one who knew how to drive safely but would have to go slow through the roadways. That left her in this rather ridiculous looking situation of the tiny Celestia hanging off one of her arms and legs, Godzilla doing the same to her other side, and Adagio piggybacking on top of her cousin whilst leaning to the side in an attempt to equalize the weight.

I'll admit. Ever since I made that Top Gun joke to you awhile back, I can't get the ridiculous image out of my head of Aria literally being an F14 Tomcat. And Adagio wearing Maverick's helmet.

And if something out of their means to handle emerged, especially by the machinations of another god, she would ensure they didn't fight alone.

The convo between Junior & Tia was fantastically heartwarming here. And I like the twist that Tia's disconnection with the Elements may be a self imposed psychological limitation. The pondering over Bagan's actions & his recent development seems to imply that he'll be playing a different role than expected for the future, and I suspect than what you had originally intended for The Bridge. I'm liking this potential direction so far.

Pinkie Pie slipped off her Element crystal and, with some caution just in case of any signs implying a negative reaction, put it on Sonata’s neck. Instantly any changes from Australis to Sonata seem to be increased one hundred fold, the transformation reversing even more and the pain subsiding as the Element of pure good worked off the inner goodness the siren had. It wasn't quite a replacement for what had been there prior, but the substitution certainly seemed to help as long as she was right there next to it for the magic to work. Worries that somehow the opposite magic of the windigos would cause harm to the siren were quickly proven untrue. Nobody could have known it was because a certain goddess would never condemn one due to the circumstances of their birth or who had sired them.

Damn it, Tarb. We need to stop sharing the same brain cell for story ideas! Lol

"Kids? I'm 150," Megalon whimpered.

Stfu, Megalon. You're a baby, and no-one can say otherwise.

Megalon casually picked up Wallflower with his surviving arm and carried her into the vehicle, “No time to explain, get in the truck!”

I don't mind Wallflower contributing to saving Sonata in this scene, but I feel like she shouldn't have been the one to finally calm her down. It would've been better if Wallflower had merely chinked the armor enough for Pinkie & Megs to finally get through to her. That said, I still enjoyed the scene & I liked the displays of Good Samaritans at work.

For now, extinction chose to ignore the giggling and focus. Runic markings covered Gigan’s form, and what was his form itself began to shift.

I liked the conversation between Gigan & Bagan. Along with Bagan's character development for reasons that I've covered earlier. You're doing great with Bagan. Also, Gigan is Favorite Child confirmed.

Eurus waited no more.

Not much to say about this scene in particular, so I'll get to my overall thoughts on this chapter. This was a good chapter. I can't wait for Part 2. That's all.

And now I'm finally done with this.

[Dragon-from-down-under]

I can see tarb incorporating aspects and moves from Godzilla vs Gigan Rex sometime down the line

[Dragon-from-down-under]

The turtle returns
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRJkYWXRj6Q

[CalvinZilla]

Oooh, Eurus is joining the party. This should be a fitting conclusion to the long, long, long, Winter Wars arc. I am happy to see that everyone's kaiju'd up, especially Anguirus, who has only spent time as a kaiju at the beginning and when catching Junior and Xenilla. Also glad to see that Sonataustralis is recovering. Hopefully she'll get free from the ice soon, and the Windigos will meet satisfying ends. Please update soon!

[THE_NERD]

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The Monsterverse Mothra design is my favorite due to its sheer uniqueness.

[AJoltOfDapper]

Bro, coming back to this story after discovering it in 2015 is a TRIP. I keep planning to re-read it at some point to see how it's aged (and get a good kick of nostalgia for when I was a full-blown brony), but God Damn, it's so long I don't know when I'll EVER have the time! No time like the present though. Tarbtano, you are a literary genius and I have many fond memories of this story, ESPECIALLY Xenilla's redemption arc. Here's to almost 10 years since you created this masterpiece!

[THE_NERD]

I’m excited for the next update!

[Ri2]

You know, your multiple mentions of how things totally could have gone differently and ended things quicker kind of emphasizes that...this arc really HAS dragged on way, way too long.

[redandready45]

11442224

I see Grogar's error as not a failure to understand the need for balance, for clearly once he understood that, but a failrue to see that "balance" does not neccessarily mean an even, 50/50 split. In some ways Grogar's ideals, the negative emotions he embodis, are needed elements of the world, but they are... denser emotions, that require a greater amount of positive emotions to counteract and balance, like an 80/20 split that still ends up balancing the scales evenly.

The Wendiegoes are what happens when you have entities that are just 0/100, and as powerful as they are, they are brittle and weak to even the smallest 1/100 part drop of positive emotions. They're Grogar's living thesis, but also equal proof as to why he's wrong. I just hope in some distant future, he and those who follow him can be made to see that.

Remember, Equestria is a place with a narrow moral compass: either you are a good guy trying to save Equestria, or you are a bad guy trying to destroy/conquer it. While the Mane 6 and their allies are flawed characters, they are more or less good characters who want what is best for everypony, and almost all their enemies and rivals are either evil or run contrary to their ideals. The Mane 6 have never had an antagonist who is not only morally grey but forces them to question their beliefs and wonder if what they do is right or not.

The villains of Equestria, meanwhile, are all self-serving assholes who lose because their unpleasantness means they alienate any potential allies. Even Starlight, the closest any MLP antagonist has come to having a following, loses her followers when she is revealed to be a lying hypocrite. Zephyrus only really succeeds in the beginning by pretending to be a wise savior to Wallflower and Sci-Twi but quickly throws away that goodwill once he feels he doesn't need it, not only turning those two girls against him, but rallying the Dark Hunters, Terran Defenders, Sirens, and Dark-Hunters together against them. Even the most competent MLP villains have no conception of securing long-term loyalty from their followers and thus are destined to fall due to such short-sightedness.

Grogar having no real appreciation and understanding of good and positive emotions is pretty standard for an MLP antagonist who inhabits a world where the rule is that good should beat evil, because all evil people are friendless losers who others will team up to defeat.

[FiredragonX]

The arc finally it’s done!